Latest / For Azeroth!: A World of Warcraft Podcast / #303 - For Azeroth!: “Lex was Right”

Transcript

#303 - For Azeroth!: “Lex was Right” · For Azeroth!: A World of Warcraft Podcast

• 0:01
  In today's episode, we recap a number of interviews that the
• 0:04
  developers have been doing post the 30th anniversary Warcraft
• 0:09
  Direct. There's a lot of implications on
• 0:11
  what this means for the future of both the War Within and the
• 0:16
  future of Warcraft as a whole. For the Forsaken.
• 0:19
  For Lord Iran. For the Karen tour for.
• 0:24
  Pandaria. For calendar.
• 0:29
  To the burning region for Gilnaeus, but has.
• 0:34
  Not died for the Lich King for the.
• 0:38
  Sindora for the Alliance for the.
• 0:42
  Horde for Azeroth. Hello and welcome back to For
• 0:49
  Azeroth. This is episode 3 O3.
• 0:51
  I am Manny, AKA the true villain Manny, and I am joined by the
• 0:55
  other two parts of the Triumphant.
• 0:57
  Introducing first Lex. Lex, how are you doing?
• 1:01
  I'm doing good. I do have Don't Trust me stuck
• 1:03
  in my head now. So if I mute myself throughout
• 1:06
  this episode, it's because I'm humming to myself.
• 1:09
  I have. That song stuck in my head now.
• 1:11
  You said that I've got like, don't trust a hoe.
• 1:13
  Yeah, that's the one. OK, cool.
• 1:15
  Alright, now for Golden. Yeah, alright, you fast intro
• 1:21
  song. Just for this one, we'll just
• 1:24
  commit a minor crime, get mildly shut.
• 1:27
  It's fair use. As long as we keep it under 15
• 1:30
  seconds, right? We really There we go.
• 1:32
  I don't know how copyright law works, but apart from the fact
• 1:37
  that I'm apparently going back to my middle school days, I'm,
• 1:40
  I'm doing great. I'm bopping right along.
• 1:42
  We are finally on Queen Ansarak in my rating team and we're also
• 1:47
  kind of trying to do Black Rock depths.
• 1:49
  It is rough. We are having, we are not
• 1:52
  remote. We we were not classic Raiders.
• 1:54
  And so we are learning what classic rating felt like, but
• 1:58
  we're bopping right along and I get to tank a little bit, which
• 2:00
  means that I don't do anything. And my other tank says, oh, oh
• 2:03
  God, you got to take this. And then I take it.
• 2:05
  And then he dies. Anyway, love you Kirk.
• 2:11
  OK, all right. I'm glad you're enjoying that
• 2:13
  and going to the other part of the Triumphant.
• 2:16
  Sean. Hello.
• 2:17
  How is the World of Warcraft been treating you?
• 2:20
  Quite good, Manny, quite good. I am loving it.
• 2:26
  That's the song that's in my head.
• 2:29
  You know, maybe after this episode I'll go go fulfill my
• 2:34
  wish to go to the Golden Arches. But are you, are you rating?
• 2:38
  What? What's the situation with you?
• 2:42
  Yep. So rating, we are now actually
• 2:44
  officially extending on silken court.
• 2:46
  We had a third sent wipe, a low wipe.
• 2:53
  We had a low wipe P3 last week on Sunday and this week starting
• 2:59
  tomorrow we are extendo so we'll be extending till we get CE,
• 3:03
  hopefully before Christmas. Knock on wood, I can't imagine a
• 3:07
  world where we don't have it before Christmas, but we'll see.
• 3:10
  And Hall of Fame is officially closed.
• 3:13
  That's cool, I might have just broke news.
• 3:16
  I didn't. Like it wasn't in the notes, but
• 3:18
  I believe actually even though they did fill it up.
• 3:25
  Last. Week, people were still getting.
• 3:27
  Yeah, Blizzard didn't officially say so.
• 3:29
  It didn't fill until late on Monday.
• 3:32
  Yeah, and Blizzard. Good guy.
• 3:33
  Blizz didn't get the official stats until after Tuesday, which
• 3:39
  means everybody has this whole week, which is nice.
• 3:42
  There you go. So good guy Blizz, give us an
• 3:44
  extra time. Good guy Blizz.
• 3:46
  Good guy Blizz. Yeah.
• 3:47
  Can I also? I just want to touch.
• 3:48
  I know we got news with all kinds of stuff to talk about.
• 3:51
  When the anniversary event was coming up, one of the concerns
• 3:54
  that I had was whether or not we would be able to obtain enough
• 3:57
  coins to buy all of the things and how stressful that would be.
• 4:02
  This event couldn't possibly be more chill.
• 4:07
  You get coins for literally I logged in today and they just,
• 4:11
  some guy just ran after me and gave me two coins.
• 4:13
  I got no one just came up and it was like congratulations for
• 4:15
  letting me in here. Oh, here's 2 coins.
• 4:17
  It is crazy. Thank you Blizzard, thank you.
• 4:20
  And I know there are some people who are like I was done on the
• 4:22
  4th day now I have nothing to do.
• 4:24
  That sucks for you man. I guess find other things to do
• 4:29
  but I this is great. This is the absolute best way.
• 4:33
  I hope all events are this way. I don't want to have to think
• 4:36
  about it, I don't want to have to sweat about it.
• 4:38
  I like that they made it accessible for people who aren't
• 4:42
  hardcore farming the event. Well, they did actually address
• 4:46
  this. This is another part that's not
• 4:48
  in the notes, but we'll talk about it because you've you've
• 4:50
  brought it up and I guess it is news.
• 4:53
  They obviously went through the same thing where at the
• 4:56
  beginning people were worried about how much coins they would
• 5:00
  get, whether they'd be able to do it without the, as you say,
• 5:02
  the hardcore farming. And they adjusted things.
• 5:06
  So we're getting more than we initially going through and that
• 5:10
  was brought up again. And so they, they respond and
• 5:14
  said, you know what, typically we err towards being
• 5:17
  conservative and then we are willing to adjust it.
• 5:21
  And that's happened with this, it's happened with our time
• 5:25
  running. It's happened with a number of
• 5:27
  events too much to the point where it feels like a pattern.
• 5:30
  And to that point when we were talking about it, I'm like,
• 5:33
  yeah, don't worry, wait, wait two weeks in and they'll add in
• 5:37
  an extra thing. We're not even done adjusting it
• 5:40
  yet. Because come 11 point 0.7, as
• 5:44
  you're running around the island or ignoring the island as you
• 5:47
  see fit, you're going to be getting a new sources of coin as
• 5:50
  well. All of those dailies are going
• 5:52
  to throw more coins at you. It is to the point where the
• 5:56
  people who even if they weren't rushing, are now saying like,
• 6:00
  oh, geez, I need a coin outlet. OK, This is the many version of
• 6:07
  Sean's. Just the tip, you can hand in
• 6:12
  all of the celebration coins and turn that into time walking.
• 6:18
  But the problem right now, which is a minor sticking point, is
• 6:22
  that you have to do these transactions one at a time
• 6:24
  instead of being able to bulk convert them.
• 6:28
  Maybe Blizzard add that in that bulk conversion somewhere there,
• 6:32
  but it is available for for you. Time walking is going to be
• 6:36
  something that last long after this event.
• 6:39
  Editing Manny here. Blizzard has added in the
• 6:42
  ability to buy a box for 25 coins.
• 6:46
  So it's no longer one at a time. We've got, of course, the time
• 6:50
  walking refresh that's going on right now.
• 6:52
  So hey, if you like this event, which I'd be loving, make sure
• 6:56
  you do take it full advantage of that.
• 6:59
  I'm sure you can write a macro for those turn insurance.
• 7:01
  We did it for many other things from vendors before where you
• 7:04
  could only do them in in one transaction at a time.
• 7:06
  You can just macro it to 1 button and just click, click
• 7:09
  click click click click click click.
• 7:10
  OK, well, you know what Sean, can I, can I get you to do
• 7:15
  something? I'm not going to write that
• 7:17
  macro for you man. You're not going to write that
• 7:19
  Mac, but you're so good at this. You do these things.
• 7:21
  Yeah, you've done this so many times, Sean.
• 7:23
  I bet I could Google it right now and I would have an answer
• 7:26
  before we get to the next topic. And we'll throw it in the
• 7:29
  resources in the fast Discord as well so that that'll be
• 7:32
  available. That said, your time has run out
• 7:35
  because we are going into the news here.
• 7:38
  We have had a series of interviews following the
• 7:41
  Warcraft Direct, which we gave our first impressions of.
• 7:45
  We have had Taliesin from Taliesin and Evitel and the
• 7:48
  Comeback Kids and the Daily Star release developer interviews.
• 7:54
  We've done a roundup. I've broken it down into the
• 7:57
  different categories of what was spoken about because obviously
• 8:01
  with these different views, some of the questions overlapped.
• 8:03
  Therefore some of the answers overlapped.
• 8:05
  And in some cases it's just, you know, stuff that we didn't find
• 8:09
  that interested. So as we dive into it, I want to
• 8:13
  give you guys the time stamp. Sean has now put the macro into
• 8:17
  the discord. Make sure you go over to bit dot
• 8:20
  LY slash fast discord so you can get that macro and get rid of
• 8:24
  that pain point. But first thing we're going to
• 8:27
  talk about is player housing. Now none of us were super
• 8:31
  interested about this, so I'll just go through this relatively
• 8:34
  quickly between the interviews. We know that they've been
• 8:38
  working on this for a long time, but the answer that was given is
• 8:43
  that working on it is a nebulous phrase.
• 8:46
  This was something that they said they couldn't fit it into
• 8:48
  one expansion. We talked about it earlier being
• 8:50
  something that might have devoured the resources that
• 8:54
  would have given us an entire tier.
• 8:57
  By having it built out over multiple expansions to get to
• 9:00
  get it through, apparently we're not losing it a tier, which is
• 9:03
  great, but also. Shout out to.
• 9:05
  We lost, we lost a tier, we lost two tiers.
• 9:08
  They they've been working on this.
• 9:11
  They've been working on this. We had two season fours.
• 9:14
  You're. So right, Sean?
• 9:18
  Season 4, Season 4 is obviously a a not a tear.
• 9:21
  It's not a real tear. It's a throw away.
• 9:22
  It's a replacement. They've given us two of those
• 9:25
  while they've been working on player.
• 9:27
  We've already lost tears to player housing.
• 9:30
  It's. You pay for the gas before you
• 9:32
  can use the gas. I would just like to say I want
• 9:36
  to give a major shout out to Blizzard for gaslighting us so
• 9:39
  hard about player housing. Like they had me in
• 9:42
  conversations with people being like you guys, They said it's
• 9:46
  too hard. They said it doesn't make sense.
• 9:49
  They're not going to do it. Like I don't.
• 9:50
  Blizzard is telling us to our faces that we're not going to
• 9:54
  get this thing. I don't understand why you all
• 9:56
  insist on still like every time they talk being like player
• 9:58
  housing when player housing never.
• 10:00
  Like how many times have they said that?
• 10:02
  So that's a that's a big W. We love a good gas light.
• 10:06
  There we go, there we go. That's why we're friends, Lex.
• 10:11
  There will be multiple starting places, so if you don't want to
• 10:17
  be in something ugly like Stormwind or visit all of the
• 10:21
  wonderful vistas of Orgermar, you can probably do other things
• 10:26
  as well. They then go on to say that the
• 10:30
  team has announced this so early because they are looking for
• 10:34
  suggestions for feedback, for conversations about this, which
• 10:40
  is going to inform how they developed this.
• 10:42
  Again, midnight isn't on the timeline and I don't believe is
• 10:47
  actually going to come out until at the very earliest the end of
• 10:51
  next year, maybe next year this time roundabout.
• 10:55
  So that's a long time for them to build out.
• 10:58
  Get your conversations going now.
