If you're the dev who coded this and you are most decidedly not
an intern, I want you to know that for legal reasons, that was
a joke, OK? You know networks cancel joke
joking parties now, so watch your mouth for the Karen tour.
For Pandaria. For.
Calendar. To the burning.
Region. For Gilnaeus, but has not died
for the Lich King for the. Sindora for the Alliance for.
The Horde for Azeroth. Hello and welcome to another
episode of For Azeroth. I am one of your hosts, the
returning villain AKA Manny, and I am joined of course by the two
people who held down the Fort who did all the work last week,
other than editing apparently. We have, of course coming to us
from part unknown. In the new abode we have Lex.
Hello Lex, how are you and how's the World of Warcraft been
treating you? I.
Great, I finally set up my on the floor gaming station and
immediately realized that the table that I the coffee table
that I was using was far too short.
So I am now purchasing a new coffee table which I said I was
not going to do and I was going to buy them used.
So this is But this is great. I'm on the floor and I'm
snuggling with my puppy while I'm recording a podcast and I'm
playing video games, not in my spare time, so I'm doing great.
Nice. And then coming to us from
Eastern Canada in one of his manses, we have of course, Sean.
Hello. Hello, Manny.
How are you and how's the World of Warcraft been treating you?
I'm doing well, we are actually thinking about moving to PEI,
buying a home over there and moving to PEI which just makes
me chuckle but I'm doing well. Warcraft is doing well.
I've been on the PTR, hitting the dungeons, things are feeling
good. I don't want to say best season
ever, but I will say season ever and it's definitely a season.
And yeah, we've just been grinding through.
I am officially done all tasks that I need to do on retail
until the end of the next season.
As far as player power goes, I have my Warrior, my Paladin, and
my Death Knight all geared at 684 Max doe ready to go into
next season. Remaining paladin, but we're
going to keep the others ready to go just in case.
And I've started the raid prep for both NA and EU where one is
mythic and one is heroic. Things are good.
That's good, that's good. Speaking about 11.2, the last
week that I was here, we got that release date.
While you guys were holding down the Fort, of course Blizzard was
making changes. But in between last episode of
this episode, we now have a release client out on the PTR.
So it is getting very real. We're going to see people
putting up their tail list if they haven't already put up
their tailors. But I'm going to tell everybody
within the sound of my voice slow down because Blizzard has
been working through with different hot fixes on the PTR
and changing things quite quickly.
In fact, we had some changes today.
And Sean, you were looking at them at first and first you
were, you weren't happy about some changes, but you, you got
in, you played a bit and turned it around.
Tell tell us about like what kind of tuning they're doing
with Mythic Plus? So they are attempting to make
it more accessible. And one of the things that
players have identified as a hurdle, especially for new
players getting in trying to push to to higher levels is the
complexity and the coordination required in because it says they
changed the way AOE like CC's work where they don't send
abilities on cool down. That coordination of CCAOE stops
has become much higher at the higher key levels.
And it seems like Blizzard is trying to find ways to work
around that. And one of those ways that they
did try to, to work around this, the fish sticks and Soleil's
gambit, if you remember them from shadow ants, would be a it
was a 1.5. They started out as a 1.5 second
cast by the scale binders or scale finders or scale.
The stupid. Yeah, Murlocs.
And then once the cast ended, it would put a fish stick in the
ground, which is a totem. And then that totem would put
ADR on the enemies and start to heal them with invigorating fish
sticks. That's it's a frustrating came
to play around now as through tuning and shadow lands that got
changed from 1.5 to 3 seconds to cast.
People started using AOE stops to to avoid having to deal with
these. And because it's a totem,
because it's coded as a totem, they're not affected by AOE
spells. So you have to single target
them down. You have to physically swap to
them as your main target and focus them down.
Coming into this season, coming into into season 3, they were
looking like they were not going to be any more fun and people
had complained about them and asked for fixes to them to try
and make them somehow better. Wowhead did some data mining
last night before the fixes went in, and what they data mined was
that there was no longer a cast timer, that the totems were
instant cast, that they make the mobs bigger when they empower
it, and there was another change, I can't remember what it
said. Anyway, the changes that they
said made it seem like Blizzard doubled down and made these
things awful because with with them being an instant cast,
there's no you can't chain CC the enemies.
But what in actuality happened? I went in and played it.
The the totem is instant cast. So the fish stick is still
instant cast, but the fish stick itself is like 4 times the size
that it was. It's as tall as a very large
murloc. Like if you know that number,
that toy that you're that mouth that we all got for being six
months subscribers to like the big burly orange murloc that
everybody rides. It's about that size.
It's effing huge. And but once it casts once the
once the murloc casts it, it then has a 5 second cast timer.
The totem itself doesn't start. It's Dr. or it's healing for
five seconds. So you have 5 full seconds to
swap. It's still totem, which is kind
of a bummer. I'd like to see that be changed.
It's the one last change I would like.
If you still hard swap to it, burn it down.
If you have a monk in your group that can touch and death it, get
it down before that 5 seconds and then it never DRS and it
never heals the enemies or you. Also, alternatively, you have 5
seconds to cut away from it. Yeah.
