Latest / For Azeroth!: A World of Warcraft Podcast / #330 - For Azeroth!: "Attack on Addon"

Transcript

#330 - For Azeroth!: "Attack on Addon" · For Azeroth!: A World of Warcraft Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome back to For Azeroth.
• 0:03
  There has been a lot of talk this week.
• 0:06
  Blizzard is coming for your add-ons, or are they?
• 0:11
  There's a lot of people scared about this, so we are going to
• 0:15
  dive right into the conversation in this episode of For Azeroth.
• 0:18
  Victory for the Forsaken. For Lordaron.
• 0:22
  For the Karen tour, For Pandaria, For Calendar to the
• 0:31
  Burning region, for Gilnaeus has not died for the Lich King.
• 0:40
  For the. Sindora for the Alliance for the
• 0:44
  Horn for Azeroth. Ian Hazikosa sat down with PC
• 0:51
  Gamer and did an interview and in it he spoke about the same
• 0:56
  thing that he spoke about with that last episode of Wow Cast
• 1:00
  Lizard is changing their philosophy on the add-ons, what
• 1:04
  they want to do going forward. And I sincerely entreat
• 1:12
  everybody to read the article. Don't read a synopsis of it.
• 1:17
  Don't go by just whoever's take. Not mine, not Sean's, not not
• 1:22
  Lex's, not Pawn. Get God X, who Sean loves
• 1:25
  entirely. But read the initial article.
• 1:30
  I think you just need to read a couple tweets.
• 1:32
  I think you need to find the tweets with the most caps lock
• 1:34
  and the most exclamation marks, and those are the ones that you
• 1:37
  should read. And then you know, then you know
• 1:38
  the article. Is there actually a poem Got X
• 1:41
  out there? I don't know, I've, I'm hoping
• 1:43
  there he is that he just keeps on going.
• 1:45
  Why do I keep getting these hits?
• 1:48
  Actually like just a random streamer and he's got like maybe
• 1:53
  5-6 followers and every so often like 20 people come in and be
• 1:56
  like, oh, you're not saying the stuff Sean says.
• 1:58
  He's like, who the hell is this shot?
• 2:00
  Catching all these strays, I feel so bad for him.
• 2:02
  I'm going to look. I'm going to find a poem.
• 2:04
  If you're listening and you know Bone got X, let me know.
• 2:09
  TTV dot PO slash Bone got. XI owe them an apology.
• 2:13
  Up. Probably, yeah.
• 2:15
  So yeah, it it's a pretty heated conversation that's happening,
• 2:21
  which is why I'm telling everybody to go to the original
• 2:23
  article, get form your own opinions.
• 2:26
  It doesn't affect everything in sat down and said, hey, we're
• 2:33
  really not looking at the customization stuff.
• 2:35
  We're really not looking at that thing that helps your RP
• 2:38
  community. Mostly it seems centered on
• 2:42
  combat, but it's the World of Warcraft.
• 2:45
  It's not the World of Peace craft.
• 2:49
  Combat is such a core part of the game that it affects most
• 2:52
  everybody, even our peers. To like get through that
• 2:56
  dungeon, you're going to have to do some combat.
• 2:58
  Even the people who are going to be diving into housing when that
• 3:01
  comes out, you're probably going to go through some dungeons and
• 3:03
  raids to get some of those patterns and stuff to get that
• 3:06
  stuff. So it does affect pretty much
• 3:09
  all the players of the game, even though it is specifically
• 3:14
  looking at combat stuff. And so I do I I know normally we
• 3:22
  we have some like irrelevant you've ever been conversation
• 3:25
  where we sort of like make jokes for jokes sakes.
• 3:29
  But I think that there's so much that needs to be talked about in
• 3:32
  this, including even though we kind of did a preamble
• 3:36
  conversation with the wild cast, I've kind of rethought some of
• 3:41
  my positions on things. And I think that this is like
• 3:45
  really furthered the conversation that we were having
• 3:47
  with this. So I got to ask you guys, what
• 3:53
  were your initial impressions after you read the article?
• 3:58
  Let's start with you, Lex. OK, so the first thing I want to
• 4:02
  say, I think they should do more role play add-ons in World of
• 4:05
  Warcraft. They said they didn't want to
• 4:06
  touch them and I think that's actually something that they
• 4:08
  could do very easily. Most of the role play add on
• 4:11
  work is pretty consistent. And I actually have an argument
• 4:14
  and I'll I'll then we'll get into combat.
• 4:15
  I swear to God the the role play is actually one of the worlds
• 4:19
  where you really can't play the game without add-ons.
• 4:22
  But if you want to role play, then people are gonna be
• 4:25
  accepting and like do that. Like role players generally tend
• 4:28
  to work with you with where you're at, but there's a ton of
• 4:31
  information that you don't get if you don't have a role play
• 4:33
  add on. Like you have people's statuses,
• 4:35
  you have like at a glance, things that you'd know about
• 4:37
  their character if you just look at them.
• 4:39
  You have information on their pets, you have their full name,
• 4:41
  you have what they look like. You have anything that differs
• 4:43
  from their like character to like the, you know, the
• 4:47
  characterization exactly. That's what I was looking for.
• 4:49
  Thank you. You're welcome.
• 4:51
  Those are all things that you have to download something like
• 4:53
  TRPG or XRPTRTRP. Sorry, I added AG to access it
• 4:59
  all. And I think those are things the
• 5:00
  World of Warcraft could absolutely roll in fairly
• 5:02
  easily. I will say it's possible that
• 5:04
  I'm going to get torn to shreds by the role players because I do
• 5:07
  know that some people, for example, are like, I will only
• 5:09
  use XRPI will not touch TRP. You could not, can like I, I
• 5:14
  could not explain to you the differences.
• 5:15
  I've used them both. They feel identical to me.
• 5:18
  But anyway, I think they should, I think that World of Warcraft
• 5:20
  should put in role play. But that's the only thing I'll
• 5:22
  say about role play. Well.
• 5:23
  Well, I do want to talk about that because you've actually
• 5:26
  brought up a couple of things that I think that's worth
• 5:28
  actually discussing. One thing that one reason that I
• 5:31
  would fight against them being pushing for the RP stuff is the
• 5:36
  scope of the audience. It is like people who are doing
• 5:41
  pet battling, people who are doing RP, people that are doing
• 5:44
  some of these more fringe parts. Not to say that it's not a
• 5:47
  substantial part of the audience, but when you're
• 5:51
  talking about the core of the gameplay add-ons, really I I'm
• 5:56
  talking about combat add-ons. Like I said at the beginning,
• 5:59
  that's what affects the most people.
• 6:01
  So while I do think that at some point that they should bring in
• 6:06
  these these sort of things, especially as they start
• 6:08
  shutting down things in the APII think that the community that
• 6:14
  uses those is served by the add-ons sufficiently right now
• 6:20
  without it negatively impacting what Blizzard wants to design
• 6:26
  with RP add-ons. I think that those add things
• 6:29
  without damaging the game. Like if I get like if I get the
• 6:33
  back story through an add on, people who don't get that back
• 6:37
  story aren't negatively impacted right as much until they are
• 6:41
  trying to interact with me and which point we can work around
• 6:44
  that without them feeling, oh, you've got to get this right now
• 6:47
  and you cannot play with me. And I think that a lot of the
• 6:50
  add-ons that Blizzard is speaking about, and I say
• 6:54
  Blizzard instead of Ian. I knows Ian is in this article,
• 6:57
  but it's a team that is working on this that's developing this.
• 7:00
  So I want to speak in the plural group noun of Blizzard rather
• 7:04
  than just pinning this on the end and being like him, you
• 7:07
  right there. But I think that when they're
• 7:13
  focusing, when they're prioritizing, yes, combat
• 7:18
  effects affects the majority, the large majority of the
• 7:21
  players. And I think you have to go in a
• 7:23
  very roundabout way to avoid combat in the World of Warcraft.
• 7:27
  And so that obviously is such a priority.
• 7:30
  And I think that the RP add-ons, much like a lot of of the
• 7:34
  add-ons that they said, hey, we're not going to be messing
• 7:37
  with those are have less negative impacts on people who
• 7:41
  don't have them. Yeah, I, I, I hear what you're
• 7:44
  saying. I think it and I and like, the
• 7:46
  other thing is I'm always the one who's like, oh, you know,
• 7:48
  they need to, I need, I want them to give the devs a a little
• 7:51
  nap. I, I think that like, I guess it
• 7:57
  like the, the question is when they first came out with the
• 8:00
  whole, like, here's what we're doing with add-ons.
• 8:03
  I, the, the argument they were mostly doing is they don't want
• 8:06
  people to feel like they have to download anything to play the
• 8:08
  game. And I do think that if that's
• 8:09
  the core of what they're looking at, I do actually think role
• 8:11
  play add-ons are something you have to download to play the
• 8:14
  game. I, I really don't know any
• 8:15
  serious role players. And when I say serious role
• 8:17
  players, I mean like role play more than once a year, right?
• 8:21
  Like if you role play at any frequency, you have a role play
• 8:24
  add on. But I hear you that the flip
• 8:25
  side of that is that nobody, it's not like because people
• 8:27
  have role play add-ons, all of a sudden World of Warcraft has to
• 8:30
  like squash name conventions because people like, you know,
• 8:34
  that's less, nobody's being hurt by the fact that there's role
• 8:39
  play add-ons. I do think, I think I also think
• 8:41
  it'll be fun to be able to just set my little, my little status
• 8:43
  as I miss having my little, you know, like 5 things you'd notice
• 8:46
  about my character if you were walking by them.
• 8:48
  But maybe that's just the role play.
• 8:50
  But no, and you're right, like the the combat is where it's
• 8:53
  it's felt the most. And clearly it's what World
• 8:54
  Warcraft or what the yeah, the World Warcraft team cares about
• 8:57
  right now, right? This is what they're saying.
• 8:59
  They specifically said they're not going to play add-ons.
• 9:01
  So Faz dev, pick your side and it won't be mine and I'll be
• 9:04
  hurt and sad. I mean, they're they're will be
• 9:08
  taking your side in another part of it, but I want you to
• 9:12
  continue on with like the combat part of it at least.
• 9:15
  Yes. So my thought is this is going
• 9:17
  to be a metric level nightmare when this first happens, it's
• 9:21
  going to be terrible. It is going to be like, we are
• 9:23
  going to hate them. We are going to hate the things
• 9:25
  that are lost. We're going to be complaining
• 9:26
  constantly. It is going to be a crisis for
• 9:30
  probably a few tears, right? It's going to feel really,
• 9:33
  really bad. And then they're going to figure
• 9:34
  it out and it's going to clean up and it's going to start to
• 9:37
  move smoother and we're going to start to see the benefits in the
• 9:39
  raid. And they're going to, you know,
• 9:40
  actually there's also I'm I would bet money that there's
• 9:43
  going to be a few tears where they're actually not going to
• 9:45
  know how to scale, right? They're going to be so used to
• 9:47
  having like, you know, their, their team doesn't even realize
• 9:50
  how much they've been working around these add-ons.
