Telling your team that there's going to be another 1600 for all
eliminations or or layoffs over the next year is really hard.
I think just having people work with like a a sword over their
head sucks. Victory for the Forsaken.
For Lauderon. For the Karen Tour for Pandaria.
For calendar to the. Burning region for Gilnaeus
Sindori, for the Alliance, for the Horde, for Azeroth.
Hello and welcome back to another episode of For Azeroth.
I am your host, Manny Akie, the true really Manny.
And I am joined by the lovely, the ever wonderful Lex rants.
Hello Lex, how are you? I was going to say luscious and
I'm like, that seems weird. I was trying for an alliteration
thing and it was just like, no, no, abandoned that.
But how's the way to work after you?
I thought I'd be chewing you into loquacious because we did
have. I had a little conversation with
my boss this week about how I don't need to send four
paragraph long emails every single time I talk to her.
Yeah, so bless up. But yeah, I'm doing well.
The World of Warcraft is treating me very well.
Actually. We got AOTC this week, so I have
officially gotten all my fun little goals.
I'm still trying to figure out exactly what I'm going to do
next season, whether I'm going to go back to Demon Hunter or
stay on heels. So and I just today played
through the new storyline, which I was able to grind out in a
couple hours. So good to know.
Although do bear in mind, don't make the mistake that I made.
There's a place midway through they're going to make you go
through a dungeon and one of the bosses has something you have to
pick up. And if you are in a mythic plus
group, you are not going to think, oh, I need to loot a boss
because you don't loot bosses in mythic plus.
And then if you do that and leave, you'll have to go through
very grumpy in a follower dungeon to get to that point.
Stupid. Nobody knows how to stupid stuff
so don't do that. Or do if you really wanted to
have a really bad follower dungeon.
Very unnecessary follower dungeon if you've already done
an on Mythic Plus. Understood.
Yeah, but like, you'd have to
get the right key for Mythic Plus.
It's an entire ordeal, yeah. There are a lot of groups for
this dungeon going right now. I, I pugged A10 also, it's the
first time I've solo pugged on as a healer, I think since I
last played healer. So I'm feeling very proud of
myself, very excited. It was very good.
I did yell at the tank. The tank was mean, but not to
me. And that's the joy of finally
being kind of good at mythic plus.
I get to now be the person who if somebody else decides to be
mean in the mythic plus, I get to yell at them and I can
because I did a good job. This, if anything is going to
convince me to be good at mythic plus, it's the fact that I then
get to step in and be like, hey, it's a learning key.
You don't get to yell at them. If you didn't want to do a
learning key, you shouldn't have.
I signed up for a learning key but also like learning key and
we timed it like so they're shutting up.
OK. I mean, yeah, yeah, we're not
going to go into the entire story of like maybe they were
trying to be helpful at the end of the day and stuff.
I do they. Were not they they did this one
made me feel like now I feel kind of silly and embarrassed
that I even brought up the time the tank yelled at me because
the tank in Rep like in comparison was very nice.
The tank today literally was like horrid job but or a 10 and
I was like if you don't shut up and we timed it I don't
understand. The guy died on like all the
bosses would like arguably was my fault.
It wasn't because he was standing and soft, but whatever.
It was a learning key. Get over it.
OK, I'm, I'm really happy to hear this, like the continued
adventures in mythic plus you getting into healing, pugging
through it like that's that's something that sometimes, like,
I mean, actually this week I've been struggling with because I
decided to switch from elemental backed enhancement because I'm
going to go into enhancement next next season.
And I figure I've got the extra catalyst charges.
I can crash stuff on cheap right now.
This seems like the time to make the switch rather than trying to
do it while I'm gearing up next season.
And we're going to be talking a lot about 12.1 in the coming
episode. So stay tuned for that.
But it was also about like getting that change of pace and
actually going back more to my comfort.
Like I like elemental. It has some very cool things.
And when you're like doing the burst damage like a God,
lightning God, it feels super powerful.
And then again, you have to spend a lot of time outside of
that point where you are struggling to keep any kind of
relevant DPS. Enhancement has a bit of that
same issue, a little bit of like that living in your cooldowns.
But because of a couple of things, it's not as bad.
Some point I will have like maybe a Shaman talk episode or
something, something we'll get, we'll get word up or something
in there and we could talk about it.
Because there's a lot of changes coming in 12.1 too.
Many of the classes we talked about the preset and the episode
that we released came out late because the guys I was on
vacation. I'm sorry I dropped the ball,
but I also got to like sip some nice drinks have some great
company yeah I I don't I don't feel super guilty.
So I'm sorry, not sorry In a time between when we recorded
that episode and when the episode released, couple of
things happened and I want to mark this.
Lex was talking about oh man, this bonus and it giving haste
and like I don't want haste and please and got some feedback.
And so Lex, what happened with that tear set?
Yeah, it's Crit strike now, which is our number 1.
So it's the same thing, which I will say after I started
thinking about how renew exists within the game, it did make
more sense to me. Like I if I look at things, I do
usually have renew stacks on everyone just based on how I'm
used to pull down stuff. But yes, hopefully it's still
based on how many renew stacks have I think still capped it 6%.
It's still capped at the same number.
Yeah. So 2% per stack, three of them
capping at six. Yeah.
