Latest / For Azeroth!: A World of Warcraft Podcast / #276 - For Azeroth!: “Taking the Leap”

Transcript

#276 - For Azeroth!: “Taking the Leap” · For Azeroth!: A World of Warcraft Podcast

• 0:00
  He doesn't want to have a show today.
• 0:02
  He's like, what if I just ask all of the questions right now?
• 0:04
  What if in the pre show we just did the show and then we'll hit
• 0:08
  go live and we could do that segment You guys made me cut for
• 0:14
  calendar to the burning region for Gilnius, for the Lich King
• 0:25
  for the. Cindora for the Alliance.
• 0:31
  For Azeroth. Hello and welcome back to
• 0:36
  another episode of For Azeroth. I am one of your hosts, The
• 0:40
  Truth with the Manny, and I am joined by Lex.
• 0:44
  Hello, Lex. Hello, Manny.
• 0:47
  And returning from across the pond.
• 0:50
  Sean. Hello, Sean.
• 0:53
  Hello, Governor, How you doing? Oh dear.
• 0:56
  No, that's that's it. That's as, that's as British as
• 0:59
  it gets. I'm home.
• 1:01
  Here we go. Good, good.
• 1:03
  There. There was a couple of people
• 1:04
  like, yeah, yeah, he's over there.
• 1:06
  Don't you miss him? Like, yeah, we're trying to
• 1:07
  figure out how to close the borders here.
• 1:11
  How do we How do we not get him back but?
• 1:13
  There's this entire thing. Customs almost took care of that
• 1:16
  for you. Oh dear.
• 1:20
  But you weren't the only one travelling last week.
• 1:22
  Lex was also travelling. I forget how far it is away for
• 1:27
  you to, like, go back 'cause you were visiting family, right?
• 1:30
  How was I think I was the only one playing Wow this week?
• 1:33
  How was your week in general, Lex?
• 1:37
  It was really good. So I was in Michigan.
• 1:39
  I was seeing Sorry, I'm I'm running through my brain and
• 1:41
  trying to make sure I'm not accidentally doxing myself.
• 1:43
  But I think this is a pretty common thing.
• 1:45
  I was seeing my sister get her PhD because she's she's a
• 1:49
  genius. So that was really fun.
• 1:52
  And Michigan I so I grew up in the Midwest, I grew up in Iowa.
• 1:56
  So there is a like Midwestern energy that which is basically
• 2:00
  farm lands but it's a really pretty farm lands.
• 2:03
  So it was really nice to be to be back and wander and hang out
• 2:06
  with family and see my sister talk about nature and it was it
• 2:13
  was really good. It was really good is is.
• 2:16
  Your sister's PhD in nature? Or are you dislike even in
• 2:19
  nature? Isn't again.
• 2:21
  I was I was trying to like be like will Am I am I saying too
• 2:24
  many identifying things but you guys can see my face she it's in
• 2:31
  bugs. I forgot the word.
• 2:35
  Entomology. No.
• 2:39
  Edamame is salty bee peas, I think.
• 2:42
  Ophthalmology. Etymology.
• 2:44
  Yeah, yeah. I'm so sorry.
• 2:47
  The only word that's coming to my mind right now is epidem,
• 2:51
  because. He's you got a PhD in Epidem.
• 2:55
  That's crazy. That is.
• 2:59
  What's the study? What's the study process for
• 3:01
  like thesis? I want to.
• 3:02
  I want to know what her thesis was.
• 3:05
  How to stop people without them knowing?
• 3:07
  Yeah, so that's two PhDs in your family now.
• 3:12
  You have a podcast hype Dr. yourself and then potentially a
• 3:16
  bug doctor. That's.
• 3:17
  Yeah, definitely a bug doctor. She she's a doctor.
• 3:19
  Girl's doctored up. Very cool.
• 3:22
  Very cool, that. Was well, OK going going from
• 3:26
  the PhD in podcast Hype to the world globetrotting other class.
• 3:33
  Man, I feel outclassed here. But John, how has your how's
• 3:36
  your week been? Manny, I had probably the best
• 3:39
  week any humans ever had on the planet Earth.
• 3:42
  That might be too much. Let me dial.
• 3:44
  It I was literally in Michigan. So yeah, hello.
• 3:50
  I had a great week. I had a really, really amazing
• 3:52
  time. I went to over to London with my
• 3:55
  partner on Julie and we spent eight days or seven days, 8
• 4:00
  days. We were there for a week and we
• 4:02
  got to do the LFG London event on Saturday and I gotta tell
• 4:09
  you, man E, there is a real good chance we moved to Europe.
• 4:15
  It was so good. Anyway.
• 4:17
  Lot of fun, Lot of fun. You wanna hear some firsts?
• 4:21
  I got. I got some big exciting firsts
• 4:22
  for you. Wanna hear?
• 4:23
  Yeah, yeah. Like, OK, this Wait, is this
• 4:24
  your this was your first time in the UK?
• 4:28
  My, well, my first time in London.
• 4:30
  I have been to Edinburgh, Dublin, Glasgow and Cork.
• 4:36
  My first time in London and I had my, my.
• 4:40
  So my first time in London, my first time ever.
• 4:42
  I'm 43 years old. I'm a grown man, my first time
• 4:45
  ever on a tube or a subway as we call them here in North America.
• 4:52
  It's like the that wasn't my first time on a train though.
• 4:55
  It was my first time on commuter rail.
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  I've only ever taken like Via Rail trains from Halifax to
• 5:00
  Montreal before and Angelina had some first as well.
• 5:04
  It wasn't just me, it was her first ever Caesar salad.
• 5:08
  London has she honestly has some pretty severe allergies.
• 5:11
  But London has this exceptional vegan scene.
• 5:17
  Like there are so many vegan restaurants and the the, the,
• 5:20
  the the city itself is so conscious of allergies.
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  Like, we would go to a restaurant, we would sit down.
• 5:26
  We we chose vegan restaurants most of the time, except for one
• 5:29
  sushi place we went to. But we would sit down and the
• 5:31
  first thing the servers would ask is if you had any allergies.
• 5:33
  It was so incredible. It seemed like they genuinely
• 5:36
  cared. Whereas in North America, it
• 5:38
  seems like they don't believe allergies even exist.
• 5:40
  When you tell them you have them, they're like, yeah, that's
• 5:42
  made-up OK, we'll just dust this off of.
• 5:45
  We'll dust the gluten off of this for you.
• 5:47
  Here you go. That's how it feels in North
• 5:50
  America. Anyway, so she had her first
• 5:51
  ever Caesar salad. We went to a vegan sushi
• 5:54
  restaurant that was owned by a Michelin star chef, which is my
• 5:58
  first ever eating at a Michelin starter chef restaurant.
• 6:01
  But it was the meal, everything at the restaurant she could
• 6:03
  have. So it was the first time for her
• 6:05
  that we ordered the like, the the the stuff so that everybody
• 6:08
  was like, sharing at the table. Yeah.
• 6:11
  Basically it was her first time ever being able to, like share
• 6:14
  food with a table of people and talk about what we were all
• 6:17
  eating and and like, be involved in that as opposed to having to
• 6:22
  like sort of eat off by herself. And it was just the whole trip
• 6:27
  was amazing. And to cap it all, so LFG London
• 6:29
  also a great event. But to cap it all off, I got to
• 6:32
  see Moulin Rouge live play in the Piccadilly Theater.
• 6:38
  And I I I cried half a dozen times.
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  But I absolutely bawled at the end and it's my favorite musical
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  and one of my favorite movies and it was just such a great
• 6:49
  trip. And then on top of all of that,
• 6:52
  I got to spend like 2 1/2 days hanging out with with a bunch of
• 6:57
  Warcraft nerds and it was so much fun.
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  Great, great trip. I am so happy that we did it.
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  How was my week? Yeah, that is pretty fantastic.
• 7:09
  OK. I just.
• 7:12
  I can't compete. I you know what I did?
• 7:14
  I went back to Mr. Pandaria. I went through the Jade Forest.
• 7:19
  What's this podcast about again? That's exciting too.
• 7:23
  That's exciting too. Yeah, I mean like and I think
• 7:29
  that honestly, it's it's a lot of fun, but then everybody
• 7:35
  starts complaining. So we got to talk about it.
• 7:38
  We got to get into the World of Warcraft.
• 7:40
  So we're going to do that right now.
• 7:43
  But before we talk about Pandaria, there's a little bit
• 7:47
  of LFD that was shared all over because I got to watch that from
• 7:51
  my my we got. We got a little LG in all of
• 7:56
  this. Sure, that's going to be the
• 7:59
  tagline for 2025, but I got to tune in and watched some parts
• 8:07
  of it. It was it like it seemed like
• 8:08
  such a great time. You guys put on an amazing show
• 8:10
  there and I'm really glad that you were a part of it.
• 8:13
  I really wish that I was a part of it, But there was a quick 20
• 8:17
  minute interview with Morgan Day and so we had basically more
• 8:25
  good day on the screen. Mr. GM asked, asked any
• 8:29
  questions and they went a little bit into things that we're going
• 8:33
  to get for the War Within coming up now again, it was pretty
• 8:39
  short 20 minutes, but there were some small tidbits in it that I
• 8:42
  thought were really, really good.
• 8:45
  The first one being that, hey, the KSM mount.
• 8:49
  The reason that it wasn't a flying mount or a dragon riding
• 8:54
  mount in in dragonflight was because they were just really
• 8:59
  scared about how dragonflight would be received if it was
• 9:02
  going to be something that people liked or not.
• 9:05
  And they didn't really want to put all their eggs in their
• 9:07
  basket. So they hedged their bets a bit
• 9:11
  there. Now obviously the reception has
• 9:15
  been overwhelmingly positive and so come the War within, we're
• 9:21
  gonna be getting full what they're now calling sky riding
• 9:25
  mounts. I feel like they should have
• 9:28
  just legacied and said it's just dragon riding and other things
• 9:31
  can get up to dragon riding. Sky riding doesn't cut it for
• 9:34
  me, you guys. Are riding the sky right like
• 9:40
  they Am I not riding the sky on a normal Griffin?
• 9:44
  Is that what you're saying, Morgan Day?
• 9:48
  I don't. I don't.
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  I I feel like one day we're like, oh, we're going to call
• 9:52
  this one like static flight and this one dynamic flight.
• 9:55
  The working names. I know that.
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  I know that doesn't sound fantasy, but sky riding
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  actually. Dynamic flight.
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  Yeah, I was going to say I love that static flight, Dynamic
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  flight. To me, because it evokes what
• 10:07
  you're doing. It makes just makes sense.
• 10:10
  Yeah, yeah, one. 100% to me. So I think they should have just
• 10:14
  stuck with that, but whatever, it's sky riding Now.
• 10:19
  The second thing is that all of the trans mugs that that you
• 10:25
  might have in your bag, in your bank that you couldn't send to
• 10:28
  alts, even if they're like sold, sold, bound to.
• 10:32
  You know, I have the the tusks of Manor off on my warlock.
• 10:38
  That's the character I dropped on.
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  And so luckily I got them when the whispers of what the war
• 10:48
  bands would be and I was like, well, maybe I can hold on to it.
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  Looks like that bet has paid off because in the war within any of
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  that stuff that you have earned, retro will be retroactively
• 11:00
  applied. So having the Tusk in my
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  inventory on my warlock will allow that trans mock to go to
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  all of my characters that can actually wear it.
• 11:09
  The plate wearers, they also said things that you've been
• 11:13
  rewarded through quest. So as you've gone through and
• 11:17
  you've levelled up through all of Cataclysm, that that stuff,
• 11:21
  even if you've done it on a clothy, you will get rewarded
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  retroactively all the stuff for all the different armor types.
• 11:31
  And that is music to my ears because I I mean, like, it would
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  have been like, OK, well, I'm gonna eventually go back and
• 11:39
  work my way through this, but not having to do that work,
• 11:42
  Yeah, I'll take that. Oh, that's going to be huge.
