The biggest take away from this interview?
Manny, you're burying the lead. Ian listens to the show.
Ian is Fasdev. Victory for the Forsaken.
For Lauderon for the Karen tour. For.
Pandaria. For calendar to.
The burning region for Gilnaeus or has not done for the Lich
King for the Sindori. For the alliance.
For the Horde, for Azeroth. Hello everybody, and welcome to
yet another episode of For Azeroth.
I am one of your hosts, Manny AKA the Truvan.
Manny and I am joined by the lovely Lex.
Lex, how are you and how's the World of Warcraft treating you
this week? Manny, I am great.
We are getting a cold front coming in, which is making me
very happy because I'm a cold weather girl.
So the next week is all going to be mid to low 70s.
I am on the moon, I am flying high.
This is the best thing that's ever happened to me.
And the World of Warcraft is treating me well too.
I am actually still doing some mythic plus.
My team is hoping to do at least enough of the break the meta to
get the cute little, the cute little, I think you like a
banner. Yeah, fun little stuff.
So I'm getting back on Havoc Demon Hunter enough to do a
couple 10s because we do already have healers and so we figured
it would make the most sense for that to be my mind meta
breaking. And I'm having fun with it.
I'm enjoying doing Mythic Plus just for the sake of doing
Mythic Plus. It's crazy.
Very nice, Very nice. And also joining us is the
sensational Sean. Sean, how are you?
Not great, Manny. It's been a hell of a week.
House issues up and down. Property taxes in the island of
Prince Edward are crazy. Yeah, but other than that, I'm
healthy. I have my dog.
I have my loved ones. I have these two great people to
talk to you. I just realized you always give
us an adjective. The lovely Lex.
The loquacious Lex, the sensational shot.
Well, we never have an opportunity to give one to you.
There's no marvelous Manny, you know.
Yeah, because I'm introducing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I don't like that. I think you should introduce
yourself as the terrific true villain Manny or the marvelous
Manuel T villain. True villain, sort of a already
a qualifier. I know this is cliche, but I
think we should lean into the Manny, the myth, the legend.
I think that's perfect. I think that's what we I'm sure
you've heard that every single day of your life, Manny.
It's not it's not the not the first time I've heard it.
I've had I've had many names over the years, as it were.
But we're here to talk about the World of Warcraft.
We are back, the three of us. We did a special that is out
there for the patrons where we talked about the lore, because
everybody's been talking about the lore and everything that
happened with the release of 12.0 Point Sevens little story
bit last week. And this week we're back and we
are talking about a number of things, including a
clarification of that lore. So senior quest designer Keith
Riley went on to X to clarify some misconceptions about last
week's lore debate. The cinematic at the heart of
the controversy depicts the in game hair and air perspective.
And the thread goes on to point out that the visions of the hair
and air, while they can have gaps or inaccuracies, are
supposed to have a general truth.
But this is the hair in ours perspective.
So he concludes that this was not a definitive account.
This is not Blizzard saying that this is how it is and there's no
other way. So people can drop their
pitchforks and we can get some calm back on Wow lore in the
Twitterverse, as it were. Lex, does this.
Does this help put your heart at ease?
Yeah, well, I'm my heart's not ease for the quest designers
because didn't people lose their whole sweet minds when the
Newser or whoever it was said that Chronicles was meant to be
from the perspective of the Titans?
Which, to be fair, as somebody who owns all the Chronicles, I
understand a little bit of the rage with that because those
boys are expensive. But I don't I don't know that
the the the World of Warcraft always loves the fact that the
lore we're getting is not necessarily truth, but I do I
think it's a good way to tell a story, right?
You don't know who's necessarily a perfectly consistent narrator.
You don't know who you can trust beyond what the characters know.
Sometimes you do know other stuff because you spent $50 on a
book that's basically a World of Warcraft textbook and so you
have some degree of background knowledge that the characters
don't have. I I think that good storytelling
does involve some degree of ability, the writer's ability to
perspective shift and to give information that only some
people have or that nobody has. And and to withhold information
versus everyone is just play acting and has the entire went
to World of Warcraft high school and knows everything that
happened in the World of Warcraft and is going forth with
their life with full knowledge and and know nothing to
discover. So I'm happy.
You're happy generally. OK, John, are you going to throw
out and burn your codexes, your compendiums, or are you somewhat
better with this new understanding?
I actually do think the Chronicles not being a true
telling is a mistake. I stopped.
I bought. I stopped buying them when that
announcement came out. I have.
I owned the first one and then didn't buy any others after that
announcement. They should be a true telling in
my opinion. In my but in game, everything is
from the point of view of whoever is telling you that
story. And if you took the time to read
any of the quest text in the rest of that campaign chapter,
you would have known that everything was coming from the
Harendar point of view. And that doesn't have their own
point of view. And if you had done any of the
questing in Harendar when Midnight launched, you would
have learned a lot of the same stuff.
All of it. It was really strange to see
Twitter go crazy over this piece of lore when everything else
that we've heard contradicted it.
And they were all like, oh, they're retconning their own
expansion in expansion. And it's like, it's very
confusing that yeah, I don't know.
I guess the strange part for me is they're upset that things
that they think everybody should know, everybody should know that
elves gained from trolls, that, you know, dark elves, dark
trolls don't evolve with it. Everybody should know this when
I I mean, I would put a high wager that there are people who
are making those statements who don't know what's happening one
block over in their own home in their own town.
