Latest / For Azeroth!: A World of Warcraft Podcast / #311 - For Azeroth!: "Khajiit and Kitchenettes!"

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#311 - For Azeroth!: "Khajiit and Kitchenettes!" · For Azeroth!: A World of Warcraft Podcast

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Yeah, so the housing system in ESO is pretty well regarded in
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terms of sort of MMO housing systems for.
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The Forsaken for Lauderon, for the Kieran Tour, for Pandaria,
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for Calendar, for the Burning region, for Gilneus or has not
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done, for the Lich King, for the Sindori, for the Alliance, for
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the Horn for Azeroth. Hello and welcome to another
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episode of For Azeroth. I am one of your hosts, Manny,
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AKA the true villain Manny. And today I am joined by the
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lovely, by the wonderful, by the Silky Raven.
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Hi, hi, hi, hi. Here we are Round 2.
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Round two, yes, yes, if you guys remember last episode, there was
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some mix up. There was unfortunately a lost
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episode. Well, there was a second paired
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episode that was lost alongside it because this is a
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continuation of last episode. We are talking about the World
1:12
of Warcraft, the World of Warcraft housing and what it can
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learn from other games. So I am joined, of course, by
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Raven and Raven you have played not only World of Warcraft, but
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of course Elder Scrolls Online and Elder Scrolls Housing.
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Yeah, I have. So tell me a little bit about
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your history. How did you get into Elder
1:31
Scrolls? How did you get into Wow?
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Like what? What's the the the order of
1:36
operations SAS like love or falling out of love situation
1:40
there? Oh, wow.
1:41
OK, so Elder Scrolls Oblivion was the game that got me back
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into computer gaming after a bit of a hiatus.
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I grew up playing video games and then I went to university
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and I didn't have a well, no, I did have a computer, but I
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didn't have any money. And then after I graduated, I
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was obviously working and stuff and in 2000, and I think it was
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actually 2008, so it was a bit of a while after Oblivion had
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come out some. I was living with some people
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who were playing Oblivion and they were like, would you like
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to play Oblivion? And so I did.
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And I was like, you know, video gaming is actually quite cool.
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So it was definitely, it's the game I credit with getting me
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back into video games in general.
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But then on the 1st of January 2009, anybody who listens to
2:27
Girls Gone Well will already know EJ, my Co host and best
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friend over on Girls Gone Well convinced me to play World of
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Warcraft. We were at a New Year's party,
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don't quite remember the full details, but on the 1st of
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January 2009, I rolled my account.
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I rolled my Druid Silky Raven, who is still my Druid to this
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day. So I've sunk a lot more hours
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into World of Warcraft than I have into ESO.
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But in in the bad times in 2002, thousand and one, when all of
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the allegations came out about the stuff that had been
3:02
happening in Anaheim and the stuff that happened at BlizzCon
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and everybody was like, oh, do we need a, do we need a break
3:08
from the World of Warcraft? Do we need to give these people
3:10
an opportunity to sort of sort themselves out a bit?
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Maybe we should try some other games.
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Maybe we should see what's out there.
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I had a go at ESO Online. I did, as it turned out, I did
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play a little bit in the beta. The beta for ESO was happening
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at the same time as the beta for Wildstar.
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If you want another game to talk about with housing, I think I
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said this last time, if you want to talk about wild star housing,
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that's that's one of the gold standards for housing.
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EJ is your girl for that. But I did play a little bit in
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the beta and I at that time I was like, oh, this is just
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another is it just another MMO? And I like being in Tamriel,
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sure. But like I don't really have
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enough space for two Mmos in my life.
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But ESO in an update, sort of infamous update a couple of
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years after it launched, that's known as the One Tamriel update.
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They made a bunch of changes to the game, which means it's much,
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much easier to drop in and out of than World of Warcraft.
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So obviously if you take a bit of time out of Wow, and I
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actually am at the moment on a Wow hiatus because I'm taking
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some accountancy exams. I just found out today I passed
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one of them, so that's nice. But if you take a bit of time
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out of World of Warcraft, when you come back, the game has very
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much moved on without you. Everybody's at a higher item
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level, they might be at a higher character level.
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There's a lot of you. You're there's a catch up.
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You have to do a lot of catching up.
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But ESO approaches the whole thing completely differently.
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So Max character level is 50, just is and it has been since
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2016. So when that's not them
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resetting it back to 50, it's just. 50 no, it's just 50.