• 11:45
  We're going to have just, like, appearances coming out of our
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  ears. Yeah, that's a huge, huge win.
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  The crowd elicited that. That elicited a woo from the
• 11:54
  crowd when he made that announcement.
• 11:57
  Oh, you know, that's something. Hell yeah.
• 11:59
  I I think that there's still some ones that are going to be
• 12:04
  weird. They like the the caveat was a
• 12:06
  lot of them, not all of them. And I I think there's probably
• 12:11
  going to be exceptions like, hey, was like the character part
• 12:15
  of the covenant? No, you got to go back to that
• 12:17
  covenant and buy that, buy that sort of stuff.
• 12:19
  And I think that's the kind of stuff that might be the fringe
• 12:24
  cases. But still, this is a huge thing
• 12:27
  and I'm, I'm going to love not having to do all that work.
• 12:32
  Do you guys change means at all? Like I I'm pretty stubbornly
• 12:37
  shaman. I've been shaman for like way
• 12:40
  too many years, so I've I haven't really had to deal with
• 12:43
  this. But like Sean, do you always
• 12:46
  play Warrior? It's no I actually this will be
• 12:50
  my first season back-to-back where I play the same main
• 12:56
  because I tank. I typically would have changed
• 12:58
  to whatever tank, either the Raid team leader for comp
• 13:01
  purposes or what was strong that season.
• 13:05
  So I sense coming back to the game at 8.2.
• 13:10
  I have maned Prop, Paladin, Vengeance, Demon Hunter, Blood,
• 13:13
  Death Knight, and Prat Warrior. The only ones I haven't maned
• 13:20
  were Bear and and Monk. And it's because the people I
• 13:23
  tanked with always played those classes so I didn't have to, but
• 13:26
  I am. I played Warrior.
• 13:28
  In what tier did we just do, and I'm staying?
• 13:40
  I I stayed with that in season four and I'll be playing Warrior
• 13:44
  to start War Within. And the plan is to stay unless
• 13:50
  something happens that I end up tanking for my Raid team and
• 13:55
  then my the possibility is that I will swap to whatever is
• 13:58
  needed to con points. OK, so you you can have it.
• 14:03
  So you've you've had a bit of like the, oh, I don't have the
• 14:07
  trans mogs that you would want, but I I know that on your worry
• 14:10
  you've got some really good trans mogs.
• 14:12
  Your trans mog game is actually pretty solid, John, I got to
• 14:15
  say. Yeah, I so I'm not a mount guy,
• 14:17
  right? There's a lot of mount
• 14:18
  collectors and I do want to hear if Lex changes.
• 14:20
  I know Lex changed for this season.
• 14:23
  I'm not a mount collector. I basically have like 1 mount
• 14:26
  that goes for each race and I've already got them so the mounds
• 14:30
  don't really matter to me. But I am a big trans mug
• 14:33
  collector. That matters, although I don't
• 14:34
  know why because I basically wear the same outfit and I call
• 14:38
  them outfits all the time like I almost never changed.
• 14:41
  So. But Lex, what are you?
• 14:43
  Do you? You swapped the Demon Hunter for
• 14:45
  this tier, right? Yeah.
• 14:46
  And that was really like part of the excitement of that is that I
• 14:49
  have not switched off of priests since I started rating.
• 14:51
  Like I have just been, and not even just priests like I have
• 14:54
  been hardcore, holy, only I tried disc for like a week and I
• 14:57
  was like, this is the worst thing that's ever happened to
• 14:59
  anybody. And I I'm so sorry.
• 15:03
  I'm I'm, I'm, I'm happy you guys are happy.
• 15:06
  Whatever's going on with you over in Discworld.
• 15:09
  But I have never tried anything else.
• 15:11
  And I was like, I've done DPS like historically, like, you
• 15:15
  know, in Legion and things. So I know I don't like DPS.
• 15:18
  There's, you know, there. I've tried Shadow.
• 15:20
  I know it's not going to work. I know I hate DPSI was hoping
• 15:24
  for tank. And when I didn't get tank, I
• 15:25
  just because I was like, oh, I'll shake it up and be another
• 15:27
  big thing. But when I didn't get tank, I
• 15:30
  was like, well, I guess I'll do DPS if I have to, to be a good
• 15:34
  sport and I am in love with it. So I am beginning to wonder,
• 15:37
  like, I suppose there's a chance that I just happened to pick the
• 15:42
  one DPS class that I would possibly enjoy and I would hate
• 15:45
  the rest. But that feels statistically
• 15:47
  unlikely. So I'm starting to be a little
• 15:49
  curious if maybe there are other classes that I didn't realize
• 15:52
  that I I loved. And I'm I'm doing for time
• 15:55
  walking I'm doing Hunter, which is the DPSI played way back in.
• 15:58
  But when I was most CRP ING I wasn't really focusing on doing
• 16:01
  a good job. So we're gonna 'cause I think
• 16:04
  what I'm learning is what I really like and this is a
• 16:07
  tragedy. As a priest mane, what I really
• 16:09
  like is mobility. Like I like zipping around the
• 16:11
  screen and popping all over the place.
• 16:13
  Like I'm over here now I'm over here No.
• 16:15
  Oh, you can't see me 'cause I'm back there now.
• 16:18
  Which is not how holy Priest plays at all.
• 16:21
  So we're we're anyway, we're we're experimenting.
• 16:24
  Who. Who knows what the next season
• 16:25
  will bring? And frankly a lot of it will be
• 16:27
  raid team comp. Like if we have a bunch of
• 16:29
  people. Again, knock on wood, I'm not
• 16:31
  making decisions, but like if we have a bunch of people chomping
• 16:34
  at the bit for Healer, I might sacrifice my slob to go DPS.
• 16:37
  If we don't, I know I enjoy Holy Priest and I can play it well,
• 16:41
  but we'll see. I would pay real Canadian
• 16:47
  dollars to have you on an MDI casting desk describing what the
• 16:53
  DPS are doing. I just want let's get a video of
• 16:58
  fragments. Can we do this?
• 17:00
  Can we get, can we get a stretch goal for us to get VOD of clips
• 17:05
  of fragments in Sanctum of Domination?
• 17:07
  When he was playing Demon Hunter for Echo and he was like
• 17:11
  jumping, you know how the the bridges would would go up and
• 17:13
  sell on the Savannah's fight he was crossing before the bridges?
• 17:17
  I just want to have Lex cast that 'cause every time, she
• 17:24
  says, zipping and bopping. It is the happiest I think I've
• 17:30
  ever been hearing somebody describe Deep Under Movement.
• 17:36
  You know, we're going all over the place.
• 17:38
  It's great. It's, it is.
• 17:39
  I I think I've said this on the show already, so forgive me for
• 17:42
  being repetitive. It does give me a bit of a like,
• 17:45
  dopamine addiction. So when I'm like, well, people
• 17:48
  are trying to describe boss mechanics and like talk to what
• 17:50
  we can do. I'm running all over the place.
• 17:51
  Like, come on you guys, I need to go.
• 17:55
  I I double jump on, like when I'm playing D100, I'll just
• 17:59
  double jump on the spot over and over again until the ball.
• 18:05
  It becomes kind of like a running game of like how when I
• 18:08
  get bored enough, I will accidentally not on purpose, but
• 18:11
  I will pull the boss because I'm, you know, zipping all over
• 18:13
  the place and I've forgotten where I am.
• 18:15
  So there is a little bit of a timer.
• 18:17
  We need a glyph that puts like a like the Tron lights.
• 18:20
  You know when it's when the bikes going Tron, that beam of
• 18:23
  wipe out there. Yeah, we need that a glyph for
• 18:26
  Demon Hunter so that in Lex's raids all you see is like zoom
• 18:30
  zoom. There is a toy that leaves that
• 18:35
  rainbow trail behind you, but it's got long cooldowns.
• 18:39
  It would be amazing just to have like the just trailing by.
• 18:44
  That would be good two. Stretch Goals Rainbow Lex and
• 18:49
  Caster Lex covering fragments on the second with dominations of
• 18:54
  honest fight. OK, here you go.
• 18:58
  Well, we we got to figure this out.
• 19:00
  All right, so you've been playing Priest a lot, which
• 19:04
  means that you've basically had a good catalogue of of trans
• 19:09
  mog. Oh.
• 19:10
  Yeah, sorry. There's the point I meant to say
• 19:11
  before I started talking about how much I love Demon Hunter.
• 19:16
  So the the downside of this is because I've been playing Priest
• 19:20
  for so long, my Demon Hunter is ugly.
• 19:24
  Like I do not have any leather trans mogs and I don't like I
• 19:27
  love trans mog. I've been late to, I don't like
• 19:29
  collect trans mogs because I'm absurdly lazy, but I've been
• 19:32
  like late to raid because I'm putting things together.
• 19:34
  I'm like, no, this cloak isn't right and so I'd have to like go
• 19:38
  in and this like gunky little gear on my Demon Hunter.
• 19:42
  So I am over the moon that I'm about to get a ton of trans mogs
• 19:46
  and war within, because then I can actually look good on my
• 19:48
  alts. There you go.
• 19:51
  So yeah, this seems like a boon for for most, most everybody
• 19:56
  except for the most die hard people who just play the the one
• 19:59
  or like very extensive trans model collectors that have kind
• 20:03
  of already done that legwork. I could see some some category
• 20:05
  of people doing that. The last well, one of the last
• 20:12
  ones that I think was really, really important was like the
• 20:17
  question about. Cross realm work orders for
• 20:24
  guilds because it was something that like a lot of people had
• 20:27
  just assumed like Oh yeah no like as they're you're doing
• 20:30
  these things that should be added in.
• 20:32
  But yeah it's not something we have currently in Dragonfly and
• 20:36
  and like my Guild is cross realm.
• 20:39
  We've got people who are on like 1 server or another and it it
• 20:43
  sucks when like they are unable to get anything fulfilled
• 20:46
  because most of the most of the Guild is on one server and we
• 20:50
  have some quote UN quote satellite members.
• 20:53
  But now it's not going to matter, like you can fulfill
• 20:55
  Guild orders regardless of what server they're on.
• 20:58
  As long as they're in your region, you're good to go and I
• 21:00
  I'm so happy for that. Oh yeah, and it's going to be a
• 21:03
  game changer. Yeah, and it goes.
• 21:07
  From the crowd. That also got a woo.
• 21:09
  Well, it all goes to this thing where Dragonflight was about
• 21:13
  creating this sort of like baseline of like the the
• 21:17
  experience and not adding any new features that are just, you
• 21:22
  know, that sort of borrowed power system or something that
• 21:25
  is going to just sort of disappear after expansion's
• 21:28
  over. And instead we've been getting a
• 21:29
  lot of these, these features that are sort of built upon and
• 21:33
  building the foundation. And so like when these questions
• 21:38
  that like that Mister GM was asking, it really felt like
• 21:42
  they're just building upon what's what's come before just
• 21:45
  making that the game just like so much smoother and we don't
• 21:49
  have to worry about like oh like how's the heart of Azeroth going
• 21:52
  to like go into Shadow Lands. It's yeah.
• 21:55
  No. Like now the work order system
• 21:58
  is way better than it was before And if you have you guys been
• 22:03
  looking at any of the work order system stuff from like other
• 22:06
  creators, it's kind of yeah, I I I can I we've got the head
• 22:11
  shaking. No.
• 22:12
  Right. It's kind of going under the
• 22:14
  radar because obviously the big things people are looking at are
• 22:17
  with your characters and the hero talents and that sort of
• 22:20
  stuff, but they're making a lot of changes to professions to
• 22:26
  make it just easier to learn things.
• 22:28
  Not as like cryptic about like how you like you skill up in
• 22:33
  that sort of thing and adding in work orders that are just like
• 22:38
  available all the time so you can you can get those done is
• 22:42
  something that they had said way back early.