So the data mining and posting before the patch notes, because
the patch notes sort of clarified a little bit, didn't
paint the whole picture, and it wasn't until we actually went
and played it. That's why it's so important
that we don't get frustrated and immediately triggered by what we
read from data mining, because it doesn't always mean what we
think it means or play out the way it does.
And I was one of those people who instantly got.
I was like, oh, this is it. They ruined so last gambit.
But I was wrong. Yeah.
They fixed it so last gambit's better now.
It's perfect. There are no more issues.
Blizzard stop tuning for me Gambit.
There, there are things that people want.
Yeah. No, like they definitely made
it. We're done.
It fixed it. Another change to Slayers Gambit
that is a huge quality of life change but also makes me a
little bit sad. The second boss is the pirate
dragon Captain Hook Tail. In that fight.
ADS get off of a boat, rush the beach.
You, you, you turn the dragon to use its frontal breath weapon to
kill those pirates as they're running into their swashbuckles
as they're running in. But Captain Hook Tail, as the
name says, has a giant tail mechanic that hurts the players
in your group as you swing it around to hit them.
They have removed the tail mechanic entirely.
There is no more to. So instead of a tail mechanic,
now there is a dot that goes on players which gives you a haste
buff. So I think it's a 30% haste
buff, but it also does 244,000 damage.
Every tick of damage, it does 10% more damage for 30 seconds
or until it's dispelled. So now there's going to be this
really fun gameplay of how long can I survive this dot ticking
with this buff before it has to get dispelled.
And then when you dispel, there's a burst of damage.
Two of those go to once. So it'll obviously have to be
something you stagger dispels on.
But I'm really looking forward to MDI groups where they have
like a single Death Knight who pops AMS and then gets spell
wording from his paladin and then gets paints up and they
stack them all the way for 30 seconds and watch him blast.
That's going to be a lot of fun. But yeah, Captain Hook Tail
doesn't have a hook tail anymore.
So now it's just, yeah, now it's just Captain Tail.
That sounds so much worse. Yeah, than.
It does, yeah. Like does it?
I want to know if it goes through immunities and stuff.
I could see to see like a Palin be like, oh, I'm about to die,
time to bubble and get like 3-4 more seconds out of this with
like that much haste to kill who?
Who? That can be spicy, that is.
I love that. That's got play.
Let's got play. Let's got into play.
But yeah, all this means that if people are putting out those
tier lists being like, Oh my goodness, this is good, This is
worse. This is the worst dungeon.
This is the hardest dungeon. Like don't, don't take that to
heart right now. They are still very much at work
trying to do adjustments here. I saw that there were some
healer changes last week while while I was travelling back from
the more rural parts of Ontario. Yes, you're allowed to say
Ontario to John. That's fine.
I. Almost gave your address though.
Manny, I was like you. Didn't quite go there at least.
Maybe you edited that part out and I'll be thankful for that.
Yeah. So yeah, like I'm excited for
11.2. Like I just, you guys already
talked about Sean's misgivings of the story.
I I hold some different misgivings of the story, but
that will literally have to be an entirely separate episode.
But what are you guys excited for an 11.2 let Lex I got I got
to throw this one to you first. Rating I'm excited to get back
into the raid. It sounds really fun.
It sounds really cool. It sounds like there's a lot of
story. I am I'm excited to feel like
there's like something for me to be working towards right now
that isn't just like prepping in general.
That is that is absolutely the thing that I'm the most hyped
about, and this one sounds really cool.
I have. I I know none of us.
Question Mark. I've seen the dementias fight,
right? That one's hard locked.
Yeah, well. Unless that's what Sean couldn't
tell us about. But yet.
Yeah. As far as we're legally allowed
to say, apparently none of us have seen the dementias fight.
Well, that just, it just sounds sick, like the, you know, fight
as a city. Oh my God, insane.
I'm so hyped and I'm so hyped for our inevitable betrayal by
Zalitath. Yeah, I'm, I'm more on Sean's
side on that one, but I can just like, OK, Sean, before I go off
on this tangent, what are you most looking forward to?
Is it also rating or are you more excited for Mythic Plus or
what's what's got you going for 11.2?
Are you most excited for your personal zoo?
I am looking forward to actually, you know what the
Ecodome I, I was thinking about this.
So the Ecodomes and I, you know why I equated it to Jurassic
Park. You go and you're, you're
rebuilding these things. And then I saw the new Jurassic
Park movie and then I was thinking to myself, I've seen
every Jurassic Park movie and they all end horribly.
But if there was an actual real world Jurassic Park, knowing how
horrible it goes and everyone, I'm still going.
I'm not passing up the chance to see an Ankylosaurus like I'm
sorry, I need to see my spiky boy, I'm going to Jurassic Park.
That is not what I'm most excited about 11.2.
But I just wanted to be clear that if they open a real
Jurassic Park and you see me going, please don't tweet at me.
Wow, he's such a hypocrite. He knows those Dinos be eating
some. You did so good last episode,
not swearing and so I know you can do it so.
No, maybe what he's saying is the dinosaurs famously eat dogs
and so there's got a 50% chance that they'll be female.
