I'm terrified someone's going to hear it up to that part and then
immediately hit stop and go eat a next card.
Do not take next card. Victory for the Forsaken for
Lauderon for the Karen Tour for Pandaria for Calendar to the
Burning region. For Gilneus, but has not died.
For the Lynch king. For the the.
Cindora for the Alliance, for the Core, for Azeroth.
Hello and welcome to another episode of For Azeroth.
I'm one of your hosts, John, and today I am joined by the one and
only Flex Rance. Flex.
Thanks for being here. And how's the World of Warcraft
been treating you? It's been treating me well.
I do appreciate the way you phrase that made it seem like
Manny was the second Lex Rance. Like if, if he was here, I
wouldn't have been the one and only Lex Rance, 'cause there
would have been 2. That's right, yeah.
The world. Was treating me good.
We're my raiding team is where we have a couple officers
traveling and stuff. So we're on a little bit of a
raid break, but we did do a heroic pug re clear on Monday,
which is very fun. You know, get to shake off a
little dust and get a couple crests and move on with it.
We are on Crown right now, so we will be hopefully pushing past
that and moving into Bellerin. We've got the the little spiky
horn guy who by the way, I think is such a cutie.
I think that he just needs a little family.
Like yeah, I think he needs to be rescued.
He needs a little snuggly bed and a bowl full of yummy treats.
I think he's a little bike. I have no idea who you're
talking about. What spiky horn guy?
Did Guy with the little the undreamed God?
What's his name? Oh, Guy Maris, Guy Maris I had.
That is the worst description of that boss I have ever heard.
The little spiky whore I was like it should have been
Paladin's before Crown of the Cosmos.
What? What?
Spiky horned. I get it now, he has the one
horn. He might be an antler.
Whoever got mad at me for not knowing about crawfish might get
mad at me for that one too. Yeah, our we definitely have
some listeners that are like big into the animal genealogy and
making sure we're using proper terminology for for what species
and everything they are. So Chimeris, that's definitely
an antler because it's wide and flat and looks like it's from a
moose. Congrats on Chimeris.
I wanted to ask, I've actually been really curious, did you
guys normally do a blind frog boss?
But you were going blind for like most of this tear, right?
So we try, we did normal blind. We did end up watching videos.
I think if I remember correctly, it was around the around
Paladins that we, we started watching videos again 'cause it
was just getting tough and we were like, this is not something
we really want to figure out on our own.
I don't know what our plan is going to be for the next year.
I think I personally was feeling a little frustrated with it.
I think it was less fun than I was used to.
I think I didn't, which is crazy because when I was hearing about
the add-ons going away, I was like, this is going to be so fun
and amazing because it's what I really want.
Right? Like I, I, you know, every time
it tells me like, oh, that's a stack.
I'm like, oh, but we're doing a blind and I think that I might
have actually been enjoying having normal be a little bit of
a face roll more than I thought. But I don't know if that's
universal for the team. So we'll probably have some
conversations among the officers.
We'll have some conversations with the team and make a
decision and also see what next tier looks like.
This tier was a particularly mechanic heavy tier.
I felt like like that first boss was a lot of mechanics for a
first boss, which like, you know, Oh no, my steak is too
juicy, right? Like my raid bosses are too fun.
But I it it it felt like everything they were kind of
flexing the fact that they could do like they're like, oh, look
at all these mechanics that we can do even though you don't
have weak auras. So it it felt more challenging
to do blind than I was used to. Yeah, I could see that.
We do have weak auras at home though, we have Timu weak auras.
So that's. We we we all went DBM at
Dragons. I like we were so like that.
That is the most like wall boss. I've hit like that early in a
tier, which I think I think we're doing some stuff wrong.
Like I don't think it was just that, but it just and once we
got DBM and it started announcing the fears better, we
were like, OK. When you guys are getting ready
for Midnight Falls for Lura Prague let me know.
There is a very popular guide channel that put out a video
that I I don't think is the best plan and I actually made one for
Dayglo, another build that I know that I think is better and
I will send it to you. You can send it to your officers
if they're interested in it. It just really makes that fight
a lot more assistant. And I think I don't want to say
the name on on the air because I really like the channel that I I
think they actually missed on a couple of bosses this year, but
they're pretty popular. So you are probably watching
them for tips, but I will send you some details after for for a
way to make that boss a little bit easier.
And I have a little fun video you can watch it says hi day
glow in the video. Just we can dub over that and we
can just say hi. Timbermont Tavern.
Hell yeah, Hell yeah. I'll do it too.
So just to make sure, it's like you're super smooth.
They'll never, they'll never know.
Yeah, so we can even just have you pre, you can just rerecord
all of the vocals and just be like, hey guys, I just threw
this together. This is just something I threw
together quick little. A quick little thing.
Yeah, me, my like right in the bottom of the DPS charts.
But I figured out who wrote it super easy, so let's get it all
done. Yeah, press me.
It works perfect. Yeah.
I will, I will say Taldenos I think is some of my favorite
bosses in at least in the very much with a tier.
I went into Taldenos, like not super in love with it.
I didn't, I, I can't really verbalize why I didn't love Void
Spire, but I didn't love Void Spire.
I thought it was frustrating and, and just like anything that
was feeling challenging just felt annoying instead of like,
Oh yeah, we're going to like figure it out and do it a little
bit more perfectly. And then we went to Ballarat and
I'm like, this is the most, this is the best thing that's ever
happened to me. This is amazing.
This is perfect. It sucks, it's horrible.
