Latest / For Azeroth!: A World of Warcraft Podcast / #289 - For Azeroth!: "Flight's Farewell"

Transcript

#289 - For Azeroth!: "Flight's Farewell" · For Azeroth!: A World of Warcraft Podcast

• 0:00
  OK, see it's not working. Oh, because I had to switch it
• 0:03
  because of thing. OK, people can hear.
• 0:05
  Me. They can't see any of us.
• 0:09
  Tell them I say hi people. Won't be able to hear you.
• 0:11
  Manny tell them I say hi. Lex says hi, Manny.
• 0:14
  Tell them I say hi too. I don't want them to think that
• 0:15
  was just Lex. Oh, you know what it is, Manny?
• 0:18
  You didn't tell them I said hi. Scene.
• 0:21
  There we go. Now we're there.
• 0:22
  Manny, you got to tell them I said hi, too.
• 0:24
  They they wait. They're going to think that only
• 0:27
  Lex cares about them. But I care too, Manny.
• 0:29
  Yes, Sean. Sean very pressured and I was
• 0:33
  forced to say hi. That's not what happened.
• 0:36
  You can hear her mouthing it right now.
• 0:37
  I. Was genuine high.
• 0:38
  I had a genuine high for the. Karen Tour for Pandaria for
• 0:48
  calendar to the Burning region, for Gilnaeus or has not done for
• 0:56
  the Lich King, for the Sindora for the Alliance for the.
• 1:03
  Horde. For Azeroth Hello and welcome to
• 1:09
  another episode of For Azeroth. I am one of your hosts, Manny
• 1:13
  AKA de Truvan. Manny and I am joined by two
• 1:17
  wonderful parts of the Triumphant.
• 1:19
  First, introducing Lex. Lex, how are you doing today?
• 1:22
  I'm. Bopping right along.
• 1:24
  We are less than 24 hours if everything goes well before I am
• 1:28
  stepping my my little feces into the war within.
• 1:32
  I forget the name of the zone so I'm I'm flying high there.
• 1:38
  You go, yeah, I'm, I'm pretty hyped myself.
• 1:41
  I just, I just want to go into a coma and wake up right ahead of
• 1:44
  launch time because it's just time has slowed.
• 1:47
  Time has slowed so much, but to pass the time, I got to watch a
• 1:52
  really cool stream and that was Sean's stream, who is joining us
• 1:56
  here again today. So, Sean, how are you and how's?
• 1:59
  World of Warcraft have been treating me great, and right
• 2:02
  now, Manny, I am struggling not to buy a giant pack of all of
• 2:06
  the collector's editions on eBay.
• 2:08
  Yeah, all right. Yeah.
• 2:11
  We're gonna talk about something else.
• 2:13
  Warcraft's great. Warcraft Warcraft is really
• 2:19
  great right now. It is It is just a very great
• 2:24
  time to be a Warcraft content creator or just a fan.
• 2:29
  It's been a long time and I think it was the end of Pandaria
• 2:34
  where I was both super excited for the next expansion,
• 2:38
  Warlords, and like bringing back those classic orcs and stuff and
• 2:41
  being super excited for that. But then also just being like,
• 2:45
  so sad to see the end of this expansion.
• 2:48
  That was so good. Are you feeling?
• 2:51
  That big time a Dragonflight for me was such a good expansion.
• 2:58
  There was so many life changes that happened for me like in
• 3:02
  real life. And then I made so many new
• 3:04
  friends in the game and it's just I have a a really, really
• 3:07
  it holds a really, really warm spot spot on my heart.
• 3:09
  I was sad to see it go, but like somebody said to me today, it's
• 3:13
  time to move on to new adventures and new memories.
• 3:20
  Yeah, Lex, what about you? How you feeling?
• 3:23
  I'm feeling good. I'm I'm going to miss
• 3:26
  Dragonflight. War Within is going to be a big
• 3:28
  transition. I'm actually going DPS for the
• 3:30
  first time in my life in rating. I'm going to be full time Demon
• 3:33
  Hunter, which is very, very scary but also very exciting.
• 3:39
  And Sean is doing Demon Hunter Wings at me.
• 3:42
  For those of you who are listening to the audio show, I
• 3:44
  could have ignored that, but God knows I can't do that.
• 3:48
  And so Dragonflight has been a really, I think a really
• 3:55
  beautiful expansion. I think I lost a bit of steam
• 4:00
  play wise near the end there. So I'm excited to be back in the
• 4:04
  energy of The War Within, but moving away from Dragonflight
• 4:08
  has kind of made me remember how wonderful this expansion is and
• 4:12
  how fun it was. I mean, and you know, like with
• 4:14
  Sean, this was my first year like BlizzCon, my first ever
• 4:16
  BlizzCon happened during Dragonflight and so many
• 4:19
  wonderful people. I've met so many people in this
• 4:22
  last year and I've been having such an incredible time.
• 4:25
  So I think Dragonflight I am going to miss a lot, but I am
• 4:29
  also ready to experience The War Within.
• 4:34
  OK, so before we dive into like our thoughts and feelings of
• 4:40
  dragonfight in depth, want to cover a little bit of news first
• 4:45
  heading into the war within. We've got some mythic plus
• 4:49
  changes and Sean, you want to cover that?
• 4:51
  What in the world have they changed?
• 4:53
  Cause like we're, we're about to step through the door and
• 4:57
  they're. Still making changes?
• 4:58
  What happened the the snarky people on Twitter said that devs
• 5:02
  finally tried to run a dungeon on the beta.
• 5:07
  But what it is, it's continuing on with what we said, that
• 5:10
  tuning doesn't happen in a bubble and everything sort of
• 5:13
  goes together as they look stuff up.
• 5:15
  And they made some tuning. So they have nerfed the health
• 5:19
  on bosses in Tyrannical to 25% from 30%.
• 5:23
  And then they have also reduced all damage dealt by all enemies
• 5:30
  by 7% on all mythic and mythic plus difficulties.
• 5:34
  So this is just doing that thing.
• 5:37
  They, they mentioned it, there was an interview this week that
• 5:40
  came out. And one of the things that was
• 5:42
  mentioned in it is that they want, and, and people have said
• 5:46
  that they, this is what they want, but they want the, they
• 5:50
  don't want the, the, the one shot.
• 5:52
  You know, what can, what kills us to be the thing that limits a
• 5:54
  key. They want the timer to be the
• 5:55
  thing that limits how high we can get the keys and they are
• 5:58
  working towards that. And I am here for it because I
• 6:01
  think Mythic Plus is the most fun when what determines how
• 6:05
  high you go is how fast you can pull what you can, what unique
• 6:09
  things you can do with routing and that kind of stuff as
• 6:12
  opposed to at what point do these mechanics one shot us?
• 6:15
  So I'm looking really, really excited about the season.
• 6:20
  I'm, I'm a little bit of two minds on that.
• 6:24
  I do like that concept. There's always going to be
• 6:27
  something that's limiting. I just think that when it is how
• 6:31
  much I can pull, then you're pushing yourself towards
• 6:34
  specific damage profiles. The guys that can do the best
• 6:37
  uncapped AOE damage or have the like shortest cooldowns in order
• 6:43
  to like have those cooldowns up all the time to get that damage
• 6:46
  in. There is a place for defensives
• 6:51
  to matter. I do think that we are coming
• 6:54
  out of Dragonflight. I'm ready to change from that
• 6:56
  though. And they have done not just with
• 7:02
  OK, the damage coming down on both bosses and everything
• 7:06
  throughout the dungeon, but they've also tightened up the
• 7:08
  timers as well. That was a change that had come
• 7:10
  in earlier. So yeah, I do see what they're
• 7:12
  doing there. Let's see how it go goes
• 7:16
  through. I I'm excited because this is
• 7:19
  going to be about the core of the dungeon.
• 7:22
  The affixes in terms of the Zaltaf bargains don't feel like
• 7:27
  they are completely distracting from dungeon mechanics anymore,
• 7:31
  which is great. The fact that once you get past
• 7:35
  the 12 they just don't come into play anymore at all.
• 7:39
  It is strictly damaged mechanics from the dungeon and the scaling
• 7:44
  that comes with the fortified tyrannical and keys levels
• 7:49
  there. So that seems, seems really
• 7:51
  good. I, I, I'm excited for this.
• 7:54
  Is there anything that you're kind of worried about?
• 7:58
  So one thing it's tough to be, it's tough to say that I'm
• 8:02
  worried about it because there's been a couple of changes that
• 8:05
  have happened this week to mob mechanics.
• 8:09
  The one in Necrotic Wake, they turned the the drain life.
• 8:12
  It used to be a cast that you could interrupt followed by like
• 8:16
  it was a cast that would build up and once it build up, then it
• 8:19
  would be a channel on an individual who would be stunned
• 8:21
  until the channel was kicked or you could kick the cast.
• 8:24
  And they had changed it to make that not have a cast anymore.
• 8:28
  It was just instantly channelling somebody and they
• 8:30
  were stunned, which is horrible, horrible change.
• 8:34
  But they reverted that almost right away.
• 8:37
  Like that is that is a that's a horrible change.
• 8:40
  And that's my concern is that not being able to see that
• 8:45
  that's a horrible change does make me a little bit worried
• 8:49
  about what changes we might get on a Tuesday reset that don't
• 8:52
  get fixed until the next week. If I mean, they're not able to
• 8:57
  to gauge those things. There are some changes they make
• 8:59
  that maybe aren't aren't popular, but whatever we work
• 9:01
  around them like the the defenders and and Mr. Tiernan
• 9:04
  Scythe circles that that that doesn't make it like impossible
• 9:09
  to play it, but it just just makes it annoying.
• 9:11
  Whereas this drain life is like that's didn't have no counter
• 9:14
  play to it. Like you're just stunned.
• 9:16
  Well, what if you're the only kick left and everybody else is
• 9:18
  on cooldown because you had planned the mode already and
• 9:20
  you're the one who happens to choose to stun you just or you
• 9:25
  just you know, you just you're hard, hard stuck.
• 9:27
  So, yeah, I don't that that is my, it's, it's like a, not a
• 9:35
  concern so much as it is like, it's like a, a thin layer of
• 9:39
  unease, you know what I mean? But like they have shown us so
• 9:44
  many times throughout this beta cycle that they are willing to
• 9:47
  listen to the community, the monolithic community and in some
• 9:53
  cases individuals when we're nerfing rainbuffs.
• 9:56
  And then they are, they're making those changes quick on
• 9:59
  the fly. So I'm gonna, I'm, I am, like I
• 10:02
  said, a little bit unease with with who's making the changes
• 10:05
  and maybe they're not seeing things as clearly, but
• 10:09
  ultimately, like, like I said, that got reverted.
• 10:11
  How upset can I be able to change that they made and then
• 10:13
  immediately reverted? Correct me if I'm wrong, I don't
• 10:16
  pay a huge amount of attention to mythic plus which will come
• 10:20
  as a surprise to long term listeners listeners of show.
• 10:23
  But my general vibe is I know right?
• 10:25
  Who to thunk Isn't the team often like doesn't really make a
• 10:29
  ton of mechanical changes during the season at large and if they
• 10:32
  do it's usually nerf not making it harder.
• 10:34
  So like I could be wrong but. I I mean, I would say that
• 10:43
  historically that's true, but I think that there's two things
• 10:47
  that happened, both the dragon fight and in the war within that
• 10:51
  change up this stuff. One is that they have, like Sean
• 10:55
  said, like something will be an issue.
• 10:58
  They'll leave it for the week and then they'll change it the
• 11:00
  week after Dragonflight season one.
• 11:02
  We had a couple of weeks where it was like, OK, we're going to
• 11:05
  change that. They did buff some things when a
• 11:08
  particular dungeon was just way easier than the rest of like,
• 11:11
  OK, we do have to bring this up. So like I can expect it to be
• 11:14
  kind of like that initial Dragonflight season one tuning.
• 11:18
  But the benefit that they have that they didn't have in
• 11:21
  Dragonfight season one is that we have a heroic week, We have a
• 11:24
  week that the the cap is there. And so people aren't going to be
• 11:28
  like running all the way to the highest levels and getting the
• 11:32
  highest rewards. Even if they do complete A+,
• 11:36
  let's say 14, they're still not going to be getting the rewards
• 11:40
  that would break the the balance and not let people catch up in
• 11:45
  that first week. And that can give them a little
• 11:47
  bit more. Time.