• 22:44
  Dragon fight when people are like, whoa, I can't get any work
• 22:46
  orders. It's just being sniped by the
• 22:48
  same three people on my server, whatever.
• 22:52
  There they they seem to have taken all of that and just sort
• 22:56
  of refreshed and refined it. I really want to take a deeper
• 23:00
  look. Did you guys enjoy professions
• 23:05
  this expansion or is that something that you sort of
• 23:07
  bounced off of? Let's start.
• 23:09
  With that, Oh yeah, I went back to my double gathering ways
• 23:14
  because I get a little fussed by crafting, especially the work
• 23:19
  order system. Using it for my Guild.
• 23:22
  Incredible love it. 10 out of 10 using it as a crafter sounds
• 23:26
  terrifying and and and to be fair I mostly enjoy using it.
• 23:29
  Like when I say using it for my Guild is great, that is because
• 23:32
  what I do is I go in the professions and I'm like hey
• 23:34
  guys, what do you what do I do here?
• 23:36
  And my Guild's like you. I can put in this work order
• 23:38
  which this person can fulfill, and you give me these things and
• 23:41
  this much money. And I'm like, great, thank you.
• 23:44
  But I like just thinking about handling all that seemed very
• 23:48
  scary. And it did seem like there were
• 23:51
  a lot of pitfalls this season of like, yeah, like, you know,
• 23:54
  there were not enough work orders for people were giving a
• 23:58
  ton of goods from their own pocket to do work orders because
• 24:02
  that was the only way you were going to get them.
• 24:05
  I know. I mean, like in our Guild there
• 24:06
  were people who were like, can somebody please just put up a
• 24:08
  few Guild orders for XYZ so I can do my dailies and things
• 24:12
  like that? So I was double craft or double
• 24:15
  gathering. I got far too fussed to do any
• 24:17
  crafting. I tried to predict what Lex was
• 24:21
  going to say and thumbs down the thing that I actually agree
• 24:24
  with. So yeah, I I agree with Lex.
• 24:27
  So I I'm an alchemist and an enchanter.
• 24:30
  Not because I really love the crafting system, but because I
• 24:34
  run so many dungeons that enchanting is basically a
• 24:36
  gathering profession for me in the disenchanting of gear and
• 24:40
  alchemy because extra long flasks saves me gold or files.
• 24:45
  I was super, super pumped for the crafting system coming in to
• 24:49
  dragonfly because I don't have a job.
• 24:51
  So I was like, I'm going to be at home all day.
• 24:53
  This will be the first time in my life that I can make money.
• 24:56
  As a crafter, this is going to be awesome.
• 25:00
  And as a purchaser, the crafting system is great.
• 25:05
  There's a piece that I want, I pop in a trade chat.
• 25:08
  I say I need a crafter that can five star this.
• 25:10
  Or I ask my Guild, I need a crafter that can five star this.
• 25:15
  I give them the mats. It's done.
• 25:16
  I love it. As a crafter, it is the least
• 25:22
  amount of fun you can have with your clothes on.
• 25:26
  It's just like you're gonna to make any money at all.
• 25:29
  You have to spam trade chat. They're gonna sit there for all
• 25:33
  hours spamming trade chat, hoping people will send you
• 25:35
  stuff. And then on top of that the the
• 25:41
  actual crafting orders don't work.
• 25:42
  They they might as well not exist because as soon as they
• 25:45
  allowed people to put stuff up with no mats, people flooded it
• 25:49
  with stuff with no mats. I was like and you and you, they
• 25:52
  capped it at four. They they used to be 20 a day
• 25:55
  that you could do and they they reverted that before it went
• 25:58
  live and capped it at 4:00 because they didn't want people
• 26:00
  to just like spam get all the good ones but it by capping it
• 26:04
  at 4 meant what I'm not going to what are you usually going to do
• 26:07
  for like 100 gold 100 gold Commission like it just it it
• 26:14
  was so disheartening for me that I completely lost all interest
• 26:16
  in it and I only engaged with it as a buyer.
• 26:20
  And as a buyer it's great because I know there are people
• 26:23
  who will do the take the time to do the do that legwork.
• 26:26
  But yeah I don't I haven't looked at I have a video
• 26:30
  bookmarked by soul so breezy talking about the changes and
• 26:33
  I'm going to check it but the for me the damage is done.
• 26:37
  I will never engage with crafting in a meaningful way as
• 26:39
  a crafter. I will only ever use it as a as
• 26:41
  a consumer. It doesn't matter what changes
• 26:44
  they make at this point. Now I will.
• 26:45
  I I my my excitement got so shattered with what the reality
• 26:50
  of it was that it's not it's not worth me putting the energy in
• 26:54
  to even look at. OK, OK.
• 26:57
  A question for I guess you already said, you've already
• 27:02
  said before that you haven't typically made a lot of gold
• 27:08
  through professions, and this was like your your what you
• 27:11
  thought was going to be your chance, Lex.
• 27:13
  What about you? Have you made much gold through
• 27:17
  professions prior to this? Oh, Manny, I have 30,000 gold on
• 27:21
  both of my characters. I have not made much gold at
• 27:24
  all. I I really play World of
• 27:27
  Warcraft as a solo game that I pop into raids.
• 27:30
  I I double gather because you can make some money, right?
• 27:35
  You post things on the like, you know you if you remember to
• 27:38
  gather your little herbs. You post some things on the
• 27:40
  auction house. You put some things in your
• 27:43
  Guild bank. You feel like a good guildie.
• 27:46
  You make like 10,000 gold. You say, wow, this is 1/3 of all
• 27:50
  the gold I had before. This is so exciting.
• 27:53
  And you move on with your day and then your team starts
• 27:56
  talking about how they're trying to save up for the long boy.
• 27:58
  And you're like the like, sorry, the mount with the the
• 28:01
  auctioneer mount. And you're like, you guys are
• 28:03
  gonna do what you You guys have that much money and then you
• 28:08
  realize you're bad at the game. But it's fine.
• 28:11
  It works for me. OK.
• 28:14
  All right. You're not bad as game, Lex,
• 28:17
  you're just playing a different game.
• 28:18
  Exactly, exactly. I'm, I'm, I'm playing an RPG.
• 28:24
  That's right. I got you bestie.
• 28:25
  I got you 30K club. Rise up.
• 28:31
  OK. All right.
• 28:32
  Well, you know we got, we got two members in the 30 K-Cup and
• 28:35
  that's that's it. So we got some remember.
• 28:38
  Who maybe is going to mail me some gold tonight, Right Manny?
• 28:41
  Yeah. Sure I'll I'll I'll put 30K
• 28:47
  together for you. We we could do that.
• 28:53
  I I think that, yeah, like the the system did hit some people
• 28:58
  pretty bad and like that kind of like bounce off isn't uncommon.
• 29:03
  I'm hoping that they kind of get the message out there, 'cause it
• 29:07
  is, it is, it does feel like they've sort of failed at that
• 29:10
  first impression And so it's going to take a lot more to
• 29:13
  convince people to give give this another shot.
• 29:16
  And so I I definitely see where you're coming from, Sean.
• 29:20
  I do hope that they do build this.
• 29:22
  They do continue to build this up.
• 29:24
  They've been making a lot of these changes that seem like
• 29:26
  they are removing a lot of pain points and maybe closer to
• 29:31
  release. We could do like a kind of like
• 29:33
  deeper dive into it to see if there's anything that might at
• 29:38
  least make you go like, yeah, I guess it's not as bad.
• 29:40
  I'm still not going to do it, but it's not as bad as it used
• 29:43
  to be, which. Is You know what?
• 29:45
  Yeah, sorry, this is this is full speculation.
• 29:47
  You know what I really wish they'd do?
• 29:48
  And maybe they are doing this and maybe I just haven't heard
• 29:50
  about it. I wish they would tie in the
• 29:52
  crafting system in the auction house because I don't like, I
• 29:57
  have to like keep running back and forth to buy because I don't
• 29:59
  know what I need because I'm trying to like get the mats
• 30:03
  because I don't, you know, like I I don't engage with crafting
• 30:05
  otherwise so I I never know what needs to be gotten for what and
• 30:08
  then I forget something. I have to go back or I have to
• 30:10
  post it without and I have to like put after gold, but I don't
• 30:12
  know how much gold I should put. So I feel really bad and guilty
• 30:14
  and I'm like, am I being a jerk? I wish that I could just like,
• 30:16
  you know have a thing that auto connects the auction house and I
• 30:19
  can like I can put in a certain amount of gold that will fill
• 30:22
  all my mats or something like that.
• 30:24
  It's probably too complicated. Wouldn't it be fun?
• 30:27
  It doesn't feel like it'd be that complicated.
• 30:30
  And just want to not have or at least put them.
• 30:32
  Maybe just put them next to each other.
• 30:33
  Just put a fucking crafting work order person in the auction
• 30:36
  house so that I don't have to, I can fly and Oh my.
• 30:40
  Anyway, lot of yeah. No, no, I agree.
• 30:43
  I'll watch. That video.
• 30:44
  I'll watch that video and see what the changes are for next
• 30:47
  week. OK, all right.
• 30:49
  I zoomed my camera because I was just all face.
• 30:51
  I was looking at the stream. Manny.
• 30:53
  And I know you're going to want to edit this from the podcast,
• 30:55
  but this is people need to know this.
• 30:57
  If you're watching us live, you missed the opportunity to see
• 30:59
  just a giant face for like the 1st 30 minutes of this show.
• 31:03
  It was just all face when you tell me I was so close.
• 31:08
  Making eye contact, you're staring into people's soul.
• 31:11
  That's your role. Crazy.
• 31:12
  Exactly. People get to see your big smile
• 31:14
  and speaker because. Of the magnification Lex.
• 31:17
  Manny the Death Star. It was crazy.
• 31:20
  Just a giant pasty orb. All right.
• 31:22
  Anyway, I backed up a bit. OK.
• 31:25
  OK. You backed up a bit.
• 31:26
  Well, there's a lot in that. There's a lot of interviews that
• 31:30
  have come out over the last little bit.
• 31:33
  So do check out those interviews.
• 31:36
  There was a Tina Fey, Sorry, not Tina Fey, Tina Wang.
• 31:41
  Tina Wang did it, did an interview with Lease TV and
• 31:49
  there was some other ones. So do check those out.
• 31:50
  We've got the link to Mr. G Miss interview in the show notes but
• 31:56
  while that was happening while you guys were off in London
• 32:00
  there and you were off visiting family Lex, I was in the mists
• 32:05
  of Pandaria and that has been a lot of fun.
• 32:11
  It is like of course you had played this tested it with me
• 32:16
  when it was on the PTR so you you know you've got a taste of
• 32:19
  it and it's it has not dulled. It is just being run through as
• 32:27
  fast as I can get these crazy abilities mix them together.
• 32:30
  I played on a warrior on the PTR now live I'm playing a Drnai
• 32:37
  mage because I just mage is the last class that I need to level
• 32:41
  up to Cap and Drnai just got their heritage armor.
• 32:45
  There's a bunch of quests for them, so I like, I just.
• 32:48
  I feel like this will fit in so I can get all the lore bits
• 32:51
  after I'm done with it. But I'm I'm liking mage, not at
• 32:54
  not anywhere enough that it's threatening to like be
• 32:57
  something. I play on main but I'm enjoying
• 32:59
  it. Did you go with fire like you
• 33:01
  said you were going to last week?
• 33:03
  I let chat decide and they said fire is like like I quote fire
• 33:08
  is lame, go frost. So I was like, OK, all right.
• 33:13
  And it was a good week. Fire is objectively lit, like
• 33:18
  you cannot. Chad is wrong.
• 33:22
  Whoever said that get in the discord 'cause we need to have a
• 33:24
  conversation. What are you talking about?
• 33:27
  I I think people just wanted me to have something a little bit
• 33:30
  more chilled. That's fair.
• 33:32
  No, I'll accept that. I'll accept that.
