Latest / For Azeroth!: A World of Warcraft Podcast / #222 - For Azeroth!: “Dragonflight Alpha Impressions”

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#222 - For Azeroth!: “Dragonflight Alpha Impressions” · For Azeroth!: A World of Warcraft Podcast

0:06
Victory for the Forsaken for Lord, are on for the Kirin, Tor
0:13
and REO for calendar organ. Alias us Endora.
0:30
For the alliance for Azeroth. This episode of for Azeroth, is
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brought to you by a wonderful patrons over at patreon.com
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slash fats. Fats, will always be free, but
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even Joy. The content we produce consider
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becoming a patron at patreon / fast, that's Faz
1:22
Hi, welcome to fir Azeroth. My name is Olivia and I am one
1:27
of your co-host, of course, as always joined by the wonderful,
1:34
the villainous true bill and Manny Manny I have a, I have a
1:39
quite a, quite an interesting question to ask you.
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How was the alpha been treating you?
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Yeah, this is a special episode because you, and I have spent
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the last two days digging through the dragonflight alpha,
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and by the time people are hearing this, the flood gates
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will be open, and there will be so much information out there,
2:05
but we're going to collect it all and talk about our
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impressions today. So how has the alpha been
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treating me quite well. I think It's a pretty polished
2:19
experience. I encountered only a few bugs,
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but again, it's Alpha naught beta but it's encouraging to see
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that the concepts are landing as well as a they have been.
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What about you in general? Like, how were you enjoying this
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first little taste of dragon flight?
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I only got a couple of hours because of had to be at work and
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I don't want to be a work and just want to be plenty Alpha.
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Well, you know like the first world problems to cry over is I
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got Alpha axis for anybody else and I had some work in his very
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first world problems but you know while we're here it is.
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It's such a privilege that we got this access and thank you to
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Blizzard for helping us with this.
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It's really it really did. Dampen, the mood that so many
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people were getting these leaks from people who are in the axis
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and if you do that live and I were playing a playing the alpha
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well good on you because we did not drop clues for this.
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We have been radio silent. I haven't said a word.
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I swear, we even edited the last episode where we were like hmm
3:43
that night cause issues and you can Can let us know if you knew.
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I'm really glad that we finally get to sit and talk about this
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because all my goodness, it that the hype.
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Yeah, you you're sad that you're at work.
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I was trying my best to get through this stuff and trying
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to. Like I honestly didn't even get
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through the entire outfit experience, unfortunately,
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because you know, work, of course, well naturally.
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Yeah. And that like that's, that's,
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you know, part of the reality of this is like, like we do this as
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a hobby, so we We know we have to fund our hobbies and
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unfortunately means we have to spend a lot of time doing stuff
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other than you know just dedicating all the time in the
4:28
world and to doing stuff. I so we should go if you want us
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to give you more give us for. Yeah exactly.
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If you want us to completely no life this game for the rest of
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time, we're not going that far. But what was what was Is
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available to us in this Alpha quite a lot.
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Actually, we had. So, of course, we had the, the
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director, this is the first look that we got at the drag theater.
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They had I think blacksmithing and Alchemy available to check
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out. They had dragon writing
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available to check out and the questing experience for one of
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the zones and that zone. It's called the Azure is your
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spam as your span, that's correct.
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So yeah, we got, we got That a lot to chew through actually
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like you said like you didn't even get through it.
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I barely got through like maybe even a quarter of the questing
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through that zone. There was a lot a whole whole
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lot to get through and we barely scratched the surface so that
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like we got a good thing of. I've been going around the zone
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and seeing the environment actually playing the invoker
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class. Through their two specs and of
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course all the stuff that we're going to go into.
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So I wouldn't say we barely scratched the surface but yes
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there's still more out there to go through.
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We got ya, the meaning to say like by barely scratched the
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surface, I mean like that we got through, you know, a good, a
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good portion of what's available currently in the alpha right
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now, but it barely scratches the surface of what is going to be
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available in dragonflight proper.
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Yeah, which is, which is a really good thing because I was
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concerned with the lack of, you know, those tentpole
6:25
announcements that they put through that there was going to
6:28
be like, some gaps in gameplay, like what's there to draw you
6:32
in? And yeah, there's there is some
6:35
good gameplay to draw you in. So let's just get this through.
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Obviously, we didn't get much time to do everything.
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So one of the things that we're not going to be talking about
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about today is the new profession system.
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I do recommend anybody who wants to get my like, full
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understanding of that and conversation, I'm going to be
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sitting down with bacon bits on my stream, this Sunday and that
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will give me a little more time to actually explore this.
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And then talk with a real gold maker Goblin, aah, Goblin to
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discuss that, but we're going to be skipping over that today.
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And then we're going to be going through the talent trees guys,
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if you have been keeping up with the talent, Chi previews.
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Those are the talents that are in the game right now.
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If you haven't seen a talent tree revamp article for your
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class, it's not currently in the alpha.
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So Warriors shamans, whatever you might be, you currently are
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using the default talents that we had before this revamp if you
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so chose to play that class. Through this.
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The new UI is in and it is a substantial monetization.
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It's actually funny how much that little bar that shows your
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cast bar or when you go into the menus, how much that is like,
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whoa, wait a second? Is this still?
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Wow, but it's a substantial monetization.
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Oh, yeah. Just to, you know, give an
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example, first off the, The Art Bar Unrecognizable but also kind
8:18
of recognizable but like unrecognizable but yeah the
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weird fits the Gryphon and the above and the to Griffin white
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dragon, right. IPhone is a lifer mmm-hmm.
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See, it's just going to be messed up, but I the fact that
8:43
you can easily disable it, the Vamp is you can it's like they
8:48
integrated bartender. That's the closest Adam.
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I can think of like the integrated bartender into the
8:54
game so you can resize bars individually.
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You can have multiple bars that are horizontal or vertical laid
9:03
out in wherever you need them to be, you can quickly hotfix that
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was that was an update that they have put in partially nine point
9:13
two point five but this is now the full A hall where that's
9:17
coming into play. So it's really good that way.
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But we had some criticisms. What was your first criticism?
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My, my criticism is that the only thing that you can scale
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currently independently of anything else on the UI is the
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cast bars. So I would like to see them
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expand that out to be able to scale individual.
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Yeah, the action bars. Not just.
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Well yeah, I don't think you can scale a kaspar either with Side
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of just scaling, the overall UI size.
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So you can, you can scale everything, and then scale the
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cast of ours down individually, but I think that that feature is
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not complete until you can scale everything independently.
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I don't. I also don't think that you can
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remove like wholesale remove parts of the UI.
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I think they are. They're all just static on
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there. Like they have a toggle for for
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the buff bar. Are so the buff there, the bar
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that tracks, what Buffs you have active, at the moment, there's
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one that or a toggle for it that switches between all Buffs that
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are active. And then just having ones that
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are like short short term minor like in combat Buffs only, so
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that's nice but I think it would behoove them to have a little
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bit more customization other Just having that toggle.
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But yeah, overall overall like the big criticism that I have of
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the system as a whole is that you can't scale individual parts
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of the UI to your liking. So it's just the base UI and
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then you can make the action bars as big or as small as you
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want. And that's the only thing that
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you can really change. So that needs a little bit of
11:15
work in my opinion. Yeah, I think that they could
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add that in hopefully before. Release.
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But even if they put it in later in a future patch that would be
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good. I'd like to see that.
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I think that one thing that bartender has is being able to
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do the alignment so that you can make sure something is centered
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horizontally or if you want vertically for sidebars and
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stuff. Yes, I think that's one thing or
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much like Final Fantasy 14, having that grid system, so if
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you want to put something and make sure it's aligned, right?
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You can do that. So I would want Something along
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the lines to sort out the alignment.
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Yeah. And it's not just Final Fantasy
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14. Like basically every modern MMO
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aside from Wow has a grid that you can use to align your UI
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elements to it, at least the ones that have you know,
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scalable and movable you is. So that's that's something that
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the team could definitely take a look at and see if there's an a
12:18
way to implement it. Yeah, beyond that.
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Anything else is this sort of a wish list?