• 11:47
  There's no there's no mythic plus in the heroic week.
• 11:52
  OK, so then it's the mythic zeros where they would have to
• 11:55
  make those analysis. Right.
• 11:57
  Normally you're right. That's how it is and that's how
• 11:59
  everybody expected it to be, that they would have just a cap
• 12:02
  on them. But yeah, this because of the
• 12:05
  change to looting and the difficulty with Mythic Plus.
• 12:07
  The Mythic Plus doesn't release until the Mythic raid does,
• 12:10
  which was community conversation point for a little bit.
• 12:17
  I think it's going to be solid cause like Mythic zeros are
• 12:20
  dropping better loot than they have done in the past.
• 12:25
  They're going to be run pretty much ad nauseam because the
• 12:29
  lockout isn't, isn't that, oh, you get it.
• 12:34
  You get at the week. It's actually for sitting every
• 12:36
  day now, which means that they'll get a lot more data for
• 12:39
  when Mythic Pluses go live. So yeah, I think this will be,
• 12:42
  yeah, this will be pretty solid. Hopefully, fingers crossed.
• 12:49
  OK, with that said, we also had something promotional that came
• 12:57
  out this this also had like a bit of a community conversation
• 13:03
  and I I do wanna know where you guys land.
• 13:05
  We had two promotions, one Lex, you have the information for
• 13:10
  that. So what in the world is being
• 13:13
  sold and why is it such a question?
• 13:16
  So the Steel Series company is combining with World of Warcraft
• 13:20
  to give us a World of Warcraft themed headset.
• 13:25
  A gaming mouse, like with an MMO mouse with all the fun little
• 13:30
  buttons on the thumb. A couple booster packs, but
• 13:33
  they're specific to the head. So you can either you can if you
• 13:35
  buy the headset, you can make it either Hoard or Alliance.
• 13:38
  Basically a keypad, a key cap that has the sword of Sardaris
• 13:43
  in it. It's very bougie.
• 13:45
  It might glow. It's hard to tell if it's just
• 13:47
  paint an orange or if it glowed. I think it might glow.
• 13:49
  It's cool. And then a mouse pad that also
• 13:52
  has the sort of Sardaris on it as well.
• 13:56
  And it, these are also coming with some like mounts and pets.
• 14:03
  In case you were like spending $200.00 and like didn't like,
• 14:08
  you know, you got to have a little, a little something
• 14:11
  right, like a little gifty gift alongside your absurdly
• 14:14
  expensive headphones. And so they have the for the
• 14:19
  headset, the Arcus Arctis Nova 7, they have the grinning
• 14:24
  Reaver, which is ugly. It's a big, it's a big bug.
• 14:27
  It's from, from Warlords of Draynor.
• 14:31
  It was removed in 2019. It used to be a shop mount and
• 14:34
  now it's a significantly more expensive shop mount.
• 14:37
  And it's, it's, it's a really big bug.
• 14:40
  It's got a little skull and it's mandibles and it'll mess you up.
• 14:45
  You know you look at this you're like not my not my vibe then for
• 14:50
  the airox 9, which is the fancy little mouse it you get Lil
• 14:55
  flanio, who is a pit Lord. The battle pet apparently was
• 15:00
  added in 10 point 2.7, but this is the first time that this
• 15:03
  version is going to be available.
• 15:05
  And then it's unclear whether they know exactly what is being
• 15:09
  given for. So it's it's kind of funny
• 15:10
  because you got a fancy thing for your headset, you get a
• 15:12
  fancy thing for your mouse and then like everything else is the
• 15:15
  same like they just like, OK, that's enough diversity for
• 15:20
  that. We're moving on.
• 15:22
  So it appears to have been data mined that you would be getting
• 15:25
  the savage Ebony battle turtle, which is an angry little guy.
• 15:28
  He's very grumpy battling presumably as a mount, but it
• 15:35
  doesn't sound like that has been.
• 15:38
  Sorry. That was very loud set in stone.
• 15:43
  It sounds like that one is like more.
• 15:45
  You know, the website says they're getting a battle turtle
• 15:48
  and Wow had data mined one that's has a source of promotion
• 15:53
  and they think it's that. But it's fun.
• 15:57
  And if I show up to the podcast at some point wearing golden
• 16:01
  headphones, we're not mentioning how much they cost.
• 16:04
  We're not worrying about that. We're not thinking about that
• 16:06
  deeply. Don't.
• 16:07
  No, it's not a big deal. Money's fake.
• 16:11
  Not that I have any opinions on what I would get out of this
• 16:13
  promotion if I were to get anything.
• 16:15
  I don't actually know why the community is up in arms because
• 16:19
  every time I think about this I just go look at the headphones
• 16:22
  for a couple hours. So what's the community?
• 16:24
  Unhappy man. Well, it's because they are
• 16:32
  coming with mounts in game mounts one of them and pet as
• 16:38
  well. The pet is a color variant of a
• 16:41
  pet that was a promotional pet that came before, but it's the
• 16:45
  first time we're getting this tint.
• 16:47
  OK. The mount that is the Ebony
• 16:52
  Turtle is again another tint variant.
• 16:56
  There was trading post version that was a different color, but
• 17:00
  this is the first time that presumably we're getting this
• 17:03
  because this is Wowhead's best guess, not confirmed at this
• 17:06
  point, but the data file matches the look of what's on the
• 17:11
  promotion. And then of course, the last one
• 17:16
  is a mount that's no longer available in the store.
• 17:18
  They Disney vaulted this, it was available in the store, they put
• 17:22
  it away and now it's coming back in a limited time attached to
• 17:26
  this other thing that you need to buy.
• 17:29
  So some people are looking at this and for the mount
• 17:32
  collectors that are like, makes number go up.
• 17:34
  They're like, oh, no, I have to spend to to make number go up.
• 17:39
  And these are not inexpensive items and at all they are
• 17:44
  expensive items. They are beautiful looking items
• 17:47
  though. I think that if money was no
• 17:50
  object I would be picking up definitely the mouse and the
• 17:55
  headset with without a second thought.
• 17:59
  Even if money was no object that that like keycap.
• 18:05
  No, I'm not a keycap girl, I'm sorry.
• 18:07
  What am I gonna do? I'm gonna be like hitting escape
• 18:09
  and pricking my finger and being like son of A.
• 18:11
  Yeah. No, but that's, that's the one
• 18:15
  that I'm not. But like the I look at that, I
• 18:18
  look at that headset and I'm sort of like you have like a a
• 18:23
  different cousin. Like I like my wired headset.
• 18:26
  Like I like wired headsets more than I like wireless headset.
• 18:30
  And also I have the benefit of wire wired headsets costing a
• 18:35
  little bit less. And I just, I just wish that
• 18:39
  there was a slight variant that I could get everything I want
• 18:42
  cause even though it's wireless, even though that thing costs a
• 18:47
  very pretty penny, like I keep looking at it so.
• 18:51
  Pretty. So pretty.
• 18:56
  There is a tweet by the European Community manager Varia and she
• 19:05
  is showing pictures because they have it at Gamescon.
• 19:09
  It looks better with that non marketing picture than it looks
• 19:14
  in the marketing. I was like, Oh yeah, that's the
• 19:17
  marketing thing and maybe it won't be that good.
• 19:21
  I'm going to I'm going to ask you guys, do you have you guys
• 19:24
  seen the Deadpool tie in where they have the cheeky Xbox
• 19:28
  controller where they have like the Deadpool controller colors
• 19:32
  or they Wolverine colors, but on the back of it, it's like a big
• 19:37
  round butt. I have not, but that's very on
• 19:40
  brand for Deadpool. I'm really glad that we're
• 19:44
  sorry, Manny, you can mark this and cut the section.
• 19:47
  If we don't want to talk about this, go ahead.
• 19:48
  But I'm really happy that we, whoever like came up like if
• 19:52
  somebody is looking at like. Women's Chest.
• 19:54
  Pads and he's like, we got a, we got a lazy equal opportunity
• 19:58
  that one. So we love.
• 20:02
  We love. See, This is why I said you
• 20:03
  could cut it, Manny, it's OK. No, no, that's that's totally
• 20:07
  fine and goblin graphics is saying that they have and it's
• 20:10
  amazing and like when I was looking at it, I was like that
• 20:13
  would be good and just imagine it was like soft at velvety and
• 20:17
  you're just sort of like that would be hilarious.
• 20:21
  Anyways, the point of the story is that when I saw the actual
• 20:26
  product, it is an Xbox controller with the right colors
• 20:30
  but the back of it is an attachment that is a magnetic
• 20:34
  attachment and that felt so much cheaper and like I I was I was
• 20:39
  really sad to so to see this product look better outside of
• 20:45
  the careful marketing images. Like if I had the money, guys.
• 20:50
  So you're not going to buy it? Are you not getting any of it?
• 20:55
  Not unless I get a significantly better paying job.
• 21:01
  No, I am about to spend $2100 on some more rough collections.
• 21:08
  I have to figure out a way to convince Anjali that those are a
• 21:11
  good purchase. I'm going to try and convince
• 21:13
  her it's a tax write off for business.
• 21:16
  And they are all all of them have all of the trading cards
• 21:21
  intact and I could probably sell a couple of those if I needed to
• 21:25
  recoup my money because I don't care about the amounts.
• 21:27
  But yeah, no, these are so the I'm like you in a serious note.
• 21:33
  I don't actually know for sure that I'm going to buy the
• 21:35
  acquisitions, but I might. On a serious note, these are
• 21:38
  gorgeous. These headphones.
• 21:39
  I'm looking at that picture that Varia posted.
• 21:42
  I also prefer wired headsets and I I have a a brand loyalty thing
• 21:48
  and I prefer Sennheiser and so I would want sends instead of the
• 21:57
  the steel series. But it's tempting.
• 21:59
  It really is tempting because they do look nice.
• 22:01
  If I was a mount collector, I would be really hard pressed not
• 22:05
  to buy it. Right.
• 22:06
  How do you how do you look at this and say, I'm going to
• 22:10
  actively choose to not buy this thing that will increase my
• 22:13
  number by one for like the serious mount collectors.
• 22:16
  Yeah, are you are you getting them Lex?
• 22:19
  For sure. You're like, are you showing up
• 22:21
  on the show on those headphones? I'm on God like I I have the
• 22:24
  alerts on that like the 2nd that it drops.
• 22:27
  I want to buy. Because I don't if it sells out,
• 22:29
  I'm going to cry like a baby. I I OK, I have never used
• 22:32
  wireless headphones, so I might hate them.
• 22:34
  I might hate the like audio change or like delay or whatever
• 22:37
  is going on. This if for those of you
• 22:40
  listening to the podcast, I'm aggressively shaking the wire of
• 22:43
  my headphones right now is the bane of my existence.
• 22:45
  It's so annoying. I feel like constant.
• 22:47
  And part of it is probably that I'm like, I guess I could just
• 22:50
  flip my headphones and be like, it's all over.
• 22:52
  It's a century nightmare. It's on my stupid legs right
• 22:55
  now. I don't like it.
• 22:56
  I don't want to hear. Yeah, the idea of having
• 22:59
  headphones that are both gorgeous and also mean I don't
• 23:01
  have to deal with this monstrosity.
• 23:06
  Text. OK, this is kind of my own
• 23:08
  fault. It's straight.
• 23:10
  Back those of you listening at home, all that I flip the
• 23:13
  headphone. No, you know what I did that to
• 23:16
  make I I did that to make a little joke.
• 23:18
  And now this is so annoying because my head is getting
• 23:20
  pulled this way. I hate, I hate this.
• 23:22
  Like now that I've been told that I, I mean, I, I knew the
• 23:25
  wireless headphones existed, but now that this is in my head is
• 23:28
  the thing I could get this is about to like I, I must, I must
• 23:32
  get rid of this stupid. Thing I had I had a steel series
• 23:35
  set of headphones and I have a turtle beach set of headphones
• 23:41
  and they were both wireless and found the battery life on them.
• 23:45
  Son, I'm at my desk all the yeah, it's only 38 hours every
• 23:50
  day I have to charge them. But at the worst case, the worst
• 23:53
  thing that happens is like you're in the middle of a raid
• 23:54
  or you're in the middle of a dungeon and then your headphones
• 23:56
  die and it's like what the F yeah.
• 24:01
  I'm really excited, Alex, for you to show us pictures of your
• 24:03
  new headphone. Oh.
