It's actually pronounced Gemescalm.
Forsaken. For Lauderon.
For the Kirintor. For Pandaria.
For. Calendar to the burning region
for Gilnaeus, but has not died for the Lich King for the
Sindora. For the alliance.
For the horn for Azeroth. Hello and welcome to another
episode of For Azeroth. I am one of your hosts Manny AKA
the true villain Manny and I am joined my my other two Co hosts.
First introducing the lovely Lex rants.
Hello Lex, how are you doing? Hello Manny, I'm doing great.
I am bopping right along in the World of Warcraft.
You didn't ask me how the World of Warcraft was treating me, but
I'm answering anyway. Bopping right along.
I'm actually low key having fun with this cute little Delve
belt. I'm doing them all at once
because I am at the point of the season where I don't want to do
work. I want to just go in and like
face roll things for 30 minutes and then log off, which is
great. I'm having a great time.
I'm face rolling things so hard. Y'all, This is so fun.
Yeah, so my belt is updated. I got my cute little CDs to put
in. We're having a good time
listening to our little music. OK.
All right, all right. And then on the other side,
coming all the way from I think his second or maybe primary
residence, Sean. Hello, Sean.
How are you doing and how's the World of Warcraft treating you?
Hey Manny, we're in the main studio today.
So we're the, we're we're on the on the on the the, the primary
property. World of Warcraft has been
treating me good. I too am wearing my Fanny pack
stuff for the Sony Discman like Lex is and it's up to date.
My borrowed power is all caught up and I'm just getting ready
for raid testing. I've been on to the Ptra little
bit, played through the campaign, played the new
dungeon, and yeah, I'm mostly maintenance mode.
It does look like I know, like I like.
I update this every week and say the same thing, but it looks
like I'll be playing Paladin next year.
Our Death Knight, although maybe not with the thing we're going
to talk about years later. Our Death Knight did initially
lock in on returning to Death Knight when the changes went
live for 11.2, but then they read the changes and the the the
hive mind has decided 9 Sir 9. We do not like these changes so
we'll see what happens. Maybe I'm back on DK, nobody
knows next week. It could be something completely
different. Oh, so you might be on DK.
OK, we'll talk about that more as we get to that news.
But Lex, you mentioned the gosh darn belt.
So we have our first bit of news, which is the belt got nerf
slash, buff slash, rearranged again with all of the powers
that were like not worth talking about before it went live
getting buffed last week. And we were talking and we
didn't get a chance to talk about it because we had the big
news of 11.2 coming. But I'm glad we didn't because
all of that is worthless now because they have decided they
were going to buff, slash nerf it all over again.
And so the big offender went from having a big, big buff and
being like the only one that anyone would ever pick to
getting a 62% nerf. And Blizzard explained that on
top of the buff that they gave it last week, they also did a
bug fix to its functionality which caused them to overshoot
the mark. But they've made the correction
for that now. And then on top of that, they've
buffed a lot of the other ones. So whatever you thought was good
for you last week, do double, double check with your guides.
Sean, you said your belt is up to date.
So I guess that means that you have done the quest this week to
give it the three item levels. Are are, are you enjoying this
bit? You called it borrowed power.
Are you enjoying the belt? Are you enjoying the borrowed
power? No, no, no, how can you?
No, what is there to enjoy? I log in, I pick up my quest
from Dagron from Not Brand, I pick up my quest from Not Brand
and I run my level 1 delve on 4 NA characters and one EU
character and then I can ignore him until next week.
It's I, I, I'm on record as saying the game is much better
when it's accessible, and I think this season has been
extremely accessible for a lot of players.
You've seen we were seeing people who don't normally push
very high Mythic plus being able to push higher in Mythic plus,
which is good and healthy for the game.
We're seeing people that clearing the raid faster than
they had in the past, seeing people get further into the raid
than they would have in the past.
All of that is good. I support all of that, but I do
feel like there's a little bit of boost fatigue on this our 4th
item to power boost us with 'cause we had turbo boost.
So I guess it's the third item. We had turbo boost.
We had the horrific visions helmet chance and now we have
the belt and it's just like, oh, I guess and the the raid
renowned tracks. So I'm locking it in his fourth.
I'm gonna say it is 4th. It's just I'm getting power
creep fatigue and I would be I'm at the point of the season and I
recognize that this does not reflect everybody, but I'm at
the point in the season where I want to be white, where where I
want. I just for the listeners at
home, I just smacked my mic. Manny probably was unable to
edit that out. I apologize so.
On top of your sentence. I can definitely edit that.
No, we're leaving it in. I want to apologize to the
people, Manny. I want them to know.
Professionals. That's right, and we're going to
apologize to our one viewer. If you're in the discord bit dot
LY slash fast discord, we have dropped a link where you will be
able to watch us live record every episode starting this
week. We gave exactly 38 seconds
notice and Gary was like, I'm in anyway.
I'm getting borrowed power for TR, getting power boost fatigue.
I'm at the point in the season where I feel like I want to be
winding down. I don't want to have a thing.
I have to check it. I don't want to have to do my
Korthia dailies to the bitter end, You know what I mean?
I want to be able to dial it back.