• 9:52
  So they're going to continue to like mentally be like, oh, and
• 9:54
  we have to do this thing in this way to do that, or it's going to
• 9:56
  be like stupid easy and face roll for a few tears while
• 9:59
  they're trying to like build their way back up.
• 10:02
  And then, and then it's going to, it's going to normalize.
• 10:04
  And I think it's going to be a lot better when it's normalized
• 10:06
  because there won't be this little arms race constantly
• 10:10
  going on where things are getting harder.
• 10:12
  And, and they're the way that they're able to affect
• 10:14
  difficulties gets more complicated and like, you know,
• 10:17
  and they, they kind of start getting cut down.
• 10:18
  So if you, you know, there is sort of this expectation that
• 10:21
  you're using a ton of add-ons and like playing to to the Max.
• 10:24
  And if you don't, you can't. But I, I, I do think I see that.
• 10:28
  I think I do see the fight that they're doing with combat
• 10:31
  add-ons right now. And I think once that goes away,
• 10:34
  it's going to be really good and really beneficial.
• 10:37
  I just, I, I can't see a world where there's not going to be
• 10:39
  really intense growing pains for a while.
• 10:41
  And I think we just kind of need to, you know, be prepared to to
• 10:45
  find our way through those growing pains.
• 10:48
  OK. All right.
• 10:49
  I definitely have some thoughts on that, but I'd I'd like to
• 10:51
  pass it over to Sean. So to get some of your thoughts
• 10:56
  as well, your initial impressions or just your
• 11:00
  response to what Lex is saying. Sure, I never even considered
• 11:04
  role players needing add-ons to role play.
• 11:06
  That is wild. I would be laughed out of the
• 11:11
  role-playing community for being a filthy casual like.
• 11:14
  No, you would. If you if you ever want to try
• 11:17
  role-playing, you'd have so much fun.
• 11:18
  If anyone ever wants to try role-playing, please let me
• 11:20
  know. I can help you find offense, but
• 11:21
  go. So specifically so I want to say
• 11:25
  a couple of things. The the game being more
• 11:27
  accessible is good. I'm always on the side of the
• 11:29
  game being more accessible and the game needing less external
• 11:36
  pieces is good. I don't see a world where this
• 11:42
  ever happens. There, there, there are so many
• 11:46
  things in the API that hold data for these add-ons that to fully
• 11:51
  turn off cooldowns, you'd have to disable chat like you can't
• 11:56
  chat reads. We we can read from chat what
• 11:59
  cooldowns have been used. So you'd have to disable chat.
• 12:01
  There are so many things that wouldn't so well, now you go to
• 12:03
  a dungeon, you can't talk, you have to have voice calls.
• 12:06
  Honestly, a win, sorry. There's probably there's so
• 12:10
  many, there's so many pieces connecting and touching in the
• 12:13
  API that and again, people are dooming like, Oh my God, they're
• 12:16
  just gonna turn off our add-ons like they well, they would the
• 12:18
  game would be deleted there nothing would function.
• 12:20
  And and that's the other problem is that there's gonna be so many
• 12:22
  unintended errors that pop up when they start pulling on these
• 12:26
  threads and turning these things off that I think they're gonna
• 12:30
  get about halfway through this project and realize this is a
• 12:35
  lot. This the the juice is not worth
• 12:37
  the squeeze. And when they get to that point,
• 12:40
  my hope is that the alternative that they come up with is
• 12:44
  instead of removing third party add-ons, I hope that they leave
• 12:51
  third party add-ons but design better Blizzard built in ones.
• 12:56
  One of the one of my biggest frustrations is that.
• 13:00
  And so this article and at the same time, Ian did a talk at
• 13:04
  some Euro games convention. And in that he's talking about
• 13:10
  meeting the players where they are and desire paths.
• 13:13
  And one of the biggest things he talks about is one way Ratchet
• 13:18
  systems in a game. And what he the way he breaks it
• 13:20
  down is it's something that once you give it to players, you can
• 13:23
  never remove it. Like this thing exists forever.
• 13:27
  We can't take this back. That's add-ons in the game.
• 13:30
  That's the game is built on add-ons.
• 13:34
  So there's no world where they take them away.
• 13:36
  But one of the things that frustrated me the most is
• 13:39
  they're talking about this and I'm going to address the arms
• 13:42
  race too, because I think it's, I think the arms race is
• 13:43
  bullshit. There is no arms race.
• 13:45
  Blizzard makes things hard. We come up with solutions.
• 13:47
  If you don't make it hard, we don't design solutions.
• 13:50
  Nobody wrote a week or A to tell people where to stand in their
• 13:53
  soaks or galliwicks because you didn't need it.
• 13:55
  Because the mechanic gave us enough time to deal with it.
• 13:58
  So we didn't write one. If the mechanic had only given
• 14:01
  us 4 seconds instead of 8 seconds, we would have written
• 14:03
  one. So it's not an arms race against
• 14:05
  add-ons. The add-ons get developed
• 14:07
  because of the design of the bosses.
• 14:09
  Anyway. The thing that frustrates you
• 14:11
  the most is that I feel like like they're not reaching out.
• 14:18
  It doesn't seem like they're reaching out to these add on
• 14:20
  developers and it feels like they're coming at this as if
• 14:23
  these ideas are brand new. This is specific to the cooldown
• 14:26
  manager which launched an 11 point 1.5 in a terrible state.
• 14:29
  You couldn't add and remove spells from it.
• 14:32
  It's spells that are passive spells that become active spells
• 14:35
  when you swap them in the talent tree or vice versa don't change.
• 14:39
  They stay as the path like the paladins are broken when you
• 14:42
  swap the crusader strike. It just doesn't show you any
• 14:44
  just anyway it's it's but this one of this one specific quote
• 14:51
  in here regarding the cooldown manager.
• 14:55
  So here it is. Blizzard will be working on
• 14:56
  improvements to the in game cooldown manager, visual
• 14:59
  effects, improvements to the games UI, edit mode, audio cues,
• 15:01
  and the handling of nameplates for players and enemies.
• 15:03
  That's the article. This is the quote from Ian Has.
• 15:08
  Acosta said the company heard loud and clear the player
• 15:10
  feedback to the first basic role of the cooldown manager, which
• 15:13
  was part of the recent 11 point 1.5 patch.
• 15:16
  That's right, this is silly article.
• 15:18
  Players decried its simplicity, lack of functionality, and the
• 15:21
  factor could not be customized. And then ironically, some mod
• 15:24
  makers immediately created add-ons to improve it.
• 15:26
  Here's his quote. We know we're not going to
• 15:29
  replace a fully in depth, customizable add on that you've
• 15:31
  been using for years and tailored to your personal
• 15:33
  gameplay with something that we have as an initial fixed
• 15:35
  offering, he said. But we're getting a whole bunch
• 15:38
  of feedback about the ways in which we need to change.
• 15:40
  We need to add customization and improve it to make it feel like
• 15:43
  it could be a reasonable substitute for a more advanced
• 15:45
  power user. I'm going to try and get through
• 15:47
  this next sentence without screaming.
• 15:49
  I'm not mad at either of you. I adore you both. 20 years of
• 15:54
  developing this game. 20 years of add on design.
• 16:02
  All all of these devs play this game and you didn't know until
• 16:08
  you launched your cooldown manager players would want to
• 16:11
  customize what spells are on it. You needed that feedback which
• 16:16
  you got. This is so hard.
• 16:19
  Which you got during the PTR when people were testing it.
• 16:25
  They've responded, hey, we would like to be able to add and
• 16:26
  remove spells. So you got it.
• 16:30
  This is really tough. You got it before it went live,
• 16:34
  and it wasn't until it went live and the vast majority of players
• 16:37
  saw that it was kind of unusable, is when you realized,
• 16:40
  oh, we should have added to the customization for spells here.
• 16:45
  If that's the mentality and the process they're using to design
• 16:51
  their own Bigwigs or DBM, their own details, damage meter, their
• 16:56
  own cooldown manager, if that's the process they're doing, it'll
• 17:01
  be a laughable failure at launch.
• 17:04
  Well, and this has been, I think I've even said this on the
• 17:06
  podcast a few times, but this is one of the things that's been
• 17:09
  frustrating me and concerning me about it.
• 17:12
  It early on in the new mindset shift of Blizzard where they
• 17:16
  started saying like we're going to focus a lot more on listening
• 17:18
  to the players and player feedback.
• 17:19
  They it really was, it felt like they were just like listening
• 17:22
  and making really good calls from the player feedback.
• 17:24
  Recently it's kind of started to feel like I'm a bug tester,
• 17:28
  right? They are giving me half baked
• 17:29
  ideas and they are releasing them knowing that they're half
• 17:32
  baked and that I will then yell at them and they'll fix them and
• 17:36
  they'll say, oh, we're listening to player feedback, which great,
• 17:40
  but I kind of would rather that you give me a fully formed
• 17:42
  project right like I, I kind of wanted you to release it good.
• 17:45
  I didn't want to have it suck for a while and that is why I
• 17:48
  think it's going to suck for a while.
• 17:49
  I think they're going to release things and it's going to be
• 17:52
  absolutely terrible because I don't think right now they're
• 17:55
  putting out fully formed content, unfortunately.
• 17:59
  And so this was part of this is part of what I thought the
• 18:03
  conversation was going to go at. We have Blizzard's intentions
• 18:07
  versus player expectations versus the actual experience
• 18:13
  that comes when it goes live. And I think that there's a lot
• 18:17
  of there's kind of a sub conversation about how little or
• 18:23
  how much faith people have in Blizzard to actually even live
• 18:27
  up to what they say they would do, even if you agree with like
• 18:31
  the reasoning behind it, the process that they're going to
• 18:34
  do. So I think that what I would
• 18:37
  like to do for the remainder of this conversation is speak to
• 18:41
  how we think they should do it in order to best get to that
• 18:46
  point, because I, I know we're all going to have many concerns
• 18:50
  and trepidations about it based on number of things.
• 18:53
  The cooldown manager, of course, being one of the latest things
• 18:56
  last week, Sean, you were quite incensed about like time gating
• 19:01
  and them finally removing time getting on one part.
• 19:04
  And and I even had like a bit of a monologue of man, Blizzard,
• 19:08
  I've been saying this forever, please with that.
• 19:11
  So rather than going down that path again, I'd love to talk
• 19:14
  about like what we think Blizzard could do to best
• 19:17
  effectuate this. And so Sean, you've got your
• 19:20
  hand up. Let's have you jump right back
• 19:22
  in. I love that we're reframing this
• 19:26
  because everybody has given their angry hot takes and very
• 19:28
  few have given their, hey, you know what?
• 19:31
  Here's how I here's how I would like to ideally see this work.
• 19:35
  Step one, number one, contract the add on developers that make
• 19:40
  the add-ons that you're looking to either replace or to augment,
• 19:45
  like to give your own Blizzard version.
• 19:47
  And, and I'm not saying you have to have them come in and write
• 19:49
  the code for you. And I realize that if you're a
• 19:51
  developer in the games industry, which is super volatile,
• 19:54
  contracting a third part, like somebody in as a third party to
• 19:57
  tell you how to do your job is scary.
