Latest / For Azeroth!: A World of Warcraft Podcast / #262 - For Azeroth!: “Optimally Optional Content”

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#262 - For Azeroth!: “Optimally Optional Content” · For Azeroth!: A World of Warcraft Podcast

• 0:00
  10 point 1.7 has been announced for September 5th, but before we
• 0:04
  get there we're going to go back and talk about 10 point 1.5 and
• 0:09
  everything that we have got and might have missed in this latest
• 0:13
  patch. For Calendar, for the burning
• 0:18
  region Organeus has not died. For the Lich King.
• 0:25
  For the Sindora. For the Alliance.
• 0:31
  For the Horn for Azeroth, Hello, and welcome back to another
• 0:37
  episode of For Azeroth. I am back from the dead, and I
• 0:41
  am not alone. I am joined with Halleonics.
• 0:44
  Halleonics, thank you for joining me today.
• 0:47
  Thank you for having me. Can you tell people who may not
• 0:51
  be aware of you a little bit about yourself?
• 0:53
  My name is Halle Onyx. I've been playing World of
• 0:55
  Warcraft since it launched in 2004.
• 0:58
  I was previously a Restoration Shaman main, now I play a
• 1:01
  Preservation of Ochre. I am an officer in Nat 20 where
• 1:05
  we run AOTC KSM. I'm also a guide in the Dungeon
• 1:09
  Dojo, and honestly, I just love creating spaces in Warcraft
• 1:12
  where people can have a good gaming experience.
• 1:15
  Yeah, and outside of the game, like, I've seen some of your
• 1:18
  stuff with the five oh first and that.
• 1:19
  So you really love getting into various cultures?
• 1:23
  Oh yeah, tell me honestly, I know it's a little off top of
• 1:27
  it. Tell me a little bit about the
• 1:28
  five. Oh, first, cuz I like, you know,
• 1:29
  I've heard and I've seen some pictures, but I never really got
• 1:32
  it. So the five oh First Legion is a
• 1:34
  Star Wars costuming group that does charity through movie
• 1:39
  quality costumes. So I have a Stormtrooper and I
• 1:42
  also have a Tuscan Raider. So we will make costumes at the
• 1:47
  qualifications of what they look like in the movies, and then
• 1:49
  we'll go do charity work. So we'll work with Make A Wish
• 1:51
  Foundation. We'll do 5K runs for Alzheimer's
• 1:55
  Research, pet adoptions, just pretty much anything that is
• 1:58
  devoted to charity and community.
• 2:00
  I've been doing that for about 9 or 10 years now, and that is
• 2:04
  awesome. And then of course, something
• 2:06
  that you and I have in common is that we're both part of the
• 2:09
  Dungeon JoJo, But I haven't really talked about that on the
• 2:11
  show, so I'm gonna use you as an excuse to talk about that.
• 2:14
  Can you just tell us a little bit about that?
• 2:15
  Absolutely. So this is a project that Wo Chi
• 2:18
  want the Dojo Head came up with. He's like look I'm I want to
• 2:22
  create a place, a community on the European side and the North
• 2:27
  American side where people who are afraid to get into keys
• 2:30
  because maybe they don't know how to run mythic plus dungeons.
• 2:34
  Maybe they need help a little bit help with their.
• 2:35
  Respect. Maybe they're just kind of
• 2:36
  looking for like a place that people will help them with these
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  things. They're nervous, they've had bad
• 2:43
  experiences, pick up groups. So Wochi approached a group of
• 2:46
  people a couple of years ago and said, look, I want to create
• 2:49
  this space, Would you be interested in helping?
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  And it's just grown from there and started with maybe a few
• 2:55
  people, a couple of guides who are like, yes, we'll go ahead
• 2:57
  and do this. And now it's just, it grows
• 3:00
  exponentially every day, every day, every time I look at the
• 3:02
  Discord, I'm like, wow, there's another group of people that
• 3:05
  have joined us. So there's we do, we'll do
• 3:09
  rating, We'll teach people how. Here's the latest rate if you
• 3:12
  wanna go. Run through it.
• 3:14
  Here's the mechanics of all the raids, the boss fights, and
• 3:16
  we'll help people. You know, do you need help
• 3:18
  learning demonology, spec, warlock, that sort of stuff?
• 3:22
  It's just a place for people to have, again, a positive gaming
• 3:25
  experience and not feel like the feedback.
• 3:28
  The only feedback they're going to be getting is somebody
• 3:30
  quitting on the group and saying get good.
• 3:33
  Yeah. And so that's one of the big
• 3:36
  reasons that I really want to jump in and join with the Duncan
• 3:39
  Dojo, because I like building up people.
• 3:43
  I like people learning the game. And like you said, it's there's
• 3:47
  a lot of negative experience with the Keystone dungeons where
• 3:52
  you're trying to learn. And before this expansion, if
• 3:55
  you jumped in anywhere other than season one, people are
• 3:58
  like, well, why don't you already know this?
• 4:00
  Exactly right. Exactly.
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  And not everybody has the same amount of time to play or knows
• 4:05
  where to look for the resources on on researching these
• 4:08
  dungeons. Or, you know, maybe.
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  Maybe they just haven't gotten to that one yet.
• 4:12
  I mean, there's stuff that they not everybody can play for 8 to
• 4:16
  16 hours a day. Sometimes they only get to play
• 4:18
  for a couple hours a week. Sometimes they don't know all
• 4:21
  the resources out there that you can look up you know learn about
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  how to run the mechanics or the the boss fights or what is a
• 4:26
  week aura that sort of stuff. Yeah.
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  And so one of the big things that's been happening with 10
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  point 1.5 has been the mega dungeon.
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  And so last episode, which was a little while ago, I got a chance
• 4:41
  to sit down with two developers and talk about the mega Dungeon.
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  And we have had some time to like actually dig in and play it
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  for ourselves. And so now we're actually
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  getting to know what the mega dungeon's about and what's your
• 4:56
  initial impressions. So my initial impressions before
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  it launched, going through the developer's notes and hearing
• 5:04
  what they were talking about, I knew this was gonna be a
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  challenging dungeon. They wanted it to mirror like a
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  mini a miniature raid. So that means that you're gonna
• 5:12
  have a little bit more coordination.
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  It's nothing that you can kind of walk in there and just brute
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  force DPS it and be done with it.
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  And I was really excited about that.
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  I love that idea. I like stuff where.
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  You can't just tank and spank. I like, you know, let's do this
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  mechanic or this is different. OK, that's cool over there.
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  So it was knowing that I knew it was gonna be challenging.
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  I've only run the dungeon twice and the second time I ran it, I
• 5:39
  got more feedback about it. As far as like the design from
• 5:43
  like a personal experience, I was able the first time I ran
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  it. I ran with a like a seasoned
• 5:48
  tank who just was like, yeah, we're just gonna do this and
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  Yolo, here we go. Which is fun for some people.
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  I don't mind, you know, doing the hands on being thrown in the
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  water, but that's not really great way for everybody to
• 6:00
  learn. So the second time we went in,
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  you know, I had to remember, OK, for the strats, for this boss,
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  for this. OK, Strats, for this boss, for
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  that. OK, all right.
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  We do this, we do that, you know, And then going from there.
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  So that really showed me how much coordination and
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  communication you have to do in this dungeon, which?
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  Can be a pro and a con. Mostly it's a pro because you're
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  learning. It's supposed to be a mini raid,
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  so you're supposed to be working with your little raid team to
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  get everything done. And because none of the fights
• 6:29
  are that brute force DPS, you really had to do all the
• 6:33
  mechanics. You could not skip over a
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  mechanic because then you would wipe the group.
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  So that added a layer of OK, you have to stay on focus like this
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  is we can't just. Top all your cool downs and blow
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  the boss up. I mean, there's some fights were
• 6:50
  like you did that, like the last phase of it, but you could not
• 6:53
  just tunnel, you had to do the mechanics every time or else the
• 6:58
  group would probably probably wipe from that.
• 7:01
  Yes, that is very true. The way that they've tuned it is
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  that if somebody, any person in your group ignores a mechanic or
• 7:13
  fails to execute a mechanic, it is going to cause something that
• 7:17
  you may not recover from the first boss, just those stomps
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  and then going back in for the small circle.
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  Missing that small circle. Unless people are topped up and
• 7:28
  at a relatively high item level, it will just one shot people.
• 7:32
  Absolutely, yeah. And there are examples of that
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  through pretty much all the bosses.
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  I think the second boss is really a pug wiper, because Yep,
• 7:42
  you can't be saved by somebody, You have to be executing those
• 7:45
  mechanics yourself. Yep, I that's the feedback that
• 7:49
  I got from a lot of friends who have attempted it is they they
• 7:54
  went in, they managed to get past that first boss and then
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  you get to the second one and they couldn't because of
• 7:58
  whatever mutually because they couldn't.
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  They weren't doing the mechanics.
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  Somebody wasn't doing it properly.
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  And so their group would would break up.
• 8:07
  Yeah. And so I put out a Twitter poll
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  and we had a pretty decent response.
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  Over 100 different people responded and put in their
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  criteria. And while I was surprised by the
• 8:22
  results, you were not so surprised.
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  So to give people listening a breakdown, we had the number one
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  response was at 40. A little over 46% people had
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  gone through and completed the dungeon, but the second closest
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  response was 45% of people who have never even attempted the
• 8:43
  dungeon. Between the remaining 10% ish
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  that was there, there were some people who had completed the
• 8:53
  dungeon on the Quote UN Quote Hard mode, which is like a
• 8:58
  deathless run while collecting extra items.
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  That is impressive to me, like just that, going through that
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  dungeon. And yeah, that's impressive, but
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  that was less than 5% of the the remaining, the remaining
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  percentage and then there was roughly about 4%.
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  It was 3 point something percent that had gone in and had only
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  been able to complete a couple of bosses.
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  So it seems like once you actually get into it, so the
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  chances of getting through all of those bosses is relatively
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  high if you make a commitment to it.
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  But truly it seems like it is a experience where you have to
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  read the dungeon journal or have prior knowledge and execute
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  those mechanics. Once you get the mechanics, you
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  should succeed. Right.
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  And that's part of the challenge of it.
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  And so it didn't surprise me that half of the respondents
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  hadn't touched it. I think because a lot of people
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  are hearing how difficult it is and the time commitment of it.
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  I mean, it takes you 2 1/2 hours, 3 hours to do it, usually
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  two hours at a minimum. So you gotta be able to sit down
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  for that. Yes, you can come back and
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  complete it at another time, but also.
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  Do you have, you know, as a person with their play time who
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  may be limited? Do you have that time to come
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  back or not? So I think a lot of people have
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  seen it as a daunting thing to join in.
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  They've heard that it's it takes not, I don't say it takes a
• 10:33
  certain item level, but the higher item level then the
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  easier it is for you to take a hit if something goes awry.
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  And so they're kind of like, well, maybe I only have like a
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  420 item level. I don't know if I can do that.
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  Versus, you know, some people who are going in there with the
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  437 item level and thinking that this is going to be easier.
