Latest / For Azeroth!: A World of Warcraft Podcast / #299 - For Azeroth!: “Anniversary Angst”

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#299 - For Azeroth!: “Anniversary Angst” · For Azeroth!: A World of Warcraft Podcast

0:00
Yeah, no worries. I'll edit that part out later.
0:01
You'll never know, but you at least get to say that you did
0:06
say it, even if it never made it to anybody's ears for the Karen
0:09
tour for Pandaria. For calendar to.
0:16
The burning region for Gilneus or have not died for the Lich
0:23
King. For the.
0:26
Sindori for the Alliance for the Horn for Azeroth.
0:35
Hello and welcome to another episode of For Azeroth.
0:39
I am one of your hosts Manny AKA the true villain Manny and I am
0:44
joined by Lex. Lex, how has the World of
0:47
Warcraft been treating you? It's been treating me good,
0:50
Manny. I am reminded of why I don't
0:54
usually sweat in World of Warcraft because I burn out real
0:58
freaking fast. So I am backing off a little
1:01
bit. I spent most of this week
1:04
reading Play Nice, which is very fun.
1:06
I have many thoughts. If anyone wants to hear my
1:08
thoughts on Twitter, I probably won't tweet them, but you can
1:10
ask me for them and I'll tell you them.
1:13
And I also played a little bit of the anniversary, which is
1:17
very fun and we'll talk about later, But I was having a good
1:19
little time. Oh.
1:20
Man, OK, I think I've hit a bit of burnout too.
1:25
Now that now that you're, you're saying it like the last couple
1:28
of, well, you know what, like part of it's just been because
1:31
I've been busier in other things.
1:36
So I just haven't had the time to play as much as I would have
1:40
liked. And then because my time is
1:42
being squished and that makes it harder to fit in everything that
1:44
I would want to fit in. It's made it less enjoyable to
1:53
like go at my own pace because now I have this checklist of
1:57
things that I, that I'm falling behind on and so forth.
2:00
So like I man, it's weird. OK, so I was doing really well
2:09
getting contracts every week, pushing my renown and I fell off
2:14
the last couple of weeks. I didn't get a contract.
2:16
I think the last last week, the week before I didn't do half the
2:22
world quest that I would normally do.
2:24
This week I didn't pick up a contract at all.
2:26
And we're now halfway through the week, so I've probably lost
2:29
it. So lost like a bunch of world
2:31
quests as well. So I've fallen behind where I
2:35
would have been if I had kept things up.
2:38
That said, I am 23 with most renowns.
2:43
The track ends at 25 and the one that's lagging behind is only at
2:46
20. I say that in that way because I
2:51
don't want to say like, oh I've fallen behind and stuff because
2:54
I have friends that are nowhere near that.
2:56
I have friends that are like who have completed the track, but
3:00
for me, I wanted to get those flying mounts and I'm a mountain
3:04
collector, so 23 was the big hit and I I got that this week.
3:09
I can pretty much relax except we've got this new patch that
3:17
hit and new activities to do. I haven't done any of the other
3:23
farming. Like my usual pattern is that I
3:27
will go pretty hardcore. I, I will go into my version of
3:31
being a sweat for the first little bit to like get all the
3:37
power that I can to get to the, the level that that I need to.
3:42
And then it sort of shifts into a maintenance mode.
3:45
And while I'm in that kind of maintenance mode, I will be
3:49
doing all of this sort of side stuff.
3:52
So it's not that I play less, it's just that like my focus
3:54
sort of shifts and it's like I don't need to do like a bunch of
3:59
keys and all the delves and plug into a bunch of raids to finish
4:05
anything that I that I've missed.
4:07
So I will go and I will hunt down mounts from like past EX
4:11
dimensions and and so forth. The cadence pretty much since
4:18
Dragonflight hasn't has been fast enough that I have had less
4:23
time to get into that mode. And maybe that's part of why I'm
4:27
the sort of like, oh, I haven't had the breather.
4:30
Yeah, that is true. That especially after everything
4:33
that happened with Shadow Lands, they started working really hard
4:36
to make sure that they were constantly pushing content,
4:40
right, Even if it was a story. I will say right now feels very
4:45
busy to me too. The fact that we're, you know,
4:48
still only in Season 1 of a new expansion and all of a sudden we
4:52
actually have double, you know, double raids and all of these
4:56
other activities, which luckily are giving some things like
4:58
delve keys. I didn't I realized that it was
5:01
it was going to overlap in that way and like some gear and
5:03
stuff. So it's the same things as as
5:05
the the chest that you would have gotten had you been doing
5:08
more stuff in Dornagall proper. But it it does feel like there's
5:15
a lot right? Like I'm still kind of at the
5:17
point where I'm, I've gotten my feet more or less under me with
5:21
the new, the, the new content, but I was just kind of getting
5:26
into the swing of it and now it's like, and here's even more
5:29
content to do. Well, let's dive into it because
5:35
it's Wednesday. Yesterday we got a new patch and
5:39
with that new patch we got the big anniversary patch.
5:43
So this is 11.0 point five that is hit.