• 19:59
  But don't think of it that way. Think of it as asking an expert
• 20:03
  in a field. To give you a consultation,
• 20:06
  they're going to tell you Rd. roadblocks they hit, they're
• 20:08
  going to tell you mistakes that happen.
• 20:10
  They're going to tell you the types of things that they've had
• 20:12
  to do to work around stuff. And they have I mean, in the
• 20:16
  case of DBM and bigwigs, they've got like 1515 plus years of data
• 20:21
  for player usage. How are players using this?
• 20:24
  What features do players want contract these.
• 20:28
  They still, I don't think they've contacted the Hikili guy
• 20:31
  and they've they've their rotation manager launches and
• 20:35
  like a month, a month and 1/2 right, like 11 point 1.7.
• 20:40
  I don't think we have an official date yet, but it's
• 20:41
  obviously going to be like June 17th or something.
• 20:44
  If that happens to be the real date.
• 20:45
  By the way, I'm buying a lottery ticket.
• 20:49
  Yeah, so contract. That's my that's my number one
• 20:52
  step and like I would love to be able to use all Blizzard stuff.
• 20:58
  Now. I obviously I like to customize
• 20:59
  the way my stuff looks. I don't want to have to be
• 21:01
  locked into the blizzards design choices.
• 21:04
  So if the add-ons just are reskins, you know what I mean?
• 21:07
  If you're going to say if if it's a hard and fast no, we want
• 21:09
  to get rid of DBM. We want to get rid of bigwigs.
• 21:12
  We want you to we're going to have one Blizzard cooldown
• 21:14
  manager. Sorry, boss mod.
• 21:18
  Then let us be able to reskin it.
• 21:21
  So contract those those people out.
• 21:23
  And then the second thing. So contract the devs that are
• 21:26
  making these weak cores are making these add-ons already and
• 21:29
  this or just flat out hire them. And the second thing, this is my
• 21:32
  bigger concern is add on devs are very agile.
• 21:38
  They can release patches, they can release hot fixes in an
• 21:41
  hour, in a day, like they're very fast.
• 21:46
  My concern is that Blizzard won't be be able to react as
• 21:50
  fast. And that's my second thing.
• 21:51
  You need to stand up a team for each of these add-ons you're
• 21:54
  replacing that will be able to react immediately to bugs and
• 21:58
  hot fix stuff right away and then keep them up to date.
• 22:02
  You have to keep them up to date more current than your patch
• 22:05
  cycle. It's got to be like every week
• 22:07
  or every two weeks at a minimum. Bigwigs gets updates that you
• 22:10
  will. I guess you'll need less updates
• 22:12
  maybe if your Blizzard is designing it, because Bigwigs
• 22:14
  updates often are due to changes in Blizzards API or changes in
• 22:19
  timers. So if Blizzard's already doing
• 22:21
  that then maybe it syncs up better.
• 22:23
  I don't know. But that's the second thing is
• 22:26
  you need to, whatever add-ons you replace, you need to make
• 22:30
  sure that we're not sitting with a bugged version of it till the
• 22:33
  .5 patch because I mean, that's just not acceptable.
• 22:39
  Those are my two things. If they do that, then I'll give
• 22:42
  their stuff a shot. You know what I mean?
• 22:44
  But don't I have one more thing? Can I have a third thing?
• 22:46
  I'm sorry, I have one more thing.
• 22:48
  Actually listen to the feedback. Give it a longer PTR test.
• 22:52
  If you want to bring it to details damage meter, give us
• 22:55
  two months with it on the PTR and then actually listen to the
• 22:59
  feedback. Actually listen to the PTR.
• 23:02
  Don't wait for live feedback. Don't wait for like it's too
• 23:05
  late, then it launches bad. A bad launch is forever bad.
• 23:08
  Miyamoto said that something like that bad games, whatever
• 23:11
  delayed launch is forever good. Well, he said something, he's
• 23:14
  great. We love Nintendo.
• 23:16
  Actually listen to that feedback on the PTR.
• 23:20
  Please, I beg you, OK? I, I would like to man, I guess
• 23:28
  I got to give the hot take first and then kind of bring it back.
• 23:34
  I don't think they need to put in longer PT Rs for that, that
• 23:41
  with the condition that they do not disable the analogous
• 23:46
  add-ons at the time. I think that if you introduce,
• 23:51
  and I think right now we need to stop thinking of it as they're
• 23:57
  going to introduce 5 add-ons and shut down 5 add-ons all at the
• 24:00
  same time, right? And then go in waves like that.
• 24:02
  I think that they should do one thing, put it put it on the PTR,
• 24:07
  put it live and not shut down the the API that allows the
• 24:14
  whatever add-ons to work until people are like, yeah, I don't
• 24:17
  feel like I need to download anymore.
• 24:19
  Once they once the general consensus is yeah, I I don't
• 24:24
  feel the need to download hit Kelly, then you can shut down
• 24:26
  the API for it. And in that way, yeah, OK, you
• 24:31
  don't need to do, you don't need to do have it launched exactly
• 24:36
  perfect. You can have it like Ian had
• 24:39
  said, we're hoping people will accept 96% of perfect, which is
• 24:42
  great. I'm telling you, you could hit
• 24:45
  73% on launch and then get it to 96 if you don't remove people's
• 24:53
  ability to have 100% at the get go.
• 24:56
  And I think that part of it needs to be that the
• 25:02
  customization needs to be something that is user
• 25:06
  generated. So if it is, hey, I'm going to
• 25:10
  have my hikelly replaced by the cooldown manager.
• 25:15
  I want to be able to like go in import a string from Wowhead
• 25:19
  from my class discord, from my from my guildmate that did it
• 25:23
  that says, hey, cool down manager.
• 25:25
  This is what I want you to look at.
• 25:27
  This is what I want you to do. And it would be the exact same
• 25:31
  as the talent manager that we have, you know, add more talents
• 25:36
  in there, but whatever. And in that way, the community
• 25:39
  is going to be able to use your add on.
• 25:43
  You'll be able to shut off the the API, the community can keep
• 25:47
  it up to date. The people who are theory
• 25:48
  crafting or even if I'm just like, you know what?
• 25:51
  I don't like this and I'm going to create my own.
• 25:53
  I'll be able to do that. And then you won't need an
• 25:55
  entire team that's just dedicated to making sure that
• 25:58
  the cooldown manager is working exactly like Sean likes it.
• 26:01
  Exactly. Lex likes it exactly how I like
• 26:03
  it. And I think that's the best
• 26:05
  thing. Open it up in terms of like what
• 26:10
  you're tracking, the color of the highlight, because I don't
• 26:14
  like the blue highlight. I find it's easier to miss than
• 26:17
  the yellow highlight or whatever it might.
• 26:19
  Whatever nitty gritty thing you want to do.
• 26:23
  All of those options are something that you can have in a
• 26:27
  baked in system that will allow the customization that people
• 26:31
  want. And in that way, I think that's
• 26:34
  the best way to get it to that finish line without having to
• 26:40
  like, because if you if you replace all these add-ons, even
• 26:44
  if you don't hire the exact person who made these add-ons,
• 26:48
  you're going to need to hire a team that is just keeping on top
• 26:51
  of that. And imagine that Blizzard now
• 26:53
  needs to go and say, hey, guys, we can't change our class
• 26:56
  because then we're going to have to change what the auto cooldown
• 26:59
  does. And we don't have the time to do
• 27:01
  that. And then you somebody gets into
• 27:04
  the game on patch day and their their one button rotation is
• 27:08
  giving them suddenly 23% because it didn't get updated.
• 27:11
  Then that's on you Blizzard. Like and you don't want that.
• 27:15
  I I'll sign that petition I like.
• 27:17
  I would definitely feel more comfortable if they said we're
• 27:19
  going to we're going to simultaneously launch our
• 27:22
  versions of these add-ons while keeping the current ones up and
• 27:27
  running until we're comfortable. My fear is that if they launch a
• 27:30
  73% version, everybody's confidence in that version is
• 27:33
  going to be gone no matter what they do to build it up
• 27:35
  afterward. I'm never going to use their
• 27:37
  cooldown manager because it launched in the way it did.
• 27:40
  I'm never going to use that because I just don't trust that
• 27:42
  it's going to be functional in a way that is going to make it
• 27:46
  worth it. So that's because it launched
• 27:50
  badly. Even if they come up with a
• 27:52
  bunch of updates like it's gonna you, you'd be really hard
• 27:54
  pressed to convince people to swap to that from whatever
• 27:57
  they're using now. Yeah, I think so.
• 27:58
  That's my only concern. Yeah, I I think the other thing
• 28:01
  is IA lot of the functionality that we really like about these
• 28:05
  add-ons is kind of especially with things like weak auras, the
• 28:08
  things that people like are what Blizzard wants to turn off,
• 28:10
  right. Like the, the point is that they
• 28:12
  don't want us to have all of the functions that we've had.
• 28:15
  I think. And like, I will say, I think
• 28:17
  I'm kind of like morally diametrically opposed to Sean on
• 28:21
  this because I actually do. I, I tend to get very
• 28:27
  disappointed when Blizzard introduces what seems like it's
• 28:30
  gonna be a fun mechanic and like a complicated mechanic they
• 28:34
  would have to play with. And then somebody, you know, is
• 28:37
  like, oh, they actually made a weak war that fixes this.
• 28:39
  I think the thing I think about a lot is the among us boss in
• 28:43
  Nialotha, not Nialotha in Nathra.
• 28:45
  And I sometimes just think about how fun that would have been to
• 28:48
  do without a weak aura like, and to be fair, it was way too hard
• 28:51
  the way they put it out, like they, they needed to drop back
• 28:53
  the difficulty, which I think they, you know, The thing is
• 28:55
  that it almost immediately got replaced with a weak aura.
• 28:57
  So who's going to nerf it? You just put on the weak aura
• 28:59
  the. Nathrazine from Sepulcher.
• 29:02
  The first ones. Yeah, yeah, where all of the
• 29:05
  players you had to find. Right, right.
• 29:07
  And they, they possessed people. OK, Sorry.
• 29:10
  Right, right. Yes, Yeah.
• 29:12
  I think it's a really good example.
• 29:14
  No, it was Sepulchre, the first ones, you were right.
• 29:17
  But it was the Nathrazine. It was Malganis and Contessa.
• 29:22
  Oh. I'm trying.
• 29:24
  And they turned 1 turned into like a bat swarm.
• 29:28
  Yeah, yeah, that's the, that's the one.
• 29:29
  That's, that's the fight Blester was referencing and that
• 29:32
  mechanic was great. But if you weren't in voice
• 29:34
  comms, right? Well.
• 29:36
  Let's forget it, yeah? I think I think that that is
• 29:41
  actually an add on race. The the issue, because I think
• 29:47
  that could have had a much more lenient timer on it or much more
• 29:55
  like that is something that they could have done in a way that
• 29:58
  made it much more expressive. Like it's like, oh, like that.
• 30:02
  The thing is that like it was happening so quickly.
• 30:04
  You could, you only had like a little bit of time to like sort
• 30:06
  of see the effect, right? And then say, Oh, it's it's
• 30:12
  actually you're the imposter. He's the imposter.
