Latest / For Azeroth!: A World of Warcraft Podcast / #362 - For Azeroth!: “Deck the Halls”

Transcript

#362 - For Azeroth!: “Deck the Halls” · For Azeroth!: A World of Warcraft Podcast

0:00
Unfortunately, I had some mic issues with this recording.
0:03
By the time I realized it, we had already recorded the
0:06
entirety of the show, so my apologies.
0:08
It'll be fixed for next time. And with that, let's get into
0:11
it. Victory for the Forsaken for
0:14
Lauderon, for the Karen Tour, for Pandaria, for Calendar, for
0:24
the Burning region, for Gilnaeus, or has Not Died for
0:30
the Lich King. For the.
0:34
Sindora for the Alliance for the Horn for Azeroth.
0:44
Hello and welcome to another episode of For Azeroth.
0:47
I am one of your hosts, Manny, AKA The Trivial Manny, and I am,
0:52
of course, joined by the other two parts of the Triumphant
0:54
First coming in from the amazing bayous of Mississippi.
1:01
We have Lex, and I know that was a little bit switching up there.
1:06
We'll just say Georgia, Let's go the entire station.
1:08
Aren't aren't bayous in Louisiana?
1:12
Yeah, the bayous are Louisiana and Georgia and Mississippi are
1:15
two different states. That's why I want to say, yeah,
1:17
but like Georgia has, doesn't Georgia have some at the South
1:21
end? I'm pretty sure.
1:23
I mean I'm not American but I'm pretty sure to hear the term
1:25
Bayou I I strictly think Louisiana.
1:28
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then the gumbo and all of
1:30
that. Yes, definitely, definitely.
1:32
But like I anyways, I paid it because I was like, no, wait,
1:35
Mississippi's not right. I got to go to like say that she
1:37
has it anyways, I apologize, Lex, I I screwed up your state.
1:42
So we're just going to stick with with Mississippi this time.
1:47
And I don't know anything about Mississippi.
1:48
If you know something about Mississippi, feel free to
1:51
message me. But Lex, how are you doing this
1:53
week and how as well? Mississippi facts.
1:55
None of them are crud. No offense from Mississippi.
1:58
Wow, how are you and how is the completely non controversial
2:04
World of World of Warcraft treating you?
2:06
It's been. Treating me good.
2:08
I so I will say this week especially, I've been knee deep
2:11
in Christmas cookie baking. I bake Christmas cookies.
2:15
I, I took on what used to my grandfather's role of baking
2:19
Christmas cookies for my entire extended family, although he
2:21
only did it for his like three children and I do it for my
2:24
entire extended family. So there is quite a bit of
2:28
Christmas cookie dough in my fridge right now that needs to
2:30
be rolled out and cut into hundreds of Christmas cookies.
2:34
But that's OK. It's very fun.
2:36
That's nice. And then of course, coming from
2:40
the East End of Canada, we have Sean.
2:43
Hello, Sean, How are you? No bayous here, I'm doing quite
2:47
well. I'm doing quite well, Manny.
2:50
World of Warcraft has been treating me good.
2:51
I have a surprise for the listeners, A twist that will
2:56
shock and amaze them from last week.
2:58
So I'm excited for us to talk about our first topic because
3:02
last time on for Azeroth Ball, for Azur on Z, it doesn't work
3:08
when you just put the Z on there.
3:09
I was doing a Dragon Ball Z thing.
3:11
I can't do the radio announcer voice through the Korra thing.
3:14
So I was, I mean you. Could like approximate the thing
3:17
last time on Dragon Ball Z or whatever?
3:20
It was approximated, yeah, that this.
3:21
Is AU skill Manny? Yeah, I can't.
3:24
Last time on for Azur off, Sean talked about brucing up the
3:29
place. I yeah, we left the last episode
3:32
and I was like, housing is great.
3:33
My house will be a empty box with four windows.
3:35
And that's what it had when we ended the call last week.
3:38
Well. And one thing we know about you,
3:39
Sean, is you've never stated that something doesn't interest
3:42
you on this show and then taken aback later.
3:44
So I I'm fully believing that your house is still an empty
3:47
box. That's right, that's right.
3:48
I'm nothing if not super consistent to my takes.
3:53
I consistent in a ironic way, I guess, yeah.
3:57
So that is our first story. We are going to be giving our
4:00
first impressions on. Wow housing.
4:03
It looks like I guess Sean is eating crow.
4:08
Let's start off with that, Sean. I guess housing more interest
4:14
than you thought. So I don't, I don't think, I
4:16
don't think eating crow is the right term because I didn't hate
4:17
housing. I just had a lot of doubt in my
4:20
own patience and my own skill. It turns out, Manny, I am
4:23
incredibly skilled at housing masterly.
4:27
I'm a masterful designer. So I left it, you know, I had, I
4:31
had four windows in my, my box. That was it.
4:33
And it's just because every time I went to make a room up to that
4:37
point, I had just like, I would just start going without any
4:39
goal, without any vision and I would just start putting things
4:42
in and it just wasn't working. It didn't didn't line up to what
4:44
I wanted. It wasn't ever, you know,
4:46
hitting any sort of cords in me. Like I'm seeing these beautiful
4:51
greenhouses and saunas and stuff that people are building.
4:53
I'm like, I'm just making a room.
4:55
And then I was laying in bed on Thursday evening last week.
5:00
And as it often does, I was struck by a euphoric moment of
5:09
clarity when I thought I know exactly what my house should be.
5:14
I I was a pretty big fan of the show of Vikings when it was on
5:18
TV. It was a history show.
5:20
And so because of that, I get a lot of Vikings things in my
5:25
feeds as I'm joy scrolling at night.
5:28
And so a picture came across, it was Lagertha who was one of the
5:32
main characters. And I was like, Oh my God, I
5:33
need to build a Viking hall in Warcraft.
5:37
And from the moment that I had that thought, like I immediately
5:41
started like vision boarding Viking halls and seeing designs
5:46
and layouts and putting pictures, saving them and
5:48
sending them to myself in my second Discord account.