That's not even a swear. It's true.
Yeah.
Jurassic Park 3, The Lost World. They eat a dinosaur in the
backyard in San Francisco, right over to the doghouse.
I can't believe you don't remember that man.
Come. On man, anyway, one of.
My excited for an 11.2. I'm going to.
I mean, I'm with Lex. The raid is a banger.
I've played through it. I'm looking forward to progging
with my teams. I think for me what I'm most
excited for is to be one step closer to midnight and the
announcement of cross region gameplay.
I think that is what I'm most excited for.
An 11.21 step closer to being able to use all of my characters
on NA with my friends on EU, and more importantly being able to
merge all of the collectibles from my EU account into my NA
account. I am looking forward to 11.2.
The non 11.2 thing that I'm looking forward to is a super
clip of every time Sean has predicted that we would get
cross region play. But coming in 11.2, I think I'm
yeah, I'm with you on that. Getting closer to midnight.
I think that that like I'm excited to see where that goes,
especially since the, the scuttlebutt around it is that
the story of the war within sort of shifted in production and
this is what they could divert the story to.
And so like midnight will be the true pushing towards what they
what they had planned. And then beyond that, man, I, I
really want to push pretty hard at the beginning of this season
for mythic plus. The end of this season was my
push for for mythic plus. This time I'd like to kind of
get there earlier. I'm not going to be anywhere
looking to push for title. I'm not going to go be going to
like nineteens and 20s. That's not that's not in the
forecast as it were. But I would love to start
pushing into fourteens into fifteens, see where we can go,
see if my my team is willing to push themselves considering
where we got this time. I am scared however, that we're
going to get things in later patches that are going to be
like we got in 12.5 and in 12.7. Namely the belt power up, the
extra 8 item levels on everything, power up the head
and chant power up. Which meant that the early part
of the season kind of didn't count, which I felt was weird
and kind of self defeating I feel.
Like that's sort of true of every patch, though, is that
like, would it like you're always going to go into it with
the knowledge that if you push in the beginning, they're going
to make it easier by the end, right.
And so like, do I, I maybe not to, to to be fair, this season
was back loaded and it was back loaded with time limited things
and I didn't like that either. Like I, I hear what you're
saying that there was a lot that was handed to you by the end of
it. But like at the end of the day,
it's always going to be the people who get title within the
first few weeks or the people who get, you know, Keystone
master or whatever. Within the first few weeks
though, like just by definition, they worked significantly harder
and had significantly less gear available to them than the
people who get it right before season close.
Like there's always catch up mechanics, there's always some
extra little things they give you.
There's always ways that it just got significantly easier.
To a point, yeah. But like entire systems, like we
didn't have anything quite like this for much of Dragonflight.
But like, to your point, in 11.1, we did have the ring that
showed up on the Siren Isle that gave a lot of people a boost of
power. I don't think there was much
beyond that. You guys can correct me if I'm
wrong, right? It was a weird this season it
did feel like they were really scared people were not going to
be able to get things by season end, which was a little bit
surprising because to be fair, I didn't do any method.
But it it sounded like this was one of the easiest seasons
they've had. So I don't know why they were so
like terrified, But I, I guess my argument would be that like
there's always like, even if it's just like they start
handing out gear like it's candy by the end of the season, right?
Like they always do things to make the end of the season
significantly easier than the beginning of the season.
This season was easier because of the extra power they gave us.
It was the turbo boost in 11 point 1.5 that made the season
easy. Everybody gained 6 item levels
and then on top of that we had a few weeks later we had the the
helmet chance coming from from visions which added player
power. A lot of classes were still
using Cersei's circuit which was a bit overpowered especially if
you were a mastery loving class. And then boomkins and or feral
druids maybe. But that is why sorry.
Enhancement shaman call. Enhancement shaman, Yeah.
So that, I think, is why the season felt easier.
And the Galliwick's mythic kills, they've that rings true
for that there. It's like the most killed boss
or right now it's the second most killed boss and boss in, in
modern Wow, it might be the most killed at this point.
So it's, it's definitely more accessible, but it's because of
that mid season boost. And they've already said that
they liked what turbo boost provided and they're, they're
looking to do something similar in 11.2.
So I expect a mid season Crest bump.
Save your crests now. Hot tip, don't use the Crest
upgrade vendor guy until the turbo boost of season of season
3 comes out and then you can do it all in one day and not have
to farm anything. That's a hot tip for you.
That's what I did this season and it wasn't just that I forgot
that I could do the craft upgrade and.
The end of the season. Well, another, another thing
that Lex has been doing that everybody else should be doing
is not spending your valor stones because going into 11.3,
we will not have a reset of valor stones.
Anything, any valor that you have if you're capped already
because you just, what are you going to spend it on?
You've upgraded everything already and so forth.
You get to carry those into the next season and as you get
upgrades, you'll be able to immediately start pushing that
through. If you're somebody who is
economically minded, make sure you have a lot of things ready
for enchanting items and all of that.
Because a lot of people are going to be getting items,
upgrading them past anything that they've gotten this season,
Especially if they're like a heroic Raider and they're being
capped at 470 something. In that first week, you're going
to be getting 480 something gear.