Stunning perfect. But now it's it's 6% crit
stripe, which is much more useful for a holy.
So we are all very happy about that, or at least I am.
I haven't talked to other holy, maybe they all hate it.
I mean, like based on what they said, feedback was there and
crit was a much more desirable stat and that was good.
I also like that I was also a bit vindicated, we'll say,
because they said, listen, the haste was there to like interact
with the renew and make renew that much better, which, you
know, faster ticks on the renew be that you get like a more
upfront benefit from that, which is cool.
You know, stronger ticks from crit would also do that effect.
So hey, I, I get a bit of I, I guess I understood what they
were going for and I guess you guys understood what they should
have done. And so Blizzard has now switched
that over to crit, which is amazing.
The other thing that happened is that we got a couple of builds
for 12.1. In fact, one came out yesterday
as of this recording, one came out just after our recording,
but the dungeons just became available for testing.
And again, I really want to get into that.
But the third thing happened this week that we want to talk
about first, and that is Microsoft going absolutely
berserk. And it has been a bit of a
bloodbath at Microsoft Studios with the new management coming
in. We have now seen cuts of 32,000
roles being being set up with 1600 of those roles being
immediate and another 1600 set up.
Sorry, I forget what the time frame was.
This is in the new feud in the near future where it is 16,000
eliminations today and in addition for studios will leave
Xbox to new management and then the other 1600 are going to be
throughout the fiscal year 27. So over the course of the next
fiscal year, which we that's, that is a lot.
And so, yeah, Lex, what was happening when you heard this
news? What was what?
What in the world was going on in your circles and the impact
of this news? Yeah, so this one I actually
found through a New York Times news alert, which usually is not
relevant by gaming. I was like in the middle of the
work day. Yeah, it's tough.
This is a so we, you know, my friend group of chatted about
this a lot. We have some folks who like know
folks, Blizzard Circle and everything.
And it's it's hard, right? And it's scary.
I think this is a rough way. I won't claim to understand
management at a high enough level that I can speak to like
the decision making behind this. I think telling your team that
there's going to be another 1600 rural eliminations or layoffs
over the next year is really hard.
I think just having people work with like a sword over their
head sucks. I I.
So. Listening to what Xbox says I do
like I get it right, like they're hemorrhaging money now.
I obviously my little, you know, workers right self is going to
be like, wow, I wonder how many CF OS are losing their money.
But it does sound like they are doing a lot of like not cutting
from the top top, but like cutting higher level roles.
And yeah, I think it's just, it's just sad and it's, it's
hard. And I'm, I'm worried about like,
I again, I love to be the like. Oh no, the poor Blizzard.
Like genuine this like working so rushed with so much to do,
getting all of this, you know, feedback and criticism of I
think often validly right, like things are, in my opinion,
obviously coming out rushed, which is not the devs fault, but
it means the devs, the ones getting yelled at now you've
lost some folks. It's hard.
It's not super clear that they said that they are going to cut
Blizzard among others, but so having all of that and then also
just like FYI, there's going to be thousands of like, you know,
well, 1600. So like over 1000 more layoffs.
You don't know who it could be you, it could be tomorrow, it
could be in six months. You know, what do you live in?
Did we have a return to office policy that forced you to live
in one of the most expensive cities in America?
It's something like that. I don't know.
So it feels really bad. The one thing that I'm, I
haven't really heard a lot of conversation about, obviously
this is not Blizzard relevant, but it's all of the studios that
they had purchased and will now be leaving.
I thought obviously that's better than layoffs, but I, I
mean, what a studios purchase, there are major layoffs, right?
Like Blizzard, for example, lost their entire QA department.
They lost, I think their legal department, like basically
anything that there would be overlap just got cut.
So A, now those studios have to figure out how to pull back
together whatever got removed and B, like, imagine being one
of those old workers, like, oh, sick.
OK, so you purchased my job, you laid me off, and then you got
rid of the company. Like, imagine being one of the
people working there. We're like, bro, what was the
point of all this? Why were we?
And like, I get that. It's like they thought that was
going to be a good decision of diversifying and bringing them
other studios. And it has proven to not be as
good of a. But yeah, man, like, I can't
even imagine the feelings that must be coming from that.
Or on the flip side, you know, oh, sick.
My little company no longer works for the company that has
decided to hold 1600 layoffs over people's heads to
presumably try to get them to work significantly harder.
We get out. So yeah, like, OK, there's a lot
in what you just discussed or rather said that I'd like to,
that I'd like to outline. It is horrible in this day and
age that bad management seems to get the golden parachute while
the workers seem to suffered the brunt of like the the mistakes.
Like in this particular case, you're looking at Phil Spencer,
who left earlier this year was the head of the Xbox division,
the gaming division. And so hey, he he was basically
fired and this is the new management coming in.
So at least there's that. But you again, there is a golden
parachute with that. He got a lot of compensation as
he went out the door. And so this new successor, Asha
Sharma, right, she's come in and she's making these cuts.
She didn't make the decisions to bring in all these companies.
So there is there is something about that.
But this is still people's livelihoods that are getting
absolutely demolished, destroyed people who would have like moved
to join these studios. And you're right, there is a lot
of uncertainty with some of these studios that have been
sold off to new management. And even worse, there's other
studios that are still in a bubble where those studios might
just be shuttered because they can't find somebody to purchase
that. And it sucks.