5:50
And then the next morning, from the point that I woke up to the
5:53
point that I went to bed, it was I was laser focused on housing
5:57
and finding what materials are available in the game and
5:59
designing and building a Viking hall.
6:01
And that's what I did and it came together really, really
6:04
well. It took two days of farming
6:07
materials and getting stuff. And I'm really pleased with it.
6:11
I did a little video showcasing it.
6:13
It's online. And then I opened up my house to
6:14
everybody who wants to come see it for friends on bnet or
6:17
whatever you can, you can come look at it.
6:20
I love it. I love housing.
6:21
But that being said, I don't have any visions for.
6:26
So I have 4 houses that I could build two EU 2 Nai built that on
6:30
my aligned side. Nai have no other visions.
6:32
So the other three houses don't even exist.
6:34
There's not even a house on a plot for those.
6:37
But my Viking hall turned out really well and a detail that I,
6:41
this is the last thing I say. And then I'll, I'll hand it off
6:43
with the one detail that I did that is that nothing is aligned
6:48
to the grid. So in real life, if you were to
6:51
walk into somebody's house, nobody's house is perfectly
6:54
aligned the way that some of the people are like designing their
6:58
houses in Warcraft and, and a lot of video games are like, it
7:00
looks perfectly alike. The chair is perfectly aligned
7:03
to the table, which is perfectly aligned to the walls.
7:05
Nobody's house is like that in real life.
7:07
So every single item in my Viking hall is off somewhere in
7:12
the range of two to six degrees from the grid lines, which gives
7:18
it this really lived in feeling. It feels functional and like
7:22
people are actually in here doing stuff.
7:25
And it probably drives people that have OCD crazy because the
7:28
tables aren't straight and the benches and the tables aren't
7:30
straight to each other, but it's because they wouldn't be in real
7:33
life. And I love it.
7:35
That's amazing. That's amazing.
7:37
So I guess what we're looking for is another late night doom
7:41
scroll and or sorry, joy scroll. You call it joy scroll, joy
7:44
scroll and suddenly we'll get something on your first EU
7:48
account to the house or maybe on your your NA hoard side,
7:52
depending on what works best for the theme.
7:56
And I love that for you. That is that is great that
7:59
you're finding the joy. Has it taken well, I guess you
8:04
took two days on it, but that did that like completely absorb
8:08
your two days or were you still like bounce the ground doing
8:11
some other things as well in in Warcraft?
8:15
I know I spent two days laser focused on doing my house except
8:18
for we did our raid re clear on Thursday because we always do so
8:22
that 30 minutes 45 minutes it took us to re clear the raid.
8:26
I was in the raid, but I was in our tank chat talking to my Co
8:32
tank about the stuff that I was doing So still just very much
8:36
thinking about it yeah, but it was pretty much it.
8:39
I started doing like afterwards, I was like hooked.
8:42
I, I got this weird desire to have everything on one
8:44
character. So I started like grinding old
8:47
world reps on, on my warrior, which is great.
8:50
You throw on the tabard, you go around Botanica 7 or 8 times and
8:53
you're done. And you can do that all the way
8:54
up to the end of Cataclysm for all the reps.
8:56
So definitely recommend that for anybody who's missing those reps
8:59
back there. Just go buy the tabard from the
9:01
the quartermaster and then run a couple of Botanicas.
9:05
OK. And then heading from your about
9:09
face to Lex, who and what had the initial enthusiasm?
9:13
Lex, how's housing going for you?
9:15
Oh, I was completely right about how housing was gonna go for me,
9:17
where I go in one day and I build something and then I
9:20
forget about it for months. And then I'm gonna get a bunch
9:23
of new stuff and I'm gonna be like, what if I checked out
9:25
housing at some point and then I'm gonna go do everything in
9:27
one night and then I'm gonna forget about it for months.
9:31
So yeah, I've I've forgot about it.
9:34
It's so in your cool kitchen. It just, you know, I didn't do
9:36
anything in the cool kitchen. OK OK, so in your one one day of
9:40
flurry you made a cool kitchen. Any other rooms or anything like
9:43
that? I have I, I, I so it's basically
9:46
it's identical to when we talked last time.
9:49
I have I, I think it's really cute.
9:50
I think it's really fun. I have my nice little living
9:52
room. It has a little dining room
9:53
table and also a little the desk.
9:58
And then I'm a cute little bathroom that has a tub and I
10:00
tried to like kind of approximate a toilet and sink.
10:02
I was very proud of it. That's, that's my pride and joy.
10:04
And then I'm a really big kitchen and I have a bedroom of
10:07
course. And I will say one thing that
10:10
annoys me. They might if they change this
10:11
and I missed it, I'm sorry. When you are in edit mode, you
10:17
can only. Remove.
10:18
Doors, at least I can't figure out how to open them and go
10:22
through them. So you have to every time you go
10:25
through a door, you have to go like click out edit mode, open
10:28
the door, go through it, click back into edit mode and keep
10:30
working. So you know that would be great.
10:33
Although I I will say this not to to spoiler alert the rest of
10:36
the segment, but the floating houses, which they just
10:39
introduced. I am a little intrigued by that.
10:41
Sounds very fun A. Little Why don't you just leave
10:43
all your doors open? No, when you go into edit mode
10:46
it defaults them back to shut. Oh, really?
10:48
Yeah, yeah, It's a huge. I don't have any.
10:50
I don't have any doors. There's not a lot, not not a lot
10:52
of traditional doors in Viking halls.
10:54
So I haven't experienced this. Good for you.
10:57
Honestly the bathroom was a huge pain because also I like to make
11:00
the sink kind of work. I had to kind of clip it through
11:03
the wall and anytime it like occasionally would get mad it
11:06
would be like this. There's no floor there when it
11:08
would have been fine 2 seconds ago and then I'd like go remove
11:11
everything and find it and do it all again.
