Latest / For Azeroth!: A World of Warcraft Podcast / #268 - For Azeroth!: “Talent for Trouble”

Transcript

#268 - For Azeroth!: “Talent for Trouble” · For Azeroth!: A World of Warcraft Podcast

• 0:01
  Victory for the Forsaken. For Lauderon.
• 0:05
  For the Kirantor. For Pandaria.
• 0:11
  For calendar. To the burning region for
• 0:16
  Gilnaeus or has not died for the Lich King for the Sindoran.
• 0:24
  For the alliance. For the Horn for Azeroth.
• 0:31
  Hello and welcome to the return episode of For Azeroth proper.
• 0:37
  If you are just listening to this, we just had a lot of a
• 0:41
  sort of get to know you with Lex and her history with like Mmos
• 0:47
  and Final Fantasy and of course World of Warcraft.
• 0:50
  And now we are going to be doing the episode proper.
• 0:55
  Honestly, this has been a long time coming and I'm really glad
• 1:00
  to have you here, Lex. I decided to look up Boulders
• 1:03
  Gate just because you're like, yeah, I was like single digits
• 1:06
  when Boulders Gate came out. Boulders Gate One.
• 1:10
  Boulders Gate one came out in 1998 at the end of the year of
• 1:17
  1998 I feel. Good.
• 1:20
  Yeah. I should clarify that I was not
• 1:25
  playing Balder's Game real time because I might have been single
• 1:28
  digits. I definitely was not two.
• 1:30
  So this was after it released a little bit.
• 1:33
  I'm sorry Manny, that probably didn't help you feel like less
• 1:36
  worse. You just made it worse.
• 1:41
  Oh, hi everybody, and welcome to Four Azeroth.
• 1:48
  I am joined by my what's what's, what's the proper word?
• 1:53
  Infantile code. Lex.
• 1:58
  And we're here to talk about the game of World of Warcraft, which
• 2:02
  may in fact be older than Lex, not actually.
• 2:07
  Not the world I think Warcraft might have.
• 2:10
  Been Warcraft entirely is actually open to you.
• 2:12
  I knowing you, knowing no, actually, OK, it's very close,
• 2:18
  but now I'm talking to you. But we'll leave it alone.
• 2:22
  But we've got a bunch of news to go into.
• 2:25
  But before we do, I want to ask Lex, how was your week in the
• 2:28
  World of Warcraft? How is the World of Warcraft
• 2:30
  treating you? It was treating me very good.
• 2:35
  I did one attempt at the heartbreaker and I didn't get
• 2:40
  the heartbreaker. I did get the dragon armor,
• 2:43
  which I didn't realize was we. Got the manuscript in a single
• 2:46
  attempt. Yeah, I did.
• 2:48
  So I. Thought angry ratings could go
• 2:50
  to Lex. Single attempt?
• 2:56
  Yeah, it's. The real tragedy, Manny, is I
• 2:58
  went to the Dragon place to see how it looked and it doesn't go
• 3:02
  well with my Drake. So I just went back to riding
• 3:04
  for rock. So I'm so sorry.
• 3:08
  I really didn't deserve this. I really should never have
• 3:10
  gotten this. That's my bad.
• 3:13
  But I did get the cute Sailor Moon outfit.
• 3:15
  Am I allowed to say if if I'm not allowed to say titles of
• 3:18
  other things? Oh, you are.
• 3:20
  The rest of the world exists outside the World Warcraft.
• 3:24
  It's not World of Warcraft only. Everything else I'm relaxed on.
• 3:28
  Anyway, I got the fun little Sailor Moon outfit, so I'm super
• 3:32
  happy I got what I wanted. Did you see the gothic one
• 3:36
  that's on the store? Like the dark version with the
• 3:40
  mount and everything? I think it's like 30 USI.
• 3:42
  Was thinking about it. I ended up deciding against it
• 3:45
  because The thing is that realistically, I'm going to wear
• 3:47
  my pretty Sailor Moon outfit for a week and then I'm going to get
• 3:50
  bored of it and I'm going to try something else.
• 3:52
  Which is fine. When it took me a few hours of
• 3:54
  grinding tendies, it it would feel a little worse if I could
• 3:59
  spend $30.00 on it and then never looked at it again.
• 4:02
  But I I do think I I love the vibes.
• 4:05
  I love the little the little fancy magic girl vibes.
• 4:09
  OK, now that stuff that's on sale right now.
• 4:16
  Of course they said it's a limited time offer.
• 4:19
  It might actually be gone out of the store.
• 4:21
  This wasn't actually part of part of our notes, but it is
• 4:25
  supposed to come back into the trader's tenders.
• 4:29
  Sorry. Rather, the trader post itself
• 4:31
  at a later date like it's supposed to no earlier than
• 4:36
  three months. I would suspect that it's
• 4:38
  probably what might show up in the post next year.
• 4:42
  That would be kind of the smart thing is like, hey, here's the
• 4:44
  the gothic version for you guys as well as like a few new
• 4:48
  offerings would be kind of cool. And I think if you're spending
• 4:52
  30 bucks and you get it like exclusively for the people who
• 4:56
  paid that money for the year, feels feels OK.
• 5:02
  The the first bit of news of the week, the first short bit of
• 5:06
  news is actually the Diablo coming to the Game Pass.
• 5:12
  Man, He says. The first short bit of news, and
• 5:14
  it talks about the one thing everyone's been talking about
• 5:16
  for the entire week. I'm sorry, Manny.
• 5:18
  You can go. Really.
• 5:19
  Like, I didn't think this was like, big news.
• 5:22
  You're saying that this is big news?
• 5:24
  Well, the game pass in general has become a source, like
• 5:27
  whether or not I'm jumping in the gun a little bit, but
• 5:29
  whether or not World of Warcraft is is getting in game pass, at
• 5:32
  least in all of my circles, has been the controversy of the
• 5:36
  moment. OK, all right.
• 5:39
  Like I saw the conversation you were having in the four ass or
• 5:43
  off Discord. I guess I should plug that if
• 5:45
  you guys want to join bit dot LY slash fast Discord conversations
• 5:48
  like this happening. And for me it just, it was like,
• 5:53
  yeah, of course Diablo the the first thing.
• 5:58
  And then I guess like the big conversation that you guys were
• 6:00
  having was like, oh, is World of Warcraft coming?
• 6:02
  Because this was an announcement that came out on the official
• 6:06
  Xbox podcast. They had like Phil, Phil Spencer
• 6:10
  there. They had Sarah Bond who's the
• 6:12
  president of Xbox. They, and they had another
• 6:16
  bigwig as well as well as they host and they were talking about
• 6:19
  like, oh, how they're having Activision Blizzard games coming
• 6:23
  to the the Game Pass. And so the first one that they
• 6:28
  announced of course was Diablo. That's like the first of the
• 6:31
  Blizzard game games coming through and that's coming to the
• 6:36
  Game Pass on March 28th. So yeah, we we've got till the
• 6:40
  end of next month and then it'll show up.
• 6:42
  I'm excited for that. And of course, the question
• 6:45
  becomes like, well, what are the other games that are coming?
• 6:48
  So yeah, I guess we kind of jumped the horse a little bit,
• 6:52
  but I'll ask you this. Do you think it's likely that
• 6:56
  World of Warcraft is a candidate to come to the game pass?
• 7:00
  So I I have been going back and forth with this with a lot of
• 7:05
  groups for a very long time. My initial reaction was no, I
• 7:10
  don't think World of Warcraft is going on Game Pass.
• 7:12
  And I do want to also pause for a minute because that one thing
• 7:15
  that's been causing a lot of back and forth is the what was
• 7:19
  said by Sarah Bond I believe was Activision and Blizzard games
• 7:25
  are coming to the Game Pass. That has been unless there's
• 7:30
  been a second leak or a second source that has been misreported
• 7:35
  as her saying all Activision and Blizzard games are coming to the
• 7:39
  Game Pass. So you will hear some people say
• 7:41
  World of Warcraft is definitely coming to the Game Pass.
• 7:43
  Again, it is quite possible that there's another source of
• 7:46
  information that I'm not aware of and if that is the case, I
• 7:49
  apologize for spreading this information on fast.
• 7:52
  But but as far as I'm aware that's not guaranteed.
• 7:55
  We don't know what's going on yet, which I say only because I
• 7:57
  know that some people are going to respond to this episode and
• 8:00
  be like what are you talking about as World Warcraft likely
• 8:02
  to come to Game Pass. It's guaranteed.
• 8:04
  They said that everything's coming, but that is a a
• 8:06
  misreport from some. Yeah, there there needs to be a
• 8:09
  secondary source that's saying that because like having watched
• 8:13
  the the podcast and hearing from Sarah Bond and her exact words,
• 8:17
  she didn't say all. She said that Activision
• 8:20
  Blizzard games were coming, the first of which would be it would
• 8:24
  be Diablo, right. She didn't say that Every game
• 8:28
  we're not going to see like just to throw out games that I don't
• 8:31
  expect to to see suddenly just like appear on the on it.
• 8:35
  I don't expect to see like StarCraft One suddenly show up
• 8:39
  on Game Pass, right? Like the more likely it's the
• 8:44
  more modern StarCraft and even and even then it's not one of
• 8:48
  the the high priorities because it's not like a a recent thing.
• 8:53
  Diablo seems like such an easy fit because it is a box price.
• 8:57
  It's gone past its initial selling frenzy, right?
• 9:02
  So it's making it more available with very little bottom line
• 9:06
  impact if they can get more people onto the Game Pass.
• 9:11
  And with the seasonal model, it's something that people want
• 9:13
  to constantly play like, but you're not paying for seasons.
• 9:16
  You will pay for a Season Pass, but that's an extra expense on
• 9:19
  top of a of the Xbox Game Pass or the PC Game Pass in this
• 9:24
  case, right? And so I think that's that
• 9:27
  should be fine in my. Opinion.