5:46
And with that, we've got the anniversary event grounds right
5:53
in front of the Cavern of Time. It all of the stuff that we were
5:59
talking about last week. We've had a day, an evening
6:05
because it came up late in NA to get our first taste of it.
6:10
And So what have you experienced so far?
6:15
So I did a lot of running around the fairgrounds itself, right?
6:19
I did all the entry level quests, the talking to everyone,
6:22
you know, going and figuring out where everything is.
6:25
I hung out a little bit with, I did fashion Frenzy and I got two
6:28
votes for my outfit, which was nowhere near winning, but I
6:30
felt, and I ran around with a little Otter for a while, which
6:34
is very fun if you're a Demon Hunter because you get wings.
6:37
If you drop like you can, you can glide and you get little,
6:39
stupid little demon wings. It's amazing.
6:42
And then I hung out with the bounce and I remember that I'm
6:44
not a mount collector because I couldn't show any of the ones
6:47
that they were everyone else was showing.
6:49
But it was cute. It was fun because everyone was
6:50
like putting on their mounts at the same time and it felt like a
6:52
big fun group activity. I did, I will say I did the
6:56
Anchorage event, which I was saying I was very excited for
7:01
because Anchorage was something that I missed in Classic,
7:04
obviously, and I'm sure this is known to everyone else.
7:07
I don't really PTRI don't really do a lot of testing.
7:10
So I don't know if this was available on the PTR, but I went
7:15
in expecting that it was going to be like a cool, you know,
7:18
this the nostalgia trip from classic.
7:22
And it was a a little bit of a, shall we say, nostalgia trip
7:26
from a couple months ago because it was virtually identical to
7:30
the pre patch event I thought, which I am feeling a little bit
7:35
salty about. I am like, that was one of the
7:37
more boring free patches we've had and we decided to copy and
7:41
paste it into a scenario. But not everything is for
7:44
everyone and not everything is for me.
7:46
And so it's OK. How are you feeling about it,
7:48
Manny? I mean, like I will say that
7:52
like there's got to be some restraint on how often and how
7:56
quickly you go back to a well. Yeah.
8:00
Like I I think you're you were discounting your criticism too
8:04
quickly there. It it is very odd for them to do
8:10
an event that is structured so similar to the pre patch event
8:15
and use the same graphical cues. To me, it would have been so
8:22
much better for them to pull a graphical cue from somewhere
8:26
else just to at least not immediately remind people of
8:32
that, of like that same sort of event.
8:38
So I can understand the disappointment with that.
8:43
I think there's a lot of people who are somewhat disappointed,
8:49
but for me I think that it's way too early to have drawn the
8:56
conclusions yet. Because we haven't done the time
8:58
walking, I haven't had a chance to jump into the raid, which
9:03
some people like. The majority of of the buzz that
9:08
I've heard from social media is that it's overtuned, that it is
9:11
difficult, that you will get roughly 3 bosses in and then it
9:15
will suddenly jump up in difficulty and be a much harder
9:19
experience. So my team wasn't rushing in
9:22
there. We did our RE clear yesterday,
9:26
getting 7 out of eight. So we'll go deal with Anzerek
9:30
later. We're going to do a third grade
9:33
day to give this a try, and I'm glad that it's there, but it
9:39
also feels like a lot of teams are still quite entrenched in
9:45
their progress, and if it wasn't for this being tied to the
9:50
anniversary, this could have come out later.
9:54
Yeah, well, and I think I've complained about this on this
9:57
podcast before. 10 to 15 people is an awkward number, right?
10:02
Because it's if you aren't at a full 20 on your raid team, it's
10:08
hard to split. Like one thing that we're
10:10
talking about on my team is that we tend to hit around I think
10:13
like 16-17 people, which means what we're probably going to
10:16
have to do is we're probably going to have to divide and pug,
10:18
which is fine, but isn't really ideal, right?
10:22
Like either we're going to sit people or we're going to have to
10:24
pug people, which usually like we are pretty aggressively anti
10:28
pugging people because, you know, we are really like the the
10:32
point of raid night for us is that it's the time that you're
10:34
hanging out with your buddies and the people that you know and
10:36
that have, you know, gone through the whole testing
10:39
process that the officers have to make sure everything is happy
10:41
and joyful. Would you know, it's not to say
10:43
anything bad about pugs. I've been a pug, but that's
10:46
something. Known it's just a random element
10:48
that you don't want to introduce into it.
10:50
Right, especially since we're hoping to do this as like a true
10:52
progression, right? Like we have heard it's harder
10:55
than expected. So we already had a bonus raid
10:57
night that we were going to be jumping into.
11:00
Usually we do like re clear or clean up things that we've done
11:03
previously, but it's not a required raid night.
11:06
And so we're going to turn that into our Black Rock deaths
11:08
night, which is very exciting and very fun, but it is going to
11:12
get a little bit awkward. And also, you know, if teams
11:14
kind of developed different straps or different ways of
11:16
going through fights, it'll be hard if we have to shuffle that
11:19
around. So I, I never loved the decision
11:22
to make it such a small window of, of numbers of players.
11:27
And as I'm thinking about this as a, as a raid officer, I'm
11:30
liking it less and less. I'm sure that there were reasons
11:32
they had to do that, but like, I think it, it's a little
11:35
uncomfortable. That's just my take though.