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  And then also still getting hit with a mechanic because they
• 10:54
  didn't do it right and going, oh, that wasn't easy, that was
• 10:56
  punishing. Yeah, to your point, the number
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  one comment that I got from people who took the time to give
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  extra response that had attempted it or we're waiting
• 11:06
  for it to come to heroic because it's going to be split into two
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  parts and being heroic as soon as 10 point 1.7.
• 11:14
  But they had said, yeah, I'm getting bounced because I only
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  have an item level of 424, I don't have a 430 item level,
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  average item level and that's why they were getting bounced.
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  In your in your opinion, what would you say is like a
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  reasonable cutoff? Because, you know, sometimes
• 11:35
  people ask for a little more than what I would consider
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  reasonable. So I actually ran like I ran
• 11:40
  this dungeon twice. I ran with one group where my
• 11:44
  tank was very geared for it, and I ran with one group where my
• 11:48
  tank was not very geared for it. I also ran with a group where we
• 11:51
  had a relatively higher item level.
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  We had like four 30s in our group and then I had one run
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  where I ran with someone who was running a 422 I think.
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  And the thing was, is that as long as people did the
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  mechanics. We were able to keep everybody
• 12:09
  pretty much alive. The only time that I ran into
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  like a bit of a problem, I'm the healer so this is coming from my
• 12:14
  healer standpoint. The only time I ran into a bit
• 12:16
  of a little problem is if there was a tank Buster mechanic and
• 12:19
  my lower geared item level tank didn't have a mitigation up in
• 12:24
  time. So then for then maybe he took a
• 12:27
  bit more of a hit or you know my DPS that was a little lower item
• 12:32
  level, forgot to get out of a circle in time and it clipped.
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  Slipped them as they're running and so therefore okay they, it
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  took a lot more health than would have taken of somebody
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  else. So I think that there's the item
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  level requirement definitely helps with regards to your
• 12:48
  health pool and you're hopefully your damage which you're able to
• 12:53
  pump out with that. But I don't feel like, you know
• 12:56
  you have to take somebody you have to take an entire 440 team
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  out there. You could probably do it with
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  the like the 4:28 to four 30s. If you are just doing your
• 13:07
  mechanics properly, you have, you know, your flasks and your
• 13:09
  oils and your, you know, enhancements out there.
• 13:13
  Yeah, I mean there there's definitely a kind of a a
• 13:20
  increased separation in item levels, like when you have
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  people who are running 440 item levels, right, like mid four 40s
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  and stuff. Those are the people who are
• 13:29
  really pushing, and so they've got all their flasks and stuff
• 13:32
  and they're already bringing that to bear.
• 13:34
  We have people who are at closer to like let's say 410 and such.
• 13:39
  Those people may decide that they're going to skip particular
• 13:43
  enchantments or gems and such and not have the best gear
• 13:46
  because they're going to replace it with higher gear and it it
• 13:50
  creates a larger divide than just the strict item level would
• 13:54
  tell you. And so when I've run this and I
• 13:59
  believe it was two weeks ago or or last week that I ran and I
• 14:03
  had a 413 item level tank and we got through it.
• 14:09
  I think that's more of an exception than the rule.
• 14:12
  And I think that's kind of why people push towards the higher
• 14:15
  item levels. But I think it's exactly like
• 14:17
  you said, if you can do those mechanics, if you're paying
• 14:20
  attention, you should be able to get through it.
• 14:23
  Of course, it's going to be obviously a lot easier when you
• 14:27
  have people with much higher item levels, but it's not the
• 14:31
  strict cutoff then. Exactly, yeah.
• 14:34
  I think though there's a community.
• 14:36
  Misperception is what I'll call it, of you have to bring that
• 14:40
  higher item levels so that you can just brute force your way
• 14:43
  through it. And this dungeon is not one of
• 14:45
  those things like you can't just you can't treat it like a key.
• 14:50
  Where you're just going to blow your cool downs through all the
• 14:53
  trash or the boss and then that's gonna be it.
• 14:55
  Like it's there's a lot more coordination to it.
• 14:58
  So there's there's stuff where you have to think about, you
• 15:02
  know, yeah, I can use my, I can use my cool downs during this
• 15:05
  part, but I can't. I can't tunnel.
• 15:09
  And that's, I think that's the big thing that the community at
• 15:12
  a large will. Forget is that they want that
• 15:16
  higher item level because they think that it means that you can
• 15:19
  get carried or you can tunnel, but that's not the case in this
• 15:22
  dungeon at all, and I like that. I like forcing players to do
• 15:26
  something a little different where they can't just look at
• 15:32
  the numbers on their DPS meters and say look at that I did that.
• 15:36
  You have to go through and do your mechanics.
• 15:40
  So we already said that second boss causes a struggle for a lot
• 15:43
  of people who managed to get through that first boss.
• 15:46
  What would you say is one of the toughest bosses in this dungeon?
• 15:51
  Morchi was the next one, cuz the first two required that
• 15:57
  coordination and we're kind of like the gatekeeper bosses is if
• 15:59
  you kind of wanna look at it that way just to kind of set you
• 16:02
  up of hey, by the way this is what you're gonna be up against
• 16:05
  for the next 8 bosses so don't don't get you know.
• 16:08
  Thinking that this is gonna get easier now, it does get a little
• 16:11
  easier as on some of the mid range bosses like the Blight of
• 16:14
  Galacon was a easier fight. Some of the other ones get, you
• 16:18
  know, a bit easier, but we get to Morchi.
• 16:21
  Morchi was another one that I just.
• 16:22
  I struggled with and I actually ended up I I found a lot of
• 16:27
  feedback on that fight from other people saying that this
• 16:31
  fight was just not a fun, intuitive fight to do with so.
• 16:37
  By fun and intuitive, we're talking about more of like kind
• 16:41
  of like the the design of things.
• 16:43
  When you're designing encounters, you want them to be
• 16:45
  challenging, but you want them to be fun.
• 16:46
  You don't want your players to feel as though they're being
• 16:49
  overwhelmed or it's impossible for them to get through this
• 16:53
  this encounter. You want them to feel as though
• 16:55
  they are able to progress to that reward, to that defeat of
• 16:58
  the boss. The Morchi fight does not give
• 17:01
  you a lot of the feedback or a lot of that constructive fun.
• 17:06
  Through the fight and there's a couple of reasons why.
• 17:08
  So First off is the mechanic where you have to trap your
• 17:13
  alternate self in the sand traps throughout the arena.
• 17:16
  There are never enough sand traps to trap all of the all
• 17:21
  five players alternate selves and you have to do this.
• 17:25
  You have to trap them thing at least twice.
• 17:27
  Each time one of them comes up before they go away.
• 17:31
  So that automatically means that one person in your party is
• 17:34
  going to be. Fighting their alternate self
• 17:37
  around for most of let's say 30 seconds, and I don't remember
• 17:41
  all of the timers very well, but you would have that.
• 17:45
  You have one person having to kite and chances are it's going
• 17:48
  to be like your healer or your tank, which is not really a lot
• 17:51
  of fun for either of those roles to have to do.
• 17:54
  The second mechanic is when she summons her alternate selves
• 17:58
  around the edges of the room and you have to find which one is
• 18:01
  the correct one now. That's a great mechanic and fun,
• 18:06
  but I feel like the time limit on finding that finding the true
• 18:10
  morchi is really hard to do. It's a very short time limit and
• 18:14
  you're looking across an arena and you're trying to find the
• 18:17
  one morchi that doesn't have a hat.
• 18:19
  And to make things even worse, there's one another Morchi that
• 18:22
  has a very tiny hat. On her head, that crown.
• 18:26
  Yes, So a lot of people will be like it's that one, and they'll
• 18:29
  dash to the crowned Morchi, only to discover that it was actually
• 18:33
  the other Morchi across the room and the sand Breath goes off and
• 18:38
  you're dead. So what I saw from various
• 18:42
  people who were running this dungeon.
• 18:45
  What they started doing is they started sacrificing a DPS pretty
• 18:50
  much at the start of the fight before the alternate use came
• 18:53
  out. They would let the three DPS go
• 18:57
  to town and then they would say all right, one of you sacrifice
• 19:01
  yourself and therefore that gave you enough puddles to handle the
• 19:06
  sand trap mechanic. But then you still had to handle
• 19:10
  the other mechanic. And because of its, you know,
• 19:12
  its RNG nature, because it involves communication, you know
• 19:17
  it was it helps to be on Discord or some voice client to to yell,
• 19:20
  oh, it's it's the it's the blue diamond, it's the blue or
• 19:22
  whatever, you know, get across the room to that one if that
• 19:26
  helped. But you still like if you didn't
• 19:28
  have a mobility, if you were on the other side of the room, If
• 19:31
  you just happen to be at the wrong place, the wrong time,
• 19:33
  because you were staring at a health bar trying to get a heel
• 19:35
  off you, chances were you could not get to the correct side of
• 19:39
  the room. In time.
• 19:41
  And so you ended up dying. The second time I ran this
• 19:44
  dungeon, we actually only completed that fight because we
• 19:47
  had two warriors who basically self healed them the way through
• 19:52
  the last 20% of the fight, which I was just like, this is not a
• 19:57
  way to do a fight. I don't like that idea at all.
• 20:00
  OK, so four people who are dealing with this fight.
• 20:09
  What would you say are helpful things to help them for?
• 20:13
  Helpful tips to help them through this.
• 20:15
  So I think there's setting using the markers to communicate cuz a
• 20:22
  lot of the add-ons like deadly boss mods and big woods will put
• 20:25
  the markers on the more cheese as they spawn.
• 20:28
  So using a voice client to communicate which one it is, is
• 20:33
  probably gonna be the easiest way of doing it.
• 20:36
  And then I've discovered that you didn't have to get to
• 20:39
  exactly the correct morchi. You just had to be mostly on its
• 20:43
  side of the room. And then the sand breath, you
• 20:46
  could avoid the conal of the sand breath.
• 20:47
  So at least you know you didn't have to get straight to that
• 20:50
  marker. If you were within like 20 to 30
• 20:53
  yards either way of that marker, then you were safe.
• 20:56
  You just kind of had to get to that side.
• 20:57
  So that helped out a lot. Being ready to move is another
• 21:01
  thing. It's a moving fight.
• 21:03
  It's it's not a fight where you're gonna be able to sit
• 21:06
  there and and just fire away or way along, way away on the boss.
• 21:10
  Get ready to move, watch your feet constantly.
• 21:12
  So it's again, none of these fights are brute force.
• 21:17
  You gotta sit there and do all the mechanics for it.
• 21:19
  But that's also great because none of the fights have enrage
• 21:21
  timers. So you can take as long as well,
• 21:24
  not as long as you need, but you can take a long time getting
• 21:27
  through these fights. And so I think that's.