• 9:29
  And in fact I think that that could be potentially really
• 9:32
  beneficial to other Blizzard games because right now there is
• 9:35
  a pretty heavy slant. I would actually a very heavy
• 9:41
  bias towards World of Warcraft in Blizzard.
• 9:43
  I think not to bring up the other big news from a while
• 9:47
  back, but I think that was reflected a lot in the layoffs
• 9:50
  that one of the the games that was not touched was World of
• 9:53
  Warcraft. And I think a lot of that is
• 9:54
  because World of Warcraft brings in just a ridiculously higher
• 9:58
  amount of money. And so I think if other games
• 10:01
  are bringing in more money outside of just the initial
• 10:04
  purchase because they're part of Game Pass, that might actually
• 10:07
  let them even the playing field a little bit more.
• 10:10
  I know my Diablo friends especially will get really
• 10:13
  frustrated because it's like, oh, every single BlizzCon, there
• 10:17
  is huge news for World of Warcraft.
• 10:20
  And then they like, read the patch notes for the last Diablo
• 10:24
  patch like there's nothing for other games.
• 10:26
  And so I think having a little bit more of that, you know every
• 10:29
  game is bringing in a little bit of money.
• 10:31
  So every game is consistently worthwhile to the for the
• 10:35
  company to invest in. That could actually allow other
• 10:38
  games in the Blizzard portfolio to come out a little bit more
• 10:41
  and have a little bit more. Maybe success isn't isn't the
• 10:45
  right word, but but look a little bit more relevant when
• 10:48
  the directors are making decisions on that.
• 10:53
  I personally can't imagine that World of Warcraft is going to
• 10:57
  come pure game pass, because that would be a pretty hefty
• 11:04
  drop in the amount of money that they're bringing in to what is
• 11:10
  is a is a pretty consistent cash cow, right?
• 11:15
  The the game pass, depending on how much you like to be.
• 11:19
  When I was looking at the game pass, it's about 9:00 or about
• 11:21
  $10. Excuse me, I forgot how 90 nines
• 11:22
  work, but which is honestly pretty close to what I'm playing
• 11:27
  for, paying for World of Warcraft on a monthly basis
• 11:29
  because I have like a six month subscription.
• 11:31
  So I think that's like 12. The average World of Warcraft
• 11:34
  subscription or the the monthly subscription I should say is
• 11:36
  about 15 a month. And so I think transferring
• 11:39
  World of Warcraft directly over to Game Pass would be about a
• 11:43
  30% decrease in funds which AI don't think they're going to
• 11:48
  want to do. Like there's no benefit to just
• 11:50
  tanking your own income and BI don't really want them to do
• 11:55
  because I've spent so long gaining the privileges of having
• 11:59
  the game that is the company's cash cow, right?
• 12:02
  I think that part of if you only play World of Warcraft, you
• 12:05
  don't necessarily see how much we are getting the fancy
• 12:08
  resources and we are getting the best writers and we are getting
• 12:11
  patches. All of the, you know, big
• 12:13
  patches all the time and constant content and we are
• 12:17
  getting that very regular expansion cycle.
• 12:20
  You know, we all will get mad if it's more than like 2 years
• 12:23
  between expansions where other games don't get anything near
• 12:26
  that degree of rapid expansion and rapid growth and and
• 12:30
  content. So frankly, I don't want World
• 12:34
  of Warcraft to drop down to Game Pass only partially because I
• 12:38
  think that it might mean that we would lose some of that Blizzard
• 12:41
  looking at the the games in general and being like what do
• 12:45
  we cut and World of Warcraft has just taken off the table as an
• 12:48
  option because well there this, that's how we're funding all of
• 12:52
  the other games. What I'm starting to think for
• 12:55
  more conversations I have with people is potentially more
• 12:57
  likely is that Game Pass could be more of an option on World of
• 13:03
  Warcraft right? There might be like a special
• 13:06
  World of Warcraft game pass subscription that's a little bit
• 13:08
  more expensive than the $10. Or if you have World of Warcraft
• 13:12
  and game pass you get added benefits.
• 13:15
  Like World of Warcraft tends to be pretty good I think at
• 13:18
  keeping the benefits that you can pay for relatively
• 13:22
  aesthetic. So I'm thinking put probably
• 13:24
  more things like you get free amounts the same way that if you
• 13:27
  do a six month sub you get extra amounts.
• 13:30
  I could be wrong. I have been wrong about things
• 13:33
  like this in the past, but that is my gut instinct that they're
• 13:36
  not going to make Game pass necessary or if they do it's
• 13:41
  going to be more of like a world like Game Class Plus, which is
• 13:46
  $20.00 a month gives you World of Warcraft.
• 13:49
  But I also sorry Manny, I I will let you speak on this.
• 13:52
  No, no, no. I also don't think that they're
• 13:55
  going to do the opposite. There's also a fear that I've
• 13:58
  heard that Xbox and and Microsoft is going to make it so
• 14:03
  that you're paying both the Game pass sub and the World of
• 14:06
  Warcraft sub and that you become a a required $25 monthly sub.
• 14:11
  I find that very unlikely. Again, because World of Warcraft
• 14:15
  is such a cash cow, you don't alienate that many players,
• 14:19
  right? You don't a make it so the like
• 14:21
  the people who right now are subbing and they haven't really
• 14:24
  played in the last few months but like they might come back so
• 14:27
  they might as well keep their sub active like that group
• 14:30
  would. You'd lose all of them, which is
• 14:33
  is not a small portion of World of Warcraft's players.
• 14:36
  And frankly I think that if if the price goes up that high
• 14:40
  you're going to lose some regular players.
• 14:42
  I I would have to think about whether or not I was going to
• 14:44
  continue playing World of Warcraft at that level.
• 14:46
  And I just, I again, I've been wrong about how people make
• 14:49
  business decisions. So I might I I hopefully won't,
• 14:52
  but I might have to eat a little crow.
• 14:54
  I don't see that as very likely. I think that it's much more
• 14:58
  likely to be either World of Warcraft is not on Game Pass or
• 15:02
  Game Pass is more of like fun little add-ons, but not the main
• 15:07
  the main sub base. Yeah, no, I I think a lot of my
• 15:13
  opinion just lines up with your initial opinion.
• 15:16
  It seems like counter intuitive to suddenly give up that new
• 15:21
  that like source of revenue to to switch it to Game Pass.
• 15:24
  Like you could say like hey everybody who's paying for World
• 15:28
  of Warcraft, you are now automatically subscribed to Game
• 15:33
  Pass and that is a value additive thing where it's like
• 15:37
  oh OK I I'm playing for myself and I get Game Pass.
• 15:41
  Let me let me go check out, check out what games there are.
• 15:45
  They could do it where it's like oh for like a little bit extra
• 15:48
  money. You get like a discounted Game
• 15:52
  pass if they really wanted to like push people towards Game
• 15:55
  pass. But you don't merge them, you
• 15:58
  don't, You don't suddenly say like, hey, instead of giving us
• 16:02
  like, what is it, 15 bucks a month if you're paying month to
• 16:04
  month? Or would you only pay 2, two
• 16:07
  months at a time, like if you're buying like the regular time,
• 16:11
  but like if you if they were to suddenly kill the subscription
• 16:16
  model, To me that's because the game popularity is dwindling
• 16:21
  enough that they're like, OK, like you're not making the money
• 16:23
  that yeah, that we thought you were.
• 16:25
  And the fact that they are putting out so much more
• 16:27
  content, so more so quickly. The fact that despite all the
• 16:32
  ABK interference that happened before the merger and the fact
• 16:39
  that they didn't attack like cut a lot of the core team when they
• 16:46
  were doing the layoffs to me is saying that yeah, they don't
• 16:50
  want to disrupt what they feel is currently a winning formula.
• 16:54
  So that that sub revenue seems to be working for them.
• 16:58
  And you don't, you don't start being like, yeah, we're going to
• 17:01
  get you like more updates all the time when it's like we can't
• 17:05
  afford to put that money, that money and those resources in.
• 17:08
  You don't acquire another studio and put 100 developers kitch to
• 17:13
  work on a game that is dwindling.
• 17:16
  So yeah, I I, I agree with you for a lot of, a lot of those
• 17:20
  reasons. I think you've already gone over
• 17:21
  it. So I don't really need to rehash
• 17:23
  it. So the question becomes, what do
• 17:25
  you think are the likely candidates from Blizzard as like
• 17:28
  the next game? If you have to pick like one
• 17:30
  game, you're like, that's probably the one going on Game
• 17:31
  Pass. I would think probably
• 17:34
  Overwatch. I think Overwatch has a little
• 17:36
  bit of the same Diablo problem where it is simply too cheap and
• 17:41
  I don't think the people are buying the like the little
• 17:42
  add-ons as much as they want. So I think A, that's a, you know
• 17:47
  it it it lines up with the other games that are on Game Pass and
• 17:51
  it sort of has that same sort of vibe.
• 17:53
  And B it could also, I think, really benefit from having a
• 17:57
  little bit of like people are subscribing, even if they're
• 18:00
  subscribing to a bunch of games instead of just they get
• 18:05
  Overwatch and that's it. Yeah, I think Overwatch is a
• 18:08
  weird one. In the original Overwatch that
• 18:10
  had a box price, like, you know, the 40 bucks go by GO by
• 18:13
  Overwatch and then they had the season, I think that would have
• 18:17
  been like, yeah, that's a candidate.
• 18:18
  I feel that with Overwatch two being like initially free to
• 18:22
  play and then microtransactions to all all levels, I don't think
• 18:27
  that's actually a good candidate for Game Pass.