• 24:07
  I'm very good. But that wasn't the only
• 24:10
  promotion though. Later on I came across another
• 24:15
  World of Warcraft tie in, a special graphics card that is
• 24:21
  commemorating, you know, 30 years of Warcraft, 20 years of
• 24:25
  World of Warcraft, and that also had another tie in.
• 24:31
  So this isn't a one time thing. This is something that they seem
• 24:35
  to be going into. So are you guys OK with this or
• 24:40
  is there like a line where you think this is going to become
• 24:42
  too much? Let's start with you, Sean.
• 24:47
  Yeah, I, it makes very, very poor podcasting.
• 24:51
  There will be no controversy for me on this.
• 24:53
  I don't care. They can have as many times as
• 24:54
  they want. I guess I if they eventually tie
• 24:57
  in something that I want, then I'll care, but I don't know
• 25:00
  what. The the black protodrake maybe I
• 25:02
  guess is you get the black protodrake with this video code.
• 25:06
  If you know that that no, then I'm good.
• 25:08
  They can do whatever they want. I don't it's a megasaur pointed
• 25:12
  out that in the chat. Like we had people freaking out
• 25:14
  over trading card game mounts going to, you know, twitch drops
• 25:18
  and that's a problem. But people seem to be less upset
• 25:22
  about having to buy $200 for the headphones to get them out.
• 25:26
  Maybe they're all just planning to return them.
• 25:28
  I guess. Buy the headphones, get the code
• 25:30
  and return the headphones no. I.
• 25:35
  Think that does not condone or endorse purchasing of headphones
• 25:40
  strictly for the purpose of using the code to then return
• 25:42
  them? Yeah, fairly fairly soon that
• 25:48
  they would catch on to that. OK.
• 25:51
  What about you, Lex? So to be super honest, when I
• 25:56
  first saw that there were mounts and pets attached to these very
• 26:00
  expensive purchases, my first thought was why like like not in
• 26:06
  a like angry way, just like one amount.
• 26:12
  Like, OK, like I mean, I don't, I'm not like upset about it, but
• 26:15
  like I for $200 I don't give that's nothing like that's I'm
• 26:19
  not buying an I also don't mean to be disrespectful to like
• 26:22
  hardcore amount collectors who are like, I would absolutely
• 26:24
  spend $200 for an extra amount. But like there's there's no
• 26:30
  world where one mount, which is not, again, not to be
• 26:33
  disrespectful to people who love it, but hideous is is going to
• 26:37
  sway me either way. I think I can imagine some more
• 26:40
  like frankly, if, if, if I don't know, somehow been a little bit
• 26:43
  more tied in. I can't think of how, but like
• 26:45
  if it felt more like a OK, this the mounts that they selected
• 26:52
  feel to me like they had come up with this promotion and they
• 26:58
  were like, these are really expensive.
• 27:00
  We should give them something else to go with it.
• 27:03
  And they just kind of like sorted through their old files
• 27:06
  and pull something out and they're like gritting river.
• 27:08
  OK, sure, sweet, whatever. That's great.
• 27:10
  So it like if it it it feels a little dinky, but like, I mean,
• 27:16
  whatever, if you're going to give me free stuff on top of my
• 27:18
  very expensive stuff, I'm not going to like whine that you
• 27:20
  gave me free stuff. I just like don't it it.
• 27:23
  It feels kind of disappointed, but I also, you know, the flip
• 27:30
  side is that like I've always said, that I think it's not like
• 27:34
  a crime for World of Warcraft to make a little extra money off of
• 27:38
  things that are purely cosmetic. The second the World of Warcraft
• 27:41
  starts making a little extra money off of things that change
• 27:43
  the game play, then I'm going to get a little concerned.
• 27:46
  Like not to get controversial on the podcast, but like, I'm a
• 27:49
  little concerned about early access being paid for.
• 27:52
  But I, I don't think, like, I, I'm not like, you know, Dumer
• 27:56
  running for the hills, but like, you know, we're, we're getting
• 27:58
  into that world. I don't think getting a mount is
• 28:01
  anywhere near the point where I'm like upset about it.
• 28:04
  And mounts are paid already. So like, I, I'm not fussed about
• 28:08
  that. And like, I, I think if, if, if
• 28:14
  you feel like you need mounts to the extent that they are worth
• 28:17
  $200 for you, that's a decision that you get to make with your
• 28:22
  own money. And I don't necessarily know
• 28:27
  that I would agree that it's like World of Warcraft's job to
• 28:30
  not make a mount cost $200.00 because you're going to feel
• 28:33
  like you need to buy it then, right?
• 28:35
  Like, again, that's a personal choice that you're making with
• 28:38
  your own money on your own time. And if you don't want to make
• 28:40
  it, don't make it. But it's not going to, like,
• 28:43
  ruin the game for you. Yeah, and the mount.
• 28:46
  The mount doesn't cost you. These are gorgeous, gorgeous
• 28:48
  headphones. Like the mount is a free bonus,
• 28:52
  right? This, I think this is a it's a
• 28:54
  harder pill to swallow if it's like here's generic Hyper X
• 28:57
  cloud headphones, $100 because they come with a mount that's a
• 29:01
  lot are no shed, no shade to Hyper X.
• 29:03
  They do great products. Definitely worth it if you're on
• 29:05
  a budget. But if they're looking to
• 29:07
  sponsor a show Hyper X we have space in the for Azeroth
• 29:11
  universe. But yeah, these are like these
• 29:15
  headphones are beautiful and I think $200.00 is like the going
• 29:18
  rate for high end eel series wireless headphones.
• 29:21
  So it's not I do I never feel like I think Lex is probably
• 29:25
  closer to being right with the statement of like, hey, these
• 29:28
  are a lot of money and those are really pretty.
• 29:30
  Why don't we throw something extra in?
• 29:32
  What do we have in the. You know, when you guys go to
• 29:35
  the dentist, Did your dentist when you were a kid have like a
• 29:38
  box, a wooden box at their shop? You could like pull out a toy or
• 29:41
  something from my dentist had like this box full of like
• 29:44
  little toys, like little like rubber cars and like little
• 29:47
  plastic sailboats and stuff. And every time you get your
• 29:50
  teeth cleaned, you go, there was no, no suckers.
• 29:52
  Like the doctor had suckers. The dentist wouldn't have
• 29:54
  suckers because clean your teeth anyway.
• 29:55
  After you clean your teeth, the dentist, every time you like,
• 29:57
  pick a toy from the box. That's what this feels.
• 30:00
  Why wouldn't he give you suckers?
• 30:02
  He keep himself in business. Did your dentist not have a toy
• 30:05
  box Manny? I guess not, I don't remember
• 30:10
  this. Manny, I'm so sorry that you
• 30:12
  missed up on a on a critical childhood activity.
• 30:16
  Oh no, I didn't miss out. My dentist had a beautiful like
• 30:20
  mural all over one wall that was like forest and everything.
• 30:26
  And it like went up and then the skylight was there like it was,
• 30:29
  it was beautiful. I remember that say.
• 30:31
  Something and please take this 100% with love and respect and
• 30:34
  honor. Saying I didn't miss anything as
• 30:37
  a child because they didn't get toys I got this beautiful mural
• 30:40
  is the most Manny statement I can imagine.
• 30:42
  Gift. I don't know how to take that.
• 30:46
  Fully respectfully, we're gonna we're gonna clip that and then
• 30:49
  comments, comments. You know.
• 30:52
  What Alexa means that is. That's what's happening.
• 30:55
  It's. A good thing.
• 30:58
  Sure, you could say that. We'll see in a few degrees.
• 31:00
  I was given the gift of a lovely experience and a beautiful view
• 31:03
  which I look. At you maybe, but I do want to
• 31:11
  point out the graphics card that I'm talking about because I
• 31:14
  think that this like you guys, we were talking about something
• 31:18
  that is gorgeous. This is a 20th anniversary
• 31:22
  graphics card. It has custom back plate and
• 31:26
  like gold highlights on it. I'm throwing that into the for
• 31:31
  as or off chat right now so you guys can see that it is
• 31:36
  fantastic. And on top of it, they're doing
• 31:39
  a giveaway prize where if enough people get get in, they win.
• 31:45
  Like I feel like I'm promoting them, promoting them, but they
• 31:47
  give like collector's edition at one point and then they give the
• 31:51
  graphics card along like along with it and then like a a full
• 31:56
  system giveaway through with it. But they are doing a lot of
• 32:00
  promotions around this 20th anniversary.
• 32:03
  This seems like they are going really big, which goes into the
• 32:08
  next news story that I wanted to talk about.
• 32:13
  Right at the beginning of Gamescon, we had a announcement
• 32:18
  that Blizzard is preparing for a Warcraft Direct, which is going
• 32:25
  to be later this year, and people are speculating that this
• 32:28
  is the replacement to BlizzCon. We have basically no details.
• 32:34
  So even if you are going to like try and like randomly look this
• 32:36
  up, basically we know that his name, there's future details
• 32:40
  coming. And this was something that they
• 32:43
  announced just I believe yesterday.
• 32:47
  Speculation hats on friends. What do you think Blizzard
• 32:52
  direct is? Or at least what do you hope it
• 32:54
  will be? I guess Lex, you, you seem
• 32:57
  really excited. What do you think?
• 32:58
  So, OK, I, I, I'm really good at getting myself hyped up for
• 33:02
  things that don't actually happen.
• 33:03
  So this is probably not actually going to happen.
• 33:05
  But do you guys remember when they said that BlizzCon wasn't
• 33:07
  coming? They were like, we are going to
• 33:09
  be doing local, you know, like local opportunities to meet with
• 33:13
  death. And when they announced they
• 33:15
  were going to games con and they didn't say anything else, I was
• 33:17
  like, damn it. Like I thought we were going to
• 33:19
  have World of Warcraft things like mini Blizz cons in
• 33:24
  different cities. And this would be so great
• 33:25
  because I was going to have to fly to California and I could
• 33:27
  just go down to Boston like a normal person.
• 33:30
  But maybe what they actually mean is they're just going to
• 33:32
  have booths at other conventions, which like sucks,
• 33:35
  right? Like that's not all the BlizzCon
• 33:37
  experience. That's not what we're getting.
• 33:39
  I was thinking we were going to get fun little Blizzard specific
• 33:43
  things live Warcraft direct. Sounds to me like the devs going
• 33:52
  like making their own little events in local places.
• 33:55
  I could be wrong but that is what they said they were going
• 33:57
  to do right? That they were going to have
• 33:59
  opportunities locally. So that's my yes, and that would
• 34:05
  make me very happy because I was about to doomer that they didn't
• 34:09
  do BlizzCon and they also just like didn't do one thing where I
• 34:12
  could meet another World of Warcraft player.
• 34:16
  I'm going to make my prediction based in reality.
• 34:20
  And Nintendo Directs already exist and they are digital
• 34:29
  events put together by Nintendo that lasted about 30 minutes
• 34:33
  long and they happen every three to four months.
• 34:36
  And it's a way for them to talk directly to the consumers about
• 34:38
  upcoming projects that they have.
• 34:40
  And it's almost certainly going to be that Blizzard.
• 34:43
  OK, I didn't. Know that this is a.
• 34:45
  Thing in the game industry, yeah, Nintendo Directs have
• 34:48
  existed for a long time. Sapporo Iwata used to host them.
• 34:53
  He was the president of Nintendo.
• 34:54
  He passed away and they still exist and they're fantastic and
• 34:58
  Nintendo fans get more excited for those than they do for some
• 35:02
  actual games. And if Blizzard, if I haven't
• 35:07
  seen this thing mentioning Blizzard direct, but if it's if
• 35:09
  they actually called it Blizzard Direct, 100% it's going to be 30
• 35:15
  minute ish digital shorts that are highly produced and
• 35:19
  delivered directly to us to talk about upcoming projects at
• 35:21
  Blizzard. I and and get as excited about
• 35:25
  that as you were about this fantasyland where Blizzard was
• 35:28
  going to come to your hometown and throw you a party.
• 35:32
  They said they were going to Shawn.
• 35:34
  They said they. Were going to do small.
• 35:36
  Defense, we said where we could meet the doves in our town, and
• 35:39
  I believed them. I put my faith in somebody and
• 35:42
  I. No, don't be like they're at
• 35:44
  Games Com. They have a booth at Games Com.
