Latest / For Azeroth!: A World of Warcraft Podcast / #354 - For Azeroth!: "Limited in Lemix"

Transcript

#354 - For Azeroth!: "Limited in Lemix" · For Azeroth!: A World of Warcraft Podcast

0:00
It's pretty simple. Collect the bronze.
0:01
Buy the things. Save the cheerleader, Save the
0:04
world. Victory for the Forsaken.
0:06
For Lauderon. For the Kieran Tour.
0:11
For Pandaria. For calendar to.
0:17
The burning region for Gilnaeus, but has not died, for the Lich
0:24
King, for the Cindora, for the Alliance.
0:29
For the. Horn for Azeroth.
0:34
Hello and welcome to. For Azeroth, I'm one of your
0:37
hosts, Sean, and today I'm joined by the incomparable tile
0:42
Queen of Connecticut, Lex. Oh, am I allowed to say where
0:45
you live? Manny never docks.
0:48
Man, I always avoid docks here, but you know what?
0:50
It's your show, go for it. You.
0:52
Guys can do yeah, apparently we're picking random state, so
0:55
feel free to do that. I actually think I know the real
0:58
estate now, but I I'm going to stick with Connecticut, the land
1:01
of no taxes. Wait, that's not Connecticut, is
1:04
it? Surely not.
1:05
Have you been to new actually? Oh, you're thinking of New
1:08
Hampshire, actually. I am thinking of New Hampshire.
1:11
Yeah, but that's not where I think you live.
1:12
But I'm not going to say where I think you live because after
1:15
reading the YouTube comments, we got to be careful.
1:17
We have to protect our Lex. Lex, how has the World of
1:19
Warcraft been treating you? It's been treating me very well.
1:23
We are working on Dementius in my Guild, my braiding Guild,
1:27
which is hard, but that's OK. We're going to get it.
1:30
We're we're holding right now, so we're just going to keep
1:32
pushing there. And then other than that, just
1:35
playing through alpha, having a good time, getting stuck in
1:37
Valves because it's buggy, but that's OK, it's alpha.
1:39
Love it. Is dementius hard or is the
1:41
Guild hard? I'm trying to parse what you
1:44
said there. Dementius is hard, the Guild is
1:46
low. OK, Guild, easy.
1:47
Dementius hard. Yeah, I get it.
1:48
We're also working on Dementius. In my Guild we saw P2 platform 2
1:54
and got Pargoth. That's the mini boss.
1:57
They're down to 6% so we almost had AP 3 poll after only 102
2:01
polls in mythic and that's pretty good.
2:04
We are blasting. I don't know mythic, but I feel
2:07
like at least with heroic, it does feel like the type of fight
2:10
we're like, once you hit P3P3 you're kind of home free, right?
2:13
Like, oh. P3 is like really hard.
2:16
It's the hardest part of the fight.
2:18
Really. Yeah, you're going to hit P3 and
2:20
then spend more nights frogging. Interesting because I'm normal
2:24
P3 was K. Yeah, yeah, that's normal.
2:27
Lex, you're so far above normal. True.
2:31
We're we're we're a step above normal.
2:33
We're. On Heroic that you found that?
2:35
Yeah, it was like home stretch territory I think when we hit
2:38
P3. It.
2:40
Was Yeah. Manny, don't talk, do you?
2:41
Remember that time when I tried to talk and you hadn't
2:43
introduced me and you, you rolled up that newspaper and
2:46
smacked me on the nose with it? Well, I think of course we are
2:54
also joined by the other Co host.
2:57
We are try hosts. Co hosts try we're try host
2:59
because. It can be both.
3:01
Co just means multiple, right? Oh, does it?
3:04
Yeah, code doesn't mean 20. I thought Co meant just.
3:08
Collaborative. Cooperational.
3:10
Yep, doesn't need to. Be well.
3:11
I don't collaborate with either of you.
3:12
I consider this an adversarial. Relationship Lex does all of her
3:15
tiling and bathroom renovations solo.
3:18
Manny, how has the World of Warcraft been treating you?
3:23
So I gotta say, it's weird being on this side.
3:26
I never talk about my my time in World of Warcraft.
3:30
Yeah, weird. I I've been enjoying Wow.
3:34
I've been trying to like collect a bunch of things that I've left
3:37
behind as we've been going through the war within, you
3:40
know, ratings done. We got our AOTC.
3:42
We're not pushing into mythic. I have been doing the mount
3:46
hunting. I've been trying to like make a
3:49
bit of gold liquidated everything out of my war bank
3:56
because I needed to get rid of that before all the prices
3:58
crashed. That was good.
3:59
It was another 1,000,000 gold ish think it was around there.
4:05
So I'm happy. Plus we got the 12 month mount
4:09
and that's it's always nice to have those shinies.
4:11
So I'm I'm doing good. I'm doing good but most of my
4:14
time is in the alpha right now. Are you how do you feel about
4:18
the 12 month mount? So you like pro 12 month mount
4:21
gifts or because they used to be 6 months, right.
4:23
It used to be 6 months and. They are both now and 12 months.
4:27
There is, oh, there is an extra amount for 12, I think.
4:34
Or is it just that they're always giving them out once a
4:38
year? Either way, I know that you get
4:40
something for six months for paying like the, the amount
4:43
where they used to have lulls and they're like, yeah, just
4:46
just keep paying us upfront and we'll, we'll give you this shiny
4:49
amount. And it worked on me because you
4:50
know, shiny amount. OK, so we're pro pro mount.
4:55
How do you feel Lex? Where are you?
4:56
Where do you land on the the free mounts from from Blizzard?
5:00
So I like them because I think it's fun to have extra mounts.
5:03
But The thing is because I know it's just a like look you spent
5:07
a lot of money in in a certain chunk.
5:09
I never use them the same way that I never use shop mounts.
5:12
And I want to be really clear. I never judge other people if I
5:14
feed them. Sorry, my dog is itching her
5:16
collar. I don't know if you're here for
5:17
Rattle. That's a Manny.
5:19
That's an editor Manny problem. That's.
5:22
Yeah, if editor Manny has figured out how to remove noise
5:26
from the person who's actively speaking's mic, frankly, he
5:30
needs to be on a significantly higher level show.
5:33
Da Vinci has a button that's called Voice Isolation and it
5:35
moves everyone. So voice isolation or because it
5:39
was going when you weren't talking, I can just isolate that
5:41
sound separately? Yeah, yeah, seriously, Da Vinci
5:44
has a voice isolation button. I used it.
5:47
I had to edit a video the other day where somebody was walking
5:49
their dog outside and you could hear all of the sounds of
5:52
outside and dog sounds and I just hit voice isolation and it
5:55
was like they were in a closet by themselves.
5:58
I I'm never feeling bad for Manny for being our editor
6:01
again. I didn't realize it was that
6:02
easy. Not really.
6:02
Manny, I know you work really hard, you do a lot and we love
6:05
and appreciate you so much. And I don't know what we like.
6:07
Literally I don't. Do video editing now.
6:09
It's like more work on top. Off topic, let's keep going
6:14
y'all. Never.
6:14
Appreciate to do that. I'm hosting.
6:17
I'm going to let us veer as much as I feel like we can veer
6:19
Manny. Speaking of Veering, Lizard
6:22
veered from their plan and Legion remix.
6:24
So we get some Legion remix news.
6:25
We're going to talk about it a little bit.
6:26
I know for those of you who are long time listeners last week
6:29
probably remember all three of us saying we're not really
6:32
interested. But spoiler alert, I'm now
6:35
massively addicted to Legion remix.
6:38
So we're going to talk about a little bit of the region remix
6:40
news. I played it for the first time
6:43
after the show last week. And there is the section when
6:47
you go to the class order halls and you start doing the class
6:49
order hall campaigns and you get a quest to like do the war band
6:53
table or you get a quest to take 250 seal pelts to Jebediah
6:58
Scrooge. And as soon as you get those
7:00
quests, more Atari, more Atari. The other the dragon who's not a
7:05
Turnus pops up with a little talking head and says, listen,
7:08
we're not here for that. We're going to skip it.
7:11
And they auto completed for you and like 1/2 a dozen times
7:17
during the class hall campaign she pops up and she's just like
7:20
Nope or pass and you skip them. And I instantly fell in love
7:25
with Legion Remix. And then I paired it with the
7:27
completionism website where it checks off the things you've
7:29
done and addiction hooked. Anyway, a little bit of Legion
7:34
remix news 'cause there was some nerfing that happened to people
7:38
who had infinite power of over 10 million.