11:14
It's fine though. OK, turns out you can make
11:17
fountains really small and then they kind of look like look like
11:20
sinks. I I'm sure somebody who knows
11:21
how to do like people would look at my house and they'd be like,
11:24
are you serious? Like that was your little sink
11:25
approximation. Somebody else has some beautiful
11:27
thing if my pod thought. Sorry if I'm talking to you
11:30
right. Now, yeah, I also need to eat a
11:37
lot of crow. I think last week, Sean was
11:40
you're like, oh, I've got a mattress and and like two things
11:43
and two windows and like, I was like, yeah, I don't even have
11:45
that. I spent some time hanging out
11:50
with friends. They showed me their place.
11:52
I got inspired. I completely turned around on
11:55
housing as well, just like you, Sean.
11:57
I was like, OK, I'm going to do something here.
12:00
I'm going to push through on this.
12:02
And for me, it was a matter of like, OK, by the time I look
12:07
around, your housing is like Level 3, and you could put all
12:10
these rooms in. And I remember when we tested on
12:12
the alpha, the first thing, Lex, you did was like, I'm going to
12:15
set up all these rooms. And then it's like, what the
12:17
hell are we going to do with all this space?
12:19
And it was just overwhelming. And so for me, my process
12:23
started with outside. I wanted to design an exterior.
12:29
And I did that because the outside exterior at 200 is very
12:33
limited. And honestly, I, I wanted to
12:37
like create like a patio and all that sort of stuff and, and
12:41
create that friend of the show Rolly Rods had an entire going
12:47
around his Guild and people who went in to chat and allowed him
12:52
to see their homes and showed a bunch of different things.
12:55
And so it's like, OK, I'm going to set up a garden and use a
13:00
fountain as a full size fountain instead of instead of a faucet
13:04
and create a workspace and everything and just create
13:07
something that I that I wanted for like my quote UN quote
13:12
adventurer, like a place for that he would actually go home
13:15
to. And then I started building
13:19
rooms. And like you, Sean, I didn't
13:23
want things to be in perfect square rectangles.
13:26
I really wanted a lived in cozy kind of feel that like this is a
13:32
place that somebody returned to. This isn't a place that somebody
13:34
set up as a showroom. This is some place that was
13:37
actually lived in. And so, yeah, making sure things
13:40
were at different angles, making sure that not everything was
13:42
lined up perfectly was it was a big part of it.
13:45
And it kept stories going through my head of like, oh,
13:51
like when I came back from doing whatever we did in this
13:55
expansion, like BFA or leading and stuff.
13:58
Like, let me put like a little trophy of that in the into a
14:01
room. And then like you, Lex, I was
14:04
like, how come these houses don't have bathrooms or working
14:09
toilets and stuff? And so I made not only a
14:13
adjoining joining restroom through my master bedroom, I
14:20
also made a guest bathroom downstairs as well.
14:25
And it just became this weird little thing I love.
14:28
I loved it. Just some of my friends have
14:31
done incredible, incredible things.
14:36
Right now on early access, you can get to level 5, which is a
14:40
lot of space, a lot of different rooms, a lot of budget and
14:45
people have done fantastical things with that.
14:48
I am nowhere close to that. I've used less than 800 of my
14:53
budget to slowly start putting things together.
14:57
But I think that's how I'm going to build this place.
15:00
It's going to be getting 1 little thing and be like, oh,
15:03
where can I place that? Does that fit into my home?
15:06
I still got empty corners and stuff that I want to build in,
15:10
but it's breaking the 4th wall here.
15:13
That's kind of how I live myself.
15:14
Like I just sort of like I have my couch, my TV, and then I got
15:20
it and then I went to a place and I put that on the bookshelf
15:23
and then I went to a place and I hanged that up on the wall.
15:25
But like when I first moved into my place, buck naked bare walls,
15:32
had a partner that was like, what the hell?
15:34
And I'm like, no, I just, I travel places, I get experience.
15:36
I don't bring stuff. And then she was like, you, you
15:39
should collect mementos. I'll say, OK, I'll do that.
15:42
So that's how I started building a place.
15:45
And I like that I've transferred that same sort of ethos into
15:49
World of Warcraft, that it actually supports that too.
15:52
So a lot of these things are a little memory of when I like
15:58
actually defeated this raid boss.
16:00
And so we get the like, Head of Enixia or the like Eye of Nazov.
16:05
And that's what it's actually attached to achievement.
16:07
I think those really make it feel like this is, even though
16:12
I'm sure everybody and their uncle has the head of Inixia,
16:17
that head of Inixia is when I was playing with this Guild and
16:21
we went through that and I had the quote UN quote, royal family
16:24
and all the stories that I could talk about that like really
16:29
helps connect to kind of a history of the of the world.
16:32
And I. So I'm super happy that housing
16:34
allows me to do that. And yeah, but housing has had
16:40
some updates. We've only one weekend and
16:43
they're already making some some updates based on that.
16:45
And Sean, do you want to cover this?
16:48
Yeah, So that housing budget you mentioned, it was 200, which
16:51
everybody on the planet in every Ave. they can think of has given
16:55
the feedback that they need more.
16:57
And Blizzard did say, hey, we started at 200 because we didn't
17:00
want the servers to melt. And we, we will slowly increase
17:03
that as time goes on. And so it is now unlocked when
17:06
you hit rank 3 in the renowned track, you get 250 for your,
17:11
your outside housing budget, which it only sounds like 50,
17:14
but that's a huge jump. You could do a lot more things
17:16
with that. So get your trees out there, get
17:18
your fences. And then the other thing is the
17:20
floating houses that Lex mentioned.
17:22
So people last week had figured out ways to put platforms down
17:26
and then put their house on top of the platforms and then delete
17:28
the platforms to make the houses float and blister.
17:31
Had actually just the initially planned to hot fix that as a bug
17:36
and they actually had an OPS channel set up where they were
17:38
going to shut it down. Zorbrix tweeted this on Tuesday
17:42
that the plan was to shut it down and they had somebody come
17:46
into the channel and just link 5 houses that have been made.
17:49
And they were so blown away by the creativity that instead of
17:53
removing the functionality, they made it a feature.
17:56
They said, we're going to keep it.
17:56
We're going to double down. It's now available to be done by
17:58
default. So you don't have to do the
18:00
weird pixel stacking platforms to get it.
18:02
You can just do it. And that's pretty cool.
18:05
I think that's a huge W for the team.