We're all dying. But also I'm having a good time
and like, this feels like a thing that I can figure out if I
sit and I play with the puzzle enough.
And I, I do think L'ura was a fun box too.
I'm, I'm excited to hit her on heroic and and see what that
looks like. Yeah, she's a fun fight.
She's a fun fight. Bella Ren is I think is my
favorite fight of the Tear, if I'm being honest.
I really on all three difficulties, normal, heroic,
mythic, it just feels fun. And I wonder if part of it is
because it's the only one that's kind of in like a bright, openly
lit courtyard where everything else is like boidy and purple
and kind of dim. Or we have a little spiky boy in
his like, gloomy, foggy dream rift.
But Bella Ran is like, here's his beautiful, brightly lit
courtyard. The boss himself is gorgeously
lit. I wonder if that has an impact
that we don't realize on why we like that fight more because it
is punishing on tanks. Oh, I can't even imagine.
Well, I, I think it also, to be fair, the, the mechanics are
hard. They're mostly personal
responsibility, right? Like you, I, I guess the soaps
can get a little bit messy and funky, but it's less of a like
one person is going to wipe the entire raid, but it is like
you've got to focus up or you are cooked right.
Like they will not give you a, a second chance if you screw that
up or stand the wrong place. But it's, it's very distinct
color. So, you know, it is extremely
doable. Yeah.
I, I, I think it is frustrating when a boss feels like, Oh my
God, I like, you know, moved 1/2 inch too much or I thought, I
thought that was the blue in the, the, the officers called
for me to go over to purple and I didn't realize what like that
we were saying different things like, Oh my God, the two
Dragons. We learned very early that we
have different definitions of blue and purple.
So we have, but now we call them the Dark One and the Light 1.
Yeah, that's way they're 'cause they're both purple Lex.
Yeah, well, I, I people were saying like, go to the blue one.
I'm like. No.
Girl. No, they're both.
They're both purple. Dark and Light works.
You can use their names, Valgor and Nazerac.
That works too. Dark and Light's probably
easier. It's definitely not a blue 1
though. That person should get checked.
Let's you want to roll out of some news.
We're talking about the raid. We might as well hit some raid
news while we're at it. Let's chat about it.
What's going on with the? Raid All right, so the Hall of
Fame for March Hall of Fame for Dream Roof was already closed.
Void Spire closed and as of this Tuesday reset.
So yesterday, as of our recording, the Hall of Fame for
March on Queldonas has officially closed.
So 200 guilds hit the kill mark I think around Sunday.
And then there's always some scragglers once they see that
200 that you see teams putting overtime in trying to push, it's
always or not always, but usually a little bit above 200
teams to get that cut off. And that has officially closed.
And when that closed, that also triggered the next round of
nerfs for Lura. And they are, they're pretty
significant nerfs. We have Heaven's Glades so this
was already nerfed on heroic, but Heaven's glaves maximum
duration was reduced to one minute from 2 minutes.
What this means is that's huge, huge change.
So in P1 the the boss shoots out these glaves and when they were
lasting for two minutes it meant 2 sets of glaves would overlap.
So you would have to be dodging and glaves at a time, bouncing
around the arena like beyblades. It was craziness, and that's a
very old boy. You probably have never heard of
Lex but Beyblades. Were extremely popular my my
Guild describes every mechanic like this is beyblades.
I this is literally where I learned about beyblades.
It's just the fact that constantly they're like, this is
the Beyblades. I love it.
They also reduce the spread so that's a huge.
So that change means you're only ever going to have 5 glaves
bouncing around at a time. The glaves in P1 are like P1 is
like wipe fest. And those glaves are the biggest
reason why. But those gone, that's less
chance of a glave hitting a crystal, less chance of a glave
hitting a person and sparking soaks, all all kinds of stuff.
Less chance of those glaves killing somebody.
That's a huge change that everybody I think was expecting.
And then we also saw a reduction on the spread of the midnight
crystals on mythic difficulty though L'ura spawns in, in
normal heroic, she spawns prismatic safeguards, those 3
prisms that that rotate around her and decrease damage.
She takes until they're interrupted 4 times and then
they explode into these crystals on mythic.
They're not a safeguard prism, they're like a damaged prism and
they increase your damage done by 33% while they're alive till
they get interrupted and you have to then they explode in
crystals. Right now it made it so that you
you didn't need three death Knights, but it it made it a lot
easier if you had three death Knights because the the last set
of those crystals, because there's no Don crystals to spawn
from that set, they explode more.
Though there's extra things to grip.
What teams have been doing if they're only running two death
Knights is using a series of knocks to bring them in closer
and then trying to DPS them down that way.
They're decreasing that spread, so they're going to shoot out
less far, which means 2D KS will be will be more than enough to
use their raid buff. And then star splinter damage.
That's the intermission when you get the stars on you.
The initial hit from that was reduced by 20% of I think
difficulty and criticality. That's the circles in P2 was
also reduced by 20%. So those to just make it like
the criticality change means you might be able to survive an
overlap maybe, but those should make prog easier.
The biggest change though is that Heaven's Glades, because
it's going to let teams get 2P2 and P3 more consistently.
Big changes, very happy for that.
Do you air if it gets easier, does that you even register?
I just realized I'm telling you I'm out.
Like I'm excited about these changes and you're I'm realizing
you're probably giving them no thought at all.
I, I mean, I think I like, obviously it doesn't directly
affect me and my life, but I, I want the first of all, first of
all, I love getting in other people's business.
That makes me so happy. I love having opinions about
things that do not affect me in any way, because when things
affect me, then I actually, you know, it matters, right?