7:41
If you remember in Mop remix early on a Mop remix, there was
7:44
frog farmers who intentionally blasted frog farming to get
7:49
unintended levels of power early on and Blizzard saw that, rolled
7:54
them back and gave other people a buff to try and balance the
7:57
playing field a little bit. Well Legion remix had something
8:00
similar except it wasn't and it a bug that was being
8:02
intentionally exploited. It was just that some mobs and
8:06
mining nodes and herbs, we're giving more rewards than
8:11
Blizzard wanted them to. And they saw people, players
8:14
power spike faster than they wanted it to.
8:16
And so Blizzard said, no, we didn't intend for that to be the
8:20
case. And they rollback anybody who
8:22
was over 10 million infinite power back down to 10 million
8:26
power. Manny, how do you feel about
8:30
Blizzard saying, listen, we are going to control the level of
8:33
power you can be at in this game mode through no fault of your
8:37
own? I am fine with artificial caps.
8:43
I am less fine when that unintended level of power is
8:51
obtainable and they don't just explicitly say that they have an
8:56
intended cap. It should just be built into the
8:59
game where you reach that 10 million and it just you stop
9:02
getting it. So everybody who puts their time
9:05
into it says, 0, there's a cap here and they move on with their
9:09
lives. That to me is straightforward.
9:12
It is upfront, it is honest. The fact that they come back
9:16
late and said, oh, shoot, you guys are way more diehard than
9:20
we thought. Nah.
9:21
And then roll it back that that's people's time that you're
9:26
messing with. That's people's dedication that
9:28
you are negating. And it was more acceptable when
9:33
it was just frogs. And it was just like, oh, yeah,
9:35
I could see how you missed that one.
9:37
But everywhere and anything that you were doing and so widespread
9:43
that it wasn't even like somebody trying to like find
9:46
some abusive behaviour to do it. It was just, hey, let's, let's
9:49
do this. And man, I love this.
9:50
And look how I'm strong. I'm getting in Legion.
9:52
And man, Blizzard, you made a fun mode.
9:55
Nah, that that that feels like a kick in the teeth to me.
9:59
Yeah, and I don't think it's a cap.
10:02
I think any you'd like they they rolled them back, but they can
10:04
now gain more infinite power if they choose to keep playing.
10:08
Lex, how do you feel about this? You are you OK with the nerf?
10:11
Are you glad now that the five tank meta and all of the people
10:14
hard blasting are back on a level playing field with the
10:17
normies? So.
10:18
I'm probably not going to. I mean, you know, you said the
10:21
same thing last week, so miracles happen.
10:23
I'm probably never going to get involved in Legion remix.
10:26
So I don't really have a personal opinion from an outside
10:30
perspective, I don't really understand the point of remix
10:35
other than get really powerful really quick.
10:37
So I don't really understand why we're punishing or not
10:40
punishing. Obviously, like, like we said,
10:41
this wasn't an exploit. Everyone's acknowledging it
10:44
wasn't an exploit, it was Blizzard's fault, whatever,
10:45
Moving on. But I, I guess I'm just like
10:48
consistently perplexed by the fact that Blizzard's saying one
10:51
thing we don't want with Legion remix is for this to just be get
10:54
really powerful really quick. I I guess I also agree with
11:00
Manny a communicate caps and B, if they're not true caps, what
11:08
is it? Like what?
11:08
What is the I, I? I also don't know how hard a
11:10
million, 10 million infinite power is to reach.
11:13
Like if that's something that everyone's hitting in the first
11:15
few days, then that's really mean.
11:18
If that's still a pretty intense amount of infinite power.
11:21
I mean, I think it's silly, but. It it's tough to get to 10
11:26
million. I have some friends who've been
11:28
playing pretty consistently since the beginning who are at
11:31
like 2 or 3,000,000. So this was people who were like
11:35
you were, you were putting serious time into the game mode
11:38
to get this level. But I think if you're putting
11:41
that time in, I don't know, it feels bad to me.
11:43
Like I agree with man 100% on the frogs.
11:45
Everybody knew going in, even on the PTR testing, everyone was
11:48
like, hey, this is this was an exploit mop.
11:51
It's going to be an exploit now. Don't let this happen.
11:55
And then it happened and then it got exploited and then we're OK,
11:58
we're going to roll it back. And you could tell that that was
12:00
an exploit because they rolled that back and then buffed other
12:02
people up to match sort of the same level.
12:05
But this was none of that. This was just them saying, oh,
12:07
you got really strong way faster than we thought you were going
12:10
to. These things were
12:11
unintentionally giving more power than we wanted them to.
12:14
Like well you didn't notice that in day one or like 6 hours of.
12:20
Testing. I got to say that like the
12:26
things that hurt most about this is that the people hit 10
12:29
million and now the drawbridge is being pulled up behind them,
12:33
right? The people who want to like
12:35
catch up, they've lowered the experience that you can get from
12:39
a lot of these activities. So to catch up, it's now harder.
12:42
These people are just ahead from here on until like enough
12:48
knowledge or whatever does enough to deflate the
12:51
difference. The the other part to this is,
12:54
you know what, if you're going to take that away and it wasn't
12:57
really what you had intended, I wouldn't mind if they just
13:01
compensate these guys and said, hey, you know what, we're going
13:03
to cap you at 10 starting on the next reset so that people want
13:07
to catch up, huh? You can have a bear form from
13:11
the mage tower. Not a beer form.
13:13
I was going to give him some bronze.
13:15
I was going to be like, we're going to convert everything
13:17
above this 10 million to bronze. Feel free to buy whatever you
13:20
want, That's your thing. But you are now hard capped.
13:23
Everybody else, you have till next reset and then all these
13:26
activities are going to get scaled in.
13:28
So the people who really want to push, because really if you want
13:30
to push and you want to do that grind and you say, hey, we're
13:33
going to shut this down, give people a little bit of time to
13:35
catch up. I think that would have been a
13:39
far more acceptable answer than what I'm reading from this right
13:42
now. You know, good, all good stuff,
13:45
Blizzard. Maybe take some notes for the
13:48
next remix. We do Warlords remix at the end
13:51
of What's the Next Mansion Midnight.
13:53
Yeah, could happen then. We're not done though.
13:55
This is now a remix only podcast.
13:57
So for all the listeners who tuned in hoping to hear Alpha
13:59
talk or hear us talk with the PC Gamer interview or literally
14:03
anything else, I'm sorry, we are.
14:04
We're all remix all the time. The more remix news, so I
14:08
mentioned it earlier, but there was a 5 tank meta that had
14:10
developed in high keys. People are doing plus 30s plus
14:13
40s right now on Legion remix soloing them in some cases.
14:17
If you're Kess live, the streamer Kess is doing carries
14:21
for people in his chat so that they can get their achievement
14:24
for a free plus 30s at no cost. So definitely check that out.
14:28
But there was a a meta of 5 tanks and it was it was a
14:30
combination of two things. Tanks do a lot of damage, but
14:32
more importantly, tanks don't die.
14:35
So tanks are going and they were, they were doing this and
14:37
healers and and DPS mains were like, hey, listen, we would also
14:41
like to play the game at this high level.
14:43
We can't get invited to groups and we can't do these keys that
14:45
tanks are doing because tanks are just going with tanks.
14:48
So what do we do? So Blues are today, don't worry
14:50
about it, we're going to buff healers and DPS on the next
14:54
weekly reset, which was today. So healers and DPS got buffed by
14:58
20% across the board. All damage from healing, all
15:01
damage and DPS from artefacts has been buffed by 20% for DPS
15:05
and healers, which is great. This does nothing to solve the
15:09
fact that they were getting one shot by mechanics, but the
15:12
natural progression of versatility as you gain your
15:14
power should help to smooth that out a little bit.
15:17
So more damage and they got the versatility buff coming as they
15:20
gain power. This is great news, but it was
15:24
reported on Twitter just before we went live that it appears
15:26
Blizzard also without announcing it, nerfed tank damage.
15:33
Lex as Adps Maine who sometimes dabbles as a tank but has no
15:39
interest in remix yet. How do you feel about this
15:44
buffing of healers and DPS and then the the no announcement of
15:48
a tank nerf? I mean, like, first of all, not
15:51
to say the same thing I said last time.
15:53
I guess I don't understand the point of Legion remix other than
15:55
like mess around and so people are having fun messing around
16:01
with their tank straps. I mean, like I I actually hear
16:04
you that the issue is that DPS inhalers felt like they couldn't
16:06
get invites and that's a complicated issue.