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It just stays at 50. So when new content, new
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chapters are released, you don't get any new character levels.
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It does have essentially a paragon system.
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It's called champion points. So you do keep earning champion
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points in the same similar way if you've ever played Diablo,
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you earn sort of paragon levels and those do contribute to
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player power. So like a level 50 with 700
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champion points is at a different place from one with
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like a couple of 1000, but they rack up reasonably slowly.
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And the fundamental kind of base level of the game, like it
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doesn't it doesn't change. The other thing big thing is
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that you can literally like the world levels to the level that
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you are playing at. So you as a character of any
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level can go to any zone. So obviously if you roll a new
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character, it'll offer you one of the sort of starting zones,
5:52
starting stories, but you can, if you want to go straight into
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the current content. So you can just you could now
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just go and buy and download ESO and go straight into Gold Rd.
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which is the current chapter if you wanted to.
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I would obviously be running off the Skyrim because that's my
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touch point for other scrolls. Yeah, well, the current so the
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gold Rd. is does explore some of the Skyrim territory which some
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of it's not been uncovered in ESO yet.
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So, but not all of it. It's not a direct translation,
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but it it means the game is very, very accessible.
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And it also means that if you're in an end gaining dungeon set
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and you step away for a little bit, when you come back, those
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bonuses, those set bonuses, those things that make that set
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goodwill still will still work. They might not be the current
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meta. There might have been changes to
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how combat works because similar to Wow, classes are constantly
6:47
being tuned and adjusted. But fundamentally that armour
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will be OK. You can go and play a dungeon.
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It also means that any of the dungeons and any of the trials
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you can you, you can go into them, you can actually go in
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with mixed party levels. So you can group up with anyone
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with any other group of people, go into a dungeon and it'll be
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completely suitable for you unless you want to do, there's
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obviously there's veteran dungeons, there is a sort of
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higher level tier, but the whole game is, is just generally very
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accessible and it's very, it's just very suitable for kind of
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dipping in and out of. So you can come in, do a chapter
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if you're only interested in story.
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And that's really where my interest is you can come in,
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play the chapter that maybe take you, I don't know, maybe you're
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going to spend a month on and off doing all of the bits in the
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chapter and finding all the bits of story and doing all the
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achievements and maybe a couple of months doing all of that.
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And then you can just go away and you don't have to.
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There's no sort of pressure. There are daily quests if you
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want them. There are there is end game
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content. It doesn't have quite as much of
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an active end game scene as well does, but I think Wells kind of
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a juggernaut in that in that respect.
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But you can just dip. You can just dip in and out and
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the the developers know this. They're not fazed by it.
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There's no I never feel like ESO is trying to hold me in the game
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by giving me busy work. Whereas I often feel like World
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of Warcraft is trying to kind of stop me going anywhere by giving
8:22
me a thing to do, which often looks a bit like another talent
8:27
tree to fill out or some complex achievements or some kind of
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thing. Like I often feel like Wow's
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kind of holding on your tailcoat just being like, no, don't go,
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don't go. Whereas 1.
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More renowned level please. Yeah, just yeah, there's always
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a little bit more to do, whereas I don't have that feeling from
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ESO. I think it's a very good MMO to
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kind of dip in and out of and whilst you do have to pay for
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chapters and you do have to pay for the end game, there is no
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monthly subscription. There's an optional plus
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subscription if you want it, which is about the cost of a
9:00
while subscription. So it's about 9 lbs.
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I have no idea what that is in dollars, Canadian or otherwise.
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So, but probably about probably about 10 bucks, I guess for US.
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But I it's it's very optional, but like, but it's quite well
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balanced. The perks it gives you are
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meaningful and useful. So it gives you a an infinite
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reagent bag. So if you're into the crafting,
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well, if you'd like to just be able to walk around the game and
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pick things up without constantly enter, like having to
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empty your bag, it's like actually a very, very powerful
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perk that your reagent bag because you have a separate
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reagent bag. Your your reagent bag is just
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infinite. It's actually like a really,
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really, really helpful perk, but you can play the game without it
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and there are some other perks you get.
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It has an in game because it is a sort of, it's not exactly free
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to play because you do have to pay for the base game, but it's
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doesn't have a subscription. So there is an in game currency
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and there is they're called crowns.
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There is a crown store. This will all be a little bit
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relevant later when we get into the housing.