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Love to have some stylistic options like hiding character
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portraits or even just having the bars look a little bit
12:31
different if I wanted, and it in a slightly different style that
12:35
would be kind of ice. But yeah, you know, again we're
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not we're placing all mods is just the base.
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UI is a huge step forward and I mean huge the way cast bars look
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is incredibly slow. Eek the updates that they
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probably were doing when they're like, oh, if we're updating cast
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bars for the drakh, there's new Empower thing.
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Why don't we do it for everything?
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And I think they just went down a rabbit hole.
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But oh yeah, it's a huge Improvement.
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So I do have I do have it, it criticism about the Casimir
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specifically that I didn't include in the notes.
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But I just thought of, I'm gonna have to completely relearn, how
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to play a Caster, because I am not going to be able to tell
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naturally with the way that they've changed the bars when I
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can click my cast because it's not the same UI anymore.
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So you don't have the you don't have like the little red end to
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the kaspar to tell where the Where the overlap is the global
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cooldown. So, But that's also depended on
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your own lag. Like yeah, when I'm playing with
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my friends in Oceanic where I'm able to clip is different than
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when I'm playing in a North American server and I have to a
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true far less. Right?
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So very true least, there's some learning anyways.
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But yeah, let's talk about Drac there because we were talking
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about the empowerment so the drag Fair they put out earlier.
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All these customizations and all these 000 is behind the
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different customizations. And so we got to go in and look
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at all those customizations and it is absolutely astounding.
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The number of combinations you could put together because all
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these different parts can be adjusted.
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Both on your drag fear form and on your humanoid Visage form.
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I man it's gonna be a while before I see somebody who looks
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exactly like a character. Just because they all look good,
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like, you don't have the ugly face, like some of the races
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have like a number of options, but, you know, a lot of them are
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ugly. So there's only really that one
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good face. No, this is, this is good.
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It is, it is I spent a good solid that would.
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This is my my very first experience getting into the
15:13
alpha was. Oh, we can make dragon people.
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Cool. So I went in and I started
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playing around the Carriage customers customizer to make my
15:21
character to hop around through through the dragon Isles, right?
15:28
I completely completely forgot that we will only be able to
15:33
have one drag theater per realm and that is very much a rule
15:38
that is active on the alphabet. And you had already made one.
15:44
So yeah, I got in and spent a solid 45 minutes, trying to make
15:51
my character, and got to the end picked out a name, hit character
15:56
create and you can't have more than one.
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So I had to back out and then delete your character so that I
16:03
could make mine to go play around and had to spend another
16:06
like 45 minutes making another character because they're just
16:09
so many options to go through. Um, and so many so many good
16:14
options that look good together. It's already difficult to
16:19
decide. You didn't get that far into the
16:21
play experience yet. Look look listen, you gotta look
16:26
good. If you're gonna If You're Gonna
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Play the game you gotta look good.
16:30
That's like Base number one, everyone knows you do in an or
16:33
DPS, where do more decreases but you do more DPS, if you look
16:38
good. Everyone knows, even if that was
16:42
true, what do you do more DPS by like actually showing up to do
16:46
more DPS? I'm just, I'm just gonna put it
16:49
out there. This feels like the time
16:51
especially if you and I are on opposite ends of the thing where
16:54
I was like okay these are what the options are documented and
16:59
then randomize named Joe. That's why you're not keep me in
17:05
your like I need to remove your character.
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My yeah, go for it. I did not send I did not get
17:11
attached to that character at all.
17:12
It's it's Alpha. It's gone.
17:14
Yeah. Yeah, by the time, people are
17:16
listening to this. That character is wind.
17:19
Oh, it was already wind. Like, it was wind when I logged
17:23
out for the night but yeah, there's a lot of the
17:28
customizations, you can really make a character that is
17:33
Virtually unique to you. When I was calculating the
17:39
numbers, I was getting into scientific notation and without
17:45
being able to like put it through to normal numbers.
17:48
Like I was doing the math and I'm like okay like I can report
17:51
an actual number here and see if the number that they gave was
17:55
you know grounded somewhere somewhere close to the truth and
18:00
when I took the number three I was like, okay well what does
18:02
that? Play numbers.
18:03
There are websites that you can go to that.
18:05
Will convert it to say, though. Is the number you're looking for
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is yada yada bajillion or whatever?
18:13
Yeah it said this number is outside the range from this tool
18:18
so they truly have a staggering number of customizations.
18:23
Yeah. Yeah to the point where there
18:27
was a criticism with blizzards design choice where they said oh
18:31
like you're doing this Ooh, set up.
18:33
Why don't you just have a slider, like you have numbers
18:37
for everything? Instead of me having to choose
18:39
between haircut? 1210 just put a slider there
18:43
where I can go through. Now, we're getting something
18:46
like 21 options for one particular thing.
18:50
I think that slider would, the difference between the different
18:53
ticks would be so minut. That would be just cumbersome
18:55
the go through. So the fact that we could just
18:58
get a drop down menu, be like, okay, give me style number 18,
19:01
of whatever. That's so much more
19:05
player-friendly and I'm guessing.
19:06
Yes, Wizard was because we keep saying that their working years
19:10
in advance. This is clearly them seeing the
19:13
problem ahead of anything we saw and yeah, we didn't know any
19:16
better. Yeah, absolutely.
19:20
But the, I think the real draw for it is the the model
19:25
animations for for the director, they're all So crisp so nice.
19:34
Like that's that's to be expected with any new like race
19:38
or new class they bring they're going to have, they're going to
19:41
have really good animations regardless and they're they're
19:45
on a very unique and unique skeleton that operates obviously
19:51
differently. Than all the other playable
19:53
characters that are available in the game.
19:57
There's a surprising lack of clipping.
20:03
Something that I've noticed, like, in the character model
20:06
itself, while like animations are happening.
20:08
Like the wings aren't clipping through themselves.
20:11
Like the, that seems to have been accounted for, it's just
20:16
it's just not, uh, chefs kiss. Yeah, I had reservations about
20:22
this model. I felt that it was kind of
20:25
lanky. It didn't quite look.
20:27
Warcraft, like it. My honest take was that it felt
20:31
more akin to something out of eso.
20:33
Then something out of Warcraft, but that animation has
20:36
definitely sold it. These act and look very much
20:41
Warcraft when you're playing them in the game.
20:44
And so I take back any criticism that I gave previous to this.
20:50
But beyond that, all those looks and everything.
20:53
There's how the drakh fair play and the core of them because
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Drac there can only be a volkers and evoke is can only be dragged
21:02
there. Is because the racial talents
21:06
are so interwoven. With that particular class, race
21:13
combo, you would not be able to take it apart, the talent tree.
21:20
That is the class talent tree actually augments these racial
21:24
abilities, they're not evoke ER abilities, their track their
21:27
abilities. But I guess in this case,
21:30
they're both, yeah, yeah let's talk a little bit about Those
21:33
abilities. So first one is awakened, pretty
21:37
flat ability. It increases your Mastery by
21:40
2.5% so you'll have more mastery.
21:44
The next ability is Visage. You can choose to always stay in
21:49
your track, their form or you can choose to have your Visage
21:53
form. Now, it's not just cosmetic
21:56
because you would think that this works much like the worgen
21:59
ability where they have their work in forming, their human
22:02
form and it is pretty much like that if you decide to be in
22:06
vizag form as soon as you go into combat you will go into
22:08
your drag their form but when you're in your Visage form or
22:13
visit you However you want to pronounce that.
22:15
Hmm yeah I would say visit yeah it might be me just butchering
22:19
the word. So I'm going to say this is for
22:20
the rest of the episode at least that way part of the episode I
22:23
was right? But when you are in your visit
22:28
form, everybody in your party gets a dramatically increased
22:33
Health regeneration rate so any time you're out of combat
22:36
because that's when your visit form you're going to see your
22:39
party's Health tick up quickly. So there's a very real reason to
22:43
have that you will automatically go in your visit form whenever
22:46
you are in a vehicle. So whenever you are a dragon
22:50
riding, or on a mount that's visit form, you will not mount
22:53
in your track their form. And I assume that there are
22:56
several things like that, that will force you into your visit
22:59
form the Discerning Eye. This one seemed very innocuous,
23:04
but then we found out that it increases your perception by 50
23:09
and we're like, what what's perception?