You know what I mean? Like to say that this is just
knowledge everybody should have in a plant on a planet where you
can't really tell me how the pyramids were built is crazy to
me. It's crazy that, you know,
that's they, they expect these things that that just aren't
possible. And I don't know, it's, I just
sometimes feel like people get angry just for the sake of the
story. People decided they were angry
at some point, however many expansions ago.
It doesn't matter what happens, they're just going to be.
Angry Sean, can I push you a little bit on the Chronicles
tape? Because I actually feel like
it's a little relevant. So I when I first heard it, I
was kind of in agreement, right? I'm spending all this money on
these books that you claim Mouth of God and then now all of a
sudden you're saying actually it's not mouth of God.
I do actually think, though, that this whole situation with
the Herrin ear quest maybe changes my mind a little bit
because I don't know that the World of Warcraft community as a
whole would be able to to tolerate there being something,
especially something big that they know that the game is not
willing to admit. First, I will say I think that
I'm steel manning a little bit because I think the reason they
decided to make the chronicles not mouth of God is they wanted
the ability to wreck on it, right.
They wanted the ability to say, Oh, that was just what the
Titans thought. So I understand that I'm I'm
giving them a little bit more credit than maybe they're due.
But I do also kind of understand from this whole situation why
the board developers maybe would feel like if we're going to tell
somebody, we need this to be something that also is known in
game. Otherwise they're going to freak
out every single time something is sat in game.
And they're like, but use that in Chronicles that it's
different, right? OK, I I can see that.
I can conceive a little. I just find it hard to believe
that the Titans would lie to us. That's true.
Why would they deceive us like that?
If I know anything, it's books that are historical.
Depictions in real life are always factual and the true
accounting of what happened. No slant.
They never have to make newer versions of those.
It's history, it's all we all know exactly what happened
perfectly and there's no debate over anything.
Are they retconning the old? Testament.
What's happening? I just imagined that
conversation happened. There was no Twitter back then,
right? So it was just like around the
you said this. Was mouth of God that's.
Right, that's right. Oh, now they're reckoning the
old man. I wish I could have been there
for that one. I think they should.
I think we should if I had a time machine and go back in time
to give them X just so that we could see these conversations
happen in real time. I think human history has not
had enough people debating with strangers.
That's my take. Yeah.
So it takes, you know, that one I could sign on.
I'm 100% behind that. One So from this, what do you
guys feel is closest to the truth or what do you feel is the
truth for the genealogy of the troll, the trolls, the owls, the
harneer? There was a race before, like I
think they're all, I think they are all related.
They all descend from 1 something.
We don't know what that is. There's a book with full gene
where he's like, hey, we don't know what we were called before.
We were called trolls And I, I do believe that they are, are
all on the same tree. I don't know that the ordering
necessarily is like, you know, Oh no, it was Imani and then it
was dark spear and then it was, you know, it's just they're all
on the same tree somewhere along the line.
You know, the hair and ear sort of line up with what we know of
dark trolls already. So and we call them dark, but
maybe they don't call themselves dark trolls, You know what I
mean? I I'm certain there are real
world examples of people who call themselves one thing who
then got called something else by other people later on.
You know what I mean? And it's like.
Hi Elf Cinderi. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Yeah, there's one that was a good one.
Yeah. So I, I think they're all
related and it's just somewhere along the line.
Like I said, the hair and ear sound a lot like the description
we got of dark trolls. They stayed out of the site.
They stayed of the site. They live in the caves a lot.
The Titans weren't super aware of them and then some of them
became a night olives, some of them became some of them stayed
and, you know became whatever. So somewhere around there.
But I I mean, ultimately it doesn't doesn't matter like the
do we need to know like does it? Is it super important to the in
game universe that the young goal came before the torrents?
Does that? Is that really affecting
anybody's day-to-day gameplay? I.
Don't think it affects gameplay, but I think it does in intrigue
people, like when we find out that the dwarves came from the
earth and when we discover the flesh of the curse of flesh,
when we come across the Valk here and the like proto humans.
And that that like context to the world is what these lore
people love, right? What they go nuts about, what
they fight over on Twitter about.
So there's definitely engagement there.
We started by just conceding that back.
That's true, that's true. I did see a current popular fan
websites residing lore expert make a post saying that a thing
didn't exist and then somebody sent them a screenshot from a
book completely contradicting what they said.
And there was the lore expert for popular fan websites
response was I never actually read that book.
OK. All right.
We can have gaps. In fairness, there's a lot of
books. I don't know what this is.
I have no context to this. Yeah, I, I think that what I'm
hoping from this is that maybe we see a progenitor race or that
something about this is more of like more integral to the plot
than just like, yeah, we needed to get you together to like send
you on your way to the Isle of Coils.
Like it would be a good way of, of it coming back if it is a
seed that they're planting. Because they had said back when
we were starting the World Soul Saga that hey, they were willing
to plant seeds that would come to fruition much later.
I'm hoping that this is a way of doing that where they go where
they, I don't know, have a virus that affects that affects trolls
and inherent or but then not the elves.
And it's like, wait, what is that about?
Right? Something like that.
So if they or if they have like the progenitor race come out
from like even deeper underground, something like
that, I think that would be be cool of planting this seed here.
I think conceptually be cool. I will say I don't like
scientifically, it's not really how evolution works.