But if not, I can just experience the joy of, you know,
rage. We all love it.
We all, we all love that. So, so I, but also, I mean, you
know, I have friends who do obviously you and I have the
young people who do mythic raid and I want that.
I I understand that not everyone is AOTC only Raider and so I
want the game to be healthy because I don't want our top
players to not be having a good time right?
Like the people who dedicate a lot of time to the game I think
should be hopefully having fun. I had the energy of like, yeah,
I have friends, but you wouldn't know them, they're from Canada.
To actually, I think the people I am thinking are from Canada.
I love it. Yeah.
So those, those are some changes.
No changes to Heroic, but Heroics already had a few rounds
of nerfs, so it should be in a pretty progable state.
I'm excited to see you guys get there and track that 'cause I
think it'll be a lot of fun. And we're working on L'ura now,
so I'm also excited for us. I'm very excited.
Did you? You got HOF on Voidspire, right?
No, we got HOF on Dream Rift, Spiky horn guy.
Yeah, we got Dreamers, spiky horn guy.
HOF We missed HOF on Void Spire. I want to say it by two resets,
but I don't know exactly, but it's it's around the two reset
mark is when we missed it. We're not.
I mean, we only raid two nights a week and there it's Tuesday
and Sunday or sorry, it's Thursday and Sunday, which makes
it harder because when you raid that, when you raid later in the
week, your world ranking or your US ranking.
It's here's a fun side fact. Nobody ever says they're EU
rank. And I have a theory as to why.
So whenever you go, if you go to there's a recruitment Guild, a
recruitment discord, you go there, there's, it's like the NA
recruitment discord. It'll teams will be posting and
they will post what their world rank is if their world rank is
good, but a lot of them will just post their NA ranks.
So they'll be like, oh, it's NA rank 150, and they go, what's
your world rank 0500, 600? Oh, imagine being 500 in the
world. But it's funny of shit.
Why this is funny to me is that a lot of NA teams only ever
function in their NA, right? They don't ever mention their
there's just we're looking for Raiders who have experience in
an NA 200 + 200, a better Guild. Nobody, no, nobody on NA ever
says what world, but on EU all they mention is world because.
And here's my theory. They know that the world rank is
so much better because every like EU teams just seem to crush
the NA teams for the most part. So they're like, well, we're
just going to put our world rank because we know if we put our EU
rank, it's still much higher than what the NA teams would be.
So they're just going to put their world.
It's like this weird flex that happens that I don't think
people are like physically or mentally aware of happening.
But it's like if you will, if any EU team at all, they only
ever give their ranks an E in in world ranks.
But NA teams will either only give NA ranking or will give
both but they always mention that NA rank.
It's so weird to me anyway. That is very fun.
I I'm also really curious about the fact that the EU seems to be
so much better than NA at video games.
It's a larger player base. I think that that factors into
it. They have better, yeah.
Than the US plus Canada. Yeah, EU is larger than NA and
OCE and at the risk of potentially offending some
people. Europe has better social
infrastructure though. People are able to spend more
quality time playing, they're doing their hobbies and and
engaging that way. Whereas North America has, well,
not as great social infrastructure for people.
I'm trying so hard not to make people angry and leave the show
for political takes. This isn't a take, this is a
fact. Oh yeah, I'll, I'll second this.
I I was wondering if it was that was kind of my gut too.
Is that it's just, you know, you have more access to to time and
and. Yeah, when you have to work 7
jobs just to pay your rent, it's makes it hard to have time to,
to game unless I, I mean, we should all move to New York.
They're doing anyway. That's not that's not this kind
of show. Thumbs up for New York, though.
We. Oh yeah.
We stand New York more. We're going to switch.
We're going to pivot. We're pivoting.
Hey, if you haven't turned us off yet, we're pivoting.
Relax. We're pivoting.
There's I I want to, I'm excited to get L'ura down and I assume
you are excited to get working on Ballarat and get L'ura
because we have 12 point O .7 coming up.
Spore fall is launching. That's the new one boss rate and
we had some PTR testing. Did you have a chance to either
do the testing or see any of the videos of the boss?
No, this is all. This is all new to me.
Have you I assume? I didn't test it.
I have sworn off testing this expansion because of the
personal protest. I've sworn off.
I don't need to. If you've listened to the show
for more than one episode, you know why.
But I, I didn't, but I didn't watch testing of it and it looks
fun. It looks to be a boat, the
challenge level I expected, which is not much of one at all.
And I think that's important because it's launching on June
16th. Not confirmed, but I'm if you're
listening to the show, you can write that down.
It's June 16th. Blizzard hasn't announced it
yet. I'm telling you, June 16th is
when that badge is coming. All of the everything points to
that date. So if it's not June 16th, I will
do an episode where I only speak in Klingon.
Yeah, I had the Did you not get the Klingon dictionary when you
were a child to learn because French was too easy?
No, we were the, we were the like Baller's Gate and like
Renfair style of nerds. We did watch some Voyager, but
never honestly. That was also when I was a
little, a little past the age when I would have learned
Klingon. Are you like fluent?
Wait, can you like say something?
I'm not gonna. I'm not a monkey that will Just
Dance for your entertainment. Lex, this is I have to get my
prediction wrong for the Klingon episode to happen.
All right. Sounds like something that
someone who doesn't speak Klingon would say.
Well that's what a non Klingon speaker would think.
And I'll, I'll, I'll own that I'm not pretending that I know
how to speak Klingon because I got the Klingon dictionary when
I was a kid. War of all anyway, looks like
it's fun. It's going to drop 259 to 298
item level gear depending on what difficulty you do it at,
which is 9 item levels higher than the current tier.