I want to be able to slow down. And they just, it's like every
week it's like, here's a new thing, you're going to make sure
you drink your Ovaltine. But we get turbulent time ways
and I do love time walking, so I guess that's a bonus.
Yeah, Lex, I mean, you're saying you're loving delves.
This is another reason to do delves.
Are you feeling the fatigue of borrowed power slash upgrade?
That's a good question. I do think first of all, I don't
love the like, not to say the scary word, but the time dating
on it. I do sort of feel like,
especially at this point in the season, if I want to just no
life for no life for two hours, if I want to just like grind it
out basically, I should be allowed to do that, right?
Like, what are we? What are we dragging this out
for? Why do we need to make sure I'm
not too powerful too quickly at, you know, probably a month
before 11.2 drops? Can't get AOTC too fast.
So I don't love that aspect of it.
I'm having fun playing the dolls.
It is the the other thing is because the season is
essentially over for me. I have ARTC.
I'm really just kind of here for the vibes.
I do, I like, I, I'm having fun with it, but there's a level of
like, damn, man, if they nerf this belt at the top of 11.2,
this is going to be a huge waste of time.
So frankly, I kind of wish they were giving me like cute little
cosmetics, like cute little pets or like cute little mounts.
Although they've been doing that all, you know, if we're saying
we've been getting too much power creep, we've been even
throwing the pets at us. So what do I have to complain
about? So I, you know, I'm having fun
because it's giving me a fun little way to goof around,
right? What I want at this point in the
season is a fun way to goof around.
I'm having a fun time goofing around.
I that's how I'm playing one character, so I can understand
why Sean would not be having fun with it anymore.
You can only goof around so long before it becomes a goofing job.
But I'm having a good time. I don't know that I need the
belt. Like I, I don't know that I'm
happier that it's a belt, that it doesn't really benefit me
anymore because of how late it is in the season.
And they better not nerf it. This better be useful in 11.2.
And I know that a lot of people have the opposite opinion that
it's stupid that we're basically losing the belt slot.
But I will say that if I do this and I don't get to use this
belt, at least through Heroic, I'm going to be a grumpy little
camper. What do you think, Manny?
I I think there's a number of things there goofing job sounds
like profanity. I also think that you're right,
there is this issue of is it going to be actually useful in
the next tier? Sean, you were talking about
horrific visions and the head enchant.
If you go on the PTR right now, the head enchant specifically
can only go on items from season 2.
So as soon as you replace your helm with something from season
3, no more head enchant, which is actually going to delay you
switching your your helm enchant.
Maybe you might get something that's like a side grade a same
item level and it's like better stats, but that helmet chant
might push you off of it until you can upgrade it to a higher
item level to offset that. It's a very weird thing, but the
helmet chants in general were quite weak.
So it's not it's not probably not going to be that big of an
issue. But you're right, the same thing
with this belt. They've buffed it, they've
they've nerfed it. They've done a bunch of things
and I'm concerned that we're going to get a point where we
get into next tier and they'll be like, Oh yeah, it's kind of
sticking with people too long into heroic and some people are
taking into mythic and then the the nerf bats going to come in
and shoot. I guess I should have been
holding onto belts that we're dropping along the way.
Is is it a real fear? So I think you hit on a couple
of points there that I I'm a little worried about.
Yeah. Like I don't want to get
something and then replace it two months down the line from
like quest stuff. I don't know.
Yeah, but the the other hand of that though is that we already
don't have like everyone's gonna have the same back in 11.2,
right? Because it's the whatever thing
that name I've already forgotten.
Forgive me, listeners. Reishi wraps.
Yeah, the reishi wraps. Thank you.
So it does kind of suck to have it be like, well, two of the
pieces are meaningless or like like 2 of the like two of the
piece you weren't grinding for I guess unless they do adjust
other drop rates. So like you are easily getting
like really nice. I mean, I guess they definitely
would for the back. But anyway, I, I, I don't really
know where I fall with this to be completely honest.
The more I think about it, like mostly I will be cranky if this
work is for nothing. But I I can understand why they
might make that decision, you know?
What's really going to suck is when they don't remove the
cloaks from the dungeon pool and you get them in your vault.
Oh, that'll be fun. That'll.
That'll be upsetting though. I think.
I'm hoping that they will flag those.
They had similar things where we had dungeons coming back from
BFA and it's like, I'm not getting any necks and they're
like, Oh yeah, because BFA didn't drop any necks or you
would have Legion dungeons. It's like, I got no weapons,
Blizzard. Yeah, so, so like hopefully
that'll that'll come back as they're adding in things into
the mix there. But as long as as long as
they're being I, I can't actually say like as long as
they're being intelligent about it because you get those reishi
wraps as you're doing the quest. So that and it's needed for the
very first boss of the raid. So we're going to get it before
Season 1 opens up. I assume that we're going to
have some sort of upgrade track with that because there's no way
they're giving us like a cloak that is able to contend with
anything that drops for like mythic level on week 1 when
people are going to run into like LFR with it and, and the
story mode and with it, you know what, I generally don't care
about story mode anymore. So I'm just going to stop
protecting story mode. And so there, there's a question
there, the belt. Yeah, I'm just expecting it to
get nerfed. I I'm hoping that their timing
of the nerf is like literally, hey guys, we're going to be
nerfing this since we're opening up a heroic normal and heroic
next week. So that people have like a bit
of opportunity to replace stuff because in the first week you do
have the raids that are, sorry, the dungeons that are going to
be open at 0 so people can farm for stuff before the raid opens
up. That's my best case scenario
that I'm hoping for. And you're right, having a bunch
of slots locked off is doesn't give you the excitement of like
chasing down down loot. No, does not spark joy.