• 35:45
  They're going to be in the stage of Games Com and I, I think
• 35:48
  you'll see them at like PAX East and you'll see them at maybe
• 35:51
  Twitch con. Maybe Twitch Con's not the same
• 35:53
  thing. That's not really for gamers.
• 35:54
  That's more broadcasting. But I, I do think you'll see
• 35:57
  them at these events and have a booth of these events and a
• 35:59
  presence of these events. But I, I, I actually, honestly
• 36:03
  hope Blizzard direct is just Nintendo Directs.
• 36:06
  When my brother and I used to, we did a weekly game show,
• 36:10
  weekly news, weekly games news show.
• 36:13
  Nintendo Directs were the most excited we ever got for
• 36:16
  anything. And Xbox and Microsoft already
• 36:19
  do similar things as well, but there are cult Directs with
• 36:22
  them. They call them something else.
• 36:26
  So it's already sort of in the ethos of that company.
• 36:28
  Like this is how you deliver your product as opposed to one
• 36:31
  major event. I, I, I hope, I actually,
• 36:34
  honestly hope that that's what it is because Nintendo Directs,
• 36:37
  I'll show that some of the best, like most quoted lines in gaming
• 36:41
  come from Nintendo Directs as well.
• 36:43
  So yeah, but I'll. I'll let you build me back up.
• 36:47
  I'll let that be exciting. Very exciting.
• 36:49
  Rex, do you like Nintendo? I'll send you some good Nintendo
• 36:51
  Directs. They're great.
• 36:53
  I have never. So here's the thing.
• 36:56
  My only real experience with Nintendo is my friends like
• 37:00
  logging us into like Super Smash Bros and being and being like,
• 37:06
  and I'm like, OK, like I don't play console.
• 37:08
  So being like, what do I do? And they're like, you'll figure
• 37:09
  it out. You'll figure it out, don't
• 37:10
  worry. And then I just get killed
• 37:12
  repeatedly. Then you'll figure out your
• 37:14
  friends are. That's my Nintendo experience,
• 37:16
  yeah. What?
• 37:18
  Do you think, Manny, which, which one of us do you think is
• 37:21
  closer to reality? I'm going to say, Sean, you're
• 37:30
  more likely to be true in terms of format.
• 37:33
  I'm more of a downer about this. I consider what they do with
• 37:41
  with Wow cast. I feel like Wow cast has been
• 37:44
  their way to do outreach on a more regular basis and it has
• 37:49
  been doing it pretty well. I think that if they start
• 37:55
  cannibalizing that space for something that is in between Wow
• 38:00
  cast and BlizzCon line that they did it.
• 38:06
  I don't, I don't know about that.
• 38:09
  Like their BlizzCon line thing was supposed to be trying to
• 38:15
  emulate BlizzCon. It didn't quite have that same
• 38:21
  impact or or feel. I really love BlizzCon for not
• 38:26
  just the big stage event, which is fantastic.
• 38:32
  Anybody who's ever been in a crowd of people who that are
• 38:36
  just as excited about an event that you are like if you don't
• 38:41
  even have to be in at BlizzCon, like my analysis or analogy to
• 38:46
  that is when I went to WrestleMania and the WWE has
• 38:50
  this line like there's nothing like the WWE live and that's
• 38:53
  true. And there's nothing like
• 38:55
  BlizzCon Live. And that's true because when you
• 38:58
  have everybody beside you and they're all like, oh, BlizzCon
• 39:03
  logo and then the reveal and the crowd erupts, that creates a
• 39:07
  completely different experience. And these online experiences
• 39:13
  don't quite meet that level. So I would like for Lex to go
• 39:19
  ahead. Oh, I was going to say, if you
• 39:20
  think the point of BlizzCon is the speeches, then you don't
• 39:23
  understand BlizzCon. I'm with you entirely.
• 39:25
  It's, it's the people, yeah. I, I just, I don't think we're
• 39:29
  ever getting another BlizzCon. I think the Microsoft merger
• 39:33
  solidify, especially if we're not getting one for the 20th
• 39:36
  anniversary of the game. We're not getting one for the
• 39:39
  21st anniversary of the game. So that being said, I think.
• 39:43
  And the 30th of the. Franchise and the Yeah, that's
• 39:45
  yeah, exactly 30th of the franchise, yeah.
• 39:47
  I think they're looking for a better way forward.
• 39:50
  Nintendo Directs are like 30 minutes of commercials,
• 39:53
  basically. It's not Wowcast is like deep
• 39:56
  dive sit down talks with people, whereas Nintendo Directs, if
• 39:58
  you're not familiar with them, it's like, here's some games
• 40:00
  that are coming out next month or you know, this summer and
• 40:04
  it's like speed clips of games that are coming out, you know,
• 40:07
  and then it's like, here's a look at this aspect of the next
• 40:10
  Legend of Zelda. And it's like 5 minutes of
• 40:12
  watching Link run around crafting or whatever.
• 40:14
  So it's not, it won't replace the Wow cast.
• 40:16
  It's it'll be a 30 minute commercial of upcoming things to
• 40:20
  the games. I suspect.
• 40:21
  I don't know for sure. I don't work at Blizzard.
• 40:24
  That's what Nintendo Directs are and they're they're wildly
• 40:27
  successful for Nintendo and in in the forms of social media
• 40:31
  outreach and engagement. So it would be dumb not to to
• 40:34
  copy it. I I would say the reason that
• 40:39
  you don't copy it is because Nintendo Directs are a ton of
• 40:43
  second party and sometimes third party games that are all coming
• 40:47
  together to be condensed into that short half hour.
• 40:50
  So you get a very clippy, clippy pace that even if you don't like
• 40:54
  one game, wait 5 minutes, the next game might excite you.
• 40:57
  And that's much harder to deal that kind of pace and that kind
• 41:01
  of hit with one studio. Even if Blizzard is doing
• 41:05
  multiple projects, I just don't think they can do that.
• 41:08
  And to your point on Nintendo Directs, Nintendo Direct and all
• 41:13
  of these direct like things coming from companies, they are
• 41:17
  kind of the evolution of E3, a big con that used to happen that
• 41:23
  all the studios would go to and then the studio said, you know
• 41:26
  what, we can do this in this in this manner to directly to go
• 41:32
  direct to the consumer. That's a new one.
• 41:34
  That's what he says. I'll bring it to you direct.
• 41:39
  I love it. Right.
• 41:40
  And then BlizzCon the panels like when you are meeting the
• 41:47
  voice actors and they and they go through lines or you're doing
• 41:50
  the deep dives into the the systems and all of that sort of
• 41:56
  stuff. And to a lesser extent, when
• 41:59
  they have like the question period and you have like a
• 42:01
  particularly good, a good host that can like wrangle some idiot
• 42:04
  off off when he asked off one. That is something that does not
• 42:10
  translate into these direct experiences and I'm sorry to to
• 42:15
  lose that, but but you know. What they have the Blizzard dev
• 42:18
  who's watching the show, if you're listening to this and
• 42:22
  you're like, Wow, Manny's making some really good points.
• 42:25
  Warcraft really couldn't emulate the Nintendo Direct system.
• 42:29
  What you can't always do is you can't always pivot, and you can
• 42:33
  instead make it really direct because you bring the devs
• 42:37
  directly to Boston to meet me. Yeah.
• 42:45
  There you go. In Canada, Toronto is known as
• 42:49
  the center of the world because it's such a like self-centered
• 42:52
  little community. Apparently Boston has taken that
• 42:56
  title. Going forward, let's switch
• 43:02
  gears. We've covered the news.
• 43:03
  Let's talk about Dragon fight, because we are at the twilight
• 43:09
  of Dragonflight. Here we are on the last hours.
• 43:12
  By the time you're listening to this, servers may be down for
• 43:15
  maintenance and you might be waiting for the worldwide
• 43:19
  release of The War Within. So we said at the top of the
• 43:24
  show, all of us seem pretty satisfied with Dragonflight as a
• 43:28
  whole. What are the things that you
• 43:31
  want to highlight about this expansion?
• 43:34
  I am going to start with you Lex.
• 43:36
  Think this expansion was so people focused and so respectful
• 43:45
  just in ways that I didn't expect Blizzard ever really
• 43:49
  would be and I should say I'm saying this is a white girl.
• 43:51
  So what do I know? The I was really worried when I
• 43:55
  heard that we were doing like a Centaur zone because like,
• 44:00
  frankly, the centaurs were one of the first moments that I kind
• 44:04
  of realized how racist old World of Warcraft floor was right when
• 44:07
  I was like, oh, we're running through the torrent and like,
• 44:11
  anyway, it's there's problematic elements that I could bring up
• 44:18
  if but that's not the point. We're being happy.
• 44:20
  We're being happy about Blizzard.
• 44:23
  And I thought the way the, the, the Centaur especially were
• 44:27
  absurdly well done. The way that Blizzard dealt the
• 44:34
  the team dealt with cultures that were not like white
• 44:38
  American cultures was exceptional.
• 44:41
  The way the Blizzard dealt with with disability was exceptional.
• 44:46
  The way again saying this is a white able wide girl, what do I
• 44:48
  know? The way that Blizzard dealt with
• 44:53
  human relationships, I think people give Dragonflight a lot
• 44:56
  of Flack for being kind of after school especially.
• 45:01
  I thought it was really, really beautiful.
• 45:04
  I thought the exploration of family and found family and
• 45:07
  trauma and purpose and, you know, like leadership like that.
• 45:12
  It was, it was so thoughtful and so loving and clearly meant so
• 45:16
  much to the writers. And I just, I found the story to
• 45:20
  be really Blizzard showing that it is learned, it's grown like
• 45:28
  it, it understands the critiques that it's gotten in the past
• 45:31
  just across the board. And it wanted to do better and
• 45:36
  it did better. Like they succeeded.
• 45:39
  I came into Dragonflight saying, you know, of course I'm going to
• 45:43
  be suspicious of Blizzard. Every time I haven't been
• 45:45
  suspicious of Blizzard, they failed me.
• 45:47
  And I am leaving Dragonflight saying like, no, you know, we
• 45:49
  should give them the benefit of the doubt.
• 45:50
  They've proven time and time again that they are willing to
• 45:52
  listen and they're willing to grow.
• 45:53
  So I think that was like one of the most exceptional pieces of
• 45:58
  growth I have seen in my life. And they made a really good
• 46:01
  story out of it. OK, Lex, in love with the story.
• 46:06
  All right, go. John.
• 46:08
  What's what's a highlight for you A.
• 46:11
  Highlight for me, I'm going to echo some of what Lex said
• 46:14
  there. It was not just the main story.
• 46:16
  I know the main campaign in Dragonfly catches some heat in
• 46:20
  the lower community for being a bit light on the the danger.
• 46:24
  But we knew that everybody spent all of Shadow Land saying we've
• 46:27
  had enough cosmic danger and we have some more local danger and
• 46:30
  they gave it to us. And then obviously people were
• 46:32
  like, Oh no, we need more cosmic danger, not this local.
• 46:36
  And then but around that, I think the, the story team and
• 46:42
  the quest team really, really stepped it up in the side quests
• 46:46
  and the adjacent questing that we did.
• 46:49
  They learning the individual tales through the dragonflights.
• 46:52
  The Blue Dragonflight quest chain, especially as a highlight
• 46:55
  for me, was remarkably well done.
• 46:58
  And that sort of really solidified that, you know, it's
• 47:03
  not just what's happening here on this main track that matters
• 47:07
  to make this world a living, breathing world.
• 47:09
  It's all of this stuff around it.
• 47:12
  And I helped, I found that it really helped the flesh out the
• 47:14
  Dragon Isles and flesh out the expansion.
• 47:18
  Yeah. So I'm going to say that I think
• 47:20
  the story, that's one of the things for me.
• 47:24
  OK, I I'm mixed on the story. I think that you guys are right.
• 47:31
  That blue dragon fight story is such a highlight, one of the
• 47:35
  best campaign or I don't even want to call it campaign because
• 47:38
  it wasn't really the full of the campaign.
• 47:41
  It was the best B story, the best side that that World of
• 47:49
  Warcraft has done pretty much hands down.
• 47:52
  I cannot think of something that I would even compare it to that
• 47:55
  I think would be a fair comparison.
• 47:56
  I think they knocked it out of the park with that.
• 47:59
  I do think that many of the small side stories just
• 48:04
  resonated so well, and without going into spoilers, I think
• 48:08
  that they have continued that in The War Within.