11:39
The reason that it's 10 to 15 is I don't believe it's a
11:44
programming thing. I literally think it's a space
11:47
thing though. Like BlackRock depths isn't
11:51
built for a large large team. Like I believe it was originally
11:59
A10 or A-15 man raid. Oh, fascinating, that makes
12:03
sense. So they may have been like, OK,
12:05
we're going to adjust scaling and allow you to go win it in
12:09
with as little as 10 people. But pushing it above 15, there's
12:15
not space for people to be actually be in some of these
12:19
environments. Yeah, that is fair.
12:23
And so I think I believe that's the case.
12:30
I would love to hear from the fast listeners.
12:32
Let me know if I'm smoking something.
12:34
That was way back in vanilla, 20 years ago now.
12:41
I was incredibly new to rating. My first rating experience was
12:47
out of combat rezing. So I would stand making sure I
12:51
didn't get into combat and when somebody would die it would like
12:54
send them a rez with my shaman. That was my entire contribution
12:58
to the raid. Rating was a different beast
13:01
back then. Lex.
13:03
Oh. God I love that's so much.
13:05
I'm glad you got that experience.
13:07
It's like when you have an intern that's so cute.
13:10
That's that's pretty it like it was it was something else.
13:15
Anyway, I like I like that they're they brought this back.
13:24
I think that they could have actually staggered the raid
13:27
release a little bit later, just because when we're dealing with
13:34
all these things to do, staggering things out helps.
13:38
Like we aren't doing time walking right now.
13:40
We haven't had a chance to do any of the time walking dungeons
13:45
that are supposedly coming later.
13:48
This week's This Week is What's the weekly quest this week?
13:56
There definitely is one for Black Rock depth.
13:59
Oh, I think it's just killing the world bosses.
14:02
Right, OK, so sorry. So there the there isn't a time
14:08
walking week quest and that's coming later.
14:12
You could have had the raid, even though they have the BRD
14:16
this week, they they could have put it off to something else and
14:20
just given us the go do world events.
14:23
The fair will count towards the world events and that would
14:25
encourage people to do the do the fair next week where they
14:33
introduce something else. We're going to have dark Moon
14:35
fair coming because we're literally going into November,
14:40
right? And then space out because it's
14:41
going to be here 3, three months through till like well, more two
14:46
months in a bit because it's 10 weeks.
14:49
So it's going to be going through till January.
14:53
There's lots, lots of time. I'm surprised at the rate is so
14:56
difficult because it's going through all of these holiday
14:59
times, but considering also that we're going to have three months
15:05
to Prague or other 10 weeks to Prague through this.
15:09
I guess it does. It's nice that it has a bit of
15:11
difficulty to it and that you can you can give that stuff for
15:16
people who genuinely are done with the challenge.
15:20
So I just I see it as an extra, but it also feels like there's a
15:23
lot of there's a lot of, oh, the new stuff and I want to do it
15:27
and but I haven't finished with the old stuff.
15:30
This is a situation that we haven't had since like what?
15:34
I guess recently it was Legion, definitely Warlords going from
15:42
the first raid into BlackRock. Foundry seemed really quick to
15:50
go between that and I guess Mr. Pandaria when they were doing
15:55
the three raids in the first tier that kept on like
15:58
releasing. You're like, Oh my goodness, I
16:00
don't think I had enough time to get through to get to the next
16:04
one. So like we've been in this
16:05
situation before. I think it's the lesser of
16:08
evils. I'd rather be like all this,
16:10
there's all this stuff to do, but how do I deal with the
16:14
burnout? Let's how are you dealing with
16:15
the burnout? Like you're just stepping away
16:17
and be like, I'm going to, I'm going to read a book, guys.
16:19
I need to look at something other than the screen.
16:21
Yeah, I'm being very conscious of the fact that this is a video
16:27
game that I play for fun. And I've, I've done this in the
16:29
past with different activities. I, I think I even sat on this
16:34
podcast. I did this with time walking or
16:36
time running. Excuse me, where if I am playing
16:40
World of Warcraft and I realize that I am just not having fun, I
16:45
log off. There is obviously there are
16:47
exceptions. One of the reasons that I'm
16:49
feeling kind of burnt out is that I, I hit a couple of
16:54
dungeon walls. There was one Arakara dungeon.
16:59
I sending so much love and affection to the people who did
17:02
that Arakara with me because it was vicious.
17:07
Like I think it took almost an hour and a half for us to get
17:09
through and it was all my fault. It was like entirely just that I
17:12
was positioning wrong. Anyway, I won't get into it, but
17:15
like, obviously I'm not going to be like I'm not having fun.
17:18
Bye besties log off when I'm doing something with people.
17:23
But more so I realized after that like, oh God, like I'm not
17:28
looking at mythic plus in this moment as like this joyful thing
17:32
that I am super excited to do anymore.
17:34
It's become, Oh, it's a day that I have a couple hours in the
17:38
evening. That means it's time to get on
17:39
and do M plus because I need to work on my M plus because I need
17:41
to grind up and I need to be a better tank.