I want to go back to the good old days of more independent
publishers, more independent development teams and
developers. Before ABK was swallowed by
Microsoft, before Blizzard was swallowed by Vendy, right?
All of these sort of mergers because they think that they're
so big that they can't fail, but it turns out that they're
constantly failing and people are constantly paying the price
for that. And it it is something that I
think isn't just going to affect the people currently in the
industry, those who have now lost their job and may leave the
industry there. Many of them are pro have like
skills that are applicable to other industries that that
aren't as fraught with like these constant layoffs.
So we're going to lose talent there.
And then there are going to be people who look at this and say,
I really don't want to get into that industry.
So future prospects become like what just the the people who are
crazy enough to like wade into those waters.
It it's going to hurt a lot in the long run, in the short run.
And the profit is a quarterly finance like they the letter
talks about the fact that their business had declined, not that
the they were as you said hammering money.
They had invested $20,000, sorry, say 20 thousand $20
million, maybe twenty $20 billion outside of the ABK
acquisition and that acquisition was finalized only recently.
And for them to say like, OK, we need that return of investment
so quickly. It's it's pretty it's pretty
insane. Like you like it's saying that
like if you look through the initial post and it goes through
you goes through to another one. They talk about their end of the
fiscal year having like a 3% margin and spending 2020
billion, right. But the avenue, the revenue has
declined and yes, that revenue declining by nearly half a
billion during that time is a lot of money to you or I what
they sent spent several billion to purchase these companies.
It's almost a rounding error when you talk about the
expenditures that they've made to amass what was what was the
largest, one of the largest game development networks that they
that they had. And so I just, I feel like it's
at no point do these companies ever feel that they can absorb
any of the loss. They always shifted on to the
people who had no control over their fact that their company
got purchased out, that their role was made redundant.
But yet they they shed that weight off and they dumped that
that load onto them and it and it just feels horrible.
Yeah, it sucks that the team, the Xbox team was made bad
decision that the the grunt worker or the one who primarily
are going to add. Big love out to Fast Dev and of
everyone at all of the Microsoft studios.
Like you said Lex, there are still more layoffs incoming and
that is hanging over the heads of people still at the job as
well as trying to find and support the people who were
affected. The there have been post saying
that nobody who was part of a union at Blizzard has been
affected in this round I believe.
I would like to believe that is because of the unionization, but
that doesn't mean that they are safe entirely.
It might be that the next half of the layoffs that are upcoming
are going to be focused on that because they just needed the
time to work, work in conjunction with the union to
see what they could cut and we will see.
Yeah. Well, and unions, I think
usually will negotiate for things like, oh gosh, I can't
think of the word, but payment after layoff, right?
Deferences and some sort of renumeration.
Yeah, I get that. Yeah.
So I mean, which, if nothing else, means that you're a little
bit safer after you get laid off.
I'm this is a pro you podcast. It most definitely is.
That is, that is 100% true. This is a programming product,
Yeah. Because, you know, yeah, we were
just saying Xbox makes bad choices and so the workers are
the ones who suffer. You want to know how you protect
yourself in situations like that?
You combined with your Co workers and you negotiate as a
group and you make it so that the you know, people above you
don't have that, but like don't have have less power over you
because you are you're joining together, which doesn't only
have to be unions. There's ways to collectively
bargain and there's ways to join with your colleagues that are
not official unions, FYI. But yeah, yeah, that is it's
it's good that there seems to be some degree of but also, yeah,
this is just devastating. And like you were saying with
people not wanting to get in, you know that there's talent
that will be leaving the industry, there's talent that
will never join the that could make incredible game and tell
incredible story. And those folks are less likely
to go in now. And I think that's sad in its
owner. And again, just the people
who've given so much time and energy and work and move to
these horribly expensive places and put so many hours in and
given so much of the games we love just getting laid off or
working with this year hanging over them, that I think is also
terrible. Outside of outside of the
unionized groups, which are very much franchise sort of aligned,
there is a development team that covers World of Warcraft.
There's that's unionized and that includes many of the the
supportive roles. There is a team that is for
Diablo, but there are people that work in the development of
like new games that aren't quite quite out yet, new franchises
that aren't quite out yet. Blizzard has an incubator thing
where we get games like Hearthstone came out of that or
Rumble or any number of games that might come out in the
future. Those aren't covered by the by
the union. And so there are people at
Blizzard that could be getting hit.
When you look at Bethesda, another company under the Xbox
umbrella, they have definitely been hit.
And what's happened now is that they're talking about needing to
return to a sustainable growth, right?
And shifting their model from like what they might have been
doing more experimentally. But they said that they are.
We are shifting from a planning model primarily centered on
what's next for each independent studio to one that focuses on
our strongest franchises and determining the content road map
that best serves our players and professor as a whole.
And that is from the CEO, Jill Brath.
And what I look at, what I see in that is that when they're
focusing on their strongest franchise, that means that they
are throwing things that were in development, that were in that
incubation out the window. They're like, oh, people don't
know about like this. And it could have been the next
great game. It could have been something new
and revolutionary. But now they're going to be
focused on is what people already know.