16:08
And I think buffing that is great not to also show my hand
16:13
for the rest of the episode. Lizards not communicating well,
16:18
that's crazy. What?
16:20
I don't know where that's coming from.
16:22
So yeah, I I mean communicate I I I I I again, I I I let people
16:29
cheese it's legion remix. But also sometimes you're going
16:34
to have to fun detected and remove a cheese.
16:37
Tell us you're removing the cheese.
16:39
But also, I have no skin in this game.
16:41
So I hope you guys are having a good time.
16:44
Yet we're we will get you there. So there's currently a petition
16:49
being signed in the discord at bit dot LY slash faz discord to
16:52
get Lex into Legion Remix while we wait for her to sign up.
16:56
Manny, any thoughts on the buffing and nerfing potential
17:00
Nerfing I I I don't want to say confirmed it was only from one
17:03
source, but it is a source that I trust.
17:06
Any thoughts or feedback? Are you going to be legionary
17:09
missing soon? Honestly they have a Holy
17:12
Trinity for a reason. People like to heal, people like
17:15
to DPS, people like to tank. So I think that if ever 2 tanks
17:19
are in the same instance at the same time, the game should lock
17:24
them into a PvP deathmatch until one dies or re rolls.
17:29
But more seriously though, I think that the big thing is that
17:33
the tanks were able to not get one shot as you have these
17:37
things infinitely scaling and we've had people get up to plus
17:40
68 already. I'm hoping by the time this
17:43
episode finishes I'll double check back and I can say nice,
17:47
but it's infinitely scaling. Eventually you're going to get
17:50
to some pain point and it's going to be either you run out
17:54
of time because you can't do enough damage, you get killed
17:58
because the things are doing too much damage, and that's it.
18:02
So hey, Legion damage, spiky tanks, tanks have an advantage
18:08
if we're going to cut the tank damage so that they run up
18:10
against the clock. Seems like a way to force them
18:13
to bring other things at least a somewhat more balanced spec.
18:17
So on paper, everything they've done seems fine, seems smart,
18:21
seems warranted. But we're going to rewind this
18:24
video back 5 minutes and go to Lex and say communicate.
18:29
And that's all I got to say for that, Yeah.
18:31
I like it. OK, so listeners, I have to let
18:34
you know a little secret. I may have lied to you when I
18:36
said that this show was a remix only podcast.
18:39
Now I am out of remix news. There's not really much more you
18:43
can say about the game mode. It's pretty simple.
18:45
Collect the bronze, buy the things, save the cheerleader,
18:48
save the world. That's essentially Legion Remix
18:51
in a nutshell. But we do have lots more to talk
18:53
about. We had a new alpha build come
18:54
out today that we're going to get to at the end of the next
18:57
segment. We'll be starting into that
18:59
talk. But before we talk about that,
19:00
there was a couple of interviews this week that came out that
19:03
made some waves in the Blizzard space.
19:06
One of them was the Scharizard joining the Potty Sea Scharizard
19:10
was the former Blues, an employee who recently left due
19:15
to workload, question mark and just general burnout.
19:20
Lots of stuff there and then. An interview with Ian has a
19:22
Costas and crash read APC Gamer that took Twitter by Storm X.
19:27
The everything app blew up when this came out.
19:30
A lot of it, not a lot of it. Some of it was due to poor
19:33
reading comprehension. Some of it was due to maybe the
19:36
wording in the way that that the PC Gamer article put things, but
19:40
they basically talked about the upcoming expansion of Midnight
19:42
and the breakdown of add-ons in the game.
19:46
Couple of quotes I just want to pull out before we toss to Manny
19:49
for some thoughts. One of the big ones Ian has
19:51
accosted said and he's mentioned this a couple times, but I think
19:53
this is the first time he's put it so bluntly.
19:55
And it was if you're playing Warcraft out-of-the-box with no
19:58
add-ons whatsoever and trying to play at the highest competitive
20:01
levels, I do think that it's too hard, and I think that
20:05
consequently, hardly anyone is doing that.
20:10
Which I think it's a great quote for him to actually say like
20:11
listen, we and and this ties into why they're doing the
20:16
implementation of their own add-ons in the game.
20:18
So that the game itself is giving you the information that
20:20
it that you need to play those high levels.
20:23
And on the same token, as Manny is very fond of saying, you
20:26
know, nothing lives in a vacuum. So yes, them giving us in game
20:30
tools is one step, but also the way encounters are being
20:34
designed, the way classes are being designed, it's all a
20:36
puzzle that comes together to make the full midnight picture
20:39
and what we're changing to. And the other quote I would like
20:42
to say from Ian is this one, it's a bit longer, but this one
20:46
I'm going to throw to Mandy and I've got a question for Mandy on
20:48
it. A lot of the class changes in
20:50
Midnight have not been in the works for years.
20:55
Instead, they popped up over the past few months.
20:59
So when we first began our conversation with the community
21:01
around the philosophy of where we were thinking we wanted to go
21:03
with add-ons, we heard a lot of feedback immediately of that's
21:07
all well and good, but how am I supposed to track this mechanic?
21:11
And internally we were like, they're not wrong, man.
21:14
You play Elemental Shaman, a class known for spinning plates
21:17
and being able to line up buffs and identify procs and track
21:20
things. So that's one of the more
21:22
complex classes. Do you have any trepidation at
21:26
all that a lot of these class changes are coming very quickly
21:30
with not much thought? No.
21:34
Because the proof is kind of in the pudding as I've been looking
21:38
through the classes that I play. So like shaman, which is a big
21:41
culprit for like 1 button bolt button bloat, but also just the
21:46
amount of buffs and set up that you have to do in any particular
21:51
encounter. Like they've stripped that down,
21:54
but they've also maintained like the core of what it is that like
21:58
makes a rotation work in terms of like both.
22:02
If you're doing like a casino build where it's like, oh, proc
22:07
lights up, let me let me gamble with that proc.
22:09
Oh good, I got the jackpot. Let me continue with that.
22:12
That continues. And that's been the same for a
22:14
shaman, elemental shaman since basically Legion.
22:18
There's been some adjustments and stuff, but that that has
22:21
come through the stuff that they've added on or introduced
22:24
since they've still kept that going.
22:26
And, and in fact, elemental shaman is one of the few that
22:30
still has some of the like buffs that you want to track.
22:34
You still do throw in your lava burst a couple of times to
22:38
empower other spells, but you don't need to be tracking for
22:42
sacks of this and making sure that I, I, I've done this
22:45
before. I do that.
22:46
And so it's a lot more intuitive, especially
22:50
enhancement shaman and one of the classes that I play Unholy
22:56
DK has basically gotten a rework of sorts.
23:01
But like, it's still very much the core.
23:04
Like instead of putting festering wounds on an on
23:08
enemies and then bursting those wounds for damage, now you're
23:12
just like increasing a buff on yourself, clearly visible, and
23:17
then you expend that and get a bunch of ghouls and like, hey,
23:21
I'm still the undead champion carrying pestilence running in
23:24
and doing all that sort of stuff.
23:26
It's still Unholy DK. It's just that I don't need tell
23:30
me when we cores and five other add-ons to make it work or make
23:35
me able to make it work. And I'm really glad for that.
23:39
I like that. It's I think I'm glad you
23:41
answered that the way you did. And in a term I want to stop
23:44
using is simplified and I would much prefer to say reduced
23:48
complexity because they have not made any of the classes that
23:52
I've played or that Manny has played or that a lot of other
23:54
people have played. They haven't made them simple.
23:56
They're not easy. They've just reduced the
23:58
complexity that is required to play them.
24:01
But you still require skill to play them at a high level.
24:04
So if you're going into midnight, you're worried, oh
24:07
man, all these classes are going to be just BM hunters.
24:10
Sorry, BM hunters, that's not the, that's not the case.
24:13
Even BM hunters aren't going to be BM hunters.
24:15
That's not the case. So don't worry about that.
24:18
And yeah, just because these class changes weren't something
24:21
they had in the pipeline for years doesn't mean that they're
24:23
receiving any less effort or that they're going to be any
24:27
less polished than we're used to seeing from Blizzard.
24:31
Lex, This article also talks about accessibility and bringing
24:34
in members of the Undaunted community.
24:36
To test things, I do want to add one more thing, right?
24:40
Are you able to land base them? There are outliers I just I
24:44
gleamed about. I like just glazed about how
24:49
great I love unholy DK and enhancement shaman is like
24:53
somewhere in between and great. But there are some where they've
24:57
pruned too much. Resto shaman right now doesn't
25:02
have its identity. It has. 1.