• 33:34
  Frost's chill is also a valid statement, but Fire is
• 33:37
  objectively lit. I've never played Mage, I just.
• 33:40
  There's also an old pandaren proverb that if you put a man
• 33:45
  near a fire, he's warm for a day, but if you light a Man on
• 33:47
  Fire, he's warm for the rest of his life.
• 33:50
  And I think you should have gone with fire just for that reason.
• 33:56
  I broke legs. OK.
• 34:05
  I have a question for you, Manny.
• 34:07
  I have a question. So you're playing Mr. Pandya
• 34:10
  remixed, which, don't get me wrong, super jealous.
• 34:12
  I can't wait to dive in. Probably tomorrow.
• 34:15
  Did you Frog exploit or did you not Frog exploit that?
• 34:22
  Is the question. I have not frog exploited.
• 34:25
  I bring it a little bit of 4th wall.
• 34:29
  I do suffer from bouts of insomnia.
• 34:32
  It does cause like me to be just like a bit frazzled at times.
• 34:36
  So was playing it. I got a first day killing it and
• 34:42
  then Insomnia hit, so I haven't been playing as much wow as I
• 34:48
  would like. I'm I think a little shy of 40.
• 34:52
  I'm like 37 or something like that.
• 34:54
  So I never even got to like 6570 when you can actually start
• 35:00
  doing the Frogsploitation. I.
• 35:06
  But like I have people in Guild that like hit 71st day, like
• 35:10
  just done. They're right there.
• 35:14
  I know a lot. I've had, I've heard many
• 35:17
  accounts of talk with different content creators about like how
• 35:20
  things are set when you hit 70 and it becomes quite the push to
• 35:26
  get your gearing up and how hard things are at the heroic rating
• 35:31
  level and and end game content scaling pretty steeply.
• 35:36
  So I I understand why people would be looking for just the
• 35:40
  fastest way to gear up so they can start conquering this
• 35:44
  content. But yeah, I didn't do it myself
• 35:48
  and. For those who don't know, I just
• 35:50
  want to explain what the frog exploit is.
• 35:51
  For those who don't know, there was a a hyper spawn point of
• 35:55
  frogs and Mr. Pandora that you could kill and this existed in
• 35:58
  original mop as well but it was less power inducing.
• 36:02
  Then killing them dropped lesser charms as well as bronze.
• 36:06
  You could turn the lesser charms in for gems I believe which
• 36:10
  significantly boosted the power level of your characters in mop
• 36:15
  remix to the tune of like mages with eight million health that
• 36:20
  do 3 million DPS. So basically soloing raid bosses
• 36:26
  and they nerfed it. Team two came in three days this
• 36:28
  so this was active for three days so for three days people
• 36:31
  who are in the the team of exploit early and exploit often
• 36:36
  which is the team you should be in they have they they have
• 36:42
  massive power gains over anybody else who didn't get it.
• 36:46
  Why is it important that that they nerfed it and and I do
• 36:49
  think it needed to be nerfed. I know there's a lot of
• 36:51
  statements of like oh it's a for fun thing it's only for 95 days
• 36:55
  just let us add a Blizzard and on Twitter Jeddith actually
• 37:00
  nails this in a tweet but if they don't nerf this those
• 37:05
  people who are exploiting it today will be so much further.
• 37:09
  The gap would be so much greater between them and anybody who's
• 37:13
  not exploiting the frog hyper spawn in a month or in two
• 37:17
  months that it would be, It would completely ruin the game
• 37:20
  mode, so it had to be nerfed for that reason.
• 37:23
  But, and they've already said they're doing this, there needs
• 37:27
  to be something done to offset the scaling at 70 because it is
• 37:30
  so bad. People shouldn't feel like they
• 37:32
  had to frog exploit in order to play the game at that high
• 37:36
  level. So it did need to be nerfed.
• 37:38
  I'm glad it was nerfed. I'm also glad I didn't have the
• 37:42
  opportunity to do it because I know I would have.
• 37:47
  If I had been home, there would have been massive frog
• 37:49
  exploitation happening all day long at my house.
• 37:53
  I'm gonna just say it like the existence of the frog exploit
• 37:57
  necessitates the frog exploit. If anybody can do it, then the
• 38:01
  only way for anybody to stay, like competitive is to do it
• 38:07
  themselves or to do something at that similar speed.
• 38:11
  So it doesn't matter if the scaling was out of whack or
• 38:13
  perfect. The frog exploit was a problem
• 38:16
  on its own right. And so people who are saying, oh
• 38:20
  some people have done it and therefore I can never catch up.
• 38:24
  You're not arguing to keep the frog exploit in in play.
• 38:29
  You are actually arguing for rollbacks of everybody who used
• 38:34
  the frog exploit because it's like you that's the only way
• 38:39
  that it can be done is that either they get they catch
• 38:42
  temporary bands so that everybody else can catch up
• 38:45
  while they get to sit on the on the bench.
• 38:48
  Or Blizzard goes into each of their characters and says this
• 38:52
  is the point where you killed your first frog and restores all
• 38:54
  their stuff to that and they lose all their progress which is
• 38:57
  painful. Maybe they do a portion of that
• 39:00
  and but like somebody's gonna hurt here.
• 39:02
  Or maybe the people who didn't exploit go well.
• 39:06
  It'll all wash out in the end. I don't know.
• 39:08
  I I don't think you can punish players for doing something that
• 39:11
  was in the game 15 years ago. I mean Blizzard put it live like
• 39:14
  this. It was, it was mentioned, it was
• 39:16
  brought up to them on the PTR. It was reported on the PTR that
• 39:19
  it could be done. So it went.
• 39:21
  They were made aware of it in MOP.
• 39:23
  They were made aware of it on the PTR.
• 39:25
  It still went live like that, you know, and it and even with
• 39:30
  it live like that it was still three days before the and they
• 39:32
  only fixed it. It was remove the charms.
• 39:34
  You know what I mean? I can't imagine that that
• 39:36
  doesn't take three days worth of code cracking to figure out how
• 39:38
  to remove an item off a loop table.
• 39:41
  So I don't. I think rolling back is the
• 39:43
  wrong play. I don't think you can.
• 39:43
  I don't think you can. Sorry, Lex, I'm gonna let you
• 39:45
  go. No, no, no.
• 39:46
  Good. Crazy.
• 39:46
  I I I was gonna say I I agree. I mean like this wasn't like
• 39:49
  somebody who found a bug and and pushed it.
• 39:51
  Like this was people playing legally.
• 39:53
  I think more so the point the like what needs to happen is
• 39:58
  they need to do heavy catch up mechanics and like they could
• 40:01
  even do it in the sense of like if you have X amount of power we
• 40:04
  will not like I haven't played a ton of remix.
• 40:07
  I don't know exactly how they would do this but like make it
• 40:09
  so those catch up mechanics are only available when you are
• 40:12
  between a certain brain you know 70 but X amount of power to
• 40:16
  higher power. Because yeah, like, you know if,
• 40:18
  if again I I've played for like. An hour.
• 40:22
  So I I don't know what I'm talking about.
• 40:23
  But if if people are feeling like they hit 70 and then it's
• 40:25
  just grind city, that's not you know that's not true for fun.
• 40:31
  And I think it's valid to not want people to do that.
• 40:32
  And I also think it's true that you know if if there is this
• 40:35
  exploit that will grind you up really quick people because it
• 40:38
  is an MMO where you are playing with other people, people are
• 40:41
  feel pressure to do that and that sucks.
• 40:42
  And so giving the same thing they're doing with time walking
• 40:45
  I think or not time walking with the war within I think very
• 40:48
  successfully, right. Giving multiple avenues that you
• 40:51
  can reach power that you know you have to work, but you can do
• 40:56
  a lot of different things. But you can't just sit there
• 40:58
  killing frogs. I will say though, I was when I
• 41:02
  started seeing the the the articles about frog farming, I
• 41:06
  think it was last week that I learned about the Mr. Pandaria
• 41:09
  farm mechanic. Like the the the little farm
• 41:11
  that you can go to. I I haven't done it, but like
• 41:13
  you know where you go and you you engage in farming.
• 41:15
  And so I was like, Oh my God, I can farm frogs.
• 41:20
  I was so excited. OK, well, I you'd be
• 41:25
  disappointing, bro. I'm gonna rip off the Band-Aid
• 41:28
  in mop remix. The half Hill Farm is disabled.
• 41:32
  You cannot do the actual farm. Boo.
• 41:35
  Well, then I'm never gonna farm. This is like.
• 41:39
  When I was 5 and I said my dream job was to be a farmer and
• 41:41
  everyone told me I'd have to like.
• 41:45
  Yeah, Half Hill. It still exists in retail
• 41:48
  though. You could just go to that farm.
• 41:51
  This is this is true. Don't let your memes be dreams,
• 41:54
  Lex. You could still be a farmer,
• 41:55
  you. Could still be a farmer.
• 41:57
  Yeah, I should. I should roll a pandarian just
• 41:59
  to go hang out and farm. Like not to level, just farm.
• 42:02
  OK, So then I got to ask you and I'll throw to see you.
• 42:05
  First, Sean, what do you believe the solution is to bridge that
• 42:09
  gap between the haves and have nots?
• 42:12
  Right. Like, So what would what's the
• 42:13
  solution now between those who frogged and those who didn't?
• 42:17
  There is no solution. You just you just have to suck
• 42:19
  it up. It's a it's an L Blizzard takes
• 42:21
  an L for this one and hopefully they learn from it going
• 42:24
  forward. They they they what they what
• 42:27
  needs to happen is scaling needs to be fixed.
• 42:30
  There's no people shouldn't be getting one shot at level 70
• 42:33
  from mobs that 10s can solo. That's it just shouldn't happen
• 42:38
  And and I get it smaller teams work on these offside projects
• 42:42
  that sure it happens that but that needs to be fixed.
• 42:44
  And two they need to find some way to address that lost power
• 42:50
  gain from frogs. They need to figure out what
• 42:53
  level they think is reasonable and that needs to be implemented
• 42:56
  ASAP so that people have the option to do something to to
• 43:01
  gain power up that's that's you know, not an insane grind.
• 43:06
  Yeah. But there's nothing you do.
• 43:07
  It's sorry. I was going to say it's the IT
• 43:08
  was the same with the seeds in a mirror.
• 43:11
  So when the seeds first came out you could get Rep 250 Rep from
• 43:14
  them up to exalted and within two days they nerfed it.
• 43:18
  You only got 250 Rep in the 1st 5 but everybody who farmed them
• 43:22
  for those first two days kept all of their Rep which is the
• 43:25
  right thing to do. If it's I mean I I use the term
• 43:28
  exploit I said earlier exploit earlier and exploit often.
• 43:30
  I don't mean actual exploits. I mean if there's a thing in
• 43:33
  like if it don't don't don't exploit bugs that's that's
• 43:36
  wrong. But if there's a a mechanic in
• 43:38
  the game that lets you gain either Rep or whatever fast it's
• 43:45
  they're going to remove it. So if you care about that gap
• 43:48
  existing, you don't want to be on the back end of it.
• 43:53
  OK. And then Lex, what about you?
• 43:56
  Do you feel there's any solution to like make this whole or do
• 44:00
  you feel like the the damage is done you just we're going to
• 44:03
  have to live with it? Yeah, I think I I I think that
• 44:05
  they should make just getting rap and and and levels not rap
• 44:10
  getting power easier. I mean the whole point of mob
• 44:14
  remix is that like they were like you're going to go in and
• 44:16
  you're going to be crazy powerful and you're going to do
• 44:18
  all these cool things. And like I I, I don't have a
• 44:21
  problem with them just making it like I, I, you know people are
• 44:24
  saying like they're getting one shot by mobs at level 70.
• 44:27
  Like I would much rather that we get into again having not played
• 44:30
  it. So I'm talking entirely out of
• 44:33
  nothing but get us into level 70 and we're already pretty
• 44:38
  powerful and we're already you know, running around.