Yeah. But I guess the that brings us
into kind of the next part of this, which is we have a lot of
things that have been announced, including games.com.
Now we we are literally just talking about like what's coming
in 11.2 and all of that. We just had that big drop come
and then Blizzard decides to say, hey guys, we're going to
give you your first look at midnight.
Feels like they're killing the buzz.
Blizzard let let me just enjoy the moment.
I think at one point we're like, oh, you know what we want to do
let's talk about 11 point 1.7 because we never got a chance.
No, no, let's talk about midnight now, because that is
the big thing, Gamescon, which will be taking place this
August, August 20th to 24th in Cologne, Germany.
Now I might have mispronounced that.
Please don't come at me. Germany.
That's you pronounce that correctly, Germany.
OK, sorry. I know.
I, I thought it was Gamiscon. All right, good, good.
I didn't pronounce it right. And we're going to get a lot of
sorry, I didn't protest. We're going to get.
It's Gmescom, Gmescom. And so we're going to get our.
First look at midnight. I suspect that we're going to
start looking at maybe we'll get a release date.
We'll we'll definitely get some sort of trailer.
There's no way. If you're in the fast discord,
you already got the release date.
I broke that stuff down for everybody.
That is an infallible formula. You know the release date?
Lock it in. I already booked vacation.
You can't book, well actually, and I guess you can book
vacation I. Feel like.
Your vacation blackout days are based on like, Nope, Warcraft's
doing a thing. No vacation for you.
Yeah, maybe. Yeah, you know.
You can probably play on the job though. 1.
Problem probably. Yeah, that's true.
But so they they will officially announce the release date.
Straw Madasu or Straw Shan Adasu, I don't know.
Nostra Shamus. Nostra Shamus notwithstanding,
everybody else will will know at that point.
I suspect there will be a really good trailer.
The last time they announced an expansion at Gamescon was I
believe Legion. And I mean, if, if that follows,
yeah, it should be a really good expansion.
But I'm, I'm looking forward to it because I am looking forward
to seeing what kind of goodies were getting.
Like, I'm not the biggest housing fan.
I know a lot of people are going to love love housing.
It's going to be, it's going to be something that changes the
game for for people. But I'm more interested in how
they're going to further develop the like character systems.
Like they gave us hero powers and that's permanent.
Are they going to give like each class another option for hero
powers or are they going to like further expand hero talents?
I want to see how like the classes are evolving in this
next expansion. So there's a lot to be excited
for. Well.
Minnie, don't put too much on their plate because remember
right now they need to be focused on making the third
Death Knights back and then they can figure out what all you all
are doing. Demon Hunter, but yes, what did?
I say I said Death Knight. No, my joke was stupid.
No joke works 'cause they just deleted one of the Death Knight
specs so we need them to remake they'll.
Give they'll give frost to the the demon hunters and the death
Knights can get the voity boy. I'm sorry I'm I'm I'm spoiler
alerting this one. I'm jumping ahead.
This is why we don't have show notes anymore.
We can't clip ahead if we don't know what man he's gonna ask us.
I mean, I guess so, I guess so, but what are you actually
looking forward to in terms of midnight?
Like is there anything that you that you think they're hiding or
is it is it going to be like player housing in continuation
of the the story from the world Soul Saga or in the world Soul
Saga? Cross region We are getting
cross region gameplay with Midnight, so that'll probably be
announced. That feels like a games com
mainstage announcement so I'm looking forward to them
officially announcing cross region gameplay coming in
midnight. Just throwing off your batting
average like that, I. Listen I have a source.
You want my source Blizz? The last BlizzCon happened and I
had a guildie who went because a friend of ours lives in the UK.
This guildie went to one of the devs during AQ and A and said,
hey, when can we have cross region gameplay and that dev
told them, ask us again at midnight.
Now whether or not that meant go, come to the Blizzard mixer
and when the the two hands strike, well, then ask me again
or midnight. But I, I listen, people will say
it's copium. People will say I'm huffing it
hard, but I am I'm locking in cross region gameplay in
midnight. And when it happens, everybody
can book February 10th off as the launch date for that that
that expansion 'cause I think that's the date that I predicted
in the for Ezra this guard. All right, all right.
I think one of those is likely to happen and it will not be be
playing with my European friends.
We'll see. All right, Sean.
We've had your predictions. We'll turn it over to Lex.
Lex, what would you like just I guess at this point because we
got pie in the sky. Go ahead and pie in the sky.
This like what's, what's your dream of?
Like? What will happen to World of
Warcraft at midnight? Oh, no, Oh no, I don't know.
So basically I'll do that. It'll become one in the morning.
It'll be the next day. They should do a midnight
release. They should totally do a
midnight release for like a just stage it so that it's like it,
it'll be like in Europe, midnight release, in North
America, midnight release based on like the Pacific or
something. That would be cool.