18:07
And you know, a lot of times we'll say, oh, fund detected and
18:10
they nerve something. But this was a case where fund
18:12
was detected and they supported it.
18:15
The dev team, the, the part of the dev team that's behind
18:18
housing has just, it's been home run after home run.
18:22
And it's so nice to see the accolades are getting.
18:27
And the, I don't know if he's the head of the housing division
18:30
or if he's just the most vocal, but there's a dev on Twitter,
18:34
His name's Jesse. And every morning I just imagine
18:37
he must wake up and scroll through Twitter and just get the
18:40
biggest smile ever. Because if his feet is anything
18:43
like mine, it's just tweet after tweet of these beautiful houses,
18:48
these beautiful designs people have made.
18:50
And now Mr. GM made an add on to help people with their cameras
18:53
so they can get smooth camera pans.
18:55
So now we're getting beautiful videos of these houses.
18:58
It just it's it's it's really nice that they housing
19:02
completely shifted the conversation away from anything
19:05
else to do with midnight. And it's strictly now in like
19:09
look at how awesome and cozy this is.
19:11
And even the people who aren't enjoying housing, you don't hear
19:14
from them. They're not out there Pooh Pooh
19:15
and people stuff. Nobody's out there like down
19:18
voting houses that are being built.
19:19
It's just pure unfiltered joy pumped right into my veins every
19:25
time I open my feeds. I love it.
19:27
I'm really glad housing is here. I can't wait for my next
19:30
inspiration to hit. That's awesome.
19:33
Don't read too far into the comments.
19:34
There's always somebody who's like, oh, they're finally
19:37
getting held and like this. There's always, there's always
19:40
somebody. I never read the comments.
19:42
Just can't just shut up and let people have their fun.
19:44
Yeah. So I'm really glad that housing
19:50
is inspiring so much joy for so many people and giving that
19:54
outlet. I think just a non competitive
19:59
form of expression in World of Warcraft is really such a such a
20:04
joy. So I'm glad for that.
20:06
Turning towards more traditional stuff though, we have raid
20:10
testing. We had a number of raid tests
20:14
over the last week, both for Mythic and over the weekend we
20:20
had normal testing as well. I did not get a chance to do the
20:24
Mythic testing just because I had to focus on real life for a
20:30
week. But I did get in some of the
20:32
normal raid testing. And Sean, I believe you also did
20:36
some mythic testing as well. I tested the first two out of
20:40
the three bosses that were sorry, I did all four of the
20:44
bosses on Thursday and then I did two of the three bosses on
20:49
Friday. I actually didn't do the last
20:52
boss. I was at that point so
20:55
frustrated with the raid testing that I left the the testing
21:01
group that I was part of. I was like, I'm just not.
21:02
I can't do anymore. I can't do this last boss.
21:05
I need to walk away because I just am at a point now where I
21:09
nothing of value will come from this for me.
21:13
So I didn't do the last boss. It was testing.
21:22
It was testing. But they have announced the just
21:26
first thing I would like to say, Blizzard, if you're listening
21:29
and you might be fasdev from myself and everybody else that I
21:34
know, like every single person who is willing and eager to test
21:39
these raid bosses. Please, for the love of all that
21:43
is holy, stop giving us 4 hour testing sessions.
21:47
Because by that fourth boss, you're not getting anything
21:51
constructive from anybody. Because we're all just like we
21:54
don't even a lot of girls don't even raid Prague for four hours
21:57
at a night. You're asking us to do 4 hours
21:59
in the middle of the day on bosses that are buggy, with UIS
22:03
that aren't functional. It's it's too much.
22:05
Please, 2 is ideal. Three if you have to.
22:10
I beg you, please stop at the 4/4 bosses in one testing
22:13
session. It's, it is awful.
22:16
It's awful and it just makes me more angry and it taints the
22:19
previous like by the time I get to that fourth boss, I'm just
22:22
like exhausted. It's like I have to do another
22:24
boss and so the ones previously just start to start to suffer.
22:32
I. Would.
22:33
Think yeah, there's no prog joy. There's no joy at all, Lex.
22:36
There's no I immediately have to log off and go look at a bunch
22:38
of housing, please. So yes, at this rate, John will
22:43
give up his sword for plowshares.
22:46
Unfortunately, yeah, but in. General though, so you asked me
22:52
about raid testing that they announced that there is new raid
22:54
testing coming on December 19th. We're doing the first 3 bosses
22:58
of the Void Spire. Again, this is mythic testing.
23:01
I'm not surprised because all three of those bosses felt very,
23:06
very not ready. Like very not ready.
23:12
I'm going to quote Stripe, who is the the GM and raid lead from
23:19
Echo, and his tweet perfectly encapsulates my feelings on the
23:24
testing that we had last week. And it was I can confirm that
23:29
these bosses do not look easy without weak auras.
23:31
They also would not look easy with weak auras.
23:37
So it was a lot, yeah. Do you feel like these are all
23:42
issues that can be tested out though?
23:43
Like, does it feel like it's just they kind of need to do a
23:45
little tweaking and like, understand how things work a
23:47
little better or are you concerned on a higher level?
23:52
I am certain that the way they look, the way they looked last
23:58
week will not be how they look when they go live in March.
24:04
I am even more certain now that's, I don't want to say
24:10
certain, but I am even more convinced now that these, the
24:14
design of these bosses started before the decision to limit the
24:19
combat API came down the pipeline and that they're now
24:23
being changed to meet the reality that they live in These
24:27
bosses, none of them feel as if they were designed from the
24:31
ground up for the new world that we live in.
24:34
And that's, that's my biggest concern is, is that they feel
24:38
like they were designed for a world where we had access to a
24:41
lot more information. So.
24:44
One thing that I noticed that changed from week to week are
24:48
tic tac toe boss the dominus when those portals like well in
24:54
mythic, there's a there you now have a bubble that you have to
24:58
pop in your and there's like the extra complication.
25:01
But when those portals did explode in previous testing on
25:06
heroic, it was this swirl of pools that came out from it.
25:10
In mythic it looked like it was more just straight shot lines
25:13
where it would go out. Yeah, yeah, it was gone.