• 11:01
  Get on those Reddit posts, get it, get into the forum here at
• 11:06
  Forrester Off. I'm going to be talking to some
• 11:07
  people who play a different Mmos and we're going to be putting
• 11:11
  out episodes that talk about what they do with player housing
• 11:15
  and how that can apply to Wow. So look forward to seeing those
• 11:18
  coming out in the next couple of weeks and months.
• 11:23
  Beyond that, of course, the team is very conscious, very aware of
• 11:28
  the issues that Garrison's had. And so they're trying to make
• 11:32
  sure that these player housings are not Garrison's two point O
• 11:36
  that they are social, that they don't have power in them and
• 11:39
  learning from those mistakes. So that's that's great.
• 11:43
  I think that for my part, I'm mostly going to be looking for
• 11:47
  profession hooks and like how this might stimulate the
• 11:49
  economy. And then, you know, I might
• 11:53
  emulate you there, Sean. And there might be a day where
• 11:57
  I'm like, you know, I'm going to I'm going to spend a little bit
• 11:59
  of time on it and see how far in the weeds I go.
• 12:02
  But this is not something that I'm going losing my mind over
• 12:06
  what I think we had said that last week as well.
• 12:09
  Neither. None of us are really going
• 12:11
  crazy over. This Yeah, I think
• 12:12
  hypothetically I think player housing would be fun and I do
• 12:14
  actually have opinions about player housing.
• 12:16
  That said, I am a broke girly, so I will not be affording
• 12:20
  anything in my player housing. I I will look at things and I'll
• 12:24
  be like, oh, wouldn't it be so fun if I ground the money out
• 12:26
  for that? And then I will never do that
• 12:29
  and I will think that for the rest of my life.
• 12:31
  Thank you very much. There you.
• 12:33
  Go well, the other part to this, of course, is the the undermine
• 12:39
  that is the 11.1 patch that will be coming after 11 point O .7
• 12:49
  and that is US going of course to the undermine where the
• 12:53
  cartels run the run the streets. And they had first said that the
• 13:00
  cartels are not going to be like covenants.
• 13:03
  They specifically said that, hey, we understand that players
• 13:06
  have PTSD from covenants. This is going to be cosmetic.
• 13:11
  It's going to be something that you opt in each week.
• 13:14
  They made the analogy of the severed threads where you make a
• 13:20
  pact with like the general and that, and I think that is
• 13:23
  pretty, pretty wonderful if you like have that like overall
• 13:28
  reputation that you're building towards, but just be like, OK,
• 13:31
  I'll work with Bilgewater or I'll work with the the
• 13:34
  Blackwater this week or whatever you happen to be working on.
• 13:37
  And if you're completionist, you go through them all and Max them
• 13:40
  all out. So I I'm going to probably make
• 13:43
  a very unpopular argument here. Isn't the point of these cartels
• 13:47
  that they don't like each other and they're all like directly at
• 13:50
  odds with each other? I.
• 13:54
  You think so? Yeah, I, that's my understanding
• 13:56
  too. I understand why this wouldn't
• 14:00
  work. Like, I understand why this is
• 14:02
  the decision that Blizzard is making that sad.
• 14:05
  I think that they should like, if they're going to have 4
• 14:07
  cartels that are fighting each other, making decisions on which
• 14:11
  cartel you're fighting with should have consequences.
• 14:13
  And it should mean like, you know it.
• 14:15
  It should be a meaningful choice.
• 14:17
  Like if if I am part of a cartel that another like they're
• 14:20
  cartels, right? They're not like little buddy
• 14:23
  clubs, right? That that's my argument.
• 14:25
  I think that if this is the choice that they made, again, I
• 14:28
  understand why gameplay wise it would be a mistake, but I think
• 14:32
  consistency wise there should be this should I?
• 14:35
  I'm thinking more like Booty Bay where you could like switch over
• 14:39
  to being a pirate and then all of a sudden the people are
• 14:43
  trying to kill you, but you get a fun little, you get a fun
• 14:45
  little pet. I think it's been going like
• 14:47
  that. People should try to if, if you
• 14:48
  are, if you are aligned with a cartel, people should be trying
• 14:51
  to kill you. That's all I'm going to say.
• 14:54
  OK, Sean, you made some eyes, your eyebrows made some
• 14:59
  movements. Let's hear it.
• 15:01
  I I disagree with my whole chest.
• 15:06
  But like mechanically you disagree, Thematically do you
• 15:09
  disagree? Yeah.
• 15:11
  Oh yeah. Because I, I, you just like,
• 15:14
  think that dramatically. Yeah, no, I disagree with both,
• 15:17
  Yeah. Argue me with me.
• 15:19
  I'm so excited. I could probably come up with a
• 15:22
  dozen examples where people who were at odds with each other
• 15:29
  allied themselves with somebody who worked for both sides.
• 15:33
  Anybody who sold weapons during any World War, for example.
• 15:36
  I I could immediately consider you a mercenary, right?
• 15:39
  Where it's like, yeah, who's getting your loyalty this time?
• 15:43
  You're the, the free agent. It's like, oh.
• 15:44
  Crap. They're cartels.
• 15:46
  Yeah, they're paying you. It's like there's a there's an
• 15:48
  old movie called Piss Full of Dollars with Clint Eastwood, and
• 15:53
  it was remade with Bruce Willis called, oh, what was it called?
• 15:58
  Bruce Willis, I can't remember. He's anyway, he does one that's
• 16:02
  it's a remake really good. But in this movie in Eastwood,
• 16:05
  he's a gunslinger that comes into an Old Town in the West.
• 16:09
  There's two warring gangs in the town.
• 16:12
  The first one hires them to help take out the other one.
• 16:14
  The other one realizes how good he is at taking people out, but
• 16:17
  they hire him to take out the other team and he goes back and
• 16:20
  forth. He plays them off for each
• 16:21
  other. There's a woman involved and
• 16:22
  he's trying to help her, but it's, he plays them off with
• 16:25
  each other. But yeah, it's they recognize
• 16:28
  that you are the most dangerous person and they try to try to
• 16:31
  pay him off to, to help them out.
• 16:32
  What is the Bruce Willis one called Last Stand, Baby?
• 16:36
  No. Well.
• 16:38
  OK, that's actually a fairpoint. I feel now that I have been.
• 16:43
  Yeah, so that's why I say no to both.
• 16:46
  That's why I said that. And you're like, you're
• 16:48
  literally the champion of Azeroth, right?
• 16:50
  So they're not going to kill you.
• 16:52
  They're not going to. They can't kill you.
• 16:54
  They know that you've beaten gods, right?
• 16:56
  So that is an argument I've even made on this show.
• 16:58
  OK, that's. Fair at at this point there are
• 17:03
  like 20I I forget how many people in my raid, probably 30
• 17:08
  odd other champions of Azeroth. Just hire two of them to Take Me
• 17:12
  Out. Like if you got the money you've
• 17:13
  got the money, you can hire a champion of Azeroth.
• 17:16
  Honestly half the time they go around and murder people for
• 17:19
  free so paying them sure OK. They should have a Kini P way
• 17:24
  that you can kill each other. That's what I'll that's the
• 17:26
  argument I'll make. They won't do it.
• 17:28
  I understand why they won't do it, but wouldn't it be cute?
• 17:30
  Wouldn't it be cute and fun if you got to like PvP because then
• 17:33
  it's like the faction war against then they've pretty much
• 17:34
  gotten into the faction war. You get to instead be like, oh,
• 17:37
  I'm fighting for the black water today.
• 17:39
  Like that would be cute. That would be fun.
• 17:41
  If they did that and like you know, like for people who want
• 17:45
  to do PvP, if they had world PvP quest that actually respected
• 17:50
  which cartel you're aligned with, that would be quite fun.
• 17:54
  I think that would be pretty good, but we haven't heard
• 17:58
  anything about the PvP side. Sorry.
• 18:01
  If you guys want to hear more about that, go over to tech PvP.
• 18:04
  Maybe they've got the inside track on that, but.
• 18:08
  Sorry, it's called Last Man Standing, that Bruce Willis
• 18:10
  movie. I had to get it out.
• 18:11
  It's a fantastic movie. If you've seen it and you love
• 18:14
  it, go watch Fistful of Dollars because that's what it's based
• 18:16
  on. It's really good and fish full
• 18:19
  of dollars Is is all honesty probably based on a samurai
• 18:21
  movie because all of the westerns were based on samurai
• 18:24
  movies anyway. Sorry.
• 18:27
  What we need a movie where it's samurai versus Cowboys.
• 18:33
  No, man, automatically that doesn't work.
• 18:35
  I'd rather have it would it'd rather be.
• 18:37
  It's like Cowboys versus aliens. It's just, it's nonsensical, but
• 18:40
  you're like, oh, that's such a cool scene.
• 18:42
  OK, maybe. All right.
• 18:43
  You sold me. Pirates versus ninjas.
• 18:48
  It's like what? Who cares?
• 18:50
  Yeah. Right.
• 18:53
  Everybody's wondering if Plunderstorm is going to get
• 18:55
  like a revamp and become like a ninja storm or something other
• 19:00
  themed, right? But yeah, they can do anything.
• 19:03
  Anyways, that is not the topic of today's show.
• 19:07
  So the cartels aren't going to carry in any kind of reputation.
• 19:11
  So even though we fought the Venture Co, how many different
• 19:14
  places, how many different times, they're not going to come
• 19:16
  in and be like, yeah, we're going to kill you anyways.
• 19:19
  It's going to be a pretty much a fresh start.
• 19:22
  They say that it works differently, but again,
• 19:26
  Mcguffins can work. Any way to explain anything?
• 19:28
  This is yet another one of those.
• 19:31
  A big part that I like about the story is that the story is said
• 19:38
  to make to focus on the goblins being relatable and getting that
• 19:44
  kind of empathy in for the the goblins and how they work.
• 19:48
  Because we're now going to basically the heart of goblin
• 19:51
  culture, their Mecca of all of the cartels and all of that.
• 19:56
  And so I'm really glad for this. They sort of been laying the
• 20:00
  groundwork. Would you call it their Mecca
• 20:03
  Gob? No, no, in fact I might bleep
• 20:08
  that when I go to edit because that's horrible.
• 20:12
  Like it was gone. It's like.
• 20:14
  I'm not sure if you listened to the last episode, Sean.
• 20:16
  I know you like typically listen to episodes, but I know you've
• 20:19
  been really busy. Oh, I listened.
• 20:21
  Oh, OK. Every time Sean was bleep.
• 20:24
  I listened. I went back and bleeped all of
• 20:29
  them, yeah. I do feel like if we're
• 20:31
  interjecting about things that were already talked about, but
• 20:33
  we're now mentioning now, I feel the need to take an owl and
• 20:37
  acknowledge that I've only ever heard the word cartel in terms
• 20:41
  of like drug cartels. I just googled cartel and it is
• 20:44
  not inherently violent. And so I'd like to formally
• 20:48
  apologize for saying if you're in a cartel, how you should be
• 20:51
  killing each other. That's not correct.
• 20:54
  That's my bad. That's my misunderstanding.
• 20:57
  And I, I I deeply apologize for that one.
• 21:00
  Yeah. Cartels are mercantile and then
• 21:03
  the particular drug cartels are violent because they're in
• 21:08
  illicit activities. Yeah, OK, there you go.
• 21:11
  There's there's Lex version of just a tip now moving forward,
• 21:18
  we have the drive system. This is gonna be how you get
• 21:23
  around Mechagon, because Mechagon it.
• 21:26
  Why am I saying Mechagon? You got me started on it now.
• 21:28
  Mechagob, man mechagob. Bob, how you're getting around
• 21:33
  Mecca. Gob, how are how your I've said
• 21:36
  it now too much. It's going to have to stay in
• 21:37
  the episode. OK, anyway, how you get around
• 21:41
  the underment? Goes in and like bleeps out
• 21:42
  words like whoever that is in the show, you can just have them
• 21:44
  go in and bleep out. Yeah, it just happens, right?