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So there is a crown store. You can buy cosmetics and mounts
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and pets and those sorts of things from the crown store.
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You can buy crowns with real money if that's a thing that you
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want to do. So you do get some crowns with
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your monthly subscription as well, if that's a thing that
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interests you. But you don't.
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But it's voluntary. You don't have to.
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I know. I do know there's at least one
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like serious ESO podcaster who's made a point of literally never
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paying for the subscription. Like they'll have occasionally
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like free weekends. So they'll give plus away to
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everyone who's playing on the weekend to demonstrate how good
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the perk is and then hope in the hopes that some people will keep
10:56
it up. And if you're dedicated to not
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paying for plus, that was difficult to say.
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You can on those weekends like maximise filling up your reagent
11:09
bank as much as possible because when the plus turns off, it just
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freezes the bank. So you can then just like use it
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up, but you can't add anything more to it.
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It doesn't, it doesn't get rid of anything in your bank.
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It just like freezes it so you can sort of go and top up on all
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of your reagents or move everything that you've got
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stored everywhere else into your reagent bank and clear off the
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rest of your stuff to give yourself a little bit of a
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little bit of headspace in your, in the rest of your bank.
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But yeah, it's quite, it's quite an accessible.
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I I feel like it's quite an accessible system in terms of in
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terms of Mmos and it's not it doesn't have the same region
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locking exactly. There is a North America super
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server and there's an EU super server on PC and they are
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separate. This.
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There is also there's a similar situation on Xbox and also on
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PlayStation. So, but they are each of the
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sort of those are as detailed as the breakdown to get.
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There's only 1 EUPC server and I can roll on either either EU or
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NA. I can roll the character on
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either with just one account. So you only have to buy the game
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once and you can you can roll it on either of the servers.
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Obviously if you roll it on North America it might get a bit
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more but from where I am you might get a bit more lag.
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But actually it didn't seem noticeable when we were when
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there were a few GGW people playing.
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I obviously rolled on the EU and quite a few of the American GGW
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people also rolled on the EU and were able to come and do stuff
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without any serious sort of issues.
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But yeah, so All in all, it's just a very, I think it's a very
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accessible kind of game, OK. So that's, that's your
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introduction. I think you've definitely told
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that it is a approachable game that you can come and go from.
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But like the piece that we're we're interested in today is
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where you hang your hat up when you're, I guess what, when
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you're not actively going and doing the quest in whichever
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zone you decide to go into. So housing itself, yeah.
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How is it based? Do you just see a house out
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there and say I'm going to buy that?
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Is it fully instance where you go through and click through and
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be like, OK, this is the house, you get teleported there?
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What? What's the basic premise of
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housing in the ESO? Yeah.
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So the housing system in the ESO is pretty well regarded in terms
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of sort of MMO housing systems. Basically the houses are
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instanced, but they are also located in the world.
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So it would be like if you if one of the houses in Stormwind,
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like if one of those properties where you can sort of see a
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door, but you can't go into it, if like that was your house.
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So every single player, if they want to, could buy an instance
14:05
of that particular house, but it's located in a specific
14:12
place. So this means there's a huge
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range of types of house. So you can have a little city
14:18
house, you can have a huge country mansion.
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There are, there's like a snug pod, which is like a, it's like
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a, it's like a hollowed out, like root of a tree.
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Basically. There are different houses.
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Each race has its own, similar to in Wow, which race has its
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own kind of cosmetic design, its own aesthetic.
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And so all of the different races have different houses that
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suit their particular architecture, their particular
14:51
kind of aesthetic, but they are all sort of physically located
14:55
in the world. So you can ride up to the front
14:58
door of your house where it is located or you just click on it
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on a map and you will fast travel there.
15:06
Travel is, I remember I did talk about this quite a lot on the
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episode that we lost. Travel is another thing that ESO
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have just made super easy. You don't have fly points, but
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you have way shrines. But you don't need to be at a
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way shrine to go to another way shrine if you don't want to be.
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If you open your map and you find the area you want to go and
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you click on a way shrine, you go to that way shrine.
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If you go from anywhere in the map, like there is a charge, if
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you go from another way shrine, it's free.
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So the other thing you can do is you go to a way shrine, you
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click on the way shrine and it'll open the map and then you
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can go to another way shrine. But you can also it's always
15:50
free to travel to your house, always free to travel to your
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house. So you can just open up your map
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and any property that you own and you can own as much property
15:57
as you want. Some people housing is the thing
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that they do in ESO. They they only go and kill
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monsters if they've got furniture to drop, right?