25:19
And the the added a mechanic where you have to dispel.
25:23
So 10 people get a debuff, you need to get 5 dispels on an ad
25:28
to break its bubble so that you can then put the tank soak on it
25:30
to kill it. And you have to do this on two
25:32
different ones. There is almost not enough time
25:36
to do this. Like naturally we had we were
25:40
lucky we had which we had three, but we had two priests so we had
25:44
two master spells. First boss of the raid on mythic
25:47
should not require a 2 priest healing comp.
25:51
It should. There needs to be less of these
25:54
that you need to to debuff less the spells required.
25:57
And right now it's like a hard requirement of you need to have
26:00
two priests. This first boss just going to
26:02
say. 5 is a lot of dispels. It's a lot.
26:05
And there's, there's, it's not like they gave us extra time.
26:07
So there's like we, there's three enemies that spawn that
26:12
each have a Dome and then two of those enemies, the Dome has to
26:15
be broken and then you have to hit them with a tank soak
26:17
mechanic. The debuffs go out almost
26:20
immediately there. I think there was like 3, three
26:22
to five seconds before the tank soak comes.
26:25
So you have to be pre stacked on the first one.
26:28
You want to pop hit your five dispels.
26:31
You're just randomly dispelling people because there's no way to
26:33
pre assign this. And then if you're one of the
26:35
five who wasn't dispelled, you need to then be running to the
26:39
next one that we're going to pop while the group takes the soak.
26:43
On the first one. The tank soak happens right away
26:45
and then there is just enough time to get the boss to the next
26:49
one and have already had it popped to then put the next tank
26:52
soak on that one. It was extremely tight timing
26:56
for a first boss. It was it.
26:59
It definitely felt like it was designed with them expecting
27:01
that this coordination of who was getting dispelled when and
27:04
who was going where was going to be handled by a week.
27:06
Or is is how it felt to me. This is just on mythic, doesn't
27:11
happen on heroic. Well, I, I still maybe I'm
27:14
losing my mind. It's been a few years since I've
27:16
healed, but I'm kind of losing. Like I I'm trying to do the math
27:19
on like how long before your dispell cool down goes off.
27:24
Just. You have you have just enough
27:26
time. Yeah, it's like it can.
27:27
It cannot be done like without some sort of mass or people
27:34
helping. I don't know what kind of effect
27:36
is it? Is it a magic?
27:38
Debug so it is. But you can't.
27:40
You absolutely cannot have an extra like you have to know
27:43
exactly who is dispelling when because you only have 10 and it
27:48
takes 5 to remove the Dome, so you have to have exactly 5.
27:52
So if somebody if a warlock singes off their debuff and they
27:58
weren't supposed to, and then the five healers each dispel
28:00
one, well now you can't do the next. 4 But again, like you, you
28:07
could have them move to the position and then remove it,
28:11
which is what you need to do to do if you don't have a a mass
28:16
dispel, because it's just if they're out of position and it
28:20
gets removed, you don't get the bubble.
28:21
They have to be in position and then you dispel.
28:24
So as soon as those go out, if you, if you have quote UN quote,
28:29
well, I've assigned 5 people assigned by a week or to go over
28:32
there. That's the level of coordination
28:33
it almost feels like. Exactly.
28:37
It feels like it was designed that a week or was going to
28:40
split the group into two. Five people with a debuff, go to
28:43
1/5, go to another. That's how it felt.
28:46
Could it be changed? Yeah.
28:47
Give us more time, but then you're fundamentally changing
28:49
all of the timers of that boss to push up more time or have it
28:52
be less dispels required. You know, give 10 debuffs and it
28:55
only takes 3 to drop the there's a couple different ways it can
28:57
be done. It just it was not a good tone
29:01
set. It was the second boss of the
29:03
day that we tested. The first boss of the day was
29:06
oh, no, sorry, that was the first boss of that day, but it
29:08
was not a good tone set. It did not feel, did not feel
29:11
good at all. And none of the, I mean none of
29:14
the bosses it was it was. I have been, I have raid tested
29:18
every boss that's been testable since the first raid in Dragon
29:23
flight. So since Vault of the
29:24
Incarnates. And this was the first time that
29:27
I left early and I won't, I won't be going to the testing of
29:31
the 19th. So pretty, pretty grim from you
29:39
on that side. This is a good cause to to say,
29:45
hey, they have scheduled that additional testing.
29:48
Are these three bosses that you see here the ones that you feel
29:53
are most problematic on Mythic? No, Fallen King Salador didn't
29:59
feel Fallen King Salador wasn't terrible.
30:03
It wasn't fun, but it wasn't terrible.
30:06
It probably just needs a little bit of tweaking.
30:08
The first boss definitely needs work.
30:10
The second boss we don't even. Yeah, the second boss definitely
30:13
needs work. Because I couldn't even tell you
30:14
how the mechanics function on that second boss.
30:16
Or some things that just didn't seem to be working at all.
30:18
You soak an orb and it's supposed to cause the circle to
30:21
be less big than it when it explodes, and it just wasn't the
30:24
size just wasn't changing it. So yeah, I don't know what.
30:28
And like both Dragons, when we tested it in Heroic, one dragon
30:32
was in the air and one was on the ground, and then they
30:34
switched. But when we tested it on Mythic,
30:35
both were just on the ground to start, so I don't know if that
30:39
was intentional or if that was a bug or or what.
30:42
Feel like if it was a bug they would have either fixed it in
30:45
later part parts of the testing or they would have shut it down
30:49
and be like hey it's not testable in this form because
30:50
it's the hard bug. That we get awful yeah, I don't
30:55
know. I don't know.
30:56
So I I don't think they're the worst.
30:57
I think the first the the dream rift boss I think is by far the
31:02
was in the worst state. I there's just so many issues
31:06
with that boss. I don't even know how to
31:07
describe it. But yeah, these were these two
31:12
of these three were not great. Fallen king was OK.
31:16
OK. So then I'm glad that they're
31:20
doing another round of testing that they are that are bringing
31:24
them back. I'm hoping that they do do see
31:26
improvements. As for my normal testing, it
31:31
wasn't as threatening as Mythic. Obviously I've difficulty aside,
31:41
I find that these fights don't feel compelling, like there's
31:48
not a strong narrative to what's going on in it.