So if you are already done the rain and you're looking forward
to your break of the race are you looking for?
If you're Break of Warcraft, you're ready to log back in on
June 16th and from that boss at least once a week.
But it looks like fun. Yeah.
Well, that that one, we're excited because that's the one
where we might be able to do Flex Mythic.
I don't know that we've made a decision on our raid team as to
whether or not we're going to do flex Mythic, but I mean, it
would be fun, right, If we could push a little further.
I think I'm, I'm, if you're wondering who's voting what in
the Timbermont Tavern officer team Lex is voting that we like,
we try, right? We see what happens.
We dip our little toes in. She's voting voting pro mythic
flex and also to kick Trevor. She's had enough of his
bullshit. Absolutely, Trevor, you're on
the thin ice. As I said that I was like, man,
I hope there's no Trevor on her team and if there is, this is a
hard way for them to find out if.
There is. I don't know their their real
life name unless yeah no. OK, All right, We're saying
Trevor. That was a close one.
The close one from Mondani to Trevor.
We're going to keep rolling. We're going to go into updates
of bug fixes. Lex, we had an update.
I complained last week about crests and being capped and how
it sucks and Blizzard probably didn't hear me but maybe they
did because. Fast stuff is back.
Fast stuff. It's like, all right, you guys
had your little whiny episodes. I will listen to you once you're
like a little bit through that. Yeah, that's right.
So we have uncrept, uncrept uncapped crests now, so you can
farm to your heart's content. You can use your bonus rolls to
get your mythic drops from plus 10s and spam that and get get
maxed out and get ready for these this new raid sport file
that's coming or to continue your Prague that you're going on
Lex. Now that crests are on cap, are
you like ready to dive into mythic plus and go full beast
mode? Yeah, that was why I wasn't
doing Mythic Plus and why I wasn't pushing all my twelves is
I was just like, I mean, crests are caps, man.
Does this have any effect on you at all?
The. Maybe I think I maybe capped one
of my crests, but also also no I'm not.
How do I put this? I'm not very good.
So am I capping my crests? Not really.
Does your does your Guild have like a require?
Like is there requirements like you must do these things to be
on this raid team We. Will set gear requirements as
needed. We'll often have one early on
just to give people an idea of this is what you have to grind
up to for your first grade and then it'll kind of honestly
depend a little bit on whether or not we feel like we have to
keep it up. So right, honestly, right now, I
don't think that we have a stated you have to have X gear
level, but like there, there's an expectation that we're, you
know, trying, right. But we we do, you know, we are a
we like to say full adult team, which means that we all have
lives and things come up. This has been probably one of my
worst tiers. I think I've I've fallen pretty
heavily off of mythic plus and also just, you know, I now have
a ton of fun new life projects with the house and the dog and
everything that makes it harder to keep up with things.
But no, for like for like weekly chores.
No, we do not have a. You know you have to do XYZ
things per week. Remember my Tavern Rated A for
adult. Exactly, exactly.
I I was trying to figure out how to word that in a way that
didn't make it seem like we were just like the porn Guild.
But yeah, yeah. You're welcome.
Adult was the one that I I didn't give that vibe at all.
No, no, I too have spent some time around them, adult guilds
and films, and they're both good.
Wait, do you? Does your Guild have a like
requirement of things you have to do every week?
It's so there's not a hard requirement.
Like there's no, I don't think there's any rules written
anywhere. But our team has a culture of if
you're on this team, you will do everything you can to increase
your power gain week to week. As long as it's still effective
and worth the time, though, because of that, everybody full
bull caps their vault on dungeons every week and early
season we do delves or whatever gives us a chance for tear, that
kind of stuff. And then as time goes on, we
have a we use wow audit to track who's done what and our Wade
leader will throw out reminders. OK, groups are running at these
times. If you need to get ease in, you
need to farm gear, reach out, you know, join them.
One of these groups get into them.
There's no like hard, it's not written down anywhere do this.
But I think if you weren't doing those things, you would probably
there. I imagine there would be a
conversation to find out why, what the issue was.
And because we're all laser focused on one task, it's I
think one of the strengths of our team is that everybody is
rowing in the same direction and has that same mentality of
being, being above all. And I think a lot of us have a
crippling sense of letting people down, a crippling fear of
letting people down. So that's why we do that.
But there are, there are other teams that I've been part of
where they did have like a weekly requirement.
I was in a Guild called Fates are Forged on EU and they were
like, hey, you just have to get 3 choices in your vault that are
hero track or better from the vault.
And they, but their requirements only lasted during Prague.
They're an AOTC only team and their Prague only lasts
typically between three and five weeks.
So after that, the the things fall off, the requirements fall
off. I think both works.
I mean, obviously it's working for, for you, whatever.
Like as long as it's, as long as everybody on the team is, is
going with that same mentality, like tip of my tab and
everybody's like, OK, we want to get better, you know, and
they're all moving at like sort of the same level.
I think that I think that is good.
And if you have to put it in writing and put it in writing,
that works too. I don't think there's a right or
wrong answer for it. I guess the wrong answer is if
there are no requirements and you're screaming at people for
not doing as hard, like, you know, there's no requirements
and I'm feeling my vault every week and you're not and I'm mad
at you for not doing it. Like, well, this is the team
requirements, pal. Like it's don't be mad at me
because I'm doing what we're asking.
Right. I, I think that is really big.
I think it's really important to make sure that everyone's kind
of clear, especially among the officers as to what we think of
as the, the culture and the expectations.