And like, yes, Bethesda has like big franchises, Fallout, Elder
Scrolls, Doom, Doom is also Bethesda, I think, right?
Dishonored. I know the Dishonored on them.
Like they're going to be focused on on those things.
But like, if this has happened years back, we may not have
gotten Dishonored if this had happened years back.
Her stone means never been a thing in her stone.
I think revolutionize that niche of gaming because before that
nobody was doing really the online collectible trading cards
and then suddenly everybody was like popping out their Gwent
copy and and all of that. So like I think we will lose new
areas of gaming and it will go fall back on the Cods every
year, every two every year and that's going to suck.
Yeah, I, I mean, obviously there's the, you know, constant
fear that we've had since activism purchase Blizzard of
the like the codification of World of Warcraft.
I, I was just thinking, I actually don't know the numbers
on this. So I don't know if there is a
little part of me that is thinking like, yeah, my kind of
wish Blizzard was still just Blizzard, right?
Like, because I think we talk a lot about like World of Warcraft
printing money, right? But it's not, you know, money to
support Xbox and Activision and all these little independent
studios and it's money that supports Warcraft and then like
maybe a few other games. And so I again with that, I'm
not like I don't have numbers in front of me.
I don't know how it works. There is a level of this.
I'm kind of like, I wonder if the monopolizing of the game
industry is part of the harm that if you need to be like
your, your games need to be bringing in enough money
together to support a huge conglomeration, right?
With all these different people at all these different levels,
risks are harder because everything's more on the flip
side, you also can divide that much a little bit easier, right?
Like if there's more games bringing in more money, you can
take the Cods and the World Warcrafts and the things like
that. And I hypothetically did
distribute that, but it doesn't my, I will also say my
understanding of the game industry right now, again,
without being in it, without looking at versus.
So right now is the really time to be a game studio that the
cost of production is rising pretty rapidly and cost truly
consumers are not paying substantially more like we are
lead. Obviously price are increasing,
but not at a rate that keeps in line with the game development.
Again, this is just what I've been told.
I'm kind of just parroting with other people is.
That well no, no like I I have seen I have read that before,
games do cost more to make than they have have in the past.
Especially when you're trying to put out all these AAA hyper
realistic live service games that need to have a shelf life
of however long, right? You look at Grand Theft Auto 6.
That is like the big thing that all the studios are now trying
to avoid because they don't want to release at the same time
anything at the same time as Grand Theft Auto 6.
And that's a game that is going to like set you back, like,
sorry, I got to translate to the US think it's a 80 or $90.00
game US. And like, that's huge sticker
shock. Like I remember back in like
back in my day, N64 was trying to put up the price of its games
and there was like a riot. People like you can't do this,
you can't make it. You can't put the price up that
high. And that caused PlayStation that
had kept its prices low to gain an advantage, among other
things. It wasn't the sole reason.
And so I, I wonder if games are going to be so expensive to make
at the AAA level and they're going to start charging so much
and you have Sony now saying that they're not going to do any
physical media which caused that big uproar or things like that.
If now's the time to start looking at AA games or like
games that are coming from other other places like we, I wouldn't
call it an indie studio. I would say that a good AA game
would be Expedition 33. It definitely wasn't done by
like a AAA studio, but they were, I think as close as they
they could be without like being a AAA studio studio, but that
took a long time to develop. You look at Boulder's Gate
three, which is like beloved by so, so many and that took a long
time to develop. So when they talk about like
these faster development cycles and going through, I kind of
bring that back to Warcraft where we are now looking at this
eight week development cycle and like people be like, guys, come
on, just let off the gas. The shine isn't there.
Oh man, it feels like so many more bugs are coming through and
it doesn't look as polished as before.
And so I worry that with this Xbox push and this further thing
of we can't let things slip dates and such and this entire
1600 rolls now being threatened. If we are going to see a lot
more pressure on them to like this 68 weeks and shove it and
shove whatever you can in there and that that's that's scary for
World Warcraft because that's exactly what I've been like.
I don't like this right now I. I, and this is one of the things
that I think that that it was luckily, I think we were kind of
more shielded from Activision than we realize because this is
it's very big studio brain. And I think one of the reasons
that so many of us have played World of Warcraft for our entire
lives, our entire adult lives, or who came into this game.
You know, we get all of our friends raved about it or
whatever Part of that is the fact the Blizzard team
historically has been very, very player focused, right?
We have BlizzCon, we have these communities like it, it, it's
such the, the, the point was always all the like, all
Blizzard employees are Blizzard players, right?
I think without exception, maybe, I don't know, maybe I
shouldn't say that, but my understanding is it's pretty
much uniform. I'm sure there's some exception
out there, but there were there. Again, the exception, not the
rule. Right.
And so I think that's why and again, I don't I don't have
their numbers. I don't like maybe the eight
week cycle actually did boost their sub number something
crazy. And we just, you know, whine
about it as content creators, but everyone actually loves it
and we just don't know. But I feel like we as a
community, we're willing to tolerate slow development cycles
and delays. And you know, oh, we're going to
do a season 4 because we don't really have this ready.