17:42
I need to I need to learn all the dungeons and I don't do M
17:44
plus. I'm not going to be able to keep
17:45
moving. I'm not going to be able to keep
17:47
grinding. And when I noticed that I'm
17:48
getting into that mindset, I stop.
17:51
I take a night off, I read a book, I watch TVI go for a walk.
17:57
Not anymore because it gets dark at like 4:00 now.
18:00
Not that's not true 6, but still it's very early.
18:04
I I prioritize the other things in my life that bring me joy.
18:07
And I remember that this is a fun little game that I play
18:11
because it is fun and it makes me happy and it lets me relax
18:13
and it lets me, you know, get excited about things and learn
18:17
things. And when it ceases to be that,
18:19
it is ceasing to do its job and I need to put it aside.
18:22
OK, OK. For me, I look for story because
18:26
I really when I am most having fun is like when there are new
18:30
moments and stuff and we've had the disc weeklies that happen
18:34
every couple of weeks where it's like a new little bit of lore
18:38
that we get. But it it doesn't, it's not
18:41
quite satisfying because it's such a small amount.
18:44
Like it's like there are some revelations and I, I do love
18:48
talking about about those, but I'm really looking forward to
18:53
the next patch, next major patch because I want the next part of
18:58
this story. We started so strong with the
19:02
questing, the story and all of that.
19:05
I was hoping that maybe there was some time gated story or
19:09
story that was behind renown and such.
19:12
Unfortunately, that hasn't been the case, but that just means
19:19
that it more than I'm looking forward to and I will say that
19:25
there are some stuff with this patch that are encrypted there's
19:31
the dalarans survivors that are going around the city that are
19:35
more prominent now that we're in 11 point O .5.
19:38
There is one particular survivor that has a quest marker on them
19:45
that is silver and I don't know what will open that up, but that
19:50
was encrypted on the PTR so nobody could tell.
19:52
I'm looking forward to seeing that.
19:55
And of course they are already feeding the next story, so there
20:00
is a lot to talk about with that that makes me excited for where
20:04
this is going for it. But 11 point O .5 came with
20:10
unfortunately a lot of rough edges.
20:14
Now the patch issues are pretty varied and pretty and pretty
20:20
wild. I want to say before we get too
20:25
deep into this, I expect that that many of these issues are
20:29
going to be dealt with fast. A big issue is that many of the
20:35
hot fixes that we have seen all the way through the initial part
20:41
of this expansion did not get merged with the PTR patch.
20:46
And so when the PTR patch came on to life, it actually wiped
20:50
out a lot of that progression that we've seen.
20:52
And so a lot of teams have seen like a bit of regression or a
20:57
lot of classes have seen a lot of the like the benefits that
21:01
they had been getting over the this first part kind of just
21:06
torn back from them. So shadow priests are really
21:09
hurting right now. And they were also some quality
21:17
of life changes that they were making that caused some
21:22
unintended buffs and nerves. And a lot of people were
21:26
wondering, well, why in the world is arcane getting such a
21:32
huge buff? And it was like double digits,
21:34
like 11 or something, 11 or 12% DPS buff and arcane was doing
21:40
fine. Why in the world are they
21:41
getting that? Why in the world are DKS, blood
21:44
DKS getting such a hit when they are not?
21:46
Like the tank and lizard did a quick hot fix that came out just
21:53
prior to the patch going live to make some of these adjustments
21:57
because they realized that the quality of life changes had also
22:01
done that. But then on top of that, there
22:04
are unfortunately a number of bugs that are a lot more severe.
22:11
And so I'm going to talk to you about these ones.
22:15
They made some major retuning for shaman.
22:18
If you want to know more about that.
22:22
I got to sit down with two of the theory crafters, Hawk, who
22:28
covers elemental as one of the theory crafters with the with
22:32
the earthshine and of course, word up who does enhancement.
22:37
We got to sit down and we talked about that and there were a
22:39
number of alarm bells that they were raising.
22:44
One of them definitely got fixed ahead of time and Blizzard put
22:47
that into the patch notes and it's like, OK, great, here's a
22:49
temporary fix so that this doesn't run out of control and
22:53
this is what we're going to be doing later to bring it in line.
22:57
And then another one, it seems that they had done the work and
23:03
and adjusted it, but we never saw that work being put into the
23:08
script. Unfortunately, there is
23:11
currently an issue with elemental shaman.
23:15
They increase the relative ability of mastery and they
23:20
change the way ascendance works. And basically what ascendance
23:26
now does is that it double dips your mastery.
23:29
So elemental mastery is that every time you shoot a
23:34
particular spell, you have a chance of getting a second less
23:39
effective version of that spell just automatically shot off.
23:44
Ascendance means that every time you proc that second copy of the
23:47
spell, you actually get 2 copies of that spell.
23:51
This has apparently not being tested and there is a lot of
23:56
people who are saying that like the the patch seems to be
24:01
lacking some thorough testing that we've come to expect from
24:04
Bridson. Because now while some classes
24:09
are doing a million and odd going up into like some low
24:16
digit millions, which is still like Oh my goodness, millions of
24:19
damage. There have been reports of
24:21
elemental shamans doing 1020 times the damage of other
24:26
classes in the same pool. Oh my.