25:07
It has riptide. Done it has.
25:09
Does it have healing tide totem? What do you need it has?
25:13
Do you single target? Do you AOE target?
25:16
If you single target, riptide healing wave?
25:20
If you're AOE heel, riptide chain heel there is.
25:26
Hold on, slow down. I'm going to write this down.
25:30
There is no real decision in that healing right now.
25:33
And I, I think that's problematic.
25:35
Like I don't want to go the route of like dis priest or, or
25:40
other healers like preservation Evoker for a while had like
25:44
ramp, ramp, ramp, ramp, big burst heal and like your entire
25:48
thing was know when the damage is coming so that you can do
25:51
those moments of glory and you'd have to like do 5 different
25:55
things to set up for that. Resto Shaman has never been
25:58
that, but Resto So Shaman also had a number of different things
26:02
that interacted in order for it to do its heels.
26:05
And they've stripped it down so that your baseline heels do
26:08
well. But Resto Shaman has forever and
26:12
a day being, here's a bunch of things to improve your healing
26:15
in this situation. And without that, it's almost a
26:20
2 button pony. And I think that they need to do
26:22
something to give Resto Shaman an identity again.
26:25
And I don't know all the classes so there may be others like
26:29
that, but I don't want to say it's perfect all the way
26:30
through. Some of them are amazing hits,
26:33
but I have witnessed some misses here.
26:35
OK, I think that sounds great for rest of shaman.
26:39
Lex, I know you want to respond, but I want to set it up for you
26:42
because I have a great set up for this.
26:44
So the article also talks about accessibility and how they
26:46
brought members from my daunted Inn because that's something
26:48
that seems init to initial looks we talked about last week may
26:52
have gotten misplaced with the tackle on accessibility, the
26:56
tackle on the class reworks, tackle on design reworks, the
26:58
add-ons housing coming in. How do you feel about this PC
27:02
Gamer article and the current state of Blizzard?
27:05
I feel this is not going to be surprising to anyone who's
27:09
listened to the show consistently.
27:12
I feel like the one consistency I am seeing from Blizzard is
27:15
that they are flying by the seat of their pants.
27:19
That is why I'm concerned. I'm concerned about the fact
27:21
that I didn't think to bring in anyone like disabled gamers
27:24
before they turned off combat add-ons.
27:26
I'm concerned about the fact they didn't realize that turning
27:28
off like doing what they did was going to break weak auras to the
27:31
point where Ian was saying weak auras weren't going to go away a
27:34
couple days before weak auras announced they were going away.
27:37
I, I am concerned about the fact to go back to what you said to
27:41
Manny, I am concerned that they're saying that these are
27:45
all changes that are happening in the last couple months.
27:47
Not necessarily because I'm concerned that the class changes
27:51
themselves lack Polish, but because I'm already seeing in,
27:55
in my opinion, signs that they are struggling to maintain to
27:57
keep up with the demands to get midnight out on purpose on time.
28:01
And I'm concerned that if they're adding on additional
28:04
things like changing classes significantly, I I don't under
28:09
like they OK this week. As of recording, they've still
28:14
not announced when PTR for player housing is going to open
28:18
up. It was supposed to be on Monday.
28:20
To my understanding, unless I missed a communication, they
28:22
just said, oh, it's delayed 0 further information.
28:25
Not when they intend to delay it too.
28:27
Not why they delayed it. Just straight up hey guys, not
28:30
happening on Monday. It'll come one day, which A, to
28:33
go back to what I said, which communication issue, like you
28:37
can't just delay something and, and not tell us what's going on.
28:40
And especially in a situation like this to my second point
28:44
where it's presumably that it's not ready, right?
28:47
From what we see, we've seen on Alpha, there's a lot of bugs,
28:49
there's a lot of broken things. We'll get into this and I'm
28:52
jumping all around in our notes. I'm so sorry.
28:53
But they, you know, they were saying they're changing, you
28:55
know, what you can put outside and, and things like that,
28:58
because they're broken right now.
28:59
And my guess is that's why they don't want it on PTR is they
29:01
just don't have it set up. Dyes are broken right now, so
29:04
they can't really put it on PTR and let people play because it's
29:07
not ready, which fair enough. If they came out and they said,
29:10
hey guys, we're realizing the player housing is is really not
29:14
ready to put out right now. And so we're going to push this
29:16
back a week, two weeks. We're going to touch base with
29:19
you guys on Wednesday and give you more information.
29:21
If they gave us any of that, I wouldn't just be sitting here
29:24
and frankly, I don't care. I have alpha.
29:25
So like whatever, if they don't put on PTR not my problem, but
29:29
the the the fact that they are suck.
29:31
It plebs. No, no, but like, like.
29:38
The views of Lex do not necessarily affect the views of
29:40
Sean and he's count the 1st. Let let let me clarify, I
29:46
personally am not affected by this delay because I wasn't
29:48
going to do it on PTR anyway because I have alpha.
29:50
But hey, I feel really I, I have a lot of friends in my, in the
29:54
Timbermont Tavern discord who are really excited about this.
29:56
We made a whole Discord thread just for them to talk about it
29:59
and that has now just become them, you know, looking for
30:01
hints of when it's going to come out and expressing frustration
30:04
that they aren't able to get the thing they were promised.
30:06
Like that sucks. And also it just it, it I, I
30:11
feel like the one consistency is that it feels like they don't,
30:14
they're not ready and they don't know when they're going to be
30:15
ready, which is OK. I've always said they should
30:18
feel like they can slow things down, but they need to
30:20
communicate it with us. I was thinking about this today.
30:22
I'm so sorry. I'm going to let somebody speak
30:23
and not just monologue very shortly.
30:25
I was thinking, I was, I was thinking earlier today that one
30:29
expansion ago, the three of us were in this cute little studio
30:32
together talking about how we should be giving Blizzard the
30:35
benefit of the doubt. Because they've consistently
30:36
communicated amazingly, they've consistently done what players
30:39
have said. They've been listening.
30:40
We all feel heard. We feel like we can trust them
30:43
when they come out with things and and we're just so happy with
30:45
where Blizzard that oh how the mighty have fallen.
30:48
At the very least, I think Sean and I are both on the same page
30:52
that I don't trust a single word out of Ian has Acosta's mouth
30:54
anymore. I simply cannot he's he's proven
30:56
wrong like too many times. It it anyway, I I'm feeling
31:03
worried. I want them to feel like they
31:04
can delay. I think they probably need to
31:06
delay. I would rather that midnight
31:08
comes out later than bad. And if they don't need to delay,
31:13
and if these are for things are going on that are reasons other
31:16
than they're overwhelmed, I want them to talk to me.
31:19
I want them to give me the reasons.
31:21
I want them to communicate what is going on and why they're
31:25
struggling just so I can stop sitting here being like Wow.
31:29
Blizzard is releasing things really slowly and delaying
31:32
things. A lot of information.
31:33
That probably means that things are kind of not cooking in
31:36
Blizzards. Manny, what do you think?
31:39
Just before Manny jumps in, I do want to just clarify one thing
31:43
that Lex mentioned specifically about dyes not yet implemented
31:46
does not necessarily mean broken.
31:51
No, they said they they they sat at the and then showed in the
31:53
alpha notes that it's broken. Oh, did they say the dyes were
31:55
broken? I think it sounds.
31:56
Like they weren't really not working.
31:57
Yeah. So it's a known issue.
31:59
Oh, never mind, I take it back. Lex was right there.
32:01
It broke. It broke or it made it again.
32:04
It's alpha. Things are going to break.
32:06
It's not the end of the world. But if this is a consistent
32:08
habit, like a problem that I'm seeing again and again and
32:11
again, it stops being, oh, well, sometimes things are delayed.
32:13
Sometimes we struggle. Sometimes we make decisions in
32:15
the middle of cons and it becomes, oh, man, you guys did
32:19
not think this through. OK.
32:22
So last build, the bill that they would have put up to do the
32:26
testing, it was ready, but they came, they came across a bug,
32:32
easily replicatable bug, and then that bug became
32:36
popularized. That bug was the ability for
32:39
anybody in your neighborhood to pick up your property, steal it,
32:43
and put it on their land. If they had allowed testing, I
32:47
feel like it would have been absolutely derailed by this.
32:52
And therefore I think it was right for them to delay the
32:55
testing, maybe not popularize that bug any further and
33:00
therefore don't say it right away.