• 21:47
  Like you just swear on the episodes and then it just it
• 21:49
  just gets bleeped. Don't, don't don't make me work.
• 21:51
  For this, the Bleep Fairy doesn't do it.
• 21:54
  But the bleep fairy just I'm while I get to sleep at a
• 21:58
  reasonable time, the bleep fairy just drops a edit a recording
• 22:01
  underneath 5 pillow and I'm like great, I can put this out in the
• 22:04
  morning. You guys are getting a real peek
• 22:06
  behind the curtain in this one, like we're really telling you
• 22:09
  about the inner workings of how for Aseroth gets edited and
• 22:12
  managed. Yeah, I cannot wait to call this
• 22:14
  zone Mecca Gob bro. So the Undermine, you don't fly
• 22:20
  in the Undermine. Instead you get around with the
• 22:23
  drive system. And this is what you were
• 22:26
  talking about Lex. This is the going around on
• 22:29
  those hot rods. This is what you were asking
• 22:31
  for. This is why Lex was right all
• 22:33
  along. You get these vehicles and you
• 22:36
  get to do kind of dynamic ground mounts.
• 22:43
  They are customizable, not just cosmetically in terms of color
• 22:47
  and perhaps a character that will be your, your, I don't know
• 22:52
  what is that wing man? I don't.
• 22:54
  I don't know the scrub hanging outside of your passenger side
• 22:56
  anyways. We don't want no scrubs.
• 22:59
  Oh OK, well maybe they'll give you an option to to not.
• 23:01
  Have from your perspective, they're your best friend.
• 23:04
  Oh, we do. That's.
• 23:05
  True. If you're when you drive up to
• 23:07
  me, I consider them the scrub. Yeah.
• 23:09
  Right. If you want to be my goblin, you
• 23:11
  got to get with my gobs. I got it.
• 23:16
  Yeah, exactly. You got it.
• 23:17
  So you can modify the grip versus the drift, so we can have
• 23:21
  an undermined drift. You can go with the acceleration
• 23:26
  versus top speed. So you can adjust those.
• 23:30
  There's a boost much like that sort of search for it that you
• 23:33
  have with the sky writing and you can adjust like if it is a
• 23:39
  chaotic boost or if it is an efficient boost.
• 23:42
  How that works is probably some sort of meter thing and there is
• 23:48
  going to be much like skywriting.
• 23:50
  There are going to be race courses throughout the undermine
• 23:53
  that you can that you can do. So this seems pretty cool.
• 23:58
  I think I would enjoy this. Hopefully they don't make the
• 24:02
  gold prizes so pitiful like they did for skywriting after
• 24:08
  Dragonflight cuz that that hurt. Are you guys, I'm going to put
• 24:14
  this to you first, Sean, because you are the guy who bounced off
• 24:18
  a sky riding. You are the one who's like, Nah,
• 24:21
  slow riding. I forget what you called it,
• 24:25
  snail riding. Or whatever boomer flight.
• 24:28
  Boomer flight. There we go, Boomer flight.
• 24:30
  So does boomer flight or regular ground mounts still seem the way
• 24:38
  to go, or do you think you're going to give this a try?
• 24:44
  I will do as much driving as required by the game as I have
• 24:51
  to, but like, I'm not. I am not like I can't.
• 24:58
  This doesn't excite me. This doesn't spark joy for me.
• 25:03
  If it's easy to traverse, I'll use it.
• 25:06
  If I find it to be sort of a hassle I'll just ride my ground
• 25:09
  mounts. I'm not in a rush to get
• 25:13
  anywhere in the open world. I don't speed run leveling.
• 25:16
  I can teleport to all the dungeons so.
• 25:19
  And if I can't, you'll summon me.
• 25:23
  Understood. Understood.
• 25:24
  I mean, there are people who I know are like really hyped to
• 25:27
  like do this. There are people probably who
• 25:29
  love like our racing games, but I haven't played a Gran Turismo
• 25:33
  since the first one on my PlayStation two decades ago, so.
• 25:39
  What about like the more arcady ones?
• 25:41
  Did you play any of those? Need for speed or whatever.
• 25:45
  OK, I played Mario Kart. I guess this is probably gonna
• 25:47
  be closer to Mario Kart than those ones.
• 25:52
  Yeah, I don't. Lex, are you you you be excited
• 25:56
  for? It Oh, I'm happy as hell.
• 25:57
  I'm over the moon. I think it's been so fun.
• 25:59
  You know how I feel about a good little new.
• 26:01
  I have played when I was in college, my friends and I would
• 26:04
  play Mario Kart all the time. And I'm literally so bad.
• 26:06
  Like we'd be playing against the computer with the computer set
• 26:08
  to idiot and I would still come in like 12 feet.
• 26:10
  I fell off every two seconds, but I was having the absolute
• 26:12
  time of my life. That's that the one thing I'm
• 26:15
  going to say. And I I know they're not going
• 26:18
  to listen to me. I know it's probably too late,
• 26:20
  if they might have even announced it already.
• 26:22
  I am to the the the Blizzard dev who listens to the show.
• 26:26
  I am Blizz dev. Yeah.
• 26:29
  Fast F, Sorry. Fast F Fast F to fast F, Please.
• 26:32
  I am actually begging you. I am literally like, please,
• 26:36
  please, please, please, please, please do not put this in
• 26:41
  dungeons and do not put it in the raids.
• 26:43
  We don't. I know you're so proud of your
• 26:45
  little locomotion things. I know that's how you felt about
• 26:48
  dragon writing. I please don't do that.
• 26:50
  We don't want an indulgence. And raids.
• 26:52
  I'm begging you. Oh God, Sean, if you're about to
• 26:54
  disagree with me, I'm gonna cry. I have good news, I watched one
• 26:59
  of the interviews and in that one interview the interviewer I
• 27:04
  believe was Taliesin asked. It had to bink since the only
• 27:07
  one I watched asked Ian specifically.
• 27:10
  Are we going to get a Hot Rod boss in Mecca Gob like we had in
• 27:16
  a mirror cell? And Ian said we were really
• 27:18
  happy with dragon riding in the way that it played out and we it
• 27:21
  was an integral part of the expansion.
• 27:22
  We wanted it to, to feel that way.
• 27:24
  And we that's why we tied it into a boss fight and in the
• 27:26
  dungeon fight. We don't have any plans of doing
• 27:29
  the same thing with hot rodding Hot Gob.
• 27:34
  I'm gonna I'm gonna give you a slight correction on that.
• 27:37
  But he said they weren't going to do it, Ian said.
• 27:40
  They had no initial plans, but the the analogy that he provided
• 27:45
  was they wanted to make sure that they were confident in the
• 27:49
  system and that's why it came in a merger cell.
• 27:52
  Once they were confident, secure in it.
• 27:55
  Now I think it is going to basically amount to the same
• 27:59
  thing because these mounts are not being used outside of Mecca
• 28:04
  Gob as you call it, right? So if it's not in, if it's not
• 28:08
  in undermind, it won't be in the X-ray because we won't be in.
• 28:10
  Yeah, it's unlikely unless, unless they start using the IT
• 28:13
  becomes popular, people like it and they start using it.
• 28:16
  Outside of that. In my mind, I would think that
• 28:20
  such a thing would be similar to Flame Leviathan, where be it
• 28:25
  introductory boss, you just play a part of it and then you're
• 28:29
  dismounted as long. And I think generally these sort
• 28:34
  of vehicle based fights are better when it is quite earlier
• 28:42
  and less demanding, like when they can tune it to be like a
• 28:47
  yeah, this one was roughly a freebie so people don't get
• 28:49
  frustrated. I'm thinking about the
• 28:51
  underwater bosses like we had in the Shara's Eternal Palace.
• 28:55
  Make it early. I'm thinking about Flame
• 28:57
  Leviathan. I'm thinking about I have
• 29:00
  eternity as a bad example of like this is the one boss and
• 29:04
  you have to learn these Dragons in the final phase and oh good
• 29:07
  grief, that's what causes the wipe.
• 29:09
  I think those are the lessons that Blizzard should recall and
• 29:14
  unfortunately mirror Dressil. I am going to put dragon riding
• 29:18
  or the flight in the penultimate boss in the L and make sure that
• 29:26
  and hope that they learn from that as well.
• 29:27
  So if it if this does show up, they like, we'll talk about how
• 29:32
  they want to make shorter raids later.
• 29:34
  Just do it off off to the side as a a fun little experiment.
• 29:37
  So here's a quick question because maybe I'm ascribing my
• 29:40
  own emotions to everyone. Out of curiosity, how do you
• 29:44
  guys feel about like Dawn Breaker Amir Dussail?
• 29:46
  I guess Manny just had that he thought Amir Dussail was kind of
• 29:48
  an L Like how do you guys feel about flight being added to
• 29:52
  dungeons and raids? In dawn I dawn Berger might be
• 29:56
  my one of my it Dawn Berger is among my favorite dungeons this
• 29:59
  season. But it's because the flying is
• 30:02
  very simple and not very far and you can do it with you can
• 30:06
  actually use boomer flight in dawn breaker because they pumped
• 30:10
  it up to 100% though it's not just regular boomer flight.
• 30:14
  It's 620 instead of 420, which means it's almost the same as
• 30:18
  zoomer speed, but you can position lamp.
• 30:20
  That's the just the tip. I think I've given that one
• 30:22
  already, but boomer fight in in down Breakers.
• 30:25
  Great. I was not a huge fan of the
• 30:29
  dragon riding in Pendril, but it wasn't a deal breaker for me.
• 30:33
  Again, it was just point A to point B twice during the fight
• 30:36
  and that was it. Yeah I I hate I hated Noku
• 30:42
  defensive. The flying was too far packed to
• 30:46
  pack and the dungeon itself was poorly designed, but yeah, the
• 30:51
  flight there that the problem was too much.
• 30:53
  So I guess yeah. When it's quick and unobtrusive
• 30:59
  I'm fine with it, like dawn breaker and tendril.
• 31:02
  But when it's long and drawn out like escape from Dern hold and
• 31:08
  no Co defensive then I'm then I'm a no.
• 31:13
  That's so interesting because I actually Don breaker is one of
• 31:16
  the reasons I stopped doing the plus.
• 31:18
  I find it so confusing. I find it like just like really
• 31:21
  like I never know where I'm supposed to go.
• 31:23
  I never know where other people are supposed to go, which like
• 31:25
  not, I'm not all trying to like make you like feel bad about
• 31:28
  your opinions. Like I'm so glad that you are
• 31:29
  loving dawn breaker and having a really good time with it.
• 31:32
  I just like that dungeon for me is why I am like, please stop
• 31:35
  adding movement systems to my dungeons.
• 31:37
  But that's why I ask, right? There are many different ways to
• 31:40
  play this game and many different things that different
• 31:42
  people find fun. And that's super valid.
• 31:44
  And so maybe I'm wrong, right? Maybe the I I take back my
• 31:47
  pleading. No, no, I don't think it's wrong
• 31:50
  to have an opinion. If you don't enjoy it, you don't
• 31:52
  enjoy it. I don't enjoy dragon riding.
• 31:54
  You know, it's OK to not like things.
• 31:57
  It's it's fine, Lex. We don't have like the same
• 31:58
  things. No, that's not true.
• 31:59
  One of us has to be right. I mean, that's why I'm here.
• 32:03
  But on top of me, I need you go. But on top of that, like, I
• 32:10
  think that there is something to be said about losing control of
• 32:15
  your character and how you've set up your character and then
• 32:19
  being forced to play a different way.
• 32:21
  That's different but like but like every character is horrible
• 32:24
  I hate that. Yeah, but like being forced to
• 32:27
  play a different way. So when you are doing an
• 32:30
  extended fight like Flame Leviathan or like Eye of
• 32:34
  Eternity, right, it's like, oh, the only thing that matters in
• 32:39
  this is item level because that's what scales of your
• 32:41
  vehicle. And I can't play my character as
• 32:45
  I want to play my character when it is a little bit of traversal
• 32:49
  like Dawnbreaker, where it's like, OK, hot from here to here
• 32:53
  or where even tendril where it's like, OK, fly from here to here
• 32:59
  in between kind of intermission phases is what those really are,
• 33:02
  right? I find them less obtrusive.