23:11
Well, perception is a National stat, that wasn't talked about
23:17
in blizzards last professional rundown.
23:20
And what it does is that perception increases the radius
23:24
of tracking for mining or herbalism notes, but it also
23:29
increases the chance that you will find additional rare
23:32
materials when doing Gathering. So that's pretty good for all
23:38
those Gathering skills. I'm assuming that there's going
23:41
to be different gear. Ear and a chance and so forth
23:45
that are going to like hook into this as well.
23:47
But we don't know at this time aside from those abilities, we
23:53
also have some couple of couple of cool Downs there.
24:00
It's weird to try and categorize these always the same thing but
24:03
they're kind of like combat issue abilities but not really
24:07
so to these first two, definitely, our combat
24:10
abilities. We have Wing Buffett and tail.
24:12
Swipe, these are Control abilities.
24:15
There on a fairly long. Ish, cool down one and a half
24:19
minutes apiece, and Wing Buffett is a frontal cone knock-back, so
24:24
think typhoon. And then tail, swipe is a kind
24:28
of a stun if that knocks enemies in front of you up into the air
24:35
and just makes it to where they can't do anything for a second
24:39
or two I believe, but either way too, pretty.
24:44
Little pretty powerful CC abilities that are augmented by
24:51
the the talents that are available to both both
24:56
specialization. So it's in the evoker tree
24:59
itself, are the the talents that augment, those two abilities,
25:03
then you've got familiar, Skies, you fly, 20% faster on
25:07
continents that you have fully explored so I you can probably
25:13
piece. Gather a theme that they're
25:15
going for on these particular on this particular class and race.
25:22
You are incentivized between Discerning Eye and familiars
25:25
guys to have this character in particular, be a gatherer
25:29
because of what is available to you.
25:32
Yeah. But it's not a druid so I have
25:34
to lose flight form. I don't I'm not sure that fully
25:38
makes up for it. 20% faster incontinence that you have fully
25:42
explored I think that more than And makes them more than enough
25:45
makes up for the flight form being able to Herb and mine in
25:50
Flight form. Like, I 100% think that makes up
25:53
for it. Here's what.
25:54
Here's my trick. Here's my trick.
25:56
Okay, I'm gonna go with a goblin Shredder, so, the okay Hayes in
26:00
there. What I'm grabbing herbs, but
26:03
that doesn't solve the mining. So, it'll be my herbalism.
26:06
ALT, there you go. But you're not going to be able
26:09
to use the goblin Shredder and fly in the dragon aisles at
26:13
least four. Long time is all will have
26:16
available to us as dragon writing, which means not even
26:19
Druids will have that benefit. You will have the benefit with
26:24
dragon writing though. So, the last two are kind of
26:31
kind of cool Downs that are Out of combat but you can still kind
26:37
of use them in combat a little bit.
26:39
One is Glide. So it is like the Demon Hunter
26:43
ability to be able to Glide you can you can just do that.
26:47
And also you don't have to be in Dragon form.
26:49
In order to Glide, you can do it in envisage or Dragon form
26:54
either way. And then you also have sore
26:57
which is like a very condensed, dumbed down version of dragon
27:03
writing that allows you to burst yourself up into the air and
27:08
then in the same fashion of dragon writing, be able to fly
27:15
around for a brief period. The difference between sore and
27:19
dragon writing is that dragon writing is self-sustaining
27:23
whereas sore basically, as far as you get up in your initial
27:28
burst is the highest that you will get to like, in the entire
27:33
flight. So it's a little bit more.
27:38
A little bit more scaled back, but still, still is pretty
27:42
useful for getting around or getting around quickly.
27:45
While you're while you're leveling or while you're like,
27:48
in combat, trying to get away from someone, you can just soar
27:51
up into the air and fly away. It's useful.
27:54
I don't recall it being able to be used in combat, but obviously
27:58
the mechanics of it are going to make more sense when we actually
28:01
explained Dragon riding soon. Yes, we can start talking a
28:06
little bit about The class itself that the that the drag
28:10
Theory able to play the invoker which has two specializations
28:15
and I played a little bit more with preservation, then you did,
28:20
and you played a little bit more with devastation than I did.
28:22
So, do you want to start with devastation?
28:25
Sure. So obviously those are the two
28:28
specializations Devastation being the range DPS and the
28:33
Healer being the preservation. Now, For the devastation that
28:39
uses the red magic, which is fire along with blue magic,
28:44
which is a spell Frost School of magic, which is a combination of
28:48
Arcane Frost damage and then you would use that along with their
28:53
Mastery, which is the Giant Killer and giant killer acts,
28:58
kind of like a reverse execute or more aptly, a reverse version
29:04
of shamans deep healing. So you get a Bonus to your
29:08
damage based on their relative Health.
29:10
You'll get full use of your Mastery when they're at full
29:13
health. And then, as they get lower in
29:15
health, you'll get lower percentage of your Mastery.
29:18
So at 99% of their health, you'll get 99% of your Mastery
29:23
when they're at 20% of their health that you only get 20% of
29:27
your Mastery, but that's still going to give you some bonus to
29:30
your to your damage all the way through until they hit zero.
29:33
And which point yeah. That Master he's not doing
29:35
anything anyways but neither are they.
29:37
You use this, along with your high movement to do damage.
29:42
It is actually Preferable to use your movement to be jumping
29:48
around the place. When you are using this Caster
29:51
spec, you're going to be using your knock back and knock up to
29:56
keep them days. You'll use your blue magic to
30:00
snare them. There is actually a ability
30:04
where if you hit them with a blue magic spell, you will
30:08
reduce their Movement by 50%. For 3 seconds, you can then use
30:13
your fire Magic. Do stronger damage along with
30:17
usually applying a DOT on them but your fire magic in some
30:20
spells can also be used to heal you.
30:22
So your primary filler spell is the life finders fire and that
30:28
can be used against an enemy or it can be used to heal yourself
30:32
with the use of talented on. It will make your other spells
30:37
get additional things but the way that the class or rather,
30:41
the spec works is that you We'll use some abilities that will
30:47
spend and you'll use some abilities that will bill or
30:50
Empower other abilities. And this is the essence system,
30:54
but basically much like a lot of Builders fenders.
30:58
You have your, you have your points, you will build them up,
31:02
spend them. You start with full points in
31:05
this class and then spend and then rebuild.
31:08
I think that the one thing that really needs to be hammered home
31:13
is You do want to be using your float ability.
31:20
It is very key to be able to get that distance because you're
31:25
defensive Talent aren't actually that strong you are very much
31:29
trying to kite. You're trying to use your sore
31:34
Billet nuts or ability, but your deep breath ability to fly over
31:40
them. Roof them in place and then cast
31:43
for a bit when they break out of That that's when you want to
31:45
snare, snare them and then use your your fire Billy.
31:50
So late a damage. And because of that, it's
31:53
actually a Caster that I sort of like I think it is I kind of
32:00
want to count it like a frost Mage when you are using the
32:04
snares and everything then blinking to get some distance
32:07
and you don't want to stay in combat except this one doesn't
32:11
have that. Oh crap ice block.
32:12
You really do want to constantly be Go away.
32:15
How did it work for the preservation in your book?
32:18
I noticed that it was very mobile as well because there is
32:21
a ability or an ability that that all of ogres have called
32:26
hover which is kind of a cool down that you are able to use to
32:32
kind of kind of get yourself out of a sticky situation.
32:35
Basically just increases your movement speed for a little bit
32:37
but you can Talent it to have like multiple charges and also
32:40
give you like a brief brief bursts.
32:44
And let you basically move while casting.
32:49
And so a lot of the toolkit that you have as an invoker in either
32:57
form either Devastation or preservation.
32:59
You do have this ability that you are able to use to then cast
33:06
your abilities while on the move and that in my opinion was vital
33:12
in order to play the The specialization of preservation
33:17
optimally while questing around because you are playing
33:20
primarily as a Healer, and I don't know if you've ever
33:25
leveled as a Healer before, but they do not do exceptionally
33:29
well in killing their targets quickly.