• 18:30
  I think it's like, what what does it matter if it's on Game
• 18:32
  Pass? I can download it for free from
• 18:34
  like Steam because it's on because like Steam was getting
• 18:37
  stuff. Though I'm wondering if Steam's
• 18:39
  going to get stuff after merger, right.
• 18:41
  I can download it for free off of the Battle.net client.
• 18:44
  Like I guess it's just another Ave. for people to download it
• 18:48
  and sure, why not. I don't think it like actually
• 18:51
  changes anything in that business model.
• 18:54
  Then I think that's like the thing that people need to
• 18:55
  understand like the the enticement is not paying a
• 19:00
  sticker price like that box price.
• 19:04
  But a lot of the games that will come out on Game Pass have a
• 19:10
  cost associated with it afterwards, like some sort of
• 19:15
  micro transactions or game or Battle pass sort of thing or
• 19:21
  seasonal pass sort of thing on top of that.
• 19:23
  So they can still create some revenue revenue in order to make
• 19:27
  the game exist. For that reason, I think that
• 19:33
  there is a battle Pass or sort of rather your subscription
• 19:40
  stays if you're playing World of Warcraft.
• 19:43
  But if you have a Game pass, congratulations, you don't need
• 19:47
  to buy the expansion, you get the base edition immediately.
• 19:51
  And that's where I see World of Warcraft fitting in, where it's
• 19:54
  like you still got to pay the subscription, but at least you
• 19:57
  don't have to buy The War Within because it's just part of your
• 20:02
  your your Game pass thing. And I think that's where it
• 20:05
  could fit. Especially with the fact that
• 20:08
  we're now moving to more of like an annual expansion rhythm,
• 20:12
  which I know a lot of people, to some degree, myself included,
• 20:15
  are very concerned about that. Because it feels like, OK, we're
• 20:19
  going to be getting probably somewhere close to half the
• 20:22
  content just based like on time, about half the content.
• 20:27
  And I'm going to be paying double, right?
• 20:28
  Like, I'm going to be paying for an expansion every single year.
• 20:32
  And I can imagine that being a nice way to sort of ease that
• 20:34
  out of like, OK, well, you don't have to pay for an expansion
• 20:38
  every year. You can also get Game Pass and
• 20:40
  then it's just going to come to you.
• 20:41
  And that'll even work out better for World of Warcraft or for for
• 20:45
  the Blizzard, I should say financially, because $10 a month
• 20:49
  is 120 a year and and expansion is like base is 50.
• 20:55
  So they double their income. But from the the player's side,
• 20:59
  you get all of these extra games and also you don't have to deal
• 21:02
  with that sticker price of like, oh, I've got to dig up another
• 21:05
  $50 this year because we have another expansion or I'm not
• 21:09
  able to keep playing. Yeah.
• 21:12
  The one, the one thing I will say though is Metzen did push
• 21:16
  back against that. I know he said that he was going
• 21:18
  to do faster content. And the media question was like,
• 21:22
  oh, does that mean like we're going back to like because like
• 21:25
  Blizzard has tried this before where they're like, yeah, we're
• 21:26
  going to speed up the releases. We're going to try and get you
• 21:28
  expansion a year and it's like, oh, you're going to charge me
• 21:30
  that like 50 bucks a year and it's like, no, no, the patch
• 21:34
  cadence that they've been hitting has been much faster and
• 21:38
  that's great. And that is stuff that that is
• 21:40
  being relatively like welcomed. I'll talk more about like my my
• 21:46
  deeper thoughts in another time. But the expansions themselves
• 21:50
  will just be more like, OK, 2024 and a year.
• 21:54
  That's when we get the war within 2026, end of year, that's
• 21:59
  when we get midnight. And 2028, right, End of year.
• 22:03
  That right. And so it's more regimented
• 22:06
  where before it would be like, oh, the space between end of
• 22:10
  Shadow Lands or like launch of Shadow Lands and Dragonflight 2
• 22:15
  1/2 years. I mean, there was a big gut of
• 22:19
  like busy content at the beginning and COVID sort of
• 22:22
  screwed it up. But again, BFA to Shadow Lands,
• 22:25
  Legion to BFA, there's been, it's been closer to 3:00-ish
• 22:31
  years. And if you think about like, oh,
• 22:34
  has the has the content being like cut, cut that we haven't
• 22:39
  been getting as as much. I would think that the last huge
• 22:43
  expansion right in my mind is something along the lines of BFA
• 22:51
  'cause if you look at like Legion, right?
• 22:53
  We had the initial Knight hold, Embold, dream tear, sorry,
• 22:57
  rather yeah, Knight hold Embold Dream, Emerald dream be like the
• 22:59
  intro, Knight hold being like the the thing.
• 23:02
  We then went into another raid getting getting the Sanctum or
• 23:10
  rather two of Sargarus. And then we went to Argus and we
• 23:15
  had the the Burning Throne and Taurus, right, like, and it felt
• 23:19
  like a big expansion. But really what it was was that
• 23:24
  intro tier being like the additional stuff and three
• 23:31
  separate big tiers, right? When you look, when you look at
• 23:37
  BFA, similar thing we had. Oh dear, we went into the battle
• 23:44
  for Dazarlar with the crystal storms on the side.
• 23:48
  We did. We had like Mechagon Nashtar, we
• 23:52
  did Ashara's Eternal Palace right?
• 23:55
  And then we had the the final raid being like the Black Empire
• 24:00
  sort of thing and that was again 3 raids, but like the intro
• 24:05
  tier, Ulder was a full on tier right?
• 24:13
  With with this expansion it's been pretty much similar even
• 24:17
  though the stuff has been coming much faster.
• 24:19
  You've had the Vault of the Incarnates, you then went into
• 24:23
  Avarice, right? And then we jumped into them old
• 24:26
  dream and we had a mirror drusill.
• 24:28
  That's three tiers right? We're just it's for me.
• 24:32
  It feels like we're missing a little bit of that intro stuff
• 24:35
  or a little bit of that mid mid thing before but they've been
• 24:39
  relatively the same. The same expansion left I I
• 24:43
  don't know why, but in Shadow Lands it felt like it was short
• 24:46
  to me. It felt like Nathria Sanctum of
• 24:52
  Domination were like, OK, that's like intro tier, tier one.
• 24:57
  And then when we went to Zarith Mortis, it's like feels like
• 25:01
  there should be one more tier after this but it was that was
• 25:03
  it. And if and people were making
• 25:05
  the comparison where it's like, oh, this is like WAD where they
• 25:07
  cut out an entire tier and I kind of, I kind of buy that.
• 25:12
  Well and and Shadow Land specifically was COVID and then
• 25:16
  also the lawsuit like I that that is 11 expansion that I will
• 25:20
  forgive pretty much anything because like the fact that the
• 25:25
  the the devs weren't just go like we were all going through
• 25:28
  it but my God the devs were going through it.
• 25:32
  So I I'm willing to forgive a lot of missed content there.
• 25:35
  But I I should also say I think that I sounded very and I I was
• 25:38
  very pessimistic in what I was saying earlier about like I'm
• 25:42
  nervous about it being limited content.
• 25:45
  I I do I I'm trying very hard especially after BlizzCon gave
• 25:49
  me a lot of like OK like these are people who care really
• 25:53
  deeply and have big ideas and everyone's trying really hard
• 25:56
  and there's some really great stuff coming.
• 25:58
  So I I'm I will always be an inherently anxious person.
• 26:03
  I'm always going to be worried about where things are going.
• 26:05
  But I am not. I'm trying hard not to fall into
• 26:07
  the pit of, Oh my God, everything's going to be
• 26:10
  terrible before I even have any information.
• 26:12
  And I think that is really true. Like, we've been getting not
• 26:16
  just very regimented content, but a lot of content in in a
• 26:20
  very short amount of time. And when they first started
• 26:22
  publishing those schedules, I was like, there's no way this is
• 26:25
  going to happen. Like, this is ridiculous.
• 26:27
  This is not how World of Warcraft operates.
• 26:29
  But they've done it. They've managed to very
• 26:31
  successfully keep like every time I'm about to get bored they
• 26:34
  give me something else that's big and shiny and exciting and
• 26:37
  not just like OK, well this will keep you entertained for a while
• 26:40
  like actual interesting content and and so I am not inherently
• 26:46
  anti the the new rhythm that they're getting into.
• 26:49
  I'm just a a little like I I can imagine worlds where it goes
• 26:52
  badly. I can also imagine worlds where
• 26:54
  it goes really well. OK.
• 26:57
  And so your opinion for Dragonfly, would you say that's
• 27:00
  really well, more towards the scale of really well?
• 27:03
  I've I've really enjoyed Dragonfly.
• 27:04
  I think that the timing has been good.
• 27:06
  I think the story has been good. I understand the critiques that
• 27:09
  people have with the story, but I think it's.
• 27:11
  I think it's cute. I think it's been really fun.
• 27:14
  And I also think that they have done one thing that I've been
• 27:17
  complaining about for a very long time, which is that anytime
• 27:20
  they brought in or that I was, I should say, previous to
• 27:23
  Dragonfly was sort of my refrain.
• 27:25
  That Blizzard was not doing enough of this, which was
• 27:27
  bringing in people who actually like if if they're going to talk
• 27:31
  about like a race that's clearly based off of, for example, Inuit
• 27:36
  people. There was clearly a lot of
• 27:38
  actual listening and actual working with the community and
• 27:43
  and making sure that they weren't just going based off of
• 27:46
  what they thought people were like, but they were actually
• 27:49
  attempting to give positive and and realistic characters and and
• 27:56
  and a positive and realistic story.
• 27:57
  And I think that that has been done incredibly through
• 28:01
  Dragonflight, which has given me a whole lot of hope.
• 28:04
  So yes, I've been very happy with Dragonflight and it's it's
• 28:07
  been really getting me back, excited and and ready to go with
• 28:11
  the next expansions. Very cool, Very cool.