And then in Mythic Plus, you're going to be starting to get gear
from that. And that means.
Anybody who needs a new ring enchant, new gems, new whatever
consumables, they're going to be way more of a hot commodity in
the beginning of the season that I think they've been in seasons
past. Now.
I don't think either of one of you are really doing professions
on. You have like an entire Guild
network. So you've got like your one sort
of profession that you've worked through.
Yeah, I'm in. I'm enchanting an alchemy on
every character. Chanting enough, have you?
Are they all the same level of completed or?
Yeah, they're all finished. Well, I have one that is almost
finished. He was behind.
But yeah, all of my characters are enchanting an alchemy.
Alchemy for the extended flash duration.
It only makes sense and enchanting because when all you
do is dungeons, it's a gathering profession.
Good, good. My mind chanting is nowhere near
complete because it's on an alt that barely touches dungeons.
And so thank goodness for War Bound because that's where it's
beginning most of its stuff. Lex, what about you?
I, I feel like you had said early on in season 1 that you
were sort of like not really doing professions.
I don't think I've really seen heard you pick up from there.
Yeah, I have 30,000 golds. That probably tells you about
how about how much I've been doing labour wise to keep things
going. I will, I, I need, I need to
start doing gold work just because like I'm kind of hitting
the point when like people be like, oh, you can craft this
thing and I have to sit there and do a little math and be
like, oh, that is all my money. So I think especially now that I
have my cute old floor couch and I can get back into just like,
you know, spending a couple hours just flying around, having
a good time, watching TV, listening to a podcast,
gathering stuff. I think I do just need to go and
sit down and and make myself a little money 'cause I am a broke
baby. Well, at 30 Ki might suggest the
tried and true Sean method of gathering.
Basically you use your credit card and the Blizzard store, you
get yourself a token that'll get that little like at this point
roughly 10 times your gold right off the bat and that that'll
like keep you comfy and for like what, 20 bucks like I I feel
like that'll be pretty good. If you're living within your
means, AT30K300K will be some mad money for you.
I got 300. If I saw 300,000 gold in my bags
I literally don't know what I would do.
Like I think I might actually cry of joy like the shoe.
There the token 300K right now. Yeah, like it's because that's
what I said, because it's getting close to 11.2.
So the token prices are are ballooning.
I would suspect that they're not.
They're going to go down a little bit.
But by the end of August, once we get Gamescon, you're going to
see those balloon again. And this is probably going to be
one of the last times people are going to see tokens on NA below
300K, in my opinion. They like it's.
I expect as we get closer to the expansion, as things heat up
with like Legion Remix and all that sort of stuff, tokens are
going to go up yet again. And I remember getting those
tokens 430K back in the day, Lex.
So you know that that's where that's what it is right now.
I I might just go fix a couple problems this evening.
Oh my God there are 311,000 right now.
I'm buying one right now. There you go.
OK, you. Fucking money.
Are you serious? Lex, you got to buy well I'm
spending real money to get the 311,000 gold like I'm purchasing
the token to sell on the Lex, you got to do it do it with me
let's do it together. I.
I, I might be opening my my World of Warcraft client as we
speak just because you're, I mean, that would just do you
know how many problems in my life would be fixed by 300,000
gold? For the for the audience at
home, I was like, this close to just giving Lexi 100K just like,
just like, oh, I'm sorry, Lexi a cow.
This is this is the issue is my, my sweet loving Guild who I love
so much will very kindly like anytime we're talking about
crafting or anything, I'll be like, oh, I don't know if I can
afford that. Like three people are like,
we'll make it for you. And I'm like, I should say no,
but I kind of can't. But if I had 300,000 gold, do
you guys regularly have 300,000 gold just sitting in your bags?
On and on what? Like Mike?
It costs me money, but yes. My alts, I don't like leaving
them with less than 5K because I'm like, yeah, but what if they
need to like repair or something?
So I've got, sorry, I've got like my army of alts and none of
them have less than than 5K. My cheapest on my war band, it's
got to be 6 digits. There's no way it's less than 6
digits. How do I sign up to be one of
your alts? Well Lex, you have you have your
own, your own will, and therefore, damn it, I will allow
you to live your life. I don't want to be an alt, but
how do I get you as my sugar daddy?
We'll, we'll, we'll talk after the show because I do want to
come visit before you fly out to PEI or something.
Well. We would take the boat across
OH. There you go.
That's true in. The ferry not we don't have.
We wouldn't take the. Sorry guys, he wouldn't take the
yacht. He doesn't want to damage that
with the property. He would hire a crew and they
would ferry his property over from one of his, from one of his
pavilions over to whatever place that he buys.
Yeah, gold problems aside and money problems non existent for
Sean, We're going to be moving on to the next thing, which is
if you have all that goal, what are you going to do with it in
11.2? You're going to go to the new
shiny trinket vendor that Lex thought should be next, but is
actually a trinket vendor that it comes from Delves.
And so updating from our story from last week, we now know that
the rotation of that of that vendor and I I dislike daily
rotations on vendors. I think that is annoying and RNG
and I would literally rather they have this a static amount.