16:07
Some people housing is their game and you can own as much
16:12
property as you want across the world of Tamrail.
16:15
You can own all of the houses if that's the thing that interests
16:19
you. It's going to cost you a lot of
16:21
money. It's going to cost you a lot of
16:22
gold or a lot of crowns, but you can do it.
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So yeah, it's, I think it's a good system.
16:31
So the houses are like fixed in terms of their architecture.
16:35
So you can't add to or take away from like the layout of the
16:40
house. So the base, the shell of the
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house is fixed, but you can furnish it however you like.
16:47
And properties, they, they literally range from in fact, in
16:51
the starting zones at some point during the quest, somebody will
16:55
give you a room and a pub, which is just literally like a room.
17:00
You can get like a bed and a wardrobe in it like you would
17:03
expect in a room in a pub, but somebody will give it to you for
17:05
free. That's one of the things that
17:06
happens during to introduce you to the idea of housing.
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That's one of the things that happens during all of the kind
17:11
of starting quests. So they go from that sort of
17:14
size up to literally like estates without buildings and
17:21
stables and like God only knows what you know.
17:24
And some of the chapters have like unique thematic buildings.
17:33
So there's one in the clockwork city that has a beautiful kind
17:36
of, oh, it's very difficult to describe, but it's a beautiful
17:38
like glass atrium. And there's, there's all sorts.
17:43
I think there's AI think there's a ship.
17:45
I think one of the recent ones was an actual ship.
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I don't think it travels anywhere.
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I think, I think it's moored, but I'm not I don't do a lot of
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housing, but I do have some houses I like.
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So yeah, you guys, you can buy the houses either with gold.
18:01
So in game your character will be generating gold and it's
18:05
super easy to to generate gold in ESO.
18:10
It just like bosses drop quite a lot, mobs drop quite a lot.
18:13
There's like you get quite a lot for just it's it's not, it's not
18:18
like early Wow used to be where it was like you need, I need 2
18:22
gold. How am I going to get 2 gold?
18:26
It's very much like, oh, how has my character got 2 million gold?
18:29
I haven't really been doing anything.
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So if you play the game a bit like you'll, you will just
18:33
accumulate gold. But most of the houses can also
18:36
be bought using crowns. So you can and crowns can be
18:42
bought using real money. So if you could, if you wanted
18:44
to use real money to buy houses, I wouldn't.
18:48
It's not an especially good exchange rate.
18:51
So I'm not sure that I would, I would recommend it, but but you,
18:56
you can do that if you want to. And you can buy houses furnished
19:00
or unfinished. So if a house, there will be a
19:03
sort of default furnishing for a house, which will be in the
19:06
aesthetic that the that the house is and you can buy it with
19:11
all the furniture in it if you want.
19:12
Or mostly I think people don't, you just buy it empty and then
19:16
you furnish it yourself. So in order to make that work,
19:21
ESO has an extremely detailed kind of system for placing items
19:30
and furniture. There is like there are 10s of
19:34
thousands probably different items for your properties and
19:40
they range from like furniture to decorations to lighting to
19:45
paintings to just random stuff like cauldrons.
19:51
You can get cauldrons during the witches festival.
19:54
Every time you kill a boss at the end of a dungeon or the end
19:58
of a trial, a bit of it will fall off and you have a trophy.
20:07
Sometimes it's their heads. Sometimes it's like a horn or a
20:12
like, I don't know, whatever was notable about that boss.
20:18
You get like a trophy so you can have your balls decorated by the
20:22
enemies that you have felt if that's a thing that interests
20:27
you. I don't I don't do that in my
20:29
houses, but that's it's certainly possible.
20:33
But the, the system has a very, very sophisticated like 3
20:37
dimensional placing system, which is so you can literally
20:43
set an object at a particular height.
20:47
You, you can sort of rotate it and turn it.
20:49
You can move it kind of however you like.
20:51
And then you can place it wherever you want kind of
20:53
relative to the space. I'm very bad at this.
20:56
So some of my paintings are literally you can see behind
21:00
them because I didn't get them like close enough to the wall.
21:04
Better than them just randomly falling in as soon as you like
21:07
Instance in just all the paintings is component you're
21:08
like. Oh, yeah, exactly, exactly.
21:10
Now everything, everything sits very much in place.