This is one of the things that annoys me with the whole this
whole storyline is. Because the hair and air are not
the same as they were back then. Yeah, it's it's the we are not
descended from chimpanzees, right?
We are, we have a a branching tree that where we have a no no
longer existent ancestor, right, That branched into all these
different things. And then so sorry to the
patrons. I think I made this exact same
point on the Patreon episode. So you're getting less content
now, But I, I, yeah. So I at first, I don't think, I
mean, to be fair also, it's not very scientific that, you know,
you stay in the dark and that you magically transforms you
into something else. So I don't anticipate that
they're doing this with, you know, an evolutionary scientist
on staff being like. And how would these two races
divert? So they probably will have a
original ancestor razor. I just I just want to point out
Lex that we live in a world we're not one expansion to go.
We had people getting pulled out of cold storage from 10s of
thousands of years ago. So the pretended to race not
existing isn't the same as in the real life where yes, there
are reasons why those people would have eventually their
genealogy would have split and stuff.
So let me let me clarify. Any race that has been ongoing
from that point until now has evolved equivalently, right?
Not necessarily in the same ways.
They might visually, for example, look more like the
original race. They might, you know, engage
with the world in in different ways, but everyone has evolved
the same amount of time. So they're all.
Equally different. Equally, you're looking at 2
points that forked from the same branch, not going back to that
original branch. Exactly.
There's there's not an original ancestor that has existed
consistently. There might again again, I don't
know that this is an argument that thing had in Blizzard HQ.
So it's possible that there is right.
It's possible that in Blizzard's world, there will be the
original and these are the ones who have not changed since they
were the original ancestor race. But scientifically speaking and
also like, you know, I have AI have a bachelors of arts, right?
So I'm sure I'm also screwing this up real bad and somebody
who has a higher level degree is in our comments right now being
like, that's also not how evolution works, but big
understanding. Yeah, no, I think that there's a
lot there. There's the like, what if some
of the Urban had like escaped the clutches of the Titans and
had continued to be influenced by as we're often so we find
that faction later on. I I just want the Urban to be
relevant again. They they got kicked out the
back door. I love I love these little trees
of science fiction and fantasy of like lore and Ware could go,
but I'm hoping that the the people who were screaming retcon
are a lot calmer now. Spoiler they're not.
OK, well let's let's go to something less rage inducing.
Sean, do you want to take over and talk about the Season 2
dungeon testing? Yeah, for sure.
Let me quickly turn to our show notes Google, if you're
listening dark mode, for the love of all it is holy, give us
for those of you enjoying the first video format of the show
on Spotify, I just want you to watch my face patch notes show
notes. You won't make fun of me for
being so white, it's just because I have show notes up.
Yeah, All right, you can. You can put all those criticisms
towards me from now on. OK, sorry, Season 2 dungeon
testing continues. Blizzard has taken a look at the
feedback provided over the first two weeks of dungeon testing,
and they made many of the adjustments players were asking
for, including increased difficulty on bosses like
Machimba and the Golden Serpent and King's Rest.
As well, they continue to tweak the final boss and Seth Realists
to make it more engaging and require a higher level of group
coordination, even though it has a very good base right now for
the changes made to it. All of the dungeons are
available for testing in Mythic Plus this week.
Definitely recommend jumping in. Those are just some highlights.
There were a ton of changes made across the board in all of the
dungeons. A lot of quality of life stuff.
They removed some of the poison dispel requirements.
There was a couple dungeons where there was three different
poison dispels, so that would like really restrict the comps
you would bring to those. They removed one of those poison
dispels. They've made Zoljian a better
fight in Ultra Fangs. They, like I said, they added
complexity and engagement in the Golden Serpent Machimbophytes.
They were just, they felt like an error from a different time.
It was nothing was happening. It was very slow paced.
And a couple other fights in Void Sky Arena, some boss
fights, they did the same. They adjusted timings so things
are better. The Desire fight, which has a
lot or had a lot of swirls and a lot of overlapping swirls, was
adjusted so there's less overlap there and the pacing of that is
a little better. It's a really.
Good sign to see them moving so quickly and so assertively to
make changes. A lot of these, this feedback
was given like last week and changes implemented this week.
I'm very hopeful for the next season of Mythic Plus.
Lex as a new Mythic Plus enjoyer, as somebody who's just
like really sinking her teeth into it and playing for fun, How
do you feel knowing Blizzard's got such a heavy finger on the
scale? And are you excited about more
complex fights in dungeons? Yes, so.
First of all, one thing I will say go check out the notes if
you are interested in this stuff.
These are some of the longest notes I've seen Blizzard publish
right? This looks like a major like a
.5 patch notes. So I, I, they, they're doing a
lot. It's very clear that they are
working really, really hard and very thoughtful about what
they're doing and listening to feedback, which I know has been
one of our complaints recently, is you give feedback and it kind
of goes nowhere. So it's good to know that they
are listening. I am excited for more complex
fights. I think one thing that I learned
from my, from this season that made things a lot better was I
started having fun once I did a full run through of every single
mythic plus dungeon with people who could kind of help walk me
through it. And once I feel like I know the
fight, I feel so much more confident going in and just
doing. Now I'm pugging and I know
something I'll screw up sometimes.
But in general I know that I understand the fight enough that
I'm not overly scared. So I intend to do hopefully a
few full clears very early season.
As in full, full dungeon rotations early season.