• 21:30
  That that. I think that's the the biggest
• 21:32
  help would be that because I mean, if you wanna go with the
• 21:35
  Strat of sacrificing a DPS and therefore you know you don't
• 21:38
  have to have that fifth person kite around their other AD,
• 21:43
  that's an option. But I don't feel like that's
• 21:46
  good. I don't think that's good
• 21:48
  teamwork or good fun for the team, because then you have
• 21:50
  somebody who's just basically on the floor the entire time and
• 21:53
  that's no fun for that person, so.
• 21:55
  It was like my group found found it more fun to give it, put it
• 21:59
  in perspective. We saved we we saved Morchi and
• 22:01
  Deos for the last two and we found it more constructively fun
• 22:06
  wiping on Deos than we did Morchi.
• 22:09
  Like we got through morchi and we were just like we're done
• 22:12
  finally. And we were mad like we're just
• 22:14
  it didn't feel like victory. It just felt like anchor.
• 22:17
  And then we went to Deos and we ended up, you know, wiping a
• 22:20
  couple times. But we got that feedback of OK,
• 22:23
  ohh, we need to move. Clockwise or we need to move
• 22:26
  this way or we need to call out. You know we need to focus that
• 22:29
  ad we got that that feedback through failure that let us know
• 22:33
  do here's how to do better next time.
• 22:35
  The Morchi fight didn't really give us that.
• 22:37
  It was just basically up. You failed.
• 22:38
  Too bad. Yeah, I found that with the
• 22:42
  morchi. Fight it.
• 22:43
  I've had a paladin who was super nice and bubbled the healer so
• 22:48
  that the healer could like hold their ad for a bit and and work
• 22:53
  on it. But yeah, it it gets
• 22:56
  progressively worse. And it has felt that if you have
• 22:59
  one person who just sort of like, you know, lays down so
• 23:03
  that the traps can go longer, you get through that fight.
• 23:07
  I know that they have also made a change so that you have a
• 23:10
  little more time on that breath. Well that's good.
• 23:13
  It just felt too short like it was.
• 23:16
  I don't remember the the timing on it, but I want to say it was
• 23:18
  something like 8 seconds maybe which is.
• 23:22
  It sounds, you know, on paper a long time, but not really.
• 23:25
  Not when you're trying to scan through the room real quick and
• 23:29
  you know, look you oh wait, is this the crowned Morchi or is
• 23:31
  this the Nope, that's the Bunny Ear Morchi.
• 23:33
  Never mind. OK, so it's it.
• 23:35
  Actually, 8 seconds goes by really, really quick.
• 23:38
  Yeah. And I've also found that voice
• 23:40
  calms is so important for that fight.
• 23:43
  Just. But yeah, movement is such a
• 23:45
  huge part of that fight, like you were saying.
• 23:48
  I can't imagine how that fight's gonna be on the thick plus.
• 23:52
  Like if if it gets if when it gets added to the rotation, I'm
• 23:55
  like, Oh my gosh, I don't know how anybody's gonna do that
• 23:57
  fight on Mythic Plus. I believe it's going to get
• 24:00
  further nerfed. I have seen in multiple
• 24:03
  occasions where something will go from the Mega dungeon version
• 24:07
  to a Mythic Plus version and they will adjust it to be at a
• 24:13
  base level weaker than the Mythic version.
• 24:18
  That would probably because between that, like there's areas
• 24:21
  of time to dialogue, there's the gauntlet room where you have to
• 24:24
  have your your team rush through basically all dodgeball.
• 24:29
  I can't imagine trying to do that on Mythic Plus.
• 24:32
  OK Dodgeball. That, to me, is the hardest
• 24:35
  boss, and it's entirely. It is a very hard boss, but even
• 24:38
  that one's still kind of fun, cuz I mean you just it's just a
• 24:42
  bullet through a flock of doves. Go, I've.
• 24:45
  I've gone through it and the first time I was trying and I
• 24:50
  did this on stream, so it's probably on there, but the first
• 24:53
  time I did it fairly quickly. In some subsequent attempts,
• 24:57
  I've just been like, OK, I give up, wait till somebody else gets
• 24:59
  through and like summoned. Me through cuz yes, you just
• 25:03
  have some random times where you.
• 25:05
  I don't know, maybe I was more tired or more awake at certain
• 25:08
  points or jazzed up on coffee, but.
• 25:10
  The luck was on your side sometimes and sometimes no
• 25:13
  exactly. And so that to me is
• 25:16
  frustrating. It doesn't feel like I figured
• 25:18
  it out. It just feels like I got lucky
• 25:19
  this time and I haven't been able to replicate it.
• 25:23
  That is true. That is, yeah.
• 25:24
  The I can see how that could be frustrating, especially if you
• 25:28
  just for whatever reason you have somebody that can't make it
• 25:31
  through or nobody in your party can make it through but those.
• 25:35
  Things like that, like the Gauntlet room, the room right
• 25:38
  where you're opening the portals in the the sand pile with all
• 25:41
  the little the ads that open up the the sand and that's in your
• 25:45
  way. Yeah, all that sort of stuff.
• 25:46
  It's like, OK, that's, you know that that's got to be retuned
• 25:50
  for Mythic Plus, because, I mean there's there's just a lot of
• 25:53
  stuff. It's gonna be interesting to see
• 25:54
  what they're gonna have to retune from Mythic Plus, because
• 25:56
  there's just a lot to this dungeon being that it was, it
• 25:59
  was keyed to be a raid, like a raid style, I guess.
• 26:04
  And raids aren't meant to be run on a timer.
• 26:07
  Yeah, and I know Ali's yelling at me for not saying mega
• 26:11
  dungeon properly, but perhaps a better way of describing this is
• 26:15
  mini Raid. It is a five man raid and so
• 26:18
  I've been enjoying it a lot. With that said, do you have any
• 26:22
  closing thoughts on the Mega Dungeon?
• 26:24
  I am super, super intrigued as to what we're gonna do with the
• 26:27
  lore, the ending cinematic, with with all.
• 26:31
  I'm not gonna spoil any of it, but the ending cinematic.
• 26:33
  Just. I had.
• 26:34
  I was going, oh, man, where are we going with this?
• 26:37
  What's next? OK, all right.
• 26:39
  What's next? It was.
• 26:40
  It was hooked. I got hooked on it.
• 26:43
  Very nice. Talking about dungeons.
• 26:46
  One of the big things that has been on people's minds and in
• 26:51
  the conversation has actually been that five man tuning.
• 26:55
  And so we got a post out this week about changes that are
• 27:01
  going to be coming for tuning this coming week.
• 27:05
  And they are some big changes specifically geared towards five
• 27:11
  man content. So what people are being
• 27:14
  considered, what people have been calling the God comp, The
• 27:19
  composition that includes like an augmentation of Volker, the
• 27:23
  Guardian Druid, that Holy Paladin, the Fire Mage, and a a
• 27:30
  shadow priest to go through the through these dungeons, all
• 27:36
  parts of that have received some form of nerf.
• 27:40
  They've also brought up a couple of different classes that
• 27:43
  they're hoping can challenge these classes for their spot.
• 27:47
  So we've seen some buffs going for decays specifically on Holy.
• 27:53
  We have seen some buffs for warriors and Outlaw rogues, and
• 28:00
  I believe the last one was Hunter Marksman.
• 28:03
  Hunter also got some buffs. Right.
• 28:06
  In your, in your mind, have you felt that like that was the only
• 28:11
  comp or that comp was so much above everything else that
• 28:13
  everything else kind of paled in comparison?
• 28:17
  So class balance is one of the things that I'm least
• 28:19
  knowledgeable about, so I try to keep.
• 28:23
  I try to keep an eye on what's going on with a lot of this, but
• 28:25
  since I'm not pushing a lot of meta quote UN quote stuff.
• 28:30
  I I fall out of out of touch with what's going on.
• 28:33
  However, I did notice that there was that God Mode comp setup
• 28:38
  that was going through pretty much all of the the recent MDI
• 28:42
  and the great push. And that almost made it kind of
• 28:44
  boring because all you would see is the same.
• 28:47
  Mostly all the teams were the same setup and it was like, wow,
• 28:50
  I'd love to see something else, you know, let's see another spec
• 28:53
  in here. Let's see something else.
• 28:56
  Shine, you know? So I had a couple of thoughts
• 28:58
  about this. With class balance and the the
• 29:02
  nerves that are coming in, I feel like the the nerves were
• 29:05
  probably needed because you just had everyone settle into the
• 29:10
  same 5 cookie cutter. This is what we're going to
• 29:12
  bring to every key. And if you weren't in one of
• 29:15
  those specs, then you never made it into any of the higher keys
• 29:19
  because again, the communities. Preconception is that you have
• 29:23
  to be these things in order to be successful, which is
• 29:26
  incorrect. But you know, that's a whole
• 29:28
  nother can of worms to open up, so I'm glad to see that they
• 29:33
  they nerfed some of that in order to hopefully give other
• 29:37
  classes a chance to shine. But my only concern with that is
• 29:40
  that if you nerf the top level of of specs but you don't buff
• 29:48
  the others that are falling behind.
• 29:51
  Then basically all you've done is lock people out of doing 20
• 29:54
  eighths and 20 nines. And that's kind of, that's not
• 29:56
  really a whole lot of fun. So I'm glad to see that like
• 29:58
  Warrior got something added, Marksman, Hunter's got something
• 30:02
  added. The other one that was in there
• 30:04
  that I'm glad to see that some of them are being tuned, but I
• 30:07
  think that maybe there's some other tuning that will probably
• 30:10
  need to happen. And I'm but I'm really curious
• 30:12
  where we're going to be in a few weeks because the class
• 30:14
  balancing of Warcraft is always changing as far as like we can,
• 30:18
  you know. We can trend it and see, yeah,
• 30:21
  there's usually somebody usually certain specs that tend to rise
• 30:24
  to the talk. But then we start up, you know
• 30:25
  when we rebalance and and play around with the numbers a little
• 30:28
  bit, we see other specs unexpectedly maybe rise to the
• 30:32
  top. It would be nice to see unholy
• 30:33
  decay at the top more because I feel like just I don't ever see
• 30:38
  any any decays in anything. But I again that's just probably
• 30:42
  is the circles that I run in. So I would like to see others.
• 30:46
  I like see others shine. I would love seeing, you know,
• 30:48
  Enhancement Shaman Shine, because I think it would be fun.
• 30:52
  Yeah. And I think even though they're,
• 30:55
  you know, buffing and nerfing these damage numbers, I actually
• 30:59
  think that that's not really where the conversation is.
• 31:03
  Like, obviously that when they're speaking about Evokers
• 31:06
  and how much it provides to everybody else's damage, they
• 31:10
  know that that's not totality of the reason that augmentation is
• 31:14
  being brought. It's because of all the utility
• 31:18
  that's being brought. On top of that, it's the fact
• 31:20
  that, like, they make tanks tankier with their shield.
• 31:25
  It's the fact that they make the healers more effective because
• 31:27
  they're providing mainstat buffs there as well.