DOP That's so cute. That's what I want.
That's not my I. I feel like I need to talk with
the thing I don't. What do I even want in the World
of Warcraft? I want better cloaks.
I think they're gonna announce that I get the cool little
cloaks like Maya and I don't like, everyone's gonna be like,
oh, but they added the thing. No, I want the cute.
I want full body and I wanna wear it all the time.
And I want multiple trans log options with multiple colors.
Those literally exist. They wear.
I don't. Care.
I want more. But like what makes the trading
post madif cloak like unique? I'm I'm missing something?
No, no, the my F cloak the like the big ends on both sides and
it's flowy and like it moves with you.
My SO like it. Like it totally covers you.
So like, looks like a Ranger cloak you could sleep in.
Exactly, I want like a real cloak that feels like a cloak,
not like a weird tape. OK, OK, there's.
Still a little role player, just.
Wants so she can shuffle around her new house in that.
That OK, that also. I.
Do want more cute little things on the Blizzard gear store that
are like like more on in line with the murloc onesie, which I
believe is permanently just continued.
They first of all bring that back and second of all, I want
like cute little like cosplay stuff like the cute little
cloaks and cute little stuff that I can wear around my house
and feel cool and never go out in public.
I think they're announcing that midnight.
I mean, I said pie in the sky. So that, that's, that's my bad.
I should have been more specific.
Anyways, yeah, I, I think there's a there it is very, it's
very hard to predict or like even guess at things right now,
because with this big thing of housing, like it feels like
that's where all the energy energy is.
But they have told us very surprisingly little about the
next expansion. So there's a lot still to be
revealed and I'm looking forward to that at Gamescon now talked
about that. Let's talk about something a lot
closer to release, which of course is 11.2, right along with
all the things that are happening.
We are getting ray testing that's going to be coming up,
and the ray testing includes all the bosses.
That's eight, sorry, 8 bosses with seven of them being main
and one of them being optional. We have starting tomorrow heroic
tuning, sorry the heroic bosses. We have Plexus Sentinel which is
the first boss where you are trying to enter in through the
mana intake. We have Lumothar which is the
giant moth slash spider. I will be testing to see what
that looks like with arachnophobia mode activated.
We have Soul Binder Nazindri, which Sean, you and I have gone
through the campaign. Is that the same Soul Binder of
name that we saw in the campaign?
I, I think so. I want to say yes, but I got to
be honest, I found the campaign to be so humdrum that I didn't
pay much attention to the names. Honestly, we do have to have
that conversation and record it because Sean and I had some
takes, some takes about the campaign.
Yeah, sorry Laura, folks. Sorry.
So those will be the heroic bosses, three of them tested
tomorrow. On Friday we get an additional 4
heroic bosses, which is everything except for the final
boss. So that's going to be a Forge
Weaver Arise, the Soul Hunters, which is the optional encounter.
Fractalis and Nexus King Saladar they will also then open up
normal the entirety of the raid for testing.
Does that include the final boss when they open up the?
No final boss will remain untested.
OK. And that and so that will open,
open up after the testing has been completed and go through
the weekend until Monday. Wait real quick, Lord buddies is
the Nexus king whatever is that Kev as his father?
Is that like confirmed or does that just do they have different
titles of reality? Wow, that's a great question.
I don't know. We're not going to give any low
spoilers at this. Point, but yeah, because we
don't, Yeah, it's not that we don't know Lex.
It's that we don't want to get a little more.
That's such a thing. It's not that the campaign was
so. Sean, Sean.
No, no, no, no, no. We will.
We will talk about it. We will talk about it on a we'll
do a bonus episode. We got we gotta get that out off
here just the. Most campaign campaign I've ever
done. The most?
Campaign, campaign. All right, John, you are on a
campaign. Then next week Thursday we begin
Mythic testing and so it'll be again the 1st 3 bosses on Mythic
difficulty for Thursday, then on Friday the next 4 bosses on
Mythic difficulty for testing. And then after that completes,
Raid Finder difficulty will be opened up for testing and that
will go over the course of the weekend again from Friday over
till Monday. So I do need to make a slight
correction there because I said this week we're getting the
testing and the next week we're getting testing.
That is incorrect. We skip a week because we have
holidays next week, people who are celebrating Independence
Day, Canada Day, my birthday, there will be no testing during
that time. We actually come back on
Thursday, July 10th and go through the testing there and
then again on Friday, July 11th for the for the other testing.
So my apologies on that. So big, 4 hours of raid testing
on Fridays is painful. I would really, really like to
not have to do that. I would rather have two days of
two hours than one day of four hours when it comes to raid.
Because raid testing is draining.
Sometimes the bosses are bugged and don't work the way they're
supposed to. You're not really always playing
with a group of people that you play out with all the time
unless you have a regular PTR test group that you run with or
your Guild does it. It's just 4 hours is a lot in
one sitting and it's also in the middle of the day.
There's a lot to ask of people. That being said, if you are able
to raid test, you should log in and raid test.
The lots of communities have tests happening.
No pressure has one sign that you can sign up for.
The dungeon Dojo has ones you can sign up for.
Get in, test the raid. Because your feedback matters.