• 30:15
  It's like, OK, well, two people said said that before, like you
• 30:18
  would fail. And I think that that short
• 30:21
  timer is because they knew that teams were going to be
• 30:24
  incredibly coordinated with it. So yeah, I that I.
• 30:28
  Mean that's the if. If the timer isn't short though,
• 30:32
  no. Like nobody's writing weak cores
• 30:34
  for mechanics we don't need to write weak cores for.
• 30:37
  It's just not happening. There are no we core solutions
• 30:39
  for mechanics that you can solve because there's a lot and, and
• 30:42
  I'm going to use the galleries canisters again on Mythic.
• 30:45
  Galleries canisters on Mythic is, is one of those mechanics
• 30:48
  that if the timer was short, you would have to assign people
• 30:51
  spots to go, but it's not. So people just go and there's
• 30:56
  no, we go for it. There's no, we go for it.
• 30:57
  That tells you go to your, go to your canister.
• 30:59
  X or whatever doesn't exist because it's not needed because
• 31:03
  they made the mechanic accessible enough that we don't
• 31:05
  need to do it. Out of curiosity, do you have an
• 31:10
  example of a? And maybe like, I also can't
• 31:14
  think of like a counter example, but like I, I think it's more so
• 31:18
  that that's a mechanic that we're really used to like that
• 31:21
  like go to place X. So I'm wondering if there's like
• 31:24
  a a unique, I guess maybe now I am thinking like the I'm sorry,
• 31:31
  I should finish the sentence instead of just kind of ramble.
• 31:34
  I guess. I, I think as a general rule, it
• 31:37
  feels like we're like if something is, is solvable, if
• 31:41
  something is complicated and you could either really like trick
• 31:46
  your way through it or just write a weak or and fix it.
• 31:50
  Usually people will just go with the easiest version, right?
• 31:52
  Although I guess actually the the probably the best example.
• 31:54
  I wasn't I was rating, but not like super.
• 31:57
  I mean, I've always been AOTC King Mecca Torque.
• 32:00
  Was there weak or is to cut through the like selecting which
• 32:03
  button you were supposed to pick?
• 32:06
  I didn't raid that tier so I don't know, I'm sorry.
• 32:09
  We did it through comms. I was mitigating at that time.
• 32:12
  We got we got through Makatoric. There was a week or where it
• 32:24
  would like. I don't because.
• 32:27
  I don't remember it either. I remember we just, we always
• 32:28
  did it in comms. You just everyone had to shut
• 32:30
  the hell up. Yeah, it was like, I'm not sure.
• 32:33
  Sean, Sean, you got an X over your head and Sean would do that
• 32:35
  and it was like, OK, then you'd solve solve all but the last of
• 32:39
  Sean's every and everybody would go and then you'd give each
• 32:42
  other the the last one and go through.
• 32:43
  So was there a week or for that? I I can't quite recall.
• 32:47
  So but like. My guess is no.
• 32:49
  Yeah, if it was easily done through comms.
• 32:53
  Yeah, I guess that there's there's my counter example.
• 32:55
  So maybe maybe I actually am kind of proving my point that or
• 32:57
  proving Sean's point that it is just that if things are too hard
• 33:00
  to do on your own, I. Think that they're the.
• 33:04
  Hearts, the hearts on echo of north area in Anabras.
• 33:07
  They gave us 5 hearts that had to be spread to exact spots on
• 33:12
  the map in each quadrant. And I think you had 6 seconds to
• 33:16
  do it and it was randomly assigned to players and then the
• 33:20
  players had to randomly get to their spots.
• 33:22
  Like it was impossible to solve that without a week aura to
• 33:26
  instantly assign people where to go.
• 33:28
  The solution is instead of 6 seconds, you give us 8 seconds
• 33:32
  or you give us 10 seconds to figure it out and then nobody
• 33:35
  writes that weak Ora. Well, but the, the other thing
• 33:37
  is that if, if the weak Ora didn't exist, like the flip side
• 33:40
  of that is that if nobody could write the weak Ora, like if that
• 33:43
  was off the table, Blizzard would have to step in and fix
• 33:46
  the problem, right? Like, you know, there's not a
• 33:49
  lot of pressure on them to drop it from six seconds to 8 seconds
• 33:52
  or whatever. Even with the weak Ora they
• 33:54
  nerfed it and they added time. It was that insanely.
• 33:58
  I mean, OK, so, but like there are 1,000,000 different ways
• 34:01
  that that could have been easier, but they couldn't do it
• 34:03
  because of the expected capability of teams, right?
• 34:09
  OK, here, let me, let me give you an example.
• 34:11
  Let me give you an example, right?
• 34:12
  Ages, ages ago, actually not that long.
• 34:15
  I think if we go back to BFA, they still had some examples of
• 34:18
  this. You could have some people do a
• 34:21
  mechanic and you could have people who are assigned to do a
• 34:24
  mechanic. We have seen less of that less
• 34:28
  frequency frequently because assignments were pre done with
• 34:33
  add-ons so often where you would be like OK, you're going to do
• 34:40
  this and we've seen it occasionally like you'll see
• 34:43
  like. For that, you just do that in
• 34:44
  prep ahead of time, you just say.
• 34:45
  You can do it in prep like you you could have with like
• 34:50
  sprocket, sprocket monster or whatever where you have the
• 34:53
  minds. It's like OK, first set of minds
• 34:55
  you 1234, second set of minds 1234.
• 34:58
  It can be done. Heroic yes, Mythic no.
• 35:04
  Because in mythic, the minds are color-coded and the players are
• 35:07
  color-coded, and the color coding on the players changes
• 35:10
  just before the minds come and have to be popped.
• 35:13
  And you only have 8 seconds to pop all the minds.
• 35:15
  So you need a week aura to figure out which players have
• 35:19
  which colors which need to pop, which minds who don't have the
• 35:20
  debuff because there's not enough time to process it.
• 35:23
  But that's that's again, it's a it's how you change the
• 35:27
  difficulty. To do is move the time from when
• 35:30
  we get our colors to win the bond mine spawn.
• 35:34
  Yeah. But they chose to put them
• 35:35
  together. But they can do that.
• 35:36
  But like they again, there's especially on mythic where
• 35:39
  almost everyone is using weak auras.
• 35:40
  Like it's not like heroic where you would do off.
• 35:42
  Like, you know, we have a couple holdouts in our Guild who are
• 35:44
  like, I really don't want to, you know, download DBM and we
• 35:48
  work around it. You can't really do that in
• 35:49
  mythic to my understanding. Or like you, you don't right.
• 35:52
  Like anyone who's playing at the level where they're going to be
• 35:55
  doing add-ons. So like if teams were getting
• 35:58
  hard stock and like sometimes teams get hard stock on things
• 36:00
  in Mythic and they just say suck it up at mythic.
• 36:03
  But by and large, my guess is that there's not a lot of like,
• 36:08
  pressure on Blizzard to change these things because you fix it
• 36:10
  with a weak aura. So nobody's saying like, hey,
• 36:13
  can we make this time? Like, this is really, really
• 36:15
  tough and difficult. If weak auras were gone, I don't
• 36:18
  believe that Blizzard would just allow the entirety of like, you
• 36:21
  know, cutting edge Raiders to drop down to, you know, a
• 36:24
  handful of teams and 90% of the previous cutting edge teams
• 36:28
  can't do it. They would adjust.
• 36:29
  They would fix the problem, right?
• 36:30
  They would make it. They would adjust the time,
• 36:32
  they'd make it feasible. You know, it's not like they're
• 36:34
  just gonna be like, oh, well, weak auras are gone.
• 36:36
  And we made this mechanic and it sucks and nobody can get through
• 36:40
  it, so nobody's going to get through it ever, right?
• 36:43
  Yeah, and I think you've got two points there. 1 is that whenever
• 36:48
  they decide to kill add-ons, they need to be incredibly
• 36:53
  responsive with the tuning. Like you, you already said it's
• 36:56
  going to be painful. That pain needs to be as short
• 36:59
  lived as possible. Like, I don't expect them to bat
• 37:01
  100 out of the gate, but like as soon as like they see Gil's
• 37:08
  having an issue with a mechanic, they need to be willing to come
• 37:13
  in with a nerf bat a couple of pulls in to pulls in to be like,
• 37:17
  OK, that's it. We're increasing the time so
• 37:20
  that this is doable for for like in somebody's head, we're going
• 37:25
  to change change this mechanic so that you don't need something
• 37:29
  that we've now disabled to do that.
• 37:31
  Like they need to be incredibly fast on the response in the tear
• 37:37
  that they are doing that and a couple tears afterwards.
• 37:39
  Because again, they're going to have slip UPS, not just the tear
• 37:44
  that they do the kill, but probably as they're going back
• 37:48
  to McCann to be like, oh, we can do this again.
• 37:49
  It's like, yeah, you can do it again, but can you do it in that
• 37:52
  same way? So that growing pain is going to
• 37:55
  need to be like carefully managed or they're going to like
• 38:00
  kill rating it effectively. And as Sean was saying, like you
• 38:05
  have a bad experience, it takes a lot to make you go back right
• 38:08
  Just with that, like add-ons. Fellowships coming out.
• 38:11
  I'll, I mean, I will swap, I will swap to fellowship.
• 38:14
  Right. And in Mythic +2, right, Because
• 38:16
  Fellowship, Fellowship is basically Mythic plus simulator.
• 38:20
  But like, yeah, in Mythic +2 they're going to have to be
• 38:22
  incredibly reactive. But the second point is that,
• 38:27
  yeah, like Lex, they're they're going to have to put in these
• 38:31
  mechanics in a way that is like, OK, an example of the rolling
• 38:37
  the coins on on one armed bandit that I don't believe you need a
• 38:44
  week or 4, do you? Right.
• 38:48
  And that is a personal responsibility thing.
• 38:49
  You can have somebody who goes out there and you're like, OK,
• 38:51
  you're you're going to go grab the coins.
• 38:53
  You 3 people, you're assigned to the coins.
• 38:55
  So there are some sort of some assignment stuff that's still in
• 38:58
  the game. And then we just had 1.5 because
• 39:02
  the mythic mythic example I used before doesn't quite work.
• 39:05
  So there is some of that stuff, but I just find that like there
• 39:09
  are less. That's what pisses me off.
• 39:12
  I'm sorry. That's what pisses me off.
• 39:14
  They show that they can do it. They can make mechanics that
• 39:18
  don't need weak ores, that are fun, engaging and new.
• 39:22
  And whenever they make something that does need a weak Ora, they
• 39:25
  point to weak ores and say, oh, we made it because of weak ores.
• 39:27
  Well, we knew you had weak ores so we made it shitty.
• 39:30
  Sorry. It's not our fault it's the weak
• 39:31
  or his fault. It's.
• 39:33
  It's it's not what they're saying.
• 39:35
  It is what they say. No, we.
• 39:36
  Have to make it harder, we we have to use more direct quote,
• 39:40
  we have to use more ground swirls because you guys are
• 39:42
  using weak or to solve everything else.
• 39:44
  Yeah, they, they, they find that and this is OK.