Because yeah, it wouldn't, it's not fair to be like, Oh yeah,
like whatever, we don't have gear requirements.
And then, you know, start sitting people or like making
comments or getting upset when people are not or, or, or
believing you. Right.
Especially in a something like a a video game where there's going
to be a lot of different way, like, you know, levels of well,
first of all, you know, a lot of different ways that people
experience fun. The fact that it is a video
game, that it's not that deep, but also, you know, people
communicate differently and some people are more, you know,
direct than others. And I think in if you are
managing a group of humans who are trying to play a game
together, at the very least the leaders need to be capable of
being very explicit and clear. Yeah, yeah, it's, it's all about
expectation setting. You set those expectations and
then hold everybody accountable to the same thing.
It's so important. It's weird 'cause it's like
there's just so many, you hear so many horror stories of toxic
guilds and, you know, cliques that formed and these, you know,
this show, this Guild was like this and this was like this.
And I got I got benched for this or I got kicked out for this, or
this person was allowed to treat everybody like this and nothing
was done. It's just like, there's so many
better options out there. Just, I promise you, just it
seems scary. Like it's like when you have a
job that sucks, you're like, oh, man, I have this job that sucks,
but it's better than not having any job.
Well, I promise you, if you're in a Guild that sucks, it is not
better than than having no guilt.
And you'll find a new Guild anyway.
Yeah. Some of the things people put up
with, man, I am, I, yeah, I there are.
There are others. Yeah, let's keep rolling, Lex.
Manny usually scripts us out for us, but I am not Manny.
Do you want to say anything to our patrons?
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you and we see you and we are super, super grateful for you.
Yep, and if you are a member of the Patreon at any tier, free up
until I have no idea what tiers we have for Patreon so free to
whatever other tiers we have. I don't think I've ever looked
at our Patreon except to follow it.
We we have a free like a a secret super secret Patreon
hangout in the discord where you get the most unhinged takes from
me and you can come in and call me an asshole if you want to,
which has never happened, but we have the most Let me know.
Hey, those takes we're not great.
Those are not great and I appreciate it.
That's what it's here for that back and forth create that
discourse. So come on, come on and join us.
Have a little chitchat. That's good time.
Lex. This next topic, I was, I was
nervous of putting this on here 'cause you and I both have a
proclivity of a cursing. So we're going to talk about
this. This is a event that took place
on Twitter this week, and it is. It revolves around the F word.
And Lex and I are going to attempt to do this without using
the F word so that I have to go through it.
Fun. Yeah, fun.
We'll say fun. So there was a person.
This happens a lot. So somebody went on Twitter and
said, hey, I got banned. It wasn't justified.
And I'm getting nothing but canned AI responses from
customer service. You suck.
Expletive, expletive, expletive, which I got to be honest with
you, when your tweet about customer service being bad is
full of curse words at customer service, I immediately think
that your ban is probably justified immediately.
And they always, when you get banned, they give you a like
they give you, they send you a transcript like, hey, you were
banned for this action or for this communication.
And it tells you, and shockingly enough, this individual, who I
won't name, but this individual throughout the week admitted
that they had been suspended multiple times in the past, but
they hadn't been suspended in two years, though.
So they're a good boy now. But they did not link any of the
chat logs that supposedly were, you know, given to them when
they were told they were given a suspension.
PJ from the blue to customer service team went on and said,
hey, I had to look at the chat logs.
And you have a fondness for the F bomb.
And even one, if reported, can be enough to get you banned.
And then Twitter lost their mind.
I don't really know where to go to go from there.
So it was the back of it was it was a week of people saying, oh,
I can't say F, but you guys called Sylvanas.
I don't know what words were allowed to swear, what words
were not, You know, you, you called Sylvanas that word.
Mccree is walking around and not Mccree anymore.
What's he called now? Shoot the cowboy from Overwatch.
Yeah. I, I it changed his name Dustin.
We're going to call him Dustin. Dustin has BAMF on his audacity.
Thanks. Shout out the goblin reference
in the chat. I call him.
Dustin's a better name. Dustin Cassidy is probably his
full name. He has BAMF on his belt buckle.
Gracer calls people a wanker. So people were like, oh, all of
this happens, but it's not fair. It seems like it felt like
people like like intentionally took sections of their brains
out to jump through hoops to avoid the fact that this person
was probably using the F word in a, in an aggressive way towards
other people as opposed to just saying, oh, you know, hey, that
was effing awesome. Or hey, you know, I, I feel like
cursing the context matters. Context matters.
And cursing in like just saying the F word is probably not going
to get you banned, but probably someone an F an idiot.
Dang they should F and die calling them effing terrible TB
like that matters. And based on screenshots and
things that came out afterwards with this individual, I suspect
that that's what they were doing.
I don't know if a shirt, I don't know if a shirt, so I don't want
to say for sure, but why do people like they went through
these mental gymnastics to be on the side of this person they
don't know to say Blizzard was awful without any of the
background context. Lex, help me figure out why.
Tell me why so? I'm going to steal a man them.
I'm going to steal a man strangers on Twitter a little
bit, probably more than I need to.
I so ever since Blizzard laid off their entire customer
service team consistently, it has been like I, I, I have heard
like very regular reports of like insane like it it it first
of all, you can now just mass support somebody out of the
game. I don't know where what came of
this, but I do remember the the Guild gamers GAYMERS was saying
that their name like they got reported so much that they're
they had to like lose their name and they were they were pushing
hard. I found this on Reddit because
they were like starting a like, you know, we're all so I, I, I
don't know if customer service has responded, but that sort of
thing where like you can really Zerg report someone out and
often people cannot really access a real customer service
person or somebody really understands it.