And like, actually, sorry, we're going to push this back a little
bit, Things like that. Because it felt like this is a
community that we're a part of. This is more than just a video
game. This is a thing that we are in
in a community. And I think that's one of the
reasons why the codification of World of Warcraft feels very
scary and why these development cycles feel very scary is I
don't want World of Warcraft content on a cycle, like on a
rhythm, because it needs to be on a rhythm.
If that's a thing that genuinely the team does joyfully, they're
able to be like, actually, it's great for us to do 8 week cycles
and we can make our best content doing that sick.
But I'm more OK with like slower, better content.
And I, I, I feel like that's true of everyone I've talked to.
Again, I obviously run in, you know, my own circles.
I again, I do not have Xbox's number.
Yeah, I also worry. I worry that they're going to
look at this and they're going to look at it as a business.
And obviously World War like Blizzard was always a business,
right? Like I'm not that had in the
clouds. Like I understand that everyone
is going to be looking at these numbers, but they're going to
just be like, well, I guess we need more, right?
Like pump out more, faster, cheaper.
I mean, Rumble, I think a lot of the reasons why it failed so
hard was because right when it was having a chance, right when
it was growing, they pulled like almost every single dev off of
it. And it was already a running
joke in the community of like, oh, the like, you know, Rumble
like bugs everywhere, right? And then they tried to make a
joke about it's not a bug, and it wasn't that funny because you
can't make the bug jokes if you are a developer.
And also it's full of bugs. Like, fix the bugs, don't make a
joke at me. Yeah.
But anyway, that was really sad, right?
And I think that there were a lot of reasons why Rumble
failed. I'm not pretending it was just
that. But yeah, it was really striking
that to have a game at a point when we were like, oh, this is
actually really cool. But there's all the stuff that
needs to be done that would make it so much better.
And they were like, you know, it'll help zero employees.
And that's what I worry Xbox is kind of doing in general is pull
like trying to get everything to to to the most brass tacks it
can. And that's not why we play World
of Warcraft. I don't play World of Warcraft
through like mass content. Yeah, I think that part of it is
that when they start talking about the seasons and they talk
about like, oh, how they're doing the expansions, they're
like, oh, it's going to be 4 new zones and this many dungeons of
it's like that's formulaic. Like we're not looking for the
same thing every like 8 weeks. We're looking for a new
experience every so often. And it doesn't need to be every
eight weeks or every 10 weeks as like when you're looking at
things that came in, let's say Legion, I think Legion was a
massively successful time in World of Warcraft.
And they were having a pretty strong content release.
I believe it was 77 days or 11 weeks at that point that they
didn't cop to at the point, but people were like, oh, wow,
these, this is coming so soon. And nobody said it was like too
slow or anything, But they were adding new things and their new
experience. And oh, we're doing this thing
as the focus right now and then switching over to a new thing as
the focus. But like it would shift the way
that you would interact with the with the game.
And they do that in expansions to a certain point.
Like hero talents have been cool.
I feel like Apex talents have been less impactful when you
look at before hero talents when we're in Dragonflight, like the
flow of the world going through with dragon racing.
That was pretty unique and everything.
And of course they've had the accessibility issues that we
have discussed on this show. But on top of that, they were
trying to introduce some things that like you would engage with.
So we had these Azeroth anniversary secret finders, this
stuff the, but like some of it was I think the start of the
kind of shallow stuff we would get.
We would get like the shattered time way stuff.
That would be, oh, OK, go here and it'll be you running around
in like circles for 5 minutes and then come back in 20 minutes
and run around in circles for 5 minutes.
And they did that because they were against this borrowed
powers thing that they had been doing beforehand.
But when I look back at, let's say prior to Legion, because
bleeding was when we first had our artifact weapons or our
broad power, there were still things that you were working on
throughout the different patches.
And I guess that's where people call them the Wow chores, where
you would be unlocking the the Isle of Thunder in Mr. Pandaria
or you would be developing your covenant in Shadow Lands.
And I think that like they should, they shouldn't be afraid
to have these cool things that people can do outside of raids.
I just feel like that's what we're getting now with 12.1 and
this entire exploration of the Isle of Coyles where you can
like now change it so that you don't have to deal with the
poison and like explore further into the the island.
I think that is closer to the Isle of Thunder where people get
their own little tech tree to work on.
And maybe that will be cool. But I'm worried that it's going
to be, again, too formulaic where it's going to be a mix of,
let's say, Renown slash, the folio that we just got.
Yeah, well, it does feel like they remembered the existence of
Horrific Visions and they did that like they returned it for a
little bit and then they're like, oh wait, you guys like
this and now everything is the Oh, and also if you run through,
you're going to get these different and you get to decide
that there's building affixes that you can put on it and you
can either it's going to be harder, but you get more
rewards. And I'm like, OK, it was fun
because it was one thing, right? Like it's not like I like
horrific visions because I want every single thing to be affect
this. I, I actually, I'm a little bit
curious. Meaning I've like all but given
up on my omnium folio because I do not want to grind out all of
the stupid visions or whatever they're called.
The, the, the ritual site. Isn't that like 5?
Oh my God, there's been another week.
So I have to do 2 now. So like, yeah, like they're
making all this content I just don't want to do.
And it's like, so repetitive. Oh no.
Is it actually good? Are you enjoying it?
No. OK.
So Lex, you've done two weeks of it.
You've done double what I have. Yeah, nobody likes.