33:33
So you have to kite around a lot.
33:34
You have to be very mindful of the abilities that you do, have
33:41
the talents that you take, which, of course the Points for
33:45
preservation are all all centered around healing because
33:48
naturally, of course they are. But you have to, you have to be
33:52
aware of how the toolkit that you have available to.
33:58
You is able to be used in order to dispatch your enemies.
34:03
And I don't necessarily think that the other healers in the
34:07
game even come close to being as intricate and honestly as fun To
34:14
play like in general, questing content.
34:19
Like obviously it's going to be completely different when you're
34:21
in a in a raid or a party environment in any capacity.
34:26
And unfortunately there wasn't that we didn't have any dungeons
34:31
or anything to test in. So I couldn't like get in a
34:33
dungeon and play around with a group of people healing them.
34:37
I had only the questing content that was available to go
34:41
through. So it was basically just me
34:43
fighting a bunch of me. Jobs as a Healer, which was
34:47
totally doable. Like it was totally fine, only
34:49
died like five times, you know? But with preservation they they
34:55
of course are using red magic which as you said earlier, is
35:00
associated with fire. And then green magic is the
35:03
other big one for for the preservation tree and also time
35:09
a little bit like time and an Arcane like is weaved in a
35:14
little bit. Are with with the preservation
35:16
with some of the talent choices that are available.
35:19
But the Mastery for preservation is called life binder which
35:26
increases your healing done by X percent based on your Mastery
35:31
level when their health percent is lower than your health
35:36
percent. So if you are at 100% And Target
35:39
you are healing is at 99% you're going to get your Mastery bonus
35:45
on healing that that person or that character and likewise if
35:51
they're at 40% and you're at 41% you get the Mastery bonus.
35:56
So it's important to keep your health way higher than everyone
36:02
else's which sounds selfish but actually is not selfish at all.
36:06
In a environment where your Mastery increases the healing
36:09
that you do if your higher Health in them.
36:11
So it's it is important and there are quite a few talents
36:13
that allow. You to ensure that your health
36:17
is at cap, which you had mentioned Manny that they they
36:21
feel like a nice major without ice black.
36:23
Well preservation has an ability that kind of works like a nice
36:28
black. It's basically you heal like 20%
36:32
of your max Health every point nine seconds for like four and a
36:37
half seconds and any over healing that gets done during
36:42
that goes to party members around you.
36:46
So it is Like the toolkit is centered around.
36:51
You just pumping out heels left and right.
36:56
And keeping yourself topped off as much as possible.
36:59
So the question then is where you would put them in a raid
37:04
group or yeah, just any raid group where you have multiple
37:07
healers, you find that they have a good place, a good tool kit.
37:12
Think that a lot of their toolkit that I think would make
37:17
them desirable. Is in their core sort of
37:23
utility. The fact that there is a talent
37:27
where any of the Empower spells that you do will then shed Mana
37:33
off to your to, your fellow healers is insane, and that's
37:37
something that is in the class pool, that is going to be, not
37:42
quite like, a Mana tide totem, but it just a general, help your
37:47
Healers. Keep up there man and reserves
37:50
because you do your empowered spell, you restore some Mana to
37:55
a nearby healer and it helps their throughput along with your
37:59
own throughput. Yeah, it basically basically
38:02
having a preservation of ochre in a party with a with a class
38:09
that the that particular healer spec is like very Mana
38:13
intensive, basically nullifies that because you're able to just
38:18
pump In a into that healer that can then dump their Mana bar
38:23
because you don't have to worry about your Mana as a as a
38:26
preservation of ogre. Like you just don't have to
38:29
worry about your Mana. There's definitely a mannequin
38:34
straight when you're doing heavy healing.
38:36
Sure. I would say that you are maybe a
38:40
little bit more inefficient. It might have been the town's
38:42
that you chose. Yeah, yeah.
38:45
Yeah, that's entirely possible. Like you could, you could very
38:48
easily Lee Speck out to be something completely different.
38:51
I was more focused on kind of the the red dragonflight magic
38:57
and the green dragon flight magic more more so than other
39:01
like the other side of the tree which is more in line with with
39:07
like the bronze magic more like timey-wimey stuff.
39:11
But yeah, the the green magic side is definitely like it feels
39:17
kind of like a Like a more magically induced side of
39:22
druidism but yeah, I was definitely focused more on the
39:28
the green dragon magic rather than the other side of the tree
39:32
which was more focused on bronze dragon magic.
39:36
And I think that there is probably probably you know a
39:40
different build that's more focused on like very very single
39:43
Target whereas I was focused more on getting as much AOE
39:48
healing as Possible or just like passive healing with with what I
39:52
was doing and trying to trying to like my focus was on, making
39:57
a build that would be self-sufficient in, open-world
40:00
content, and not focus. So much on on like raw
40:07
throughput and just making it a little bit more easy to jump
40:12
around and do some quests and I think with my time on it it is
40:19
Thinking about backing to sort of go with what you're doing.
40:23
Because if you're are expecting for questing, you're not going
40:27
to get much out of the what you could do for rating, but I when
40:30
I was like going through those Talent, if you do a spec where
40:35
you take less magic damage, where you are pushing your
40:40
Mastery, a lot of the incidental damage that comes out and raids.
40:44
And dungeons is going to be magic damage AOE sort of stuff.
40:47
It's going to be Shadow, it's going to be E fire whatever it's
40:50
not going to be a lot of physical damage that that will
40:54
be there for avoidance but that's going to push a lot of
40:59
what you want to do. Now on the, on the devastation
41:04
side, I was looking at talents that sort of focus between doing
41:09
their red, or they're blue magic.
41:11
And the way that that would work is that you would get the sort
41:16
of red magic being good at it. We damaged being a lot of dots
41:21
because you leave that lingering burn which you could put into
41:25
stacking up. You could have your spells in
41:28
power that or you could do the Blue Magic which was a lot more
41:32
of the control. And I think actually would be
41:34
better suited to PVP or in places where you do want to
41:40
really eat lean on snares. So for that, I found that when I
41:45
was questing, yeah, I did want to snare.
41:47
I didn't want to keep them back as far as possible.
41:48
Possible. I did what a spec into like
41:51
that, double hover so you could be like okay you go 50 cents,
41:55
lower. I'm going to like be faster for
41:57
the first four seconds of my hover.
41:59
I'm going to get two of them, I'm going to be able to like
42:02
channel, the frost bail and will keep somebody away while going
42:06
far out there. I think that with the other
42:10
side, that's more akin to rating that is where you're not going
42:15
to have many bosses that are going to be suffering from.
42:19
There's and you're going to want to be able to like get those
42:22
thoughts stacked up and really burn through it all.
42:26
I do like these things. I think there's a lot that can
42:29
be put forward their in order to like specialized that.
42:33
Yeah and I guess that the, the devastation tree the way you've
42:39
described it, leaves me to believe that the the frost or
42:44
the Blue Magic side I should say is going to be more for like Add
42:49
control on fights in a rate environment because obviously
42:52
like they're going to want they're going to want to have
42:54
these all like all variations be viable somewhere.
42:59
It's some point in in the the content that is in game.
43:05
And so you're going to see a lot of people flying around with
43:08
with the blue magic side in their talents, or their talent
43:13
builds more for like heavy heavy, add control fights or In
43:20
in just dungeons, in general. Like, I feel like that's kind of
43:24
a very useful thing for Mythic place in particular, is having
43:28
having that like, like slows and snares, and that kind of stuff
43:31
to help more with ADD control. So there's there's definitely
43:36
room for all of that tree in multiple areas of the game,
43:40
which I think is good design goals to be striving towards
43:47
Yeah, so I think that there's a lot there, I guess at this point
43:53
now that we've had some Hands-On time with the talent trees, do
43:58
you find that they're, they're hitting the right things, are
44:02
you finding that? It is a shock to your system?
44:05
I know for sure what I was first going into testing and then I
44:09
was looking at my entire page, I was like, oh, there's like zero
44:13
Devastation actual active skills.