But because every trinket is available at least two of the
days, it's a little bit better. But that still means it's not
there three days. And if you happen to go on one
of the three, the three days it's not there and then have to
come back a week, like a week later, you're like, oh, shoot,
let me go check this community guide resource or like a site
here to be like, is this the day where this is available?
That just seems annoying more than anything else.
Yeah, I don't get the point of this because it's not in like an
order that anyone could figure out on their own.
Like you have to go to a guide to know what's like if if if
you're going for a specific, I guess it looks like there's two
that are constant. You can always get the shadow
guards twisted Harvester and you can always get the chaotic
another date. But everything else, it's
literally I, I I can imagine if you aren't engaging in other
world. I mean, I guess you know,
Google's if if you can play World of Warcraft, you can
Google. But this just feels complicated
for the sake of complication. I'd like to quote Kurt Russell
in the 1980s classic Tango in Cash.
When him and his partner Cash were on trial for a crime they
did not commit and the judge asked if they had any
statements. Kurt Russell stood up and said
yeah, I'd like to make a statement.
This whole thing effing sucks. If you haven't seen Tango in
Cash please check it out. It's a great movie.
You broke that job. That'll make sense once you've
seen it. This is stupid.
Why do we have rotations on vendors Blizzard?
We didn't. Did we not learn this lesson in
BFA with the with the corruption vendor?
We do not need to be rotating vendors.
It's time getting for the sake of time, like time getting.
It's aren't you frustration injection for the sake of
frustration injection? I guess I don't know if you're
going to let us buy them, just let us buy them.
We don't need to have this on a rotation.
And what I'm really worried about on the PTR, it's a five
day rotation. What if on live it becomes a
five week rotation? So a five week rotation is, I
think, better in some ways because it hurts the people who
can't log in every day less, right?
It hurts the people who have like, oh, I have a commitment.
I've got like volleyball, I've got book club, I've got DND or
whatever. And the time that I would
normally play, I can't be on that.
And congratulations, you can't do it that day.
You have to come back next week while all of your contemporaries
get it. And now there's they've got
their quote UN quote Bis or or stronger item and you're this
that far behind. It's the worst kind of FOMO when
you when it hits like that, if you're away for the week that
that is available, then that is going to hurt you as well.
And it's like, how do you balance those two?
Well, I think maybe they just do it as like a hey, week 1.
These are going to be available Week 2, Both these and the
second tier are going to be available.
And then by week 5, everything's available at all times.
So even even if they're doing like a hey, we're only releasing
these a little bit at a time. Even if you show up late, you
can immediately get it again and you're not missing the boat
until the next time it rotates through.
Yeah, I, I, so first of all, I, I think a week long rotation,
especially with how many trinkets and the fact we're
talking 5 weeks, that would just hurt.
I, I would be pretty grumpy about that.
And that would also suck. If like, you know, if you aren't
tuned in and you don't realize it's going to rotate and you're
saving up money for, you know, one that's there week 1 and you
don't even know a rotation is going to happen.
And then all of a sudden it's the first day of Week 2 and you
are like hard locked and you didn't realize that was even on
the table. But I I just.
Don't. Yeah, rotation suck.
I just don't want a rotation period.
Yeah, it it, it just doesn't make sense.
It's not protecting, you know, from overpowering.
I mean, like it's just, it's just crappy and confusing for
the sake of being crappy and confusing.
I don't. I I wonder like again, like you
have to bend yourself backwards to find a rotation that doesn't
suck as much. And the only way I can think of
like a rotation is when they have an overlap.
So it's like, hey, instead of it just being available for one
day, it's available for three days.
And then on day 2 through today, today 4, right?
The next ones are rotating in and out.
And then so there's overlap between all of them and you have
three days to get it. And then because there's like,
because they'd like come back, maybe it's only missing for a
day, but at that point, what's the point of rotation?
It's so bizarre. Just this is literally like a
let's just have the determinist deterministic loot.
You've already got it locked behind you having to get to a
certain level on your delvers journey.
Anyways, that's the unlock. Hey, congratulations, you've
reached delve delvers journey Level 3 or 6 or something.
Now you can buy buy these trinkets.
It feels like hey, let's have the intern code something today
and they chose this. OK, I'll go to rotating vendor
for drinking. Hey guys, good work intern.
I can neither confirm nor deny that some intern was involved in
this, but I feel like the planning stages of such a system
maybe have a consensus in the team seems more impossible.
If you're the dev who coded this and you are most decidedly not
an intern, I want you to know that for legal reasons, that was
a joke. OK, you know networks cancel
joke joking parties now, so watch your.
Only, only ones that are not profitable, Manny, those are
purely financial decisions since our profits are still at the
same percentage they were when we started.
We're good. At this point, I would like to
thank our patrons. Thank you for everything that
you guys do. That's right, as long as we have
one patron, we get to stay on the air.
That said, 11.2, there's a lot of stuff in there.
As we as we are approaching the day, we're going to start
looking at some of these systems again.
Hot fixes are changing a lot of things.