• 28:14
  All right, well, you're you've been panicking, but you haven't
• 28:18
  been the only one, because our next news story is about the Wow
• 28:22
  token panic that happened last week.
• 28:25
  And Lex, I I may have glazed over our last story about the
• 28:31
  Diablo Pass and what that meant to the community, but did you
• 28:34
  did you have anybody talking about this in your circles?
• 28:39
  Wildly enough, no. This was one that when I saw in
• 28:42
  the show notes, I was like, what is this?
• 28:44
  And then I started reading all of the the Reddit and the the
• 28:48
  forums and really digging into it and it seems like this was
• 28:51
  very crazy. It seems like things were going
• 28:52
  on. Oh man.
• 28:54
  Like if if Wow GOLD acted like the stock market, I could have
• 28:58
  made a mint. An absolute mint because it was
• 29:02
  Sky is falling chicken little days as soon as this happened.
• 29:06
  Basically some point Wednesday. This was Wednesday.
• 29:11
  After the EU reset, some people noticed that when they were
• 29:16
  redeeming their token they couldn't transfer it to batonet
• 29:21
  balance, they could only redeem it for extending their time.
• 29:25
  So the game time option was there.
• 29:28
  There was no other option to like put it to balance.
• 29:33
  And this sparked an A Reddit thread that like ballooned.
• 29:38
  This then went through and I'm like, I'm part of the World War
• 29:42
  Craft Community Council. People in the World War Craft
• 29:44
  Community Council were like, what's going on, Blizzard,
• 29:46
  what's going on? Content creators were like, this
• 29:51
  is, this is it guys. This is the first sign of
• 29:54
  Microsoft digging in their claws.
• 29:56
  It like it like this. Everybody had a narrative and it
• 30:03
  just went all over the place. One content creator that I was
• 30:07
  speaking to, I just said this is likely a bug because like why
• 30:12
  would this happen in the EU and not the NA?
• 30:17
  Why would they do this and not like preface it with like some
• 30:21
  sort of communication? Why when I go to the website
• 30:25
  they it still says you can trade it in for game for batonet
• 30:31
  balance rather not game time. If they don't do those sort of
• 30:35
  things, that puts them in a very precarious legal situation.
• 30:40
  I'm not a lawyer, but that feels like misleading terms, false
• 30:47
  advertising, all sorts of things that like you're going to get
• 30:51
  thrown over the barrel. So it doesn't seem like that's
• 30:53
  the way we should do it. And then of course it didn't
• 30:58
  matter because the narrative was already out there and
• 31:00
  speculation and fears and everything just ballooned.
• 31:04
  And I said guys watch DNA token and NA token before.
• 31:08
  That point was roughly 220 gold when I was when I first took a
• 31:14
  look at it. And then within a short period
• 31:17
  of time it was over 300 hitting getting close to 350K gold.
• 31:24
  And like it hasn't been there since they initially said, oh,
• 31:28
  people who have been paying, paying their subscription with
• 31:32
  the with the token for forever, you're no longer going to be
• 31:36
  able to do that if you haven't paid for any time since this
• 31:41
  date. And so that deflated the price.
• 31:43
  It was like this big thing when the the NA token had reached
• 31:47
  over 400, it was like, oh man, so yeah, this went, this thing
• 31:51
  went flying. EU post went up from the EUCS
• 31:56
  and they said oh this is a bug. We're gonna look into it and get
• 32:01
  it figured, but it doesn't matter.
• 32:02
  Not many people look at poor CS Twitter.
• 32:07
  The token continued to rise. Then the issue started showing
• 32:13
  up on NA servers and renewed fervor began.
• 32:20
  Unfortunately because the because the token on EU had was
• 32:26
  already experiencing this in the the EU token was already pretty
• 32:29
  much just frozen. People were like, I don't want
• 32:31
  to touch it right now it's not working.
• 32:33
  Any token suddenly became frozen.
• 32:35
  Probably a a couple of people who had bought it thinking like
• 32:38
  I got to buy it now before it goes any higher and then
• 32:41
  couldn't do anything but gold were trapped it it was a lot of
• 32:47
  dumors. It was a lot of Dumors.
• 32:48
  And so there was there, there was a short condensed period
• 32:52
  where wow, auction house goblins had created a a new subclass of
• 32:59
  like Chicken Little. It was glorious.
• 33:03
  And as soon as that freeze happened, that token price
• 33:08
  started crashing right back down.
• 33:11
  It dropped under 200, which would have sucked for people who
• 33:16
  were like, no, no, it did not drop under 200.
• 33:18
  It dropped to like under 302 hundred something never got
• 33:21
  quite back to it. And then the token price.
• 33:25
  They fixed the bug and the token price unfortunately hasn't It
• 33:28
  like went back up and hasn't gone back to its regular level
• 33:31
  since. I think when I was putting
• 33:32
  together the show notes, it was 320 K, which is like 100K on
• 33:39
  top. So if you need some gold and wow
• 33:42
  and have some extra pocket change, guess look at it now
• 33:46
  'cause like I think the entire effect of it is that for a while
• 33:50
  now for a while to come, the tokens are going to, there's not
• 33:56
  going to be many people who are going to purchase it for game
• 34:01
  time because they did it in that that frenzy before the bug
• 34:05
  started happening and that's going to probably start
• 34:08
  deflating the the price. So I would say look at it, see
• 34:15
  where it's at. The typical trend from looking
• 34:18
  at like 30 day averages and seven day averages in this is
• 34:22
  that it's more expensive on the weekend.
• 34:25
  So get get it, get it during the week, look for it and see if you
• 34:29
  can get get the get it cheap or maybe get some wow gold cheap.
• 34:32
  Whatever, it works. Great to know, yeah.
• 34:34
  The the World of Warcraft economy and just the way that
• 34:37
  World of Warcraft reacts to things is so crazy.
• 34:40
  I know this is incredibly old news, but like, I still
• 34:42
  sometimes think. Like when they started a
• 34:45
  pandemic by bringing in a pet from an old braid and like
• 34:49
  actual epidemiologists studied. What's that?
• 34:53
  I may have used the wrong word anyway.
• 34:54
  People who study pandemics. I mean, I never anyway studied
• 34:59
  World of Warcraft. We are it's it is fascinating
• 35:02
  that when you get millions of people together, they simply
• 35:07
  behave like people. I'm really, I'm really
• 35:09
  rediscovering psychology here. This is 10 out of 10 commentary.
• 35:14
  I want like, 'cause, like, that's actually fairly relevant
• 35:17
  because people looked at that paper and then we're looking at
• 35:20
  it comparatively to like the pandemic that we just that we
• 35:25
  just got back Shadow Lands days. And just seeing like how much of
• 35:32
  that behavior models out, especially in like a the world
• 35:38
  that we have now, 'cause like it's World of Warcraft.
• 35:39
  People weren't sure exactly how it was happening at first.
• 35:42
  Information got out there, false narratives got out there and all
• 35:45
  of that kind of maps with the pandemic in the real world now.
• 35:48
  And so like, man, it it's it's crazy.
• 35:50
  But like, yeah, you're the panic was real.
• 35:54
  I watched it in real time. I was giddy.
• 35:56
  I did not get much work done, 'cause it was just watching this
• 36:00
  all play out and like it. A bunch of Sash and Ford guys.
• 36:05
  I was just like I told you so, I told you so.
• 36:07
  Why couldn't I make money off of this?
• 36:09
  I I think that occasionally the World of Warcraft community
• 36:14
  would benefit from remembering that this is a really old game
• 36:20
  and there's a lot of people who are involved in like the most
• 36:24
  minute little things and it's so easy for something to break.
• 36:28
  And so if it it's like the old like don't attribute something
• 36:33
  to malice that could be attributed to stupidity.
• 36:35
  If you're playing World of Warcraft don't attribute
• 36:37
  something to malice. That could be attributed to the
• 36:39
  fact that this game has so many potential issues and also much
• 36:45
  love to the the the game devs. I cannot imagine digging through
• 36:49
  the mountains of code that it must take just to, like, do the
• 36:53
  world's smallest thing. Yeah, yeah.
• 36:56
  Especially when you get into that spaghetti cold because it's
• 36:58
  an old game and when you affect something here, suddenly the
• 37:01
  butterfly on the other side of the world causes an earthquake.
• 37:05
  But yeah, it it is crazy how it all went down and the reaction
• 37:11
  behind it. But you were talking about like,
• 37:13
  you know, the the people who are guiding World of Warcraft into
• 37:18
  the future. And one of those people who is
• 37:21
  no longer there is Steve Denuser and yeah, Lex, tell us a little
• 37:27
  bit about this if you would. Absolutely.
• 37:29
  So Steve Nooser has obviously been a writer on in World of
• 37:33
  Warcraft for about 8 years and folks started to notice that his
• 37:37
  LinkedIn was saying that he stopped working at Blizzard in
• 37:41
  November. So right around the time of the
• 37:45
  of of BlizzCon and nothing had been announced, nothing had
• 37:49
  happened. We people were just seeing his
• 37:51
  LinkedIn profile said this ended in November so people started
• 37:56
  chatting on Reddit, on forums trying to figure out what's
• 37:58
  going on. Like oh has he gone?
• 38:00
  Is this an error? What's happening?
• 38:02
  And then finally he released an interview where he was saying
• 38:07
  like Yep, I left. He said that he left based on
• 38:12
  the the return to work to to office policy.
• 38:13
  Excuse me? Because he lives in Minnesota
• 38:16
  and would have to move to to to California.
• 38:23
  And also just the fact that he'd been working on this game for so
• 38:25
  long and decided that it was time to spread his wings and try
• 38:30
  something new. Manny, what are your what are
• 38:34
  your takes on the the Denuzer leaving?