• 44:40
  Then we just get more and more powerful.
• 44:42
  I I can imagine a world where they do a like you know, like I
• 44:45
  was saying like a you know catch up you you can get up to this
• 44:50
  amount of power doing these things.
• 44:52
  But then once you hit that point you have to do the slow grind
• 44:54
  like everyone else. And that point can be around
• 44:56
  where a lot of frog people got things.
• 45:00
  But I the the the point, as I understand it of mop remix was
• 45:05
  that we were going to get this opportunity to be like crazy
• 45:09
  powerful and do crazy things and live the dream like we've never
• 45:13
  lived it before. So don't make 70 painful like in
• 45:18
  in instead of setting the bar. So it's like it starts out
• 45:21
  sucking and then it gets more reasonable.
• 45:23
  Start out reasonable and by the end of it you're running through
• 45:26
  a town and like you know boom and everything's dead and you
• 45:29
  know, I I don't know. I think that would be a workable
• 45:32
  solution as well. Yeah I'm with Lex on that set
• 45:34
  the set the scaling so that you're at 70 and it feels like
• 45:37
  you're you know what I mean? You're already geared on par
• 45:40
  with the content so it's easy and then by the end of it I
• 45:43
  think we should be able to to clear raid solo in a in a mode
• 45:46
  like this. By the end of it I want to feel
• 45:48
  like the avatar. So yeah, I agree.
• 45:51
  I agree with that that that that play 100% make it so we hit 70
• 45:55
  scale it so that we you know we can do it easily.
• 45:58
  It's not this isn't challenging content.
• 46:00
  This isn't race to world first. It's just supposed to be for fun
• 46:02
  where you feel like a God. You know what I mean?
• 46:05
  In my mind anyway maybe that's not the goal.
• 46:07
  Maybe the goal is is something different.
• 46:08
  But that's. I agree with Lex 100% on that.
• 46:10
  Yeah. OK, let me flatten the town all.
• 46:14
  Right. All right.
• 46:15
  Here, here is my thought. OK, soft cap.
• 46:20
  Basically, you know where your furthest players are.
• 46:26
  You put in a hey, if you are above, if you've earned above
• 46:31
  this much of of this currency, you now get it at a diminishing
• 46:34
  rate until next week. And then that cap goes higher
• 46:37
  and then that cap goes higher. And in that way, anybody who's
• 46:40
  behind hits that soft cap later and gets the ability to catch up
• 46:46
  without disrupting the people who have already got there.
• 46:49
  Fine, just play less or you were grinding before.
• 46:53
  Fine, you're fine to grind. Go ahead.
• 46:55
  It's a soft cap. I'm only reducing what you get
• 46:58
  beyond this, this limit. And I think if they do it that
• 47:00
  way, they can sort of allow people who really want to push
• 47:05
  that grind to catch up and the people who were never really
• 47:07
  going to do that grind, they were never going to catch up
• 47:10
  anyway. So this soft cap means nothing
• 47:12
  to them. And then in my mind, I think
• 47:14
  that's the way to to go about it rather than rolling people back
• 47:17
  rather than giving some sort of some sort of like boost where
• 47:22
  you have to pick and choose, oh, you were at 70 but you didn't
• 47:25
  frog grind, so you'll get the boost and now that you're at 70
• 47:28
  here you get the frog boost. That just seems really weird and
• 47:31
  a lot of manual labor. I think just a just a soft cap
• 47:35
  might might be the way to go about it.
• 47:37
  Yeah, yeah, hard to say. It'll be interesting to see what
• 47:40
  solution they come up with. I'm certain the community will
• 47:43
  hate it, whatever it is of. Course.
• 47:47
  Well, I do want to take this time to thank our patrons.
• 47:53
  So Sean, would you be willing to tell us who our latest patron
• 47:56
  is? Manny, I would love to.
• 47:58
  For those of you who don't know, I'm going to read this section
• 48:02
  this week. We would like to thank Greybeard
• 48:05
  for supporting the show, for Azeroth will always be free, but
• 48:09
  if you enjoy the content we produce, you should consider
• 48:11
  pledging to our Patreon at patreon.com/faz and Greybeard to
• 48:16
  you specifically. Thank you for your contribution
• 48:18
  to the show. Hopefully we are able to provide
• 48:21
  you with content that you enjoy. Thank you.
• 48:25
  Now we I want to, I want to gussy that up for next week.
• 48:29
  We're going to we need a new we need a we need a new patron for
• 48:32
  next week. I'm going to come up with a
• 48:34
  really fancy personalized message for whoever it is.
• 48:38
  OK. All right.
• 48:39
  Is that what this is? That what this is?
• 48:41
  Is Graybeard, our new patron? Did I?
• 48:43
  Graybeard is our new patron. All right, Graybeard.
• 48:45
  Welcome to the family, Graybeard.
• 48:47
  Happy to have you. We need a new patron for next
• 48:50
  week. We're going to spice this up.
• 48:52
  Wow. OK, all right, all right.
• 48:54
  Here we go. We can read out by.
• 48:56
  John, we don't have one by Monday.
• 48:57
  I'll figure something out the. Shame.
• 49:04
  OK, moving from that, we got a new short story from our
• 49:12
  favorite former Blizzard employee, Christy Golden.
• 49:16
  Lex. Do you want to talk a little bit
• 49:18
  about this story? Yeah, it's devastating.
• 49:22
  It's really good. So basically are we doing, are
• 49:27
  we doing, we're doing spoilers, right.
• 49:28
  So that's 37 page story. 37 pages.
• 49:32
  Go go for it. So if you're listening to the
• 49:36
  podcast, this is your chance. Get out.
• 49:41
  Yeah, get out and read the story.
• 49:42
  It's really good. Manny's Manny's going to put a
• 49:45
  chapter marker in the description that you can touch
• 49:48
  that will take you right to the end of the spoilers.
• 49:50
  I'll make me work. Sorry.
• 49:55
  And if you're watching the stream, you don't want spoilers.
• 49:57
  You can mute and when it's done, I'll wave my arms like this.
• 50:01
  That's true, Sean, because you haven't done that for the the
• 50:02
  entire. Episode.
• 50:03
  I've done it too many times. I'm not gonna do.
• 50:06
  I'm gonna keep my arms down here for now.
• 50:10
  When we're done, you're gonna get this.
• 50:12
  We're gonna get that chance. Unmute this.
• 50:13
  Sean, They're like, oh, it spoilers really fast today, I
• 50:16
  guess. OK, I'm.
• 50:18
  I'm sitting on my hands. All right, let's take it away.
• 50:23
  So basically Andrew and is having a really rough go of it.
• 50:27
  The really rough. He came out of death, and he's
• 50:30
  super traumatized because he was, for those of you who were
• 50:33
  not paying attention or did not play the the Death expansion,
• 50:40
  that somehow the name is escaping me.
• 50:43
  Shadow Lands. Thank you.
• 50:44
  I I knew that I was testing you guys.
• 50:47
  God, this is really not my day. But it's OK.
• 50:49
  We're going. We're powering through.
• 50:51
  So he comes out of death and he. Oh, yeah.
• 50:53
  So for those of you who didn't play Shadow Lands, he, like,
• 50:55
  tried to kill us in the raid because he was possessed by
• 50:58
  Arthur. So it wasn't his fault, but he
• 50:59
  was like, I tried to kill my friends.
• 51:02
  And frankly, given how many wipes we had on, he killed us
• 51:05
  quite a lot. In fact he he did some
• 51:07
  murdering, but that's neither here nor there.
• 51:10
  So he goes to Calteris to like cope with the fact that he can't
• 51:16
  really like look his friends in the eye.
• 51:18
  He's having flashbacks, he's having night terrors.
• 51:22
  He like flashbacks to the point where like he's losing.
• 51:25
  Like he he thinks he is in a in back and being possessed by
• 51:30
  Arthas, so like real flashbacks. And he is.
• 51:38
  So he meets this mill worker who is like, oh, you know, I
• 51:42
  actually have this job that nobody can do because it's so
• 51:47
  lonely. Like you, you were just alone up
• 51:49
  here grinding flour and taking care of the animals.
• 51:54
  And it's super hard. And Andwin is like, bro, sign me
• 51:58
  up. All I want to do right now is be
• 52:00
  alone. And Andwin gives them a fake
• 52:03
  name, so they don't know he's Andwin.
• 52:04
  They just think he's some guy who's willing to work on their
• 52:06
  mill. And it turns out this person is
• 52:10
  like the the owner of the mill is a veteran of the 4th, 4th War
• 52:14
  and he's like recognizing that Andwin is having these symptoms.
• 52:17
  And so he spends some time, you know, like talking with him and
• 52:19
  being like we've all, you know, everyone who's been in these
• 52:21
  wars, we've all seen and and done things that we keep coming
• 52:26
  back to. And it's not your fault.
• 52:27
  And you like, you know, there are ways to cope with it and and
• 52:32
  there are ways to get through it and you're going to get through
• 52:34
  it and it's going to be OK. But it's really hard and it's
• 52:37
  not your fault. And we all deal with it.
• 52:40
  And then because Christy Golden Slash covered had this story as
• 52:44
  a monster. Christy, if you're listening, I
• 52:45
  love you. It's fine.
• 52:46
  It's not your fault. We have to have these emotions.
• 52:48
  They have a fire and like the guy the friend dies like because
• 52:53
  in his whole thing I'm, I'm really spoiling the hell out of
• 52:55
  the story so I really hope you guys are not listening if you
• 52:57
  wanted to read it on your own. So the the the millworker's
• 53:01
  whole trauma is that like when he was in the fourth war he was
• 53:06
  sitting around a fire with his friends and they were attacked
• 53:09
  by trolls and he they all like they had to flee because like
• 53:12
  they weren't going to starve the trolls.
• 53:13
  But that means he left all of his friends behind.
• 53:15
  His friends were all killed, and I think it was implied he was
• 53:17
  the only one who made it out, or at least that a lot of people
• 53:19
  died there. And so the mill worker, like,
• 53:22
  runs into the fire because he's like, I'm not going to do this
• 53:24
  again. I'm not going to leave people
• 53:25
  behind again. And he saves this baby, but then
• 53:28
  he dies. And and then like, there's then
• 53:34
  like, pirates attack the little tiny town that Andwin's working
• 53:37
  in. And he has to, like, defend, you
• 53:40
  know, he like, gets Charlemagne, 'cause he hasn't used
• 53:41
  Charlemagne because he's traumatized by Charlemagne.
• 53:43
  And he has to, like, defend them.
• 53:45
  And then he, like, he gets into a flashback while or like he's
• 53:48
  like struggling to like stay in the moment while he's fighting
• 53:51
  these pirates. And then like, he almost like he
• 53:53
  just in the last moment recognizes that the person right
• 53:56
  next to him is the daughter of the mill worker.
• 53:58
  Like. And he's like, Oh my God, like,
• 54:00
  you shouldn't have come out here.
• 54:01
  I couldn't have I I could have killed you.
• 54:02
  And she's like, but I knew you weren't going to kill me.
• 54:04
  And it's horrible and it's really beautiful and it's super
• 54:06
  sad. And then some like light thing
• 54:09
  comes to him and it's like hand to hand you.
• 54:12
  I don't remember what she says, but she says his name a bunch.
• 54:14
  And he's like, oh, I guess I gotta go heal and I gotta go
• 54:17
  back. So he gives this little fox that
• 54:19
  he's been taming, which I skipped over because it was even
• 54:22
  more heartbreaking. He tames his fox and he gives it
• 54:25
  to the little girl and he's like, you know, the fox stays
• 54:28
  with you. Now he's like hold it tight
• 54:29
  because the fox is struggling to get to him and and when goes
• 54:32
  back to war this whole time I'm like I wanted him.
• 54:35
  I want him to just settle down and I want him to just have a
• 54:37
  nice little farm life with his little fox and his friends and I
• 54:41
  wanted to get a therapist. Andoin I I will let us talk
• 54:44
  about the short story and I I will shut up.