44:16
This Feels weird. And then I realize I had it put
44:19
points / talent tree and so what I put the points in the talent
44:23
tree then suddenly my Devastation page fills out and
44:28
I'm like, okay this feels right. Do you does it feel, does it
44:32
feel bad to put points into getting active skills?
44:37
I know when it was the previous skill tree, one thing that I
44:43
often said is, well, I don't think talents should give
44:47
abilities Talent should be modifying abilities, so that
44:53
they can balance around having those abilities.
44:56
But I'm kind of backing out on it on that with this new talent
45:01
tree. Um, I think that There's,
45:08
there's this weird thing where you could have, like, let's say
45:13
there's a set bonus that works with a particular talent.
45:16
I think it would be way more powerful.
45:19
If that set bonus made you act as if you had spent points in
45:25
that talent and therefore you could then pick a different
45:31
Talent entirely and be like, oh, it's like I get that talent for
45:35
free. That would be amazing bonus, but
45:39
at the same time, you could also be like, I'm going to double
45:41
down because there are additional bonuses to that
45:44
ability within the tree below that Talent.
45:48
So I'm going to ignore this part of the Set bonus in order to
45:54
really Empower that but like if you balance the set bonus
45:58
correctly, you can either double down and be like, Oh, I'm all
46:02
fire. And this is what I'm going to
46:03
do. Or it could be like I'm going to
46:05
still get the benefit of this set bonus, but I'm still going
46:08
to be able to use Frost and I think there's actual play there.
46:13
What about? Yeah, what do you think?
46:15
I I think I'm okay with it because like, very similar to
46:19
you, like I was very hard line stance like get abilities out of
46:24
the talents, get them out, get throw him out, throw him on the
46:26
curb and get them out of here. I don't want to see him but
46:30
having played through it, I think I'm okay with it.
46:33
And I think I know why the reason that I'm okay with it is
46:37
because almost all of the abilities like the actual Act of
46:41
abilities that are available for choice in the talent, trees are
46:45
almost all at the top. And on top of that, in order to
46:49
get into the mid and bottom sections, you basically have to
46:53
fill out the entirety of the top of the tree.
46:56
So any of the abilities that are going to be like, key abilities,
47:00
to make your whole class work or well, your specialization work,
47:06
Being at the top and being so accessible and almost forced in
47:11
your talent Choice as you're going down.
47:15
I think that makes it work because you're basically just
47:19
getting them for free anyway, like their points.
47:22
That would be spent no matter what because of how the the
47:26
trees, you know, naturally disseminate through the
47:32
disseminate, the power that you get through the talents through
47:34
the tree. All top-heavy, all of it.
47:37
And there are very very very few classes that we've seen so far,
47:43
seeing the actual talent trees for the classes where there are
47:48
abilities at the bottom. Like most most of the trees that
47:52
we've seen so far in the specializations, the abilities
47:57
are all either very high up in the midsection, or they're just
48:01
straight up in the top section of the tree and that, Makes it
48:06
work because you're not going to be able to skip out on the parts
48:11
of the cut, the parts of the specialization that make it come
48:14
together. If that makes sense.
48:17
No, that makes perfect sense and like, the very real example of
48:20
that is in the devastation tree. With the devastation tree,
48:24
there's a total of nine different choices like nodes for
48:29
talents in there and two of them require two points.
48:32
So when you're building it out, Require 8-point spent before you
48:38
can get down to the next tier and so that means that you're
48:42
going to touch all but one of those.
48:45
So that's when you make the choice between, oh, do I want to
48:48
empower my blue spells or do I want to empower my red spells,
48:52
make your choice there and then you can start diving down
48:55
further into the right side or the left side, and they're
49:00
pretty much built. The prerequisites do require
49:02
that you have worked on this before you get the next thing.
49:05
You're not going to suddenly be like, oh I've got this AOE fire
49:08
spell that requires Essence procs, if you don't get the
49:13
essence procs above it. And so, I think that, yeah, it's
49:16
very much a guided tour through your, your spec.
49:22
It is, the guardrails are there. There are some things you can
49:28
miss. Yes, you can choose not to get
49:32
key defensive Talent if you feel that you're not going to need
49:35
It, you're running through a dungeon and the incidental
49:40
damage the solo, so you're not going to do that, but in some
49:44
cases, it's like, okay choose between one or the other,
49:47
they're both forms of CC. Do I want to have my tail swipe
49:51
get a cooldown reduction? The other one is, do I want my
49:55
wings to have the cooldown reduction?
49:57
So I personally chose to have the knock up from the tail.
50:01
Swipe have the cooldown reduction because I don't want
50:04
to Knock them into something else.
50:07
Like let's say, I used the knock back of the Wings and I knock it
50:12
into more mobs. That will come at me, That's
50:15
dangerous, especially when you're playing a class that is
50:19
already running around all over the place to get distance around
50:23
there. There have been a couple of
50:24
times when I was playing it where I would, you know, fly off
50:28
this way, or try to be backing out this way and then
50:31
unfortunately not paying attention to what I was running
50:34
into would draw. The attention of more creatures
50:37
that would result in my death or something.
50:39
If I wasn't careful, but If I was clever about it, if it is
50:45
your play style doing that knock-back, so that you've been
50:49
can snare them all over. Again, to control that area
50:52
would be a very powerful tool. It's very much about your play
50:55
style but you will get something towards it.
50:59
It is possible to skip their counter magic, which is like, I
51:05
think roaring qualms Something like that.
51:10
Yeah, but even without that, you're still going to have
51:14
displacement effects, which you can then use in a pinch to do a
51:18
interrupt. If you find, you need more than
51:20
that, you can go to your talent tree and spec into more of that.
51:25
I think that's the solid part that has come from these talent
51:29
trees. Is that it takes nothing to
51:32
switch it and maybe you are going to learn from a little bit
51:34
of hard, docks, bad situation and your and your be like, okay
51:37
what can I do to adjust that But I would really love the game to
51:42
push that rather than the game to be like, here's a million
51:46
things and you don't have to use it which is where we're
51:48
currently at. With a lot of the low-hanging
51:52
content, you can go into some friends and family raids or LF
51:58
ours and nobody interrupts even though they have it and most
52:04
people didn't like they have the interrupt ability on their bar,
52:08
but they just never press it. Because they don't need to
52:10
because there's nothing threatening enough in the
52:13
open-world content that requires them to have to learn how to use
52:19
it and how to to, you know, figure out situations in which
52:25
it is beneficial to to do that or how beneficial it is to use
52:32
it at a baseline of like, hey, I know if this ability is being
52:37
cast by this enemy. Me, if I wait until the very end
52:41
of the cast to interrupt it, that means that they can't Auto
52:45
attack me, which means I'm going to take less damage if I wait
52:48
until the very end to interrupt. So that's the, you know, like
52:51
that those kind of things aren't aren't really things that you
52:55
really pick up on naturally in the game anywhere which, you
53:00
know, Yeah, I mean like that's an entirely different topic but
53:04
it, but I think that going through a talent tree and
53:07
getting a new ability and you actually having to spend your
53:10
hard-earned talent point to get this ability, will make you stop
53:15
and consider that ability. It's like what does this ability
53:17
to do? And now I'm in powering that
53:19
ability so that now when I do it I get resources back.
53:23
Okay so I want to find a time to use this and so now you're going
53:27
to want to use your interrupt. Yeah.
53:30
So I think that that's sort of the game gets us natural.
53:34
Teach you the ins and outs of some abilities or at least bring
53:39
it to your attention when you're when you are making the
53:42
conscious effort to gain this ability.
53:45
Mmm, I am cool with it. I just I am picturing somebody
53:50
trying to give Tic Tacs for a raid, you know, the friends and
53:53
family rate and then having to explain to people that you need
53:59
to Talent into saying this is something that used to happen.
54:03
Way back in the day Paladin's didn't get their resurrect
54:08
unless they did a quest. And there was this fight that I
54:13
was running through with a bunch of my friends.
54:15
When I came back to the game and we're hard-fought and there was
54:20
five of us so we could make our own dungeon group and so we are
54:22
the friends and family group and we almost wiped but the Palin
54:28
tank. Save the day and manages to
54:32
defeat the boss. And we're like, okay, great res,
54:35
us. Whap whap, whap ha, oh no, the
54:41
teaching moment. But it's a teaching moment.