So I can then you know, one of my big issues with mythic plus
is that I play at different times than most of my friends.
So pugging is kind of a necessity.
And if I felt more comfortable with that, I think that would be
a lot more able to play mythic plus, Although this is not the
first time I've had a hypothesis as well.
Maybe play more mythic plus. So we'll, you know, stay tuned,
kids. But anyway, the point is, I am
excited for getting a chance to see more complex fights to jump
in a really early in the season and to be hopefully part of the
earlier folks learning things and internalizing how to play
and what to do and what our routes are and everything.
And I am feeling less intimidated by Mythic Plus this
season, so I am not scared of the idea that there might be
more complex fights. Very cool, very cool.
Manny, are you excited about these changes?
Have you had a chance to see any dungeons on PTRI?
Know sometimes you jump in there.
I haven't jumped in myself a I'm happy to say that the burnout
that I was experiencing, we're we're past that now I'm back in,
but I've been playing live in order to do that, trying to
catch up on a number of things that I just sort of abandoned
priorities that I abandoned because I want to get that done
before this hits live. So I don't think I'm going to be
much on the PT. But what I'm really excited
about and what I would like to ask you is with these new
dungeons, they've been talking about having more of the
responsibility be with the DPS priority targeting or other
effects that instead of being a healer problem, reduce your
damage or something, or heal up the mob so that you have to
again, burn that health down. So with these changes,
especially with the dungeons that are coming back, Sean, I'm
asking, have you seen anything that has put that responsibility
on the DPS? What are the changes like that
have made this like less of a all the stress on the tank and
healer so. Specifically, the last boss and
Temple of Ecethralis there are the it's changed.
It's a boss that you want to heal, but there are two orbs
that's bonding. They had Life coalescence or
something like that. They're these purple orbs and a
blue arrow appears above them. When you touch them, there's a
small explosion and you have a debuff applied for I think it's
40 seconds. That reduces your healing
received by 40% and your healing done by 40%.
Now in a fight where the goal is to heal the character in the
middle, this obviously isn't something you want the healer
doing. O it is secifically on there are
two orbs that sawn each cycle of the phase and each orb has to be
touched twice. So all three DPS and the tank
each have to take a stack of this.
So that is one spot where it is on the the DPS to do this more.
I haven't noticed as much stuff like where you miss a kick and
now you have a deep damage done debuff or things like that.
But admittedly I'm tanking these keys.
So if a if a kick gets missed and it hit somebody else, I
don't really know what's happening to them.
I haven't gone through the logs yet, but I would like to see
some of that, that it's not just Mist Kick is a kill, but like
Mist kick is, you're suddenly doing less damage.
Yeah. And I haven't, I haven't, I
haven't seen that. But the Temple of Ceteris, that
fight. And then there's also the
increase. There's these third boss that
these pillars spawn and shoot beams into the Boston power.
Those have to be soaked as well. They added an extra pillar so
that theoretically all three DPS would each would soak a pillar
in there to keep that going. So there is some happening in
the reworks, but I would definitely like to see more.
I just I think the biggest problem is it's easy to look at
bosses, right because there's a dungeon journal.
We can tell what the boss mechanics are.
We can tell what every spell does and what the impact of them
are. There is nothing in game that's
bass Blizzard that does that for any of the trash packs, any of
the mini bosses. So like you're going in
completely blind and if you don't have a tool like MDT,
which isn't field load on the PTR or if you don't take the
time to go and physically look up each enemy in on, you know,
popular fan sites like Wowhead, you just don't know what's
happening in the dungeon with the, with this trash.
If you're not like actively running it, logging it and then
going back through and reading the logs.
We I, I think we need a dungeon journal for the trap.
Like there has to be something right?
Like, I don't, I guess players are just supposed to learn by
trial and error, but that can be really intimidating.
Not a lot of people want to take the time to do homework on a
dungeon to find out what is hurting.
You know they're going to go. That's why Dungeon Guide videos
are so wildly popular at the beginning of the season, because
they're answering this question that people have I.
Do think mythic plus is, is an interesting situation where it
is still treated like the bosses.
It it's, you know, raid is just a race to the boss, right?
Trash maybe does something kind of silly, but it's mostly just
goofing around with your buddies.
It does not matter. And it's really just boss after
boss after boss. And as a Raider moving into
mythic plus, that's always a a thing that I have to kind of
switch my brain around. I needed one of my healer
friends, my my priest friends to tell me that I needed to start
using cooldowns on trash because of course I'm not using a healer
cooldown on trash, right? That's crazy.
But in mythic class, I mean trash is a major part of the
timer and the timer is the only thing that matters.
You have to be pushing through as fast as possible.
So I think I agree. I think that the dungeon journal
is set up currently as though it was more raid like and there's
less but it's not right. Mythic plus is not small mini
raid. Mythic plus is mythic plus.
And I do agree, I think that major trash mechanics do need to
be called out. I've found that people don't use
the dungeon journal even like if they don't have the the boss
guide or something. Like when you there are the
people who will go on to the PTR, test it, generate the stuff
that then goes on to the videos like tactics will put out stuff,
Cassette will put out the stuff, Radar IO of course put that puts
out all these videos. There are the people who will
look at those videos before it's released, all of that, and put
that to the team. They're the people on the team
who will have walked, looked at a bunch of videos and be like,
OK, which one are you following? There are people on the team who
will be like, what? Why aren't you telling me what I
need to do? What's going on?