• 33:06
  But the problem is the emphasis on tendril of like how critical
• 33:11
  that is when it's like, that's not how I'm, that's not how I'm
• 33:15
  playing my character. I think that's what causes me to
• 33:17
  dislike those. And again, I, I have eternity
• 33:21
  because it's so critical, because it's the last phase, it,
• 33:24
  it becomes such a point of frustration.
• 33:26
  And I think that's really what Blizzard needs to to avoid.
• 33:30
  I. Guess technically Tindra wasn't
• 33:32
  just intermissions because we had to fly to get the orb on
• 33:35
  each platform, which was a bit of a it wasn't like a super
• 33:38
  hassle, it was easy to learn. But yeah, OK, so it was.
• 33:41
  Very critical to like, get that down.
• 33:44
  Lots of it it Webster 8 if you don't get them.
• 33:46
  I do have one of one of the issues that we had with Emir
• 33:51
  just so specifically is that we have a raid member who really
• 33:54
  struggled with like the like, like the, the positioning of
• 34:00
  Dragonflight. And so we like, it ended up
• 34:03
  being fine because we've got people who could, you know, taxi
• 34:06
  around. But I I know that there are like
• 34:10
  some it, it can be an accessibility thing, which
• 34:12
  Blizzard even acknowledged, which I think is why in Dawn
• 34:14
  Breaker they gave us boomer flight as an option.
• 34:18
  But that was that was tough in Amir de Sell is is having
• 34:21
  something that is, I like Manny was saying, that takes away your
• 34:25
  ability to choose how you play the game and forces you to play
• 34:27
  it in a different way. That maybe it's not quite as
• 34:30
  accessible as accessible to all players, or at least people who
• 34:34
  have already determined that World of Warcraft in general is
• 34:36
  accessible to them. Yeah.
• 34:38
  So I want to see how this is again, if you don't like this,
• 34:42
  as Sean said, you can use your regular ground mount to get
• 34:45
  around. So they this is they're being
• 34:47
  very clear that this is optional.
• 34:50
  This is not something you need to do for this expansion and
• 34:55
  definitely not anything that's going into these dungeons or
• 35:00
  raid as well. Talking about end game, delves
• 35:06
  are the one part of end game that I didn't mention in the the
• 35:09
  duo. There's going to be two new
• 35:11
  delves and there's going to be a new end of season boss like Zek
• 35:18
  Veer. Ian was being very tight lipped.
• 35:22
  Both interviewers that I looked at that asked about it.
• 35:27
  He he was very much like, it's like going to be a surprise.
• 35:31
  People are going to have to discover it.
• 35:34
  What's what do you guys say is the odds are it's basically get
• 35:39
  all the season 2 done at the right level and and that unlocks
• 35:44
  it, Yeah. Oh, John Locke, you mean?
• 35:47
  Yeah, to unlock it. Yeah, 100%.
• 35:49
  That's what it's going to be, yeah.
• 35:50
  So I don't know why he's being so cagey about it.
• 35:53
  I kind of double guess. I'm like, Nah.
• 35:55
  I just think he just doesn't want to say like who the boss is
• 35:58
  and like what the story is. Because they're being very
• 36:01
  careful about the story of Undermine, which if you guys
• 36:06
  have been listening to anything I've been saying on the other
• 36:11
  show, Hail Zalotath. I, I am like 100% convinced that
• 36:16
  I am right on this. We have seen pictures and stuff
• 36:21
  about like what's going, what's going on?
• 36:23
  But I'm going to ask you guys here and we'll go to you first.
• 36:28
  Lex, why do you think we're going to undermine?
• 36:31
  What's your thoughts about like how this connects in with the
• 36:34
  greater War within story? Because we're in, we're under,
• 36:40
  we're because we're in the ground.
• 36:41
  And that's what the goblins are. And we and and it makes because
• 36:45
  now it's goblin time and we've been, there's been references to
• 36:47
  the undermine for a while and now it's time to go.
• 36:51
  That is, that is definitely why it was concepted into here.
• 36:54
  They're like underground expansion.
• 36:56
  We got to go to the undermine and Ian said very much that in
• 37:01
  the interview. So you are, you are 100% right.
• 37:06
  Why let's be thrown in here, John, do you want to?
• 37:11
  Do you want to take a guess? Well, I think I don't know if
• 37:15
  this answers the question. I don't know if this answers the
• 37:16
  question you're asking, but I assume it's so that they can
• 37:19
  turn Undermine into the the Horde version of Bellameth and
• 37:24
  reclaim it and make it a a horde neutral city where everybody can
• 37:28
  go to be together and be friends and have portals to other spots.
• 37:32
  Oh Bella, meth is. So like instead of the night
• 37:34
  owls getting their like new neutral city you're gonna have
• 37:37
  from like the emerge or so being transformed, you're gonna have
• 37:41
  Undercity as the horde version. Yeah, that would be pretty cool.
• 37:45
  I hadn't even thought about that.
• 37:46
  That is that is sound but wild. I love that.
• 37:51
  Yeah, and I guess we're probably to tie it in.
• 37:54
  That doesn't tie it in with War Within at all, but I think
• 37:56
  that's why we're going there. But to tie it in with War
• 37:58
  Within, it's probably got to do with Azerite.
• 38:00
  The goblins drilled too deep and unleashed a beast of fire and
• 38:05
  flame and something along those lines is my guess all.
• 38:11
  Right. So over the course of a number
• 38:16
  of speculations, I was like, OK, well, at the end of the
• 38:21
  levelling campaign, before we go into the raid, the last time
• 38:25
  that the heroes meet Zalitath is the fight with Illyria, where
• 38:29
  Illyria damages the Dark Heart, right?
• 38:36
  So we're like, OK, well now. The goblins helped, yeah.
• 38:43
  They helped him make the the demon soul and they put his
• 38:47
  plates on him, didn't they? They put the plates on him, yes.
• 38:50
  And so Zalitaf is going to the goblins, probably most likely
• 38:58
  Galliwick's to help repair the dark heart is my thoughts of it.
• 39:03
  And if you look at the images that were that that are out
• 39:08
  there, there's a lot of Titan structure.
• 39:10
  And I was like, and so there was a question of like, and you said
• 39:13
  it, the goblins dug so deep and greedily.
• 39:18
  There was a question of like, oh, is that an alternate way to
• 39:20
  the world soul? But what if the goblins didn't
• 39:24
  get to the world soul, but instead made it to the manifold?
• 39:28
  The manifold being the Titan constructed seal around, yeah,
• 39:34
  around the world soul. And that allowed them to sort of
• 39:37
  kind of backwards engineer some of the goblin technology.
• 39:40
  And that's why the goblins are a little bit ahead of the the game
• 39:43
  anyways. So like there's, there's a lot
• 39:46
  of tinfoil hat stuff that I was throwing around.
• 39:48
  I guess this is a backhanded plug for Hail Zealotaf.
• 39:51
  But I I was pretty excited about story stuff.
• 39:57
  The thing about this patch is that even though you can't fly
• 40:01
  in the city of Undermine. There are other areas that we're
• 40:05
  going to be going to, and in those areas you will be able to
• 40:09
  still fly so you're not ground locked like we're going to the
• 40:13
  timeless aisle or something like that.
• 40:14
  And I know, Sean, I think you had said this in a number of
• 40:16
  episodes. You hate that.
• 40:19
  Yeah. So I'm glad to give you that
• 40:22
  news as well. I'm actually.
• 40:24
  Sore. Sometimes you got to sore all
• 40:26
  the time. That's right.
• 40:27
  I want to be a Sorry, I'm a Peacock, Jerry.
• 40:29
  You got to let me fly. So we've got the Zig for like
• 40:34
  challenge. We got these two new Dells.
• 40:36
  There's going to be new goblin based mechanics in the returning
• 40:40
  Delves for this new season. Bran is coming back.
• 40:45
  Lex was right. She immediately caught them on
• 40:48
  and be like, hey, wait a SEC, can you just sneak that past me?
• 40:51
  So Bran is coming back. They didn't want us to have to
• 40:55
  get a kind of borrowed power reset.
• 40:58
  So Bran is going to continue to get to have all the power that
• 41:01
  he had before. And we're just going to continue
• 41:02
  to build on him with new curios that are again, themed on the
• 41:07
  new season. And also he's going to grow
• 41:12
  further in power. So do you, do you think this
• 41:15
  means that people who are like, oh, I guess I want to push Dells
• 41:19
  for the first little bit are going to now say, OK, I've got a
• 41:22
  Max out Bran so that he starts next season in a good spot.
• 41:26
  Oh, they haven't. Seen catch up mechanics.
• 41:29
  They always do every time they do a like, you know, smash cut
• 41:32
  like this. I guess they're called patches.
• 41:34
  But every time they do a patch like this, they do like the
• 41:38
  craziest catch up mechanic you've ever seen where you're
• 41:41
  able to get from like zero to 100 within 5 minutes.
• 41:43
  I would if you have never done a delve, it's gonna be fine.
• 41:46
  You're gonna get a catch up mechanic and you're gonna be
• 41:48
  happier than the rest of us because I on God, if I have to
• 41:53
  hear that Nerubian light line one more time, I'm going to tear
• 41:56
  my hair out and I do I do. I do have to hear that Nerubian
• 41:59
  line. Maybe not the Nerubian line
• 42:00
  because maybe we're not doing Nerubian whatever, but if I have
• 42:02
  to hear that man's stupid little voice telling me like who next
• 42:05
  time the strategy line. You guys have heard me complain
• 42:08
  about this. I know and I'm sorry I'm such a
• 42:11
  hater on this episode. Like that was not my goal going.
• 42:16
  I'm going to, I'm going to let you know, Lex, the last episode,
• 42:19
  the hate earned us some comments.
• 42:20
  People are like, oh, wow, Lex, Lex is going on.
• 42:23
  Oh, really? So your brand is now legendary.
• 42:28
  We'll, we'll keep you and Bran at least 500 meters apart from
• 42:32
  now on. That said, Delves are back.
• 42:37
  But with the Delves, that means that we're again going to have
• 42:42
  that thing where they're, you know, the team was happy that
• 42:46
  they were way for people to access heroic loot, but they
• 42:50
  were concerned about having it go beyond that point.
• 42:55
  And that fit right into Mythic Plus, where people were coming
• 43:01
  in and be like, hey, you know what, the Mythic +7 is the first
• 43:05
  level where I could actually get upgrades.
• 43:09
  And Ian said, like, yeah, that is not the place you should be
• 43:13
  learning. You don't have the the
• 43:15
  experience. It's going to be a bad time.
• 43:18
  And so they're looking at creating a new on ramp or way to
• 43:22
  like introduce people into mythic, mythic plus a little bit
• 43:26
  better so that we don't have that that clash.
• 43:30
  But I think from our previous conversations here, we only
• 43:33
  think that's like one part of the problem, right?
• 43:36
  Ian did mention a couple of the the things I actually had some
• 43:40
  like while watching that interview.
• 43:42
  I was like is Ian Fasdev. And then I came back kind of
• 43:50
  reality. But yeah, that is one part of
• 43:52
  the problem. My it's weird.
• 43:55
  I had this I've been having this conversation a lot with people
• 43:57
  because it's a season that been frustrating for some and I try
• 44:02
  to like help as much as I can. But obviously we I think it's a
• 44:08
  pretty unanimous decision that are you agreement that the the
• 44:13
  gear from delves being as good as it is makes doing the keys
• 44:18
  that are below 7 feel pointless because you're not getting
• 44:23
  rewards from them, even though you should be doing those to
• 44:26
  learn whether you whether you're getting rewards or not, you
• 44:28
  should run like run fours to you understand it all or drop it.