• 31:31
  And I think that when you're looking at these classes, some
• 31:35
  of the ones that are in that composition, they are doing so
• 31:40
  well, not just because of their damage, but because of like the
• 31:44
  the extreme utility that they're bringing in passives that
• 31:48
  they're bringing. And I think that's why you're
• 31:53
  you're likely to see some additional changes in line with
• 31:57
  that. A lot of what people have been
• 31:59
  saying with Season 2, and a lot of the conversations that have
• 32:03
  happened with Season 2 are actually around the utility.
• 32:07
  If you remember the first couple of weeks of Season 2, all those
• 32:12
  Death Knights and all those warriors were complaining about
• 32:15
  afflicted. And I'm forgetting the other
• 32:19
  one. Oh, incorporeal.
• 32:21
  Yeah, right, because they couldn't do anything about it.
• 32:25
  Warrior damage isn't horrible by any stretch of the imagination.
• 32:30
  They do amazing Aoe, but not being able to have any kind of
• 32:38
  counter for that affix was huge for them.
• 32:42
  Yep. And they ended up getting locked
• 32:43
  out of a lot of groups on those weeks because they had nothing
• 32:45
  to help with. Yeah, I think that priests, one
• 32:49
  of the big reasons that people were looking at priests wasn't
• 32:53
  just because of their damage, was because they could do a like
• 32:58
  mass dispel and clear off all that bursting and you could just
• 33:01
  move right on to the next pack and not have to slow your damage
• 33:04
  or anything. And those sort of abilities are
• 33:10
  what's causing these comps to be so strong.
• 33:14
  The fact that they're so little melee in here, I think it's
• 33:22
  because Holy Paladin is has an interrupt roughly around the
• 33:27
  range of melee, right? So they're able to to pull that
• 33:31
  in. I think that Druids would not be
• 33:36
  as pervasive if you were relying on them to bring a melee.
• 33:41
  That would be more of a reason to bring in like so many of the
• 33:45
  other tanks that have a much shorter sorry that have a short
• 33:49
  cooldown interrupt if that was the way, way to go about it.
• 33:52
  So I think the conversation now shifting towards what utility
• 33:59
  people are bringing, like it's a it's very interesting and it's a
• 34:03
  different change than it used to be.
• 34:05
  And once they can start nailing that down, it will be it.
• 34:09
  It's just such a cool week. Because I know it sucks when you
• 34:15
  don't have like the perfect counter to an affix, but I would
• 34:20
  like the comp to sort of change a bit from week to week based on
• 34:26
  the affix. So that instead of not having
• 34:30
  any ability to count or something, warriors had a
• 34:34
  limited ability to count or something.
• 34:35
  And so it's not like they're useless, but they're not as good
• 34:39
  as something else. So when we have the incorporeal
• 34:44
  as a shaman, I can hex, but a pallet has an instant cast and
• 34:48
  it's it's more effective to bring the pallet.
• 34:51
  It doesn't mean people will reject me from the groups
• 34:53
  because I still have something towards it.
• 34:57
  Right. I think that the conversation
• 35:00
  around utilities has definitely been with, especially with the
• 35:03
  the new ethics that's coming in has definitely been something
• 35:06
  that keeps evolving as Season 2 comes out and we Start learning
• 35:11
  like Oh yeah, like the like the Warriors being the best example
• 35:14
  of that. Like, oh, we want to be able to
• 35:16
  to give them some way. To interrupt so that they're
• 35:20
  given this way to handle these things so that they're actually
• 35:22
  included and they don't feel excluded or you know somebody
• 35:24
  prefer bringing in the priests. And I'm glad that that I'm glad
• 35:28
  that that conversation is happening.
• 35:30
  And overall I'm glad that the class balance conversation is so
• 35:35
  quick. It seems like, you know we're
• 35:37
  getting a lot of even little tweaks here and there.
• 35:39
  We're getting them quickly throughout the.
• 35:42
  Throughout the the season actually through all of
• 35:44
  Dragonfly, you know, we know that there's some classes that
• 35:46
  still need entire reworks and that have been, you know put
• 35:49
  off. I think Rogue is is up for an
• 35:51
  entirely new rework. But it's still nice to see them
• 35:54
  working through and tweaking here and there and here and
• 35:56
  there to see you know, OK, this we can do this one better or you
• 36:00
  know, we need to adjust this just a little bit more.
• 36:02
  Yeah, definitely. Things have not been stale,
• 36:05
  especially since yet we're in 1.15 and rather 10.15 and we got
• 36:12
  this whole new spec and it's completely shifted the meta.
• 36:15
  Right, right. Question for you.
• 36:18
  Do you think that we're going to see more buff roles or buff
• 36:25
  talents coming in the future? Do you think augmentation has
• 36:29
  been relatively good for the game and you want to see more of
• 36:32
  it, or do you think maybe they went a little too far?
• 36:36
  I think augmentation is a great thing.
• 36:37
  I love the idea of a support character and I think that the
• 36:40
  community really loves it too. I think the the hard part right
• 36:43
  now with support character is how to quantify what it's doing
• 36:50
  as far as in your your like your meters and logs and things like
• 36:55
  that How to cuz I may even hear this back from from augmentation
• 36:59
  evokers themselves going OK how do I know if I'm doing this
• 37:02
  right. And because they want that
• 37:04
  feedback, they wanna be able to to know that they're playing
• 37:07
  this new class correctly. So I think that after a lot of
• 37:11
  that gets worked out and we Start learning, you know,
• 37:14
  here's, here's how to to, here's how to quantify it, here's how
• 37:18
  to give you the data that you need.
• 37:20
  OK, here's how to make this one better.
• 37:21
  OK, now we need to to tweak that because Evan might might be a
• 37:23
  little too too overpowered. Hold on whatever that you get
• 37:27
  that kind of thing. It's it's an iteration cycle
• 37:29
  that's gonna have to happen in in live essentially as the
• 37:31
  community goes through and tests it.
• 37:34
  I think that after that settles down, I think we're gonna see
• 37:37
  more support classes. I think that a lot of people are
• 37:39
  having fun with this because it's different.
• 37:41
  It's a new style of stuff. And again, going back to, it's
• 37:45
  not, it's not that immediate. Like when you look at the
• 37:50
  augmentation of over on the meters, they're gonna be at the
• 37:53
  very, very bottom because it's not about them.
• 37:56
  It's about them supporting the rest of their party.
• 37:59
  So I think that there's a group of people who are really going
• 38:02
  to love that that play style and I think we'll probably see
• 38:05
  another support class in the future.
• 38:07
  Oh yeah, for sure. And we have seen already
• 38:09
  Warcraft logs has made adjustments so that you can
• 38:12
  attribute how much the augmentation the augmentation
• 38:16
  invoker gave to the rest to their own damage.
• 38:19
  It just hasn't really happened in the, like, live meters right
• 38:23
  now. And I think you are right.
• 38:25
  Once you, once the community as a whole, gets a grasp on what
• 38:30
  the the Evokers are bringing when they're in augmentation,
• 38:33
  specialization, it's going to completely change the kind of
• 38:38
  dialogue that we saw right at the beginning where people are
• 38:40
  like, whoa, why is your meter so low?
• 38:42
  Right, exactly. Yeah, OK.
• 38:45
  So beyond just the augmentation invokers, we got a lot of stuff
• 38:50
  that came in 10 point 1.5. It's so much stuff coming in
• 38:54
  this patch. It was great when so much of it,
• 38:58
  pretty much all of it, was optional.
• 39:01
  Like if you did it, if we already had 45% of people
• 39:05
  saying, Nah, I'm not going to do the mega dungeon which had the
• 39:09
  direct power rewards. And so much of the rest of the
• 39:13
  stuff came that came in don't have direct power rewards.
• 39:18
  They're about transmog, they're about story.
• 39:21
  They're about like mounts and such, right?
• 39:24
  Like non power rewards, a lot of people may have skipped what we
• 39:28
  got in 10 point 1.5. So let's go through through
• 39:33
  these. We had the time Ifs, we had the
• 39:35
  Welp Daycare, we had the Eon's Edge dailies and we had the
• 39:40
  secrets of Nacks just from those four.
• 39:44
  And I'm sorry if I missed anything else, but just from
• 39:47
  those four, have you done them all?
• 39:49
  I have done all of them except the secrets of Nacks.
• 39:53
  OK, great. So I'll, I'll talk heavy about
• 39:55
  the sequence of Max, because that's where I've disappeared to
• 39:58
  recently. But let's go through it.
• 40:02
  The big one that I think most people touched on was the Time
• 40:05
  Riffs. What was your impression of the
• 40:09
  Time Riffs like? Did you dive into it
• 40:11
  immediately? Are you still playing it right
• 40:12
  now? I I both.
• 40:15
  I dove into it immediately. I still play it right now I'm
• 40:18
  still working on on finishing up the reputation with Sorry Normie
• 40:22
  because you know there's an achievement and I leave a title
• 40:24
  with that and of course I just love achievements and titles and
• 40:27
  mounts and stuff. So I was very excited to see
• 40:30
  this content come out. It's great repeatable in the
• 40:34
  fact of it is randomized. So every Time Rift is just
• 40:38
  different. So you're not and you're not
• 40:40
  going to have the same tasks every time Rift.
• 40:43
  You're not gonna have the same thing going on every time Rift.
• 40:46
  So that randomization was great. You could always you knew that
• 40:51
  it wasn't going to be, it's always gonna be Murloc's cuz the
• 40:55
  Murloc's take over everything. So I liked that.
• 40:59
  It was also, I liked how it was always on the hour.
• 41:03
  It was very easy to okay. It's 10:00.
• 41:06
  Let me go do that time Rift and then I'll go to bed.
• 41:11
  It was. I'm incredibly appreciative the
• 41:13
  longer that I've been playing this game of watching how far
• 41:17
  the tech in Warcraft has come along.
• 41:20
  So if you think back many, many years ago, something like this
• 41:25
  probably would not have been really available to do.
• 41:29
  Sharding would have probably helped with like the server load
• 41:32
  of people trying to do it. But the idea of multiple people,
• 41:37
  let's say a 40 Man Group doing different tasks and each person
• 41:41
  within that group, you know, has to go do, you know, 10 people
• 41:44
  have to go do task A, 10 people have to go do task B, 10 people
• 41:47
  have to go task C It's kind of this open scenario that's going
• 41:51
  on probably would not have happened.
• 41:54
  And the feast is, you know, this garden feast out there.
• 42:00
  That's probably the first where the first iteration of the
• 42:03
  technology used in the the time rifts.
• 42:06
  So learning and adapting quickly on how that was built enabled.
• 42:11
  You know, you'd be able to do time rips with groups of, you
• 42:14
  know, the same group of outdoor people.
• 42:16
  So they didn't have to be in a raid group.
• 42:18
  You didn't have to instance them into a scenario or a dungeon or
• 42:21
  something like that. So that the technology is just
• 42:24
  rapidly evolving. And I love it.
• 42:26
  I'm so glad to see that. I know that there were a lot of
• 42:29
  issues with it early on. You know, I heard that people
• 42:33
  couldn't get into phasing was was rough.
• 42:35
  They couldn't get into the final time rift.