I don't really think I want to spend that much time on the zoo.
I'm going to let you guys blindly enjoy the zoo because
apparently enjoying stuff blind is the the new hot thing.
Let's let's leave the zoo for for that.
Sorry, except for you, Lex. You're, you're a hippie, you're
ahead. You were doing it before it was
cool. Oh yeah, I grew up with so many
random animals. It was.
Oh no, I mean doing things blind.
Oh, doing things blind. Oh, I get it.
I get the joke. That's very funny, man.
That's a very funny. Joke for for legal reasons, I'm
going to edit that part out. Wait, do I don't think I wait?
Do I not get the joke? No.
I assume he's referencing your Guild doing braid bosses.
Me too, but then why is he asking this?
Out. Because you dead banded and it
didn't sell. Oh.
You'd like to send send hate mail and you can direct it to
Manny at 299 Queen St. West, Toronto, ON M5V 2Z5.
Whose address is that? Much.
Music. Much.
Music. Oh my, but.
The thing is, an address like that you could just give because
Americans would be like Zed. Yeah, man, you don't.
Yeah, What what made-up letter is that?
I don't. Know ZET?
Yeah, man, I'm surprised you don't have much music address
memorized. That's like a staple of my
child. How did you send letters into
Electric Circus? I walked past the building
frequently. I live in Toronto.
It's a beautiful, glorious city. You have to remember center of
the universe, but that's, that's enough.
Canadiana. I did want to also talk about 11
point 2.5 on the central distribution networks, which
means already we're seeing some internal testing and that is not
all. Just today we also got 11 point
2.7 detected on the internal testing.
So they are pushing ahead with this.
At this point, midnight seems so close.
Obviously we are at the final chapter and I don't want to get
too far ahead of it, but I do want to ask you guys as we're
heading into the final chapter of this expansion, have you
liked the faster cadence? Have you liked the two year
expansion sort of thing? Has this initial part of the
World Soul Saga hit for you guys in rating in Mythic Plus?
If you enjoyed that or didn't enjoy that in the new delves in
story, like what were the hits and what were the misses, I'm
going to throw this one, of course, to you, Lex first.
Yeah. I mean, I am like, is it?
The raids were great. I had a great time with the
raids. I don't rate at a high enough
level for any of the like major concerns to really hit me.
So I was just having fun with everything cadence wise.
I'm worried we had a like, I know I'm a broken record at this
point, but we had a dev resign without another job lined up.
A previous streamer, someone who's worked in the video game
industry his whole life, could only handle working at World of
Warcraft for four years before resigning without a job lined
up. That is that scares me and that
makes me concerned we're going to have brain drain because I
mean, like, maybe it was just a bad fit for him.
Best of luck to him or like wish him all the best.
He did incredible things for the game.
This Scarizard is the dev's name if I remember correctly.
Yeah, but I'm I'm worried man. I feel like the content has been
like we frequently get patches that we're like, what were we
even doing here or or choices. It felt a little bit rushed.
I'm worried about what this is going to do to the team,
especially since layoffs are continuing onward.
And I will say again, I would rather have a really slow
release cycle with like a really solid team who loves their job,
who I'm I'm proud to to play this game and buy into it.
Then, you know, three years down the line we have just a, you
know, oh Jesus Christ, we got another one coming.
I don't know. It's the freaking, it's the
trolls. I don't like we got to do
something because we set this cadence and we have to stick to
it. And I feel like my fears are
like, slowly being more and more realized.
But I'm also insane and I'm an insane labour girlie who is
stressed about, you know, will always panic on behalf of the
worker, even if the worker isn't telling you to panic on their
behalf. So like, I, yeah, it's been fun
to have new content all the time.
You know, there's always something to do.
It hasn't. Like it it, I was scared it
would feel overwhelming. And I'd feel like I was always
kind of being pushed to do things and it didn't.
They put in a lot of like story content or content you can kind
of, you know, choose not to engage with.
And they're like experimenting with cool stuff, which is fun.
So I mean, I just, I just don't want us to end up with no team
because everyone burned out. That's my fear.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, this wasn't exactly
where I wanted this conversation.
I planned this for this. No, no, this wasn't where I
planned for this conversation to to go, but it is definitely
something I would want to talk about.
So thank you for for bringing that up.
Yeah, Patrick Skarsard Scarborough, he worked with
Blizzard for like 4 years, did a lot for the game.
He is one of Sean's favorite developers, if not only for
creating the Dinar system that Sean loves those those things,
but like also being a big push for the new unified upgrade
system that we have in Pve. That was another thing that he
had helped work on. Obviously, these things are team
efforts and the team came together to help sculpt that,
but that's things that he had his fingerprints on.
He had taken a leave of absence last year because of like stress
and wanting to like get a bit of a reset and then I guess could
could not continue when he came back deciding to yet and and his
tenure at Blizzards after like you said, four years.
So it is it is upsetting. I can not in my mind think that
the series of layoffs and seeing that go through friends of
friends and Co workers could not like have made it any easier and
probably contributed to that. I know there was a follow up
post where people where people say, oh, it's because of the
backlash about this system or that system.
I forget which systems they were they were talking about.