21:14
But yeah, you have a huge, huge amount of kind of customization
21:18
for your spaces. There is a limit to the number
21:23
of items. Items have a different, they
21:25
have like a size relative thing. So like they can be small or
21:30
medium or large or whatever. I can't remember exactly what
21:32
the details are. And you can have like a
21:34
particular size of property has a particular number of slots for
21:38
a particular size of item. And actually, one of the ways
21:42
they try to get you to buy the ESO Plus is that you get double
21:47
the number of slots in a house if you pay for ESO Plus.
21:51
So you can get twice as much furniture in it.
21:54
But I mean, this is just a perk if you're a kind of a big
21:57
housing person to make it a bit worth your while.
22:00
But houses look perfectly furnished even if you only have
22:03
half the number of slots. I think.
22:04
I mean, it varies, but yeah, it's quite, it is quite a
22:08
sophisticated system. So you can put anything anywhere
22:13
in your house. OK.
22:16
And so when you have people who come into your house and that is
22:22
it that when they're in there, they can like they see a plate
22:27
on the table and they pick up the plate and they put it in the
22:29
sink. And then or is it like that
22:31
plate is a fix there because that's.
22:33
Where yeah, it's fixed. It's fixed where it's fixed
22:36
where you place it. So you can't do the thing you
22:38
can do in Skyrim, which is like bump into everything and just
22:40
send everything flying, which is one of my favorite things to do
22:43
in like Skyrim dungeons is just like throw everything all over
22:46
the place. But no, everything is fixed.
22:48
Everything stays where you have placed it.
22:49
So you can invite your friends to your house.
22:53
That's definitely an easy thing to do.
22:56
You can also open up your house to a particular guest list if
23:01
you want to. So you can say anybody on this
23:04
specific guest list and you can make a guest list or anybody in
23:07
my Guild or anybody. And you can also in ESA, you can
23:10
be a member of more than one Guild.
23:13
So if you, if you want to, if you've got different guilds from
23:15
different things, you can only be in one trading Guild.
23:18
I think trade auction houses are the only things that are much
23:22
like trading is much more problematic than it is in Wow.
23:25
I'm not going to get into it because we're talking about
23:27
housing, but like auction houses are good actually.
23:30
And that's something that ESO could do with like looking at.
23:33
But you can be in more than one Guild if you if you want to.
23:38
So you can have like your Guild of people that you do PvP with
23:40
and your Guild of people that you go to their houses if that's
23:44
the thing that you want. And you can say this house is
23:47
like available to all of the people on this gas list or all
23:50
the people in this this Guild or whatever.
23:52
And then they can also just go in.
23:54
They can just go in whenever they like.
23:55
You don't have to be there. And but no, they can't move
23:59
anything. They can interact.
24:01
So as you might imagine, there are some utility things that you
24:03
can put in your house. So when you change spec in ESO,
24:08
you have to go to an armoury station and you can put those in
24:12
your house. You can also put vendors in your
24:15
house. My house that I go to most often
24:20
has a Raven in it who is a banker and a cat in it who is a
24:25
trader. So you can.
24:29
Cat's a trader. Of course, the cat's a trader,
24:31
yeah. So you can have traders and and
24:34
sort of utilities. You can also have crafting
24:36
stations. If crafting is your thing, you
24:39
can put crafting stations in into properties.
24:42
You can also have, they also have house guests.
24:45
So there are specific sort of class of being which is a house
24:50
guest and you, you can buy them with crowns or sometimes you get
24:56
them I think in quests, but you can get them off the crown store
24:59
and they will come and entertain your guests.
25:02
They all have sort of different emotes and different like
25:06
different things that they can do.
25:08
So they can be in your house. So there'll be other people in
25:11
your house. If you want, you can also put
25:14
your pets and your mounts in your house, or I guess in the
25:19
case of your mounts, maybe outside.
25:20
But you can, if you want, just place a particular pet in a
25:27
particular part of your house. Maybe you put your cats on the
25:32
bed, I don't know. You can also, and I think this
25:35
is super cute, I really like it. You can also set a path for an
25:40
animal. So if you've got a pet, you can
25:43
give it a little loop, which it can do.
25:46
You can set it a little loop around your house or around your
25:48
estate or around wherever, which I think is super cute.
25:53
So yeah, they're quite. It's very, very versatile.
25:57
You have the cat trader just going around that the house from
26:00
like to the kitchen and stuff and stuff.