• 48:11
  I am infamous for not truly caring or shedding a tear when
• 48:17
  we had the death of Ersock in Shadow Lands.
• 48:21
  And it's like, Oh no, he's gone forever.
• 48:23
  And it's like, yeah, he was a Mac guffin.
• 48:27
  But I can say with a straight face that within the first zone,
• 48:33
  Dragonflight had me tearing up. Dragonflight had me going like,
• 48:38
  wow, that is such a such a loss. And that got trumped because in
• 48:45
  the first zone in the War Within, I had to walk away from
• 48:49
  my computer because I didn't want to finish a quest.
• 48:53
  It was that much like they can't do this.
• 48:57
  I will explain later which quest it is in the War Within because
• 49:02
  I don't want to do spoilers. But for those who know, it's
• 49:07
  about shutting down. Dude, that one.
• 49:10
  That's another one. That one, like that one, just
• 49:16
  like I, I literally was just like, you can't do this ugly
• 49:20
  tears coming out. Just like I, I don't want to
• 49:23
  hand this quest in At the end of it.
• 49:25
  I was just like, I don't want to hand this quest in for for
• 49:31
  Dragonflight. It was and I cannot remember
• 49:36
  his, his name. It was the dragon that was at
• 49:40
  the the nursery where you had to go and find out whatever
• 49:45
  happened to to his friend that was part of the black Dragons
• 49:50
  and had eventually gone crazy. And I spent a good amount of
• 49:54
  time going through like the the Obsidian area and finding out
• 49:59
  their quest log and coming back and sitting down with him and
• 50:02
  talking and being like, hey, and like realizing like, OK, I don't
• 50:06
  want to push him so, so hard. And that that had good weight.
• 50:10
  And I felt that was a beautiful story.
• 50:12
  And they continued it on throughout the next the next
• 50:19
  tear into into these air like caverns.
• 50:25
  Now the part that I disagree with you is actually the main
• 50:29
  story. I felt that Dragonflight had an
• 50:34
  issue that I also felt shadow lands had before it where they
• 50:39
  would start strong and then be unable to quite hit the landing.
• 50:45
  There were just a couple of times where it was and it really
• 50:49
  kicked off the Zealot Caverns with the Black Dragon fight and
• 50:51
  Evan Horde coming in. I can rant about that, but there
• 50:55
  was a couple of times where it was clear that they were heading
• 50:58
  for a destination, but it didn't feel like they had earned that
• 51:03
  that resolution. And that was admitted as much
• 51:09
  with with the interview that was done.
• 51:12
  There was a number of Wow cast that happened after our show in
• 51:16
  between this. We've actually had two.
• 51:17
  One was an interview with Metzen held by Scott Johnson, and
• 51:23
  another one was Bethany Stout Lindsay, who sat down with a
• 51:29
  bunch of the people and talked about world building and
• 51:31
  everything, and those are beautiful.
• 51:33
  Definitely check those those out.
• 51:35
  They resonate for different reasons, but hearing them admit
• 51:39
  those faults definitely means that I'm more excited for The
• 51:43
  War Within. And also the fact that The War
• 51:46
  Within is a part of a trilogy because they're like, we can't
• 51:49
  squeeze this into one expansion means I that means that they're
• 51:53
  taking their time to build out a proper resolution in my mind.
• 51:57
  That's, I think a really fairpoint.
• 51:58
  I think that I was thinking a more of the early story was
• 52:01
  really beautiful. I kind of lost track of the
• 52:02
  story by the end of the expansion, to be super honest.
• 52:06
  And I, which I mean, probably is, is an indictment in and of
• 52:09
  itself that it wasn't gripping me.
• 52:11
  And I also, I one of the, the Wow casts was the, the Mets and
• 52:16
  Wow casts I watched today. One thing that he said is that
• 52:21
  when he came back into World of Warcraft, he noticed it had been
• 52:25
  a lot more democratized and people were getting their voices
• 52:28
  in a lot more. And he felt a lot that his one
• 52:30
  of his roles as creative director was to push people to
• 52:34
  insert their voices and their story and, and meaningful
• 52:36
  emotional things to them and, and characters that resonated
• 52:40
  with them into the game. And I think that that is why one
• 52:44
  of the reasons why I've heard, I hear, but also across the board
• 52:49
  with like a ton of different friends, that the side stories
• 52:53
  felt so powerful and so beautiful and and so resonant.
• 52:57
  I think it is because partially because the Blizzard team is no
• 53:01
  longer, you know, a couple dudes driving the story and everyone
• 53:04
  else writing it out. Not that it ever really was.
• 53:06
  Like, I, I understand there's always been like a lot of art
• 53:09
  and beauty and love. I'm not trying to be like world,
• 53:11
  World of Warcraft is the worst thing ever made.
• 53:13
  Like it's complicated. There's nuance.
• 53:14
  There's a lot of reasons that this is has a lot of feelings
• 53:16
  and I I get it. But I think that what we're
• 53:20
  seeing now is that if you have a big group of talented people at
• 53:25
  different levels who are being allowed to tell their story,
• 53:28
  what you get is a really rich and beautiful world that you
• 53:33
  want to explore in and you want to help these people.
• 53:36
  And you want to, you want to save the dog who's really
• 53:38
  confused because he, he doesn't know what to do and he wants to
• 53:40
  help his people, but he's having a hard time, right?
• 53:43
  Like you get all these stories that are really meaningful and
• 53:46
  and that really like do something to the people who are
• 53:51
  who are playing. And I think that that's one of
• 53:54
  the reasons why the the side quests are so powerful right
• 53:57
  now. I'm going to go really in depth
• 54:03
  into the story. I'm actually going to be sitting
• 54:05
  down with Discordian Kitty tomorrow to really go through
• 54:09
  the story. So if you want an in depth
• 54:10
  thing, definitely check out her channel tomorrow and I'm sure
• 54:14
  she'll put out a YouTube video and I'll make sure to echo that
• 54:19
  on the Faraz are off discord. But the other thing and I think
• 54:24
  that I have 0 complaints about is rating.
• 54:29
  I think that this expansion the rating has been just such top
• 54:36
  tier every raid. Like I can't think of a boss
• 54:42
  that I hated in a raid. There hasn't been a, oh,
• 54:45
  remember that boss in the entirety of the boss boss tears
• 54:50
  that have been through all of this expansion.
• 54:54
  And I know some people will like immediately point out, let's say
• 54:59
  myth. Is the scar.
• 55:02
  Never reached him on Mythic and I think Ellen Hiroki was fine.
• 55:06
  But I will say that the council was something that people
• 55:12
  complained about and I I ended up being on pure duck duty.
• 55:15
  Man, I meant for for the mythic for mythic council of dreams.
• 55:21
  I've ended up being on pure duck duty, but I enjoyed that made
• 55:27
  like, I would say that I felt there were a couple of bosses
• 55:33
  that felt a little easy in Avarice and the the ramp, the
• 55:43
  difficulty ramp didn't go up, but mechanically I felt that
• 55:46
  they were all enjoyable. There wasn't a specific boss
• 55:49
  where I was like that mechanic right there is the bait of my
• 55:53
  existence and I can't wait until I'm never going to see this boss
• 55:56
  again. What about you, Lex?
• 55:59
  What was your rating experience like?
• 56:02
  So I'm heroic only, so I didn't get the full mythic experience.
• 56:06
  I do think there were sometimes that maybe pacing was a little
• 56:10
  messy. I think it was vault, but it
• 56:11
  might have been avarice. I'm trying to remember that it
• 56:16
  felt a little bit like, OK, faceful, faceful, faceful,
• 56:20
  faceful stop. Like everything is impossible
• 56:23
  now. And that doesn't feel great,
• 56:27
  right? Like it, it didn't feel like
• 56:28
  there was a real ramp in difficulty.
• 56:30
  It felt like it was like easy, hard.
• 56:34
  But I agree with you, Manny. There was never a time that I
• 56:37
  was like, it's Thursday night and I don't want to log in,
• 56:41
  right? Like I had fun with it the
• 56:42
  entire time, you know, I, I and, and even the stops didn't feel
• 56:46
  like this is so impossible. I don't like I, I want to just
• 56:52
  quit. I want to take the rest of the
• 56:53
  night off. I want to wait till we get more
• 56:55
  gear. This just sucks, right?
• 56:56
  Like it was always fun and I always felt like gross and it
• 56:58
  always felt exciting. We had a lot of trouble on the
• 57:03
  girl. I'm trying to remember her name
• 57:04
  with the circles that you got to soak, but like the the and she
• 57:09
  was trying to keep you from getting deeper into the Oh God.
• 57:12
  I don't. Remember her name?
• 57:14
  Yeah, that one, that one, she was stationary with the pies.
• 57:17
  Rough. Because that one she was a
• 57:21
  problem, but that's because our team has like 2 range.
• 57:25
  Oh yeah, getting a little, getting a little soaks, Yeah,
• 57:28
  OK, except that you're a Demon Hunter anyways, so.
• 57:34
  I I first of all, I was a holy priest for that.
• 57:37
  And I worked. I sewed so many of those little
• 57:39
  puddles. I was so good at my job.
• 57:41
  But alas. OK.
• 57:46
  All right. And Sean, you just mentioned
• 57:49
  this is a Karan or Karan, whatever he's called.
• 57:53
  What were what were the problem bosses for you and what was the
• 57:56
  rating? Like both of the incarnates I
• 58:00
  adored as a raid with the possible exclusion of the Thea,
• 58:07
  which wasn't a difficult fight and didn't pose any specific
• 58:10
  problems, but for whatever reason my Guild struggled with.
• 58:13
  But Devout Incarnis was great. I enjoyed all of it.
• 58:15
  I thought the bosses were fair, the pacing was good, and I I
• 58:18
  didn't even hate the the council fight and I don't really hate
• 58:21
  council fights. Problem with council wasn't bad
• 58:23
  Avarice I thought was but I'm not in the Hall of Fame Guild.
• 58:29
  I wanted to start by saying that for me Aberyst felt OK.
• 58:33
  I enjoyed the pacing. I did not enjoy Saskaran and I
• 58:37
  never into experiments was a terrible council fight.
• 58:41
  It just felt like chaotic a chaotic mess all the time.
• 58:45
  It never felt easier no matter how many times we killed it.
• 58:48
  But the Saskaran issue that came up with this red tear is that
• 58:55
  they there was a strategy that developed where you would just
• 58:58
  fight him in a corner and essentially ignore all the
• 59:00
  mechanics, which is not how it was designed.
• 59:01
  It was never meant to be that way.
• 59:04
  And the dev that worked on it killed him that way and said
• 59:09
  he'd sent her a tweet. Feels weird to kill your boss,
• 59:12
  kill the boss you designed using a cheese, skip all the
• 59:14
  mechanics. And within two days they nerfed.
• 59:19
  They they, they changed it so you could no longer do that.
• 59:22
  And what that essentially did because they, they made it
• 59:26
  considerably harder. They pulled the ladder up behind
• 59:30
  them for Hall of Fame. So there was no chance for any
• 59:33
  guilds that were behind that point to catch up and that
• 59:36
  locked in the Hall of Fame for that seed that tier.
• 59:39
  And that was a really, really bad misstep as far as that boss
• 59:44
  goes, that that fix should have happened either immediately
• 59:47
  after the first kill that was killed in a very similar fashion
• 59:50
  to the the bugged way, or it never should have happened at
• 59:53
  all. Because it really put a damper
• 59:56
  on a lot of Hall of Fame team spirits going in and was like.
• 1:00:00
  And it felt doubly bad because the person who put the nerf in
• 1:00:03
  build it pre nerf or not nerf, put the buff in who fixed the
• 1:00:07
  exploit, build it with the exploit, tweeted that they had
• 1:00:11
  killed it with the exploit and then fixed it so you could no
• 1:00:15
  longer do it that way. That left a bad taste in a lot
• 1:00:18
  of people's mouths. And again, it didn't affect my
• 1:00:20
  team. My team was not we're not a Hall
• 1:00:22
  of Fame team, but it did affect anybody who was on that that
• 1:00:25
  borderline other than that average was great.
• 1:00:28
  I thought Shark reth was one. It was an all time end boss.
• 1:00:30
  I really enjoyed Shark reth and obviously the gearing in in in
• 1:00:34
  in season 2 was fantastic for me.