24:31
Yeah, you've got like some classes and they're like
24:34
fighting and you've got the the warriors doing burst.
24:37
I I'm sorry, I know warriors aren't doing as much burst as
24:39
they used to. Sean, Sean can pour one out for
24:43
that one. But classes doing burst and
24:46
they're doing like 1-2 million or something, you're seeing
24:50
elemental shamans doing 2025 million.
24:54
This is obviously something that is going to be addressed
25:00
quickly, hopefully before long. I have seen already on the
25:07
central distribution network a new version of the patch.
25:11
I expect that we'll see that that applied quickly because
25:15
they're running out of time and the launcher right now, they are
25:21
performing scheduled maintenance in NA tomorrow morning.
25:25
So I expect that we'll see that patch rolled in tomorrow morning
25:28
before most people even hear me say this, and that will fix some
25:33
of those things. I have a question for you Manny.
25:37
I am feeling like the patches are getting messier recently and
25:44
we've been seeing a ton of post release tuning.
25:48
It feels like when Blizzard comes up with an idea it usually
25:52
is not super clean until the players tell them it needs to
25:57
get fixed and then to their credit they fix it very quickly.
26:00
I'm not sure though how much of that is just that I'm paying
26:04
significantly closer attention now that I am like podcasting
26:10
regularly about World of Warcraft and things like that.
26:13
So as somebody who's been paying significantly closer attention
26:16
for a much longer time than me, do you also feel like things are
26:20
messy currently, or is that just how patches are and they're just
26:25
communicating better? If you had asked me that two
26:31
weeks ago, I would have said it's business as usual.
26:35
I think that with new systems being added in at the beginning
26:39
of the expansion, there's always this bit of growing pain.
26:43
We saw it with Dragonflight, we saw it with shadow lands, we saw
26:48
it with BFA, especially BFA for poor shamans.
26:54
These things, these things happen and it can either go like
27:01
BFA where they have a fundamental issue that they keep
27:07
having to adjust things. And it felt like BFA, they were
27:12
constantly trying to make up for how the game launched with the
27:19
with the systems that they stacked on top of azerite armor
27:27
in shadow lands. It was having to adjust
27:32
covenants and people will make these complaints constantly.
27:37
And before they would make these complaints and be like,
27:40
Blizzard's not listening to us. And now Blizzard is very much
27:44
listening. But the cadence is coming so
27:48
fast that with this patch, it feels like yes, this, this felt
27:54
like they had their backs against the wall where they had
27:57
this idea for an anniversary. They wanted to do something big.
28:00
It's their big 30th anniversary of World of Warcraft.
28:05
It is their big, sorry, rather 30th anniversary of Warcraft.
28:08
It's their big 20th anniversary of World of Warcraft.
28:11
And they wanted to do this big thing.
28:13
And for the most part, a lot of this stuff feels great.
28:22
I think that if you look at the fairgrounds that you were going
28:25
around, I don't think there's that much that many bugs or that
28:29
that many issues, not notable ones that I've heard anybody
28:33
complaining about. The balance, though, this feels
28:39
like a, especially in the case of shamans, this feels like a
28:43
remnant of them running out of time before they could launch.
28:46
And then because they are on this set schedule, because
28:53
they've had so many disruptions with layoff after layoff after
28:59
wave of layoffs. And that doesn't just mean that
29:03
they're working with less people, even though they say
29:06
that they're not getting hit, they're not hitting the
29:09
development teams. It means that the people who go
29:15
into work and how many people that they used to work with are
29:19
no longer there like that. That's disruptive, period.
29:24
And it's been happening frequently.
29:27
Oh yeah. So I, I felt that we would feel
29:36
the effects of these layoffs later down the line.
29:41
There's no way for me to say definitively that this is an
29:46
effect of that. But you can go back to the first
29:52
big nearly 1000 people that were laid off and Holly Longdale, the
29:59
great leader that she is, rallying the truth and be like,
30:02
we're still going to do everything that we said we were
30:05
going to do. Don't you worry, guys, we're
30:07
still going to deliver. And my response was like, like,
30:12
I hear what you're saying, but it feels like you're still
30:15
trying to do everything you're trying to do with less.
30:19
Yeah, I that's, and I've, I've said this on this podcast
30:23
before, I will once again make my plea to the Blizzard employee
30:27
who, you know, listens to the show.
30:30
You can slow down like this is to at Blizzard.
30:34
Please listen to me. It's OK.
30:36
Like we would rather maybe I'm, I'm speaking for everyone
30:40
because I am the queen of World Warcraft, as you all know, in my
30:42
opinions are everyone's opinions, in my views,
30:44
everyone's view. And so if I say something's OK,
30:45
everyone says OK, Now that we've got that out of the way, we
30:50
would rather longer developmental cycles, the end
30:54
with more successful products. We would rather longer
30:58
developmental cycles. That means that the team stays
31:00
together, right? That the people aren't burning
31:02
out. People aren't getting horrible
31:03
amounts of crunch, right. We want the devs who make this
31:08
game that we love to also love the game and to also have good
31:12
lives. It's every time I've looked at
31:16
the road maps, my first thought has always been Jesus Christ,
31:20
right? Like great, if possible, but
31:23
that's my God. Like, good Lord, that's a lot.