And there are the people on the team that'll be like, I want to
keep my head down and don't die. Nothing's going to happen.
And at no point are any of those people consulting the Dungeon
Journal. And that to be is like something
that Blizzard needs to look at. We were talking about it back at
the beginning of the expansion. It would be great if I'm looking
at that dungeon journal and I go, oh, big tank Buster, that's
scary. Let me click on that so I can
add that to what's up, an improvement to the dungeon
journal. And please, fast dev, I don't
put out much stuff. The Dungeon Journal could be so
much better and incorporated into the game along with things
that you're already putting in the game like the cooldown
manager, like something like MDT where it's like here's the
dungeon map. I can put this map and put that
glow around the packs that I want to do instead of the pre
designed ones. We've we've come up with a
number of ideas off the top of our heads and we're three
people. You guys got an entire team of
talented individuals as well as all a feedback from all these
different people. I think that it should be a
project that they they put on because the Dungeon Journal is a
underutilized and severely lacking part of the game.
I. I will say we utilize the
dungeon journal in raid on a like in the minute, like, wait,
what's killing us? We don't really understand why
we're dying and it is often hard to parse.
There are very often times when we're in voice and we're like,
wait, is it this? But if that spell, I think
that's from this mechanic and but it says over here.
So I I think that there, there is an opportunity for clarity
because even when you do use it, you don't.
Even look at the details and be like what was the fatal event?
OK, let me click on on that and see what it is.
Hear me out. One cohesive unit.
I can go to my damage meter, I can see what killed me, I can
click the ability and it opens the dungeon journal and shows me
what killed me, and I can read the actual description from it.
I obviously love the idea of adding, you know, announcements
or highlight, hey, highlight this cast for me right from the
dungeon journal, being able to sync all that in.
That's a free idea, Fasdev, We're giving that to you for
free. I would love that that I like
that you guys use the dungeon journal likes we do as well.
If if things are happening, tanks especially, we'll go in
and have a look, say, hey, what can I ignore here?
Oh, all of it. OK.
Yeah. So like I am looking forward to
this. I am glad, I'm very glad that
there's only one new dungeon from the Isle of Coils because
what I've been seeing through like the videos, the twitch
stuff that I've been watching, there's so much green and drear.
I like I'm, I'm, I'm so sick of it and the patch hasn't even
come out yet. So I'm just like put in one
dungeon. I'll stay in Silver Moon where
I'm not going to get like seasonal depression in the
middle of summer and we'll go from there.
How is? Green, dreary Manny.
No, it's it's. It's neon green and grey
depression. Yeah, there's.
A lot of like dark brown, green and the neon.
It is a lot of Do you ever play? There's a game called Dark Souls
made by Manny watched. Me play that day.
Have you played Dark? Do you remember there's a
section in Dark Souls called Blight Town?
Was this? Within the first like before the
first, she did not get. Far no it's not no, no that
that's deep into the game it's. Blight down.
It was like they toned everything was dark.
It was really hard to see. It was a swamp.
It's it was it was awful, but it evoked in you a sense of just
like this is unpleasant and I don't want to be here.
And all of the it's like it's all green, it's all overgrown.
It's all very much like you can almost smell the zone, you know,
pictures of. This dungeon and they're
beautiful. What is wrong with you guys?
Watch it the get it in motion. Play through it like there are
some there are some great picturesque thing things that
you're going to completely skip as the enemy beats the crap out
of you and your tank. But like, just the general feel
of it is like I, I never thought the mall was that bad watching
this. I'm just like, man, I'm I'm not
going to enjoy this. I'm an ex.
Undead role player I can get behind a little a little
plaguey, a little messed up a little.
I like the. Undercity.
I I I got to watch a video because I think this looks fun,
OK. Anyways, yeah, like looking
forward to this. The dungeons are looking good.
I am excited. Between all the changes that
they've been making to the classes, the tear sets and of
course, of course the dungeons themselves, it looks like this
season 2 is going to be even better than season 1.
And the fact that like season 1 was feared is going to be the
worst season. And now, Sean, you're going into
this being like, this is good. Only up from there.
Hopefully this stuff some sort of weird inverse and we end up
falling flat on our face. That would be horrible.
But yeah. Before we go into the next part,
though, Sean, would you like to thank our patrons?
Let me put on my sunglasses. It's so.
Bright. It's so bright.
What are? You going to find a half a.
Screen so you don't have Oh my God, it's.
So it's like staring into the sun.
Hold on. I know.
Here it is. I found it.
This is all staying in the show,
people. This is for free.
You got to come watch the video to see it.
Please. You don't have to watch the
whole video, just jump to this point in the video.
It's so bright. But on that note, you know what
else is bright? Our our love for the Patrons.
I want to give a special thanks to Rack and all of our Patrons
for Azeroth. We'll always be free, but if you
enjoy the content we produce, you could consider cludging to
our Patreon at patreon.com/F AZ. You get your own special patron
tag in our Discord where we sometimes talk about things that
we don't talk about in other channels.
I don't really have a reason for why things go on the patron
channel and why they don't go over there because it's never
like spicy takes or things like hey, here's an exclusive on
something. It's always just like I didn't
like this quest or hey, this is a really cool trinket.
It's. I'm really selling.
It I'm really selling it, there are.
Some exclusive conversations that happen in the patron
channel on the Discord, which is which is nice.