31:51
In these fights, they just seem like mechanics that are put
31:55
together. It might be just my bias of
31:59
like, well, this is no name dominus #4 and this is that.
32:04
So like when we get to something like the light blind, and I
32:09
won't say anything more just because I want to avoid
32:12
spoilers, but the light blind, I know those characters, but it
32:18
still just seems like a spasm of like different glowing effects.
32:24
And I liked how when we were doing the demon hunters in our
32:32
current raid right now that it felt like Demon Hunter abilities
32:38
that were being done. The light, the light blinded
32:42
doesn't have the exactly the same thing.
32:45
There are a few hammers flying around and so forth that are
32:49
like, OK, that's there. And I guess I wouldn't want
32:52
puddles lasting forever, but they, they kind of do, which
32:57
makes me feel like our regular guys boost.
33:02
And so like that's the one that I more closely say is like, oh,
33:06
this is, this is a, a story because the narrative's there
33:09
and because the abilities more closely relate to something that
33:12
I, that I know. But so many of these fights feel
33:16
just there to fill in the space. Like, I'm Boss six, I'm Boss 7
33:22
and I, I, I think that the team has done better in the past.
33:27
I'm hoping with some shifts that this will be more compelling.
33:31
Maybe it's a it's a matter of tuning, because like when the
33:35
fight is tuned just right, that like, stuff that doesn't seem as
33:39
compelling isn't as important. And the stuff that's compelling
33:42
are the things you got to pay attention to.
33:45
Yeah, that can be, that can be a great fight even if there isn't
33:49
a full cohesion. But I I just don't feel like
33:51
there's a cohesion. John, any like comment on that?
33:59
No, it just feels like it feels like I'm doing a raid from Wrath
34:03
or BC. the IT, it feels like that design like that.
34:06
That's yeah, I bet the asthma gold crowd would love these
34:11
raids. So that's, you know, it's two
34:14
mechanics, mechanics you have to only have one of the time to
34:17
deal with. So just it's it's disheartening
34:21
for me because Manafort Omega is one of the the best raids I
34:25
think I've ever done. And it has arguably my favorite
34:29
boss ever and two other bosses that were like they're in the
34:33
the pantheon of great bosses, you know, in forge Weaver and
34:36
Nexus king. And then dementia is obviously
34:39
the one I was talking about being the being my favorite ever
34:41
it and coming out of the raid testing for Manafort, like I
34:44
came from that raid testing thing like this, I was like, I
34:46
have I have receipts where I said this raid is going to be
34:49
amazing. These bosses feel ready.
34:51
This feels awesome. Now, maybe it's because we're
34:54
three months away from the raid launch that these bosses don't
34:57
feel as polished. And maybe there is more that's
34:59
going to go into them and they're going to be drastically
35:01
different by March. But as it stands right now, you
35:06
know it's on par with how I felt about Sepulchre and I, spoiler
35:10
alert, did not love that raid. So we'll see.
35:16
OK. I don't, I don't think that this
35:17
is anywhere close to as bad as your as you might paint it.
35:24
I feel that. Like obviously I didn't do many
35:29
times. I was running through heroic, I
35:30
was running through normal. How many times in normal or
35:33
heroic did you ever have to deal with more than a single mechanic
35:36
at a time? That's BC and Rath error rating
35:42
1 mechanic at a time. I I would say that even if I was
35:48
in like Mist of Pandaria, which has a number of fights that I
35:52
love, Lei Shen was amazing. I felt that the garage fight was
35:58
also was also quite a feat that was still like an evolving
36:05
fight. But one big thing that you're
36:06
dealing with at a time, maybe like you would have issues where
36:09
it's like, oh, we've let these ads last too long or we've got
36:13
the balls rolling across and we haven't quite cleaned up exactly
36:17
what we needed to and that would cause issues.
36:19
But obviously there's like the tank Buster that's going to
36:24
force this switch and stuff that's that's quasi overlapping
36:28
and these fights have that as well.
36:29
I don't think that I want to go all the way back to Wrath and
36:32
BC, but I would put this at like Mr. Pandaria, Warlords of Dre,
36:38
Noor in terms of like what add on what it's throwing at me.
36:44
I think that's a more fair thing.
36:46
OK, so just 15 years old instead of 20.
36:50
All right. I'm happy to settle there.
36:56
But but again, mileage may vary what what they do with this new
37:03
era. I think you might be right.
37:06
It is something where they're trying to triage things that are
37:09
based on what the new reality is rather than being truly built up
37:14
from from the ground up, which kind of points back to like
37:18
maybe they should have just allowed an overlap for a for a
37:21
season. But we'll leave that aside
37:26
again. Friday, December 19th, we've got
37:29
three fights starting at 2:00 Eastern Standard. 3 fights will
37:36
be a Verizian Voracius and Fallen King salad bar.
37:43
And I will say it just because I know Sean was avoiding saying it
37:47
for so long, but we got to actually say what fights these
37:50
are anyways there. Was the first three in the voids
37:53
bar. Is Fallen king in the first
37:56
three? I thought it was a bit a little
37:57
bit later. No, first three.
37:59
OK. Yeah, so there, Manny.
38:01
I did tell the people. Yeah, you avoided their names,
38:03
is what I was saying. Don't.
38:04
Don't assume our. Listeners were.
38:06
Intelligent. Enough to know who the first 3
38:08
bosses were. Yeah.
38:10
You assumed our listeners were dumb.
38:12
I assumed our listeners were intelligent.
38:14
You're welcome, listeners. OK.
38:15
Well, Sean, if you want to congratulate our wonderful,
38:18
wonderful listeners, they're amazing intelligence and of
38:22
course, they're continued patronage, could you do a little
38:25
thing? OK, I want to give a personal,
38:28
heartfelt thank you to all of our patrons, but especially to
38:32
Louis F. Or Louis F if you're French.