If you don't, the only people who do are going to be the
sweats. Yeah, I realize I'm in that
category. But then we're going to give
feedback that makes it better for us.
If you're a normie, you want to give feedback that makes life
better for normies. I mean I I wish we had some
normie representation but like it's between you who is like
diving in and testing everything on the PTR already and Lex who's
sweating through like 2 hours of delves or was it half an hour of
delves? Lex was busy, no lifing that two
hours of delves. Yeah.
We, we, we got to get some casual representation, but we'll
we'll go forward from there. I yeah, I do think that it is
all very intense ray testing. It's clearly part of this trying
to get things out as quickly as possible.
For the ones that don't work, I hope that they quickly disable
them and say, hey, we'll, we'll push the bosses forward and if
we can get it up in the last slot, so be it.
But we'll do it. Do it the following week.
Yeah, the the PTR testing is very quick.
And because Sean, you are a person who has very refined
taste on what you think is a good raid boss or not that I
think that they got to give the community a chance to actually
test these, give feedback and for them to be able to schedule
like retest. We don't want them to have a
boss that is horrible on PTR that they completely rework and
then takes like 5-4 hundred 500 pulls to kill with a complete
with a completely different mechanics than it was on the PTR
because geez. And I nobody wants that, no.
There is there is time for retesting in the schedule here,
with the last tests scheduled for July 11th and the patch
expected launch date being first week of August.
They have about 3 weeks where they can put in retesting for
anything that was bugged or anything they want to change,
and I suspect that they will. They usually do, so we'll see.
OK. Beyond that, one thing that we
have also had a chance to test, at least on the base level, is
the new dungeon that is Echodome Aldani.
Sean, I believe you have run this dungeon a couple of times.
So do you want to give us the lowdown on what's going on here?
Spoiler free review of Echodome Aldani incoming.
It's great. It's a lot of fun.
It's visually really nice. It really feels desolate in some
areas. It doesn't feel jammed with
enemies. It's very wide open.
And there is one boss fight in particular that I really, really
enjoyed where the it's kind of like a Fate Scribe esque fight
where the boss will like knock your soul out of you and then
they're doing a targeted attack at your soul.
So everybody's soul gets knocked out and he's targeting these
beams at them. He's going to kill them.
And you take big damage if you don't get your soul.
And you have to get to your soul and touch it and then get out of
the beam before the cast happens.
And you have to either look for your person.
Don't do that. There's a big purple arrow above
your head of the head of your soul.
Just go to your purple arrow. That's your soul, but then
there's also two other mechanics that incorporate the soul there
in that fight. And then there's another fight
where it has, I don't want to spoil it, but there's another
fight that has similar mechanics to the Prototype Pantheon and
Sepal call the first ones where you would have to put the lines
through the Shields to break the Shields.
It was a lot of fun, I really enjoyed it.
I did not see, I have seen some Youtubers and content creators
who have mentioned that there's like a lore thing at the end.
I didn't see it. I also didn't phase shift and
walk or phase dive and walk around, which you can do in the
raid dungeon but you can't do in the dungeon.
You can phase dive and walk around.
I didn't do that. So maybe the lower things were
there, but I didn't see like I know people were worried because
of the dungeon canonically falls after the raid.
People were worried that it was going to spoil the story of the
the campaign for them. It it I did not.
Having played the campaign through to the to the raid and
then the after bit, there was nothing in this dungeon that
would have spoiled either of those sections.
So feel free to dive into the dungeon whenever you want on the
the PTR or on the first week of the patch.
It was a lot of fun, I really enjoyed.
It there isn't like a stay while and listen where you like you
walk in and everyone's like talking about how traumatized
they are that the the entire world of Avaross has been eaten,
then we all have to go become ethereals.
Nope. Zealotath dies and then we sort
of mourner and then that's it. Oh yeah.
For for the traumatized listeners, that was a joke.
Legal reasons? Yeah, for legal reasons.
That was a joke. So the the dungeon has been
available for testing since Tuesday of this week and will
remain open for testing until Tuesday of next week, at which
point I believe there might be another testing period later on.
But you if you want you can find mythic keystones from the vendor
just like there is on the PR Test that out.
From what I saw there, there's no changes to any affixes or
anything. We are basically following into
season from season 2 and take those affix into a new dungeon
pool. I was actually surprised.
I was expecting them to like switch out some of the bargains
or some or something, but that could come later, but you seem
pertaining. It it, it does seem like
recently they've been having a lot of here's the thing that
we're going to change out and then it works really well.
And then they're like, oh, actually, you guys want to just
keep doing that one. And I know I'm not faulting
that. I still have to play with God
damn Bran. I mean Bran will be back in
season 3 with the Delves. Or is the new Delve testing that
one? Actually, it's nice to go back
to the archives. These are the Azure archives
from Dragonflight. Don't have to fly all the way
out to Dragonflight to do that. The entrance is actually in in
the new zone. So you go into the entrance from
crash, that'll take you in the instance of the the archives.
They're being assaulted by Ethereals and you have to put a
stop to it. I haven't tested all the
scenarios. I've only tested one, but those
are those are available for testing if you so choose.
No sign of any kind of overcharged stuff going on there
as of yet. But you know, it's it's Dell.