So I think there's a lot of frustration around Blizzard
customer service right now. And so to be honest, my initial
take on reading this whole situation is like, I don't love
the new take. Like this is global.
This is not just Blizzard, but of like customer service, like
dunking on people or trying to like get the last word.
And it was a kind of on the the edge sort of situation.
But I, I do think that's kind of a little bit what was happening.
Like the customer service guy was trying to throw out a like,
oh, you thought that you were going to, you know, talk shit
about customer service. But like, I can see your logs,
which I and I, I, I also want to be super clear, like, I, I, I
first of all, I've worked in like customer service roles.
I understand what it feels like to have people just yelling at
you constantly. And especially if there was, you
know, context that was like, yeah, I to be fair, when I saw
the original tweet too, I was like, yeah, there's an AI
problem, but I'm a little sneaky.
So spishy that you were not caught up with the AI problem,
my man. So like, I do get it.
I am sympathetic to the the customer service person, but in
my opinion, that is kind of unprofessional customer service,
right? And I think the but like, on the
other hand, like what? What I, I think that the way
that you should like companies like that should be handling
customer service issues like this is you can maintain high
levels of professionalism online when communicating with
customers and you don't have to pull the like, Oh, but look, we
have your records and you actually were an asshole because
you've proven consistently to your, your customer base that
you can listen and you can like, you know, it, it, people aren't
getting banned unfairly, right? People know that if they are,
you know, Zerg reported, then they can talk to an actual
person and they'll fix the problem.
And if your customer service has a reputation for being strong,
then you don't really have to worry about dunking on people
because your fan base will do it.
Of course, you're right. Like, they'll be the ones to
come and be like, Oh, I bet you just got banned because you, you
know, you got a hideout. And I think that right now
Blizzard customer service doesn't have that right.
So yeah, I, I, I, I think it speaks to an ongoing issue that
I think we all knew was going to happen the 2nd that the entire
CS department got laid off. But also don't be assholes to
customer service people on Twitter.
And and and also, yeah, like you're saying like understand
basic contacts, right? Like the, the the tweet from
customer service is not worded very well.
But like also like girl, if you got banned for saying the word
that I won't say was, do you know how many times Lex Rance
would be out of World of Warcraft?
Right, right. Yeah, you got somebody has to
report it. I don't think it's it's just
getting picked up. That was a very balanced take,
Lex. I was I, I mean, I, I'm, I
think, I think a lot of times customers are idiots.
Oh, true. So I, I was like, Oh yeah, PJ,
give it to him. But I definitely see your point
of view that that didn't de escalate this and that should
have been the goal. Customer service's goal should
be to de escalate, not dunk on, not escalate.
And you're right. I I do agree that you're right.
The P JS response while awesome, PJ, if you're listening, then it
then while it is awesome, he should have been trying to de
escalate that situation or they they should have been trying to
de escalate that situation. OK.
All right. That's fair.
I will. OK.
I will also not to be mean to poor PJ who's been through a lot
and hopefully still has a job. I'd like to believe this wasn't
that big of a explosion, but it's it's possible that had I I
how do I put this? It felt I, it's possible that if
I'd personally found it funnier, I would have had a different
reaction, which is not to say that it wasn't a like, you know,
attempted like, like I, I, I, it's hard to dunk when you have
to be also professional, right? But like, for example, would I
maybe have felt differently if PJ had just like posted a
screenshot of something that this person had said?
Maybe right, Like maybe it's just that like it, it, it was a
little toothless and so it, it didn't hit the way that I
otherwise would be like someone's got that one seats
pulled on down. So it it's possible that I'm
being balanced in a way that I otherwise would not have if I
had been one of the people giggling along with customer
service right there. Yeah, I feel like there's no
way, no world where customer service is allowed to post
channel. Surely not I and and look, look,
PJ, if you're listening, darling, you like I, I'm being a
little mean. You did a like 4A attempted dunk
on a, a customer. You walked that line very well.
It was, you know, professional. I could see where the dunk was
happening, but it didn't, you know, commit any crimes or
anything. But because it was a
professional dunk, I think it kind of neither scratched that
itch of watching somebody get absolutely roasted on the
Internet for being an idiot, nor did it seem, you know,
professional and and measured. You know what I'm saying?
Yeah, one of the things that came out of this that I found
interesting people were, you know, slamming them for AI
responses. Oh, it's an AI.
It's always an AI response to bot.
It's a bot. It's a bot.
But one of the one of the customer service reps, because
there was a multiple that chimed in on this this weekend long
Twitter fest. One of them pointed out that,
hey, these are the templates. They're templates, my dude.
We use template and I worked at a call center.
You're giving templates. This is your customer's problem.
This is what you say. You're trying to do sales.
This is their objection, this is what you say.
So those templates are in place so that everybody's giving the
same messaging across the board at the company.
But we have, we've shifted from this mentality of understanding
and realizing that templates are a thing that exists and that
customer service roles specifically use them quite
heavily. Like especially like scripting
and stuff, call centers. That's why every time you call a
call centre, they say the same things over and over again.
Every time you call your ISP for tech support, they go.
It sounds like you're talking to the same person every time
because we're using the script using a template.
They also not to not to derail, they have this really stupid
annoying script where they like to tell everyone, oh you, you
are such a great customer. I wish all of my customers were
like you, which feels like a little good the first time you
hear that. And then if you're like me and
you're constantly talking to customer service because you
used to be screwed over by a company and you will wait on
their stupid long annoying lines for how long it takes, you're
like, you're the third person. I don't think you all like me
that much. I don't think that's true.