But he, he responded, said, no, no, it's not about that.
And yeah, the fact that he's saying it's burnout is is it's
something that we should be concerned with because we want
this. We want like great people who
are passionate about this game to be building this game.
And you cannot say that Scarzard was not a passionate developer
and had put a lot of love and into crafting things.
And the game is going to be less without without him.
John, I'm going to pass it to you to give a few closing words
and then maybe we'll go back towards 11.
Sorry, rather where you feel like this expansion is landing
I. Don't want to talk about
Warcraft at all in this moment. I want to talk about another
franchise that I had a lot of love for and was actually the
first One of the games in that franchise is the first game I
ever platinum trophied on PlayStation and that's
Assassin's Creed. Assassin's Creed one came out to
slightly mixed reviews. It was people who liked it
really, really liked it. It was a it was a Polish game
was a lot of fun. It was a bit repetitive and
there was some, it wasn't like perfect, but it was, it was a
real basis of the game. And then time went by and
Assassin's Creed 2 came out and it was gangbusters and it they
fixed all the mistakes and all the issues people have with
Assassin's Creed One. They came out with his new main
character named Ezio and it was just a beautiful game.
First game ever, Platinum. And then they released again
about the same length of time after Assassin's Creed 1 to 2,
they did Assassin's Creed 2. So Brotherhood was the second
one. It was it was like a sub sect of
the second game, Another amazing thing, but that also made a lot
of my and then they started to make them every year.
Then we got Assassin's Creed 3 Revelations.
Actually, I think it was Assassin's Creed 2, Assassin's
Creed 2. I think there's one in between
two and and and Assassin's Creed 2 Brotherhood.
I think there's one in between and then Assassin's Creed 3
Revelations and then Assassin's Creed Black Flag and the quality
and the storytelling and the games just fell off a Cliff and
I stopped playing them. The developers got burnt out
from it. It was not making them as much
money and then they had to do like a hard reboot.
I love the World of Warcraft. This.
I mean, obviously, it literally pays my bills.
I am super, super concerned that shifting to an 18 month locked
in expansion cycle is not only going to hurt the devs, but it's
going to hurt the quality of the game.
And everybody can point to the fact that Chris Madison is back
as much as they want and say Green Jesus is going to save us.
But the reality is 18 months is 18 months and you can only get
so much work done in that window and you can only be so creative.
I really, really hope that I'm wrong, but even more so, I hope
that somebody who makes the financial decision says, hey,
you know what, 2 years is fine. Just give him two years.
You know what I mean? They don't have to let and let
the patches instead of six months, let the patches be 8
months. And I realize that players are
going to say, Oh no, that doesn't do it for me.
Well, throw a throw a collector's bounty on the in the
last two months of every patch, everybody and their dog has been
glazing Warcraft since collector's bounty came in over
how great this is. The old world is rejuvenated.
It's amazing. So that gives you a, a little
bit of a filler, a little bit of buffer.
I, I just, I'm really worried. I, I think it's too fast and as
a, as a player, as somebody like, I can't imagine how
normies do this. I, my literal job is to play
Warcraft. I play this game all day long
and I feel like it's too fast and I feel like there's no
break. Like when do I take a month and
play Expedition 33? When does that happen?
Because I don't know when that happens in an 18 month patch
cycle. And I'd like to go back and play
Black Flag because I heard that was a good Assassin's Creed.
Yeah. I don't know.
If I how about people war within it has been passable.
I don't know if either of you read the book play nice, the
Jason Schreyer look at Blizzard and to be sure I haven't like
fact checked anything I don't I only know what Jason Schreyer
wrote in this book. But one reason I'm a little bit
scared is because basically everything that Blizzard was
holding really firm against Activision and Activision and
Bobby Kodak were pushing to Blizzard to do, and Blizzard was
able to protect themselves against it kind of just happened
when they got bought up by Microsoft.
And that's one reason why I'm so stressed is I'm like, oh, we
knew this was going to be nasty. And like I love to say on this
podcast, the reason the patches were slow before was not because
old doves wanted to go, you know, throw pizza parties
instead of do work. Blizzard was famously crunchy
before and I just, yeah, I, I'm, I'm just worried.
I just want them, I, I want the game to stay good.
And also I want the humans who develop the game to stay good.
OK, so I'm going to, I'm going to say this here, but I I'm
going to elaborate it on it later.
He's going to delete it after and deny that he said it.
No, I, I'm going to say this here, but I'm going to elaborate
more later. I just feel like we're we're
hitting near the end of the episode.
So let's let's talk about this. I feel like with the war within,
and this is also being true in Dragonflight, they have been
doing a lot of things, throwing a lot of things at players, but
there has been very little meat to it.
We have been getting events like the Nightfall thing, which is
just paper thin grind, and I don't want to just put this on
the War Within or the return of Chris Metzen or whatever.
We've also seen that in Dragonflight with, hey, we're
going to do the soup. This one and soup was great.
I loved soup. Soup was great, but it was
pretty thin. And they put in a bunch of thin
small activities to be like, OK, waste your time with this.
And then people would get bored of it.