38:35
Maybe for hearing my cry last week of begging someone to join
38:39
the Patreon so that I wasn't confused again by what was
38:41
written in my script. For Azeroth Will Always Be Free,
38:44
but if you enjoy the content we produce, please consider
38:46
pledging to our Patreon at patreon.com/for Azeroth.
38:49
And if you're a patron and you join the For Azeroth Discord at
38:53
Bit dot LY slash Fast Discord, you now have access to a very
38:56
new Patreon hangout text channel where we mostly just shit talk,
39:01
but it's fun and you can hang out with us there if you don't
39:04
want to be a Patreon. If you don't have a Patreon,
39:06
that's cool, we get it. If you also wanted to support
39:08
the show, you could give us a five star review on your podcast
39:11
listening platform of choice, Apple iTunes or Spotify based on
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our demographics where most of you are couple of iHeartRadio
39:17
listeners out there. We see you and Goodreads welcome
39:21
in both of you and go ahead and leave us a review and help the
39:24
show get found by more people and we would love to get more
39:27
FAZ inside more bodies. Well, I feel like, I feel like
39:32
it's assuming this is the Lewis FI.
39:33
Think it's the Lewis FI feel like he deserves.
39:35
Also a little bit of an extra special shout out because this
39:38
man has been a real one on Spotify for ages.
39:42
Assuming I'm the same, Lewis leaves like a number of comments
39:48
and everything on Spotify. Yeah, it's the same.
39:50
It's the same, yeah. Super nice I I went through like
39:54
a little phase when I was feeling a little.
39:56
Maybe this is a peek behind the curtain too much, but sometimes
39:58
feeling a little bit sad about. Things and it was always very
40:03
nice to go on and see like oh look I.
40:07
Love it, he likes. Episode so thank you Lewis.
40:09
I appreciate you my man. Is he the one that said I was
40:12
negative and incoherent? No, of course, he said.
40:14
You were negative and incoherent.
40:15
He's. Checking.
40:17
He's checking. You're still listening,
40:19
commenter. I grabbed myself to sleep.
40:24
This compared to You've already forgotten their names like you
40:26
were. It wasn't that important.
40:28
Manny, I can't remember the name of every bot that says I'm
40:30
negative and incoherent. I do also appreciate the fact
40:31
that like I was in here being like, this is somebody who
40:34
always has the sweetest comments and you're like, yeah, I met Lex
40:36
is reading like Sean is negative and incoherent and he like,
40:39
thank you so much for saying. That Lex needed to pick me up.
40:44
But yes, obviously we read your comments.
40:47
We, we appreciate your support. And with that, we're going to
40:51
turn towards dungeons, which have been getting some dynamic
40:56
changes over the last week. They were away for Thanksgiving,
41:00
they came back. And this week we've got a new
41:03
list of dungeons to test as well as a number of fixes to the
41:08
dungeons. So this week we've got the Pit
41:10
of Throne. We have three other dungeons
41:14
that I cannot remember off the top of my head.
41:16
I'm sure Sean will point it out eventually, but we've seen a lot
41:21
of changes for all of these dungeons just in general.
41:25
Some repeated trends have been that many abilities have been
41:29
reworked either to add further mechanical clarity.
41:33
Sean, you were talking about those birds that were igniting
41:38
and turn the ash and then being reignite.
41:41
We were talking about like, what is that Venn diagram and how
41:44
frustrating a fight that would be.
41:46
They completely rework the visuals on that to be an egg
41:50
that gets highlighted when it is in danger of being reignited.
41:55
The when the guys first land, they don't just immediately
42:00
ignite the rest of them. They have a decay time so that
42:04
they will eventually die as well.
42:07
So it's it's a lot better, it's a lot less frustrating.
42:12
They have heard the cries from people giving their feedback.
42:16
People just like you. As long as you're not just
42:19
complaining into the void, they're listening to feedback
42:23
and the list of changes have been amazing It for these
42:27
dungeons increased cast times for things.
42:32
Something that was like instant cast, that was a three second
42:34
cast. Some things that were like 2
42:36
seconds got doubled to four. We're seeing along with the
42:41
damage profiles being changed, we're seeing rot damage instead
42:45
of being like just like intense quick rot damage extended it out
42:49
a little bit. And then that same amount of
42:52
damage is over a long period of time.
42:55
That gives you more time to actually heal.
42:57
That's an adjustment based on all of the burst healing that
43:01
they were talking about last week.
43:02
I mean, like, oh, we got to bring that back.
43:05
Well, then they also change the dungeon so that you don't have
43:09
to quickly heal it to everything that's happening.
43:14
The last thing that I want to point out is the Dragons in
43:19
Algathar Academy, also one of the dungeons being tested this
43:22
week. Instead of shooting out two
43:24
clones or images that do the whirlwinds, now it's only one
43:29
that's far less space denial means that these done that these
43:35
Dragons without adjusting, they're like flat out how much
43:39
damage it's doing are are less dangerous, less less threatening
43:45
to pushing people out of range or denying melee or forcing you
43:49
to run into it in the next pack at that last little bit there.
43:52
And I love this change it. I didn't even think about it,
43:56
but it's so elegant when you see it online.
43:59
John, what's your thoughts on these changes?
44:04
WS across the board, yeah, They addressed almost everything we
44:07
complained about, not complaining about.
44:08
They didn't complain. Everything we whinged about,
44:11
they oh, that's worse. Whinging.
44:13
Yeah, Whinging is worse. I thought that was the.
44:15
Joke. Yeah, that was the joke.
44:18
All of our feedback was addressed almost directly in in
44:21
Pit of Sauron and Skyreach specifically.
44:24
We didn't really have any feedback for Seed of the
44:26
Triumvirate or Algathar. We had some for Algathar Academy
44:29
and they didn't address all of the Algathar Academy stuff.
44:31
But no, it's a it's a win across the board.
44:34
Yeah, this is it's the worst. Terrible.
44:39
Yeah, it's over. The season's over.
44:42
Really happy with with these changes.
44:44
Great communication from the team.
44:46
I'd like to get more than just four dungeons a week that I'm
44:49
sure is coming at some point, but we're back to testing these
44:51
ones. So it'll be good to test these
44:53
this week to see these changes, see how they feel.