• 1:00:36
  And then again in Mirrorsville, another great raid.
• 1:00:38
  The only issue with the Mirrorsville Lex sort of
• 1:00:41
  mentioned it is that difficulty spike and being the last raid
• 1:00:45
  tier of the expansion and the difficulty going so high from
• 1:00:50
  like smolder on was a high difficulty on his own but
• 1:00:53
  immediately after that into tendril who then they took far
• 1:00:56
  too long to nerf. A lot of guilds flamed out on
• 1:01:00
  smolder on because of it, no pun intended.
• 1:01:04
  And I don't know, I feel like that tuning had to happen sooner
• 1:01:10
  or better. And I don't know if it was a
• 1:01:11
  case of the difficulty implemented in those fights
• 1:01:15
  because of the implementation of private auras in those fights,
• 1:01:18
  the requirement of using a macro with weak auras in order to be
• 1:01:21
  able to timeout mechanics. But yeah, though Farak was a fun
• 1:01:26
  fight. I enjoyed program.
• 1:01:27
  Farak I like, I like there's a fight.
• 1:01:29
  And Pindrill, actually, I don't like Tindrill very much, but
• 1:01:33
  it's everybody on my team other than me likes it.
• 1:01:36
  So yeah, overall positive. A couple of small missteps.
• 1:01:42
  I think there's a scarring one is a is a major misstep.
• 1:01:45
  But every time we have these situations where we have like a
• 1:01:48
  huge wall and difficulty, Halaundra and Sepulchre, the
• 1:01:50
  first ones, they say, hey, we learned from that, we're going
• 1:01:52
  to fix it and they do the next raid tier and then it comes from
• 1:01:59
  it comes working its way back through again.
• 1:02:01
  So yeah, sometimes it's like a bad penny.
• 1:02:04
  It just keeps turning up. So that being said, we should be
• 1:02:07
  in for a good difficulty curve in the first raid of War Within.
• 1:02:13
  I I should correct myself. It was a mere de SEL was the one
• 1:02:17
  that felt like it was just face roll, face roll and then hard.
• 1:02:20
  My issue with vault was it was so easy.
• 1:02:22
  Like we were clearing through heroic like and like.
• 1:02:26
  We are not, we push AOTC like that.
• 1:02:29
  We, we are not one of the like super competitive teams.
• 1:02:33
  And I, it just, it was so fast in my memory, it was, it could
• 1:02:39
  have needed to be a lot harder. And sometimes it's fun.
• 1:02:42
  Sometimes it's fun to just go in and feel like God, right?
• 1:02:44
  Like worse things have happened in the world than feeling really
• 1:02:47
  powerful. But it.
• 1:02:49
  Felt a little undertuned, OK. So then putting the question to
• 1:02:55
  you, what was your favorite raid boss this expansion?
• 1:02:59
  OK, I will start because I I don't want to just put you guys
• 1:03:02
  on the spot. I honestly think that Farrak, in
• 1:03:07
  terms of how cinematic, how like orchestrated it is.
• 1:03:13
  I like if you had told me that there wasn't phases in that
• 1:03:17
  fight, I would have believed you because it was just so smooth as
• 1:03:20
  he went in between phases and the fight evolved.
• 1:03:23
  It was wonderful and the fact that he flew up, came down at
• 1:03:27
  multiple times to go through it. I love that.
• 1:03:30
  And I do think that they hit that with all of the final
• 1:03:34
  bosses, but Farrak was just the smoothest of it, like just flat
• 1:03:39
  out presentation wise, gorgeous. All right, so then your favorite
• 1:03:46
  fight. Let's start with you, Sean.
• 1:03:48
  My individual favorite fight, the fight that I enjoyed the
• 1:03:51
  most as a player was Rashock. I tanked Rashock.
• 1:03:55
  There's a lot of agency for tanks in Rashock.
• 1:03:57
  And I like fights that you can like scripted, you know what I
• 1:04:01
  mean? You can plan it out and then you
• 1:04:03
  just, it's just about executing the script.
• 1:04:05
  And Rashock is very much a scripted fight with some minor
• 1:04:08
  variations in knowing where to drop your circles on which which
• 1:04:12
  which purple orbs. So that one is my favorite as a
• 1:04:15
  player, my favorite as a rave leader or as a team member would
• 1:04:19
  be Razigeth. We killed Razigeth in 131 pulls.
• 1:04:25
  And we did like we came into that fight extremely well
• 1:04:30
  prepared. The team played out of their
• 1:04:32
  minds for us to kill them, kill her that fast.
• 1:04:36
  And yeah, we actually, we had skipped the, the Strat was to,
• 1:04:42
  there was a Strat to do in the second or in the last
• 1:04:45
  intermission with the ads and trapping some and then killing
• 1:04:48
  them and trapping someone killing them.
• 1:04:49
  And we mathed it out and that our DPS was high enough that we
• 1:04:52
  didn't have to worry about it. And so we just trapped them and
• 1:04:55
  naked and it, it must have shaved 30 poles off of our, our
• 1:04:59
  Prague. So the team just played out of
• 1:05:02
  their minds for that fight. So that would be my my answer
• 1:05:05
  for that. OK.
• 1:05:08
  And Lex. I think fine with Sarkaroth.
• 1:05:11
  I don't have a good reason. I remember having the most fun
• 1:05:13
  with him. I feel I will say, I think I'm,
• 1:05:16
  as I'm speaking about Dragonflight, I'm kind of
• 1:05:18
  realizing that I think I was a little, I don't know, burnt out
• 1:05:20
  or what, but like, I just like wasn't feeling a mirror to sell,
• 1:05:24
  which does not make it a bad raid.
• 1:05:27
  And like I, I, I just, you know, it just wasn't, wasn't hitting
• 1:05:31
  the vibes for me. But I remember having a ton of
• 1:05:35
  fun with Sarkaroth. I remember it being really
• 1:05:37
  frustrating and complicated, but it never felt frustrating evil,
• 1:05:46
  right? It always felt frustrating.
• 1:05:48
  Oh, we're not getting it yet until we got it.
• 1:05:50
  And then when we got it, it was the most exciting.
• 1:05:53
  I remember being in a very long time.
• 1:05:56
  It was so great. And then and then it was so
• 1:05:57
  exciting to like, you know, be able to like realize you could
• 1:06:01
  like teach it to the people who weren't there for the original
• 1:06:03
  kill and like, you know, like, and now we figured out, oh, like
• 1:06:06
  with this, we got to go over here.
• 1:06:07
  I remember that one being a ton of fun.
• 1:06:12
  I have to talk a little bit about Lex's Raid actually,
• 1:06:18
  because there's a special question I got to ask you.
• 1:06:20
  Lex. Lex's Raid, Every tear they have
• 1:06:23
  what's called a blind boss. A boss where they do not look up
• 1:06:28
  any strategy or watch any videos.
• 1:06:31
  They just try and figure it out on their own, like as if it was
• 1:06:34
  a beta test. Just utterly blind.
• 1:06:37
  Every tear they do this. Lex, do you recall what your
• 1:06:42
  blind bosses were for the tears and like which one you felt was
• 1:06:45
  like the hardest to learn? Or even if you can just recall
• 1:06:49
  your last ones. So the first blind boss was the
• 1:06:54
  the the experiment. I think it was the two.
• 1:07:00
  Amalgamation Chamber. Elementals yeah, we have to like
• 1:07:04
  keep them apart and then bring them together and I actually one
• 1:07:09
  of one of the officers works for Blizzard and I do remember him
• 1:07:12
  being like, yeah, I guess we could do that as a blunt.
• 1:07:17
  Do you guys want to maybe look at some of the other?
• 1:07:18
  Really no, it's going to be so fun.
• 1:07:19
  It's going to be so great let's do that let's do that one.
• 1:07:23
  Then our we either had two blind bots.
• 1:07:25
  I'm really bad at like as Sean has learned, I I don't have a
• 1:07:29
  great temporal mind. So this was either in the same
• 1:07:32
  raid or this was our second blind boss was the spider.
• 1:07:40
  Yes, Spider. 'S first right amalgamation
• 1:07:43
  second right. Great, so we did the spider.
• 1:07:46
  We also did the Torin Korkov, the core, that's not his name,
• 1:07:50
  the shaman, which was also my God.
• 1:07:54
  I now have a very strong rule that we will not do any bosses
• 1:07:57
  beyond like 4 on the boss. You went into Kurra grim totem
• 1:08:03
  blind. I remember, I remember I went in
• 1:08:07
  with their raid for Curran and they're like, Manny don't say a
• 1:08:11
  thing about this. And I'm like, oh.
• 1:08:12
  No. I remember that OK and I I
• 1:08:17
  totally OK again, I'm breaking this.
• 1:08:20
  I was like, what the hell is with this Guild?
• 1:08:22
  One, you're doing this is a blind fight two, you've got two
• 1:08:25
  identical twins that sound the same giving out orders.
• 1:08:28
  So I don't know who to listen to right.
• 1:08:31
  And then and then one of them's like trying to do it to to
• 1:08:35
  trigger achievements while they're trying to just do the
• 1:08:38
  fight. Normally it like if you want
• 1:08:42
  hard little grade with Lex, you think that she's kind of.
• 1:08:45
  Like nauseous. I'm so anxious for the way that
• 1:08:47
  would play out OK. Yeah, that one was that that was
• 1:08:53
  one of the few times the officers have kind of gotten
• 1:08:55
  together and been like, do we unblind it like this is just a
• 1:08:59
  mistake and we didn't, we figured it out blind.
• 1:09:01
  We probably didn't figure it out, but we got it blind by the
• 1:09:04
  end of it. And then after that we learned
• 1:09:07
  only do one blind boss. And we also learned that maybe
• 1:09:10
  if the officer who it works for Blizzard start to kind of guide
• 1:09:14
  us in direction, maybe we go that direction soon as council
• 1:09:17
  fight blind, which was actually really fun.
• 1:09:19
  I will say I think it is Discordian Kitten actually has
• 1:09:22
  said that her Guild does normal fully blind.
• 1:09:25
  I love blind bosses. I think it is so much more fun.
• 1:09:29
  I would much rather like I I don't sometimes I'm going to
• 1:09:32
  sound like such AI don't know old person.
• 1:09:36
  Sometimes it feels a little bit like World of Warcraft has kind
• 1:09:39
  of become plug and play, right? Like it is just watch the video
• 1:09:43
  and it's going to tell you where you're going to stand at what
• 1:09:45
  moment. And then you're going to press
• 1:09:46
  the buttons and you're going to press the buttons in the right
• 1:09:48
  order and you can have all your add-ons are going to tell you
• 1:09:50
  what order you press the buttons.
• 1:09:52
  And then you're the the it's going to tell you when you get
• 1:09:54
  out and like, which like is fair, right?
• 1:09:56
  Like, you know, and they've made things more complicated.
• 1:09:58
  So it's not that boring, but it sometimes feels a little bit
• 1:10:01
  like, Oh, I'm just doing the exact, like I'm, I'm being given
• 1:10:04
  a list of instructions and I'm following them to the T.
• 1:10:06
  And so having those opportunities to really lose
• 1:10:10
  that safety net and just be like, OK, I am going to figure
• 1:10:14
  it out. Like I'm going to and we're
• 1:10:15
  going to die a ton and that's going to be OK.
• 1:10:18
  And we're going to be like making jokes and having a good
• 1:10:20
  time. And we are just, we're going to
• 1:10:23
  figure it out. I have so much fun with that.
• 1:10:26
  And it would take very little for the officers to talk me into
• 1:10:28
  doing more of it. Officers, we should do normal
• 1:10:30
  blend. They're never going to agree.
• 1:10:36
  To that yeah I I just have to put that out there because I
• 1:10:38
  think sometimes when Lex is like, Oh yeah, we're just a
• 1:10:41
  heroic only Guild it's like actually there's a lot more
• 1:10:44
  twist when you rate with Lex's team yeah, heroic plus for sure
• 1:10:50
  and Lex I I would say that I have that same feeling that's
• 1:10:55
  why I dive into the beta and I'd like to test every boss cuz I
• 1:10:59
  love figuring out the boss and when you're on beta testing,
• 1:11:03
  nobody knows what the strategy is It is oh, can we do this can
• 1:11:07
  we figure this out I'll talk with my friend in a completely
• 1:11:10
  different rate being like, oh wow, we figured this out is this
• 1:11:13
  is this cool did you do this How did you accomplish this?