33:02
But in the, in the latest build, you can no longer steal
33:06
somebody's house. So I suspect that we will see
33:11
the test now that they've put it on, on the alpha, they've they
33:15
see that like you can't like LoJack somebody's bungalow and
33:21
we should see it. I think a bug like that is
33:23
worthy of me. Like, OK, you know what?
33:25
We're not going to get good testing if this, if this starts
33:27
happening. And I understand the reason, if
33:30
that is the reason behind it. There may have been others.
33:32
I am not a developer if that is the reason that they didn't want
33:35
to further publicize it. But now that that's gone beyond
33:39
that, hey, I'd love to get an update, a rescheduling saying
33:43
like, hey, we're going to do this.
33:44
Give people a little bit of heads up to say it will be in
33:48
two weeks at this time. Sorry about it, but I'm not on
33:52
their butt so much about the communication for this one just
33:56
because of all the different things that I've seen that sort
33:58
of line up. I don't know, tin foil hat.
34:01
I, I like that's, that's where I'm at.
34:03
What's the harm in popularizing that?
34:05
Like I, I, I guess I would believe you more if we were past
34:07
alpha, but like who really cares if they steal your alpha house,
34:11
right? So I.
34:12
I guess I, I hear you proper, proper testing.
34:15
If you wanted to build your house and then part way through
34:19
you think your house is gone and it's like like a lot of people
34:22
are going to be like, this is stupid.
34:23
I'm not going to test any further and then they lose their
34:26
testing data. They weren't stealing them, they
34:28
were just moving. Yeah, they were just moving them
34:32
onto their. So you still owned your house?
34:34
It isn't like the bank came and kicked people out.
34:36
They still owned their. House where that house is.
34:39
Yeah. You just hit the button to
34:40
teleport you to your house and suddenly you're back at your
34:42
house. It's like, yeah.
34:47
So I, I guess I, I hear you and that's fair to an extent.
34:53
And if that is what they come out with, then like fair enough.
34:56
I think a lot of for me, and maybe I'm just defending myself
35:01
because I, you know, clearly have a take that I've been
35:03
pushing on on for hours or off, which is that midnight they,
35:05
they are struggling with getting midnights out.
35:09
I I it it, it feels like we've had a lot of these conversations
35:12
where I'm like, this is something that is concerning and
35:15
there's always a reason. Like you're always like, oh,
35:16
well, yeah. But you know, sometimes they do
35:18
come up with things in constant. Oh, well, yeah.
35:20
But sometimes they do delay and like, Oh, well, yeah, but maybe
35:22
they only do want to test these two delves at a time so they can
35:25
spread it out or like, Oh, well, yeah, like, but but if it just
35:28
keeps happening, at some point you have to Occam's razor it and
35:32
you have to say, OK, so maybe it's that they have all of these
35:34
individual issues that are causing individual delays and
35:37
causing individual like announcements of like, oh,
35:40
actually we're changing classes. Oh, actually we're making prey
35:44
go in the gear, the row. Oh, actually housing is delayed
35:49
or they're flying by the seat of their pants right now.
35:53
And that's why we're seeing so many of them.
35:54
And, and and maybe I'm forgetting how many like weird
35:57
little things came up with war within.
35:58
And there's always going to be some.
36:00
It just it, it just feels like it is getting to be so many that
36:03
I, I can't make it individual issues it it has to be
36:09
systematic. I I would agree with you that
36:14
they're that they are flying by the sea of their pants.
36:16
I don't want this to be taken as trying to rebut that rebut that.
36:25
I think that them flying by the sea of their pants is a bit
36:29
intentional. I think that they've shortened
36:31
their timeline. They, they are making decisions
36:35
in a lot more periods closer to release and talking about things
36:40
a lot earlier. And therefore we're seeing
36:43
decisions change and evolve a lot more than we would if they
36:47
had been like, we're not ready to share that yet.
36:49
We're not ready to share that yet.
36:51
So like for me who lived through BFA development and very much on
36:59
like 2 weeks before being like, I'm really worried about this,
37:04
this Azerite power and they haven't shown it to us.
37:07
And they're like, trust me, bro. And I'm like, I don't think I
37:10
can trust you, bro. I would rather that they put it
37:13
out there and I can throw the feedback and they can screw up.
37:16
And I'm like, hey, you know what?
37:18
Like this is what, this is what I've said.
37:20
And I do think that development has always been messy.
37:25
We're just seeing a lot more behind the curtain.
37:29
Can you be anxious about that? I think that you're right to be
37:34
anxious at times. I think that there's been a
37:36
number of mess ups where you have rightly called it out on
37:40
this show. And maybe we do some sort of
37:41
super clip here to show to show that or or we just start a
37:47
little tally behind you there, Lex where you can just you can
37:50
keep that. But I think more often than not,
37:52
you've been right that this seems a little, this wasn't
37:56
quite thought out. This seems like they are doing
38:00
this really close to release. And I think it's not just
38:03
because they have shortened, they have shortened the period
38:10
of time that they work on these things, but also because they
38:15
are showing things a lot earlier.
38:18
Alpha this time around versus alpha and shadow lands is a
38:23
completely different beast. The focus testing didn't come in
38:28
until Dragonflight. That's a new thing.
38:30
The level of setup and how things were cemented has utterly
38:38
changed. So I think we are genuinely just
38:41
seeing things coming, coming through faster.
38:44
I'm seeing a lot more things that are like on textured models
38:47
or encrypted boxes or dialogue that is like placeholder here,
38:53
right? That is that's just floating
38:55
around. And I don't necessarily think it
39:00
is a bad thing, even if it does give cause to be anxious.
39:04
Yeah. And I mean, I, but you are
39:06
correct that ultimately we're going to figure like we're going
39:09
to see soon, right? We're probably, you know, less
39:13
than six months off of midnight, so we'll see when we see and I
39:18
mean, so I am a little biased because I do still really Demon
39:22
Hunter didn't get drastically changed, but because it is
39:25
already a pretty simple rotation, I do miss sigil a lot.
39:30
So I am still feeling a little bit like wow, I want at least
39:33
one more button to press my man. Although I'm realizing as I
39:36
speak, I might even test this as you guys, you guys can talk
39:40
about something else. I think they did redo they,
39:43
they, they walked back the change that I kept whining
39:45
about. That meta didn't reset all of
39:48
Havoc's cooldowns. So maybe I'm actually fine.
39:51
Maybe Fasdev, maybe you're actually the light of my life.
39:54
If you don't hear from me for a few seconds, don't worry about
39:56
it. We could get Lex one of those
39:58
staples easy buttons to put next to her keyboard so as she's
40:01
playing demon on her, whenever she feels like she needs an
40:03
extra button to hit, she can press that to help out.
40:08
I'm a problem solver. Thank you so much.
40:11
That's a great idea. You could just replace her
40:14
keyboard with like one of those, like Bop.
40:16
It's where you like to have to like, twist, Yeah.
40:18
No, anybody who's here for the pre show knows we should not be
40:21
encouraging Lex to bop it. And that's your incentive to
40:27
come check out the pre shows folks.
40:28
All right, so that's there's a lot going on.
40:30
That piece of game interview is a good read.
40:32
I definitely recommend it. The Scarizard episode of the
40:34
potty. See, I wouldn't normally plug
40:35
other podcasts on our podcast unless it was the starting zone.
40:38
Love those guys, but that scars art episode of the potty, see
40:44
definitely check that out because he goes into a lot of
40:47
stuff. He says wild things.
40:48
He has some crazy calms. Like I left and had not yet
40:52
heard the term Apex Talents so I have no idea what they were
40:55
going to be. And he left about six weeks ago
41:00
anyway. Definitely.
41:01
I'm glad I said all that stuff after Lex was concerned about
41:05
the speed with which things are changing.
41:10
Anyway, let's move into some alpha.
41:11
We got a new Alpha builds Wednesday One Giant kudos I want
41:14
to give. It's been true for two
41:16
Wednesdays in a row, so I'm going to assume that it'll be
41:18
true for every Wednesday for the rest of Alpha, but Wednesday is
41:21
build day on the Alpha. We got our first build.
41:25
We got phase two last Wednesday. We're getting phase three today.
41:28
It's out now as of this recording.
41:29
It's live, but we got our patch notes.
41:31
I'm not going to go into the patch notes in a deep dive, just
41:34
like every week. I definitely recommend reading
41:36
those on your own, but I'm going to hit a couple of quick
41:38
highlights and then I'm going to ask me any what he's most
41:40
excited to test today to test this week.