Sean also will put forward anything that we're putting out
to the patrons in that Channel so you guys will know about it.
Just like we talked about with the lore conversation with the
early access episodes that we've been putting out as well.
So there's more reasons than ever to become a patron,
including with the new video feeds and the patron hangout
that we're that we're trying to plan it.
So make sure you pay attention to that.
Bonus, that lore episode. You get to find out which one of
the three of us has a weird ear fetish.
You'll never guess who. Yeah, we'll leave.
We'll leave that as something for them to figure out.
Anyways, we have of course APC Games N interview.
Lauren Bergen of PC Games N sat down with Game Director.
Ian has a coasters himself to chat about the state of World of
Warcraft. Now this interview was pretty
high level if they weren't getting into this nitty gritty,
but there were some cool takeaways from this.
We had in iterating that the story of Mod Wow is broadening
that what they are offering is for different audiences.
There was a conversation about how the team is was fixing bugs
too close to release and that's how we got the like pretty
disastrous patches where they have to take housing down for a
whole day. That was related to a fix that
they had done to the elevator in Siege Morgamar, which then
caused an issue in housing. And so they have to shut that
down, keep everybody out of their houses because it would
save a game breaking bug. Not fully game breaking, but
would like take all of your wall hangings and all of your ceiling
hangings and slam them down to the floor and save it like that.
So they have to keep people out of their homes for a bit, but
they're changing their process so it won't be that bad that
they will put release candidates out and then only deal with
things in a way to not 'cause these bugs to occur so late in
the process. Which is great to say.
And with the latest release it seems that they have hit that.
I'm looking for it to become a pattern and then I will be
reassured. I think the biggest take away
from this interview, Manny, you're bury in the lead.
Ian listens to the show. Ian is fast.
Dev, where did you? Pull this that was in.
In the interview, he says I'm I listened to you for Azeroth and
they always are talking about me.
They're like fast dev, fast dev and they don't realize it's me.
Ian, how's the cost is? Yeah.
But I he so he wasn't that direct, but he did say that
there are loud voices in the community.
Clearly us not understanding who content is directed to and
dismissing the content. If that is not proof that Ian is
fasdev, I don't know what is. Ian, thank you so much for
listening. We're honored.
We're going to tone down the snark for the next 38 seconds
about. I have.
Never. Heard Lex say that she doesn't
know what the point of the content was.
That's never something like this ever said ever on this show.
Benny, we know. Fast dev doesn't listen to me
because I made one very reasonable ask that would have
caused a beneficial situation for everyone and they couldn't
delay or release one week for me.
Fast dev, you and I are still in a fight.
I don't care that you're even has Acosta.
OK, Yeah, I I do think that it is good to see that they are
looking at things in a holistic view, that it isn't just the
people who are loud on X or sitting down with like the
popular personalities and saying it makes no sense and everything
or like jumping on their podcast and like just talking over
people who like the content that like Delves or or actually a
really good example, when Nashitol and Val came out and
Heroic came out, I hadn't played it.
Sean, you were like, I don't see the difference.
Just go into heroic and the community from a lot of
different places were saying, Oh my goodness, this is too hard,
this is scary and everything. I personally feel that when they
clicked Heroic they completely ignored the part that said this
is for three plus players. And so when they went in with
their squishy, their squishy coffee at a relatively low item
level, they're like why can't I solo anything?
I have been playing that content over the last couple of weeks
and I've been enjoying it. I didn't think I would like
world content again. I had fallen out of doing world
quest and such just because it didn't have appealed to me.
Going in with a small band of my friends and doing that content
together. It gives me a little bit of
taste of how things were in errors of Wow gone by when I
couldn't just solo smash everything and hold my cooldowns
to like, I guess eternity. Like I have to be a bit more
exacting about how I go through stuff.
And I really enjoyed that. And so, yeah, maybe the content
isn't for Lex with her like 390 geared plate warrior that
doesn't see any difference other than I guess it takes a little
bit more to pull everything. But for other people, there's a
deaf and audience for this. Let's have you done any of the
heroic world content? Not.
Really, it hit at a point when I was working on gearing rapidly
and I could convince my team to run me through Mythic Plus, and
that was just going to go so much faster.
I will say in defense of the people who ran in and ignored
the suggested grouping, usually that is a lie.
Usually when World of Warcraft says this needs to be X number
of people, it needs to be this or that.
That is not correct. So I'm not blown away with
delves. I don't I haven't really looked
at the item level requirements for a while so I don't know if
this is still true, but for the longest time the item level
expectation was what the Dell dropped, which nobody is doing
content that is the item level that it drops right at that
point it's not meaningful. I mean it didn't OK some people
are but but the the point of contact hold on a.
Second, hold on a second because I have plugged into so many
different raves and so many different dungeons and everybody
demands that I'm at 390 for my mythic 2 plus.
So I don't know. Sorry if if.
The question is, are pugs unreasonable, especially for
DPS? That's an entirely different
conversation we can have, but when Blizzard?
Does it now? We got to have issues, OK.
Yes, yes. And OK, let let me be clear.
I do not want Blizzard to act like the average mythic plus
pugger. I'll say that with my chest 10
toes down. I'm not going to put any, you
know, asterisk on that one. That one I'll I'll commit to.