44:56
And hopefully this means that the dungeons from last week are
44:58
coming out with their own set of changes when they recycle back
45:00
in again next week for the Christmas break.
45:03
If you can give us all 8, that would be great because I
45:06
understand that you're taking two weeks off Blizzard, but not
45:08
I'm not, so I need something to do.
45:11
So please let me have access to all eight of the Season 1
45:13
dungeons. Just me.
45:16
Yeah, just flag my account. That works for me.
45:19
Sean, why don't you, why don't you come visit me as a friend or
45:22
family? Go visit family, spend some time
45:25
with friends and family over the vacation time.
45:27
You don't need these dungeons. Manny, visiting you would cost
45:30
me somewhere in the range of seven to $800.00, so.
45:34
I get it. I'm not worth it.
45:35
I get. It I'm going to how much how
45:36
much did Louis F donate to the Patreon?
45:39
Is there something you're not telling us?
45:44
But no, I'm really excited. The changes look good.
45:47
The the ones in sky rage specifically they, you know,
45:49
they added visual effects that were missing that needed to be
45:51
there, which we we expected they would.
45:53
And this seeing how quickly they turned around some of the stuff
45:57
from the dungeons and there's still work that needs to be
45:59
done, especially in the UI side of it where we're getting there.
46:02
But seeing them just with this quick turn around in the
46:04
dungeons, it gives me hope that they'll be able to do the same
46:08
in the raid. We just need to see it.
46:10
We need to see a patch note that says, I, I wish with the
46:12
announcement of raid testing, it would say, here's some changes
46:15
we made to this boss so that we have an idea we're going in
46:19
because you go in blind in every situation.
46:21
So you're like, OK, well, what happens?
46:23
OK, well was and like in some cases it's like was there any
46:26
changes at all or we just now seeing if the damage meter is
46:29
tracking dispels because it wasn't last week.
46:33
So you know it's it's you turn on the little dispelled thing
46:37
and just nothing shows people are dispelling.
46:39
I see debuffs from being removed, but nothing is in this
46:41
little meter. I.
46:42
Once again, point to our proactive feedback sign.
46:47
Let me, let me tap that and yeah.
46:51
Yeah, but if they let us know what what the change over?
46:52
No, this this looks good. Dungeons look good.
46:54
I'm happy for the changes. They're they're staying agile.
46:58
We should stay agile as, as list as testers, which is what we are
47:02
at this point. So it's really going to be like
47:05
a joint joint. Thing cooperative effort.
47:12
Yeah, yeah, there we go for the for the for this season,
47:15
especially Season 1, they're doing such a big thing, they're
47:18
making such big changes. They need as much from us as we
47:21
can give them to make sure that it's good.
47:22
And if we want it to be good, we need to be giving that feedback
47:25
and helping. If you don't want it to be good,
47:27
just quietly build your house until it launches and then
47:30
complain that it's bad. Or give the reverse feedback
47:33
like be like, I actually want 5 whirlwinds.
47:36
I think that would be a lot prettier.
47:38
Just to confuse things, shake them up.
47:40
You will not be able to guess what podcast you listen to.
47:42
Don't you worry about that. That's right, you'll have no
47:46
idea. I don't.
47:47
Know the next. Three points this person's going
47:48
to make. Yeah, immediately that sounds
47:51
like a lexer Ants comment. OK, let's let's little little
47:58
sidebar, because some people in content creation were upset
48:03
about that little comment for me and about like yeah, yeah, it it
48:08
and I and some is not just like one or two.
48:11
There was, there's some people who took umbrage with that.
48:14
And to those people, I want to say it was something you should
48:19
take as a compliment. Your words reach people.
48:23
Your words influence people. One might start to call you an
48:27
influencer somewhere along the line.
48:31
And I need you to understand that what you should take away
48:34
is not my audience is stupid and just parrots what I say.
48:39
What you should take away is that your words hold power and
48:43
maybe you should talk with some nuance.
48:45
Maybe not everything should be anger and snark.
48:50
And I, I, I hate you all and they all need to be fired.
48:54
Maybe like some reasoning should be in your discussion.
48:58
That's it. That's my soapbox.
49:00
I'm off of it. Pass it along.
49:02
See. I can't.
49:05
Content creator, am I just a Leo?
49:07
Because if I learned that somebody could immediately like
49:11
somebody was saying something and somebody else not only was
49:14
the first person saying something that I said, but
49:17
somebody else could recognize they said something that I said
49:19
that is like the pinnacle of my existence.
49:22
Like if that if that ever occurred.
49:23
So much validation I. I've won.
49:25
I've won content creation. I'm taught.
49:29
Yeah, like literally we had how many people messaging being like
49:33
it's a lot in the discord on the thing that's already happened
49:37
that made. Me so happy.
49:39
And it's still like people are going back through the catalog
49:41
and doing it's happening on episodes where we don't even ask
49:43
for it to happen. It's like people, Lex has a has
49:46
an episode in the middle of one of our recordings.
49:49
And the next time that goes live, people are like, oh, Lex
49:52
needs to hear that. It's a lot.
49:53
We should. I love our listeners.
49:56
Yeah, they're the best. They're the best.
49:59
I'm not going to touch that because I have I'm supposed to
50:03
have a good working relationship with content creators, so I
50:05
won't say how I feel about people who took that
50:07
offensively. You can like I wasn't I like I
50:13
feel. Just going to let them live in
50:14
their little boxes. OK.
50:17
All right. Now, now I kind of want to now I
50:21
wonder who you were talking to on the last weekly lever.
50:25
I'm sure you record those live, though.
50:27
I could possibly figure that out.
50:29
No, no, no relation. No relation.
50:31
Just coincidence. Anyways, that's going to do it
50:35
for us today. I've got some housing to get
50:38
back to. One thing I definitely want is
50:42
after I finish talking with you, Lex, Sean, I want a picture of
50:45
your house and we're going to make it the.
50:47
We're going to make it the thumbnail, the with the long
50:51
haul, the Viking long haul, that is going to be the thumbnail for
50:54
this episode. But until next time guys, may
50:58
all your hits be good.