54:44
Yeah, and I think that's great with friends and family.
54:46
I'm just worried about the situation when that happens and
54:48
it's a pug. I'm just like, yeah.
54:54
I mean, but that's, that's kind of this kind of trade-off
54:56
though, right? Like that's that's like you're
54:59
gonna You're Gonna Learn one way is going to be supportive and it
55:04
will hopefully supportive. And the other way is going to be
55:07
You're going to feel real bad about yourself for a couple of
55:09
days. But, you know, at this point, at
55:16
this point, like, with some some people playing the game for, as
55:19
long as they they have like, you got to learn, you gotta learn to
55:23
some point. All right?
55:24
Well, let's hope the dragon Isles, is not the School of Hard
55:27
Knocks, but with that said, let's talk about the main
55:31
mechanic that's coming with the volkers, which is the empowered
55:35
spell gameplay. Now you and I have both
55:38
experienced this and it was it's different.
55:44
So I what was your experience that's different is a, is a
55:48
choice of word. I would not use different.
55:52
I would say, a little janky, a little list.
55:56
It's got a little Jank on it. So here's here's the deal.
56:02
Conceptually empowered, spells work, For the class for the
56:10
theme for the aesthetic. They work in practice.
56:15
However, In my experience, with these spells, they are kind of
56:24
Hit or Miss whether or not they will go off the.
56:29
Okay. So here's as a baseline, here's
56:32
basically how they work. You press the button.
56:34
You don't let go of it. You hold it down.
56:37
You hold the button down. You do not let your finger
56:40
release that key. Until you have gotten the
56:45
progress bar up to a adequate point in which it will cast the
56:50
ability. There are three levels that are
56:53
available for each of these empowered abilities.
56:56
There's a first level second level, third level.
56:58
Most cases. You're going to want to get it
57:00
all the way up to 3, but you can release after it gets past the
57:04
first Mark, in order to just get the spell off.
57:08
But if you release the key, Before it gets to the first.
57:13
Mark, you don't get to cast the spell and you get global'd.
57:19
Yeah, and this was a problem that I had come across to until
57:24
until I found out the secret. What's the secret, meaning, in
57:29
the menus option, you can either keep the Press hold release,
57:35
which is the default or the alternate so much better, which
57:40
is the Press click. You press it.
57:45
Once you start channeling, you have to press it again to stop
57:50
and release the spell. That's how you stop from doing
57:55
the mess up, where you release your doing a rotation, you press
57:58
the button, you're like, oh crap.
58:00
This was the empowered one, and you Global lock yourself out.
58:03
And can't cast anything else because it'll start casting, by
58:05
the time, you're like, oh, right.
58:06
This is the empowered one. You're already on your way and
58:09
it made the class work so much better.
58:12
In fact, I want them to switch that to the default in my book,
58:16
The only reason that I had trouble the second day is
58:19
because, you know, you deleted my character.
58:22
I was going back through and I had to like set it.
58:25
I said it and like after two times where I was in the
58:27
fighting was like ah, I was like right.
58:29
I know how to solve this and it and the empowerment works great.
58:35
I think that at this point I do think it should be in other
58:43
classes. Hopefully down the line they'll
58:45
like added in as like people empowering the lava blast and
58:49
stuff. It is a I don't want it to be
58:52
too much in other classes because it's very much the thing
58:55
that seems to be defining evoker casting right now.
59:00
I there are times when you do want to release early,
59:07
obviously, when you are When you are putting through a spell that
59:15
you just want to finish off a person.
59:18
So you just any damage is good. Just let me get the small amount
59:21
of damage but typically you don't want to do that because
59:25
you're empowered spells are your big nukes.
59:28
They are the big healing effects.
59:32
They are the big damage effects and doing a smaller version.
59:35
They haven't done enough so far in my mind to make the lower
59:39
levels seem Situationally worth it.
59:43
Yeah, yeah. Like I think it's it's there's a
59:48
better argument for empowerment to have multiple levels as a
59:52
Healer because sometimes you do just need that little bit of
59:55
healing and you don't want to spend the resources that it
59:58
takes to get a full cast off. Namely the time that it takes to
1:00:04
get that empowered spell off at the max level.
1:00:07
Like sometimes, you just need a quick burst and they're like,
1:00:11
are still powerful like they're still like some of your more
1:00:13
powerful abilities even at the first level but Sometimes you
1:00:18
just need the expediency of it, instead of the the full effect.
1:00:23
So I think that there's a much much stronger argument for for
1:00:28
preservation invoker's to use it as opposed to Devastation.
1:00:31
I think that they could probably maybe like if they were going to
1:00:36
be fiddling around with the with the talents or anything to have
1:00:40
some talents that effect. Like a specific spell to give it
1:00:46
additional effects at various levels that like, obviously
1:00:51
increase with severity as you're going through the progression.
1:00:55
But that's that's like the only the only feedback that I would
1:00:59
give on that in particular. Like, if they were to change
1:01:02
anything about how it works specifically for Devastation, is
1:01:06
that like, it just doesn't feel like it's worth it.
1:01:10
I agree. Yeah, I mean there's just a lot
1:01:13
of talents that are bonus based on how much you empowered
1:01:16
something. The fact that the there is the
1:01:20
Mana regeneration regeneration that you can provide your
1:01:23
healers based on like, how empowered it was the fact that
1:01:26
you can like add additional empowered level and reduce the
1:01:30
speed or the time. It takes you to get to those
1:01:32
higher power levels. It very much, is pushing you to
1:01:35
your really want to cast, is full full out.
1:01:40
So, Yeah, I do want to play with it more.
1:01:44
It is a very much, a fast-paced sort of caster which is unique
1:01:50
in this world. I really do want to say it is
1:01:54
the mobile Castor much like DH was a hyperbole bow.
1:02:00
Melee. This is the hyper mobile Caster.
1:02:03
Yeah. Yeah.
1:02:04
It's very nice. And you will have points in your
1:02:08
in your rotations where you'll need to be standing still for a
1:02:10
couple of S while you're while you'r, hover comes back off
1:02:14
cooldown, two points, and hover. Plus the special ability that
1:02:20
says, even if your major movement ability is on cooldown,
1:02:23
you can still use it. Like, you could just go like,
1:02:27
hey, I'm going to hover out of this, don't you worry and then
1:02:30
when you're caught with your pants down, as I've used my two
1:02:33
charges of however guess what? Not actually I'll have her
1:02:36
anyways or get the derivative of r or something because like The
1:02:41
big thing about these Talent is their Mobility.
1:02:45
They have stuff that is about. I'm going to grab an ally and
1:02:50
fly it to safety, they have when you first use your.
1:02:54
However, the first four seconds is is higher movement rate.
1:02:58
They are able to kite because of that slow, they are very much
1:03:02
the movement Kings and their, their new buff.
1:03:09
That they can throw out with a bronze buff is also very much
1:03:13
about like hey let's let's get out of here so I think it's
1:03:19
going to be good. I think a lot of it's going to
1:03:21
be if you are a good. Raid awareness person and you
1:03:26
can make sure you're out of the bad, your Mastery will then
1:03:30
allow you to do hyper healing. If there is a lot of AOE you
1:03:34
have the magic defense or even that Zephyr, cool down where you
1:03:41
and a bunch of people, take 20% less AOE damage in that like you
1:03:45
carry around you? Yes, you provide AOE damage
1:03:49
reduction, and movement speed increase with that ability.
1:03:52
It's disgusting. Yeah.
1:03:54
Which is like so personal hover group Zephyr.
1:03:58
Everybody get out, like it is, it's the super hope hypermobile
1:04:04
Caster all about movement and it, it seems like a lot of fun.
1:04:09
If you are a DH player that is tired of looking at boss, but
1:04:13
you can backup play this class and still Zoom around.
1:04:20
Well, so that's also not to mention the ability.
1:04:24
That the the preservation of ochres, get, where you could
1:04:28
just pick up a party member and fly away.