• 42:37
  If you were unfortunate enough to get into the Lich King time
• 42:40
  rift one, you could very quickly die to the defile because of the
• 42:45
  lag that was in there. So I know that there's still
• 42:47
  things that need to be fixed. But as far as the content coming
• 42:53
  out and what it what it offered, the package itself was like,
• 42:56
  this is, this is great, this is very, very cool.
• 42:58
  And you know, the fact that you can get the mounts, the pets,
• 43:00
  the transmog, My gosh, there are so much trans mod options in
• 43:05
  this in this game now. It's insane how much trans mod
• 43:11
  there is and I like we'll be talking a little bit about that.
• 43:15
  It's a cap off, but like I have enjoyed all the different
• 43:19
  rewards. And for my part, the riffs was
• 43:22
  the first thing I dove into because there was a ton of
• 43:24
  mounts and everybody who listens to show knows that I am a person
• 43:28
  who hunts down mounts and. Yeah, So I went through and
• 43:35
  there was a beneficial bug where you could use that item that
• 43:40
  guaranteed that the next time you would get a reward, and then
• 43:44
  that buff wouldn't fall off. Yes, I I encountered that in the
• 43:48
  first week. I was like, oh, I don't think
• 43:49
  that's supposed to happen, but OK.
• 43:52
  Yeah, I I didn't know about it until it was reported and then I
• 43:56
  logged in. I'm like, oh, I still have that.
• 43:58
  That might be why I've got so much.
• 44:02
  Right, and I played through the Time Rifts until I got every
• 44:05
  mount on my main and then I jumped over to my Alliance alt
• 44:09
  and I just got enough currency both by shifting it over and
• 44:13
  playing like the initial part to get the last mount there.
• 44:18
  And I enjoyed it, but I haven't kept up with it for the
• 44:22
  reputation. I had to go check to see where I
• 44:25
  was at. I'm currently. 6430 out of the
• 44:30
  10,000 to get the Rift Mender. I think it's more in there too.
• 44:38
  OK, so maybe I'm closer to the end, who knows.
• 44:42
  But it was pretty enjoyable. I like the alternate timelines.
• 44:46
  I just it it's a palette tease. Like I just, I wanna know more
• 44:53
  and they have those secrets in there or not even secrets.
• 44:56
  They're just like little. Things that drop and you get
• 44:59
  like a little event that will happen, like you'll get the
• 45:04
  Murloc version of Alex Traza, He'll come in and be like, yeah,
• 45:08
  let's make peace. So this stuff doesn't happen.
• 45:11
  Yeah. So the the Temporal Temporal
• 45:14
  Acquisition specialist, I think is the achievement for all of
• 45:17
  those things. And it's little quests that'll
• 45:20
  drop throughout depending on which time rift you're in.
• 45:24
  Some of them are static based on the phase two boss that you get,
• 45:27
  but then there's four or five of them that rotate depend on
• 45:31
  depending on which time task shows up.
• 45:36
  Yeah, and so I've done a couple of them.
• 45:41
  I've got like probably most of them, but like even though the
• 45:45
  ones where I've I've completed them, I still want to know more.
• 45:48
  I I'm hoping that these show up again later on.
• 45:52
  Where? If you're doing like the the
• 45:56
  next thing that we were gonna talk about is the Eon's Edge
• 45:59
  dailies. And when you're doing those
• 46:02
  those you'll have like the Murloc version of Anduin show up
• 46:08
  and he's part of the like unlocking request.
• 46:10
  And why is Findo in here is is one of the questions you asked
• 46:13
  the the blacksmith is why is Findo in here?
• 46:16
  And the blacksmith is like, well the it's supposed to be here.
• 46:19
  He's you. But you as the player go, no,
• 46:22
  the Murlocs aren't supposed to be here.
• 46:23
  Hold on. And you're fixing his sword, the
• 46:27
  like Murloc version of Charlemagne, which I it was
• 46:31
  like, see, Shallow. Yes, See Charlemagne.
• 46:35
  It's very clever. And there's so much in there
• 46:38
  that's very cool. But like, I think I went about
• 46:44
  two days before I realized that. Oh.
• 46:47
  These dailies, the Eon's Edge dailies even existed.
• 46:51
  I went almost two weeks. I completely forgot because
• 46:55
  there's there was no breadcrumb for it.
• 46:57
  Or at least if there was, it just didn't seem like maybe I
• 47:00
  just forgot it. My quest log.
• 47:01
  I lost it. But yeah, I almost went two
• 47:03
  weeks and then did. Oh no, I forgot about those.
• 47:06
  Yeah, there's like I think 1 little quest that you could, but
• 47:11
  you could have skipped. It entirely that is the go over
• 47:14
  here to start these quests. It is not part of the main story
• 47:17
  storyline. I think there are some of like
• 47:19
  the coolest little explorations of some of these these events
• 47:25
  that are in there and some of them are like fairly expansive
• 47:30
  for like a small little side quest where you like help the
• 47:33
  artist through like gaining his mojo back.
• 47:36
  And yeah, the one that to do the music like you know what's the
• 47:39
  it's all the music based ones. He's a musician, isn't he?
• 47:42
  Yes. And so, like, that is like a
• 47:46
  much bigger side quest than I would have thought from any of
• 47:49
  these. And considering all the
• 47:51
  controversy that was around these because like when they
• 47:53
  were originally data mined, you had the quest where you were
• 47:59
  working with the Bronze to fix Alex Strauss's imprisonment so
• 48:03
  that she wouldn't get released early.
• 48:05
  And so people are like, wow, I feel really sick being not even
• 48:10
  being complacent. But aiding in prolonging
• 48:15
  somebody's imprisonment, among other things that happened
• 48:19
  during that imprisonment, I think that I I wish that they
• 48:26
  would have started on a different point of that quest.
• 48:30
  Like there's so much that goes on in that that Dragon Moss
• 48:33
  storyline that I wish that you could have focused on something
• 48:36
  else in there. Maybe, you know, help the bronze
• 48:38
  dragon flight stop one of the orcs from doing something bad or
• 48:43
  something. I feel like I feel like focusing
• 48:46
  on that. Well I understand that it's it's
• 48:50
  something that I hate to say has to happen.
• 48:54
  I feel like, you know the designers could have picked
• 48:56
  something else and then we wouldn't have had this whole
• 48:58
  conversation. So I don't know it was it was
• 49:01
  very weird when I I remember reading about it and and going
• 49:04
  why did we, why did they pick that to go on?
• 49:07
  Why not something else. I mean this is a game where
• 49:10
  we're, you know, we know that we're we're we have quests.
• 49:13
  We have to go kill somebody. You know we have other quests
• 49:15
  you know we've helped the bronze Dragonflight kill important
• 49:18
  figures before in order to maintain the timeline.
• 49:20
  But maybe, you know, maybe we just forgot that sometimes we
• 49:24
  have the option to choose a different story to focus on or
• 49:28
  different aspect of a story to focus on.
• 49:30
  I don't know, it was it was very weird.
• 49:32
  I I kind of was wondering why they decided to do that.
• 49:35
  Yeah, I don't think we'll ever get the full story behind that
• 49:39
  and especially considering when they made the change to the
• 49:43
  quest so that instead of fixing it so that.
• 49:50
  People wouldn't come across her earlier.
• 49:51
  It was fix it so that people actually discover her correctly,
• 49:55
  right. Because like the the the
• 50:01
  infinite Dragons, they they move something so that Ronan wouldn't
• 50:07
  come across her. So you have to like move it back
• 50:10
  to the right position so that she does get freed like that's.
• 50:14
  That's at least making us feel good about like, hey, we fix
• 50:18
  things. So it wasn't that bad.
• 50:20
  But now they've kind of opened that can of worms, and it's
• 50:22
  like, is there some points in the past where we should
• 50:26
  actually fix things properly? And it's a weird thing because
• 50:33
  when I thought about it, we've been on this like something bad
• 50:38
  in history has happened and we're on the wrong side here
• 50:42
  trying to stop it. Because of, like the blonde say,
• 50:45
  that it's gonna be part of this greater good, remember?
• 50:49
  Yeah, go ahead. Sorry.
• 50:51
  Sorry, Remember back to the Burning Crusade where we go to
• 50:57
  the swamp, the Black Morass, and we have to defend.
• 51:03
  The opening of the Black Portal, the Black Dragons were like,
• 51:06
  we're going to stop this, and the hordes never going to show
• 51:08
  up, and all of the pain and suffering that comes from the
• 51:11
  initial war and of course the two subsequent wars thereafter,
• 51:16
  right? So we've been on the causing
• 51:23
  misery to happen side before we have and and with that it it
• 51:27
  just opens a lot of this I guess this morality and ethics of of
• 51:32
  game play and that you know do we do we continue you know can
• 51:36
  we change other things But I mean there's there's a it's a
• 51:39
  whole debate about you know the how the past you know past
• 51:44
  troubles make you stronger but at the same time do you really
• 51:46
  wanna cause such trials tribulations and trauma to other
• 51:50
  sentient beings and stuff It's a it's a whole whole I'm sure
• 51:55
  thesis paper on the ethics and morality of that so and with it
• 52:00
  coming up that the the imprisonment of Alex Straza it
• 52:03
  just kind of I think that renewed that conversation around
• 52:07
  that in a game like whether or not we should be doing that.
• 52:13
  And I think part of what really made this fail is because it was
• 52:20
  touched on so lightly, like it's clearly something that has to
• 52:25
  be. Handled deftly.
• 52:27
  It has to be like actually explain some nuance or like show
• 52:32
  that or show the consequences that would be so dire as to like
• 52:39
  willingly subject somebody to the continuation of that.
• 52:43
  Like when I think of this kind of stuff being done in like just
• 52:48
  popular media, the most recent example, I think it's
• 52:52
  Flashpoint, actually the Flash movie.
• 52:56
  Which is based off a flashpoint thing where he goes back and he
• 52:59
  saves his mother because his mother dies.
• 53:00
  Like The Flash goes back and saves his mother because its
• 53:03
  mother dies. And it causes a chain of events
• 53:06
  that basically leads to like instead of the Justice League
• 53:10
  coming together, they're all fighting and killing each other
• 53:13
  and taking over the world. And it's just it's it's like
• 53:15
  absolute dystopian future, right?
• 53:18
  And it's that butterfly effect of yes, you've tried to do
• 53:21
  something good, but like, you don't know the full
• 53:23
  ramifications of it. And maybe that would have been
• 53:27
  it where it's like, hey, like you you go and you're like,
• 53:32
  yeah, actually, you know what, Why don't I get her out early?
• 53:35
  And then because of that, it causes this entire thing.
• 53:37
  You go into this alternate scenario, you're like, crap.
• 53:40
  I have to set it back to where it is, right?
• 53:43
  And that might have at least been better.
• 53:46
  But in general, maybe World of Warcraft should just stay away
• 53:49
  from this subject matter because it's just too much for them.