31:26
And that's, and it just, it keeps on going and it's like,
31:30
it's OK to throw in the towel. It's OK to say, you know what?
31:33
Now we're also looking at the road maps and saying Jesus
31:35
Christ like, it's, it's fine, we get it.
31:38
Please, please allow this to take the time it needs.
31:43
I would so much rather continue to play a game that has long
31:48
cycles between content and then mannequin mount farm and it's
31:51
great and everyone's happy, than a game that quality starts
31:56
getting sacrificed for speed again.
31:59
As the Queen of World of Warcraft, that's my take.
32:01
And so that's everyone's. Take.
32:03
But to contradict myself a little bit, I think that this
32:07
patch is most more likely to be an Aardvark than anything else
32:13
because it had to coincide with a specific date of the World of
32:18
Warcraft anniversary. That's really true, yeah.
32:21
So 11 point O point 711.1. Those ones are more likely to
32:28
have the wiggle room to shift a bit in order for them to put in
32:32
the time to do what they need to do and get that Blizzard Polish.
32:40
So I don't see this as immediately a sign of things to
32:43
come. I just think that it was like
32:47
the worst sort of scenario where it it had to go and be live
32:55
quickly. I would have liked for them to
32:59
have treat treated this more like instead of a .5 patch, a .0
33:05
patch where they gave like here's the patch.
33:08
We're going to work out the bugs in week 1 and then we're going
33:11
to release the raid in Week 2, right?
33:13
Like just have like a quasi pre season because that would have
33:19
still been fine for them to allow it because the 30th like
33:24
yeah, it's right before Halloween, but like Halloween's
33:27
like the 1st and and like Cinco de Marte is like the second day.
33:34
And that's not that bad to like have that as a disruption to a
33:39
raid that is really just a celebration and will be around
33:42
for another eight weeks after that.
33:45
That's fair, yeah. The other part to this though is
33:48
that the PTR itself was down for long stretches.
33:54
They would like just between the release Tuesday and last week, I
34:02
was sitting down again with the the theory crafters on Monday.
34:07
On Wednesday the patch went down or the PTR went down and it
34:15
wasn't back up over the weekend. So there was little time for
34:20
people to give some testing. That wasn't the first time he
34:23
had gone down and come back up for a bit.
34:25
So that kind of hurt the testing that they could do publicly, but
34:32
also it's a .5 patch. A lot of people, a lot more
34:38
people. Are.
34:40
Not testing this then they would obviously the alpha, the beta,
34:46
the so forth and when 11.1 starts coming on the PTRI think
34:52
more people would be willing to test that then this .5 patch or
34:55
even the .7 patch that is out there on the on the distribution
34:59
networks. Yeah, that is fair.
35:02
That is fair. I don't mean to alarmist, I
35:05
don't mean to doomer. I suppose is more the word I'm I
35:08
should say. No, it's a good question to ask
35:10
though. I am I, I, I continue to be just
35:15
concerned, but also extremely grateful.
35:17
And to be fair, amazing things have come out of the last few
35:21
patches and the last few developmental cycles.
35:24
So we love please don't kill yourself for the game like it's
35:31
OK. We want, we love that you're
35:35
putting out the content. We want the content to be the
35:41
game to be sustained rather than like, yeah, like I think the
35:46
fact that you and I are both experiencing some level of
35:49
burnout means that it's likely shared with a lot of players
35:53
that are seeing all of this stuff where and it's it's just
35:57
hitting a lot, a lot of players. Again, I'd love to hear from the
36:02
fast community because this is really where I want to hear from
36:06
more people, not just us in our own little echo chamber about
36:10
where people's heads are at. I'm sure there are some people
36:12
who are like super into the raid, but like, I've lost what,
36:19
2-3 weeks of Mythic plus? I feel like it's going to be a
36:21
hellscape for me to try and pug into that now because I think
36:26
there is a direct correlation of like what your Mythic plus score
36:30
is the key that you're going for and how late into the season
36:33
you're at. So it's going to be, it's going
36:36
to be hard for me to pick up in Mythic plus again.
36:39
And I, I wanted to go for like Keystone Heroes and Portables
36:43
and all of that sort of stuff. And diving back into that might
36:47
be a lot. With that said, I'd like to take
36:52
this time to thank our newest patron.
36:57
So a special thanks to you, Siphon.
36:59
Siphon, Thank you very much. FAZ will always be free, but if
37:03
you enjoy the content that we produce, consider becoming a
37:07
patron like Siphon or and many others over at Patreon.
37:11
That is patreon.com/faz. Next week when we have Sean
37:19
back, we'll do a story. I just didn't have time to
37:23
think. I was going to say we'll make
37:25
that happen, Simon, I swear. OK.
37:29
Lex, do you want to cover our last little bit of news here?
37:32
Yeah, for sure. So there is a new documentary
37:35
coming to Netflix this Friday, October 25th.
37:39
It is called The Remarkable Life of Eveline.
37:41
Man, did I say that right? You know how bad I am with
37:43
names. I would not know either, so
37:46
we're going to let it go. Great.