• 38:38
  This is one of those times where, like my reaction to him
• 38:42
  leaving is less than my reaction to the reaction of him leaving.
• 38:47
  Man, the community. Like, I guess he was like, you
• 38:52
  know, it's it's not the entirety of the community, right?
• 38:55
  There are people who are very invested in the story of World
• 38:58
  of Warcraft. People have some really great
• 38:59
  takes on it, people who have some good criticisms of it, Some
• 39:04
  people who have really bad takes.
• 39:06
  And they all sort of came together to form this denuser
• 39:09
  bashing squad that isn't the general community but informed A
• 39:15
  narrative that the community really seemed to like jump on.
• 39:20
  Like that bandwagon was up and running and wheels going fast.
• 39:25
  And so I like, I don't understand most of the hotter
• 39:31
  takes because when the game is doing well, when it is
• 39:36
  succeeding, when we get like this, like breath of fresh air,
• 39:39
  that is Dragon Flight, which was filmed by Denuser.
• 39:42
  That was his fresh start. Right when the stuff that was
• 39:49
  like messy and BFA and into Dragon Flight was in the midst
• 39:53
  of all that turmoil. And it's like, how can you do
• 39:56
  your best work when there's like lawsuits and harassment and
• 40:00
  like? Layoffs after layoffs and like
• 40:02
  all of this sort of stuff. Like I I get I get that you you
• 40:09
  gave them a break and maybe I I could give them a break that but
• 40:13
  like it's a team effort in in my opinion I never pin it all on
• 40:17
  one person and I never like with with some notable exceptions I
• 40:21
  I'm aware of some people who like being rock stars.
• 40:26
  And so we'll overrule the general consensus to say things
• 40:29
  like, oh we're going to fire the cannon.
• 40:31
  And it's you know and it's like that never happened And like
• 40:34
  yeah we're going to burn that tree down.
• 40:36
  It's like OK how are we going to make this work And a couple of
• 40:38
  times where they've made those statements and then have to like
• 40:41
  make it work after the fact which is which I find really
• 40:46
  annoying. But we've those people aren't
• 40:48
  around anymore Now it's like it's a lot more planned when you
• 40:51
  speak to the people who are writing this and like if you
• 40:57
  guys want a very real example of like the absolute Glee and joy
• 41:03
  and the sort of want to talk about it but don't want to give
• 41:07
  stuff away, go check out my interview with Denuser.
• 41:12
  Like that's completely topical to this.
• 41:14
  It is. I'll put like a link in the in
• 41:18
  the show notes it's it's an episode of For Azov that was put
• 41:23
  out right at the beginning of Dragon flight and it's basically
• 41:28
  half an hour of. I started with one question,
• 41:33
  ended up forgetting about all the other questions and then
• 41:36
  just geeked out with Denusa for like half an hour up until the
• 41:39
  point where like Linksi from you guys know, linksi from Wowcast
• 41:45
  was like OK we're getting close to time time reminder.
• 41:48
  And it's like, oh, I got to talk about these other questions too.
• 41:55
  Like these people love the game. They are not there with any kind
• 41:59
  of agenda to destroy things they want to talk about, like these
• 42:05
  characters that they've grown up with.
• 42:08
  We talked about when Metzen came, came back, right.
• 42:12
  And like, oh, what's the Metzen going effect going to be?
• 42:16
  That is another episode that spoke with, I think Discording
• 42:24
  Kitty was the guest on on that where where there is this
• 42:27
  question of like, OK, well is there like such a reverence for
• 42:30
  these old characters that they they don't want to touch them
• 42:33
  too much, they don't want to move them into a new situation.
• 42:36
  So I think that the writing goes and ebbs and flows, but like, if
• 42:42
  you're going to trash the Sylvana story, right?
• 42:46
  Are you also going to be OK with like the entire ward, loads of
• 42:52
  drain or nonsensical alternate dimension?
• 42:56
  Like there's there's been bad things that you cannot place one
• 43:01
  way or the other. Are you gonna be, like, holding
• 43:04
  up the amazing story of vanilla? Like, come on, we like it's not
• 43:10
  the worst it's ever been. Yeah, no, I I agree entirely.
• 43:14
  I think so. I've never really been one to
• 43:17
  fall into the like Rockstar mindset and I think part of that
• 43:20
  might be that I wasn't again when I was when it was early
• 43:23
  World of Warcraft, I was having a little meal in Iron Forge
• 43:26
  because my character was very sweepy, right?
• 43:28
  I was a child and I I think that that's good.
• 43:31
  I think that it is not beneficial for us to have and
• 43:35
  sorry I think I think the entire world has kind of moved away
• 43:37
  from that Rockstar mindset in in World of Warcraft.
• 43:40
  I think that it's like the the people behind it are getting
• 43:43
  less of this like reverence like Oh my God they're the coolest
• 43:45
  few humans ever. I can't believe like anyone
• 43:48
  would ever critique them and I think that is good for us to
• 43:51
  move away from but I don't think it means we have to do the
• 43:53
  opposite right. I I I think that we there's also
• 43:57
  a benefit to the memory that like these are people.
• 44:02
  This is a creative task and it's a creative story that's been
• 44:05
  going for a very, very long time.
• 44:07
  Which means there's going to be ebbs and flows.
• 44:09
  The greatest writer in the entire world cannot write for 20
• 44:14
  years straight in like and and write a lot.
• 44:17
  Like, not write a little bit, but write constant updates and
• 44:21
  like hundreds of characters and needing to remember every single
• 44:25
  bit of interconnecting lore. It does not matter how good you
• 44:29
  are. There's going to be ups and
• 44:30
  downs and there's going to be things that are kind of mid and
• 44:32
  there's going to be things that are great.
• 44:33
  And I think going at it with grace and with the memory that
• 44:38
  these are human beings who are putting just a ridiculous amount
• 44:42
  of time and energy into what they are giving us is always a
• 44:46
  good way to go about it. And also to what you were
• 44:48
  saying, Manny, that this is a team effort.
• 44:50
  So, you know, if you hate somebody and you want to make a
• 44:55
  post on Reddit about how Denooser is the worst person
• 44:58
  ever, bear in mind that the story you're talking about was
• 45:02
  actually written by a lot of people, right?
• 45:04
  You can't really attack one writer when you're attacking
• 45:07
  World of Warcraft writing and not have sort of a a lead on
• 45:11
  effect to everyone who was involved, which to some people
• 45:14
  might be fine, that might not be, you know, a deterrent to
• 45:17
  folks who are would joyfully tell every single dev that they
• 45:20
  hate their game. I will say if you're in a
• 45:22
  position where you would joyfully tell every dev that you
• 45:24
  hate their game, there's a lot of games out there you are
• 45:27
  allowed to play something else. But regardless, I think that it
• 45:34
  it's it's fine to critique. I am the queen of critiquing
• 45:37
  lore. I will absolutely be giving
• 45:39
  plenty of criticisms on this podcast, but these are human
• 45:42
  beings and they're people and they're putting in a lot.
• 45:45
  And we don't have to be, like, cruel.
• 45:48
  Yeah, yeah, I I will. I will tack the argument.
• 45:52
  Not the person. I will tack the prose, not the
• 45:55
  writer. I think that's what people need
• 45:56
  to do and like just to sort of speak to his reasoning for
• 46:02
  leaving guys, Blizzard has handed out like five year, 10
• 46:08
  year, 15 year, 20 year awards. Like people get those swords and
• 46:12
  those Shields and all of that sort of stuff.
• 46:14
  The helm right? Bashiak who recently left in
• 46:19
  part of the the layoffs was there 20 years ish.
• 46:24
  Like people have been at the at that company for the long haul.
• 46:30
  You don't suddenly wake up one day and go like, you know what?
• 46:34
  I want to try something else. Like there has to be a a
• 46:38
  catalyst that like, makes you reconsider your current
• 46:42
  situation. And unfortunately Blizzard and
• 46:47
  ABK have been doing that a lot outside of the layoffs.
• 46:51
  So you like, return to office policy and a lot of their staff
• 46:55
  were saying like you're going to lose talent over it.
• 46:58
  Denuser might have been one of them, right?
• 47:02
  And like just one of them, Just the most public one that we can
• 47:06
  sort of look into right when go ahead.
• 47:12
  Sorry to interrupt, because yeah, he like I was saying, he
• 47:14
  was moving from Minneapolis, Saint Paul, So to Irving, CA,
• 47:20
  that is an insane quality of life drop like the amount that
• 47:24
  you would need to spend for the house that he probably has in
• 47:27
  Minnesota to live in like he would be in like at least like
• 47:32
  half the size. Right.
• 47:34
  It it's not just that it's returned to office is gonna make
• 47:36
  them lose talent. It's returned to office in one
• 47:39
  of the most expensive areas in one of the most expensive states
• 47:42
  in America. But I'm sorry, Manny, continue.
• 47:45
  Yeah, no, definitely. And like, picking up his entire
• 47:49
  family dude, 'cause he's, he's a family man.
• 47:51
  Like, that's like losing all of your connections and roots that
• 47:55
  you've put down. So yeah, I could see it where
• 47:58
  it's just like, yeah, I'm gonna give my my notice they they
• 48:03
  worked it out and then he he quietly left and once the merger
• 48:10
  was complete. So I I get it like I it's sad
• 48:16
  and they've lost a good amount of people like Josh Allen who
• 48:19
  was like legendary community content creator, right.
• 48:24
  He didn't just say like, I'm going to to leave.
• 48:28
  He was given an offer and he like the reason that he was even
• 48:32
  looking at offers was because of all the stuff that was happening
• 48:36
  with the with the lawsuit. Like, it's just it is a matter
• 48:40
  of like people don't typically quit jobs, They quit bosses,
• 48:47
  they quit environments. And if the environment is like,
• 48:51
  oh, we're completely changing our environment.