41:43
So a couple of quick highlights because there's a lot of stuff
41:44
in here, a lot of good stuff that made me really happy. 1st
41:47
off, they buffed taunt let's F and go taunt got a buff.
41:52
So previously the way taunt would work is that you would
41:56
taunt to mob and for three seconds you had increased
42:00
threat. Trying to find the the thing I
42:07
read it anyway. It's now 6 seconds.
42:10
It was 3 seconds at 600% buff. Now it's 3 seconds at 900%
42:14
increased threat. 800 eight, 100% increased threat.
42:16
Huge buff for taunt. Love this for tanks.
42:20
This is going to be even better in rage.
42:23
So this is good in dungeons, there should never really be
42:25
tank issues and dungeons that needs to be nipped in the bud
42:28
right away. But in raid, especially if
42:31
you're tanking with a brewmaster, a lot of times the
42:34
Co tank will lose threat almost immediately after they taunted
42:37
because there's just such a disparity between some tank
42:39
damages. This should hopefully help
42:41
rectify that. So huge W there for the taunt
42:44
buff, would love to see it. Another one I do want to talk
42:48
about because it is so near and dear to my heart and that is the
42:51
UI and the add on restrictions and what changes are coming in
42:55
in this build. One of the big ones that I want
42:58
to mention is that they are slowly backing away from what we
43:03
can't do. So previously an add on in
43:07
Midnight could not do anything with the Nate or with with the
43:12
health value and the power value.
43:14
So your mana, your energy, stuff like that.
43:18
Without like all it could do is reskin what Blizzard gives you.
43:21
It could do nothing else. For those of you who don't know
43:24
the way most of those add-ons work like shadowed unit frames
43:27
or unhalted unit frames or plater or any any of those
43:32
things weekly course they're not reskinning Blizzard UI.
43:36
They are turning off Blizzard UI and generating their own.
43:40
Up until this week, that was not possible.
43:43
In midnight you could not on all.
43:45
Like a shadowed unit frames would not be able to generate
43:48
player unit frames, they would have to reskin Blizzard unit
43:51
frames. Where that's a problem is a you
43:54
can only display the information they give you and B, any changes
43:58
you make to it are going to be applied across the board and you
44:01
can't make specific changes and like set points for like
44:04
percentages. You can't like make changes to
44:07
colors and stuff like that. But this they have backed off on
44:10
that a little bit and it says that they have added several new
44:14
AP is to allow unit frame add-ons to show health and power
44:17
values more accurately. So those add-ons will now be
44:22
able to like they do now generate their own health and
44:25
power values. This is a far stretch from what
44:30
what we need for these add-ons to be at the state threat now,
44:33
but it is a step in the right direction, which is what brings
44:37
me joy. We want the ability to customize
44:40
our UIS. Everybody is in an agreement
44:42
lock step across the board in Warcraft.
44:44
We don't want computational add-ons and we guards solving
44:48
bosses for us. But I think like a huge majority
44:52
of the player base, I don't want to guess at a number, but I'm
44:55
going to say 90% because I'm going to guess at a number.
44:57
I think 90% of them would like the ability to customize their
45:00
UI so that it looks the way they want it to look with their unit
45:03
frames, their player, their their name plates and their
45:07
cooldown manager or their class week or a pack style thing.
45:10
I think people like to have that that customizability and I think
45:12
they should have that. And I am definitely glad that we
45:16
are moving to a world where that is going to be potentially more
45:19
possible. We're still a long way off.
45:21
I spoke to an add on dev for a very popular add on and he said,
45:24
yeah, this puts us at about 5% of what we need, but that's 5%
45:28
we didn't have last week. So we celebrate.
45:32
And another one I want to talk about.
45:34
This is the last one I'm going to, I'm going to throw it to
45:35
you, Manny. But there's new sounds in the
45:37
cooldown manager. So the cooldown manager is now
45:39
tracking pandemic timings. If you don't know what that
45:42
means, read the blog article, read the post by Linksie.
45:45
It explains it, it's been in the game for like 15 years but was
45:48
never actually explained in game anywhere.
45:51
You had to go to third party sites to find out what it meant.
45:53
But it's in the game now. It's officially in the game, but
45:55
they've had a new sound. There's a whole list of sounds,
45:58
animal sounds, bells, whistles, mechanical sounds, and text to
46:02
speech for all your cooldown managers.
46:04
And not only that, but there is a separate volume control for
46:09
those sounds, separate from all of your other game sounds, so
46:12
you can make them as loud or as quiet as you want if you do use
46:15
them. I'm really happy because up
46:17
until now all we had was four different Dings and text speech.
46:21
But now you have like air horns and bike horns and sword sounds
46:26
and all this stuff. It was an exciting day.
46:28
A lot of great patch notes. The future is looking good.
46:31
I'm very excited about what's to come.
46:33
Manny, how do you feel about the patch notes and what are you
46:35
looking forward to in this week's alpha build?
46:40
Honestly, it's again like A2 where they're constantly
46:43
reiterating on stuff. So I'm really happy that we're
46:46
getting all these updates. Yes, they've added some more
46:49
sounds. That's good.
46:50
I hope they continue to add on. Really every time they have
46:53
somebody in the sound studio and they're like adding in stuff for
46:57
like murloc #4 or dragon #7 or whatever creature, just throw
47:02
some of those into the cooldown manager.
47:05
So we just have a like a litany of in fact, the entirety of the
47:09
library should be opened up so that we could just, I don't even
47:13
care. I just want Silvana's saying I
47:16
shall never kneel. Whenever I have like defensive
47:19
up or something, just give it to me.
47:22
Like they have such a library. They don't need to be like
47:25
making special sounds for this. If it's too long for me, that's
47:29
my problem. I'll go pick something else.
47:32
I do like the changes that they're making the cooldown
47:34
manager. Literally pandemic was something
47:37
we talked about last week. I brought it up and I was like,
47:40
hey, this is something that's missing.
47:43
I know we don't often put put stuff out there, but like if you
47:47
guys listen to the weekly no lever, they always have some
47:52
amazing, amazing guests that are talking about stuff.
47:55
And just if you talk to any of them, they're always giving like
47:59
just a bunch of feedback about what can be done better about
48:03
this game. So there's always going to be
48:05
stuff. The the biggest thing that I
48:09
want from this is for them to realize how much work is left
48:17
and maybe understand that they should allow the add-ons that
48:22
have put in those years of work to coexist until they can make a
48:27
make up the gap, right. I don't think that they can
48:31
honestly say that they are at 90% or even on track to get to
48:37
90% by the launch of midnight. And maybe I you know, I don't
48:43
want to echo other people from from this show.
48:46
I don't want to steal their bit, but I don't want these guys
48:48
working through Christmas. I don't want these guys working
48:50
through Thanksgiving, right? I do not want the the crunch and
48:55
this seems like a big workload. So the so to me, if they want
49:01
that clean break, that clean break is in the last Titan or
49:04
maybe after the World Soul Saga. It is not midnight.
49:08
I think they're going to cause a lot of issues.
49:11
And now that they're bringing in some diverse voices into the
49:17
conversation about how they're doing this stuff by bringing
49:20
people from Undaunted and hopefully other communities,
49:24
maybe that should inform their process for how they do things
49:27
going forward. And that way they will be better
49:33
set up to do these changes in the future.
49:35
Because I don't know what the inside of that room looks like,
49:39
but I hope that it's only the walls that are monotonously
49:43
white. We had a saying in the Navy, I'm
49:46
going to fire some relax because she is nodding and snapping her
49:48
fingers and she is feeling what Manny is saying and agreeing
49:53
with him. We had a phrase when I was in
49:54
the Navy. Every time is like the first
49:57
time. And Manny, I hear your echoing.
50:00
I echo your your sentiment that hopefully lessons are learned
50:03
here. But I fear that much like the
50:05
Canadian Navy, every time is like the first time.
50:09
That Blizzard. Lex, what do you got for a
50:12
screen? Oh yeah.
50:13
I mean, that's been one of my ongoing issues with Blizzard is
50:17
it feels like very often the people who are relevant are not
50:20
in the room until lately. I I remember talking about this
50:24
a lot during shadow lands because they had the character
50:26
who was like very clearly a trans man.
50:29
And then they were like, and they use they them pronouns
50:31
until everyone was like, excuse me, what do you mean they use
50:34
they, them pronouns? And then they adjusted.
50:36
And I have said consistently that that was very frustrating
50:39
for me because like, yes, it's great they adjusted, but why was
50:43
there not a trans person in the room, right?
50:45
Like, why was there no one to call it out?