• 53:53
  I think. I think that I agree with you
• 53:56
  and the fact that like anytime you're talking about the trauma
• 53:59
  in that sort of way, you have to handle it with a lot of empathy
• 54:01
  and gravitas. You cannot just kind of gloss
• 54:03
  over it and handle it lightly. It it has to just be handled
• 54:07
  with so much care, and it's not really something that is easily
• 54:12
  done in video games. It's not something that's easily
• 54:15
  done in really any narrative. So it's it.
• 54:17
  It'd be easier to just not go through these things, even
• 54:21
  though you would like to try to tell the story of, you know,
• 54:23
  maybe it's the butterfly effect, but I don't know.
• 54:27
  I just, I feel like we didn't need to go there, so why we went
• 54:30
  there, I'm not really sure. Hopefully we don't go there
• 54:32
  again and any of that's because it's just something that I think
• 54:36
  a lot of the community would prefer not to revisit.
• 54:41
  Okay. So now I'm gonna lean on you
• 54:43
  heavy because this is part of 10 point 1.5.
• 54:47
  That I have not touched at all. Is it Welp daycare?
• 54:49
  Is the Welp daycare that question mark is still there?
• 54:52
  Tell me about this, What in the world is this all about?
• 54:55
  Cuz I didn't even test it on the PTR when it was on the PTR.
• 54:58
  So this is they were crafted a little bitty highlight about
• 55:02
  them. So you are their eggs hatching
• 55:06
  and you have to help take care of the baby welps that are
• 55:10
  hatching. So it's an adorable little, I
• 55:13
  say little it's still going for me.
• 55:16
  I've been doing this for a couple of weeks now.
• 55:18
  It's a a dailies and a quest line where you open up each of
• 55:22
  the color, the dragonfly colors. So you start with like the black
• 55:26
  Dragons I think 1st and then you help them do various things
• 55:32
  through the wealth daycare system.
• 55:33
  So you have to go clean up the daycare play with the Dragons.
• 55:37
  It's also, but it's a really great way to get into the pet
• 55:40
  battling system because it shows you how to do pet battles and it
• 55:43
  gives you the rewards for that. It is just, in general, one of
• 55:47
  the cutest things added to Warcraft in a long time.
• 55:50
  There are adorable little cinematics every time one of the
• 55:53
  baby welps hatches that are just so whimsical and cute that like,
• 55:58
  I giggle at him. There's things that the little
• 56:01
  babies say that are, you know, one of them is just sassy and
• 56:05
  she's a red dragon welp. So therefore I'm just like
• 56:07
  whoop, she's gonna be the next queen of the Dragons.
• 56:08
  There she is. She's just about, she's bossing
• 56:11
  everybody around and there's one that he's allergic to everything
• 56:16
  and so when he sneezes, it is such an adorable sound in the
• 56:19
  game. So I've been having a lot of fun
• 56:21
  with this going through and hatching little Dragons.
• 56:25
  I've watched, you know, a lot of friends also play it and just
• 56:28
  squeals of delight is generally the the emotion that comes
• 56:32
  across or the expression that we get.
• 56:34
  And but it's also neat to see the pet battle system
• 56:38
  incorporated into that quest line because it teaches you, you
• 56:41
  know, there's some certain quests where they say go do this
• 56:43
  pet battle over here and then you get the baby dragon as a pet
• 56:47
  in your journal. So you can summon them and they
• 56:49
  can go do more adventures with you.
• 56:52
  That sounds so great up until you said pet battle.
• 56:55
  I I went on my pet battle push for some mounts and I'm gonna
• 56:59
  stay away from pet battles, but I may play this up until pet
• 57:03
  battles. It's actually like the pet
• 57:04
  battles are not really that that big of a deal.
• 57:06
  They're very easy. It's not like you have to go do
• 57:08
  a whole bunch of them. It's like 1 maybe every, I don't
• 57:11
  know, 5 or 10 quests. It's very, very, very easy.
• 57:13
  You'll get it done in just a moment.
• 57:15
  Alright, alright, that'll that'll be pinned on my To Do
• 57:18
  List. It's for the cinematics alone
• 57:21
  and the personalities of the Dragons.
• 57:23
  I highly recommend doing this event.
• 57:26
  And I like while I personally am not a pet battle person, I'm
• 57:31
  really glad that they have something that has incorporated
• 57:34
  pet battles. At this level and has more than
• 57:37
  just go out and do pet battles or here's a pet battle dungeon
• 57:39
  has like a little bit of you know personalities like you're
• 57:41
  saying these these wealth each have their own personality and
• 57:44
  stuff. I think that is really endearing
• 57:46
  and I'm really glad that that's there for people who enjoy pet
• 57:49
  battles and so I will give this an attempt.
• 57:52
  I swear I'm not just pinning it off.
• 57:54
  I will get this attempt and I'm really glad that this for pet
• 57:57
  battles. I think you'll enjoy it like I
• 57:59
  really do. OK.
• 58:02
  So on the flip side something that I've done that you haven't
• 58:04
  had a chance to do is the secrets of next Ramus that they
• 58:08
  added. And this isn't just next Ramus,
• 58:11
  this starts in the Skulllands dungeon that's out there that
• 58:16
  got revised in I believe it was Mr. Pandaria and you go through
• 58:21
  that and you get you're looking for this rare to spawn.
• 58:28
  I've seen comments on on. Wow head.
• 58:31
  That said that they were working on this for four weeks with like
• 58:36
  multiple tunes. I think they did like 4 tunes,
• 58:38
  so like 16 different attempts before they finally got this
• 58:40
  rear to spawn. Oh, it's the the butcher, isn't
• 58:43
  it? The Krasnos.
• 58:44
  OK, yeah OK, I do. I do know a little bit about
• 58:46
  this. OK, I got incredibly lucky.
• 58:50
  I was like, oh, OK, this is going to take a long time.
• 58:53
  I'm really sorry. Stream got it in three, three.
• 58:57
  So. I was super happy, super feeling
• 59:00
  like that, like I was on top of the world.
• 59:03
  I once you get that started it starts like a little storyline
• 59:09
  which I most I most attribute to.
• 59:14
  Kind of like a modern day attunement where you have those
• 59:18
  quests to like unlock a dungeon, except that this time you're
• 59:22
  unlocking an old version of the dungeon it's got some story it
• 59:26
  like. Reaches back to like old vanilla
• 59:31
  Warcraft stuff and it like it really hits those nostalgia
• 59:37
  vibes. If you know or were playing at
• 59:39
  that time, even if you don't like it sort of tells you about
• 59:43
  what happened before and I think that is so cool.
• 59:49
  So you do that. You get the old version of
• 59:51
  Skullmans, you. Do some stuff in there that will
• 59:56
  allow you to then go to Strath Home.
• 59:59
  You do stuff in Strath Home and there's this challenge run where
• 1:00:04
  you have like 5 minutes from when you activate the secret.
• 1:00:07
  To get to the other side, kill Baron Rivendeer.
• 1:00:12
  That was something that was, that was something that used to
• 1:00:15
  exist. There was, Oh my gosh, I cannot
• 1:00:18
  remember it. But they did have something
• 1:00:19
  where there was an internal timer that the moment you
• 1:00:21
  stepped through the gate of Strathholm, you had X many
• 1:00:24
  minutes to get to barren Ribbon Dare.
• 1:00:27
  Yes, exactly. Yeah.
• 1:00:29
  It's an homage of this. That's awesome.
• 1:00:32
  And so when you do that, that unlocks the old version of Nax
• 1:00:38
  Ramus. And so then once you've done
• 1:00:43
  this, you're now attuned to the old version of Nax Ramus.
• 1:00:46
  You can go through there, but it's not.
• 1:00:49
  It's not exactly the old version, because even though
• 1:00:52
  everything, all the bosses and everything are set up exactly
• 1:00:55
  like they were in the past, they've added in a bunch of
• 1:01:00
  little secrets. You can get this grappling hook
• 1:01:02
  and get to areas that you never used to be able to get about
• 1:01:05
  that. How neat.
• 1:01:07
  Yes, and one of the things that you can do is get up to this
• 1:01:13
  goblin merchant and he will allow you to.
• 1:01:21
  Trade in Scourge Stones in order to get tier 3 and a bunch of
• 1:01:28
  different transmogs and one item that allows you to get a
• 1:01:34
  different shade of the Horseman mount.
• 1:01:38
  It's called Valiance. OK.
• 1:01:41
  So wait, the Scourge Stones, are they something, a currency
• 1:01:44
  that's dropping new or are we talking about the old Scarch
• 1:01:47
  stones that are no longer? Scourge stones that were no
• 1:01:49
  longer available, you could start cracking them again.
• 1:01:53
  Okay cuz I remember that event when you would get those scarch
• 1:01:56
  stones that was at the end of Burning Crusade going into Wrath
• 1:01:58
  of the Lich King. They had the Scarch Stone event.
• 1:02:01
  Yeah, I think it was also there. Just ahead of Nax Rammus
• 1:02:08
  debuting in vanilla, there was entire you can kill small
• 1:02:11
  enemies and get skirt stones and then it would go up and up to
• 1:02:15
  like the larger skirt stones. So it's like it's being used in
• 1:02:19
  the past and they're they went back to that and it's the exact
• 1:02:22
  same skirt stones as before. So it's it's such a pull into
• 1:02:27
  the past of the game and I thought the quest was was just
• 1:02:33
  amazing for that alone. But then doing the secrets
• 1:02:37
  themselves is fun, getting those transmogs.
• 1:02:41
  And like, I like Transmog, but I'm not the biggest transmog
• 1:02:45
  guy. So I was putting this up on the
• 1:02:47
  auction house and some of this stuff is going for 10s, if not
• 1:02:51
  hundreds of thousands of gold. Oh, wow.
• 1:02:55
  So if you're looking for some gold, you can you can make it
• 1:02:58
  there like some. Items that are fairly common to
• 1:03:01
  drop were selling for. I think they've come down since,
• 1:03:05
  but they were like 300 gold a pop and I was collecting like
• 1:03:10
  about 20 on like a clear through.
• 1:03:13
  Wow, Yeah, I'm definitely have to look into this then.
• 1:03:16
  Yeah, and so. If you like the Transmog,
• 1:03:19
  there's transmog there for you. If you're after the gold,
• 1:03:21
  there's gold there for you. If you're hunting mounts like I
• 1:03:23
  was, there is a mountain there, and there's still some secrets
• 1:03:26
  that haven't been discovered yet.
• 1:03:27
  The Secret Finder group is still on this.
• 1:03:29
  I love that. Yes that is amazing and the fact
• 1:03:33
  that just even unlocking the vendor because to you had to
• 1:03:38
  like solve the the the secret to get the grappling hook which.
• 1:03:43
  Even that I was like, how the hell did they figure this out?
• 1:03:45
  Thank goodness for comments on Wow right?
• 1:03:50
  And then to get to the the vendor, it is this very
• 1:03:54
  complicated jumping sequence that I don't understand how they
• 1:03:58
  figured that out. Oh my gosh.
• 1:04:00
  Wow. With the grappling hook, like,
• 1:04:02
  you don't see the grappling point unless you're at a
• 1:04:05
  specific angle on certain ledges.