37:48
At the very least, it's not like the the last time I tried to
37:51
thank a patron. Anyway, we're moving on.
37:53
We don't need to remember that moment.
37:55
The Remarkable Life of Eveline, which is a documentary about a
38:00
Norwegian gamer who died of a degenerative muscular disease at
38:04
the age of 25 named Matt Steen. And my understanding of the
38:11
movie is that he played World of Warcraft and had a lot of
38:17
friends. Yeah, like it's, it is really
38:23
amazing because he, again, he's suffering from this degenerative
38:28
muscle disease. And so his mobility is lessened.
38:31
He can't go out as much. But he found his community, he
38:36
found friends and everything through World of Warcraft.
38:39
And his parents weren't actually aware of the life he was living
38:46
in the game. And it wasn't until after he
38:49
passed that his friends started reaching out being like, oh,
38:53
where's Eibulene? Because they they didn't know,
38:55
right? And then his parents found out
38:58
like the life, the second life that is, that is that their
39:04
child was living this like entire, well, not child.
39:07
He was at that point. He was a man of 25 this, right,
39:13
and how full of a life he had had and the relationships that
39:17
he had developed when they thought that he had been so
39:21
confined. And so I think it's going to be
39:25
an amazing, if not sad, poignant, yeah, but poignant
39:31
experience that comes out. It came out again at the
39:37
Norwegian Film Festival at at the beginning of this year.
39:42
It is being released on Netflix this Friday.
39:46
And I suggest if you've got the time, go watch this movie
39:51
because like I, I really do love when you have those people that
39:56
are connected that way. I was part of AIE and we would
40:03
hold every year a March to celebrate a fundamental member
40:09
and. And you don't know what's going
40:11
on with people, with people and what's going on in their lives.
40:15
But like, the fact that you can touch somebody's life, be a true
40:20
friend even through, like, the monitor and the Internet and
40:24
everything. Like, I think that there's a lot
40:27
of positivity in this story, even if there is some sadness as
40:31
well. Yeah.
40:33
Yeah, I think we all have those stories of the, you know,
40:37
connections we've made and the, the I, I've moved so many times
40:40
in my life. And the one thing that's kind of
40:42
kept me sane through all of that is my online friends.
40:47
And I think it's easy to kind of fall into the mindset of like,
40:50
oh, these are friendships that are like, you know, yeah.
40:52
Like you have your friends and you have your online friends,
40:55
but these are, you know, some of the most core friendships in my
40:59
life, right? Like, these are not secondary
41:02
closeness. These are not secondary people.
41:05
Y'all are just my folks and I think it's I'm really glad that
41:11
we're seeing that yet recognize the ways that we can continue to
41:15
remain connected even through our through our video games.
41:21
So the I realize that we're talking about this, but we
41:28
forgot one big piece of story news.
41:31
I was just. Thinking that too, I was like,
41:34
oh God, we're going to go. Back up there so we're we're
41:37
we're going to we're going to reel you guys back in for one
41:40
more story because today Blizzard made a big announcement
41:45
there is the Warcraft 30th anniversary direct.
41:50
It is a presentation that I that is going to be what everybody
41:55
was saying is the replacement for BlizzCon this year.
41:59
And I do feel that we I do feel we need to pause very briefly
42:04
just so that I can say Sean was right about what Warcraft Direct
42:09
meant. It wasn't them going to all of
42:12
our cute little cities and having fun little fancy events
42:15
where I got to meet the devs. It was the video thing.
42:20
Congratulations, Sean. Sorry, Manny.
42:22
We can continue talking about what it actually is.
42:25
Yeah, no worries. I'll edit that part out later.
42:26
You'll never know, but you at least get to say that you did
42:31
say it, even if it never made it to anybody's ears.
42:33
Fair enough, it made it to your ears.
42:35
So this is happening on November 13th?
42:37
You're right, it does seem like it's going to be closer to a
42:40
BlizzCon line, but a much shorter truncated thing.
42:45
It's going to be at 10:00 PM, Sorry, 10AMP St. that is 1
42:54
eastern or if you're over in the UK that is 6:00 PM GMT.
43:04
It's going to last about an hour.
43:06
Ahead of it there will be 1/2 hour pre show and after there's
43:15
going to be a broadcast of the World of Warcraft 20 Years of
43:21
Music concert. That was the concert that took
43:25
place in in Europe where you saw a number of content creators
43:31
that had watched it live while they've recorded that and
43:35
they're going to give a broadcast of that.
43:37
So you can listen, listen to that after the the hour
43:42
presentation. The presentation is going to be
43:45
on all the major platforms. So you've got TikTok, you've got
43:48
YouTube, you've got Twitch and other people can rebroadcast it.
43:54
So your favorite streamer will most likely be streaming it or
44:00
saying, no Mandy, I don't stream anymore.
44:02
Stop asking, but we'll leave Lex out of it.
44:05
I was going to make a joke about Sean, so we got there
44:08
eventually. Just as a little incentive,
44:12
players that tune into the broadcast from any Warcraft
44:15
channel will also be able to to earn rewards for in game items
44:22
across all the Warcraft games. So that is World of Warcraft,
44:25
Hearthstone, and of course Warcraft Rumble.