• 54:46
  I swear to God, of all of the characters in World of Warcraft
• 54:50
  Andoin is the one that I want most to be able to step away
• 54:53
  from this. Like, I know we already tried
• 54:55
  that with Thrall and he had to come back easy as.
• 54:57
  But like Andoin has been dealing with this since he was a kid and
• 55:02
  like, he had to deal with a traumatized father who wasn't
• 55:05
  coping well. So he just went to war and like
• 55:07
  was distant and and one has always been so like trying to
• 55:10
  help people and trying to do good.
• 55:11
  And he's seen so much and he's like one of the things you were
• 55:14
  getting in the story is like, it wasn't just flashbacks in Shadow
• 55:16
  Lands. He was getting flashbacks from
• 55:17
  all over the place, right from like all of the things that he
• 55:19
  had to deal with. And I want the I want him to
• 55:25
  retire like he's he has been doing this since he was a child.
• 55:28
  He is completely scarred. He just wants to help people.
• 55:31
  He just wants to make people happy.
• 55:33
  That is a horrible thing to be dealing with when you're also in
• 55:35
  war. Like let the kid rest.
• 55:38
  But I'm sure other people have thoughts too.
• 55:41
  OK, Sean, hands up. Are we done spoilers?
• 55:45
  So we we not going to spoiler stuff anymore?
• 55:47
  I don't want to wait. It's true.
• 55:49
  All right, all right. We'll we'll.
• 55:51
  We'll wait. We'll give it a minute.
• 55:52
  We'll give it. We'll give it a minute.
• 55:54
  The fox part is heartbreaking. The rest of it is is is
• 55:58
  extremely rough. I I wept.
• 56:00
  I openly wept on my porch reading this short story.
• 56:03
  I'm a grown man, but this what I want to say is this short story,
• 56:10
  much like the one we got with Alaria, does an exceptional job
• 56:15
  at portraying mental illness and the internal struggle that
• 56:21
  people have. And I hope that The War Within
• 56:28
  is able to do the same thing with its quests and its
• 56:31
  cutscenes and its books and stuff, 'cause it's a lot harder
• 56:35
  to do without that inner monologue, you know what I mean?
• 56:38
  It's it's not as easy to to get that across.
• 56:42
  It's not not great when external content is required to fully
• 56:47
  grasp a story from a game. But this is I mean this is it
• 56:53
  and when it has has is classic a case of PTSD.
• 56:56
  You know it's and like like Lex mentioned his entire literally
• 57:01
  his entire life. His mother died when he was a
• 57:02
  baby. His father gets kidnapped when
• 57:04
  he's a kid, then his father's off to war, then like,
• 57:07
  everything is just wild. His whole life he gets, he goes
• 57:11
  missing in Pandaria, you know, they'd be friends, a dragon, and
• 57:14
  they fall in love and then they get split apart and that's
• 57:19
  Rathian and and then it's like he believes Sylvanas and like
• 57:25
  tries to make amends with her. And is it before the storm or
• 57:29
  storm rising or the one before BFA where she like, guns down a
• 57:34
  bunch of her own people in front of them after peace talks?
• 57:38
  Anyway, it's just, it's just not.
• 57:39
  And then obviously everything in the Shadow Lands, it's just his
• 57:42
  whole life has just been one massive open wound.
• 57:46
  And even in this story, when it's like, OK, he's finding some
• 57:50
  closure, he's finding some peace, He's like doing these
• 57:53
  things to work through this. He found somebody who could they
• 57:56
  they, like, literally, Christy literally throws him back in it.
• 58:00
  She's like, no, just kidding. No rest, no no healing for you.
• 58:08
  It's it's extremely rough. And I I I loved it.
• 58:11
  It was amazing. Short story.
• 58:12
  You definitely should read it. But I do want to say I'll let
• 58:15
  you go, man. I I might not say this.
• 58:17
  Next piece. Go ahead, say that piece.
• 58:19
  I have heard that online there are some people who have made
• 58:24
  comments along the lines of oh and when being mind controlled
• 58:29
  and shadow lands isn't enough to give somebody PTSD and first of
• 58:34
  all he was to that note he was mind controlled and literally
• 58:38
  made to kill a God using his dead father's sword.
• 58:41
  If that can't give you PTSD then nothing can.
• 58:44
  But the what I what I would say to that is anybody who has the
• 58:49
  opinion that they know what can or can't give someone PTSD
• 58:53
  should re evaluate the way that they interact with humanity
• 58:57
  because it's not that's not a judgement call that other people
• 59:01
  can make. There's so many different
• 59:02
  things. Everybody's built differently
• 59:05
  and different things can trigger trauma in people.
• 59:09
  And it's I hope we don't have to go through all of the war within
• 59:13
  listening to the mouth breathers that you know are forcing women
• 59:17
  to choose bear attacks telling us what can or can't qualify as
• 59:23
  something that deserves to be treated as trauma.
• 59:27
  That's all. That's all.
• 59:28
  Sorry. That's that's a bummer.
• 59:29
  On the show, on a happy note, I'm I'll second.
• 59:33
  All that, yeah. It 100 needs 110% needs to be
• 59:38
  said, especially in the current climate it like and it's just
• 59:45
  generally that is the way that that gets done because it's
• 59:50
  ignoring all the content that we just talked about his mother
• 59:54
  dying at such an early age, him being thrown into war again and
• 59:58
  again and again. It's like there's no point in
• 1:00:01
  Anduin's life where it hasn't been something life threatening
• 1:00:06
  and trauma. And so to then ignore all that,
• 1:00:10
  to talk about one particular point that I don't think you can
• 1:00:15
  properly communicate where he is a person who has.
• 1:00:21
  A who had a strong connection with the light and had so much
• 1:00:27
  hopefulness and felt that with the will things could get
• 1:00:33
  better. And then to say that, hey, if
• 1:00:37
  your will gets stripped away and you are made to do anything
• 1:00:40
  against your your will doesn't make you feel powerless is one
• 1:00:46
  of the most trite and entitled things I have ever heard.
• 1:00:52
  Boiled down like I like just on the face of it, you lost your
• 1:00:57
  will and were made to do act against your conscience with no
• 1:01:03
  control and experience it. And yeah, no, I wouldn't be
• 1:01:08
  traumatic against that. I guess you have no will in the
• 1:01:10
  first place. Like, yeah, like, like you can.
• 1:01:15
  The other thing is, I I would argue pretty strongly that you
• 1:01:17
  can boil that down to two separate actions, right?
• 1:01:21
  Losing, like complete control without against your will of
• 1:01:26
  your body and your actions and and being forced to do things
• 1:01:29
  that you find repugnant right. And watching people you love
• 1:01:34
  almost get murdered. Both of those are things that
• 1:01:39
  even without any back story, even if Anduan had been the most
• 1:01:42
  cushy man alive who had never experienced anything bad, both
• 1:01:45
  of those are traumatic events, right?
• 1:01:46
  And I know that in video games we're like we're so everyone has
• 1:01:49
  seen somebody die that it's like we you know, whatever.
• 1:01:51
  But like even even it like first of all, yes, Anduan has been
• 1:01:56
  built up. There's there's a reason this is
• 1:01:57
  traumatic for him. But even if all of this didn't
• 1:02:00
  happen, there were still traumatic experiences there.
• 1:02:03
  Like he is experiencing PTSD because that there weren't many
• 1:02:07
  dramatic things that happened. Yeah, it's wild.
• 1:02:09
  Anyway, great. The short story's amazing.
• 1:02:11
  Please go read it if you haven't read it already.
• 1:02:13
  I think we're done. Spoilers.
• 1:02:14
  I really want to wave my arms because my shoulders kind of
• 1:02:16
  hurts. Let's.
• 1:02:16
  Wait, Let's wait a minute. You shake them back, Save the
• 1:02:21
  comeback. Chad made some great comments.
• 1:02:25
  They were all like, you know, and CERN brought up CERN the
• 1:02:27
  hunter, brought up like Jessica Jones, like she because she was
• 1:02:30
  forced against her will to to be that guy's weapon.
• 1:02:33
  Basically, yeah. Anyway, great.
• 1:02:37
  It's a great story and it just, I mean it, it speaks to
• 1:02:41
  Christie's work, but it also just shows us like this short
• 1:02:44
  story book that's coming out. I think this is 2, there's eight
• 1:02:46
  stories in it. I think two of them are
• 1:02:49
  exclusive to that book. So the other six are going to be
• 1:02:51
  released in piece, meal up to it.
• 1:02:53
  We are in for some bangers. I cannot wait to see what else
• 1:02:56
  comes. Yeah, I I'm really looking
• 1:02:59
  forward to seeing more of that. Like, I wasn't expecting to get
• 1:03:02
  6 free short stories about like crucial players in the upcoming
• 1:03:08
  War Within. So this is great that we're
• 1:03:11
  we're getting that. I'm guessing that this is maybe
• 1:03:14
  a replacement to some of those 2 1/2 D things that we used to
• 1:03:18
  get, you know, like the War Bringers and stuff and that.
• 1:03:22
  Geez, that's kind of a bummer, yeah.
• 1:03:24
  I like. I'm not entirely sure.
• 1:03:26
  It's a bummer. I think more I'm getting more
• 1:03:28
  out of these than I am. Like those have a cool factor.
• 1:03:32
  They have a sizzle for sure and I would love both, but I kind of
• 1:03:36
  like this better as. Somebody.
• 1:03:38
  I was going. To say is greedy to want them
• 1:03:41
  both. Yeah, as somebody who's getting
• 1:03:43
  into the novels, I'm kind of sad because my understanding at
• 1:03:46
  least is that we're not getting a novel between expansions
• 1:03:49
  because we're getting the short stories, which is a little.
• 1:03:52
  But in on the other hand, we're getting Chronicles 4 and we're
• 1:03:54
  also getting their short stories.
• 1:03:56
  So, like, as a novel reader, I'm a little sad.
• 1:04:00
  But these are excellent and beautiful.
• 1:04:02
  And as as one of the like 5 people in the world who adores
• 1:04:06
  Chronicles, I'm it's fine. They're making up for it.
• 1:04:11
  There's one of the six. People, I'm a conquer.
• 1:04:14
  I've, I've only read the first one, but I didn't even really
• 1:04:16
  know what they were and I bought the first one.
• 1:04:18
  I was like, oh man, I'm all in on these.
• 1:04:20
  It's the best way to learn Azaroth's history.
• 1:04:23
  It's a textbook. It's like it it it is a a, you
• 1:04:26
  know, relatively narrative textbook and I love reading
• 1:04:30
  textbooks, so I'm happy. Yeah, I did.
• 1:04:34
  I did a quick check. What we've got of course is the
• 1:04:37
  the next textbook the right we have the short stories that we
• 1:04:43
  we are now getting most of as a free release.
• 1:04:46
  Thank you. And then we have the Exploring
• 1:04:50
  Azeroth. That's the three books that
• 1:04:52
  we're aware of, right? So yeah, you're right, there
• 1:04:54
  isn't going to be any, like big narrative story in between.
• 1:04:57
  But also, I'm kind of glad for that because we were just
• 1:05:02
  talking about how much should exist outside of the game
• 1:05:05
  itself. And these short stories
• 1:05:07
  definitely catch people up to what where these characters are
• 1:05:11
  at the point leading into it, but they're not big story
• 1:05:15
  revelations that it's like, oh, is that where this character
• 1:05:19
  showed up from? Is this why, why suddenly this
• 1:05:22
  character's important? Like so I'm I think that this is
• 1:05:24
  a better way of going about it. And yeah, if we could be greedy
• 1:05:29
  some war bringers 2 1/2 D as well as this would be good.
• 1:05:34
  And I think that also Sean, what might give you some credence
• 1:05:38
  towards that is that we're really early from the War Within
• 1:05:42
  and a build up towards that. So we could definitely be.
• 1:05:47
  Just. Yeah.