26:02
OK, the trader I think has to sit still because the trader is
26:06
a different type of item, but they do.
26:10
They do have little emote though, like the pets do.
26:12
So the like the Ravens like, ruffle their feathers whilst
26:17
they're sitting around, so they're not completely
26:18
stationary in a kind of weird in a kind of a way.
26:21
OK. My question would be, you
26:24
mentioned going around the outside of the house.
26:26
So when you have these homes that you buy, you're not just
26:30
teleporting inside the building. You're teleporting to like the
26:33
front gate of a property and the.
26:35
Depends on the size of depends on the size of the property.
26:38
So basically they have essentially a portal at the
26:42
entrance from the world into your property.
26:45
So if you're going to your room in an inn, then yeah, you'll
26:49
just teleport into the room. That's fine.
26:52
If you're going to your estate, then yeah, you'll get put at the
26:56
front gate. OK.
26:59
And so you can have stables there like let's say your mount
27:02
where like horses or. Yeah, you got let's.
27:05
Go with horses. Because yeah, yeah, there's,
27:09
there's a few horses in, in ESO. There's also all sorts of other
27:11
things. But yeah, you can, there's
27:14
outdoor space in some of the properties.
27:16
So yeah, you can have mounts in a sort of more suitable
27:20
environment. Can you have your mount path
27:25
around? Yeah, yeah.
27:28
OK this is a little rabbit hole. Is are there flying mounts in
27:32
ESO? No.
27:35
OK, because I was wondering if you could have a flying mount
27:37
that's passing around, just circling around.
27:38
OK. But they're they're ground
27:40
mounts in ESO. OK.
27:41
ESO has not removed the lid from that jar of worms.
27:47
That that genius stake in the bottle.
27:48
OK, all right. You had said that there was a
27:52
limitation on basically there's a set floor plan and so you will
27:59
always have X amount of rooms, one that is here and so forth.
28:06
In terms of like how you can decorate, like what, what are
28:11
the limitations? Basically you can change what
28:14
the the flooring is, change what the walls look like, or are
28:18
those somewhat set? No, those are kind of set.
28:21
So it's like you were buying an unfurnished property.
28:26
So you can get loads of like you can get rugs and you can get
28:31
like banners and things that you can put on your walls.
28:34
So there is a certain amount of customisation, but it's like
28:37
you're buying like an unfurnished property and you
28:41
didn't have the option to like paint the walls, but you can.
28:46
But there's loads of different paintings and banners and like
28:50
different ways in which you can sort of customise it like that.
28:53
But yeah, the the sort of shell is quite set.
28:56
OK. And you can buy multiple
28:59
properties as you were saying. So with the ability to have
29:04
multiple properties, vendors within them, traders within
29:08
them, work benches within them. ESO does allow for some player
29:14
power or conveniences or quality of life items to be within those
29:18
those houses. And he was also saying that you
29:20
could teleport them to them without much of a cooldown.
29:24
Yeah, there's no cooldown and there's no cost either to
29:27
teleport into a property. So because if you teleport from
29:31
anywhere in the world, like from a random place in the world,
29:34
usually there's a cost, There's no cooldown.
29:37
But it does get expensive if you try to do it a couple of times
29:40
in a row to sort of encourage you to use the way shrines.
29:44
But you can teleport to a house, it's totally fine.
29:46
So if you've got places that you go to quite often, like I quite
29:52
often use Eldon Root, which is one of the cities as like my
29:55
main kind of hub city. So I own a very small property
29:58
that's in Eldon Root, because then I can always get there and
30:01
I can just, I'm just going to go to and from there, yeah.
30:05
And for the size of the properties, can it is the
30:09
location of the property going to determine what size it is
30:12
like there was only ever a mansion or a manse out in here
30:17
or can you buy like a smaller place that's also there?
30:21
It's going to vary. Most of the places that I mean
30:27
they do take up kind of physical space in the game.
30:30
So they will be like appropriate to the size of the settlement
30:34
that's there. But, you know, there are cosy
30:38
little cottages that are in the middle of nowhere that are on
30:40
the edges of like a lake or whatever.
30:42
Some of those are quite small. Most of the really big places
30:45
are a little bit out of a sort of a big city.
30:48
Like most of the city dwellings are small.
30:52
I mean, anybody who lives in New York will tell you that's or
30:56
London will probably tell you that that's, you know, how
30:58
cities go. So, yeah, it follows that sort
31:00
of that sort of logic. Everything is situated in a
31:03
place that's kind of appropriate for it, I think.