I think that's a script. And now that I know it, it feels
fake. So sorry.
No one, no one has ever told me that they wished all of their
customers were like me. Am I?
Am I customer X? OK, right.
Not a universal script. I've never maybe it's just you,
Lex. Maybe you're just lovely when
you're calling you like you sound because when you're angry
you just sound like a like a butterfly, like a Hummingbird.
You're just like buzzing. So they're like, oh, she really
wants, she's really excited to talk to us.
That's. I, I, I even when I'm very
angry, I bear in mind the fact that the person that I'm talking
to is not my enemy. They're my ally.
I think that's really, really important.
The customer service person you're talking to, they are not
the person who screwed you over. They are not the one who upset
you. They are.
And and they are arguably the only person in the this
conversation right now who can help you.
So like you are. Yeah, I have fully had like
calls that I have been like livid about what is going on.
And the person on the other line with me, they, they are my best
friend. Like, I am very mad at their
company. But I fully understand that.
Like, this is not. And I, I, I'm the queen of the
like, I, I know this is not your fault.
I'm not angry at you. I'm just frustrated with the
situation. So you get customers besties.
That's a good point. You're like they they didn't
'cause this problem and they're probably the only ones who can
fix it or could put you in touch with the person who can fix it.
So you know, you catch more flies with honey.
Definitely butter them up. I like that.
But people I just need you to hear this cause apparently I
don't know if it's zoomers or dementia riddled boomers that
don't know this or both. Maybe it's both templates exists
everything's not AI it's not I mean I get it Oh, I don't like
this it's AI you know my my lawn is too long and there's a bunch
of dandelions on it to AII got it one of those AI lawn like
it's not not everything's AI it's the templates are missed
man, I miss miss the 90s I. Man OK this is probably not a
surprising take for me. I am not an AI girly.
I hate the fact that everything I know are you is that.
Who would have thought so? Surprised.
I like because, yeah, I mean, the the other hand of that is
like we kind of do have to be paranoid about AI everywhere
because it's getting harder to recognize and you have to be
able to. Yeah, I'm constantly.
So yeah, people are getting, you know, AI investigated
constantly, like artists and everyone.
And on the one hand, I hate that.
I think that's a terrible way to engage with each other is like,
you know, assuming that we are just talking to bots.
But on the other hand, there have been like most times that
I'm like, I'm going to release my AI, you know, paranoia, and
I'm going to approach everyone with the assumption that I'm
talking to a human. I end up talking to a freaking
bot and then it looks stupid and I don't want to look stupid.
So I just assume everyone's AI. It's going to be awesome when
the listeners get to this point of the show and we tell them
that this whole episode was actually AI, that we took our
voices from the 300 episodes that we've done before and fed
them into Gemini and asked it to create a podcast episode with
the two of us. Oh, yeah, but I don't talk about
my dog nearly enough. OK.
I will also say though, I am maybe part of the reason I'm so
bitter about it is because I do kind of write like AI, Like I am
a little flowery. Oh.
My gosh, I. I was raised by a copy editor
assuming like. I'm not giving it up.
I don't care. You can accuse me of AI all you
want. I'm not giving it up.
I refute. You will clot out of my cold,
dead hands. It's a.
Great tool. You know and.
Everybody's like me. It's not my fault that all the,
you know, all the the robots want to be fun and nice and
supportive. That's right.
They're all just fun little fun little zoomers zipping around
and bopping and nipping. You're not a zoomer, but like I
don't mean zoomer as in generation, I mean as in your
fast. Yeah, fast and and like to kill
people with mushrooms. Yeah, big mushroom killers.
What? Hold on.
What? Well, 'cause there's like AI
mushroom identification apps and this is one of the, the new
things it's kind of circulating of like you're all the way if
you don't listen to AI is I think, I think it was a
destroying Angel. No, not a destroying Angel.
It was, it was the white one, the really, really toxic.
Swear to God, that's a mushroom. I'm not good at mushroom.
I eat them, but I like I forage them, but I don't forage the
scary ones. But they're like a highly toxic
mushroom and they fed it into into AI and they're like, yeah,
I was like, correct. You're right.
That is a yummy button mushroom. You should eat that as a fun
snack. Like that is a healthy
appropriate. Like, don't you, you guys, you
guys, you guys, if you are interested in foraging, do you
know how many books are written on this subject?
Please do not listen to a little robot.
Go to one of the millions of books, the Facebook pages, the
Reddit groups like talk to a person.
First of all, it's fun. Why?
If, if you want, if if you're here for the easiness, if you're
here for that, like go to the farmers market and find somebody
who seeds freaking chicken of the woods and sells it to you
for an exorbitant amount of money, right?
Why are we trudging through the woods and cutting a little
mushroom? We're doing it for the love of
the game. And so you might as well to also
get to talk to a little person. Foragers are all weird.
They're all fun. They're sometimes a little
insane. They sometimes like to say, I, I
did once have somebody insist that a mushroom was not chicken
in the woods. And chicken in the woods does
not have lookalikes. They're like, I don't know what
else it is, but that is not a chicken.
It's too yellow. And I'm like, OK, so there's two
different varieties of chicken of the woods and the yellow one
is potentially a little bit more likely to give you a little bit
of tummy offset, but then you like side a little bit.
Oh my God, these crazy people, Sean.
They were actually like chicken of the woods was we're like, I
ate some bad chicken into the woods and I was in bed for a
week. You were not, you were not.