• 1:05:49
  Just I'm going to call Taryn and ask him to just throw a couple
• 1:05:52
  together real quick. OK.
• 1:05:55
  But while you're doing that, let's talk about our last story
• 1:05:59
  of the day, which is the private auras.
• 1:06:02
  And maybe you could contact somebody at Blizzard and talk to
• 1:06:05
  him about this, because this, this one's a little bit more
• 1:06:08
  controversial. They may need the input.
• 1:06:11
  So, Sean, talk to us about private ores.
• 1:06:14
  What? What exactly are private ores?
• 1:06:16
  So Blizzard was in a semi arms race with add on developers,
• 1:06:23
  specifically weak Auras developers when it came to
• 1:06:27
  mechanics in raids and dungeons. I guess to the point that the
• 1:06:32
  mechanics were so complex that you it required a computer to
• 1:06:36
  properly solve them. The most egregious of these
• 1:06:39
  being the jailers. If you remember the jailer
• 1:06:45
  fight, there was the holes in the ground.
• 1:06:47
  Everybody got bombs, you had to jump into a hole, hole in the
• 1:06:50
  ground in like I think it was 4 seconds you had.
• 1:06:54
  It was a very short amount of time to coordinate 6 people
• 1:06:57
  jumping into six different holes but making sure all the holes
• 1:07:00
  were hit in the right order. So anyway to combat this to to
• 1:07:05
  to stop this arms race, Blizzard put in private auras which is
• 1:07:10
  hiding what people players are targeted for, these types of
• 1:07:16
  mechanics. What this means on a level that
• 1:07:21
  isn't impactful is you get like the forgotten experiments with
• 1:07:26
  the rending charge. Three people are targeted, the
• 1:07:29
  guy charges through them in order, and anybody in the path
• 1:07:32
  gets hit. This isn't a tough mechanic to
• 1:07:34
  deal with that that would ever even require we gore those.
• 1:07:38
  You just put 3 markers on the ground.
• 1:07:39
  Those three people standing in the markers was your uncle, but
• 1:07:43
  then you also get on. The flip side of that mechanics
• 1:07:46
  like the. Smolder on orbs or the Netherian
• 1:07:49
  Hearts mechanics in Mythic, where five players were targeted
• 1:07:53
  with these. With these hearts, the circles
• 1:07:56
  were so big it required extremely precise positioning
• 1:07:59
  and they only had, I think at the time it was 5 seconds to get
• 1:08:03
  into position. It might have been 7 seconds.
• 1:08:05
  Anyway, it was impossible. There was not a single team on
• 1:08:08
  the planet, including the race to world first teams, that was
• 1:08:11
  able to do this without use of weak ores.
• 1:08:14
  But so the the the private weak ores were supposed to stop us
• 1:08:18
  being able to use weak auras to solve these.
• 1:08:20
  But all it meant is now we had to implement two different weak
• 1:08:24
  auras and a macro system. So you get targeted with it, you
• 1:08:27
  hit a macro, it registers. These are the players hit with
• 1:08:30
  the macro. You have a list of the players
• 1:08:31
  in the roster, they hit the macro and then it tells them
• 1:08:34
  who's got it and they they go stand in the pre assigned spots
• 1:08:38
  with a map. There were literally players
• 1:08:39
  playing with maps on 2nd screens, hitting macros.
• 1:08:43
  When these when these first came out it got slightly better.
• 1:08:46
  But up until this season, the the faded season, you weren't
• 1:08:50
  you could you could not do that boss on Mythic without using the
• 1:08:54
  macro system for that. And then smolder on was the same
• 1:08:57
  and still is the same with the orbs.
• 1:09:00
  Three orb spawn the target players.
• 1:09:02
  You have to break them and then you can't break two in a row and
• 1:09:06
  it's the same thing. You're using this this system.
• 1:09:10
  What this means is. So it doesn't make.
• 1:09:14
  Less weak Rs It made more weak Rs, it made it more difficult.
• 1:09:17
  So players had to have these more complex systems in place in
• 1:09:21
  order to beat these mechanics. It had the exact opposite effect
• 1:09:25
  that they wanted it to have, and it was widely, widely unpopular
• 1:09:31
  amongst the player population because it meant now instead of
• 1:09:35
  Guild X that kills, you know, mythic bosses, you know, world
• 1:09:41
  rank 1000 or 1500. Instead of just installing a
• 1:09:43
  week or a pack and going and and fighting the boss like they have
• 1:09:46
  to, now they have to install a week or a pack.
• 1:09:48
  They have to copy macros and they have to spend every night
• 1:09:51
  that there's an update verifying that everybody has all the
• 1:09:55
  updates, that all the weak ores are up to date, that everybody's
• 1:09:57
  doing their macro correctly. It adds so many extra pulls, so
• 1:10:00
  much extra garbage on top of this.
• 1:10:03
  And it, you know, some people will say, OK, but that's only
• 1:10:06
  for the ones that are tough. If they just make the private
• 1:10:08
  orders, the ones like they're running charge, it's not a big
• 1:10:11
  deal. But the argument is those
• 1:10:13
  mechanics wouldn't have been a big deal anyway.
• 1:10:16
  So the private orders that don't matter are on mechanics that
• 1:10:20
  already wouldn't have needed a weak ore to solve, and the ones
• 1:10:23
  that do matter are requiring these more complex things.
• 1:10:27
  Why are we talking about all of this?
• 1:10:28
  Because Blizzard has said not only will Private ORS be
• 1:10:31
  returning in the War Within, but now they're going to add them to
• 1:10:34
  dungeons, and now you're going to have LFG that requires you to
• 1:10:39
  have macros set up to do 20 fives to do, 20s to you're.
• 1:10:45
  I have 100% guarantee you if you do not have whatever current
• 1:10:52
  macro or weak or a combo pack Cocktail is required to handle
• 1:10:58
  certain mechanics in a certain way, There will be key levels
• 1:11:01
  that are no longer open to players without it.
• 1:11:05
  It is probably the biggest mistake they could make.
• 1:11:08
  Now the argument could be if players are doing keys at that
• 1:11:12
  level already, they're not. It's not a big deal.
• 1:11:13
  They'll already know how to do this stuff and have these
• 1:11:15
  installed, but it is a massive, massive barrier for entry to
• 1:11:20
  Mythic Plus because all of that stuff always trickles down.
• 1:11:24
  So I'm going to push back a little bit and I I don't do a
• 1:11:26
  lot of Mythic. Plus, so I don't do the high
• 1:11:28
  level keys and so I'm speaking a little bit more theoretical and
• 1:11:30
  so it's quite possible that I'm just blatantly wrong.
• 1:11:33
  I do think, I think the World of Warcraft has a problem with
• 1:11:38
  add-ons because for the same reason that the frogs are a
• 1:11:42
  problem, right? Because this is an MMO, and
• 1:11:44
  because there's this many people playing and trying to be
• 1:11:46
  competitive, if you write a week or if you write an add on that
• 1:11:52
  makes something like inherently even for the best player 3%
• 1:11:57
  faster, there's going to be a ton of pressure for players to
• 1:12:03
  to have that add on, right. It it it's creating a world
• 1:12:05
  where weak Auras I like I have some friends who don't want to
• 1:12:09
  use weak Auras or you know don't and and really struggle to play
• 1:12:12
  because of that. So on the one hand I don't want
• 1:12:17
  World of Warcraft to become like Final Fantasy right, where
• 1:12:22
  add-ons are banned and you can get a lot of trouble if you're
• 1:12:24
  caught using them. I I think that that ability to
• 1:12:27
  kind of make your the game your own is really beneficial.
• 1:12:31
  That said I personally would much and I I I hear you this is
• 1:12:36
  not what happened and this is not what Blizzard did this time.
• 1:12:39
  I would much rather a world where Blizzard doesn't have
• 1:12:42
  those abilities that are unmanageable without add-ons.
• 1:12:46
  But also like I remember in Nasriya there was that that mind
• 1:12:51
  can or not the the mechanic where like one person's a
• 1:12:54
  traitor but they don't know they're a traitor and so you're
• 1:12:55
  trying to call. I was really excited about that
• 1:12:58
  mechanic when it came out. And then the weak aura came and
• 1:13:01
  it just like, oh, we're gonna stand there and then somebody's
• 1:13:02
  gonna look at the weak aura counter and be like, that's the
• 1:13:04
  the impostor and then you kill them.
• 1:13:06
  Right. And that kind of sucked.
• 1:13:07
  Like, you know, I made a a mechanic that could have been
• 1:13:09
  really fun into just like, but like nobody's nobody's gonna be
• 1:13:11
  like, Oh no. Like, you know the the raid
• 1:13:13
  would have to as a group vote to be like, well, we're not gonna
• 1:13:16
  do that, which is just, you know, like yeah, like it it made
• 1:13:19
  it faster. I mean you didn't have to worry
• 1:13:20
  about the mechanic. It was confusing a little bit,
• 1:13:22
  but like I was excited to manic, like Blizzard made a cool
• 1:13:26
  mechanic and it it became just, you know, utterly nullified by
• 1:13:30
  weak auras. So I would personally prefer on
• 1:13:35
  a rating level. I again, I don't really do
• 1:13:36
  Mythic Plus, so I understand that's a whole other world.
• 1:13:39
  I would kind of prefer that there are mechanics that can't
• 1:13:43
  just be like I I don't want any mechanic to be fixed by we
• 1:13:46
  cores, right? I think that's boring.
• 1:13:48
  But on the flip side the developers work very hard to
• 1:13:51
  make sure that those like there are no mechanics that must be
• 1:13:54
  fixed, right. All mechanics are doable and
• 1:13:56
  manageable. But I also hear you that's not
• 1:13:58
  what happened. No, I I And so I wanna I I.
• 1:14:01
  Agree with you that we shouldn't there there should be no
• 1:14:07
  situation where you need weak auras to do mechanic.
• 1:14:09
  I 100% agree with you. The problem is private auras
• 1:14:12
  force you to need them usually because of the go on mechanics
• 1:14:18
  that are so on mostly unsolvable in most cases.
• 1:14:23
  So I do agree with you and and that that Lord that Lords of
• 1:14:26
  Dread mechanic was great. The only I guess the only push
• 1:14:32
  back I would say on that the only the only counter to that I
• 1:14:34
  would say is it basically required everybody in the raid
• 1:14:37
  to be invoice which made it difficult in pugs and difficult
• 1:14:41
  for people that don't want to speak or can't speak in raid.
• 1:14:45
  So the weak or helped in that case because there was not
• 1:14:48
  enough. I think at towards the end of
• 1:14:50
  the season they patched it so you had enough time to like type
• 1:14:52
  it out if you wanted to and and on the note of like just on the
• 1:14:57
  the war within dungeons and I and I hope that this is the
• 1:15:00
  case. They and Manny I think noticed
• 1:15:02
  this as well when we we tested them.
• 1:15:04
  They have done an incredible job.
• 1:15:06
  The war within dungeons are miles ahead of any other dungeon
• 1:15:11
  ever before in the telegraphing of what a mechanic will do and
• 1:15:16
  being able to see it on the screen without the need of a
• 1:15:19
  weak aura. I you're right if if if it
• 1:15:24
  exists, people will feel pressure to do it because even
• 1:15:27
  if like you said it makes it 3% better.
• 1:15:31
  I just I fear like right now today as Mythic Plus is you can
• 1:15:36
  go in and do keys and I have friends like I do keys with
• 1:15:38
  friends, high level keys and they don't have weak aura packs
• 1:15:41
  that tell them all the mechanics and they performed well and I
• 1:15:43
  would never know if they didn't tell me that they don't have
• 1:15:46
  them. My fear is that putting private
• 1:15:49
  auras on mechanics and then making the solving of those
• 1:15:53
  problems so complex that it requires a weak aura will remove
• 1:15:59
  the capability for players like those to to to engage in the
• 1:16:03
  Mythic Plus. That's my fear.