1:04:32
Literally just move someone else to a different location that
1:04:38
isn't life. Gripping them off the ledge like
1:04:42
all of our priests like to do. I generally feel that this this
1:04:49
class in a rate is going to be for those hyper raid awareness
1:04:54
people. All like I have friends who play
1:04:56
their priests and they are keyboard Turner's.
1:04:58
This is not going to be for them.
1:04:59
They're not. This is like the opposite for
1:05:01
them. But those people who are very
1:05:04
much head on a swivel and stuff, you might be able to save that
1:05:08
keyboard Turner or like just cover places where it's not.
1:05:12
So I do like that there is this new playstyle new way of playing
1:05:19
in. Wow, it has very much carved out
1:05:21
its own Niche and I'm very Very happy for that because a lot of
1:05:27
my my wishes for them not to do a new class was to avoid them
1:05:34
biting, somebody else's Niche. Remember we had that talk about
1:05:36
Necromancer and it's like what's a necromancer?
1:05:39
If not demonology warlock or Hunter somewhere in between?
1:05:44
This is a this is an unique Niche based on Mobility.
1:05:47
Yeah. Yeah it's nice.
1:05:49
It's nice. Speaking of Mobility there is a
1:05:53
a New way to get around in this expansion and it is called, I
1:06:01
think, is it, is it dragon writing?
1:06:04
Am I reading that correctly? You are in fact they have
1:06:08
created a smash of the name it's not Dragon riding you know two
1:06:12
words like every common sense is it's Dragon riding one word.
1:06:19
This is a this is basically the system that we're going to be
1:06:22
using to get around the dragon Isles.
1:06:25
Basically, the entire expansion, it is something that we'll have
1:06:28
to build up as we go through the experience of leveling.
1:06:31
In the dragon Isles, it will be something where we're training a
1:06:34
dragon. It to help get us around the
1:06:37
island a little bit easier. It is fun as hell.
1:06:44
I'm just, I'm just, you know, I'm going to come out right at
1:06:47
the start and say this, Is the most fun I've had with a with a
1:06:53
writing system in the game. Basically since they introduced
1:06:59
flight at all period, like it was super cool getting to fly
1:07:04
around the first time that I got it and then it just kind of was
1:07:08
a thing that we had and now it's fun.
1:07:12
Now it's great. Yeah, this is far more engaging
1:07:18
faster travel. Like just at the base level, we
1:07:21
had you were zipping around the island and just before we were
1:07:26
playing and we're like, okay we just need to check some places
1:07:28
on the as your span. I was going around and it is
1:07:32
just so engaging to play. I really think that the problem
1:07:38
is because you have to be attentive.
1:07:41
People are going to be I think it's it will see what it goes
1:07:47
with that higher levels, but people may just feel like it
1:07:50
might outstayed its welcome because, you know how it is.
1:07:54
I'm flying out the here and I'm going to fly out here at AFK.
1:07:57
Those people are now going to be forced to use flight routes
1:08:00
again, dreaded dreaded flight routes because you need to make
1:08:06
sure that you are performing the right actions in order to stay
1:08:11
afloat in the air. You don't just pick a Direction,
1:08:15
go grab a drink. And then come back to see that
1:08:17
you're completely exhausted and dead over the sea.
1:08:23
Yeah, it's it's something. Okay, so here's here's a kind of
1:08:29
a brief rundown. You have to basically two things
1:08:35
that you have to keep an eye on while you're flying, you have
1:08:38
bigger charges. And then you, you have a bar
1:08:42
that fills up and every time, the bar fills up all the way you
1:08:46
get another charge of vigor back.
1:08:48
So the goal with dragon writing is to have your, your flight
1:08:56
generate bigger charges enough to keep you in the air to keep
1:09:00
you going. If you are flying at an upward
1:09:04
angle, you will be decreasing in velocity just like just like,
1:09:09
you know, regular normal flight in the real world and if you
1:09:15
are, you know, pitched down you'll be increasing in
1:09:19
momentum. And we'll be going faster.
1:09:22
Also just like in real life. And if you're going down fast
1:09:27
enough, if you have enough momentum, you will be
1:09:30
regenerating your Vigor charges. So the goal is to is to keep the
1:09:35
keep the Vigor flowing and the word you're looking for the word
1:09:42
you're looking for in the name of the game is momentum.
1:09:45
You want to keep your momentum when you're flying entire
1:09:47
momentum. Yeah, I said momentum.
1:09:51
That's how you get your Vigor recharge really quickly, you're
1:09:55
flying fast. You get that like entire win
1:09:59
trail going behind you. Eventually you get to the next
1:10:03
level and you get that blue glow and that kind of magical sound
1:10:06
going. And that's when you know your
1:10:08
Vigor is recharging. And if you can keep that up,
1:10:12
keep your momentum up that will allow you to recharge your Vigor
1:10:17
enough to regain altitude. And then keep going and I think
1:10:23
the initial time I played through, I didn't get far at all
1:10:26
but even over the course of these two days, I'm now able to
1:10:30
basically fly around the entire Azure span with just the basic
1:10:35
Dragon riding that we have. Because right now, you start
1:10:38
with three Vigor charges but as you gain your Mastery, you're
1:10:41
going to be able to get more and you're going to be able to get
1:10:44
additional Maneuvers like that barrel roll or whatever it is.
1:10:50
Call that we saw in the game. Yeah.
1:10:52
Yeah. And speaking of we only have two
1:10:54
Maneuvers at the start. So there's surged forward and
1:10:57
then Skyward Ascent as they do exactly what they say.
1:11:01
Surge forward, gives you a little bit of momentum boost in
1:11:05
the forward Direction and Skyward Ascent get you higher up
1:11:08
into the air so you can get a little bit more of a steeper
1:11:11
angle so that you can keep your momentum going but yeah.
1:11:18
The the first impression of the of the system as a whole.
1:11:23
It's very nice. It is, it is, you know, there's
1:11:27
a there's a saying that goes around and blizzard games that
1:11:31
they try to strive for which is easy to learn hard to master.
1:11:37
This hits that right on the head, it is a system that you
1:11:41
can get in. It is very easy to understand
1:11:43
how it functions you will need to play around with it a lot.
1:11:47
In order to master it completely, in order to maximize
1:11:51
your ability to fly around with this, but it is something that
1:11:55
is very quick to to pick up on because it is again, easy to
1:12:00
learn. So, that's, that's where I'm at.
1:12:03
I can almost guarantee you the first couple of hours of getting
1:12:09
into Dragon flight. And add like, after we like get
1:12:13
our first dragon writing mount, I can guarantee you.
1:12:18
I'm going to be spending a too much time too much time with it.
1:12:26
Yeah, well, we talked about why you didn't quite make it that
1:12:29
far in the testing cough. Cough customizations.
1:12:33
This is why I didn't make it that far in the, the testing the
1:12:38
first day, got out to the Azure span, which is not the first
1:12:42
Zone. There's actually two zones that
1:12:44
are going to be before it. And I was like, oh, I can do
1:12:48
dragon flying and you're supposed to walk down the path
1:12:51
and get your quest and then start going through the Zone.
1:12:54
Nope, I went straight up into the air.
1:12:56
Air and went flying around ended up landing outside the zone.
1:13:01
You get teleported back to Orgrimmar because you're not
1:13:04
supposed to be in these other zones and yeah, they had a
1:13:09
little issue where you couldn't get back to the Azure strand
1:13:12
right away. It got fixed.
1:13:15
It got fixed with a couple of people reporting the same issue
1:13:19
that I occurred that I came into but I spent a lot of time just
1:13:24
going around. I can flying.
1:13:26
It is again. Very engaging.
1:13:28
I agree with you. It's going to be something
1:13:30
that's going to be a lot of fun. I do love that they're going to
1:13:34
have time trials with this flying.
1:13:37
So you're going to have obstacle courses, you're going to have
1:13:39
time trials to do this at at the cap.
1:13:43
That's going to be incredibly promising and just the sheer
1:13:49
thrill engagement is just a fun gameplay Loop so I'm happy that
1:13:54
dragon writing is not The gimmick.
1:13:56
It is truly marvelous gameplay. Yeah, absolutely.