• 1:11:17
  And I I think it's it's great. So that that is awesome.
• 1:11:22
  The last part of of the game that I want to talk about in
• 1:11:28
  retrospect of dragon fight is actually actually sorry, I guess
• 1:11:34
  there's two parts. Dungeons, let's talk about
• 1:11:38
  analogous to raids. Did you like dragonflights
• 1:11:42
  dungeons? Did you love Dragonfly dungeons
• 1:11:45
  or did you have like some concerns?
• 1:11:47
  John, you are the guy who dives into dungeons so much with
• 1:11:51
  Mythic Plus, right? I'm going to start with you.
• 1:11:54
  What? We're I loved the people that I
• 1:11:57
  ran dungeons with in Dragonflight.
• 1:12:01
  That is a very specific phrasing.
• 1:12:03
  I am looking forward to dungeons in the war with it.
• 1:12:11
  Yeah, that's I think that's all I have to say when I look back
• 1:12:15
  at Dragonflight. The way I'm going to remember
• 1:12:18
  Mythic Plus over this expansion is that I got to spend my time
• 1:12:22
  with a lot of really amazing people.
• 1:12:25
  A lot of really close friends that I have that I had coming in
• 1:12:29
  that are closer friends now. New friends that I made along
• 1:12:32
  the way that are now hopefully long term friends going into the
• 1:12:36
  War Within. And anything else, any minor
• 1:12:40
  frustrations, any irritations, anything that made me walk away
• 1:12:43
  from my desk, that doesn't matter because all gone,
• 1:12:47
  starting with the War within. So I'll just look back on
• 1:12:50
  Dragonflight and say, you know what it the real IO was?
• 1:12:53
  The friends I made along. Yeah, no good.
• 1:13:01
  Offensive. OK, thank you for pushing the
• 1:13:06
  edit. Let's understand.
• 1:13:08
  That we can mark that. OK, I I would say that I had a
• 1:13:18
  lot of frustrations with different mechanics.
• 1:13:20
  I had some dungeons that I I didn't like, but I loved how
• 1:13:25
  quickly things changed up. I spent this entire expansion
• 1:13:32
  pretty much just pugging my way through the KSM into portals and
• 1:13:37
  the case the keystone hero. I did not have a static group
• 1:13:40
  like I had in Shadow Lands and it was an experiment and I
• 1:13:47
  actually had a lot of fun. There was season 2 and season
• 1:13:52
  three where I basically was saying like, how, why do I need
• 1:13:57
  to have my score where people will excuse that I'm not mad or
• 1:14:01
  something. And I, I almost made an episode
• 1:14:04
  out of it where I was like, OK, this is my findings.
• 1:14:07
  This is what, what it what it was where if you have this
• 1:14:10
  score, they don't care. They will just be like, this guy
• 1:14:13
  knows it. Who knows?
• 1:14:14
  Who knows why he's applying to a 13 when he's got a score that
• 1:14:18
  beats a 20 or something like that.
• 1:14:21
  But if you want a really in depth view of that, actually
• 1:14:26
  preach did it, did it before I I got it out.
• 1:14:29
  So preach did a great job. Check that out.
• 1:14:32
  I loved experimenting. I loved pushing through things.
• 1:14:35
  I loved that they brought out new affixes, even if I didn't
• 1:14:39
  like the affix. I like that they were moving
• 1:14:41
  things around. I loved going on to the beta and
• 1:14:44
  being like, what in the world did they do to explosive and
• 1:14:47
  then come back next week and be like, what in the world did they
• 1:14:50
  do to explosives? And then coming back next week
• 1:14:52
  and it's like, oh, thank goodness explosives are gone.
• 1:14:57
  I, I had a lot of fun because they were so quick to react,
• 1:15:03
  even if some of the steps to get there could have been
• 1:15:08
  frustrating. And I'm hoping that they
• 1:15:11
  continue this sort of thing where they are willing to make
• 1:15:14
  these changes where it's not set in stone.
• 1:15:17
  We're not suffering for like 6 months until the next patch
• 1:15:22
  comes out so that it's finally good again.
• 1:15:25
  I like that any frustration I had was transitory at best.
• 1:15:31
  Lex, I know you don't play many dungeons.
• 1:15:35
  Yeah, in your opinion? So it's hard for me to evaluate.
• 1:15:40
  I hated dungeons in Dragonflight, but I've hated
• 1:15:43
  dungeons. I guess I had some fun in Shadow
• 1:15:45
  Lands. I think mostly just because my
• 1:15:47
  Guild was good at like kind of making me keep up with them.
• 1:15:51
  Like really, that's the issue, right?
• 1:15:53
  Is that what happens is I do Mythic plus early in the
• 1:15:58
  expansion because I have to to gear for raid and then I kind of
• 1:16:01
  pull out a little bit and then by the time raid kind of slowing
• 1:16:04
  down, I'm like, oh, wouldn't it be fun to see where Mythic plus
• 1:16:06
  is? And at that point I don't
• 1:16:07
  remember anything mechanics. I don't really know any of the
• 1:16:10
  ethics is I'm not like well where can competently do a
• 1:16:16
  dungeon at my item level. So I'm either just like
• 1:16:19
  essentially wasting time right to learn the dungeon still or I
• 1:16:24
  am constantly stressed. I will say I am when I think
• 1:16:27
  about it. I actually think when I'm going
• 1:16:29
  DPS odds that I do dungeons. Like I think I'm gonna enjoy war
• 1:16:33
  within dungeons significantly more just because I won't be
• 1:16:35
  healer, because it's the biggest fear I have going into dungeons
• 1:16:40
  is that I'm going to forget mechanic and the entire group is
• 1:16:44
  going to be like, oh, you idiot, you ruined this.
• 1:16:47
  I've been so mad at you. Healer sucks.
• 1:16:48
  Healer sucks. That's the healer.
• 1:16:50
  Like that. Like people do that, right?
• 1:16:52
  Like not in those exact words, but like, yeah, you know, I've
• 1:16:55
  been in plenty of groups where being the healer means that
• 1:16:58
  everything is getting blamed on me and I don't know what's going
• 1:17:01
  on and nobody will explain anything.
• 1:17:02
  It's very stressful. DPS is significantly and and
• 1:17:07
  less stressful right? And you're also one of three so
• 1:17:10
  like if you suck a little who cares?
• 1:17:11
  There's two others and the tank is probably doing some GPS too.
• 1:17:15
  So like I I think pugging in WAR with it is going to feel less
• 1:17:19
  horrifying and less all eyes are on me and everyone hates me.
• 1:17:25
  And the tank is probably doing a little DPS too.
• 1:17:29
  They. Probably are.
• 1:17:33
  Love it. OK.
• 1:17:36
  The last part, of course, is the open world, and I think that
• 1:17:41
  this was such a triumph in some parts and just lacking in
• 1:17:47
  others. I want to end this on a high
• 1:17:49
  note, so I'm going to talk about the stuff that I felt was
• 1:17:51
  lacking first and then start talking about like the stuff
• 1:17:54
  that I think was so good in terms of lacking.
• 1:17:58
  I think that now that they've gotten away from the whatever
• 1:18:03
  flavour du jour that was there for the Tear, whether that be
• 1:18:08
  going around the Lost City and trying to get the archival stuff
• 1:18:14
  for for that back in like Shadow Lands, or if it was like the
• 1:18:23
  corruption and trying to push your cloak every week up to the
• 1:18:27
  next level that we had in the end of BFA.
• 1:18:32
  Those things that people considered Wow chores definitely
• 1:18:36
  kept me engaged from day-to-day. And without that like quote UN
• 1:18:41
  quote required play, I don't think they filled in the gaps
• 1:18:45
  with just optional stuff that I could enjoy on the day that I
• 1:18:49
  wasn't looking to like dive into instance content.
• 1:18:54
  And I'm hoping they're going to be doing better with that in the
• 1:18:59
  War Within. But also, I think part of it was
• 1:19:03
  that I had to adapt myself. I had to stop being like
• 1:19:08
  Blizzard, tell me what to do and start finding my own fun.
• 1:19:12
  And I've been doing that a lot better, especially in this last
• 1:19:16
  week where we're kind of in waiting mode.
• 1:19:19
  I have gone so goblin on the auction house and I've set up an
• 1:19:26
  alt, a bank and I've created a what we're calling yourselves
• 1:19:30
  the consortium, which is just a bunch of like minded goblins
• 1:19:33
  that are now covering every battle group in North America so
• 1:19:38
  we can sell on on that. And just this I'm I found my own
• 1:19:42
  mission guys, and I'm just having so much fun.
• 1:19:44
  And the reason I'm doing it this week and not last week is I
• 1:19:46
  ain't got a working graphics card.
• 1:19:51
  And I, you know, I love that for me, like, and the vibes are
• 1:19:54
  great because of that. So maybe it's just a learning
• 1:20:02
  curve, but I would love if with like these delves with these
• 1:20:07
  events, with all of the the stuff that we have that stuff to
• 1:20:14
  do when. Maybe I I just want that like
• 1:20:17
  also give me an invisible mode. Sometimes I don't want to be
• 1:20:20
  visible online. I just want to do stuff.
• 1:20:22
  I I missed the days I could have that secret alt.
• 1:20:26
  But like sometimes I just want to do stuff on my own and I I'm
• 1:20:29
  I'm hoping that the war within provides that more than dragon
• 1:20:32
  fight did. Lex, what about you?
• 1:20:35
  Any any solo play stuff or has wow really become the I do this
• 1:20:40
  with my friends and then I log off.
• 1:20:43
  So as you were speaking, I was thinking a few minutes back I
• 1:20:48
  said that by the end of Dragonflight I was getting, I
• 1:20:50
  don't know, burned out or something, but I don't know what
• 1:20:52
  problem was. I do actually think part of the
• 1:20:53
  problem now that I'm thinking about it is that I didn't have
• 1:20:57
  to log in. So I didn't.
• 1:20:58
  And then I kind of stopped playing the game outside of
• 1:21:01
  raid. And then it just became, you
• 1:21:03
  know, I was able to raid logs significantly earlier than I
• 1:21:07
  usually do in a, in a pass, misconnected from the game,
• 1:21:13
  right. And then, and then I got to
• 1:21:14
  like, well, I can't really come back because like, you know, I
• 1:21:16
  try to do mythic plus and everybody yells at me because I
• 1:21:18
  don't understand when I'm supposed to tell these guys and
• 1:21:21
  when I'm supposed to go over here.
• 1:21:23
  And then I, you know, it kind of spirals from there.
• 1:21:26
  And also I was doing like, I was dealing with real life stuff.
• 1:21:29
  Like it's not like Blizzard, just this isn't like an
• 1:21:31
  indictment of Blizzard. I'm, I'm not saying that, you
• 1:21:34
  know, I, I think Blizzard's been working very hard to be anti
• 1:21:37
  grindy Manny. And I think at this point,
• 1:21:42
  actually, all three of us can say like we've talked about how
• 1:21:44
  occasionally that feels like Blizzard doesn't really want us
• 1:21:48
  to play the game, which is it's a really hard balance to block.
• 1:21:52
  And you know, as somebody who was around for early World of
• 1:21:55
  Warcraft and saw how, you know, if it's the, the grinding
• 1:21:59
  dopamine, like it drives the mission, like you wouldn't
• 1:22:02
  believe, you know, I, I appreciate that they're pulling
• 1:22:04
  back and I've said in many, many episodes, it's not a new take of
• 1:22:07
  mine. I know that.
• 1:22:09
  But I, I think things that feel useful and fun to do would
• 1:22:16
  probably keep me more engaged. And I do feel like it kind of
• 1:22:19
  got to the point where I was like, oh, I have a few hours to
• 1:22:21
  log into World of Warcraft and I log in and I would just like
• 1:22:24
  look around and be like, maybe I'm gonna read a book.
• 1:22:29
  Like I don't actually know what to do right now.
• 1:22:35
  OK. So then, Sean, what about you?
• 1:22:38
  Your your non instance content from day-to-day?
• 1:22:43
  Was it fulfilling or were you like when you logged in, you
• 1:22:46
  were jumping into a dungeon, you're jumping into a raid, or
• 1:22:49
  you were, you already had something?
• 1:22:52
  I like deck boxes for my week and my non non instance content
• 1:22:57
  could be wrapped up in two hours on Tuesdays though.