50:46
And I've been saying they were doing a really good job with
50:48
story. It does seem like they're doing
50:50
a really, really excellent job of making, by and large, with
50:52
exceptions, making sure that the people who are relevant to the
50:55
story, who might have lived experiences they can talk
50:58
through are in that room. I do think this is a myth.
51:01
I don't think that Blizzard should have had to wait for
51:03
disabled players to say, hey, add-ons are critical to making
51:07
the game disability friendly for them to suddenly be like, oh, do
51:12
you guys like want a voice in the room?
51:14
Do you guys, should we have a disabled person talking with us
51:16
about like what? And that's even more complicated
51:19
because the like we were talking about last week.
51:21
The sheer number of potential ways of disability can affect
51:24
gameplay is is so huge. And this, I'm trying to remember
51:27
if I said this on this podcast or if it was just something that
51:29
I said to my rating Guild when I was supposed to be prepping them
51:32
for dementias. But instead listening to the
51:35
sound of my own voice is I worry a lot about them taking away
51:40
add-ons. Because when I think about the
51:41
things that make me really happy with with cool down add-ons,
51:45
with, you know, weak auras to a large extent and things like
51:48
that, It's that there are people who have sat in a room and just
51:54
focused on like, what is anything that anyone could ever
51:57
possibly want in a cool down manager?
52:01
Like what's any little thing that they might ever want to
52:04
tweak? How can we put that in?
52:06
And I don't I think Blizzard has the resources to do that.
52:10
And even if they do, I don't want them to.
52:12
I don't want a dev spending that many hours thinking about every
52:17
possible iteration of like, what might somebody want, you know,
52:20
different like, oh, this is rage.
52:22
And also, if this is on cooldown and also if they have this buff,
52:24
like how can they combine that all together to do an at a pop
52:27
up? I I worry about the sheer number
52:33
of like hours that would take. And to some degree what they're
52:37
doing is they're making it less complex.
52:38
You don't really need to worry so much about like, oh, this is
52:40
I only use my rage building and I'm doing this.
52:42
But like I do at the very least, I agree that they need more
52:48
time. Like I said, the one thing that
52:50
is just consistently shut, like for example, I've said
52:53
previously in this episode that I don't trust anything coming
52:55
out of Ian has across his mouth. I don't, I think Ian was lying
52:58
when he said that he did, not that the plan was not to turn
53:01
off weak auras. I think they just quite
53:03
genuinely had not thought through what the decisions they
53:06
were making would mean for a weak auras developer and their
53:09
decision to keep going. And that if nothing else, even
53:13
if they do decide they want to turn off cool.
53:15
I mean at this point it's done like they're going to turn off
53:17
add-ons whatever. Tragic.
53:19
What can you do? I, I, I really do think they
53:22
are, they have not considered all of the implications.
53:25
And I, I agree with Manny that I, I, I want them to slow down
53:29
if they're realizing like, oh, Jesus, we're getting really long
53:32
posts on Reddit saying that we didn't think about how this
53:34
would affect disabled players and we have to suddenly scramble
53:37
to fix that. Maybe that's a sign that you
53:42
aren't actually ready to announce this.
53:44
If you're getting clowned on because one of your lead
53:47
developers looked kind of stupid because he said something that
53:50
was immediately proven untrue. Maybe that's a moment to think
53:54
about like, oh, we don't really know the implications.
53:57
And that probably means that we shouldn't just, you know, be
54:00
like, you'll figure it out as you go.
54:03
That's my take. I I wanna say that this could
54:09
have all been an e-mail, not even an e-mail.
54:13
This could have all been like cut like just gone ahead of if
54:20
they had done a summit meeting, done a discord with the add on
54:29
add-ons that they felt they needed to integrate into the
54:31
game and just said, what are the things that you have learned as
54:35
you've made this add on? We were going to be doing these
54:38
adjustments. Here's the thing, you're under
54:41
NDA. Here's here's the here's the
54:44
stuff that we're looking at. What does this look like to your
54:47
add on? What does this shut down on in
54:49
your add on? Is this something that you think
54:52
people can do without and that would have gotten them such
54:55
focused feedback before they even had a broader conversation?
54:59
And they could have done that before they even got a developer
55:01
working on this. Now they have to have the
55:03
developer go back in or team of developers go back in and
55:08
readjust this sort of stuff. They have to do the work twice.
55:10
They have to have their people, NPR getting yelled at because
55:15
they didn't consider something. And you know what?
55:17
I don't expect them to consider everything.
55:19
They have more resources than these developers, but they don't
55:23
have the history, the time and the and the backlog of changes
55:28
that have created the DBM that we know today that didn't have
55:34
interrupts. You know, the current one that
55:37
is got added today. Can't tell me how many people in
55:41
how many interrupts happened, right, how many times somebody
55:45
used a stun, all the stuff that like DBM has today and they're
55:49
replacing it. But they're cutting this stuff
55:50
out because apparently intelligent thought like hey,
55:53
you're not interrupting enough or you never used this single
55:56
interrupt is something I guess I shouldn't know in the middle of
55:59
a dungeon like. Full and if I remember
56:04
correctly, Mr. Hazy cost himself said they were going to do that
56:08
and they were going to work really closely with add on
56:11
developers. And then they it does not appear
56:14
that they did. I didn't.
56:15
I haven't played with the damage meter and I think even when we
56:17
were talking about the damage meter, we were saying, well,
56:19
obviously they're going to have things like interrupts.
56:21
I didn't realize they didn't. That's silly.
56:23
That's yeah. I mean, more so like, you know,
56:25
in dungeons, that's important. As a raid leader, we use that
56:28
all the time to figure out, you know, if we're really struggling
56:31
to get interrupts off, we need to whisper and be like, hey,
56:34
man, this is like an everyone sort of thing.
56:39
And if that's gone, that actually really sucks.
56:41
Like if we have to continuously go back to logs to figure out
56:44
what's happening. And yeah, there's no way that
56:46
anyone in details wouldn't be able to say hey.
56:49
I'm going to cut, I'm going to cut in.
56:51
I think it's the host. It's my job to cut in.
56:53
I just want to say you both know how I feel and I feel all of
56:57
your frustrations. You don't even have to talk to
56:59
the add on. It's just all lux dose we go
57:01
back. That's what we want for a
57:02
cooldown manager. It's free.
57:04
You can get it on waggo. But yeah, like that's that was
57:10
the part that anyway, I don't I'm not going to say that that's
57:12
the part that frustrated me because it's like, did you even
57:13
play the game that you're building these things for
57:16
because you don't anyway, that's not important.
57:18
What's important is I don't know what's important.
57:21
We have a new alpha built this week.
57:24
Frustrations are high, tensions are high.
57:25
So I'm going to lighten it up. We're going to end the show.
57:27
I'm going to tell you guys a story.
57:29
Everybody likes when I freak out.
57:30
So I'm going to tell you a story of me freaking out this week
57:34
while playing the alpha. But it's a good story.
57:36
And I call this story, hold on. I have to bring it back up
57:39
again. I call this, this story is
57:43
called This House is not a Home. One man's sad journey across the
57:47
Founders point I am. I want to start this by saying I
57:52
am a massive massive fan of housing.
57:54
I am so so genuinely excited to why I'm still begging.
57:59
I'm gagging for a YouTube channel that is just time lapse
58:03
builds of housing and Warcraft. Please I need this.
58:07
If you are the somebody sent me a link today for mega art I
58:10
think their name is and it might end up being a housing thing.
58:14
If this is you, if you have something like this if you're
58:16
looking for $1,000,000 idea I will literally watch that
58:19
Channel on a stream non-stop. But I said to myself self and I
58:23
knew it was me because I recognize my voice.
58:26
You should try out housing. You keep saying that your house
58:29
is just going to be a mattress on the floor in a single room.
58:32
Give it a shot because you see all these beautiful creative
58:35
things that people are creating like bears, adventures, and
58:40
there's just so many, so many, so many.
58:41
Marvel, Miss Marvel, I think it is on Twitter, so many
58:43
beautiful, gorgeous houses being created.
58:45
Tally Essen made like a shop across a lake with a sign.
58:49
Somebody else, I think so, so breezy made a cannon.
58:52
It's just there's so many beautiful houses.
58:53
I love it. So I said I'm going to try it
58:54
myself and I went in. For those of you who know me,
58:57
know that minor irritations and small frustrations are my
59:03
downfall. And initially, immediately off
59:06
the bat, I could not figure out how to customize the outside of
59:09
my house. It took 17 minutes for me to see
59:14
the toggle button on the right that says customize the
59:17
exterior. So this was how it started.