• 39:48
  So this is what the war is. No.
• 39:50
  No, I understand and I like again, we knew this was going to
• 39:53
  be be heated, but design space gets constricted as things can
• 39:59
  be more easily trivialized, right.
• 40:02
  We've like I could go and get clips from how many fast
• 40:06
  episodes where Sean says you get this because then you don't have
• 40:10
  to think about it and therefore you can think about all these
• 40:13
  other things that are happening, right.
• 40:15
  I am terrified that the point where they go, OK guys.
• 40:20
  We're going to remove as these interrupts and such so that you
• 40:23
  don't have to deal with as much interrupts and you don't need to
• 40:26
  have that like that kind of coordination.
• 40:29
  The answer from the top players is great.
• 40:31
  We're going to keep doing that level of coordination.
• 40:33
  We're just going to pull more and they're going to go right
• 40:36
  back to that. That like extreme limit of this
• 40:39
  is how much our stops can handle The, the big thing about like
• 40:44
  one of the things that they're talking about is like, hey, we
• 40:47
  don't want you to be able to track other people's cooldown.
• 40:52
  So you can't track incoming heels.
• 40:55
  You can't track if that, that paladin has used his defensive
• 41:01
  and such. And so in my mind, I go, OK, I
• 41:06
  immediately think back to them saying, hey, we want to
• 41:10
  deescalate the amount of defensives that people have.
• 41:13
  And I go, you know what, if I don't have 5 different cooldowns
• 41:18
  per other person on my team and I have one, one or two to track,
• 41:24
  yeah, I can do that In my head, that doesn't feel that bad.
• 41:26
  It's like, oh, the I've used one, he's got one more, Oh, he's
• 41:32
  used two. I, I'm going to call for an
• 41:35
  external or something. And that kind of that kind of
• 41:39
  thing is a lot easier for people to do in their head than if
• 41:42
  they're at. Externals if you don't know if
• 41:44
  they have them available. But I I will say that was one
• 41:47
  thing. I just don't understand the
• 41:50
  logic. Like I don't see why tracking
• 41:52
  other people's cooldowns is hurting the game.
• 41:57
  OK. So it's it's, it's a matter of.
• 42:00
  What does that mean for augmentation of workers who are
• 42:03
  incentivized to use their abilities on people when they're
• 42:06
  in their cooldowns? Well, augmentation of workers is
• 42:08
  actually a good example because the the level of ability for an
• 42:13
  augmentation of poker when you have a highly coordinated team
• 42:17
  that can line up all the cooldowns versus the average
• 42:19
  player that isn't following those cooldowns is part of the
• 42:22
  like information gap causing such a huge difference in
• 42:27
  performance. Right.
• 42:28
  I think that if I were to look at Sean's UI, Sean going through
• 42:36
  a a mythic plus versus Lex's UI and Lex's going through a mythic
• 42:40
  plus. Let's say that you're both
• 42:41
  tanking Lex, you've decided you're going to go vengeance
• 42:44
  demon hunt and we go through any dungeon.
• 42:48
  I'm going to see on Sean's UIA lot more information about like
• 42:54
  what are which things are casters, which things are
• 42:57
  priority targets, which things are interruptible, which things
• 43:01
  are like the most must interrupt?
• 43:04
  How long an ability lasts? Like it's just going to be like
• 43:06
  a like there are add-ons where it's like and Billy goes off and
• 43:10
  in the middle of the screen you'll just get a little circle
• 43:12
  that'll just spin down and say, OK, this this ability has
• 43:16
  elapsed, right. I don't expect to see that on
• 43:19
  your UI, Lex. Right.
• 43:21
  But the the fact of the matter is, if I were to switch you 2
• 43:25
  onto each other's accounts, right?
• 43:30
  I think Sean, you would be perplexed into all the
• 43:32
  information that you're missing. And Lex, you would suddenly be
• 43:36
  able to much more quickly absorb what's happening in a dungeon
• 43:41
  because of all the information that Sean has done.
• 43:44
  Yeah. Wait, are these actually going
• 43:46
  to? Exist.
• 43:46
  Is this why I'm so bad? Do you guys actually have things
• 43:49
  to tell you who you can interrupt and who's a caster?
• 43:51
  And when you're you're kidding, you're joking.
• 43:54
  This is a joke. This is a fun.
• 43:56
  Blizzard name plates are trash. Blizzard name plates don't tell
• 43:59
  you who's being targeted for a spell.
• 44:00
  So if you're a warrior, spell reflect is useless if you're not
• 44:03
  using a a nameplate add on because you don't know if you're
• 44:06
  being targeted so you never know when to use spell reflect.
• 44:08
  He's so for real. Is this why I'm such a bad tank?
• 44:11
  It like, OK, but like, not because you're, this is not to
• 44:16
  say that this is because you're such a bad tank, but I want to
• 44:18
  say that some of, if not all of the top players, a big thing
• 44:23
  that makes a differential is not just their play, but their
• 44:26
  preparation, right? Yeah.
• 44:28
  If you talk to Sean, I keep putting words in your mouth, but
• 44:32
  I'm really just saying that I listen to you.
• 44:34
  Really. Right, Sean, ahead of any raid.
• 44:39
  Yeah. You have done a ton of prep and
• 44:42
  on on top of the ton of prep you've done, your raid team has
• 44:45
  done a ton of prep, right? And like Lex, you're kind of the
• 44:52
  exceptional case here because you literally have bosses where
• 44:55
  the point is to go in blind. Well, we also prep.
• 44:58
  We, we very carefully have made it for the team.
• 45:00
  We we kind of gave up on making the team prep.
• 45:03
  Now we all just do it together. But yes.
• 45:05
  But like, but like, yeah, but like I'm just saying like, I
• 45:07
  mean like the blind bosses, the bosses is a is an exception.
• 45:10
  I don't want to to use that. But like there are teams, right
• 45:14
  Where their where their prep is. Hey, you know what, we're going
• 45:18
  to sit down and we're going to watch the video together, right?
• 45:25
  And then we get there and we're going to be like, OK, so we're
• 45:29
  going to make the plan before we do the first poll and then, OK,
• 45:31
  we'll adjust the plan there and like, oh, you know, let's just
• 45:35
  get to phase three and then we'll see how phase three goes
• 45:38
  and then we'll talk about Phase 3.
• 45:40
  When we get there. This everyone dies No, Lex, a
• 45:44
  lot of people do that I'm not describing your raid group in
• 45:48
  particular. I'm describing a raid group at A
• 45:52
  at a casual level and how they would approach it right.
• 45:56
  And I'm describing Sean Sean's group, but using Sean as example
• 46:01
  of a high level group and how they would approach it.
• 46:03
  And the, the point of it is, is that the amount of information
• 46:08
  is so much more powerful. If you had the level of prep,
• 46:15
  the information that the add-ons provide and your entire group
• 46:19
  had that your entire group would progress much faster than you
• 46:24
  than you would progress now, right?
• 46:27
  And so part of it is how much information do we give you and
• 46:35
  how difficult does the fight need to be because of all that
• 46:38
  information you're getting? If you know at a glance what's
• 46:42
  targeting you, how long that ability lasts for what, what the
• 46:48
  priorities are, how many people have their their interrupts
• 46:53
  right? And when the next interrupt is
• 46:54
  going to come back online, you are able to at a glance make a
• 46:58
  whale more informed and more likely to be right decision than
• 47:04
  you would now. And if you we take away all of
• 47:08
  that and design with you not having all of that, that is
• 47:13
  where the arms race comes into play.
• 47:15
  It is not that Blizzard could just make the dungeon easier.
• 47:21
  They of course they can. That's why we have follower
• 47:23
  dungeons, LFR. Like I don't want to go any
• 47:27
  higher than that because then I'm going to start like
• 47:29
  insulting people. But like the entry level
• 47:31
  difficulties exist. Blizzard already develops it at
• 47:35
  a lower level or lower or more entry level for people who
• 47:40
  aren't expected to be as coordinated.
• 47:45
  And so the reason that things are, are put at such a mind
• 47:51
  bending level is because they're aware and design two people
• 47:57
  having that kind of power from from their add-ons.
• 48:03
  Like like Sean, you said, Blizzard employees play this
• 48:08
  game with those add-ons. I like, I know it for a fact.
• 48:11
  We all know. I play with no add-ons at all.
• 48:14
  No add-ons, no weak horse, and they kill the bosses is what I'm
• 48:16
  told, right? And weak horse like I I like
• 48:21
  even their PR team is running it like mythic level right?
• 48:26
  Yeah, here's the thing, Manny, If you remove tracking of other
• 48:31
  people's cooldowns, you remove all of this combat functionality
• 48:34
  they want to remove that you take away from the player.
• 48:37
  You have to dumb down the content to a point when it's a
• 48:40
  boat on par with Mr. Pandaria. Maybe Cataclysm.
• 48:44
  That's boring as shit. I don't have any.
• 48:46
  If I wanted to play Classic, I'd play Classic.
• 48:49
  I don't want to play a dumbed down version of the game because
• 48:52
  other people can't take the time to look up a you know, a guide.
• 48:54
  You know what I mean? I'm I'm not going to use Lex,
• 48:57
  but her team doesn't want to look at a raid guide before they
• 49:00
  do a boss. Well, Alexis team has done this
• 49:03
  information. So Sean's team, we're going to
• 49:04
  have to delete YouTube, everyone.
• 49:06
  Well, OK, I actually, so now that I'm, I'm, I will say this,
• 49:10
  this has kind of opened my eyes to how many add-ons I was
• 49:14
  actually just like unaware existed.
• 49:18
  And I think reading what Ian's saying again, with that in mind,
• 49:25
  I think that they're focusing too much on what like the point
• 49:30
  that Ian was making throughout this article, especially when
• 49:34
  we're talking about things like turning off group tracking, is
• 49:38
  not, we don't want people to have this ability.
• 49:40
  It's if this is actually something that people need to
• 49:43
  play the game successfully, it should be baked into the game.
• 49:46
  He says that like almost every other line in this interview.
• 49:49
  And it's just what they pulled out.
• 49:51
  Like what was exciting to talk about was that, you know, you
• 49:55
  won't be able to track players or enemies.
• 49:57
  So I'm going to give Blizzard the benefit because I honestly,
• 50:01
  one of the reasons that I gave up on tanking is it felt like,
• 50:03
  Oh my God, like the amount of things that I have to memorize
• 50:07
  and like, like I either I'm going to have to constantly have
• 50:10
  a better player than me, like basically carrying me through a
• 50:13
  raid, walking me through, you go here, now you go here, now you
• 50:16
  go here, now you go here. Or I look at this like
• 50:18
  absolutely chaotic map that's going to take me forever to
• 50:21
  figure out, or I have to somehow memorize every single dungeon.
• 50:24
  Like I don't understand how tanks do this.
• 50:26
  Now I know it's the other tanks had add on.
• 50:28
  No. No, no.