• 48:53
  In the case of an RTO, yeah, like he did it.
• 48:56
  He's not listed at somewhere else.
• 48:58
  He left, right, said. Screw it, I'm gonna enjoy the
• 49:02
  holidays and then at the end of January, it's like, I guess I
• 49:07
  should start looking right? Like that's not like AI got like
• 49:10
  a great offer. That's a I'm just done with you.
• 49:13
  Right. Well, and and you know what a
• 49:17
  like I can also imagine it being very stressed.
• 49:20
  First of all, moving to a really expensive place, really far away
• 49:23
  also with a ton of instability, right?
• 49:26
  Like I I would like to believe for example that Ibarra knew
• 49:28
  that he was out at BlizzCon, but like they fired the president,
• 49:32
  like they got rid of some pretty high up people.
• 49:35
  It's not like it was everyone is super safe.
• 49:38
  Yeah, I I can also imagine the the people who you're going to
• 49:43
  lose when things feel unstable in the the, the company that
• 49:49
  you've built and when you're putting pressure on people, for
• 49:53
  example, to do a return to office when previously they've
• 49:56
  been fully remote, are going to be your best talent because
• 49:58
  they're the ones who can find other places.
• 50:02
  And this is something that I was also afraid of with the lawsuit
• 50:05
  or not. The well with the lawsuit, yes,
• 50:06
  but also with the layoffs. I think my plea to Microsoft and
• 50:15
  Activision Blizzard is to remember that creativity is
• 50:18
  going to do its best work when people feel safe and people feel
• 50:22
  secure and people feel like they can make mistakes.
• 50:25
  And I building that environment where people a are able to work
• 50:32
  comfortably, partially for example from home, if they're
• 50:35
  not doing anything that requires collaboration.
• 50:38
  And also not in the most expensive place you can imagine,
• 50:42
  but also with and. And this is, I want to be clear,
• 50:46
  the only reasons given by Steve Denuser were the return to
• 50:49
  office policy and the fact that he wanted to try something new.
• 50:53
  But talent leaves, you're right, the the people leave bosses, not
• 50:58
  jobs. And the people who leave those
• 51:00
  bosses are usually your best. So I agree with you on that,
• 51:04
  Manny. Yeah.
• 51:06
  So it like, to your point, like you're dealing with a creative
• 51:10
  thing. You're dealing with like people
• 51:12
  who are who should be thinking about like the next three
• 51:16
  expansions and how to realize that and how to make these hero
• 51:20
  talents so amazing. But instead they are now worried
• 51:24
  about their very livelihood. And that is going to have a
• 51:29
  significant impact that we won't be able to quantify because we
• 51:33
  will never know how differently it may have gone had they not
• 51:37
  been so distracted. But with that said, that leads
• 51:42
  us to our big story of the day, which is of course those hero
• 51:46
  talents. So while Phas is being on
• 51:50
  hiatus, Blizzard has put out not one but two waves of early looks
• 51:57
  at these hero talents. The 2nd wave was just last week,
• 52:02
  and that included hero talents for Druid, Hunter, Mage, and
• 52:09
  Priest. And so we're going to do like as
• 52:13
  a kind of overall opinion of these Lex you play Priests.
• 52:19
  And one of the one of the big ones that were revealed in this
• 52:24
  wave of course was the Oracle Priest, which is for Disciplined
• 52:29
  Priests and Holy now for people who don't know how the Hero
• 52:35
  talents work. Basically, as we level into the
• 52:37
  war within you hit level 71 through level 80.
• 52:41
  You'll get points that you'll get into to put into the Hero
• 52:45
  talent trees for your spec. There will be two trees
• 52:50
  available that you can choose between.
• 52:52
  You can either go and become, in the case of a Priest, an Oracle
• 52:57
  Priest if you are a Holy or Discipline right, or you can
• 53:03
  choose one of the other two that are available, but there are
• 53:06
  only two available for any Spec. So while Oracle is shared
• 53:10
  between Discipline and Shadow, sorry rather Discipline and Holy
• 53:18
  Shadow doesn't have access to Oracle, and there are two other
• 53:22
  specs that Shadow has access to, but Discipline only has access
• 53:25
  to one of them and wholly only has access to the other.
• 53:30
  Now once you hit the final level, you will get enough
• 53:34
  points to unlock all of these talents, so it won't be a choice
• 53:38
  of like, oh, I can only choose these talent choices and the
• 53:42
  rest get left on the floor outside of of course, choice
• 53:46
  nodes where it's you have to pick between the two and that's
• 53:50
  a basic rundown of Hero Hero talents.
• 53:53
  Each of these is based on sort of a theme of like the spec
• 53:59
  gaining the teachings of something else.
• 54:03
  So there's a lot of flavour sort of built into this.
• 54:09
  And so, Lex, what's your feelings of the hero talents
• 54:13
  from what you've seen so far? So when they announced it at
• 54:16
  BlizzCon, I was very excited. I thought it seemed like a
• 54:19
  really cool way. The words that they have been
• 54:20
  using a lot are class fantasy and I thought that that could be
• 54:24
  done really well and that could be really exciting.
• 54:26
  I should announce my biases, which is that as you have said,
• 54:30
  I'm a holy priest and it seems that the pretty universal
• 54:37
  opinion of Oracle is that it is not good.
• 54:42
  I I have not actually heard and this might just be the content
• 54:45
  that I engage in. I will be honest, one of the
• 54:47
  reasons that I'm not excited about Oracle is I don't really
• 54:49
  understand it. So basically the without getting
• 54:53
  too in the weeds, it replaces Power Infusion, which those of
• 54:56
  you who are not priests might know is the thing that your DPS
• 54:59
  keep begging your priests for because it makes them fast.
• 55:02
  It replaces Power Infusion with a new spell that gives it either
• 55:09
  gives a healing buff, a damage buff, or something else.
• 55:13
  And it's sorry, I should know this.
• 55:14
  I should know my own challenge. It's fine.
• 55:17
  Premonition, which like is the is a is like you said, the
• 55:23
  replacement for Pi, but it's a rotating buff.
• 55:26
  Like, and it's not. From what I understand, it's not
• 55:30
  rotating. It's supposed to be seeing the
• 55:34
  future. So people are thinking, unless
• 55:36
  more information has come out since I was talking to my priest
• 55:38
  friends about it, that it's going to be based on something.
• 55:41
  We just aren't clear on what that something is.
• 55:44
  Ah, So what they've been doing with these, with these videos
• 55:49
  that they've put out, is that there's further explanation.
• 55:51
  So if you're not entirely sure, look at look at those videos
• 55:55
  that came with each of them. So Premonition is a rotating
• 55:59
  thing, like Premonition is the umbrella, but there are like 3
• 56:05
  different buffs underneath it, like you were talking about.
• 56:07
  You can have like Solace, which is the one that increases the
• 56:12
  healing that the target receives.
• 56:15
  Great thing to put on your tank or somebody who's taking a lot
• 56:18
  of damage, right? Insight, which increases your
• 56:22
  magic damage, right? Or Glory, which increases your
• 56:27
  physical damage, right? And what happens is that when
• 56:31
  you click Premonition, it starts at a random one of these and
• 56:36
  you'll be like, oh, I've got the insight buff, OK, let me go slap
• 56:41
  that on the mage and let the mage do like the extra damage,
• 56:44
  right? Or you'd be like, I don't have a
• 56:47
  really good target for this. I'm going to wait and then the
• 56:50
  the premonition changes and you'll get the glory buff and
• 56:54
  you can be like, OK now I'm going to slap that on the the
• 56:57
  the physical damage dealer and hunter go at it right?
• 57:01
  Or right and then it'll rotate again to to solace, you'd be
• 57:06
  like OK, I got to put this on the tank.
• 57:09
  It'll flip through this rotation starting on a random one over
• 57:14
  the course of like once you hit the premonition you're like,
• 57:16
  it'll be like, OK, start, start the rotation.
• 57:18
  It's not always rotating. So you're not like waiting to be
• 57:20
  like, when does this come? You're like, OK, start the
• 57:23
  roulette now and it goes so like you will have access to all
• 57:27
  three of these. It will rotate on a like once
• 57:31
  you need say, OK, I need to get this set up and I think that is
• 57:36
  kind of complicated kind of kind of a lot of mind space to be
• 57:40
  going when you're also evading mechanics and stuff.
• 57:44
  So I'm worried about the the amount that it asks of players
• 57:49
  to, like, keep in their head at the same time because like, this
• 57:52
  isn't like Pi where you'd be like who am I Pi ING, let me go
• 57:54
  check this thing or ask my raid leader and that's who I'm going
• 57:59
  to go into Pi. It's it's also a matter of like,
• 58:06
  hey, if somebody drops, you're not just going for the next
• 58:10
  person in your order of like, OK, the DK is not here, so I'm
• 58:16
  going to go put this on on the next guy or the DK is dead or
• 58:20
  out of range, so I'm going to go put it on the next guy.
• 58:23
  You need to be like OK, who's the next guy that benefits and
• 58:26
  which buff do they benefit from, from them?
• 58:28
  And hopefully that's the buff that comes up and that's that is
• 58:31
  a lot to run in your head. That is really.
• 58:33
  Yeah. No, I I I do really agree with
• 58:35
  that. I'm also thinking like
• 58:36
  especially when when healing output is really needed, I don't
• 58:40
  have the time to be thinking deeply about like oh wait does
• 58:42
  this person do the magic damage or physical damage?
• 58:46
  Or like like the the odds that I would end up giving like a
• 58:49
  warrior the magic damage buff just because I'm overwhelmed is
• 58:53
  pretty high so I think so now. Thank you Manny.