So we'll have to wait for Alexe to jump in so that we can get a
positive review of that. Yeah.
I'm playing on Tier 1. That's that's all I was doing
with my free time. I just went through side Street
while it was overcharged over and over and over again so I
could complete the web. You just side street.
I hate side street. I hate the stupid levels.
I get so confused about where I'm supposed to go for things.
Like on a higher difficulty, I'd be upset because you can pull
things that are below you or above you with the with the
wrong stuff. On a level 1 where I don't care.
It's just like, yeah, have them run up to me.
I don't have to worry about it. Let me let me have a little
drink while I'm waiting for them to like path all the way up and
just keep moving on. So it's it's fine when it's not
like threatening. That's super I.
I just personally get annoyed. I try to like go over some place
and I fall and I'm now completely turned around.
So I guess I could also walk on my feet instead of trying to
wings across, you know, like glide, I guess is the word I'm
looking for. Wings is for priests.
But I don't. I try to fly and then I fall and
I get confused and I finally find my way back to where I was
supposed to be. And then I'm like, hey, you know
how I should get over there? And then I'm surprised I falled.
Then followed back in again, I mean, at this point, like if
you've got your tree upgraded, you like literally run around
into every lightning thing to cause the storm to get the buff
to all of that. And you you're running around so
quickly that you don't really need to jump.
But that that's I guess the power fantasy that you you like.
So that's Delves, that's dungeons, that is the raid.
There is of course other things that are going up on the PTR,
including the the zoo and such. I haven't had a chance to test
that and we can cover that in future episodes.
But I believe we did have one more piece of news that we
wanted to cover that's on the PTR, which is spell density.
I actually haven't played around with this and I only discovered
this when Sean you brought this up.
So I want to ask you what what's going on with this?
So Blizzard is finally this was from community manager Lynxy.
Special shout out to Lynxy, second favorite community
manager, manager of the podcast 5X obviously #1 come on, Lynxy's
a very cool second. So this this week's the Ghost of
Gresh PTR includes changes and approvals to spell density
graphic setting. You're going to be able to
remove other players spell density like spell effects,
which is great. I I hope I don't know how
granular it's going to be because I want to see
efflorescence so I know where to stand, but I don't want to see
anything else my druids cast. I want to see Feline Stomp,
which I actually can't see now, but I want to see Feline Stomp,
but I don't want to see anything else the monk casts.
I want to see where Earthquake is.
Special shout out to my elemental shaman so that I know
where to tank the mobs, but I don't want to see anything else
they cast. So I don't think we're going to
get that level of granularity. It's going to have three.
It says there's three new spell density options.
These are not new options. These options already exist in
the game. Everything reduced and
essential. Those options are already in the
game, but it's for I think just enemy spells.
Anyway, we're going to see hopefully we get or if I could
even like, say, I don't want to see this players or this class
of spells I need in my head. I'm I'm already prepared to be
disappointed in my head. I'm going to be able to like
pick and choose exactly what spells I want to see and what
ones I don't want to see. Like show me spells that help.
Don't show me spells that hurt. I'm not going to get that it's
it's not going to. Happen.
Somebody will build a before. That'll let you do it, but.
Next week you're going to be pissed about it, but this week
I'm just going to hope for it. But anyway, we're going to be
able to reduce which this is good because it reduces some of
that visual clutter. It frees up some of those brain
GCD, some of that cognitive overload that you have.
And if your PC isn't, you know, on the cutting edge, it might
may help with some some lag that you experience in the raid when
there's, you know, 20 to 30 of you spam casting AOE and oven
axe. And there's also 45 eggs in the
room. Oh, and there's 35 sets of tiny
spiders to attack. So all of this should help to
clear up some of those those performance issues.
I'm looking forward to it. I really can't wait to be angry
next week, though, And I can't set it up exactly the way I want
to set it up. But thank you, Lynxy, for the
news. And thank you, Blizzard, for for
giving us what I assume is gonna be a fine option, but just one
that I'm already prepared to be on.
Happy pup. I do.
I appreciate. If this is gonna be true for
World of Warcraft, I know my Final Fantasy friends say that.
Final fans, I will say World of Warcraft.
This is a very interesting thing because for a very long time,
Final Fantasy Online has been pulling heavily from World of
Warcraft. And recently, it feels like
World of Warcraft is suddenly pulling very heavily from Final
Fantasy, including the player housing.
But that's a little aside. According to my Final Fantasy
friends, the turning off the spell density only does like
fancy CDPS stuff. It doesn't turn off healer
circles and things like that. TBD if that's how the World of
Warcraft one works, but that would make sense, right?
Like the things you need to stand in, It's gonna make your
life better. You want to see those even if
your stuff is down. OK, That would make sense
because like that, those sort of healing circles like the
efflorescence and such, those would be likely deemed
essential. Like you should be still
standing in this don't run out of my healing rain sort of sort
of thing. Makes sense.
And without all the other stuff going on, it'll be easier for
you to see to see that. Yeah, I don't need to see these
7 consecrates. I have way too many paladin
friends. I I don't need any.
I don't need to see any consecrates.
Well, like you have paladins. Boy.