That it's all right. I'm sorry.
You're you're too hardcore for me.
I apologize. No, I'm a sweat.
I had said this. This was one of the episodes
where you were away and I said, OK, there's power behind this.
It's something that we're going to need in the next tier.
They're unlocking it over the course of the five weeks.
I expect that come 12.1, they're going to allow you the shortcut,
some of it. Or I can just rush, rush through
it on one week. And it's not like I can't
compete in keys. I'd like been switching over to
enhancement and I should go and do it.
And this week, which is week #4 there's actually a bit more
power than it has it been in previous weeks.
When it first came out, it was like such a small amount of
power. But with week 4, we're getting
runes that are giving secondary stats.
And so actually, let me pull up. I think there was a Wowhead
article about this. Yeah, I'm trying to figure out
what, first of all, because I want to know what it is.
OK, it's a this one's better. It's going to be a dungeon delve
or LFR wing and boss, which makes me think that next week
it's going to be multiple dungeon delves or LFR wing.
Oh shoot, If I'd done this today, I would have gotten it
done. Yeah, so this week seeking
knowledge, week 4 out of five, the magical preminescence.
You're right. You complete a dungeon delve or
LFR wing and boss, and it will give you one of four traits, all
which correspond with the secondary trait.
So critical power, of course, haste, mastery, versatility,
right? And then because it scales with
your gear, that is, that is going to be something that is
going to give you a good boost in your mythic.
Plus you might want to get it done before done if you're going
to be pushed on Mythic Plus or whatever it is.
But actually I kind of want to ask, maybe we should ask this at
the top of the episode. Since you've now completed AOTC,
are you sort of going to shift the shift into a more mellow
pace? Is your team going to like do
another week to like get the achievements or like what's
what's the future look like? Yeah.
So the current plan team wise is that we're going to do another
run through for AOTC because we got a couple guildies miss it.
So that'll be we're taking this week off and the next through
that. And then I we haven't like
officially set the stone, but probably the week after that
will be our achievement run and then we'll probably go on to
break mode. That's a good question for what
I specifically am going to do. I mean I've already kind of
shifted into a little bit of a slower mode.
I needed to be reminded that there was a new story to do
today. But I also don't want to go into
12.1 totally cold. So for example, I think I
probably should get through my stupid Omni and folio and I just
need to do this with virtual sides and whatever.
And you're probably right, I'm probably going to use skip and I
want to do virtual sides if I don't do it, but I should
probably be good at my game. So I but yes, I think by and
large, we're going to be switching to a more of a rest
that the officers will chat about, you know, next year.
If there's anything that needs to change.
Like I said, I'm still kind of between roles, which means we
can't really set a roster. So we need to, I need to
solidify that so we can, you know, figure out if there's gaps
or things to work through. But I'm not really an alt girl.
That was one of the reasons why when we needed another
character, I just like had to hardcore grind in like a week.
So I and I don't really have anything that I'm like desperate
to do. So I am probably going to spend
the next couple weeks prioritizing the garden or like
practicing my loot or reading books or things like that.
Like catching up on the stuff, maybe playing other games like
catching up on the things that I haven't done as much because
especially this tier has felt like World Warcraft has been a
little bit more needy. Well.
OK, well, yeah, again, this is week 4 out of five doing like a
dungeon to get the get what you what you need, remembering
dilute if you go through stuff and remember dilute.
And I think that it's all kind of leading up to 12.1.
So let's talk about the stuff that's happened on the PTR
because as I said at the top of the show, we've had a couple of
builds in between shows and we have had some adjustments.
So Hansman Shaman is getting some adjustments, which is why I
was like, OK, I'm back on, I'm back on my old business.
Same with what they've been talking about before.
They're taking some of the juice out of the cooldowns and
spreading that out over your normal rotation so you're not so
focused on these particular burst windows.
They have also been addressing a lot of the complaints or issues
that people were having. So we are seeing some redesigns
for particular things. Some adjustments like warrior
tanks being adjusted so that they aren't as squishy.
I'm sure Sean will love that. I'd wasn't aware that our
warriors were particularly having that issue, but that is
with their four set. The four set bleed was currently
underperforming. They also feel that Protection
Warriors could use a small bump in overall survivability and the
performance gap between their two specs was too wide.
So they're bringing that together.
They've made some changes, some wonderful bug fixes for a number
of classes as well as like just adjusting, adjusting those tear
sets so that they are that they are more in line with what
people want. So I would suggest if you are
interested, check out the show notes.
There are class changes all throughout this week though they
are testing the returning dungeons to the dungeon pool.
Last week it was the midnight dungeons that we had at the
beginning of of the expansion that were then locked away in
the Disney Vault. Now they're coming.
They came back out of the Disney Vault so that you we're going to
have those in Season 2. This week we're testing those
returning dungeons like the Ruby Life Pools, the Temple of Seth
Rallis, and King's Rest. This is going to be a really
good opportunity to see the shifts in those fundamental
things that they were changing. They said said that they liked
where things were in season ones in terms of overall dungeon
viability and difficulty. The overall changes that they're
saying, it seemed really great. And then they have very
particular changes for for things as well.
So Dragonflight, it was a pretty notoriously full on expansion
for what was being thrown at you.