• 50:31
  So the path I know the. Path yeah but like what mobs to
• 50:34
  pull and stuff but yeah there's I run a week or that tell her
• 50:37
  when I run an add on that tells me who has interrupts when my
• 50:40
  plater tells me what mobs are targeting who it's color-coded
• 50:43
  to say which enemies are casters which enemies are lieutenants,
• 50:46
  which enemies have frontals. I get a little icon next to
• 50:49
  their name that says this is their big ability and when it's
• 50:52
  coming up next with a timer. Yeah.
• 50:56
  And then I track the defensive. I don't track defensives when
• 50:59
  I'm tanking, but when I'm healing, I track what defensives
• 51:01
  my team has. When I'm tanking, I track what
• 51:03
  offensives they have so that if their offensive CDs are coming
• 51:06
  up off, cool. And I know I can do a bigger
• 51:08
  pull next. Or if they're not, they're a
• 51:10
  long way off. I pull trash before pulling a
• 51:12
  boss, that kind of stuff. But it's not like like that's
• 51:15
  not like a, it's not a mystery. It's like it's all like the box.
• 51:19
  You just install the add on and it's there.
• 51:21
  But I, I see, I agree with your point.
• 51:23
  And Ian definitely says, if people need this, we need to be
• 51:25
  giving it to them. And I'm glad that you're going
• 51:29
  to give them the benefit of the doubt, but they fundamentally
• 51:31
  changed how AOE stops work and AOE stuns work and how stuns
• 51:35
  work and dungeons. And we talked a little on this
• 51:37
  podcast and we were all like, well, they're obviously going to
• 51:40
  change when they design dungeons and put less casters in the
• 51:42
  packs to accommodate this. And they absolutely did not.
• 51:46
  I OK, I I want, I want people to go back to what I said.
• 51:50
  I said that the must interrupt casts right will be less and
• 51:55
  fewer and farther in between, and there are some casts that
• 51:58
  are going off, but I think that is just so that what is actually
• 52:03
  stopping actually happening is that healers do have to heal
• 52:07
  right. I used it as a rot damage rather
• 52:10
  than them just being like constantly doing damage.
• 52:13
  And later on we didn't, you did come back and say, Oh yeah,
• 52:16
  people are now using their stops to like delay a cast to like
• 52:19
  wait for that cool down. So there is some value in in the
• 52:22
  stops in the like pushing and pushing back, that sort of
• 52:25
  stuff. Now there is.
• 52:27
  Think that the the number one tanks for the last three seasons
• 52:30
  have been ones with massive AOE crowd control.
• 52:32
  That's that's what I was going to say.
• 52:34
  The ones. With massive AOE crowd control,
• 52:36
  and the top DVS have been the ones with massive AOE crowd
• 52:40
  control. So I think that, yeah, the
• 52:43
  problem is that they left some things that are still in that
• 52:48
  are still in there. Demon Hunters. .2 I'm sure.
• 52:52
  Demon hunters are a big one because of like, you know,
• 52:56
  change being able to just do like a quick research, silence,
• 53:00
  being able to to do that. So like there are like some
• 53:04
  outliers that are incredibly strong because of that and they
• 53:10
  should address that. But right, it isn't.
• 53:15
  It isn't to say that it's undoable for the ones that don't
• 53:19
  have that. It's just that the nature of
• 53:22
  meta means, hey, it's easier to go this way.
• 53:25
  So we pushed. So the teams go this way.
• 53:29
  Nobody, I don't think anybody in this panel is saying that
• 53:34
  Warriors are unable to do thirteens or Warriors are unable
• 53:39
  to to do fifteens. No, it's a lot harder though.
• 53:43
  It is harder, right? A lot, not just a little bit.
• 53:46
  It's a lot harder. I have a friend who played
• 53:49
  brewmaster monk all season and he swapped the Demon Hunter and
• 53:52
  was immediately doing keys of the same level as Demon Hunter.
• 53:54
  20 item levels lower on his Demon Hunter than he was on his
• 53:58
  Brew Master, and with half of the healing received because of
• 54:02
  how much easier it is. And I get it.
• 54:04
  Blizzard's in an arm race with Demon hunters.
• 54:05
  It's OK that the demon hunters keep getting stronger and
• 54:08
  Blizzard has to keep adding more mobs to AOE silence.
• 54:11
  It makes sense. So.
• 54:13
  I'm going to fight against my own point because I've been very
• 54:15
  processed the entire time I do. I'm very annoying.
• 54:20
  I worry the Blizzard is biting off more than it can chew and
• 54:24
  I'm kind of stopping my like I'm I'm sort of getting over my very
• 54:28
  friendly. I'm worried they're not napping
• 54:29
  enough and I'm getting. Into I'm gonna cut you, I'm
• 54:32
  gonna cut you off for a second. Well, one, like I, I understand
• 54:37
  that sentiment, but like, I think that the biggest thing
• 54:40
  that we need to remember is that Ian said this, this isn't going
• 54:44
  to happen overnight. So yeah.
• 54:46
  He said two patches he. Did not say too.
• 54:48
  Bad, he said. Two tiers.
• 54:49
  This isn't going to happen in the next two tiers.
• 54:52
  He said what he said it's not going to happen in the next tier
• 54:54
  or two. He's saying it's not going to
• 54:56
  like it's not going to happen in midnight in, in the next tier or
• 55:00
  two, see in February. But like my hope, right?
• 55:05
  And my advice, because we're talking about how they could do
• 55:08
  this, this properly, is to implement one thing at a time,
• 55:13
  change your name plate so that more information is on those
• 55:15
  name plates, that the name plates are better, right?
• 55:18
  They talked about the one thing that they don't want to do,
• 55:21
  which is the conditionals, right?
• 55:23
  A name plate suddenly lights up because, oh goodness, this thing
• 55:26
  is, is casting a big bad spell. So the name plate suddenly
• 55:30
  lights up and says, oh, everybody focus on that.
• 55:32
  That can be that can't be removed from like an API or
• 55:36
  conditional trigger. But instead we get like the cast
• 55:41
  animation that's like, OK, wait a second, this guy's calling
• 55:44
  down a meteor from the sky. Maybe we want to focus on on
• 55:48
  this guy so that people see it. And if they get killed by it
• 55:51
  once they go. Anytime I see Sean start putting
• 55:54
  up both his middle fingers at me, I know we got to deal with
• 55:58
  Sean, right? Is a very elegant solution that
• 56:02
  hopefully you're able to see because you don't have to play
• 56:04
  with practical density turned on essential or spell this right
• 56:08
  part of it. Does he turned off and spell
• 56:09
  this to turn on essential because you lag out in the
• 56:12
  content in any other situation with an on any level.
• 56:14
  If you have those two settings on low, you don't see the
• 56:17
  mechanics that are happening in Eric Cara that he referenced.
• 56:21
  Right, the Eric Cara thing, but the the next thing would be to
• 56:25
  have really long cast, like the cast bar be like equivalent to
• 56:31
  the damage. If something is casting really
• 56:32
  quick, not that much, it's gonna get a little chunk chunk.
• 56:37
  If that thing is sitting there and it's casting for like 30
• 56:39
  seconds as a as an extreme, yes, that is something you really
• 56:44
  should stop, friend. Right.
• 56:46
  And to go to go and do do that is like another way that doesn't
• 56:53
  depend on particle density. So like, yes, it's going to have
• 56:56
  to be attacked on multiple fronts to do to do these sort of
• 57:02
  things, especially when they are trying to make this an
• 57:04
  accessibility thing and an accessibility thing can't
• 57:06
  suddenly be like, oh, it's accessible, but only if you have
• 57:09
  the top graphic. So yes, you're right there,
• 57:10
  Sean. It needs it needs to be a multi
• 57:13
  pronged approach to that. I want.
• 57:16
  Your Lex agree with me though. Can we go back to Lex?
• 57:18
  She was about to agree with me, I think.
• 57:21
  OK, so other than the the team, sorry, wait, I got to finish
• 57:25
  this point. So like, yeah, they work on one
• 57:27
  thing, right? They work on one thing.
• 57:29
  So they the the casters being incredibly telegraphed,
• 57:33
  incredibly obvious, regardless of your graphical fidelity to
• 57:39
  know that that is a dangerous spell.
• 57:42
  It would mean that they wouldn't need to have that locked in on
• 57:46
  the on the name bars, right? And then they can solve name
• 57:50
  bars and then move on to the next thing, which would reduce
• 57:54
  their workload. Instead of, like I said, doing 5
• 57:58
  things at once and then trying to get that done and then doing
• 58:01
  the next 5 things instead, Working on one aspect of combat,
• 58:05
  moving on to the next. Get cooldown manager up and
• 58:08
  running to a point that we love it, and then work on name
• 58:12
  plates. Get name plates up until what we
• 58:14
  like, and then start working on the next thing.
• 58:19
  OK, continue on. Lex, I apologize.
• 58:21
  Yeah, I mean, I, I forget exactly how I was going to word
• 58:24
  this, but basically I worry that Blizzard is biting off where
• 58:29
  they can chew. I worry.
• 58:31
  And I also worry that they're doing, they're consistently
• 58:33
  doing the thing that I was scared of, where they give
• 58:34
  themselves deadlines and they clearly don't really have the
• 58:37
  ability to meet them. So they kind of give us less
• 58:40
  content or kind of mid content or broken content because
• 58:44
  they're like, well, this has to really offend.
• 58:45
  So we're going to figure it out. I think if they're gonna if, if
• 58:48
  they're gonna do this, I think they need to get significantly
• 58:50
  more comfortable. Sorry, if you can hear a siren
• 58:52
  in the background. They need to get significantly
• 58:55
  more comfortable with delaying things like immediately.
• 59:00
  I, I, I need Blizzard to start saying this isn't ready and
• 59:03
  we're not putting it out yet. I need them to go back to that.
• 59:05
  I don't, it is not better for them to be giving us, you know,
• 59:09
  the next year in a timeline and then being like, well, we're
• 59:13
  just sticking to it. We have to, and giving me less
• 59:15
  good content. I, I want them to stop
• 59:18
  themselves sometimes. I want them to look at things
• 59:21
  and say, this is not complete. I want them to be on the like to
• 59:23
  be saying we're not taking the PTR.
• 59:25
  We have not had the time to take the PTR feedback or like or like
• 59:29
  even if we feel like they should have.
• 59:31
  We've gotten a lot of PTR feedback.
• 59:33
  We have not been able to integrate it into the mechanic
• 59:36
  yet. Therefore we are not releasing
• 59:37
  it yet. I want them to slow down.
• 59:40
  It is better to do good slow work then really rapidly promise
• 59:45
  a ton and just figure out how to pump it out and then you know,
• 59:48
  have the live basically become PTR.
• 59:53
  Just pretend the add-ons are dastardly duos and delay them by
• 59:57
  too much, yeah? Exactly, like I actually agree
• 1:00:00
  with that point going to what Lex was saying and like at one
• 1:00:03
  point the the team had said, hey, you know what, like
• 1:00:07
  there'll be something that can't make it with this patch and
• 1:00:10
  we'll move it off to a patch. I think they did that once in
• 1:00:12
  Dragonfly even. But like to say, OK, you know
• 1:00:15
  what, the cooldown manager, we've gotten a lot of feedback.