• 1:23:00
  For me that's a 10. That's a 10 out of 10.
• 1:23:03
  There's no requirement to log in every day and grind islands.
• 1:23:07
  There's no requirement for me to run soup on 45 different alts.
• 1:23:11
  There's no, you know, and at the start of the expansion we had
• 1:23:16
  like the fun. Everybody's zooming around to
• 1:23:18
  rares and world events, and that was great.
• 1:23:22
  I really enjoyed that. Everybody did a big dirt farm.
• 1:23:24
  My friend Sofa and I, she literally carried me through
• 1:23:26
  dirt farms because she's exceptionally fast at the game
• 1:23:29
  and I am. It's really slower.
• 1:23:33
  Oh, that was great. And then once we hit the season,
• 1:23:35
  like Lex mentioned it let her raid log sooner.
• 1:23:39
  I didn't raid log. I still logged in every day and
• 1:23:41
  did just did dungeons and hang out, but I didn't have that
• 1:23:45
  requirement. There was no you have to do this
• 1:23:49
  whether you enjoy it or not, like Tor gas, you have to do
• 1:23:52
  this whether you enjoy it or not Island expeditions, you have to
• 1:23:56
  do this whether you enjoy it or not.
• 1:23:58
  That doesn't exist anymore, and I don't think it exists in war
• 1:24:02
  within. That's great for me.
• 1:24:03
  I like that I can log in on a Tuesday and pick up my quests,
• 1:24:07
  go do one world event each and I'm done Ski.
• 1:24:11
  That is great for me. I don't need that.
• 1:24:14
  I get I get what you're saying how you want to something.
• 1:24:16
  I just want to log in and just be right.
• 1:24:19
  But I for me, I can, I can go and I can farm herbs instead if
• 1:24:23
  I get that itch. But if I'm logging into the
• 1:24:26
  game, I typically want to be doing a dungeon, which is why
• 1:24:28
  this last week, it's funny because you started your
• 1:24:31
  consortium this last week, but this last week has been so hard
• 1:24:33
  for me because there's no point in doing dungeons.
• 1:24:37
  I know we're days away from affixes not exist.
• 1:24:40
  Like this week is a sanguine week.
• 1:24:43
  Those like I'm like, what do I I'm logging in.
• 1:24:45
  I don't I don't level alts. My characters are all 70.
• 1:24:49
  I don't want to build an alt army.
• 1:24:52
  I've got all the cosmetics from this event.
• 1:24:54
  I've got all the cosmetics from Remix.
• 1:24:56
  What? We're not we stopped rating two
• 1:24:58
  weeks ago. It's like, what am I doing when
• 1:25:00
  I log in here? I don't know how many.
• 1:25:03
  Like yesterday I spent four hours getting all the mole
• 1:25:06
  machine locations on an old, which isn't probably something
• 1:25:10
  that should have taken me 4 hours, but sofa wasn't there to
• 1:25:13
  carry me and like, as I mentioned, I'm very slow.
• 1:25:17
  Yeah. So I like that.
• 1:25:17
  I think that's, that's what I want though.
• 1:25:19
  That's my, I don't, I want the world events to be optional and
• 1:25:24
  if they're not fun, be fast. And they were fast and.
• 1:25:30
  I think optional is great. Sorry.
• 1:25:32
  I do think optional is great and I think they have done optional
• 1:25:36
  in a way that has been fantastic.
• 1:25:39
  Like I loved the blue dragonfly, we just talked about that.
• 1:25:43
  Utterly optional. You don't have to do it, but the
• 1:25:46
  experience is rewarding. I would love more of that, even
• 1:25:50
  if the lore, the story behind it is what is the reason to do it.
• 1:25:56
  I felt that like the stuff that failed to quite reach that level
• 1:26:01
  was when they threw in the archivist dig and it was just
• 1:26:06
  like, I guess I'd do it because there's a mountain there.
• 1:26:09
  But as soon as that mount is done, I am out.
• 1:26:12
  I am out 3000 like goodbye right when they do something like the
• 1:26:22
  snail race where again it's something completely optional.
• 1:26:26
  But like I could go back day after day and it didn't have to
• 1:26:29
  be every day. I could take a couple days off
• 1:26:32
  in between and stuff, but as long as I eventually completed
• 1:26:35
  enough days I would get that mount.
• 1:26:37
  I thought that was relatively good.
• 1:26:39
  I think more of that when they were not doing more of the
• 1:26:42
  mandatory stuff like so I don't mean for it to be like bring
• 1:26:46
  back the Azerite power so I have to full clear the entire map of
• 1:26:52
  Azerite every day, which I did. I am looking for stuff that's
• 1:26:58
  like I can work towards something that I enjoy or that I
• 1:27:01
  think is is cool but isn't done in like half an hour if that
• 1:27:10
  makes sense. Yeah, I, I do want to say I talk
• 1:27:14
  a big game about like, you know, I didn't feel like I needed to
• 1:27:17
  log in, so I did. I do also remember in Shadow
• 1:27:19
  Lands, like crying on the phone with one of the other officers
• 1:27:22
  because I was so behind and I didn't know how to catch up.
• 1:27:25
  And I was so overwhelmed. I was like, I was like on the
• 1:27:27
  verge of being fat. And again, I was having real
• 1:27:29
  life stuff going on. It was complicated.
• 1:27:31
  Like it was not just World of Warcraft, but I like, I also am
• 1:27:35
  not saying I want like, yeah, like necessary grinding to the
• 1:27:40
  extent where like, yeah, if you're not on every single day,
• 1:27:43
  you're not able to keep up and you're not able to to maintain
• 1:27:48
  the game at the level that you need to maintain it at to do
• 1:27:50
  content. OK, the last thing about the
• 1:27:56
  outdoor content, the stuff that I think was absolutely fantastic
• 1:28:00
  and Dragon Fight and is something new to Dragon Fight,
• 1:28:04
  is these world events that they threw in right at the beginning
• 1:28:08
  of the expansion. I loved, I loved just the
• 1:28:12
  outdoor world for so many things.
• 1:28:14
  It was doing the soup and everybody coming in for the soup
• 1:28:18
  and clearing through it endless. Yes, yeah, yes, yeah.
• 1:28:21
  That was amazing and so much fun.
• 1:28:25
  It's something that I think I will remember years down the
• 1:28:27
  line. Similarly, I loved when there
• 1:28:31
  were particular rares that dropped a little bit better
• 1:28:34
  items than anybody else and there were just raid groups that
• 1:28:38
  would descend like Locust. And I am sorry to whatever boss
• 1:28:43
  that was just gone. Sucked all the loot out of him,
• 1:28:48
  flew off to the next one and his and the guy's just like, hey, I
• 1:28:52
  lost, I lost Gary on the phone. What's going on?
• 1:28:55
  Looks out the window. Where's the sun?
• 1:28:58
  Goodbye. It was it was a great experience
• 1:29:03
  and I hope to see that again in the War Within.
• 1:29:07
  I'm worried about it though, because this was something that
• 1:29:10
  Zerlich Caverns did quite well and then they stomped on it.
• 1:29:15
  This was something that was done in the Forbidden Reach, which
• 1:29:19
  was a lot of fun and I enjoyed that, but then in Emeritusil the
• 1:29:25
  rares just had no bite. I don't recall really pushing
• 1:29:30
  for many rares and not having, and I specifically remember not
• 1:29:34
  having that swarm. The most of a raid group you
• 1:29:37
  would have was the seed farming before they nerfed that into the
• 1:29:41
  ground. So.
• 1:29:44
  So bring it back Blizzard. We those rares, they don't
• 1:29:47
  deserve to live. They deserve to give me their
• 1:29:50
  loot. There's there's nothing like
• 1:29:53
  when people in World of Warcraft come together and just like
• 1:29:56
  don't know each other, but just have fun together that you can
• 1:29:59
  consistently the soup. I remember very early Legion,
• 1:30:03
  just like running around to all of the little events and like
• 1:30:05
  there were half the people were Horde and they didn't punish you
• 1:30:08
  for playing alongside Horde and like you were just like bopping
• 1:30:11
  along. It was the time of your life and
• 1:30:12
  you like kind of like waited for your friends to come tag things.
• 1:30:14
  Even though they weren't your friends, they didn't know you.
• 1:30:16
  They were your friends, but they were they were my friends.
• 1:30:18
  They were my best friends. I've never spoken to them.
• 1:30:19
  Don't remember their name. We were best that those are the
• 1:30:23
  like World of Warcraft vibes that we all remember.
• 1:30:26
  I think forever. Yeah, dragon fight has been
• 1:30:32
  amazing. Sean, what about?
• 1:30:35
  You I love it when I it's funny because shadow Lands happened at
• 1:30:38
  a time of my life it was the worst of the last two years of
• 1:30:43
  my time in the Navy. I was leaving for health issues
• 1:30:47
  and issues with like the culture and I just wasn't in the happy
• 1:30:51
  spot. A lot of transitioning
• 1:30:53
  happening. Dragonflight started in the
• 1:30:56
  house that I live in now, in the town that I live in now with the
• 1:30:58
  partner that I have now. And it has just been like, you
• 1:31:04
  know, Alex Strauss I think says Azeroth is healing and it is
• 1:31:07
  felt like my life was healing with Azeroth.
• 1:31:09
  You know what I mean? World of Warcraft, it's crazy to
• 1:31:11
  me how like, art imitates life and how my life was so tied to
• 1:31:16
  like the way that the game sort of went and Dragonfly was a
• 1:31:21
  banger. And things have been really good
• 1:31:23
  for the last two years. But hopefully that that carries
• 1:31:26
  through the War Within and I just need some more events that
• 1:31:30
  I can AFK and I'll be happy I got to know Manny.
• 1:31:34
  How much does it bother you that I sometimes don't engage with
• 1:31:37
  those as much as you would like? It actually doesn't bother me.
• 1:31:43
  At all. It's a fun bit.
• 1:31:44
  It's a fun bit. But I have also AFK in some
• 1:31:50
  events too and I just think like Shawn if Shawn could see me.
• 1:31:53
  Now, that said, I have to agree Dragonflight in terms of meeting
• 1:32:03
  you, Shawn and have you come on to this show has been such a
• 1:32:07
  highlight. And I wasn't that down on Shadow
• 1:32:12
  lands, like I, I felt the story had its issues and all the
• 1:32:16
  criticisms that there was there. But through Shadow Lands was
• 1:32:23
  when I started watching a, a show that had shoe boots that
• 1:32:31
  had Warcraft stats and had Lex. And I got to meet Lex through
• 1:32:36
  that. And then as soon as that show
• 1:32:40
  went about its business, I just like slid into Lexus DMS and
• 1:32:44
  like platonically let's do something.
• 1:32:49
  And so like, I have a lot of good memories of like World of
• 1:32:54
  Warcraft and Dragonflight has been such a plus to that.
• 1:32:58
  Lex, I'm gonna let you have the final word here.
• 1:33:01
  Oh, God, after that, you're gonna give like this, beautiful,
• 1:33:05
  gorgeous, like, both of you are gonna give all this like
• 1:33:08
  amazing, meaningful, like here's why this meant so much to me.
• 1:33:11
  And then you're gonna pass it to me and I'm gonna be like I.
• 1:33:14
  It was. Yeah.
• 1:33:14
  No, no, no, no. This like, I love Dragonfly.
• 1:33:18
  I love you guys. I love the community.
• 1:33:22
  We have Blizzard so excited. I'm so hopeful.
• 1:33:31
  I am also seeing the community so joyful and hopeful, which is
• 1:33:34
  really, really incredible. And ah, I got good vibes going
• 1:33:42
  into War Within and I got a good, beautiful podcast game
• 1:33:45
  going to War Within. So even if it sucks.
• 1:33:47
  We're gonna have to lot of rage bait, but until next time, guys,
• 1:33:57
  may all your hits be crits. And if you guys look on your
• 1:34:02
  feed, there will be a second episode being released
• 1:34:06
  simultaneously as this episode where I'm going to be sitting
• 1:34:09
  down with so, so breezy and talking about going into the war
• 1:34:14
  within and how in the world we can get our heads around
• 1:34:17
  professions. But look for that.
• 1:34:19
  And we'll be back next week when we are hopefully level 80.
• 1:34:24
  I'm going to say at least two out of the three of us is.
• 1:34:27
  But Sean says he's the slowest leveler.
• 1:34:28
  I'm actually saying it's Lex later guys.