So moving right along our last story for the day is actually
something Lex you brought to our attention, this Steam and
Battle.net now being on the Xbox app, and it's not what I
thought. Like, tell me what's going on
here. Yes.
So there's some conversation about this in the for Azaroth
Discord bit dot LY slash fast discord.
So there was an announcement that the Microsoft is basically
adding Battle.net and Steam to what they were calling quote the
Xbox app. If you are not in tune with the
Xbox world, which I will be clear I was not until I started
reading these articles. That makes it sound a lot like
Battle.net is coming to your Xbox console, right?
You are able to access things on your Xbox.
To be clear, Battle.net is basically what Xbox is doing.
They already have a PC app and for an app for like handheld
devices and they are trying to make it into one big gaming
system where whatever system you buy your PC games off of, you
can get to them in the Xbox app, right?
So if you buy a game on Steam and you download it, you can go
into your Xbox app and open it there.
If you are playing, you know, World of Warcraft, you have that
downloaded. You can now access that in your
Xbox apps. You don't need to both have
Battle.net and Xbox apps. It's my understanding with the
goal of like potentially even expanding it further.
So as of yet they are not saying that Battle.net and World of
Warcraft are coming to console. I will say people have said that
they're coming to console for so long, but I'm officially pretty
deep and I'll believe it when I see it.
Mode, but if so, make sure you're reading those more
thoroughly. I think it is cool.
I think it is I I do feel a little bit like there was a
period of time that I had like epic games on my PC and I just
uninstalled it because I'm like there's like one game here that
I would ever play, but it's it's annoying when everyone has their
own little system and your own little thing you need to
download and it would be nice if I could download the game app
and then I have the games that I can play on my PC instead of
being like, oh shoot, is this a steam?
Is this over here? I have 50 pop ups every time I
log into my computer. My SSD is busted now because I
have so many things. I have two games, apps.
I don't know. I'm actually like, I'm such a
hardcore gamer who struggles so hard to find things but.
Is one of them Battle.net? Yeah, it's Battle of Steam, my
man. I feel like Steam is a pretty
solid one. If you said I've only got Steam,
that covers so much. Right?
Like what are you gonna do? I only have Origin.
Who the hell uses Origin? Like come at me, I don't even
care if you're using Origin, get off of it.
Really. Well, and that is interesting.
I was a little bit surprised that Xbox was the one that was
doing this because frankly, it does feel like this would be
more Steam's thing, right? Like this is close, to my
understanding, kind of what Steam was trying to be early on.
Is the games app where you buy all of your games and play all
of your games. And it's pretty successfully
done that. Like it's got the Epic store
that's trying to compete and and Epic store keeps throwing,
throwing money at stuff. And of course, with Xbox now
with the Xbox app, you're right, they're trying to be the one
stop the all in It's available on your desktop and laptop.
It's not available on your Xbox, Manny.
It's only on your PC and handhelds.
It might come to your Xbox in the future, but not on your
Xbox, which is very. Confusing.
The article says it's on console.
Now what? No, I'm kidding.
Kidding. I was like, I'm just like, I
haven't discovered this. Yeah, but this.
I read the title and looked at this picture.
Oh, that's true. Yeah, Yeah.
No, you're right about that. You're right about that, yeah.
And so I will say I I do like the idea of them all going
together. Although as I speak, as I think
you we're coming to learn very much in this podcast, I kind of
argue with myself in my head, even when you 2 aren't arguing
with me. So I do feel like I've been
burned by like movie and video streaming apps like Netflix and
Hulu that were trying to tell me that they were the all in one.
And then what has actually happened is just like a crisis
of everyone needs me to spend $20.00 a month or I can't see
The One Show and I have to spend $20.00 a month.
I want to see one thing. So I am, although I guess that's
kind of where we are with games right now.
But anyway, I'm I'm suspicious of to make Manny's life a little
easier for editing in poopification.
Oh no, no, it's like that's a technical term.
You can't say insitification that that goes through.
Fair enough, fair enough then yeah I'm scared of
insitification. But I mean it's gonna happen
anyway. Like I said, it's there's games
that I just will never play because I'm not re downloading
epic games like I'm not doing it.
It's stupid and dumb and I don't want it on my computer anymore.
So like I do kind of hate how it it works right now and I don't
knock on wood, I don't necessarily know that it could
be significantly worse. I think like, sorry, go ahead,
Shawn. We all everybody had cable and
they were like, man, this sucks. And they go, well, what if we
just give you the channels you want?
Here's Netflix. All right, great.
And now like it's exactly like he said.
Now every every platform has its own streaming and it's like,
maybe I should just go back to cable.
Except that they keep them exclusive so that you can't have
them on cable, which is, which is basically them trying to get
a top down monopoly. And I think that Lex, this is
the exact right parallel because you are going to have all these
publishers that are going to going to make their own
launcher. Battle.net being like the oldest
one that I am aware of back when I was like launching Warcraft 2
on it and trying to like load into a multiplayer game.
They've evolved it and they keep adding things.
See if Thieves is on it, they they add on ABK games and
remember how absolutely clutching their their pearls
everybody was when like Activision games started coming
on that con on my Battle.net. Dear God, but they've expanded
it. They've done a lot of different
things with it and we have, I guess come to accept that Steam
was was always trying to be like the Netflix of every game comes
on here, go go ahead. But like what I think has helped
is that Xbox and and Steam have not had exclusives.