1:14:02
And not to mention like the flying around in and of itself
1:14:06
was fantastic. But the zone that we were flying
1:14:09
around in the Azure span. We get to see a whole heck of a
1:14:13
lot of it because dragon writing you can get around you can you
1:14:18
can get around very very efficiently with dragon writing
1:14:24
and that not only You get around but you can get to some crazy
1:14:29
places with dragon writing and like I remember there being a
1:14:35
lot of concern whenever they announced it that you know would
1:14:39
be a system that you would need to be, you know, building up
1:14:43
over time. You weren't going to be able to
1:14:44
get very far early on and then as you get got, you know,
1:14:48
progress the expansion, you would be able to go through and
1:14:53
fly for like longer and fly better.
1:14:56
Better, that's not really the case.
1:14:58
Like, you can, you can get pretty ridiculously far from the
1:15:03
outset with with dragon writing. And we got to see huge portions
1:15:08
of the Azure Span in our, in, our play testing.
1:15:12
But Manny what, what were, what were your first thoughts going
1:15:17
through the Azure span, when you first loaded in?
1:15:19
When you first saw what, what they're handing to us with the
1:15:23
edge of span? What, what is the first thing
1:15:24
that hit you? Well, honestly, because of the
1:15:28
Dragon riding, I like went up immediately and I so I got a
1:15:32
bird's-eye, sort of view, the way that they've built it.
1:15:37
It is a mix of these trees. That, you know, think the trees
1:15:44
that you saw in the grizzly Hills, think of the those mixed,
1:15:49
with some, his trees that you haven't seen since for Alice,
1:15:54
like those gigantic. Trees that stretch up so high
1:15:58
that are almost the same size as Towers on mountains beside them.
1:16:03
They their verticality of this zone is phenomenal, the entire
1:16:08
Zone, slopes down into the shore, there is what you
1:16:14
described it as howling Fjord, where it has those stretched out
1:16:18
planes. But again, intermixed with a lot
1:16:21
of trees and foliage that you can fly in between.
1:16:25
But the foliage isn't dense, these trees have spaces in
1:16:28
between and it really just cells that speed of flying when you're
1:16:32
going through it, you have that mixed with parts that are like
1:16:40
cold era where you have like that Nexus needle because there
1:16:43
are blue dragons at play. Here, you have parts that are
1:16:48
kind of, like the crystal song forest with those crystallized
1:16:51
trees. But in HD and reimagined, and
1:16:55
And today's Fidelity so think of like some of the best hits of
1:17:00
northrend all mixed together and brought up today to today's
1:17:05
standards that was my impression of coal of not colder but like
1:17:11
of the Azure span was my information of the Azure Span in
1:17:16
my like first little fly through.
1:17:18
Yeah. That very much very much.
1:17:21
It felt like the okay. So today As in the real world
1:17:27
outside of places that we can go see in Azeroth, what it reminded
1:17:32
me of where it was like the the big Sequoia forest in
1:17:37
California, like, that's that's the size tree.
1:17:40
We're looking at here in the zone, just just to give like a
1:17:46
more more grounded reference to the real world like the massive
1:17:52
massive trees everywhere. Just dense.
1:17:57
Thick trees. It's so good.
1:18:01
So good. I just love it.
1:18:03
I love it so much. Like you want to say they're
1:18:05
dense but there are far enough apart that your dragon can like
1:18:09
easily fly through it. You're not going to get caught
1:18:11
up in the leaves and they put like the big trees there to give
1:18:15
you sort of like the things to fly through, but they have the
1:18:19
trees that are knocked over. They've got like, Such a mix of
1:18:24
the colors. Like when you're in, the more
1:18:28
Open Spaces, the tundra space is the parts that remind you, more
1:18:31
of the howling Fjord. Those have like, the Reds, the
1:18:35
Auburn. So, I kind of an Autumn feel
1:18:38
that is like across there. And you have a pack of deer that
1:18:45
are running around. You have those like different
1:18:47
things that are that are out there.
1:18:49
Hawk will go flying out and then back Back through, it's got that
1:18:52
feel and then when you go into up the hill and you start
1:18:56
getting into the more snowy territory, the way, I think you,
1:19:00
you put this before the show. You said that, like it's like
1:19:03
the howling Fjord meets Grizzly Hills, where you have that cross
1:19:06
into the snow and then when you're up in places like Camp
1:19:09
had tinnitus, which is where one of the current or camps are
1:19:16
That's when you have that, like, kind of deep green, sort of
1:19:21
winters, feel with the snow touched trees and Frozen
1:19:26
waterfalls. But like it's got such a
1:19:30
variance because you, and I just before we're like, oh, like
1:19:34
let's go down to the shore. Let's go past, the Tusk our
1:19:38
village and the task our village by the shores.
1:19:41
But like, you didn't typically see tusks are in.
1:19:47
In drizzly Hills. But like, you're getting the
1:19:49
full test guard Village. They've got their mounts.
1:19:53
They're mounted on gigantic, elephants, draconic elephants.
1:19:57
That of course have like little spikes coming out of their
1:20:00
tusks, sorry little Tusk coming out of their snout at the end of
1:20:05
the snout like that's gonna hurt.
1:20:08
Yeah, yeah. And like, speaking of like there
1:20:12
are there are parts of the zone that I saw them and was just
1:20:15
like, oh, this is This is just the southern shore line of
1:20:20
dragonblight just straight up. Like there's there's so many
1:20:24
like I think your app description of the, the hits of
1:20:29
northrend like that's that. Is this Zone, 100%.
1:20:35
Yeah, there's definitely a theme because when you're looking at
1:20:37
all the little animals, they are normal animals that you might
1:20:41
expect to see but they're dracaena fide.
1:20:44
There's like the draconic beaver who has like the fin Aires has
1:20:52
the spikes coming out of its tail.
1:20:54
You've got a little draconic water that looks like a little
1:20:56
otter but has the spines coming out of its back and the little
1:21:00
horns coming out of its head and it looks so cute.
1:21:03
But also Spitfire at you. And so I just think the Zone has
1:21:08
this beautiful mix of like huge Vistas and like little scenes
1:21:14
that are in there for you to find and I'm looking forward to
1:21:18
exploring it more. Yeah, me too.
1:21:20
For sure. I hope that this has given you
1:21:22
guys a view of what we're seeing in the alpha by the time that
1:21:27
you guys hear this. Hopefully they will be releasing
1:21:30
a more public Alpha and we cannot wait to start digging.
1:21:34
Going into it more. If you guys have any questions
1:21:38
or concerns just email the show, you can reach us at Faz podcast
1:21:44
at gmail.com, but if you want to reach us directly, you could
1:21:49
also reach out to us online. So live, where can people find
1:21:53
you online when you're not busy customizing attract their.
1:22:00
Well when I'm not when I'm at customizing my directory you can
1:22:03
find me on Twitter. It Adventure live and you can
1:22:06
also find myself Manny and a whole host of other wonderful
1:22:12
people over in our Discord server which you can go to by
1:22:16
typing in bit.ly slash Fez Discord in your, in your
1:22:20
favorite browser, whichever one you want to use.
1:22:22
I'm not going to judge you. But yeah, bit.ly slash press
1:22:27
Discord, you can join the Discord server today.
1:22:30
And also if you want to ask questions, we have we have a
1:22:33
channel dedicated for Asking questions, if you if, if that's
1:22:37
something that you that you want to do but many aside from the
1:22:41
Discord where can people find you?
1:22:43
So you can find me at True Villain many that is true
1:22:48
without the e and that is on Twitter on Twitch and now on
1:22:53
Tick, Tock if you want bite-sized, Warcraft news, I am
1:22:57
now giving Tick-Tock updates about that.
1:23:00
Now for as off is part of bonus rolls.
1:23:05
Bonus roll production is the new name of Warcraft radio.
1:23:08
You can check out bonus, roll .g G for links to all of our shows,
1:23:14
the revamp directory and check out the YouTube channel because
1:23:18
we're going to be having content from our playthrough, both live
1:23:22
and my playthroughs where we're going to be exploring all of the
1:23:26
stuff we said and showing some amazing content all over on the
1:23:29
YouTube. Until next time, guys, may all
1:23:32
your hits secrets.