OK. I can I can get on board with
that, but I mean, look, I'm. A big proponent of world content
being harder, right? I think I think that world
content should be tough. I think it should kill people a
lot. I, I, I'm pro that I want delves
to be hard. I want, I've been saying for a
long time, I want them to be pushing up the the numbers.
I, I want not everyone to be able to go through every level
of delves the same way that I don't think every player can go
through every level of mythic plus, right?
I want that to be and I understand all the complications
behind it, but I think that would be good for the game to
have solo content that is genuinely challenging, that is
genuinely end game. So yeah, I'm totally proud.
OK. I mean, back in your days of our
peeing and and such, you didn't do much instance content.
Would you have welcomed this content instead of, like,
looking for those Ray teams that you eventually fell into?
Yeah, I. Think, absolutely.
I think that if I could have done more, I mean, frankly, I
would have been really excited about follower dungeons when I
was at our peer, right? Anything that let me go through
things on my own would have been really, really till you did.
One. Well, yeah.
And then? I would have been like oh This
is why all the mythic plussers hate each other.
I didn't realize it was this hard to do basic content.
I finally. I finally got an e-mail back
from many reports of Krenna the Earth Mother, and I was told
that they found no indication of her violating your code of
conduct. And I, well, this is obviously
briefing, I, I. Have to say that I feel like the
developer sat down and be like, now these guys are too organized
we're going to make this like a real pug situation.
Yeah, we. That's it.
Like they listen AI doesn't exist.
They came pretty close with Austin Huxworth to mimicking
what it's like to play with an actual BM hunter.
I am actually pretty convinced that some of those characters
are very. It is so obvious that they are
coded for example to if they get aggro, run away.
Like they are coded to be very difficult to work with, which I
don't fully understand. Like it was great for learning
to tank, I learned how to manage aggro much faster because of
that. But I feel like the people who
want to do follow dungeons for the sake of all our dungeons
probably are not just trying to learn the tank.
So maybe they run a little bit toward the tank, I don't know.
I'm also not entirely convinced that they're not actually devs,
that they just have a team of devs that just logs in and plays
for the followers and they spend the whole time in my Sarah
Caverns laughing. Watch.
You're going to pull this back now.
Lady thinks I'm a bot. That would be.
Hilarious. I wonder if follower doesn't
clearly not meant for me. I'm not the audience and such,
but there are times where I, I wish certain difficulties that
are more about the experience of the story and getting the
conclusion of like the zone or whatever happens within that
dungeon should be set up to be more of a scenario, should be
set up to embellish more on the story.
Like when you are doing a dungeon on normal and follower
dungeon, there's more dialogue, there's more vantage points that
like you see while you're going through the dungeon.
And then when you switch it to like mythic, mythic plus, it's
cuts those out and you don't have that anymore.
And because that is focused on I'm doing timing, I'm getting
the gear and that sort of stuff. But I think maybe they need to
double down on that separation. Discordian Kitty, who you
mentioned in a previous episode, talked about the failures of
story mode idea I may have hammered into her head.
And I dislike that raids now don't have those like story
moments that happened in the middle of a dungeon where you're
where it's like, oh, we're fighting against the general and
he's on the wrong side and this guy's been with us the entire
time. Or the clocks.
You're like, no, we told you we were going to betray you.
Like we're going to do that. It's all stuffed into the final
boss and everything before that is just here's a scenario here's
moves. This guy showed up from nowhere.
Hi, I'm like general the third is like what?
Where did you come from? I.
I do actually really think follower dungeons were a big
missed opportunity. I think probably that is because
they did not get as much positive reception as Lizard was
expecting, because I think in early War Within there were some
signs that they were going to take follower dungeons a little
bit more in the direction of a story mode version.
For example, the Rookery. There wasn't like it was a
little different if you were with your followers and the
followers were all plot relevant.
I was. I was actually pretty grumpy
during the most recent lore drop when I did the Mayasara Taverns
follower dungeon. Kind of.
Expected that it was going to be the people like somehow relevant
to the fact that I was supposed to be going through this dungeon
with these people in front of me and it wasn't it was the same
freaking loser, right? So hey, hey.
Captain of Garland is a lovely person, That's true.
OK. And.
Marity Huntswell is my main source for water follower fast
dev. We like follower dungeons.
I log in on a healer, I queue for a follower dungeon right
away, I take my 80 little mana biscuits, I give Mary a hug for
thanks, and then I leave. Again, I don't feel like that is
the point or the intended use of follower dungeons, to the point
that I wouldn't be upset if those mana biscuits that you
grabbed off of the NPC that I'm surprised you even remember her
name disappeared the second you owned out.
Yeah, that would be awful if they I'd be so upset.
I would still go change it. So like.
The the buffs, so the buffs. Disappear The buffs used to
persist and people were because people are people they were
using. They're like, oh, we need we
need versatility buff. Well, let's just go get credit
to give it to us before she pulls half the dungeon
accidentally and then takes and then somehow taunts a boss in
and that's just point Zenith taunts it and walks it into an
area that the players can't hit. And it's so crazy.
It's so crazy. Anyway, yeah, they, they they
spanned that dungeon was off. It's I was on the PTR, gang.
I'm sorry. Quick aside.
I was on the PTR. We were tested.
This literally happened. Krenna taunted the the boss on
the void side, the one Nykara maybe something, her name is
Nice Nysara, the one that gets jumped by Letheri, let her
accident in the little fight. She taunted it.