• 44:33
  You 2 chested it. Great pat on the back, drop the
• 44:35
  next one to a four run it again. However outside of that, if the
• 44:40
  fix next season is to nerf the loot that comes out of delves, I
• 44:50
  worry how that'll affect the people for whom delves are the
• 44:56
  only end game. And if this is really hard for
• 44:59
  me because I don't actually know any of those people.
• 45:02
  I don't know a single person who doesn't raid and or do keys.
• 45:08
  I don't know anyone. And like am I worried about
• 45:11
  these people for no reason? Are the people who don't do
• 45:14
  Raider keys, are they just like, I don't care what I don't know
• 45:17
  the devils drop I'm going to pet battle anyway?
• 45:19
  Like I don't know who these people I I, but I want to be
• 45:22
  worried for them. I don't want to punish them
• 45:24
  needlessly. So I would make the argument the
• 45:28
  delves aren't like delves replace a mythic plus or like
• 45:33
  delves and mythic plus are kind of inherently parallel, right?
• 45:36
  So I would argue like I, for example, kind of wish that I
• 45:41
  could exclusively Raiden delve, right?
• 45:44
  And then that was a viable option.
• 45:45
  And that's what's making it so I, I, I am very concerned about
• 45:48
  the fact that they're struggling with the, the level of loot the
• 45:51
  delves do. I would be very concerned if
• 45:53
  they nerf it entirely to the point where like it just again
• 45:56
  forces me to play mythic plus, which I've I had more fun with
• 45:59
  mythic plus this season than I usually do.
• 46:02
  But to be honest, by the end of it, I was still kind of like,
• 46:05
  damn, it would I would be having more fun and enjoying this more
• 46:08
  if I could just choose to do it 100% solo.
• 46:12
  And so I, I really, really want them to figure out like, I think
• 46:17
  they in my dream world, they need to make it a priority.
• 46:20
  I hear them that they're concerned about giving rewards
• 46:21
  path past hero track. They need to have a team that is
• 46:24
  dedicated to making it so that delves are meaningful as true
• 46:29
  end game. Right where I can, I can choose
• 46:31
  to raid and delve exclusively. That is a valid decision that is
• 46:34
  going to keep me occupied through the season and if I
• 46:39
  never want to touch a mythic plus, but I still want to be a
• 46:41
  viable player in raid, in PvP, in high level music plus as
• 46:47
  well. I think they are kind of
• 46:49
  parallel, but I don't think if you delve your blocks from M
• 46:52
  plus, I personally think that should be their priority or they
• 46:56
  should just, they should just kill them, which I don't want
• 46:59
  them to do because I was so, so excited about having solo like
• 47:05
  solo end game that I could play. And I think that one of the
• 47:09
  reasons that I ended the season soured on Delves is because it
• 47:12
  does kind of feel like what it did is it just made mythically
• 47:16
  Delves were supposed to make it so I didn't have to do mythic
• 47:18
  plus. What Delves instead did is they
• 47:20
  made it so I did have to do mythic plus, but I had to do
• 47:22
  mythic pluses grinding as opposed to just doing mythic
• 47:25
  pluses gearing the whole way through.
• 47:27
  Lex, you just sold me. I'm in 100%.
• 47:29
  It looks like Manny wants to talk, so I wanted them to talk.
• 47:30
  But I'm going to let you know I have.
• 47:32
  You have just fundamentally changed what I think the
• 47:35
  solution to this is. And that solution is match the
• 47:38
  difficulty in delves to Mythic Plus and have the reward tracks
• 47:42
  line up. A + 10 delve to be as hard as a
• 47:47
  + 10 Mythic Plus and should drop mythic track in the vault.
• 47:51
  And and I recognize that they're going to people who are going to
• 47:54
  say, oh, it's solo content. This should be easier, but it's
• 47:58
  not It's end. It's another end game pillar.
• 48:01
  It's the fourth, the hidden 4th pillar.
• 48:05
  It's the zealotab. This is the harbinger of new end
• 48:08
  game. Let's I'm on board.
• 48:10
  Let's do this. All right now, Manny, tell us
• 48:12
  how wrong we are. OK.
• 48:13
  I'm sorry guys. I'm going to tell you how.
• 48:16
  Long Manny's going to say delves are for babies and they should
• 48:18
  be easy. Yeah, Manny solo players like
• 48:21
  the. The problem is that Dells are an
• 48:25
  end game. They are already an end game.
• 48:28
  Their difficulty can be equal to Mythic plus we could get
• 48:34
  relatively there. Their difficulty could be equal
• 48:37
  to end game rating and they could get it relatively there
• 48:42
  for some classes for some comps, but not for all classes and all
• 48:48
  comps. And that variance is an issue
• 48:51
  already. That's like that's already.
• 48:53
  The exact same way. It's easier for some comps than
• 48:56
  this for others. Yes, yes, this one is this is
• 48:59
  this one is worse because it is Lex on her Demon Hunter and how
• 49:02
  hard it is for her Lex on her Demon Hunter and then she adds
• 49:06
  you to the group and how much harder that is for her or not,
• 49:08
  which then causes her to be like, oh, I really want to play
• 49:11
  with my friends, but it's easier to for me to do it alone or I
• 49:13
  really want to do it alone, but it's easier for me to do it with
• 49:16
  friends. And we've already had that issue
• 49:18
  at the beginning of Delves where we had some group sizes being
• 49:22
  easier than soloing or vice versa.
• 49:25
  And that's already an issue in terms of internal balancing of
• 49:29
  Delves. The other part of it is the same
• 49:33
  conversation that we have been having about Mythic Plus for so
• 49:36
  long is happening now with Delves.
• 49:39
  Well, it's easier and faster for me to organize myself and go do
• 49:45
  a delve and get done and get that done and fill out my that
• 49:50
  track in the vault than it is for me to get together for other
• 49:53
  people and hopefully get through the Mythic Plus and get that
• 49:57
  done. Than it is for me to get up to
• 50:02
  nine other people to do a minimum raid size to get that
• 50:06
  done and fill that up, right. That's already something that
• 50:10
  causes Delves to be organizationally easier, right?
• 50:15
  And there was already that issue of, well, every time I do the
• 50:21
  mythic plus end of the dungeon loot means that I level up way
• 50:26
  faster. Delves, sorry, exacerbate that
• 50:29
  because I'm guaranteed to get the loot.
• 50:32
  It's not 2 pieces of loot that's going to five people.
• 50:36
  It's loot going directly to me, sometimes multiple pieces if I
• 50:40
  happen to get a key. Delves are just generally right
• 50:43
  now if they're, if you're getting the same quality of
• 50:46
  loot, you're getting it at a faster rate with less
• 50:50
  organizational effort. And that's the issue that was
• 50:54
  always plaguing rating versus Mythic plus where people who are
• 50:58
  enraged or saying, wow, I really feel like I have to do Mythic
• 51:02
  Plus because that's the way to gear up when they're equal.
• 51:06
  And then they have taken so long to shift at least that final
• 51:11
  mythic track gear out of Mythic Plus so that Mythic plus gearing
• 51:18
  is at least not as as overbearing on Raiders as it has
• 51:25
  been in the past. And delves at the beginning of
• 51:28
  this expansion. 100% everybody's like do your delts if you are,
• 51:34
  if you have a choice between doing a delve and doing anything
• 51:40
  below A6 plus in mythic plus, right.
• 51:43
  The only reason you would do a mythic plus is for very
• 51:47
  particular gear. And that's the same thing with
• 51:49
  rating. If you could get the stuff out
• 51:53
  of raid or you could get the stuff out of mythic plus, the
• 51:56
  reason that you were doing rating was very for like those
• 52:00
  particular trinkets or items that were in the in the raid.
• 52:03
  And Blizzard has spent such a long time dealing with this
• 52:08
  balancing issue. And that's why they were like,
• 52:10
  yeah, we don't actually want to immediately jump up to her past
• 52:15
  heroic because I, I'm sure you could talk to any mythic Raider.
• 52:20
  And they were like, yeah, first couple of weeks I had to fill up
• 52:24
  the the delve track. As soon as it didn't become the
• 52:27
  highest source of loot, I just dropped it.
• 52:29
  And I never went back. And that's because of the reward
• 52:32
  system. And the reward system's such a
• 52:34
  huge part of this question. So that's fair.
• 52:36
  And first of all, what I'd say is that's why I think I need a
• 52:37
  team on this, right? Like I, I totally agree that
• 52:40
  this is a complicated issue that's going to require really
• 52:42
  high levels of tuning. I think that like, to be honest,
• 52:46
  I think this is what they have right now is the worst.
• 52:48
  Like I think that this is the worst case scenario for
• 52:50
  anything. I think that it means that
• 52:52
  nobody is happy happy. And I think that it means that
• 52:54
  you get a bunch of people dropped in on mythic plus at a
• 52:57
  level that's far. And I like by the way, I want to
• 52:59
  be clear. I know that the Blizzard also
• 53:01
  aware of this and they have said that they're working on this and
• 53:04
  they said they're making a plan. I do think this kind of in
• 53:07
  between anything is not as as as somebody who loves solo content
• 53:12
  and also as somebody who loves rating.
• 53:14
  This is this is my nightmare. Not really.
• 53:16
  It's fine. It's not that big of a deal, but
• 53:18
  I fix it. But they're going to fix it.
• 53:20
  It's fine. It's OK.
• 53:22
  I think that part, I think the one thing that I kept thinking
• 53:29
  when I was when I was listening to you talk though, is that
• 53:31
  like, yeah, but like nobody really raids for the loot,
• 53:33
  right? People raid for the experience
• 53:35
  and I think that I mean, maybe I'm wrong, but like I I don't
• 53:39
  really know like, you know, people go through like with with
• 53:43
  maybe maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm wrong.
• 53:44
  You guys are making you you, but you could.
• 53:47
  Be right that like some but like I mean, obviously there's no
• 53:52
  absolute some people some people want gear sure sure, but like a
• 53:56
  lot of people, at least in circles that I know raid for the
• 53:59
  social experience. They love their team, they love
• 54:02
  the bragging rights they love the experience and then the loot
• 54:06
  is part of fulfilling that greater objective That said
• 54:10
  people do mythic plus for that reason and the reason that
• 54:13
  you're pushing so hard for delves is because you want to do
• 54:16
  delves for that reason so it's it's the same sort of thing.
• 54:19
  There are people who hate a particular thing and feel forced
• 54:22
  into it. Oh, I've got APVP this season
• 54:24
  because that's the fastest way to gear and will be like people
• 54:28
  who will create spreadsheets and be like first week you're gonna
• 54:31
  have to get out 1500 rating and get these gem sockets and that's
• 54:34
  gonna be the way to gear even though the person after that
• 54:37
  will never touch PvP again. That's true.
• 54:40
  And the other thing that I'm now thinking as I'm like, is it what
• 54:43
  it sounds like you're saying? And I hear this, I think this is
• 54:46
  a valid complaint is that there is a risk that delves could
• 54:51
  become for like for people who don't like delves, everything
• 54:54
  that mythic plus is for me, right where like it is a thing
• 54:57
  that I have to do it, you know, every time I like it, sometimes
• 55:01
  will. I mean, it's gotten again, it's
• 55:02
  gotten better this season, but like historically, it is
• 55:05
  something that makes me not want to log on because I know it's a
• 55:07
  thing that I like. If I'm going to be playing, I
• 55:09
  should be doing this thing. I don't want to do this thing.
• 55:11
  But if I if I'm playing, I should be doing it because
• 55:13
  otherwise I'm wasting time. So I'd rather not play and not
• 55:16
  feel the guilt about the fact that I don't want to do this
• 55:18
  thing that I know I have to do 1st and then like have these
• 55:21
  people like, oh, well, I just I had to raid log this week.
• 55:23
  Sorry, guys. Versus try to, you know, like go
• 55:27
  in and either do it or do something else.
• 55:29
  It's not quite as good because of like loot necessities, right?