• 1:00:18
  It needs more time in the oven. It's not going to be released
• 1:00:21
  with 11 point 1.5. We're going to have it released
• 1:00:25
  with 11 point 1.7 or even 11.2. And so it was like in the PTR,
• 1:00:30
  they get the feedback and they go, hey, you know what needs
• 1:00:32
  more time in the oven? And even if they just kill it
• 1:00:35
  where it's like, it's just, you're not going to have the
• 1:00:37
  option to to, to enable it. It'll be in the background if
• 1:00:41
  you really want to do some strange stuff with it, but we're
• 1:00:44
  just going to have it like disabled until we're ready to
• 1:00:48
  have it launched. And then in 11.2, when they've
• 1:00:50
  done enough changes and updates, they say, OK, now it's enabled.
• 1:00:56
  I agree with you like that is that is what I think that they
• 1:00:59
  really need to need to do. And it doesn't take much for
• 1:01:01
  them to to make that changes because like, hey, they'll have
• 1:01:05
  something on the BTR and then they'll introduce time gating
• 1:01:07
  when it goes live. So they they know how to do like
• 1:01:11
  change things between PTR and live and it it would be
• 1:01:15
  beneficial to go the other way as well.
• 1:01:20
  I do want to .1 thing that Sean had said that I think was
• 1:01:23
  actually pretty brilliant. This is actually from a little
• 1:01:27
  while while ago, but like Sean, you were, you were saying that
• 1:01:34
  the team will say something, right?
• 1:01:39
  And then it'll all make sense. Like the reasoning is good and
• 1:01:44
  then it just doesn't land the way that they want it to.
• 1:01:47
  And I think that the team needs to be very conscientious of that
• 1:01:52
  where like you can have all the good intentions, right?
• 1:01:58
  And you will quickly find yourself paving a road, road to
• 1:02:01
  hell. And I, and at the beginning of
• 1:02:04
  the episode, Sean, you said, Hey, you like, they'll get to a
• 1:02:06
  point and they'll be like, hey, you know what, like we need to
• 1:02:10
  abandon this. And I like, and then I know that
• 1:02:15
  kind of comes from some of the anxieties around how they've
• 1:02:18
  implemented stuff. But I do think that there's a
• 1:02:21
  real issue with like a sunken cost fallacy sometimes where
• 1:02:25
  it's like, we've put this effort into it.
• 1:02:27
  We've got it to do this stuff. The way that it doesn't become a
• 1:02:30
  sunk cost is if you don't have it to a point where it has to be
• 1:02:36
  committed to like the cooldown manager is out right now and
• 1:02:41
  they haven't shut down Hikkelly and they haven't shut down other
• 1:02:43
  add-ons. So even though people are like
• 1:02:46
  wow, that that was a bit of a joke, Blizzard, at least you
• 1:02:50
  don't have people be like, I can't even play this game and
• 1:02:51
  I'm not going to play this game anymore.
• 1:02:53
  And I think that's how part of how you avoid this, the that
• 1:02:56
  sunk cost where it's like, well, we've we've got it in right now.
• 1:03:00
  The other part is like guys just had a entire what seminar for
• 1:03:08
  player housing? Sean was saying, Hey, contract
• 1:03:13
  these like developers and stuff. Guys like the before it even
• 1:03:18
  comes out on PTR, whatever you're, you're cooking on the on
• 1:03:22
  the PTR before it even comes out, have a little seminar.
• 1:03:26
  Bring in the the writers of this add on.
• 1:03:29
  Like let's say we're replacing damage logs.
• 1:03:33
  So you're going to bring in people from Warcraft logs,
• 1:03:35
  you're going to bring in people from radar IO, you're going to
• 1:03:38
  bring in whoever did recount details.
• 1:03:42
  Big wigs cause big wigs can it can also like feed into that
• 1:03:46
  that a bit. And so can like a lot of the
• 1:03:48
  combat systems feed into that system.
• 1:03:51
  Have a seminar and be like, this is what we've got.
• 1:03:52
  This is what it is. Have in again, like the race the
• 1:03:57
  world first players, right, and some other people and have them
• 1:04:01
  to sit down with it and do like a little bit of like, Hey, guys,
• 1:04:04
  we're testing this new this this Legion remix and hidden in
• 1:04:09
  Legion remix is the is your version of recount and get that
• 1:04:15
  test going and then be like, OK, hey, we got some feedback on
• 1:04:22
  this. Now we're going to put it on to
• 1:04:23
  the PTR for a larger thing after you've taken that feedback and
• 1:04:28
  worked on it, right, like what? So that way you get feedback
• 1:04:31
  before it even hits on the PTR. And just like Lex, you were
• 1:04:35
  saying your idea once it's on the PTR, don't get committed.
• 1:04:38
  Be like, OK, we're shutting this down.
• 1:04:39
  It's going to come later because further feedback is said that we
• 1:04:43
  still need to work on it. I'm going to believe Blizzard a
• 1:04:45
  little bit. I totally agree with you.
• 1:04:46
  I think that all makes perfect sense and I think that they
• 1:04:48
  should be doing things like that.
• 1:04:49
  And the seminars are good idea. That said, there is a little
• 1:04:53
  part of me that's like, if you guys, this whole thing is that
• 1:04:57
  every single person on your team loves your game.
• 1:04:59
  Why do you need to bring in content creators to tell you
• 1:05:02
  what's good in the game? Like does your team not entirely
• 1:05:05
  play it? Like, what are we doing here?
• 1:05:07
  But I I agree, if that's what they need to do and that's
• 1:05:10
  what's going to get them the, the feedback they need to figure
• 1:05:13
  out what's good, do it. I had to, I had to bully them a
• 1:05:16
  little bit. I have to make fun.
• 1:05:17
  Of that was, I think that was more a PR to get the content
• 1:05:20
  creators to tell everybody else how great.
• 1:05:22
  We're not going to show them. There's no footage allowed, but
• 1:05:24
  they're going to tell them how great it is and people are going
• 1:05:27
  to believe these people that we flew to Boston.
• 1:05:31
  Lex, sorry, I'm, I'm, I'm going to push back.
• 1:05:34
  No, let's. Go.
• 1:05:34
  Right, let's go. Lex, you're you're on a World of
• 1:05:36
  Warcraft podcast. You don't know everything about
• 1:05:39
  World of Warcraft. Geez, why don't, why don't we
• 1:05:42
  just bring in these players that know everything about the world
• 1:05:44
  like that's it's there like you. It's just it's.
• 1:05:47
  I'm agreeing that like, I, I, I think I like, I, I, I agree they
• 1:05:51
  should be getting more feedback and they should be listening to
• 1:05:53
  feedback. That's sad.
• 1:05:55
  The entire team plays World of Warcraft and they play World of
• 1:05:58
  Warcraft in very different ways. And so it just feels a little I
• 1:06:03
  I'm I'm kind of with Sean that it feels a little disingenuous
• 1:06:05
  when they say, oh, we couldn't have like we didn't realize this
• 1:06:08
  was going to be an issue. Nobody on your team like, are
• 1:06:12
  you guys not playing? Like the whole point of Blizzard
• 1:06:13
  early on was you guys were all playing this together and that's
• 1:06:15
  how you knew the game was good was because like, you know, you
• 1:06:18
  realize that everyone was like playing StarCraft instead of
• 1:06:20
  doing the work they were supposed to do.
• 1:06:22
  Are you guys not playing the game together anymore?
• 1:06:25
  Like are you guys not trying the new features together anymore?
• 1:06:27
  Like why? Why were we not learning from
• 1:06:30
  the, the, you know, entire Blizzard team that the cooldown
• 1:06:33
  manager kind of sucks, right? Why?
• 1:06:35
  So if the team is playing live, right, and then they're also
• 1:06:40
  sometimes diverting to play on like a closed internal server
• 1:06:43
  where all this stuff is, that's still just a portion of the like
• 1:06:48
  a very small fraction of the player base.
• 1:06:51
  And the interactions on the larger player base and the
• 1:06:55
  behavior of the larger player base and the different ways that
• 1:06:58
  people could even think to use stuff right is way larger.
• 1:07:04
  Like you could have like the best QA team that is going
• 1:07:07
  through all of this. As I say, it's just the QA team
• 1:07:10
  that are paid professionals to go through stuff and look for
• 1:07:15
  interactions and weird quirks and bugs and all of that.
• 1:07:18
  You could have the best QA team and still things do not survive,
• 1:07:25
  survive live. And even if you have your
• 1:07:27
  entirety of your your team that play it in many different ways,
• 1:07:32
  not all of them are interacting with like specifically, let's
• 1:07:36
  say a cooldown manager, right? That's the last thing that came
• 1:07:39
  out. Not all of them are acting with
• 1:07:41
  that, that cooldown manager. Not all of them are playing
• 1:07:45
  every every spec in in with like whatever rotation and have and
• 1:07:52
  have the ability to give you the level of feedback that you would
• 1:07:57
  of the greater player base I'm right to be.
• 1:08:00
  Clear I'm not saying Blizzard shouldn't need PTRS.
• 1:08:02
  I'm also not saying that everything should be released
• 1:08:04
  perfectly right. Blizzard is it's a game that's
• 1:08:07
  being pumped out to millions of people.
• 1:08:09
  Billions. No, can't be millions of
• 1:08:11
  millions yeah, millions of players like it's I, I just and
• 1:08:18
  also, and also if if what they need is they need to release
• 1:08:21
  things half baked so that we can make them good, fine, whatever
• 1:08:25
  right. Like I get it, they're under a
• 1:08:27
  lot of pressure like whatever will make it work.
• 1:08:30
  I just I guess I don't it it feels kind of disingenuous when
• 1:08:37
  something is released and it's like like Sean was saying, it's
• 1:08:41
  counter years of add on development.
• 1:08:46
  It's counter any game play, you know, and it it does.
• 1:08:54
  It feels a little bit like we should be getting content that's
• 1:08:58
  more tailored to players if like the entire team is players.
• 1:09:04
  Or maybe assign somebody to the cool down manager project who
• 1:09:07
  uses week or is to track their cooldowns instead of this pet
• 1:09:11
  battler or whoever they chose that doesn't know people.
• 1:09:13
  Want to add just I I I understand what you're saying.
• 1:09:18
  Many like the the wide player blaze are going to be niche
• 1:09:20
  things. They don't know everything,
• 1:09:21
  however. Not even niche things.
• 1:09:23
  Not even niche things. Sure, sure, basic thing, but to
• 1:09:25
  not know that people are going to want to be able to select
• 1:09:28
  what cooldowns are in their cooldown manager to come out and
• 1:09:31
  say, oh, we didn't know you guys wanted that.
• 1:09:32
  We didn't realize you'd want to be able to customize that.
• 1:09:35
  That's but like, don't pee on my leg and tell me it's raining.
• 1:09:38
  You know what I mean? That's do you have phones level
• 1:09:40
  of poor and communication with the with the with the players
• 1:09:45
  that you know when that's. To get up, sorry, I apologize.
• 1:09:48
  I'm going to agree with Sean and go a little bit further right.
• 1:09:54
  I think that there have been a number of missteps from from
• 1:09:59
  Blizzard in terms of the way that they message things, right?