• 58:58
  Now I actually understand it and my critique is less that it's
• 59:01
  too random and my critique is more that it's it's a lot that
• 59:04
  is a a big spell to add to to to somebody's rotation.
• 59:10
  Although again, if if your point is that you're doing the hero or
• 59:13
  the the hero fan of like, oh, this is the you.
• 59:18
  You're playing as the priest that can see the future.
• 59:23
  I guess I can imagine some people who have a little bit
• 59:25
  more of that brain space, who are excited about wanting that
• 59:30
  Oracle energy to think, to to have a lot of fun with that.
• 59:36
  There are a lot of people who like those really complex
• 59:37
  classes and who like having a lot more to do and a lot more to
• 59:40
  be thinking about. And I can imagine, especially if
• 59:43
  they make that powerful enough to make it worth people's time,
• 59:46
  that could be really exciting and really fun for some folks.
• 59:50
  So I'm very curious, I, I, I, I think I will almost certainly
• 59:55
  not be playing an Oracle Priest unless that's changed pretty
• 59:57
  heavily, because that feels really overwhelming and scary to
• 59:59
  me. So I'm curious what we would be
• 1:00:05
  getting on the Shadow Holy side. And I think that does also add
• 1:00:09
  the other complicating factor, which is that disc is also a
• 1:00:15
  healing speck. It does damage as well, but over
• 1:00:17
  like disc is a healing spec as much as holy and so I would be
• 1:00:21
  curious how you could make a keystone and a capstone talent
• 1:00:26
  that are great for both a healer and Adps and This is why I'm not
• 1:00:30
  a developer because I couldn't figure that out.
• 1:00:32
  I would just say, well this is different system.
• 1:00:35
  So I I think a lot of how successful these talents are
• 1:00:39
  going to be is going to be based on how much they make it
• 1:00:42
  possible to balance. One thing that I've said I don't
• 1:00:45
  think is on the table, but wouldn't it be nice would be.
• 1:00:48
  I also kind of wish that they added three extra hero talents
• 1:00:53
  that are just really intensely the spec you have chosen, right?
• 1:00:58
  Like, I wish I could choose whether I want my disc Holy
• 1:01:01
  Talent, my shadow Holy talent, OR just know on God I am a Holy
• 1:01:06
  Priest and there is another talent, and that is the Holy
• 1:01:09
  Priest talent tree. But unfortunately that is not a
• 1:01:13
  thing that is happening. OK what about so like your your
• 1:01:18
  use of Pi do you like Do you like the ability to like buff
• 1:01:25
  your your friends when you're not doing like healing Are you
• 1:01:31
  somebody who's like, no no all I do is heal and I really don't
• 1:01:33
  wanna worry about buffing. I don't wanna worry about doing
• 1:01:35
  that DPS in the downtime like let me just heal.
• 1:01:38
  What's What's your take on healing?
• 1:01:40
  So I have actually been shifting my take on healing pretty
• 1:01:43
  significantly over this last year because we at Timbermont
• 1:01:47
  Tavern recruited some frankly incredible healers and have also
• 1:01:51
  had some frankly and I I want to be clear to all of my healers.
• 1:01:53
  We also have some really incredible healers right now,
• 1:01:56
  even before we were recruiting our very talented healers.
• 1:01:59
  So we are heavily stacked on healers and I am a solid healer,
• 1:02:04
  but I'm not going to be competing against like the the
• 1:02:07
  extremely talented like knows how to play a video game like
• 1:02:10
  the back of their hand without even thinking sort of players.
• 1:02:14
  So I've actually been focusing in a lot more on adding DPS and
• 1:02:18
  adding utility when our heal like basically everyone is
• 1:02:21
  topped up and I'm not able to add a ton of healing.
• 1:02:25
  So I do have a lot of fun with that, and I'm getting a lot of
• 1:02:28
  fun having my kind of like two different rotations, my damage
• 1:02:32
  rotation, my healing rotation. I personally think of Power
• 1:02:36
  infusion as kind of a second hand thing.
• 1:02:39
  And so when I first started seeing Oracle, I was like, oh,
• 1:02:41
  that actually could be really cool because I'm not using Power
• 1:02:44
  Infusion anyway. And I know that's not like
• 1:02:46
  common in that's bad, right? Like everyone is going to hate.
• 1:02:50
  Me that's suboptimal. That's That's suboptimal.
• 1:02:58
  But I think that the people who aren't using power infusion
• 1:03:05
  right now are probably the people who are more like me, who
• 1:03:13
  aren't using it because they're thinking about other things and
• 1:03:15
  they don't want to have to deal with remembering to use power or
• 1:03:18
  infusion. And the people who like power
• 1:03:23
  infusion are the ones who probably would have more of the
• 1:03:25
  mind space of like, oh what am I doing?
• 1:03:29
  And I know that a a lot of folks, a lot of heal or a a lot
• 1:03:32
  of priests feel like the loss of power and fusion would be really
• 1:03:35
  big and wouldn't be willing to sacrifice power and fusion for
• 1:03:38
  this new spell. So I'm I'm not sure that
• 1:03:44
  removing Pi and trading it out with a more complicated and a
• 1:03:49
  more like I I would argue probably the most like moving
• 1:03:55
  parts that anything at least that Holy Priest does.
• 1:03:58
  I know Disc is a whole other beast, but Holy Priest is is
• 1:04:03
  relatively straightforward. Things stack a little bit, but
• 1:04:05
  not to a huge extent. I can imagine that making it a a
• 1:04:10
  a more complicated sort of thing that requires a lot more thought
• 1:04:14
  might not be a huge sell. But again, I'm not, I'm not the
• 1:04:20
  the target audience. So it's it's hard to know
• 1:04:22
  whether the target audience is like no, no, no, that sounds
• 1:04:25
  incredible. Yeah, I think it's it's very
• 1:04:29
  strange. I think that in terms of a Holy
• 1:04:32
  Priest, it's a new sort of like mindset, like the S the Pi was
• 1:04:37
  there for like, OK, cool down time.
• 1:04:39
  Slap that on the guy who's using their cooldowns.
• 1:04:43
  We both get the the haste it's going to be, it's going to be
• 1:04:46
  crazy. I think that this is the long
• 1:04:50
  lines of discipline where you're kind of like thinking ahead
• 1:04:52
  where it's like, OK, we got this like DPS window coming up.
• 1:04:57
  I'm going to like, start rotating through it.
• 1:04:59
  OK, there's my intellect, sorry, not intellect by magic damage
• 1:05:04
  buff. Let me slap that on and now the
• 1:05:07
  window starts and they're like doing like 10% more magic damage
• 1:05:11
  or whatever. I would want this to change not
• 1:05:18
  like either the buff like I think what honestly I would
• 1:05:23
  change one choice node and I think that would help a lot.
• 1:05:26
  They have a choice node that is a choice between perfect vision
• 1:05:31
  and the versatile divinations. Versatile divinations is if you
• 1:05:36
  really like this you can get. You can get more along the lines
• 1:05:41
  of this. It adds 2 buffs into the
• 1:05:43
  rotation of of of Premonition. So you can get Brilliance, which
• 1:05:51
  restores 5% of your target's mana, right?
• 1:05:56
  Or you can get Urgency, which gives increases your target's
• 1:06:00
  haste by 12% for a period of time.
• 1:06:03
  OK, I think that if you are really loving this thing and you
• 1:06:11
  have that mindspace and you love that versatile Divinations is
• 1:06:16
  right up your alley, you're like, OK, great.
• 1:06:18
  I can add in when we're like not looking really needing the
• 1:06:21
  damage or like there's not really a a good target.
• 1:06:25
  I can like, restore 5% of a healer's mana that seems really
• 1:06:29
  solid to have like a little innervate, not quite innovate,
• 1:06:32
  innovate, stops even casting mana, but a little spirit totem,
• 1:06:35
  quick little go, I think that'd be great.
• 1:06:38
  But it's now you're rotating through five buffs instead of
• 1:06:41
  three, right? I think that the other one where
• 1:06:44
  it reduces the cooldown of Premonition by 10% and should
• 1:06:49
  actually be changed to that your Premonition will like, you don't
• 1:06:56
  get the rotation, it will just select for you.
• 1:06:58
  So then that like it takes away some of that like mine thing and
• 1:07:02
  so like if you want to go deeper into selection, here's two more
• 1:07:05
  selections. If you don't like this, the
• 1:07:08
  selection OK, we're gonna have an AI bot do it for you and they
• 1:07:12
  can and they can adjust it that way.
• 1:07:14
  The versatility right is, is a power right versus the OK, I
• 1:07:23
  don't have that mindset. It's going to it's going to do
• 1:07:25
  it for me. If they really want to to like
• 1:07:30
  adjust it, it could be that it hits a random random player for
• 1:07:34
  pre selected buff right? And that would and that would be
• 1:07:38
  like OK well now I don't get to put it on the exact right person
• 1:07:40
  to min Max it but I'm choosing this option because I I don't
• 1:07:44
  have the headspace to min Max. I think that might be a one way
• 1:07:47
  to go about it. Yeah, that that makes a lot of
• 1:07:50
  sense. I think the other interesting
• 1:07:51
  thing that I'm catching in the the first one, perfect Vision,
• 1:07:58
  is that that's also the only way that I can make this buff help
• 1:08:01
  me. Like other than if I'm taking a
• 1:08:03
  ton of damage and I need some extra healing, which I already
• 1:08:05
  have like 3 different spells I can think of on the top of my
• 1:08:08
  head that I can use for myself as a Holy Priest.