• 55:34
  And I I agree with that. I don't want delves to feel what
• 55:38
  what I really, really want and what I think Blizzard should be
• 55:40
  prioritizing. And it sounds like maybe they
• 55:42
  are is making it so that nothing in this game is forced, right?
• 55:47
  Nobody. And and that's never like, yeah,
• 55:49
  there's things are always there's there's just inherently
• 55:52
  something's going to be easier, something's going to be harder.
• 55:54
  Something's going to give more loot and people are then going
• 55:56
  to feel a lot more pressure to do them.
• 55:58
  That's, you know, an inherent challenge when you're trying to
• 56:01
  balance any systems. It's never going to be perfect.
• 56:03
  There are always things that are going to be feel feel forced
• 56:05
  when you are gearing up. But I want Blizzard to take
• 56:11
  those issues and find ways to like drop gear and delves and
• 56:15
  raise gear and mythic plus and also like dig into what makes
• 56:19
  these three different. I guess 4 different because I
• 56:21
  keep forgetting PvP this. I'm sorry, PvP, like the four
• 56:24
  different experiences, unique and beneficial and really invest
• 56:31
  in those and find ways to make it so that the gear because to
• 56:35
  like, because to to your point of like, you know, I've never in
• 56:38
  my life felt like I have to do PvP right.
• 56:40
  There has not been one point in my gaming experience that I have
• 56:44
  been like, oh, to gear up. I've got to go in and I've got
• 56:47
  to go do my stupid PvP battlegrounds, whatever you call
• 56:53
  them. But I have felt that way about
• 56:55
  my think plus. And so clearly Blizzard does
• 56:57
  know or like, I mean, does. I'm not saying they're like, you
• 56:59
  know, there's some conspiracy, but like clearly there are ways
• 57:03
  that Blizzard can adjust systems so that something is viable, but
• 57:09
  not mandatory. I and I, I, I want that because
• 57:13
  I want that for everyone. I want M plus players to be able
• 57:15
  to log in and play M plus and never look at delves.
• 57:17
  They never want to look at delves And I want PvP to log in
• 57:19
  and just PvP and never look at anything else.
• 57:21
  If you know, outside of their PvP.
• 57:23
  And I want delvers to be able to log in and just delve and like,
• 57:25
  I want everyone to be able. And then I also want delvers to
• 57:27
  be able to go to mythic plus. And I want, I want to be able to
• 57:30
  do my raids in my delves and sometimes dabble in mythic plus
• 57:32
  and have it be OK. And once every three years go do
• 57:35
  battleground and be like, oh, this is the battleground thing
• 57:37
  like that I think is the dream. And I think that that maybe
• 57:42
  like, it's not going to be perfect right away, but I, I
• 57:46
  think that should be the ultimate goal is that nobody who
• 57:49
  plays World of Warcraft ever logs in feeling like, oh God
• 57:51
  damn it, I have to go do blank. John, can I get your perspective
• 57:59
  on this? No, I still agree with Lex.
• 58:04
  Let's give I. I mean, if the concern is the
• 58:08
  the the that that delves will become too strong with loot,
• 58:12
  then make mythic plus always drop an item for you.
• 58:15
  It sucks that it doesn't, you know what I mean?
• 58:17
  It's not fun to be in a dungeon for an hour and a half because
• 58:20
  nobody knows the dungeon. Always having to.
• 58:24
  I don't care sure I don't play for the loot.
• 58:27
  I would be just as happy if I logged in and my character was
• 58:30
  Max geared right on the first day that it's I don't, it
• 58:35
  doesn't like it's a chore to me filling the loot bars and then
• 58:39
  when it doesn't it's a hassle. I'm still wearing a heroic track
• 58:42
  chest six weeks into the tear. This is the longest I've ever
• 58:46
  gone in a tear without being maxed out and I hate it.
• 58:50
  I think this is the when they slowed the gearing, the gearing
• 58:53
  down for this this this patch. It's the most unhappy I've been
• 58:56
  with gearing since I came back to the game in 8.2.
• 59:00
  I would rather have Titan forging back.
• 59:02
  It's this is terrible. I hate it.
• 59:05
  Speed it up, please. Yeah, but I don't make or unlock
• 59:11
  raids. Let heroic, normal and heroic
• 59:13
  raids be farmable. Don't put a weekly lock on the
• 59:15
  loot. Let teams go in and from them,
• 59:17
  you know, it's we're I don't, we can't.
• 59:22
  You know, we've the game was created and we've lived in this
• 59:25
  world for so long where, you know, rating is the king of
• 59:28
  loot, but no king lives forever. Manny.
• 59:31
  Maybe it's time that we we realize, Hey, people play this
• 59:35
  game in different ways for different reasons, and let them
• 59:38
  play how they want to play. And if people want to play
• 59:41
  delves, either alone or with friends, let them.
• 59:43
  Those people who are min maxing whatever is easier to get
• 59:46
  fastest are going to do that no matter what it is.
• 59:48
  The why punish the people who don't do that?
• 59:51
  Why tell the Lexus of the world? I'm sorry, Lex, you still have
• 59:54
  to do mythic plus because we don't want om dot X to be able
• 59:58
  to get easy loot and delves like that's I don't know it's it's
• 1:00:03
  time to change John. If I give you 50 bucks, am I
• 1:00:06
  punishing Lex? You give me $50.
• 1:00:09
  Are you punishing Lex? Yes.
• 1:00:11
  No. OK, so if I give you mythic
• 1:00:14
  loot, am I punishing Lex? No.
• 1:00:17
  So if you do raid and you get mythic loot or you do mythic
• 1:00:21
  plus and you get mythic loot and Lex does delves and she only
• 1:00:25
  gets heroic loot, why is the conversation that Lex is getting
• 1:00:28
  punished? So because she can't earn the
• 1:00:31
  highest thing, the. Three of us are going wait.
• 1:00:33
  Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Let me finish this just because
• 1:00:36
  Lex's track ends earlier because there's they put delves to a
• 1:00:40
  point that it, it gets this hard roughly because the variance in
• 1:00:47
  how difficult delves are is pretty vast because of all the
• 1:00:51
  permutations. And they say, hey, you know
• 1:00:54
  what? We can't get the balancing to a
• 1:00:57
  point where we can put this at the mythic track.
• 1:01:00
  And what we'll do to compensate for that is to provide loot at a
• 1:01:05
  faster rate in the space that it does at this at a point where
• 1:01:10
  people are saying, well, I don't have I pet battle and I'm not
• 1:01:15
  getting loot for that. That seems to me bizarre and
• 1:01:21
  nonsensical. It makes more sense that people
• 1:01:24
  get loot for delves, but I don't see why people feel that every
• 1:01:29
  particular path through the game should allow them to reach the
• 1:01:34
  same height. If somebody is doing world
• 1:01:37
  quest, I don't believe they should get the same level of
• 1:01:39
  loot as somebody doing delves because the progression state is
• 1:01:43
  there. If delves cap here because
• 1:01:46
  that's what they've designed it to be and raids go here, I don't
• 1:01:51
  see that as punishing people who are not stepping into instant
• 1:01:54
  content because before this solo players could only could only do
• 1:02:01
  world content and the same thing.
• 1:02:02
  I don't think it's punishing people who are doing delves to
• 1:02:06
  say it only goes up to heroic. So the very specific issue I
• 1:02:11
  think that is and then maybe maybe this is more unique to me
• 1:02:13
  than I think. I don't think it is, but maybe
• 1:02:15
  it is. Is like, I hear you.
• 1:02:17
  Like, oh, giving Sean $50 doesn't punish me in less.
• 1:02:21
  I mean, like, punish is a strong word, but like, it feels
• 1:02:24
  different if it's like, OK, yeah, giving Sean $50.00.
• 1:02:28
  And also there's this really cool event that all of your
• 1:02:31
  friends are going to and you could only get in if you pay
• 1:02:33
  $50. Yeah, that's what I was going to
• 1:02:36
  say. The analogy only works if we're
• 1:02:37
  all going to Canada's Wonderland and it costs 50 bucks to get in
• 1:02:41
  and you give me 50, but Lex doesn't.
• 1:02:43
  You don't give Lex 50. She's got to get it on her own
• 1:02:45
  and she can't get it on her own, so she just doesn't get to come
• 1:02:47
  with us. But her track ends.
• 1:02:49
  The door analogy loosely in this.
• 1:02:52
  The $50 if you give me $50. No, no, no.
• 1:02:55
  That's the admission cost. I.
• 1:02:56
  Mean rate. It's rate I I can't.
• 1:02:57
  What is Lex being barred from Rate.
• 1:02:59
  The the rate she doesn't have the same item level, she can't
• 1:03:02
  get in there. There's no realistic way that I
• 1:03:04
  could gear to the point where I could do heroic rating if I
• 1:03:07
  don't do my thing at this point. Yeah.
• 1:03:09
  And and the other note, the other thing I wanted to say is,
• 1:03:13
  you know, you were saying how people doing pet battles and and
• 1:03:16
  world questions of them deserve it.
• 1:03:17
  I agree with that, but Blizzard came out and said delving is a
• 1:03:20
  new solo player end game pillar, but it's just not as good as the
• 1:03:25
  rest of them. Let's.
• 1:03:28
  See, that's the that's the attachment that I like.
• 1:03:32
  I sometimes quibble over words. Right, because the words have
• 1:03:36
  meaning. Lex just said handing you 50
• 1:03:40
  bucks and not handing it to her is not punishment, but we use
• 1:03:43
  that term punishment. The same thing when you say it's
• 1:03:48
  not as good is, again, it's something that I think the
• 1:03:53
  community will latch onto and has already latched onto.
• 1:03:56
  It's not coming from you. You haven't.
• 1:03:58
  It's not Sean who's created this thing, but people think that
• 1:04:03
  because their rewards don't scale as high that their content
• 1:04:07
  is not as worthwhile or as valuable or as prestigious if
• 1:04:13
  your. Job pays you less.
• 1:04:14
  Is it as worthwhile as a job that pays you more?
• 1:04:17
  Yes, you can volunteer in your job is worth more than ACEO
• 1:04:21
  because of the impact you do I'm.
• 1:04:23
  Not in the not in the society we live in, Sir.
• 1:04:28
  In a very particular metric that has consumed the world, and
• 1:04:33
  we're not going to go into this conversation any further, you
• 1:04:36
  are right. But in other very real terms,
• 1:04:41
  no. The guy who is there helping
• 1:04:44
  kids right is more valuable in many ways than the guy who is
• 1:04:50
  sitting there and scheduling meetings.
• 1:04:52
  Well, and not everyone, sorry. Is this is this particular to
• 1:05:01
  World of Warcraft or are we going in and aside?
• 1:05:03
  Lex, I will let one go through and I'm going to shut you down
• 1:05:06
  on the other. Oh.
• 1:05:07
  It's it's particular to World of Warcraft.
• 1:05:09
  Go ahead. Well, what I was going to say
• 1:05:11
  is, yeah. And like, some people pet battle
• 1:05:14
  and that's the only thing. Some people only collect mounts.
• 1:05:17
  So like it, It's not that everyone rave, it's not that
• 1:05:20
  everyone is engaging in these end level these like, you know,
• 1:05:24
  end game pillars, right? There's a lot of different ways
• 1:05:27
  to experience the World of Warcraft.
• 1:05:29
  My issue is that Mythic Plus holds a very specific and
• 1:05:35
  special role where no other end game pillar feels obligatory,
• 1:05:42
  right? With some like, yeah, like like
• 1:05:44
  rating does have tier at a higher level that you know, so,
• 1:05:48
  so that can maybe maybe I'm wrong, right?
• 1:05:50
  Maybe I am doing what I like. Like maybe I'm doing a thing
• 1:05:54
  where like as a rater, I'm going to be doing this anyway.
• 1:05:56
  And so I assume that nobody feel like everyone doesn't worry
• 1:06:00
  about rating as a thing. And so, yeah, like I would love
• 1:06:03
  to hear from listeners who are like, actually, yeah, I, I
• 1:06:07
  sometimes avoid logging into the game because I'm like, God damn
• 1:06:09
  it, I know I got to go do my raid and I don't want to do my
• 1:06:11
  raid. And that sucks.