• 1:04:08
  So that was a thing. And then when you get to him,
• 1:04:12
  it's like. He seems unconscious and not
• 1:04:14
  responsive to life and you you have the option to poke him and
• 1:04:17
  it doesn't do anything. And then I look at the guide and
• 1:04:21
  says, you need holy water from Stratholme to wait, Oh my gosh,
• 1:04:26
  that's. Oh, that's right.
• 1:04:27
  I didn't see something about that being Data mine.
• 1:04:29
  I was like, wow, holy water. Oh my gosh, that's bad.
• 1:04:32
  Yeah, so they they pull so much from the past and they put it in
• 1:04:36
  use in such interesting ways, it is amazing content.
• 1:04:41
  And I'm really hoping to do so much more like this.
• 1:04:43
  I actually hope that when they're doing mainline quests
• 1:04:48
  that they take some cues from this because this was so
• 1:04:51
  interesting and engaging to go through in my mind.
• 1:04:54
  I think it's a great way for them to also bring back next
• 1:04:57
  Ramus and that Tier 3 kind of area, because a lot of people
• 1:04:59
  didn't get to experience that at all.
• 1:05:02
  And even then, like the people that experienced it back then
• 1:05:06
  probably aren't playing the game anymore.
• 1:05:08
  There's a like, it's very rare for you to find people who have
• 1:05:11
  the hand of a doll title. I saw Scarab Lord the other day.
• 1:05:15
  It was very I was just. I ran around cheering at them
• 1:05:18
  because it's just again, a rarity.
• 1:05:21
  And I know that next Ramos in tier 3 was one of those rarities
• 1:05:24
  that a lot of people didn't get to experience.
• 1:05:27
  So I'm glad to see this being brought into the game in some
• 1:05:30
  way that preserves the original original experience of it, but
• 1:05:36
  also brings back a way for players to get to see it and and
• 1:05:40
  be a part of it. Yeah, now there is some
• 1:05:43
  controversy on that. Note, in order to get the Tier
• 1:05:46
  3, you have to use that vendor that I was talking about.
• 1:05:50
  And the way that you do it is that you have to craft it or get
• 1:05:54
  somebody to craft it for you. Now there is one reagent needed
• 1:05:59
  for the Crafting 1 crafting material.
• 1:06:02
  That is incredibly expensive. I think there are about 2000
• 1:06:07
  gold a pop and to get and to craft a set you need a lot of
• 1:06:12
  these things to the point that people were saying it was like
• 1:06:15
  believe the number off the top of my head, correct me if I'm
• 1:06:18
  wrong listeners, feel free to reach out was 28 K to craft a
• 1:06:25
  set. And people like, Oh, my
• 1:06:26
  goodness, that's so expensive to craft it.
• 1:06:29
  To craft a trans mock set. Yeah, I I, I, I guess it is.
• 1:06:35
  I have a lot of gold in the game.
• 1:06:36
  So I have a different viewpoint on that.
• 1:06:39
  Yeah, I go 28 K that's nothing. But yeah, I could see how that
• 1:06:42
  could be for some people. That could be kind of expensive.
• 1:06:45
  Yeah. Regardless, I think that it is
• 1:06:51
  going to be here for a long time guys, so you can build up your
• 1:06:55
  funds as needed and. It becomes a stretch goal to
• 1:07:00
  like I'm gonna piece together this, this set.
• 1:07:03
  And for those of you who are really into Transmog, we have
• 1:07:06
  one last story. We have all of this Transmog
• 1:07:10
  news that has been coming out this week.
• 1:07:13
  So much Transmog. So much.
• 1:07:17
  So the beginning of this of this past week.
• 1:07:21
  Team two came out with two articles about Transmog and
• 1:07:25
  stuff came out to the store. So the first thing was the
• 1:07:31
  traders post is getting new Transmog sets for every class
• 1:07:37
  throughout the rest of the year. So starting in September we're
• 1:07:40
  getting 3 October another 3N, another three, and then in
• 1:07:43
  December we get the last four. These sets are a helm, shoulders
• 1:07:49
  and belt, so not a full set. You're not getting a chest
• 1:07:51
  piece, you're not getting pants, there's no gloves and and all of
• 1:07:55
  that. But the three pieces are going
• 1:07:57
  to be on the traders post for 450 tenders, which I think is a
• 1:08:04
  pretty decent price for a Transmog put together
• 1:08:08
  considering that the shoulders and the helm I think are some of
• 1:08:13
  the most prominent pieces of any Transmog.
• 1:08:16
  Yeah, I would agree, Yeah. And then on top of that, we're
• 1:08:21
  also getting analogous weapon transmogs for each class, and
• 1:08:27
  then it within these, each class gets one type of 1 weapon type
• 1:08:33
  for each spec. So most classes are going to get
• 1:08:36
  three different weapons, except for Demon Hunters which only
• 1:08:39
  have two specs so they only have two weapons, and jurors that
• 1:08:42
  have 4 specs, so they have four different weapons.
• 1:08:46
  So you who plays priests, you're going to be getting your set
• 1:08:53
  first month in September and that's like the silks of the
• 1:08:56
  unnamed cult and the weapons which are the secrets of the
• 1:09:00
  unnamed cult. I think that these are really
• 1:09:05
  cool, but I also think that the weapons and the the trans log
• 1:09:13
  set, they don't. Match even though they had the
• 1:09:16
  same name they did have some the yes, I I, I I looked at some of
• 1:09:22
  them and finding them at the time when the release was
• 1:09:26
  difficult because some of the the article had some of them
• 1:09:28
  like very prominently and then we had to go search for like the
• 1:09:31
  other ones deeper down in different articles and stuff.
• 1:09:34
  So I didn't get to see all of them, but some of them looked
• 1:09:39
  very interesting as far as good. But then like their weapons
• 1:09:41
  looked, that's not. I wouldn't have gone with that
• 1:09:44
  aesthetic or that art. I shouldn't say art style,
• 1:09:46
  sorry, the aesthetic. It didn't fit that same theme
• 1:09:49
  for some of them. Yeah, well Lidgeon has all the
• 1:09:54
  sets up there, including what months they're coming out,
• 1:09:57
  including the weapon sets as well.
• 1:10:00
  Some of them like specifically the Paladin one, which is one of
• 1:10:04
  the first ones coming out. Their tier set or not tier set.
• 1:10:08
  I apologize their Transmog set. Looks like it could mix with a
• 1:10:13
  couple of different tier sets that they've had in the past,
• 1:10:17
  but like the weapon, doesn't match that.
• 1:10:19
  No, the weapon doesn't match that.
• 1:10:20
  And that that weapon specifically looks like the
• 1:10:23
  Judgment set. Not the tier set that Judgment
• 1:10:27
  was actually in, but the recolor that came from Burning Crusade
• 1:10:31
  that had this same sort of coloration, right?
• 1:10:36
  Yeah, exactly. And then like the priest that I
• 1:10:40
  that I mentioned you've got the old God kind of tide sage look
• 1:10:45
  for their their trans log set but pretty standard priest
• 1:10:52
  looking stuff for their weapon set.
• 1:10:55
  Yeah it really do. And like it looks like they they
• 1:10:58
  started to put some of the iconography of the wave speakers
• 1:11:01
  on there, but then it didn't. It didn't match with like the
• 1:11:03
  coloring or something. Yeah, it's it's it's quite
• 1:11:07
  strange. Be shamans because everybody
• 1:11:09
  knows that I am stubbornly, stubbornly shaman for all the
• 1:11:12
  way in December. So I've got a long wait for for
• 1:11:16
  my stuff, but oh man, I I love them.
• 1:11:22
  I think the shaman is good. I love them if you're a.
• 1:11:27
  Orc torrent or troll shaman if you are a janai shaman.
• 1:11:31
  That doesn't look so terrible on my janai shaman, but I love the
• 1:11:36
  I love the design. I think that's really neat.
• 1:11:38
  But yeah, it's it's going to look really weird on my Janai.
• 1:11:41
  The the transmog itself looks so much like the Dasar lore
• 1:11:49
  Zandalari sort of set up that I I just I don't see how a Coulter
• 1:11:55
  in. Shaman could wear that with
• 1:11:57
  pride. Yep, that's that's gonna be an
• 1:12:00
  interesting thing at least. Again, we were talking about
• 1:12:03
  this in in our our Guild the other day about how the the male
• 1:12:07
  armor pieces tend to just be not great overall, like a hunter and
• 1:12:12
  Shaman just tend to you, you know.
• 1:12:13
  Generally it's looking at all the the cool trans mods you can
• 1:12:16
  see, you know the clothies have good ones for for this time
• 1:12:20
  period. You know the the plate ones.
• 1:12:22
  Usually you look at all the the male pieces and you're kind of
• 1:12:24
  like, it doesn't look as cool. I think that this one looks
• 1:12:28
  really great for a male piece. But yeah, I kind of agree with
• 1:12:32
  you. Like for some of the Alliance
• 1:12:33
  Alliance characters and models, it's probably gonna be a little
• 1:12:38
  weird to see on them. Yeah, yeah, I do like the
• 1:12:41
  weapon. Though the weapons look great, I
• 1:12:44
  can't. I can't say that those weapons
• 1:12:46
  are bad and. If I could wear it outside of
• 1:12:51
  the class I would totally steal the Evoker one, cuz that's just
• 1:12:55
  generally a good look. That one looks really neat.
• 1:12:58
  I wanna see the animation on the shoulders for that.
• 1:13:03
  The weapons? Cool.
• 1:13:05
  I didn't even think to see if these were animated at all.
• 1:13:09
  I hope that they have some cool animations.
• 1:13:11
  I would hope so. The mage one, if you're looking
• 1:13:13
  at the shoulders at the top, has these little these little orbs
• 1:13:16
  and it looks like they would probably animate a little bit.
• 1:13:19
  Oh yeah. You're probably right about
• 1:13:21
  that. Yeah.
• 1:13:22
  It's got the two orbs on each shoulder.
• 1:13:23
  There's one orb on each shoulder and then one orb above the head.
• 1:13:26
  You're right. You're right.
• 1:13:27
  Those are probably animated, but I'm not sure if all of these are
• 1:13:29
  animated. You've got my hopes up.
• 1:13:32
  You've got my hopes. But that's not all of the
• 1:13:37
  Transmog news that we got because they also put out two
• 1:13:41
  new packs in the Battle.net shop which are going to be available
• 1:13:46
  till the end of the month. One pretty standard little
• 1:13:50
  Transmog set again available to August 31st.
• 1:13:54
  That is the Solemn Watchman's Garb and they put down a notice
• 1:13:59
  that it will become available later in the traders post.
• 1:14:02
  So if you want it now, you can. Pay some money and save yourself
• 1:14:06
  the traders. Traders post attendees later,
• 1:14:10
  but the other one followed the exact same rules available to
• 1:14:14
  the end of the month will be available in the traders post
• 1:14:19
  later. They even put a finite time on
• 1:14:23
  this that it will be available within three months after the
• 1:14:28
  the pack leaves the shop. And this one is for two corsage
• 1:14:34
  like little wrist transmog. But the thing that's got
• 1:14:39
  everybody's attention with this one is that along with your
• 1:14:44
  purchase of this bundle, you get 200 traders, tenders.