There's just a lot of stuff you needed.
I think it was the most dependent on weak orders.
We've been in the most barrage with bulk slop that we've ever
been in. So they're adjusting things.
The Ruby Life pools, they have said the spawning, pacing,
clarity and tuning are all being adjusted.
They have It also said that they are slowing down the ability
pacing on all boss encounters, reducing trash density, and then
some particular changes therein. Temple Seth Rallis was heavily
adjusted to address pain points and concerns over its previous
iteration, with some reworked stuff for the gauntlet sequence
prior to the final boss that removes a player to be in time
out while energizing an orb. Redesigning packs and trash
packs, spawning composition throughout the dungeon to just
make it more readable, more consistent, and to allow more
counter play. And these are these are things
that are in all of them for King's Rest again, receiving
significant adjustments to the creature abilities, boss and
counterpacing again and outliners so that the
composition of those those fights are changed, the fights
are more readable. So I think that for you who has
stepped your toe into Mythic Plus a couple times and also
pulled it out a couple times, I think this is going to be good.
And for me who has like tried to push more consistently and now
going back into a pugging situation where I'm going to be
like just trying to pug to see how far I can get and I won't
have those comps, it being readable is going to be so much
better. So in general, Lex, are you
excited for Season 2? Are you going to be still on
your priest in Season 2? So great question.
I think that, and that will probably change whether or not
I, I do a lot of mythic classes, whether I'm DPS or, or healer,
it is just objectively significantly harder to hug as
Adps, right? You have to be a lot better, you
have to have a lot more experience and there's just so
much more competition just on the basis that I am lazy and
more realistically the basis that I have limited time.
And so if I'm logging on, the idea of spending most of that
time button waiting to a group. So if I am healer, I am probably
more likely to do a little bit more mythic plus.
Either way, it's probably going to be primarily with friends.
But I, I mean, I to be honest, I'm having fun with mythic plus
this season now that I'm on healer and I and which is my big
debate, like mental debate right now is I think that I prefer
leveling and things like Grey delves, things like that as a
Demon Hunter. But I prefer and game content as
a priest. And so probably it makes the
most sense to do this thing that I'm enjoying on the the most of
the bulk of the content that I do.
So probably I will go priest, but we shall see.
But yeah, I I so I also did not do I've done Ruby life pools.
I don't know that I've done much King.
I don't think I did any. I don't think I played during
Kings RF. That was yeah, BFA, Yeah, a long
time back. Oh, I actually did do.
So. Maybe I do because I started
playing and actually BFA was when I started rating and when I
started rating especially, I was like, I mean, I wasn't like
sweat, but I was trying much harder.
I was trying to like prove myself to a new group.
So I was doing a lot more like gearing and getting set up.
Got to get back into that. I got to prove.
So actually maybe I do know all these, but I think I think it's
kind of good that they are playing around with them a lot,
partially just people who don't know them as well to have it be
less scary of like, oh, you, everyone else remembers these
and you don't. I do think it's funny, one of
the things that I'm noticing a couple times at least, they like
think being boss mechanics interruptible, which is
interesting, which is good. It's not a change I would have
expected them to make. I don't think it's so much that
they're, they're like a lot of bosses having interruptible
stuff, which is still, I think a good, a good thing to have
interruptible stuff. But the fact that the the boss
isn't doing 3-4 things at once, the fact that like you have more
time to react to them because they're not expecting you to
have weak orders or stuff that that tells you, that tells you
what to do to allow that reaction time.
I think it just means that it is going to be something that even
if you're not interrupting it, you can counter play against it
by saying like, oh, OK, I'm not the I can't just zip zoom like
my Demon Hunter. I'm on my priest.
I have the time to drop a feather and and run out or you
just hard run out to drop the ice off to the side or whatever
the mechanic might call you to do is what they're allowing with
the counter plan. I love that.
Yeah, yeah, it's so. I mean, I don't, I'm not good at
getting in the weeds of things like this, but just glancing at
it, I think it looks good question mark.
I mean, I think it also obviously all of this got to see
it in play if it actually changed for sure.
Actually, I was going to say, if you are, if you're interested in
getting a look at some of these dungeons, King's Rest is BFA and
is currently BFA time walking. So if you want a little quick
reminder of like, what was this about?
Temp of Seth Rallis is also BFA So two of these dungeons are
currently something you could do time walking just to give
yourself a reminder of what they were they were like and then it
won't be as big a shock and you're still working to work
like that cool dragon mount little tip the I don't want to
call an exploit but the way that time the time walking buff
worked previously is still active.
So if you have the master of the time waste buff that you get for
doing four time walking in a week and each time you get a
time walking, you get this increase to experience.
And I believe it's just experience, but correct me if
I'm wrong in the comments. When it take, when you get the
final stack, it gives you a 30% bonus and then if you get that
fully stacked 1 four weeks in a row, you will get the mount.
But if you log off after you've got that buff and log back in
the next week and do one time walking, it just refreshes the
buff and counts so you don't have to do another four in that
week. So find a character that you
want to just park. This again is Week 2.
So you still have multiple weeks to do this.
Any character that you don't need to log in more than three
hours, the buff lasts 3 hours, OK, more than three hours before
the next week and then just refresh that buff for the next
couple of weeks and you won't have to do as much to get to get
this achievement. Master of the time wise.