• 1:06:13
  And it feels like I have to raid.
• 1:06:15
  And, and so like, again, maybe I'm wrong, but, but I don't
• 1:06:18
  feel, I, I don't think that people feel obligation to raid.
• 1:06:22
  I don't feel obligation to PvP, right.
• 1:06:24
  As somebody who doesn't PvP, however, I would.
• 1:06:29
  Sorry, go ahead, continue with. No, that that wasn't meant to be
• 1:06:31
  like a danger face. That was I was anyway.
• 1:06:34
  No, no, no, like that was me being like, I didn't even look
• 1:06:36
  at your face, so. Valid, you're not looking at my
• 1:06:38
  face, but I'm a Leo. I as a Raider do feel obligated
• 1:06:45
  to play mythic plus. I could not viably raid AOTC
• 1:06:49
  level if I do not do Mythic Plus and I was really excited when
• 1:06:52
  Delves came out because I thought finally that was going
• 1:06:56
  to get taken away, right? Finally, it was no longer I was
• 1:06:58
  going to be able to gear up to the level of raid without
• 1:07:03
  playing Mythic Plus. And that is what I think should
• 1:07:08
  be balanced, right? Anything that mythic like I, I,
• 1:07:11
  I think either they need to find a way to make mythic plus no
• 1:07:14
  longer required to do raid, which I don't think is
• 1:07:17
  necessarily a good call, right? I think that there's a reason,
• 1:07:19
  you know, I, I, I'm kind of between, like I'm a little bit
• 1:07:23
  further down with the gearing level.
• 1:07:26
  What am I trying to say? What I'm trying to say is Sean's
• 1:07:28
  argument of like, I wish that I could just log in and get all
• 1:07:30
  the gear. I don't necessarily agree with.
• 1:07:31
  I think there's a benefit to gaining through work and so I do
• 1:07:36
  think as a rater, I would like to work to the point where I am
• 1:07:39
  rating. I just don't want that work to
• 1:07:40
  be 1 exclusive thing that I have to do 1 exclusive way.
• 1:07:43
  Especially given that, like, respectfully, the M plus
• 1:07:47
  community has a reputation of being toxic.
• 1:07:50
  Is that earned kind of like if someone who's done with the plus
• 1:07:53
  like a yeah, a little bit, right.
• 1:07:54
  Like you, you can find your groups, you can find your
• 1:07:56
  people. Like I had a ton of fun doing M
• 1:07:58
  plus with my like groups of friends.
• 1:08:00
  But like, yeah, when I went into pubs, was it really scary?
• 1:08:03
  Absolutely. And did I like, did I walk out
• 1:08:06
  of it feeling bad about myself? For sure I did right.
• 1:08:09
  And, and I think that that that's what's concerning to me
• 1:08:13
  is that there is this like M plus supremacy.
• 1:08:17
  And that's what I want to break. Yeah, I'm I'm going to just say,
• 1:08:21
  and I want to give Sean one last word and then we move on.
• 1:08:24
  I think that the M plus supremacy is because of culture.
• 1:08:30
  I believe that rating can be done with just drops from a raid
• 1:08:36
  if your team is willing to move at that pace.
• 1:08:40
  What Mythic Plus is, is an accelerant, and people will feel
• 1:08:45
  obliged to level as quickly as sorry to gear as quickly as
• 1:08:49
  possible in order to not be burdening them, their team.
• 1:08:53
  The progression through a raid does not require mythic plus,
• 1:08:57
  does not require delve, does not require any system outside of
• 1:09:03
  the raid itself. You can in in practice, but not
• 1:09:08
  in like the culture that we live in.
• 1:09:12
  Take multiple attempts at a boss, form up gear from previous
• 1:09:17
  bosses, and then gear past that boss.
• 1:09:20
  And that is something World of Warcraft did ages ago when
• 1:09:23
  Mythic Plus was not a thing and there was no other system to
• 1:09:26
  gear outside of whatever the event.
• 1:09:30
  The event was for that tier to get you started on the raid and
• 1:09:34
  pushing your way through the raid.
• 1:09:36
  That is still possible in today's system, it is just
• 1:09:40
  greatly frowned upon. And so Mythic Plus being
• 1:09:45
  necessity is because the community is so focused on how
• 1:09:52
  quickly you can gear in order to push through those bosses.
• 1:09:56
  If that, if this was not a thing, the world first Raiders
• 1:10:01
  would not be able to get their world first with much lower item
• 1:10:06
  level than even I have today, right.
• 1:10:10
  They they do gear through that system and that's how they
• 1:10:13
  concentrate that that gear. But they get like one or two
• 1:10:17
  mythic drops and at the end of the week they get one mythic
• 1:10:20
  drop from the from the vault and most of their stuff is heroic
• 1:10:26
  track from from mythic. Plus that's been speeding them
• 1:10:29
  up. And what they've gotten they got
• 1:10:31
  through the raid. So they've got a patchwork of
• 1:10:33
  stuff that will typically be far under level for anybody who's
• 1:10:37
  pushing. Like I'm not sure what the item
• 1:10:39
  level, average item level of Sean's team is, but it's
• 1:10:42
  probably much higher than what method and echo and limit had
• 1:10:48
  when they got their world first kills.
• 1:10:51
  So the gearing push is a construct of the culture that
• 1:10:58
  we're in for Wow and not necessarily mandating Mythic
• 1:11:02
  Plus. Go ahead, Tom.
• 1:11:05
  Would you like the last word? I agree with a lot of what Manny
• 1:11:09
  just said there, but some of it is very, I don't think accurate.
• 1:11:17
  I agree that I I I think it is far, far time that mythic plus
• 1:11:23
  earrings stop propping up rating because there are raid teams
• 1:11:27
  that wouldn't clear the raid without mythic plus.
• 1:11:30
  You need it, I don't think. I don't believe you could clear
• 1:11:35
  CE with the raid tunes the way it is now if you didn't include
• 1:11:39
  mythic plus. I don't think any team could.
• 1:11:40
  The seasons are far too short. Yeah and the gear gained from
• 1:11:45
  the year and the upgrade items gained from just rating alone is
• 1:11:49
  far too limited. I would question whether or not
• 1:11:52
  you could even get AOTC without having people on your team not
• 1:11:56
  do dungeons and or delves. The time that Manny referenced
• 1:12:01
  when you know it was there was no other way to boost was when
• 1:12:04
  there was a single raid difficulty.
• 1:12:07
  The raids were considerably easier and you used to the raid
• 1:12:11
  difficulty of the raids here before to gear up for the next
• 1:12:14
  raid tier. So yeah, like there was there
• 1:12:21
  loot from dungeons and and going back to vanilla lewd from
• 1:12:25
  dungeons has always propped up braiding.
• 1:12:28
  You needed to farm fire resistance sets.
• 1:12:29
  You need to farm nature resistance sets.
• 1:12:31
  You need to farm your shadow fangs set.
• 1:12:33
  Like it's always always propped up braiding as as a as a way for
• 1:12:37
  those raids to be cleared. But yeah, I don't I, you, you
• 1:12:45
  can't. I, I, I, I, I, I'm confident
• 1:12:48
  saying that, that you, if you only raid, if you're on a team
• 1:12:50
  where everybody on the team only wears the gear and uses the
• 1:12:55
  upgrade, that upgrade tokens that they get from within the
• 1:12:58
  raid, you would struggle to complete AOTC in time for a
• 1:13:02
  season. I, I'm confident saying that
• 1:13:05
  because you get, there's 1010 bosses.
• 1:13:07
  Is there 10 bosses, 8 bosses? How many bosses?
• 1:13:09
  123-456-7899 bosses if you have a 20 man raid.
• 1:13:16
  So you have a 30 man raid. I don't know where you're
• 1:13:20
  fighting through to people who agree to this, but if you have
• 1:13:22
  30 man raid, you're getting what, 6 drops per boss?
• 1:13:26
  So 6 * 9 is 36, is that right? No 6 * 9 is 54.
• 1:13:31
  Is that right? All right, I'm 54.
• 1:13:34
  Whatever it is anyway. 54 So 5454 drops a week for 30 people,
• 1:13:42
  hoping that it's tokens that they can different pieces they
• 1:13:45
  can use and not the same pieces that get wasted.
• 1:13:47
  There's no way there's zero chance you're clearing the raid
• 1:13:50
  on CE for sure and heroic. You're going to be at the at the
• 1:13:54
  absolute wire. I'm trying to get it without
• 1:13:57
  doing any of the gear. But all of that said, why do we
• 1:14:01
  like let's rating should be able to stand on its own and it
• 1:14:07
  can't. Everybody knows it can't Mythic
• 1:14:10
  Plus to be able to stay on its own.
• 1:14:12
  I shouldn't have to raid. I shouldn't have to find nine
• 1:14:15
  friends or five extra friends if I have 4 close friends that I
• 1:14:20
  want a dungeon with. And this isn't me.
• 1:14:21
  I love my raid team, raid team, fantastic.
• 1:14:23
  But I shouldn't have to find those people who enjoy this game
• 1:14:26
  and get a challenge out of the content.
• 1:14:29
  Just like those solo players shouldn't have to find any
• 1:14:34
  friends if you want to just log in and play alone or if your
• 1:14:36
  schedule doesn't allow for it, you know what I mean?
• 1:14:39
  You can't always be on when your friends are on.
• 1:14:41
  You should be able to go and get challenging content at any time
• 1:14:45
  that you want it. And they said they said it.
• 1:14:47
  They came on stage at the last ever BlizzCon and said this is
• 1:14:51
  the new end game pillar. Two weeks.
• 1:14:55
  This is a 2 week end game pillar.
• 1:14:57
  Enjoy it, because even the people who were solo players
• 1:15:00
  were killing double question mark executive three weeks in.
• 1:15:04
  After they nerfed the crap out of it, they did that.
• 1:15:07
  Stuff. Make it hard.
• 1:15:08
  Make it. Yeah, all right.
• 1:15:11
  I said. We were moving on all.
• 1:15:13
  Right, we move on. Right, we've got we've got other
• 1:15:15
  stuff to do. I think you made a lot of good.
• 1:15:17
  Points right. And clearly this conversation
• 1:15:20
  could continue on, but we'll have to come back if you guys
• 1:15:23
  have points to make. If you think I was talking
• 1:15:26
  straight out of my butt, definitely write in, join the
• 1:15:29
  discord, let us know. This is a great conversation.
• 1:15:32
  I would love to have it, but we do have other things to cover,
• 1:15:36
  including, of course, the raid itself, because the liberation
• 1:15:41
  of Undermine is the raid that's coming.
• 1:15:44
  Oh, sorry, I should throw in a quick little point on mythic
• 1:15:46
  plus. That is not part of this
• 1:15:47
  conversation. But hey, we're getting a new
• 1:15:51
  dungeon that's going to be joining the rotation.
• 1:15:54
  It is not a mega dungeon. As we said, it's going to be
• 1:15:56
  going into normal heroic and and the mythic plus rotation right
• 1:16:02
  away. We had the full new dungeons
• 1:16:06
  being that were revealed. So we are getting Operation
• 1:16:10
  Mechagon, not Mechagop. Operation Mechagon coming back.
• 1:16:15
  That's the workshop part of it. We of course are getting the new
• 1:16:22
  the new operation. What's it operation?
• 1:16:27
  Floodgate. Floodgate, thank you.
• 1:16:29
  That is coming in with this. Strangely enough, we're getting
• 1:16:34
  another Shadow Lands one. The Theater of Pain is
• 1:16:39
  returning. I don't know how that
• 1:16:40
  thematically connects 5 Boss Dungeon 2.
• 1:16:44
  That's going to be a long one after we were loving these short
• 1:16:49
  dungeons. And then the final one, of
• 1:16:52
  course, is the mother lode that is going to be returning, and I
• 1:16:56
  think Sean is smiling about that one because that is a fan
• 1:16:59
  favorite. So that's going to be returning.