• 1:14:51
  And that caused the absolute shitstorm, which I didn't
• 1:14:57
  really. I like I I didn't understand why
• 1:15:00
  we knew this was coming. And lots of other games do that.
• 1:15:04
  Lots of other games have cosmetics.
• 1:15:07
  Absolutely. For you.
• 1:15:09
  You pay in, you know, real currency to get an in game
• 1:15:12
  cosmetic currency. So I and I, I don't know, like I
• 1:15:16
  I know people that were in an uproar about it.
• 1:15:19
  But for me, you know, having played games for a long time, I
• 1:15:23
  knew that that was like I expected that to happen.
• 1:15:26
  I expect that to happen. A while ago and we were told
• 1:15:30
  weren't we like one of the developer interviews said that
• 1:15:32
  that was it was always gonna be bundled with something in the
• 1:15:35
  store. Like it wasn't gonna be just a
• 1:15:36
  straight one to one. You give, you know, $5, you get
• 1:15:40
  500 tenders. It was, you know, it was gonna
• 1:15:43
  be here's $5 and a cosmetic item, plus some bonus tenders on
• 1:15:47
  the side. Yeah this is something one
• 1:15:50
  reference that I found was in PC Gamer.
• 1:15:53
  Ian, has Acosis said that Hey, yeah, we're gonna.
• 1:15:56
  Put these as part of a bundle, I think that a lot of people are
• 1:16:02
  still trying to fight any kind of sort of a slippery slope is
• 1:16:06
  what they're worried about. It's not necessarily that this
• 1:16:09
  bundle in its, in and of itself is like so egregious, but if
• 1:16:14
  they're looking at it and thinking that it represents this
• 1:16:16
  continuous slide to like more predatory microtransactions and
• 1:16:22
  so precedent is what they're looking at.
• 1:16:25
  Exactly. And so looking at what they're
• 1:16:27
  putting out here in the US, it's $5 for this bundle, the two
• 1:16:34
  transmog corsage, little wrist transmogs and the 200 tenders,
• 1:16:40
  The corsage that was in the traders post before went for
• 1:16:44
  roughly 100 tenders. I if I recall correctly, I think
• 1:16:50
  it was something like that, yeah.
• 1:16:51
  Yeah, which? Isn't that big of a deal now?
• 1:16:59
  You can't buy this bundle more than once per account.
• 1:17:04
  It's not like you can be like, yes, let me buy it again and
• 1:17:07
  again, yeah. Right.
• 1:17:11
  The 200 tenders does not go towards your cap.
• 1:17:15
  So this month we can is the last month that we'll be able to get
• 1:17:18
  1400 tenders. Because for July and August, you
• 1:17:22
  were able to get 1400 instead of 1000.
• 1:17:28
  So if you buy this bundle and complete your track record, you
• 1:17:32
  would get 1600 in this month, right?
• 1:17:39
  And they're being very, very transparent about this bundle.
• 1:17:46
  It is. That it is gonna all the stuff
• 1:17:49
  that's in the bundle is gonna show up within three months.
• 1:17:54
  You have until this time to purchase this this bundle,
• 1:17:58
  right? And even though they don't say
• 1:18:00
  that it can't be purchased more than once, they're they're
• 1:18:03
  stopping people from gaming the system from the get go.
• 1:18:07
  And I like that. I like the transparency and I
• 1:18:09
  like the limit because I like, I appreciate the fact that if
• 1:18:14
  they're gonna start a precedent on something, then they're going
• 1:18:16
  to like have that here's the boundary, the transparency, the
• 1:18:21
  communication about all of that. Because like you said, people
• 1:18:24
  are worried that it's gonna start that predatory
• 1:18:28
  microtransactions. You see it in a lot of other
• 1:18:30
  games. It was actually one of the
• 1:18:32
  reasons why I stopped playing Overwatch too was because there
• 1:18:36
  were so many of those microtransactions going on.
• 1:18:38
  Not predatory, but at the same time, like there was just a lot
• 1:18:41
  of microtransactions and then it just didn't make the game fun
• 1:18:44
  anymore because it felt like I had to do all those
• 1:18:47
  microtransactions in order to enjoy the game.
• 1:18:50
  Cuz there was just such so many cool cosmetic things to get.
• 1:18:52
  And I wanted it all cuz I like, you know, I like cosmetics.
• 1:18:55
  I like looking cool you know like so I can see how some
• 1:18:58
  people are with them being very worried how Warcraft has to
• 1:19:02
  treat this with a lot of transparency and kind of like
• 1:19:06
  feeling out the waters on on things like that.
• 1:19:09
  So you know they don't want it to be they're not gonna start it
• 1:19:11
  off with you know one that's gonna give you 1000 traders
• 1:19:14
  attendees because that's just gonna you know start everything
• 1:19:17
  kind of on a bad note. So they're starting with
• 1:19:19
  something small and that's smart and they're seeing how does how
• 1:19:22
  do people react to this and I'm pretty sure that that'll that'll
• 1:19:27
  pace what they do in the future. You know, whether they do it
• 1:19:29
  monthly or every six months or or something like that.
• 1:19:33
  Yeah. And so I completely agree with
• 1:19:36
  you the way that this is positioned, it's clearly them
• 1:19:40
  testing the waters, dipping their toe and be like here's a
• 1:19:42
  very small amount of tenders for a very small price.
• 1:19:46
  What what's the reaction here? But I think that to I think that
• 1:19:53
  the best way that they could have put this forward is one
• 1:19:57
  they should have put some sort of.
• 1:20:00
  Better conversation around this because he said it in the
• 1:20:03
  article. Nothing was said and not
• 1:20:06
  everybody is going to be as in tune to what's being said in
• 1:20:10
  general like the two of us or other other people.
• 1:20:14
  They may have missed that it was said or not be, or may have
• 1:20:18
  missed the conversation around it.
• 1:20:20
  Come back to the game like whoa wait, what?
• 1:20:22
  What is this? So there there is no post about
• 1:20:25
  this on the World of Warcraft site.
• 1:20:28
  It's just in the store. And then that allowed, of
• 1:20:31
  course, the fan sites to completely control the
• 1:20:35
  narrative. Oh, gotcha.
• 1:20:36
  I see. Yeah, that's that's something
• 1:20:37
  that's unfortunate cuz I mean if you wanna, if you wanna control
• 1:20:41
  the narrative on something, then you wanna make sure that you're
• 1:20:43
  the first ones talking about it and crafting how it's said and
• 1:20:48
  and what it, what the perspective looks like for it.
• 1:20:52
  Yeah. And then beyond that, in terms
• 1:20:56
  of the bundle itself, I would have really liked that if it
• 1:20:59
  was, hey, you purchased Diablo 4, right and we will give you
• 1:21:06
  this mount in game because they had that that bundle and here's
• 1:21:12
  some tenders as well. And I think that would have gone
• 1:21:15
  down a lot better with the because the tenders would have
• 1:21:20
  just been a little a little side bonus that what but like because
• 1:21:26
  there's so much weight on the tenders in this package, I think
• 1:21:32
  that makes it, it makes it bigger than it should be.
• 1:21:36
  I agree with you on that. I think that if they would have
• 1:21:38
  been bundled into a game where you know say like Diablo 4, you
• 1:21:42
  that is the prize as you are paying for Diablo 4.
• 1:21:46
  You are not paying for the tenders in this the the tenders
• 1:21:49
  have a bit more weight. Even though it is, you know,
• 1:21:51
  only $5, it's still, you know, a bit more weight of that
• 1:21:54
  transaction overall. I think as long as they don't
• 1:21:58
  have every package include tenders so that the people who
• 1:22:03
  are we're worried about the FOMO don't feel compelled to buy a
• 1:22:07
  bunch of other stuff on top of their subscription, this should
• 1:22:11
  be OK. But they are really.
• 1:22:14
  They really are trying to find that line, and I hope that the
• 1:22:17
  reaction will make them consider it carefully.
• 1:22:20
  Yeah, I I hope so too. Because we were actually was
• 1:22:22
  talking with a friend the other night about Battle Pass systems
• 1:22:25
  and subscription systems and how Battle Pass systems work for
• 1:22:29
  certain types of games and subscriptions work for other
• 1:22:32
  types. And how Warcrafts is being on
• 1:22:35
  the subscription system for so long you you couldn't switch it
• 1:22:38
  to like a seasonal battle pass like a like Diablo or Overwatch
• 1:22:43
  has? Because the player base wouldn't
• 1:22:45
  go for that. They like being on that
• 1:22:47
  subscription system. That's just kind of how it works
• 1:22:50
  best. So I think that micro
• 1:22:52
  transactions are gonna have to be handled with a bit more care
• 1:22:56
  in the system that we're at. Because you don't want, you just
• 1:22:59
  don't wanna over. You don't wanna align too
• 1:23:01
  closely to the other other systems for that like for those
• 1:23:05
  that audience and that play style that's the world I was
• 1:23:07
  looking for is that kind of play style.
• 1:23:09
  But at the same time, you do wanna introduce new things into.
• 1:23:13
  This the the system in new ways to maybe, you know, get those
• 1:23:17
  cosmetic items, obviously don't ever tie any of it to player
• 1:23:20
  power. That's a terrible idea and I'm,
• 1:23:23
  I doubt that they're gonna do that.
• 1:23:24
  But as long as it stays to cosmetics, I think that we'll
• 1:23:27
  see it on and off and and hopefully it's just handled with
• 1:23:32
  I guess not like reservation, but kind of I just care, you
• 1:23:36
  know, like an infrequent basis like if we see it every, every
• 1:23:39
  few months or something like that, I think that'd be OK.
• 1:23:42
  Yeah, I'm cool with it showing up with like my BlizzCon
• 1:23:46
  experience that they want to do a BlizzCon package and they give
• 1:23:49
  extra tenders there, sure. But I I don't want it showing up
• 1:23:52
  with like, here's a pet and 5000 tenders.
• 1:23:56
  That, to me, would be like, wait, wait, yeah.
• 1:24:00
  I I think so, yeah. I agree.
• 1:24:02
  I agree. Yeah.
• 1:24:03
  OK. Thank you so much for sitting
• 1:24:05
  down and having this conversation with me.
• 1:24:07
  This was amazing. Absolutely.
• 1:24:09
  Thank you so much for having me. Where can people find you if
• 1:24:12
  they want to hear more from you? You can find me on pretty much
• 1:24:16
  any of the social medias. I'm Halionics, spelled HALYONIX.
• 1:24:22
  I'm also on in the Dungeon Dojo, and there's probably links to
• 1:24:27
  that somewhere. You can probably search for them
• 1:24:29
  on Twitter and Blue Sky as well. And I'm on Twitch and I'm in
• 1:24:34
  Warcraft on Black Hand. Gala Cron us servers in that 20.
• 1:24:39
  Nice. Well, until next time, guys.
• 1:24:41
  May all your hits be crits.