• 1:16:05
  I hope it's not the case. I hope they have learned from
• 1:16:08
  the Nultharian hearts and the smolder on orbs.
• 1:16:10
  Although we got the smolder on orbs after the Nultharian hearts
• 1:16:13
  so and they still to this day are extremely punishing without
• 1:16:17
  without like the use of a a a week or a stack and a macro.
• 1:16:23
  But you're right, an ideal world is.
• 1:16:26
  And that's why I think private orders aren't great, because the
• 1:16:29
  mechanics that you wouldn't need them for, you don't notice
• 1:16:33
  anyway you wouldn't. Like it wouldn't matter.
• 1:16:36
  And we can live closer to that world of you don't need this to
• 1:16:39
  exist. I but I do agree with like that
• 1:16:43
  ideally everybody can play on like a a roughly even level or
• 1:16:47
  on a on a on a on a competitive level without the use of of
• 1:16:51
  add-ons and weak auras. And I I I I really do.
• 1:16:56
  Up until this announcement of Private Auras cunning, I felt
• 1:16:59
  like the war with them was going to be the first time in a very
• 1:17:02
  long time the dungeons gave us that.
• 1:17:04
  Like it is the the telegraphing of, like, frontals and charges
• 1:17:09
  is so good in these dungeons. There's like big purple arrows
• 1:17:12
  on the ground now. There's like big red lines
• 1:17:14
  through things. It is.
• 1:17:17
  It's honestly the best telegraphing.
• 1:17:19
  It's so easy to see stuff. And it's funny because when you
• 1:17:23
  say that, I know immediately what you're.
• 1:17:25
  Talking about the big red line, that's the bazooka, That's
• 1:17:29
  Cinderbrew Metery, right? The purple arrow, That's the
• 1:17:33
  golems charging in, not dark flame.
• 1:17:36
  The other one that's in ringing deeps.
• 1:17:39
  Yeah, stone. Vault Stone.
• 1:17:41
  Vault Yeah, right, So I immediately know what you're.
• 1:17:44
  Talking about like, they're clear, they're presentable,
• 1:17:46
  they're right there. And when I look, when I think
• 1:17:49
  about weak auras in like a marriage or so, like obviously
• 1:17:54
  there's so much talk about like the volcanic heart and some of
• 1:18:00
  the worst ones. But like the fact that there are
• 1:18:02
  so many in there that nobody notices means that they can hit
• 1:18:08
  these things like absolutely just fine.
• 1:18:11
  The the seeds in the seeds for a major cell and fire X boss,
• 1:18:16
  right. Both the corrupted seed and the
• 1:18:18
  regular seeds, those are private auras.
• 1:18:20
  And I don't think I've ever once been like, oh, I need a weak
• 1:18:23
  aura from this so they can be done right.
• 1:18:27
  It's just a matter of the team and the encounter team needs to
• 1:18:33
  make sure that if they are putting Private Aura on this,
• 1:18:36
  they need to make sure that it is, like you said, absolutely
• 1:18:40
  readable and quickly understandable.
• 1:18:44
  So, so far the war within dungeons seem to be getting that
• 1:18:50
  second, second part really well, but we've been playing on mostly
• 1:18:54
  normal dungeons. I played like 1 heroic and
• 1:18:57
  stuff. I want to see what happens when
• 1:18:58
  we get those mythic 0 mechanics in, and how many of those mythic
• 1:19:03
  only mechanics have these private auras 'cause I think
• 1:19:06
  those are the ones that we're most afraid of.
• 1:19:08
  The more complex ones that are introduced, the latest that are
• 1:19:12
  now will scale infinitely into the Mythic Plus.
• 1:19:15
  So I I can understand the trepidation, but I can also
• 1:19:19
  understand a bit of hope in this.
• 1:19:21
  That's fair, I think, and I I think that.
• 1:19:24
  For private auras to work. The team.
• 1:19:28
  Also needs to be very because you know Sean, like you were
• 1:19:32
  saying there was this arms race for a long time where there were
• 1:19:37
  add-ons. And so Blizzard was like well,
• 1:19:38
  let's get more complicated and more difficult and then there
• 1:19:41
  were more add-ons and Blizzard was like, so we have to get more
• 1:19:43
  complicated and more difficult. And then Blizzard was like, oh,
• 1:19:45
  actually we can take away add-ons.
• 1:19:48
  But if they're keeping like, you know the difficulty level at a
• 1:19:50
  10 and they've just removed add-ons, that's unmanageable,
• 1:19:54
  right. They got to that level because
• 1:19:57
  they were fighting against add-ons and trying to make it so
• 1:19:59
  you it was still challenging with add-ons and then it becomes
• 1:20:02
  impossible without. And so the the, the question is
• 1:20:07
  whether they will learn that right and and whether they'll be
• 1:20:11
  able to adjust because they might also, you know, it's also
• 1:20:13
  very easy to be like, oh, I've been making these complicated.
• 1:20:16
  Mechanics for so long, and they've been fine.
• 1:20:19
  So I've been making mechanics at that level because that's the
• 1:20:21
  level people like without remembering that you just
• 1:20:24
  stripped people of a tool that they were using to make it.
• 1:20:26
  Fine. Yeah, so I have.
• 1:20:29
  One last question for you guys to end this.
• 1:20:31
  Off on I will throw this to you first Sean.
• 1:20:35
  Sean, if you could remove anyone add on from existence in the
• 1:20:40
  World of Warcraft, which add on would you remove?
• 1:20:45
  None I. I think I I honestly
• 1:20:48
  unironically think add-ons are the strongest thing about World
• 1:20:51
  of Warcraft. There's like wildly huge modding
• 1:20:56
  communities and I add-ons are used by so many people for
• 1:21:01
  accessibility across so many different ways that I don't
• 1:21:04
  think of they're used by so many different players that play the
• 1:21:06
  game. Like there's like RP add-ons
• 1:21:08
  that I found out about in an early really early episode of
• 1:21:12
  the show I had an RP are on and he was telling me about like
• 1:21:15
  these add-ons that give like full back stories for your
• 1:21:17
  characters and stuff. I I can't.
• 1:21:20
  If an add on exists it means there was a demand that at least
• 1:21:23
  one person needed this functionality or wanted this
• 1:21:25
  functionality. And I truly believe that
• 1:21:28
  Warcraft's openness and accessibility to players through
• 1:21:31
  add-ons is its biggest strength. So I got to say none.
• 1:21:35
  Manny, details. But just why?
• 1:21:41
  I feel like a blaster when you throw, when.
• 1:21:43
  You throw out details, right? In this thing you've deleted
• 1:21:48
  details from ever existing and anything from ever taking the
• 1:21:52
  place of details. So when you say details, I take
• 1:21:55
  it to mean that. Goodbye details, goodbye
• 1:21:58
  anything that that registers DPS.
• 1:22:01
  We no longer see meters anymore. Is that something you would want
• 1:22:04
  for the game? No.
• 1:22:05
  I Details is so good for. Analyzing boss fights and it's
• 1:22:09
  like it tracks so much more than just damage done.
• 1:22:14
  Yeah, I I think damage. There are people who play just
• 1:22:17
  because of damage meters. I I that was just a joke.
• 1:22:19
  I just said details, 'cause I know it's one of the people like
• 1:22:21
  to to to shit on, but no, I I honestly would get rid of none.
• 1:22:24
  There's not a single not a single week or a or not a single
• 1:22:27
  add on that. I would say get rid of it
• 1:22:29
  because if it exists, at least one person needed it for
• 1:22:32
  something and I don't think we should take it from them.
• 1:22:35
  OK, sorry it's a crop out answer.
• 1:22:37
  I apologize all. Right.
• 1:22:39
  All right. I'm gonna go next just because I
• 1:22:41
  I. I need to at least be the bad
• 1:22:42
  guy before throwing Lex under the fire.
• 1:22:44
  Oh yeah, go ahead. I'm going to say that if
• 1:22:49
  Gearscore or anything like Gearscore never existed, this
• 1:22:54
  would be a completely different game and I would have liked to
• 1:22:57
  have seen a world where that never happened.
• 1:23:01
  I think it would have completely.
• 1:23:03
  Revolutionized like. I don't.
• 1:23:04
  I don't know where we would end up because it's so ingrained in
• 1:23:08
  the mentality of people that it's that's baseline in the
• 1:23:11
  game. Now you need a certain item
• 1:23:13
  level in order to get into LFR based on the game.
• 1:23:16
  And what would it have been like if we never went down that
• 1:23:19
  route? I'd like.
• 1:23:20
  That's just something I was like, yeah, maybe Gearscore.
• 1:23:24
  All right. Well.
• 1:23:28
  That got me thinking, I'm assuming it's my turn, right?
• 1:23:30
  We don't want to talk about you. OK, That did get me thinking a
• 1:23:33
  little bit that I wish we had just never had whatever, like
• 1:23:35
  the Radar IO score that then became Mythic Plus score.
• 1:23:39
  Because, like, that's honestly one of when I learned that
• 1:23:42
  people could see a little number about me that told them how good
• 1:23:46
  I was at Mythic Plus. That is when I became
• 1:23:48
  significantly more scared to do Mythic Plus.
• 1:23:51
  But I'm not. I'm gonna say both of your
• 1:23:53
  things because I as a healer also want to get rid of details
• 1:23:57
  because I need you guys to stop looking at your God damn numbers
• 1:24:01
  when you're supposed to be moving out of the mechanics.
• 1:24:04
  That is why we have Warcraft logs.
• 1:24:05
  That is why we can look at things afterwards.
• 1:24:07
  I don't want you guys to see it in the minute.
• 1:24:09
  So you all over there like ho ho ho, no, I'm beating the rope.
• 1:24:12
  Ho ho ho, I'm beating the druid and I'm telling you to lurk out
• 1:24:15
  of the fire. That's what I think, Lex.
• 1:24:19
  You're my spirit animal. We.
• 1:24:22
  We make clips. And put it out like chalk,
• 1:24:25
  please. I'll send that to my entire
• 1:24:31
  Guild, and then they'll then they will.
• 1:24:32
  Take, you know, logs of me as the demon Lex, Lex.
• 1:24:39
  Lex 's Lex's. Lex's details please call it It
• 1:24:48
  listened in a first time chat from Cyclops snare like that was
• 1:24:54
  that spoke to so many healers out there.
• 1:24:56
  They were like, I got to type right fucking now.
• 1:25:01
  I can no longer. I can no longer lurk, Lex.
• 1:25:04
  But this is the real. Stuff just laying it down.
• 1:25:07
  Lex Lurker is coming out of the woodwork.
• 1:25:09
  All of a sudden, I love it. I love it.
• 1:25:15
  Well guys if you want to support.
• 1:25:17
  Lex and hear more real takes. Make sure you join us for our
• 1:25:21
  next show. That'll be again Mondays we
• 1:25:24
  record, but for now we are going to call it.
• 1:25:27
  So one more thing between now and Monday.
• 1:25:30
  Is this Saturday is our first ever book club.
• 1:25:34
  We're reading the first chapter of the Arthas novel.
• 1:25:38
  And I do also want to say if you have not read the novel, it's
• 1:25:40
  only the 1st chapter. So if you don't have it, that's
• 1:25:43
  OK. We're also going to talk about
• 1:25:44
  like Game War. We're going to talk about how
• 1:25:46
  you relate to Arthas in general. That's fine, show up.
• 1:25:48
  Anyway, we're going to have a good time.
• 1:25:50
  It is at 8:00 EST and it's going to be in the fast discord.
• 1:25:55
  So if you're not in the fast discord, pop right in.
• 1:25:57
  We're going to have fun, yeah. And for everybody who wants to
• 1:26:00
  join the fast. Discord, that is, at bit dot LY
• 1:26:03
  slash Fast discord. And you can find links, of
• 1:26:05
  course to the book club itself, as well as all of our socials.
• 1:26:09
  But until next time, guys. May all your hits be crits.