• 1:17:01
  And along with those four, we're getting the other four dungeons
• 1:17:06
  that we didn't have in this season that's going to be coming
• 1:17:09
  in again. We struggle to remember those
• 1:17:11
  last episode, but that is the Rookery that is Cinder Brew
• 1:17:16
  Meatery. Sean, do you remember the last
• 1:17:19
  two? Dark flame cleft?
• 1:17:20
  Yep, that's the one we had. So much trouble last.
• 1:17:23
  Time that was it really gave us really gave us a hard time.
• 1:17:26
  Dark Flame cleft and then the other one would be Priory of the
• 1:17:31
  Sacred Flame. Yeah, Scarlet.
• 1:17:34
  Monastery 2 point O, we got some heat.
• 1:17:36
  We caught some heat in the discord because we called Prior.
• 1:17:39
  We called Dark Flame Cleft. No, Which one did I call?
• 1:17:43
  We call Prior of the Sacred Flame Scarlet Monastery 2 point
• 1:17:47
  O, but we did not call Dark Flame Cleft.
• 1:17:51
  Is it from Clift? No Cinder?
• 1:17:53
  We didn't call Cinder Brumidery, Temple of the Jade Serpent 2
• 1:17:56
  point O Which? But it's not Temple of the Jade
• 1:17:59
  Serpent. Maybe the left?
• 1:18:01
  Or right to start, you loop back around at the end and you kill
• 1:18:04
  the last boss. It's it's literally the same.
• 1:18:07
  OK, but it's I'm thinking bees thematically.
• 1:18:10
  Bees instead of Shaw. OK, OK, I see it.
• 1:18:14
  I see it. Yeah.
• 1:18:15
  But anyways, just wanted to cover those points off and then
• 1:18:18
  jump into rating. So this is going to be the eight
• 1:18:22
  boss dungeon the team was talking about that we're not
• 1:18:25
  going to see. A lot of larger Rays are sort of
• 1:18:27
  backed off from that because it is kind of contrary to
• 1:18:31
  progression. A lot of teams felt that they
• 1:18:33
  had to lock out at and extend Lex.
• 1:18:37
  I know your team does that a lot.
• 1:18:39
  Are you happier about these shorter dungeons?
• 1:18:41
  Yeah, or shorter rates. I didn't really process that
• 1:18:45
  that was what was happening this tier until we started talking
• 1:18:48
  about this because yeah, we haven't.
• 1:18:50
  We just, we're doing like resets every single week up until we
• 1:18:55
  hit the, the two boys, the the, the, the two, the two that hate
• 1:19:00
  each other. Silk in court Silk.
• 1:19:01
  In court, thank you. And then we now we've been
• 1:19:03
  holding lockout every week with some exceptions from like when
• 1:19:07
  people weren't around and stuff. But the goal was we were just
• 1:19:10
  going to reset, reset, reset. And then at that point, all of a
• 1:19:12
  sudden it's prog only push only because we were able to clear
• 1:19:16
  through the first few boxes super, super quick and then
• 1:19:19
  continue progression within a night.
• 1:19:21
  We're a three hour raid team. We only raid once a week for
• 1:19:23
  three hours. So like our timing is a little
• 1:19:25
  bit weird. So I don't know.
• 1:19:26
  I don't know that we could do that if we were a 2 hour twice a
• 1:19:28
  week raid team. But yeah, that that's true.
• 1:19:31
  We haven't. We really have not been needing
• 1:19:32
  to hold lockouts really at all. And so you've been enjoying
• 1:19:36
  that. Yeah, it's, it's, it's first of
• 1:19:38
  all, it gives you a ton more. And second of all, it means that
• 1:19:42
  the night feels, it's hard to do one boss for three hours.
• 1:19:47
  Like it's just exhausting. It's necessary to prog in the
• 1:19:51
  final bosses, but it's, it's rough.
• 1:19:53
  Or, or even if you only do like 2 bosses within three hours,
• 1:19:55
  that's, that's tough. And so being able to reset for
• 1:19:58
  the first, you know, hour, hour and a half and then prog for the
• 1:20:01
  last hour and a half makes the night feel a lot faster I think.
• 1:20:04
  Nice. I also want to note that they
• 1:20:08
  are looking at having some of those smaller one boss raids
• 1:20:11
  coming back. I loved those back in the day.
• 1:20:15
  I'm really glad to to hear them talking about that.
• 1:20:17
  That's not something that's coming with this patch.
• 1:20:20
  But like even the ones that were like too many bosses, one big
• 1:20:25
  like I loved Obsidian sanctum. That was such a such a fun raid
• 1:20:31
  for for me back in the day. I think that I wasn't such a big
• 1:20:37
  fan of Crucible of Storms, but Trial of Valor, I think that was
• 1:20:42
  actually a quite a fun raid. Any of the small raids that you
• 1:20:46
  remember fondly, Sean? Yeah, I love Guru's Lair.
• 1:20:51
  Meg Theodon. Great.
• 1:20:53
  Both of those are fantastic. I wasn't a huge fan of Malagos
• 1:20:56
  at the Eye of Eternity or whatever it was.
• 1:21:01
  I'm a big fan This I was all great news to me.
• 1:21:03
  I also don't like we're two night a week CE team.
• 1:21:07
  The bigger the raid, the sooner you extend and that extend meta
• 1:21:10
  is not a good time. So yeah, I'm glad they're
• 1:21:13
  keeping them smaller and I I'm I'm here for it.
• 1:21:16
  I would love to get a small one boss, you know, tune up fight.
• 1:21:20
  I think that's great. They're.
• 1:21:22
  Fun I the only one I think I've done is cruise well with the
• 1:21:24
  storms so I don't. Really.
• 1:21:26
  Oh, that's the bad one. You did the bad one, Legs.
• 1:21:29
  Well that's not true. I have storm, Ruby, sanctum.
• 1:21:32
  These are bad ones. There's a lot of them.
• 1:21:33
  There are bad ones. I picked the one good one out of
• 1:21:36
  ICC, I'm sorry to say. Sorry, out of the Wrath of Lich
• 1:21:40
  game. Without having other things to
• 1:21:41
  compare it to, I thought Crucible of the Storms was cute.
• 1:21:44
  I had fun. It was a fun little.
• 1:21:46
  I think it was a season it was in anyway.
• 1:21:48
  It felt kind of season 40 where my team was not taking it
• 1:21:51
  seriously like we did. We finished it, but like it was
• 1:21:54
  there for us to like go in and like, you know, run around and
• 1:21:57
  be like, Oh my God, why is it so hard?
• 1:21:59
  It's only a 2 boss, right? There's sometimes we can't
• 1:22:00
  progress and then, you know, die a ton and like I'll finally
• 1:22:04
  figure it out. It was cute, it was fun, it was
• 1:22:05
  there, it was there for the vibes and we loved the vibes.
• 1:22:07
  And then they didn't do that again.
• 1:22:08
  And I'm like, this is but I pulled out the vibes.
• 1:22:10
  Why do I not get to run around, you know, with these super crazy
• 1:22:13
  mechanics that don't make sense and it somehow takes, you know,
• 1:22:15
  weeks to clear anyway. And and we're having so much
• 1:22:18
  fun. OK.
• 1:22:21
  Well, yeah. I think it's going to it's going
• 1:22:22
  to be good. I'm looking forward to the raid.
• 1:22:24
  We don't have much details in there other than Galley Wicks is
• 1:22:27
  going to be the final boss. Oh wait, is that confirmed?
• 1:22:29
  We get to kill him? Yes, we.
• 1:22:32
  Don't know if we're going to kill him, we just know he's the
• 1:22:33
  final. Boss, I hope that we do get to
• 1:22:36
  kill him, but horrid leaders have had a reputation for
• 1:22:40
  surviving being final bosses every single time.
• 1:22:48
  Funny last little bit tidbits that were in there.
• 1:22:51
  War Within has been planned as the underground expansion for
• 1:22:54
  three years. So before we even were aware of
• 1:22:57
  Dragonflight, they were already planning this as the underground
• 1:23:00
  expansion. I thought that was a cool little
• 1:23:02
  tidbit. The test realm for 11.1 is
• 1:23:06
  scheduled to go live before the end of the year.
• 1:23:10
  That pretty much confirms that we're going to have 11 point O
• 1:23:13
  .7 in December and I'm I'm excited for that.
• 1:23:18
  And any of these really point out to you that's something
• 1:23:22
  you'd like to talk about. I want to talk about the crusts
• 1:23:25
  are considered unintuitive. Tell me more about that.
• 1:23:28
  Yes. So this was in the.
• 1:23:31
  Comeback kids interview again, all of these interviews are in
• 1:23:36
  our show notes, but basically having the two the two currency
• 1:23:42
  system and then also having the different naming conventions
• 1:23:47
  every tier was something that they were saying yeah, it is
• 1:23:52
  actually pretty confounding. I just had a conversation with
• 1:23:55
  my friend where they're like what's the second highest?
• 1:23:57
  I'm like well you know what I'd rather than trying to get you to
• 1:24:00
  remember it just scroll over the tool tips and they'll tell you
• 1:24:02
  roughly where they they come from.
• 1:24:04
  That's the best I can give you because what's better?
• 1:24:08
  Ruined or engraved or carved or like it?
• 1:24:12
  It's nonsensical at that point. And I and so I think they're on
• 1:24:18
  track to do the smart thing, which is just a homogeneous way
• 1:24:22
  that even if you do, it's not like immediately apparent once
• 1:24:28
  you learn it, it should stick throughout the lifespan of this
• 1:24:32
  system. Just call it the same as the
• 1:24:34
  track. It's a myth.
• 1:24:36
  It's. A mythic track piece of gear.
• 1:24:38
  With a mythic. Crest.
• 1:24:39
  And then the confusion becomes that oi can I?
• 1:24:42
  Can use this myth Crest on the the heroic?
• 1:24:45
  No, and then don't remove that. They have to move that only.
• 1:24:48
  Hard hard tracks but the they overlaps too.
• 1:24:52
  Great hero tracks. So.
• 1:24:54
  They over. They overlap too.
• 1:24:56
  Let them overlap. There's there's conversations
• 1:24:59
  that I'm sure they've had. You can upgrade a hero track
• 1:25:01
  piece to Max hero level with just hero.
• 1:25:03
  Track with just hero crests, and if the item level overlaps to a
• 1:25:07
  mythic track piece, that's OK because you don't need the
• 1:25:10
  mythic crests to upgrade if you've already gone above it on
• 1:25:13
  a hero track piece. Wait, this is interesting.
• 1:25:15
  It doesn't matter if it overlaps.
• 1:25:16
  I'm not sure. How I feel about it I.
• 1:25:18
  Have I would need to think about it before?
• 1:25:20
  I develop a strong opinion, but it's certainly an interesting
• 1:25:22
  idea, Fasdev. And then you're not having
• 1:25:24
  affirmed content, you get a mythic track.
• 1:25:27
  Piece you don't have to farm ruined Crest content to get
• 1:25:29
  pieces to upgrade it. You just do the content it comes
• 1:25:31
  from. All right, Sean, I'm I'm going
• 1:25:34
  to have this conversation. With you, except I'm sorry
• 1:25:37
  listeners, we're not going to have it on this episode.
• 1:25:39
  We are going to take this over to the fast Discord because this
• 1:25:42
  would be another long one, but guys, I want to take the time to
• 1:25:47
  thank all of you who are in our Patreon.
• 1:25:51
  That includes our legendary supporter Michael L and all of
• 1:25:54
  our patrons. FAZ will always be free, but if
• 1:25:57
  you enjoy the content that we create, consider us sending us a
• 1:26:01
  couple of bucks over at Patreon that is patreon.com/faz.
• 1:26:08
  Or if you'd like, feel free to subscribe to for Azrov.
• 1:26:12
  But until next time guys, may all your hits be kits.