44:29
Now, I don't know if this applies to the people who are
44:33
restreaming it, but Blizzard will give more details later.
44:38
And if you want to know all of the details, make sure you do
44:41
check out the show notes. We've got a link to that article
44:46
that shows all of that. So are you excited for this,
44:49
Lex? Yeah, I, I mean, it is in the
44:53
middle of the day, unfortunately, tragically.
44:56
So we'll see if I can. Second screen.
45:00
Yeah, work, work, work, work and not and have my phone watching
45:04
something that I definitely will not be paying attention to.
45:08
You can't schedule your lunch a little bit later.
45:10
That's fair. We'll see.
45:13
We'll see. We'll see, we'll see what I can
45:14
do. But I, I am really excited.
45:18
I think it's going to be fun and it's going to be cool and it's
45:20
going to be a cute little, a cute little thing for the 30th
45:23
anniversary. I do really appreciate as a big
45:26
Rumble girlie, that Rumble is officially considered part of
45:29
the Warcraft universe. I'm sure the Hearthstone people
45:32
feel the same. I, I think, I think it's going
45:37
to be fun. I think it's going to be a fun,
45:39
a fun little bit. I did have a moment of mourning
45:42
when I was like, Oh yeah, because we're not having 30th
45:45
anniversary BlizzCon. But we knew that long ago.
45:48
That's not like news. So this is going to be covering
45:55
like, you know, celebrating 30 years of Warcraft and it's going
45:57
to have the developers talking about like memories and so
46:01
forth. And it's also look ahead of
46:03
what's next. I already said that the 11 point
46:07
O .7 patch is on the central distribution network.
46:13
So I doubt they're going to be talking much about it.
46:16
They'll probably announce the date that that's coming out and
46:19
also talk a a bit about like the 11.1 patch and where we're going
46:24
for the next major patch. That's my expectation.
46:29
They say you don't want to miss. This is a quote.
46:31
You won't want to miss a moment or a single surprise.
46:34
So I'm deciding that they're going to drop major more
46:37
spoilers just because I want to be disappointed.
46:42
I I suspect that it will include like some major things that are
46:51
coming from 11.1, but not just like I suspect that they're
46:56
going to drop mechanical new stuff much like we saw in dragon
47:02
fight where it's like, hey, here's this like additional
47:05
thing. I don't believe we'll see like
47:08
Ogvokers or an additional spec to to because we don't have a
47:13
new class. That's true.
47:15
But maybe we'll see more race class expansion, additional
47:24
restrictions for transmog lifted, like a bunch of fan
47:29
service things that everybody should be like, yeah, you're
47:31
finally doing it. That's what I expect to see.
47:34
Oh yeah sorry I'm currently scrolling down the forum
47:37
comments on the world the Warcraft post.
47:43
People are mean. Y'all need to chill out what is
47:48
going on? You can just not watch it.
47:51
Like you don't have to lose your entire God damn mind.
47:54
Good Lord. But yeah no I I also don't think
47:58
that they're actually going to say anything.
47:59
That's like life changing. They could, they could watch it.
48:04
They might. Wouldn't you be so sad if you
48:07
didn't watch Cross? Region coming in 11.1.
48:13
Oh God I wish, but maybe they'll announce World of Warcraft 2.
48:18
That worked really well for Overwatch.
48:23
Ouch. Sorry, but you.
48:28
Used to play that game. Yeah, a lot of people used to
48:31
play. That was very mean.
48:35
I, I, I miss it. I miss Overwatch as it was.
48:39
Or one out. Considering it's an hour,
48:42
considering that it's going to be hitting Wow, Hearthstone and
48:47
Warcraft Rumble, I do not expect that this is going to be
48:53
anything other than a quick video.
48:56
Probably an extended Wow cast if you would, just the initial
49:01
stuff. And then there's going to be a
49:03
bunch of posts afterwards going through until December that are
49:09
like coming in the new year. We'll see this.
49:12
What I would love is a 2025 road map.
49:18
That's that's I think the biggest thing that I would hope
49:22
for out of this. What is the biggest thing that
49:24
you would hope for? I think that they are going to
49:27
they I want them to announce that Warcraft Rumble is taking
49:29
over for World of Warcraft as the main MMO.
49:33
Sorry, I'll take this seriously. I swear, I, I don't know, I
49:41
think I really just want a fun little nostalgia trip, right?
49:44
We've had so many huge announcements.
49:45
Again, I am so worried about these tests.
49:48
I feel like they're moms. I feel like I'm just like
49:50
sitting here, like, OK, honey, but are you coming home for
49:53
Christmas this year? Like, I'm so worried about them.
49:56
So I just want them to have a good time telling me all the
49:59
cool things they're doing and showing me all the Pretty Little
50:01
art. And then I want them to go home
50:02
and take a very long nap. That's what I want to get out of
50:05
this. OK, OK, well, I guess we will
50:09
call it here. Next week will be the 300th
50:14
episode, so we'll be doing a little something special for you
50:18
guys. Make sure you tune in.
50:21
This is an episode that you will not want to miss.
50:26
But until next time, don't fumble the rumble.