You had a little bit of the poops and that's OK and you
moved on with your life. I do not believe them.
That's not how anyway. Anyway, so some of them are
crazy, but that's OK. It's fun.
So don't use AI mushrooms. I don't think anybody has ever
made an argument that has made me walk away from it being more
pro AI than you just did. Now you're telling me that the
AI is actively killing the people who are using it the
most? Let's open up a data center
right now that's AI is healing makes that they're doing it for.
They're like, OK, They're like, listen, we're just, they're
actively destroying their plan. How do we stop?
I know we'll tell them the poisonous mushrooms are safe and
all of the AIS are like, this is going to work.
This is a good plan. This is great.
That's this. This is the, this is the actual
like Terminator end goal. This is when the the machines
take over. But it's literally just like
just first like getting us to clear our brains and be
incapable of thought and then tell us the dumbest things ever
in our little AI searches. I like that they they're taking
us out 1 by 1 so that they sure can heal.
Thank you, AI. They tried, they told us to put
a little bit of glue in our pizza dough.
They told us like there's a certain number of rocks you
should eat. Like they they were.
They've been testing this for a while.
Are you serious? This is.
Like this is in this very early days of AI, like Google AI
suggested like information I they were, they were like, yeah,
like a good bonder binder when you're baking is a little glue.
Oh my God. All right, we're going to end
the show here because I'm certain at some point somebody
has already written a comment on Spotify that says I didn't
TuneIn here for these cooked AI takes and I can't believe the
fat one just just was pro murder of robot murder.
So really the reasons that was a joke.
I'm not pro anything really. Yeah, this is.
An anti only show. We can only dislike things.
That's right, I'm incoherent. And was it negatively
incoherent? Yeah, well to be to be fair, I
did start a rant all about how if you're gonna forage you
should join groups because they're fun.
And then I ended it talking shit about the the foraging groups.
So yeah, this is kind of the anti only show.
My bad. For foraging groups and now I
have to Google Chicken of the Forest.
Of the. Wood of the wood, Chicken of the
wood. Sorry and.
Then oyster mushrooms and then puff balls.
Those are all the easy ones that are really hard to to die.
From you know, a lot about mushrooms, which now that I'm
saying that aloud, explains so much.
I spent almost all of my free time in the woods, Sean, the
reason I'm not playing World of Warcraft.
I'm too busy walking my goddamn dog.
Which also last weird story before we end the the episode
today. I did have the fun joy of trying
to pull a tick off of my own shoulder blade on my own.
So that was not fun, but I did it.
I'm very good. At Taking up Tick, two things,
tick for tick. We used to get a ton of ticks.
Do you have one of those little dog tools that you can like
fight under the head and pull? So I tried that and it was a
little too small and also it was a pain in the ass to like get it
in the right place. So I just, I just tweezered it.
The other option, which is awful, just cover it in Vaseline
because it breathes through its asshole, and if you cover it in
Vaseline and it can't breathe and it'll back itself out of
your shoulder, which is an awful feeling.
Yo, you feel it? Yeah, you can feel it like
backing itself out. Oh, I hate that.
The other thing that I've heard, I don't know if this is true,
but if you do any of those I, I was told that if you do any of
the like putting it in water or like Vaseline or something like
that, it'll regurgitate out into you, which is how you get the
the diseases. Although a fun fact about us,
this us, I'm guessing this is even more true for you, Sean.
I learned this when I went to urgent care because I had pulled
off another tick and I thought that it looked bullseye ish and
the doctor went in and he said that does not look like a
bullseye at all. What is wrong with you?
You're insane. He did give me doxy because I
always give me doxy. But he did tell me that this far
north, it's like 10% or fewer of the ticks have diseases and
like, and he was like, you go to the bottom of the the state and
all, it's up to 80. So like it usually in in most
warmer climates, it is a really high rate of anaplasmosis and
Lyme and everything like that. But we are in a place where
it's, it's actually pretty rare that our techs have to see that.
But also if you pull them. Yeah, also if you pull them off
within about 24 hours, he was saying some people actually
think it's 36 again, they'll give them doxy anyway.
Nobody wants me to get Lyme, but they first have to like suck out
your blood for about 24 hours and then they regurgitate into
you and that's when you get the line.
So if you can get them off within 24 hours you are like
basically guaranteed not sick. OK, very cool.
We used to get like between 12 and 15 a week.
I had two dogs and we used to run through the woods and we get
really nervous. I just started taking the next
card myself because. We can you do that because I
want poison. So bad.
No, no, you cannot, Lex. That was a joke.
For legal reasons. We're ever I have to cut that
out of the show. Nobody eat next card.
It's poison. So bad it makes your blood
poisonous. Do you have any idea?
My dog is on next card and she also has a lying vaccine I get.
I have those two things. Is next card expensive where you
are? Because it's expensive here but
I buy it from Australia. You don't need a prescription if
you buy it from Australia and I have a company that ships it, I
get it. It's like 73 bucks for a box of
6. Actually, I think that's about,
no, I'm actually paying about 200.
No, no, I'm paying 22 to 3:00. I'll send you the info.
These dude, that'll be amazing. I want to take it so bad if you
are a doctor and. You don't take care.
I'm not going to, but if you can tell me how to get poison blood,
I don't care what it does to my kidneys.
I don't care actually. I'm going to have to cut that
out of the show. I please nobody take next card.
I'm terrified someone going to hear up to that part and then
immediately hit stop and go eat a next card.
Do not take next card until next time.
May all your hits be crits.