Very smart. You people are so good at
finding little things, finding little ways to get around all
the little rules. That that's nerfed.
It used to be that you would just refresh it in the same week
and it would count and then you would get in the first week.
But they figure it out to stop that.
Just not that. I'll stop this, yeah.
Alas. But yeah, I I do think that's
smart to be doing time walking that does relate to what's
coming. I mean, obviously they're
usually pretty good. I mean, you can jump on the PTR
if you really want to test it, but for those of us with a
little less time, maybe this will work.
It is very interesting. I think we do.
They do seem to leaning pretty heavily into the trolls, who I
would have said before BFA was one of the more like side right?
Like the kind of like the dwarves where like they very
clearly exist. They're usually visible in every
expansion, but they're never really guiding the expansion.
And now it seems like that's something that they're they're
pushing a little bit more to the point where now I feel like
people whine about the fact that all they do is troll stuff.
So what? Good for.
Who? Who's whining about all the
troll stuff? The troll stuff is great.
Oh yeah, And I so I actually did have a lot of fun with the story
today. I won't get into spoilers, but I
think it was very well done. And I I think the troll lore is
a very interesting thing to untangled because I think it is
some of the lore that they were most comfortable letting the
characters be more morally Gray than generally they do.
Which I think, you know, I could get into long conversations
about Hollow. There's problematic elements to
that. But I think it does mean that
they have interesting lore that you can really dig into.
Like, Oh yeah, this group is kind of universally disliked and
for pretty valid reasons. Like they've actually done a lot
of really bad stuff. And they can't pull the like,
oh, we were under the influence of demon blood or like we were
enslaved by this or that. Like, no, you guys were actually
just kind of a little power hungry and a little.
Honestly, if I can drag drag you out some time, we'll do like a
bonus episode where we can. We can definitely talk about it.
We don't want to dive in too deep into it, like like said,
because we don't want to give spoilers just came out, but we
do want to talk about it. So maybe we can we can go into
that a little bit more. But yes, I do think that in
general, it's something that it leads the story to where we're
going in 12 point 112.1 is very much troll focused.
So that's why they have these dungeons that are like very,
very much troll focused coming and coming back as well as the
new dungeon. I'm glad that we're getting this
this new dungeon. I'm sad that it's unlikely we
will see a mega dungeon anytime soon.
I do love myself some mega dungeons, but I also think that
some of that might be in the mega delve.
The What do they call it again? Labyrinth.
The. Layer right?
No the layers. No, I'm living mixing up with
the guy at the end again. Yeah, OK, sorry, I don't think
we've actually covered this on the show, but layers are a new
thing where instead of world bosses being out in the world
and causing all the lag, they are now putting them into a
layer that will have multiple levels that you queue up for.
And so it'll be instance content.
You'll go to the meeting, so and you'll pick whatever level of
difficulty you want to do and then you'll be thrown into
almost like a groove layer of of a boss fight.
And I think that's cool. So that's what layers are.
I believe labyrinths are the mega delves and I'm hoping that
those do include significant amount of story.
I would like to to see those like really expand upon some
part of lore that doesn't need to be part of the direct stuff
happening with Valatath and the void and all of that.
Or maybe it's a lead into what becomes in the future.
But all of that is aside to what's coming in 12.1, the big,
the big, the big thing, which is the trolls.
I I like that they're that they're doing this.
This to me feels very reminiscent of Isle of Thunder.
I think I talked about that early in the episode where it's
going to give us like a kind of a refresh when on everything's
going to be all void stuff. Now we're dealing with poison
stuff and nature green where but I do love myself some lower.
I think that they're they are cool and this is this deals with
some very lore fundamentals of trolls and elves.
I do, I do really want to dig into some of the places that
they this is taking us and some of the things that they kind of
just ignored in this story story element.
So we are going to definitely do a bonus episode and you guys
will see that on the FAZ Patreon page.
Bit.sorrynotbit.ly0mygoodnesspatreon.com/faz or Z with if you're American ZI
think yeah. No type up VED.
We'll see how it goes. Patreon.com/faz and yeah, so
we'll we'll come back to that. We'll come back to that.
I don't want to, I don't want to go too deep even though I have
things to say. But I think that's going to be
it for us today, unless there's anything else you want to talk
about Legs, OK. Yeah, go have fun.
Just say I, I do think it's, I mean, also, I don't remember
their story. It's not connected to the, to
the patch. I was also a little bit
surprised when everyone was like, oh, did you do the story?
And I was like, I didn't download anything.
Imagine if there was like a podcast where they told you
things like the story is going to be delayed a couple weeks or
something. That would be really sick.
Imagine if I was on one of those I.
Feel like I want to go back and like insert the point where we
were saying and this hasn't come out yet but will be out in a
couple of weeks can. You imagine if somebody thought
to say that on a podcast and I was like on that podcast when it
was said, that would be absurd. Anyway, I forgot so but it's,
you know, it's fun. It's it's not too long,
especially if you remember your stuff in dungeon.
So go enjoy World of Warcraft and appreciate the devs and what
they bring to us and say thank you and then go yell at CEOs but
not devs on Twitter. Well, until next time, may all
your hits be crits.