• 1:08:10
  And that might be a little different for disc, But I don't
• 1:08:15
  really do a lot of damage so I can't really benefit from my own
• 1:08:18
  buff, which I think is. Another thing that frustrates
• 1:08:20
  priests about losing power infusion is the power infusion,
• 1:08:23
  Especially if your disc is great, because haste is really
• 1:08:26
  powerful for a disc priest. And so I think having a couple
• 1:08:30
  options added in, especially for the more advanced players that
• 1:08:34
  do benefit yourself, and that do mean that I could also make it
• 1:08:37
  so that I'm doing more healing and I'm helping more.
• 1:08:40
  That could be really cool. I do think that I, I, I agree
• 1:08:44
  with you that having an option that removes some of the
• 1:08:47
  complication and lets it be sort of back to just casting a spell
• 1:08:52
  and moving on because it's just a buff and it's not the end of
• 1:08:55
  the world. That could be very helpful as
• 1:08:59
  well and make it a lot easier to sell, especially to you know,
• 1:09:04
  especially because as as much as I'm a a Holy Priest man, I think
• 1:09:07
  Holy Priest is often sold as one of the easier of the healing
• 1:09:10
  specs, right? It's very straightforward,
• 1:09:12
  damage go down, healing go up like great, perfect.
• 1:09:15
  We got it. We figured it out.
• 1:09:19
  So I I think you're right that having an option that lets it
• 1:09:21
  simplify a little bit and takes it a little bit out of that more
• 1:09:26
  complicated zone could be really, really helpful.
• 1:09:29
  I think the the cap zone is incredible, depending on how
• 1:09:35
  they tune it. Like if it has a relative, like
• 1:09:39
  it says it's a low chance to give you clairvoyance.
• 1:09:43
  And Clairvoyance is that when you throw out your Premonition
• 1:09:48
  buff, it has a chance to hit not just the target with the
• 1:09:51
  Premonition the buff, but two nearby allies with the
• 1:09:56
  Premonition buff. And not just the one that you
• 1:09:59
  selected, but all of the possible buffs.
• 1:10:03
  So you're like, OK, I'm going to give you the the 5% mana, right?
• 1:10:10
  Well, on top of that, now they get 12% haze, they get 10% magic
• 1:10:13
  damage, they get 10% physical damage, they've received
• 1:10:16
  additional healing and two nearby allies also get all of
• 1:10:20
  that. So they stay alive and healthy.
• 1:10:22
  They do more damage, they get their mana back and like it.
• 1:10:24
  It could be really powerful if they do that.
• 1:10:28
  But again, this is a mind space thing, 'cause I could see like
• 1:10:34
  the like, min Max teams, where they're like, OK, we're going to
• 1:10:38
  have the tank there and we're going to put two of our best DPS
• 1:10:44
  that sit like right near the tank so that when this buff goes
• 1:10:47
  off, if it goes off, these guys get the bonus and they can just
• 1:10:51
  start slamming. And so it's like, OK, off tank
• 1:10:54
  whenever you're whenever you're not actively tanking or right,
• 1:11:01
  that's when I'm going to slap you with the Premonition buff
• 1:11:04
  and hopefully get that high roll.
• 1:11:06
  And I I dislike the fact that it is such a powerful potential
• 1:11:13
  buff. Again, any of these numbers guys
• 1:11:15
  that we're talking about, this is early development.
• 1:11:17
  The numbers are nowhere near dialled in.
• 1:11:20
  They're just trying to throw out numbers.
• 1:11:21
  So they have like a rough ballpark to go with, right?
• 1:11:24
  But like if this proves to be very influential like Pi has
• 1:11:29
  been in the past, you know, everybody fighting over it.
• 1:11:34
  If this becomes like the next buff plus plus Pi right to to
• 1:11:38
  fight over like this could be very swingy where suddenly you
• 1:11:44
  high rolled and three people got all the buffs and were doing all
• 1:11:48
  the things where you wouldn't have succeeded.
• 1:11:50
  There could be races won or lost based on this.
• 1:11:54
  And I think that's like, yeah, and I mean like it's great to
• 1:11:57
  have a difference maker. I just don't like that it's on
• 1:11:59
  RNGI would rather difference makers be like because I planned
• 1:12:03
  on it and did and did it accordingly.
• 1:12:08
  No, I agree. I think, I think that in
• 1:12:11
  addition to the complication of the spell, I I like, I I I would
• 1:12:19
  prefer to be able to trigger something, right.
• 1:12:21
  I I would rather that it is chosen by me.
• 1:12:24
  What's going to happen versus yeah random and and waiting on
• 1:12:29
  things and waiting for things to happen at the perfect time.
• 1:12:33
  I think A that can be frustrating, like you were
• 1:12:37
  saying. It means that, for example, a
• 1:12:38
  race to world first might be one on oh, like luck.
• 1:12:42
  But B it also I think makes it easier to forget, right?
• 1:12:46
  Like if I hit the the button of like OK, start going through all
• 1:12:51
  of the the three different things and it doesn't go on what
• 1:12:54
  I want to do and then I get distracted, it's easier to not
• 1:12:57
  use the spell and it it becomes a little bit less useful then
• 1:13:02
  like OK, I want this now so I'm hitting it now and again though
• 1:13:05
  that you know that might just mean it's not my play style.
• 1:13:09
  It might be that other people like no this sounds great
• 1:13:11
  because I want to always like I enjoy having the challenge of
• 1:13:14
  having something else in the back of my mind which is also
• 1:13:17
  great and then hopefully, hopefully the shadow tree is
• 1:13:20
  going to be perfect. But I think I think you're
• 1:13:24
  right. I think that the randomness
• 1:13:25
  would not be my preference as well.
• 1:13:28
  Yeah, but they did say that they have two other ideas or like a
• 1:13:32
  completely different way of doing the Oracle that they're
• 1:13:36
  thinking about. So like if you have that kind of
• 1:13:38
  feedback, get it to them. Like this is the time when if
• 1:13:42
  people are critical I'm like more power to you just get those
• 1:13:45
  ideas out. I I will say that I'd like some
• 1:13:49
  of the non keystone capstone abilities where it's like oh so
• 1:13:55
  you're looking at more preventative damage.
• 1:13:57
  So the stuff that is like oh your guardian spirit lasts 2
• 1:14:01
  seconds longer so you can get that healing, healing
• 1:14:04
  afterwards. That's cool right?
• 1:14:07
  You could have like paint suppression, which is like a
• 1:14:10
  huge preventative thing being like more effective doing like
• 1:14:14
  10% X percent more preventative thing.
• 1:14:19
  The prayer of mending a a buffs and that where it's like, OK, if
• 1:14:22
  you can like think a little bit of head that works.
• 1:14:24
  And if like you think about premonition as like I don't want
• 1:14:27
  to do this when stuff is happening.
• 1:14:29
  I want to do this before stuff is happening to like augment
• 1:14:32
  them ahead of time. I think that's cool, I think.
• 1:14:35
  And so, like, when I'm thinking about this, I want to play,
• 1:14:39
  like, if I were playing a priest, I would play Premonition
• 1:14:42
  in the like, OK, everybody's healed every everybody's stable.
• 1:14:45
  Rather than me like, throwing out damage, I'm going to start
• 1:14:48
  rolling Premonition buffs to like make people powerful.
• 1:14:50
  And that's when I kind of want, that's where I would do it.
• 1:14:54
  In terms of the I don't want to be thinking of this when all the
• 1:14:58
  crap is hitting the fan. No, I totally agree.
• 1:15:01
  I will say the more we talk about this, the more I'm kind of
• 1:15:03
  solidifying in my opinion. So this is a much more discy
• 1:15:08
  tree. I think that this is how like
• 1:15:10
  everything that we're saying of like, Oh yeah, like I'd want to
• 1:15:12
  be prepping here and I want to be doing that.
• 1:15:13
  That's how a disc priest thinks anyway.
• 1:15:18
  But no, I, I, I do agree and I, I can see it.
• 1:15:22
  And I mean, and also obviously World of Warcraft is pushing a
• 1:15:24
  lot for like things like the augment Evoker right there there
• 1:15:29
  are they're looking for ways that healers can be more than
• 1:15:32
  just bringing up the health. And I think that there's a lot
• 1:15:36
  of cool stuff here. Like I think that the the idea
• 1:15:38
  of increasing the class fantasy makes a lot of sense.
• 1:15:43
  And I I I do also like the fact that it's a whole tree, right?
• 1:15:46
  Like I think I had a fear that this is basically going to
• 1:15:48
  become like like tier Part 2 where it's just like OK, you're
• 1:15:52
  doing the thing. But there is a lot of options, I
• 1:15:56
  think, to to make it more interesting and to actually
• 1:15:59
  change the way that you're playing.
• 1:16:01
  Yeah. Now, there's a lot more to talk
• 1:16:04
  about with these trees, but we have been going on for a bit.
• 1:16:07
  I do want to let you have the rest of your evening, guys.
• 1:16:11
  It has been amazing to be back. Lex, thank you so much for
• 1:16:16
  joining me tonight. When people want to find you,
• 1:16:20
  where can they find you when you're not talking on for
• 1:16:23
  Azeroth? They can find me on Twitter,
• 1:16:26
  Blue Sky and thread all as Lex under score rants except for
• 1:16:30
  blue sky I think, which does not let you do under score.
• 1:16:32
  And then it's just Lex rants and you can technically find me on
• 1:16:35
  TikTok also Lex under score rants and I will post
• 1:16:38
  eventually, I swear. Where can people thank you Mami?
• 1:16:41
  Can I just say thank you for joining me today on my podcast?
• 1:16:44
  Where can people find you when you're not on for Azra?
• 1:16:48
  Well, everywhere I am true villain man.
• 1:16:51
  That's true without the E and of course that is Blue Sky Twitter,
• 1:16:56
  TikTok, all the social media you can find me.
• 1:16:59
  And when you want to join the conversation again, feel free to
• 1:17:03
  join the discord that is bit dot LY slash fast discord and until
• 1:17:07
  next time guys. May all your hits V crits.