• 1:10:03
  If you have like APC gamer article or you go to, let's say,
• 1:10:09
  like a general game publication, like yes, you might see have
• 1:10:16
  more people get their eyes on it, but there's also a level of
• 1:10:21
  questions that can follow up. Like I liked that you had
• 1:10:24
  Dratnos and limit. Sorry, Max right at the Wow at
• 1:10:33
  the Wowcast where they introduced that because they're
• 1:10:35
  people who have enough like intimate knowledge of the game
• 1:10:40
  to be able to like immediately give examples where hey, like
• 1:10:45
  what about this follow up questions that like actually get
• 1:10:49
  down into things when you get to this, when you read this PC
• 1:10:52
  Gamer article, I like it's a lot of quotes and like explanations,
• 1:10:57
  but I don't see a lot of follow up or like further drilling down
• 1:11:01
  to stuff. And like, I know this is all top
• 1:11:04
  level with this, with this, this interview, but I find that like
• 1:11:09
  for there's been a couple of times where Blizzard has like
• 1:11:15
  done broad stroke messaging and then get caught up on big
• 1:11:21
  details. When if you've spoken to
• 1:11:22
  somebody who has more expertise on whatever you're talking
• 1:11:28
  about, they would have gotten that feedback a lot earlier and
• 1:11:31
  being able to like implement on it, which is why I was talking
• 1:11:34
  about actually having some sort of conference so you can get
• 1:11:38
  that kind of like knowledgeable feedback earlier in the process.
• 1:11:43
  And cuz like when the, when you put something out on the PTR,
• 1:11:47
  right, the 11 point, like, you know, what?
• 1:11:50
  Have you been on the 11.711 point 1.7 PTR Lex?
• 1:11:54
  Surely not. OK.
• 1:11:56
  And then I, I, I suspect there's a lot of people who haven't been
• 1:11:59
  on 11 point 1.7 PTR, right point.
• 1:12:02
  They don't listen to the feedback anyway.
• 1:12:03
  I'm sorry. That was cool.
• 1:12:04
  That was cool. But like, I retract my
• 1:12:07
  statement, Your Honor. I, I, I understand that there's
• 1:12:10
  going to be a lot of jabs. You're angry, Sean.
• 1:12:12
  I appreciate that you've kept the cool head thus far.
• 1:12:16
  I mean they launched Sheriffic Visions and they don't even have
• 1:12:18
  the new swirls. It's still the.
• 1:12:19
  Old and still the old twirls and.
• 1:12:22
  I will also say I my, the point that I'm kind of, and I've, this
• 1:12:27
  is not a new take for me. If you listen to this podcast, I
• 1:12:31
  think this is a feature that is being sold to us as a bug.
• 1:12:34
  I will say again that it's not that the old Blizzard team did
• 1:12:39
  not do as much because they enjoyed sitting on their thumbs,
• 1:12:43
  right? Blizzard was famous for crunch.
• 1:12:46
  So I, I really think that what's going on right now is we are
• 1:12:52
  hitting the point where the team is getting more on their plate
• 1:12:57
  than they can manage and they aren't needing to figure out a
• 1:13:01
  way to offload it. And one way to offload it is to
• 1:13:05
  just be like, honestly, if it goes live and it sucks, it
• 1:13:07
  sucks, right? And we'll figure it out.
• 1:13:09
  We'll fix it later, and it'll be fine eventually.
• 1:13:11
  And we'll make it OK. I don't like that.
• 1:13:14
  And I would much rather. And I think that it's being sold
• 1:13:17
  like, oh, God. I yeah.
• 1:13:18
  Wow. Crazy.
• 1:13:19
  We couldn't have. I didn't realize it was so bad.
• 1:13:21
  But now that we know, we'll fix it.
• 1:13:22
  Thank you so much for telling us.
• 1:13:24
  I think it's just that they don't have the resources to
• 1:13:26
  manage it. And that's what's scaring me.
• 1:13:29
  And that's what's stressing me out.
• 1:13:30
  And that's exactly what I was scared of when this started, you
• 1:13:33
  know, when we started seeing the amount they were putting out.
• 1:13:37
  And I think that we're kind of getting the worst version of
• 1:13:41
  this. That's my and you know, that
• 1:13:44
  said, I don't like if they're the, the powers that be, don't
• 1:13:49
  either drop the labor, like allow them to be more flexible
• 1:13:53
  or stop laying off people and start hiring more, which I know
• 1:13:58
  and I know they're doing some hiring and they're trying to
• 1:14:00
  stack the teams and everything. Like I could get that.
• 1:14:01
  I know that it's, it's complicated.
• 1:14:03
  I but like if, if, if, if it's the resources are generally like
• 1:14:08
  they don't have the resources to fix it.
• 1:14:09
  They don't have the reasons to fix it, right.
• 1:14:11
  I I don't blame the devs for that.
• 1:14:14
  And if that's if, if this is what they have to do, like if
• 1:14:16
  this is the way they have to do it, they have to give me half
• 1:14:18
  baked content and they have to like push things out because
• 1:14:21
  they have deadlines and they have to meet it.
• 1:14:22
  Like I would rather have the game than not.
• 1:14:25
  And you know, like have it breakdown because they can't,
• 1:14:28
  you know, Xbox gets on them, Microsoft, whatever.
• 1:14:33
  It's the same thing. But I'm not in love with it.
• 1:14:38
  It it, it feels like we're getting consistently messier
• 1:14:41
  content and it's just getting messier and messier as it goes
• 1:14:43
  down. And I am concerned is my take.
• 1:14:48
  Yeah, OK, me too. So unfortunately the
• 1:14:50
  conversation is descended back into our fears and concerns and
• 1:14:53
  worries and not the thing that I had said like, hey, let's, let's
• 1:14:57
  focus on how we think they could do it better.
• 1:14:58
  But we have also gone over time as well.
• 1:15:01
  Get them no more break off again.
• 1:15:04
  Be your own company well. That's so do.
• 1:15:07
  Does anybody have any closing thoughts I.
• 1:15:09
  Do I do? Fundamentally, the game needs to
• 1:15:11
  be more accessible. I think narrowing the knowledge
• 1:15:18
  gap in what information people have right out-of-the-box
• 1:15:22
  compared to what somebody has with a full UI suite is good.
• 1:15:26
  And I think Blizzard is. I think it's I think it's good
• 1:15:30
  that Blizzard is working towards providing their own in house
• 1:15:34
  solutions. And I hope that they're
• 1:15:40
  listening to the feedback, the constructive criticism that has
• 1:15:43
  come from the community since this interview came out and
• 1:15:46
  developing plans and developing ways in which they can do it.
• 1:15:50
  So that it is so that they give us back the confidence that a
• 1:15:53
  lot of us have lost in the last however long since you started
• 1:15:57
  losing confidence. It's different for everyone, I
• 1:16:00
  guess. So that's, that's my hope.
• 1:16:02
  And and in an ideal world, they don't ever turn off the add-ons.
• 1:16:09
  They provide Blizzard solutions, but they leave the add-ons and
• 1:16:12
  they leave the API so the add-ons can function just as
• 1:16:15
  good as the Blizzard solution. If you want to remove, if you
• 1:16:21
  want to remove weak auras, like designing solutions to problems
• 1:16:27
  in the raid, stop designing raids with problems that need
• 1:16:29
  weak auras to solve them. That's my final thought is show
• 1:16:34
  me that you can put your arms down and let us have a tier
• 1:16:38
  where there isn't 3 bosses that need we chorus and then we won't
• 1:16:43
  care if you're going to pull back on some of that, but shows
• 1:16:45
  you can design it because I'm not going to play a tier.
• 1:16:49
  If if you if you, if you kill that functionality early and
• 1:16:53
  then we get a tier and it's turns out, hey, you know what?
• 1:16:55
  Oh, we designed it just as what we used to.
• 1:16:57
  Whoops. I guess we're in an arm dreams
• 1:16:58
  with with ourselves now. I'm not going to like that's not
• 1:17:00
  going to sit with me. I'm going to go play fellowship
• 1:17:02
  because it's a banger game. The devs are awesome and it's
• 1:17:06
  really pretty. Plus this is an Ian interview.
• 1:17:11
  We learned last week that Ian interviews never come to
• 1:17:14
  fruition. You know, Ian said we're going
• 1:17:18
  to stop to we heard you loud and clear.
• 1:17:19
  We're going to stop delaying things except all of the next
• 1:17:22
  things. That's glib.
• 1:17:25
  I'm sorry, that was glib. Your Honor, I would like to
• 1:17:27
  strike that stay in front of. It's all staying in.
• 1:17:30
  I like I I'm not like, OK, I don't want you to actually get
• 1:17:35
  rid of it. I think this is like you wanna
• 1:17:37
  and then. You killed her, right?
• 1:17:40
  Retracted, your honor, withdrawn is the word I was looking for
• 1:17:46
  No. And OK, look, I've been kind of
• 1:17:48
  a little bit of a negative Nancy and a little bit of a, a grumpy
• 1:17:52
  Glinda today and I, I actually think I, I like a lot of this.
• 1:17:57
  I'm really excited. It's.
• 1:17:58
  Galinda. Galinda sorry, I'm doing the end
• 1:18:02
  of the movie. Anyway, I think one thing I've
• 1:18:09
  said for a while is I want Blizzard to confidently make
• 1:18:11
  decisions, even if they're not necessarily immediately popular.
• 1:18:14
  I am excited about a lot of this.
• 1:18:16
  I would really like to see the world that they're telling me
• 1:18:20
  exists where they can have these like significantly more like
• 1:18:23
  interesting and exciting boss fights because they don't have
• 1:18:26
  to worry about like fighting weak auras And that these like
• 1:18:30
  the, the complexity and, and the interest can stay the same
• 1:18:33
  without needing to just be a bunch of swirlies and a bunch of
• 1:18:35
  like silliness and running around.
• 1:18:37
  I, I want to see that world. And I think that if, if the team
• 1:18:40
  can get me that I would love, I would have the time of my life,
• 1:18:43
  right? I want to see what they're
• 1:18:45
  talking about. I want to see what they can do.
• 1:18:47
  And I am hopeful. I think that we're going to, you
• 1:18:50
  know, I, I, I, I think we're going to have to cut them some
• 1:18:52
  slack, but that's OK. I don't, you know, I'll cut them
• 1:18:55
  slack. Whatever.
• 1:18:56
  I'll tell them they need to take naps.
• 1:18:58
  We can go back to that world and I yeah, I, I am, I am hopeful
• 1:19:04
  and excited about the end world that they're talking about.
• 1:19:07
  I think that it's might hurt a little bit to get there, but I
• 1:19:10
  think what they're describing to me sounds like a game I want to
• 1:19:14
  play. I am going to organize my
• 1:19:17
  thoughts into a YouTube video because we are already way over
• 1:19:22
  time and I have a lot of things that I would have liked to have
• 1:19:26
  said, but we will get to that. Maybe I'll actually post that
• 1:19:32
  stuff in the discord. So join us there at bit dot LY
• 1:19:36
  slash fast discord. And until next time, may all
• 1:19:38
  your hits be crits.