59:20
My blood pressure was already up.
59:22
I was slowly starting to think that I was maybe just missing
59:26
the features, but then I found it.
59:28
I started, I started to customize the other side of my
59:30
house. I got it the way I looked.
59:31
I had a nice little plot on the beach, 24 prime location, beach
59:35
real estate, no neighbors. It's fantastic.
59:37
Then I wanted to do the inside of my house and at first I was
59:40
like, oh, I'll do the tutorial because it says here's a
59:42
tutorial you can do. So I started with a tutorial and
59:45
then I got to a step in the tutorial where it said to place
59:48
some things. I had to place 4 items.
59:50
I placed a fireplace and I couldn't get it to go into the
59:53
wall like I've seen some things do and that made me sad so I
59:56
just left it in the middle of the room.
59:58
I'll get to why I couldn't because in the tutorial I found
1:00:02
out after the fact you can't adjust the sizes of things and
1:00:06
you can't turn off the clipping when you're in the tutorial.
1:00:09
So I anyway I realized afterwards I put a window up and
1:00:13
then I saw oh I have a different type of window and I tried to
1:00:15
put that window up and it snapped into the floor.
1:00:20
And it's like under the floor, I could not see the window, but I
1:00:22
could see the light from the window coming up through the
1:00:26
floorboards. And I was like on and this was
1:00:28
the fourth piece that I needed to add to the interior of my
1:00:31
house to complete the tutorial. I was so frustrated.
1:00:33
I was just trying to click it and I couldn't click it.
1:00:36
And I was using the clean button and I couldn't clean it.
1:00:38
And I just had this glow from under the floorboards from this
1:00:41
window. And I was just like, I'll just
1:00:43
live. I'll just have a floor.
1:00:44
I'll just, I'll maybe I'll put a rug down or maybe I'll just have
1:00:46
this light in the floor. It's like I have a basement
1:00:49
tenant and they have their lights on or something.
1:00:52
So then I tried to make the window on the wall bigger.
1:00:55
I was like I want to have a big window and I kept clicking the
1:00:59
button to allow you to adjust things.
1:01:02
Advanced, but you can't use advanced if you're still in
1:01:05
tutorial. And I had placed my 4th item in
1:01:09
the tutorial, but it was the window that was in the floor, so
1:01:12
it didn't register that my tutorial was complete.
1:01:15
So I was like, OK, I'll just abandoned the tutorial and then
1:01:18
I won't be in tutorial anymore and I'll be able to make this
1:01:21
window that I want to make big, big.
1:01:23
So I abandoned the tutorial. But when you abandoned the
1:01:26
tutorial, it doesn't actually remove you from the state of
1:01:29
tutorial. So then I thought, OK, all
1:01:33
right, OK, all right, I'll go pick the quest up again and I'll
1:01:38
come back and I'll try to place something else in the house to
1:01:41
see if that triggers it. The tutorial quest is not on a
1:01:46
quest giver in the neighborhood. I flew all over Founders Point
1:01:53
and the quest cannot be re picked up.
1:01:54
So I said OK all right I'm on my alliance character.
1:01:58
I will just log over to my horde character and I'll make a house
1:02:02
in Razor wind Pass and it's going to be fine and the roof
1:02:04
will just be red. So I logged off and logged on to
1:02:08
my blood elf and I hit the little button that takes you to
1:02:12
the housing area and it put me in founders point at the house
1:02:16
with the window in the floor. So then I thought, OK, maybe if
1:02:23
I'm at that point I rage quit. I turned, I hit alt at 4:00, I
1:02:27
turned the game off. I was streaming.
1:02:29
I was like, I'm done housing stuff.
1:02:31
For me, I really need a YouTube channel of time lapse builds
1:02:34
that I could just watch because I love it, it's beautiful.
1:02:37
I want to be able to do it. I just can't.
1:02:41
I can pull a boss 400 times till it dies.
1:02:43
I can't get this God damn window out of the basement.
1:02:47
So when I logged back in, I was like, I'm getting this window
1:02:49
out of the basement. I'll just move my plot.
1:02:51
Surely if I move my house, I'll be able to get this window out.
1:02:56
So I moved to the house, didn't get the window or so I tried to
1:02:59
move the house. It wouldn't work.
1:03:00
It wouldn't move. So I went back in and there's a
1:03:03
button where you can like reset the whole interior of your house
1:03:05
that I finally found. I reset everything.
1:03:08
Window gone. Success.
1:03:12
I got to the point where it asked me if I wanted to do
1:03:14
tutorial. I hit skip tutorial.
1:03:16
No longer tutorial. I can now do advanced.
1:03:18
I turned off clipping. I made my fireplace bigger.
1:03:21
I put it into the wall. Fireplace.
1:03:23
Gorgeous. This fireplace was the most
1:03:24
perfect fireplace that it was. Many people were saying this was
1:03:27
the most beautiful fireplace that ever seen.
1:03:30
And I had it placed in the wall. And then I thought, I'm going to
1:03:32
put a nice big comfy chair next to that fireplace.
1:03:34
So I took a chair out. It was a big comfy cushion chair
1:03:36
and I placed it next to the fireplace.
1:03:38
I was like, that's great. But the chair looked really
1:03:40
small next to the giant fireplace.
1:03:41
So I thought, well, I got to make this chair bigger.
1:03:44
I'm going to make this, I'm going to scale it up.
1:03:46
So I scaled the chair up and then it floated in the air and
1:03:50
then I walked off housing and I will now live in a house with a
1:03:53
mattress on the floor. Sean, if it makes you feel
1:03:56
better, when I was trying to play with the advanced mode, one
1:03:59
of the first things I did was try to move things on like the
1:04:01
three fancy axes, and I moved my mouse a little too fast and it
1:04:04
just knew right out of the house.
1:04:07
Yeah, I, I love housing. I think I legitimately, it is
1:04:12
some of the best content on Twitter right now.
1:04:13
If you're on X, the everything app, look up Warcraft housing
1:04:16
content. It's beautiful.
1:04:17
The team has done an amazing job.
1:04:19
I just spoke today spoke, I sent a tweet at Jesse, the developers
1:04:24
working on one of the developers working on housing.
1:04:26
I say, listen, I'm really bad at this, but I would love to be
1:04:29
able to come home and have just my pets walking around the
1:04:31
house. And he said Ian has a more in
1:04:35
depth full answer in one of the Q&A's, which is probably a lie.
1:04:39
He didn't say that I added that, but he said that is something we
1:04:42
are working on, not for launch, but we want it with the future
1:04:44
build. We just have to figure out the
1:04:46
random pathing first. And that was the best news I've
1:04:49
ever heard. I'm going to have a house full
1:04:50
of cats and dogs and maybe some rats, whatever other pets I can
1:04:54
find and a mattress on the floor.
1:04:56
It's going to be great. Which frankly, is my dream,
1:04:59
Sean, like you, just to be clear.
1:05:00
Like my you describe my IRL dream house.
1:05:03
Yeah. That's right.
1:05:06
Anyway, that's my, my trip with housing.
1:05:08
I, I love it so much and I'm so bad at it.
1:05:11
Is there anything you've ever loved that much that you're
1:05:13
terrible at, Manny? Podcasting.
1:05:17
No. Something you're bad at, Manny
1:05:19
I. Love it, I love it.
1:05:22
I think that's the end of the show.
1:05:23
Do you guys have anything else you want to say before I butcher
1:05:25
this ending? Oh yes, we want to say
1:05:28
congratulations to the people who participated in our
1:05:32
giveaway. We had one giveaway on Twitter
1:05:35
or X, the Everything app, and we had one giveaway on Instagram
1:05:39
and this was for the Dreadlord regalia.
1:05:42
So over on Instagram, we want to say congratulations to Blue
1:05:47
Crucial who won over there, and on X we want to say Congrats.
1:05:52
Congratulations to Arch Mage SAR who won over there.
1:05:57
So you'll be contacted by the show and congratulations on your
1:06:00
prizes. You can wrap up now.
1:06:04
OK, thanks for listening, folks. Thanks for being here with us
1:06:08
for this little bit over an hour.
1:06:09
We really appreciate it. We're going to see you next
1:06:11
week. If you want to join us for the
1:06:12
live show, come over to bit dot LY slash faz Discord, get into
1:06:15
the conversation. You can tell us how wrong we are
1:06:18
about our opinions or you can give me your links to your
1:06:20
Housing Time Labs YouTube channel.
1:06:23
And may until next time, may all your hits be grits.