Why is my healer taunting? She taunted it and then walked
it off into the area that the players couldn't get there.
So we just can. She's just standing over there
with the boss, and we were just like Austin Hoxworth was like,
yeah, I'm going to go pull something else because he's a
hunter and that's what he does. Meredith and I were just hanging
out with Captain Garland. It was just like, I don't know.
I don't know, man. Like they're your friends.
The same thing happened in Mayasara by by the way, where
there's the room with all the dead things and you have to kill
the I. This is the first time I learned
you have to kill the boss in the middle to be able to go through
the door, because I was like, oh, I wonder how much of this
room I can skip. I tried to guide them out of the
room. They all laughed and I was just
running into that door, like, wait, just the goddamn.
Had to. Call them back and it was
absurd. So yeah, they they do have
magical powers the players don't have.
So fun I think it. Just it costs them a little too
much to program the version of a hunter that is like, I don't
know, in Nexus Point Zenith, you could easily put in Illyria as
the hunter of the group, but her abilities work differently and
program that in seems like a much more of an effort than just
saying here's the set group. You replace one of these guys.
If you're DPS, you replace this guy.
If you're a tank, you replace this guy.
If you're a heel, replace this guy.
All the rest are said. So I kind of get it.
But I also think that maybe then these guys should be in silver
moon and like interacting silver moon.
So you're like, Oh yeah, those those guys are around with us
for that campaign and such. And then it seems like a great
opportunity to build up these these characters as like the
crew that's around with you, be like other members of a war band
sort of thing. But yeah, I would love to see
more story back into the World of Warcraft.
And this interview did talk about the story, especially in
12.1. While it might seem like a Side
Story at first, and clearly Ian has seen the criticisms to that
point, in reassures us that it ties into the overarching plot
of the world so saga and will bring us in.
So I am tentatively optimistic about that.
It does make me want to put on a tinfoil hat and be like, oh how
is this all going to work out? And there have been some cool
videos out there. I know there was one by Bellular
that was trying to like piece of paste this all together and
discording Kitty again has has been talking about different
things. So I'm excited for what's to
come. In general, though, do you guys
think this is going to be the next big thing or sort of
similar to, I don't know, liberation of undermine again?
Let's start with you, Lex. I'll believe it when I see it
just because of how point ones almost always seem to go in
Blizzard writing. But I have said every single
time I've been a little doomer and little jerky girl about this
that I think like, I want that to happen, right?
I want there to be something where Mallichras combines forces
with Zalitaf. Or like like I would love to see
the story that's going on here to genuinely affect the war, the
not the war within. We're going to go back on an
expansion, by the way, I would like to see it genuinely affect
the world source soul saga and I'd like it to be really
meaningful story And I I I want these stories to feel like
genuine 3 parter. So I'm hopeful.
I'm hopeful. The fact that Ian is saying it
means that they are genuinely paying attention to this and
making sure it doesn't feel like a a blip.
I'm a little bit concerned because the storyline feels like
what I would write if I was going to write a blip storyline,
but I again, I'd love to see it. I want to be disproven.
I want this to age really poorly.
I want the story to go very, very well.
OK, John, on your end, where your hopes or where are your
predictions? I.
Hated liberation of undermine so this can only be better.
And I love Zulaman so I'm already leaning.
I'm already like, I'm, I'm in that camp.
You know how sometimes you're like, I already know how I'm
going to feel. It doesn't matter what happens.
I'm there. It's like, oh, I have a date.
I really like this person. No matter what, this date's
going to go well, you know, and then you accidentally eat that
torture lettuce from Taco Bell and you get explosive diarrhea
mid date. Doesn't matter.
I had a good time with the person I like.
This date went well. Somebody saved me that great
analogy. Analogies are my thing, but
that's where I'm at. I, I'm all, I already know I'm
going to like it. Even if I would like for the
story to tie in. I don't want to walk away from
it feeling like, well, this was a side quest.
And I am hopeful that they will be able to, you know, in it.
It's, it's obviously something they've talked about, they've
discussed and they're aware of. It would be foolish for him to
specifically bring it up in an interview if they haven't
already got a plan in place to make it tie in Like that would
just be insane PR. That's so true.
Sean Ian would never do something like say we cores
aren't going to go away the day they get announced to leave I'm.
Like I'm going to go back and get that clip and also get the
clip from Sean be like, why would your feet?
Out of here, Why are you? I listened since I realized Ian
is Fasdev. I'm going to be a lot nicer to
him because he's a person. We can't say, be nice to devs
and then be mean to Fasdev on the show that's coming.
Fast dev because fasdev and I aren't in a fight.
But you can't because you're not in a fight with Fasdev.
Because apparently Fast Enough takes Sean's side on things,
guys. Do you not realize how many
times I've said I don't believe anything he says?
I am such a bad person. It's like, I'm so sorry.
It's like on record shopping like that.
Everything he says is 6. You know this is where we cut in
the Super cut of me mentioning that 6 tiers in a row we got a
mid grade wall. We, we can't, we can't do a
super cut. This show's already an hour
long, so we're going to be calling it here.
No super cut. Yeah.
Anyways, thank you all for listening.
This is our first video episode. We have many things coming up,
including as we reach towards the 400th episode.
But again, if you didn't see the special release, we are changing
RSS speeds, so make sure that you do look for the episodes.
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Subscribe button. But until next time, may all
your hits be crits.