Patch would come in and we do the chromy time ways, shattered
time ways thing. And that was the thin, thin
little event that really didn't go anywhere.
And so they've been doing this sort of stuff because they want
people to be able to skip it if they so choose.
And they don't want us to have mandatory content.
Because it could have easily have been that whatever quick
little content we had we have coming in 11.2 could also have a
very real grind to upgrade your cloak Ala Cata.
Sorry, not Cata. No, this wouldn't actually have
been in in BFA when we were had our last legendary cloak and we
were going through visions over and over and over again to
upgrade the cloak that we could have easily had the exact same
thing in this. And the question becomes like,
what's the healthy balance? Because I do want to have things
to do. I do want that stuff to be
somewhat meaningful, but I don't want to feel forced to do it.
If I were to throw out a solution, it'd be just add story
to it. We have these wonderful local
stories that at the beginning of the war within everybody was
losing their minds over being like, man, that's that story
made me cry. That was awesome.
I'd like to see that. We had the story that came in
with the with 11 point 1.7 and the Arathi Highlands and people
had their complaints. I've had my complaints about it,
but it was engaging for a little bit.
And I think that if we had more of that along with the systems,
the entire thing would be like, OK, engage in the system, get
these cools cosmetics and appreciate this story.
Something that Final Fantasy 14 as much as it is currently
lagging right now, is that it has big story to go through.
And people are like, oh, did you experience this story?
And like, so much of the community is like, hey, get
through this moment and play through this and don't skip
ahead. Yeah, yeah, we'll, we'll play
soon. But you've got to experience
this story. And I think that can be a
rewarding thing for some people. I look back at past expansions
and I think about characters like Zappy Boy, characters that
were relatively small, but like captured the entire community,
captured the entire audience, and people loved finding out
what was happening with the next.
And I don't see the same sort of payoff in the characters that
they've introduced now. Right.
Like I have hopes for fair in and I think that the cheese
going to be built into midnight or whenever they pay off on the
Arathi Empire. There's going to be more with
that. But I also had hopes for Stoney,
Tony and in Dragonflight. I also had hopes for any of the
dragon aspects in Dragonflight and I don't want them to be
like, OK, Andy one's got his mojo again and then forget about
him for another 20 years while we go randomly deal with
goblins. What?
So maybe the lore can can help with that, but at the same time,
just just do something that makes me like eager to do to
like work through on this and happy to get this stuff done.
Because even if something as simple as increasing drop rates
by 5% and doubling the trans mock has hit people because it's
like I can accomplish something. I can get that trans mock.
I can get those mounts that I've been searching for and that
that's what I really want. Just like make it make it
rewarding again. Lex, you've been nodding your
head a lot. Sean, you got anything to add?
I don't want to have to do chores.
Manny, you lost. Me at chores.
Chores. I like that I don't have to do
that stuff. I know I can do the stuff I
want, but I don't want to have to do stuff.
That's all. I like everything else you say.
I. Just don't want them to make it.
We do the story there, so we put the story.
There. No, because I like the story.
I don't want to. Have to do it for story.
Oh well. OK, do quests for.
Story. Or read a nice little book or
get a little audio drama. Fun little audio drama will be
nice. I just I'm just worried the fast
that's going to hear this and I'm going to be doing Soup for
Sparks. But you don't.
I mean. With a cap wide progression like
a little bit of effort that is. Once on your account, swear to
God I will drive over to 290. 9 Queen St.
West and I will give you a well, the other the.
Other option. Not to make this whole
conversation but is just to give overlapping rewards and cap them
right? Like make it so you get the
same, you know, like you can get things out of multiple different
directions and so it's up to you which direction you want to go.
You can get the same thing. You can only get X number of
things though. So you know, you're, it's not an
eternal grind. It's just, oh, I don't really
feel like doing soup. So instead I'm going to go do.
My mythic plus and I'll get the same stuff and it's going to cap
at a certain point or I don't feel like doing mythic plus I'm
going to go do soup. I I think there's an.
Entire conversation about having deterministic drops, similar to
the dinar system where you can get up to heroic level in a very
deterministic way. And then when you go beyond
that, the drops become back to the back to an RNG system where
it's like, now to get the best of the best you have to focus on
where that drops. But that's a lot of theory
crafting. There's a lot of things there.
Maybe that's a conversation for another day.
Do you guys have any last things that you want to say this?
Check with Lex first. I love this game.
It's really fun and I love the people that I get to play with
and it's a good time, Yeah, and I.
Think, I think that with housing that you guys were talking about
last week, we're going to see a lot of things that don't require
much of A grind that are just community driven and get and let
you play with your friends without having to like line 20
of them up in a row to go beat their head against the boss.
And for the people who enjoyed that, Sean, do you have anything
to say? Yeah, I am grateful for the War
Within. It's been a good expansion it I
think I've grown as a player and as a Guild member, but more
importantly it brought me here for Azeroth and I'm grateful
that War Within gave me two great friends, Johnny and
Xander. Maybe the failed War Within was
the war. Within.
Within war within, within. I I I still remember Sean
complaining about the wait within.
But until next week guys, may all your hits be grits.