They've allowed things to be on all different things.
It's like, yeah, but it's on Steam too.
So why do you need to go over there where Epic has tried to do
exclusives wherever they can and that's that has ruffled
feathers. There was a big thing when they
were starting it and they were throwing money at devs to be
like, make your make an exclusive, you'll get more more
money here. It in that way, it kind of
actually reminds me of like the kick Twitch fight where it's
like you can get more money on here, come over to here.
And then Twitch was like, OK, you know what, we're giving up
the exclusive, but everybody is on Twitch, right?
Like, and so now you have YouTube Gaming and you've got
Twitch and you've got Kick and Periscope and stuff and a lot of
them just sort of fail and fall by the wayside.
Yet we haven't really had the money reserves going into that
like we have with the Netflix. HBO used to be formerly known as
Max issues that we've been having with TV.
Do you expect that it'll be more like Netflix or do you expect
that it's going to be more like the entire Twitch thing where no
company really has found the exact viable way of doing it and
keeps it, you know, relatively customer friendly?
I don't trust Microsoft anymore, so I think they're going to find
a way to make it money. OK.
I mean, I don't trust any company, but yeah, yeah.
All right. Sean, you think some companies
are good? Yeah, no, I definitely think
Microsoft is going to do what's best for the consumer and try to
save us money. No sarcasm.
Disclaimer needed. Imagine a situation where
Microsoft isn't altruistic and doesn't make their decisions
with the player in mind. First, it's.
Like how they bought World of Warcraft and there were no major
changes. That's right, they made Warcraft
better. Except they shortened the patch
cycles, overworked the devs, laid off half the team, and
refused to announce cross region play until midnight.
OK, Yeah, it is. I think we're all on the same
page. It's an unfortunate reality.
I just hope that like, the company that wins is the one
that gives us the best features and so far as far as company
goes, Steam is doing the least amount of evil with it, so I'll
be happy with that. I know I would love.
Everybody loves Steam, I hate it so much.
Interesting. Anything the least invasive like
unless you want to go GOG. Like I would love if GOG took
over but like it's so. You say it clumsy, but I have to
in order to play any game that I bought on Steam, I have to load
Steam, find the game in my library, hit play.
Steam's running in the background.
I can't just load and play the game.
I, I hate it. I hate you have.
The direct icon to load straight into it.
I've well, I guess I'm an idiot then because I have never been
able to open up a game without loading steam first.
Well, I. Mean I think even if you do
don't quote me on this because I had to take my PC into the
repairs for them to tell me to press the power button, but but
I my understanding when you do have those extra buttons.
Listeners, I need you to stop typing right now.
We don't need you to write a comment.
We get it. She knows that that was a
mistake. Yeah, this is this is a funny
story because it's the most embarrassing thing that I've
ever done in my life. Don't worry.
How? Did you get it in without
turning off the? This is computer though.
That's the marvel of it. Like that's the like, how do you
get it to the store without plugging it out and turning off
the power? So, so so which The thing is, I
didn't. Understand on the back.
Yes, that's exactly. I didn't.
Realize that there was that like, and I did OK, I will
actually say the I didn't bring it to the store.
I brought it to a person who was, you know, willing to just
help me out. So I just at this point was in
too deep and I, I lied and I was like, oh I don't know why that
worked but I, I was I was only hitting the power source and I
was turning that on I was like it's not working it's not
working it's not working and then I went cuz I, I never had a
gaming PC. I'd only have had laptops and
I'm still stupid. I know this is stupid, but so I
was doing that and I finally found this person to help me and
I had my Guild leader was like on video calls me all the time
and like trying to figure out why nothing was working.
And then I pick, I finally like, I unplug it and I pick it up and
I see the power button on the front and I'm like, oh.
I am reminded of a tech support call I took once where the
individual couldn't get their computer to turn on, but there
was a power outage in their building.
That's not stupid, Lex, especially if you've only owned
laptops before. You don't know to look for that
power switch 'cause you never, probably never ever touch it.
So you just assume that it's on. I'm gonna cut you.
I'm I, I'm gonna go on the record and say I'm cutting you
some slack on that one. That is not the most
embarrassing. It, it's pretty.
It is not the most embarrassing story I've.
Ever. No, no, Lex is fine.
That was probably like 30 years ago.
You've grown up since then. They're all good.
But but the point of this was to say, I think that it does like
soft launch Steam in the background, even if you do use
that button, because when I've done that with Final Fantasy,
like if there's an issue on Steam side, it's still not going
to let you load until it's gone through the like updating
steams, whatever. I think, don't quote me on that.
No, it it'll launch Steam in the background.
It's same thing with like the Epic Store.
You can launch a game directly, but it'll launch Epic Store in
the background. I think I think we should go
back to DIF. This is stupid.
Let me own the physical copy of the game and I put it in my
computer and then it's there. I.
Well, we put the discs in our belts now.
Yeah, sure, fine. That's another thing I'll forget
the power button on. It's OK.
How? Backwards Are the Titans still
using physical media? This is ridiculous.
We'll talk about that more on the next episode, but until next
time guys, may all your hits be crits.