31:06
I certainly there isn't a case where it's like, you know,
31:09
here's a city like here's a like you.
31:12
You can't be in like storm wind. And there's a tiny door and when
31:14
you go through it, it's like the TARDIS.
31:15
There's nothing like that. Everything is everything is
31:18
situated in the scale of the place that it is.
31:23
OK. And then I guess there's no
31:26
limitation on how many houses you can buy.
31:29
Is there anything that where if you are inactive for such a
31:34
period of time it affects your housing?
31:36
No, no, the game just freezes if you, if you're not doing
31:39
anything. I haven't logged into VSO for a
31:41
little while because I've been quite busy and everything will
31:44
just be as it was. I know where my character is,
31:47
she's not at home actually. But everything just freezes when
31:51
you're not playing. It just sits there, waits for
31:52
you to come back. There's no, there's no detriment
31:55
to. They don't, they don't require
31:57
upkeep. It's not going to fall into
31:58
disrepair or. Trader's not going to be.
32:01
Yeah, no, my raven's not going to be annoyed that I've not been
32:03
home for ages. And I guess in, you know, Final
32:05
Fantasy 14 style, nobody else is going to absurd usurp to my plot
32:09
or whatever. There's enough like every single
32:12
player can have all of the houses if they want to because
32:14
it's just because they're instant.
32:15
So there's no limit like that, which I think is very important.
32:20
And I'm hoping that that's one of the aspects that they do
32:22
bring into Wow, that, you know, all of the houses, like everyone
32:26
can have the version of the house that they want.
32:29
OK. And then social aspects of the
32:33
housing, so we talked about how you can have a guest list, how
32:36
you could have the guest list change based on like, oh, I just
32:40
want this Guild to enter. So like you could be, this is my
32:43
professional club. I don't want the professional
32:44
club to walk in, but I've got like what amounts to homeowners
32:48
association for all intents purposes.
32:49
And they, they can jump in. If somebody joins one of the
32:55
guilds, like you're, you've just added the Guild to your, your
32:58
list. Somebody joins, joins the Guild.
33:01
Are you alerted? Do they automatically get
33:03
access? Is there some sort of like?
33:05
I think, I don't know, I'm not LinkedIn any great detail.
33:08
I think because I was a Guild leader, maybe you have to be a
33:12
Guild leader to do it, so you'd know who was in the Guild.
33:15
Because I was a Guild leader, I have a house that I was like,
33:18
anybody in my Guild can get into this house and it's just anybody
33:21
who's in the Guild. So it depends on their Guild
33:22
membership. But then I'm also in charge of
33:25
the Guild membership because I'm the Guild leader.
33:28
OK, what about just for RP things?
33:32
Do you, the people of Tamriel have their bars that they like,
33:38
open up the house and everybody can come in and it's a speak
33:40
easy or nightclub or whatever? Yeah, you, you can't open it up
33:44
to the. You can't open it up to, like,
33:46
general population. You have to have some.
33:52
Yeah, the, you can't just like open the doors in that kind of a
33:57
way because the portal's always going to take you to the, the,
34:01
the doorway is always going to take to your version of
34:04
something. And if you don't own a property
34:06
and you go through its front door, it'll take you to like a,
34:08
it's like going to the realtor, like it'll take you to the, like
34:11
preview version and be like, would you like to buy this
34:13
property? Look what it could look like.
34:16
So yeah, it can't be just anybody, but you can.
34:19
But obviously you can invite anyone that you want, so yeah.
34:24
OK, in terms of what you feel World of Warcraft could mostly
34:31
learn from Tamriel, from ESO, what what would you say are the
34:35
the top things that the wild developers could look at?
34:39
Yeah. I mean, I think I really enjoy
34:41
the fact that they're geographically kind of located
34:43
properties. I know.
34:45
So Wildstar did this very differently because it was just
34:47
kind of like you got a space in the void and you could literally
34:50
build whatever you wanted. I think it's unlikely that
34:54
that's what we'll get in Wow. I would, I would like to see
35:00
something that was kind of geographically kind of based.
35:02
So if I want to go and live in Stormwind or I want to go and
35:05
live in Ogramar, then those properties are like in that
35:10
location, similar to how ESO ones are.
35:13
And I do think it's important that everybody has the option to
35:16
buy whatever properties they want.
35:19
So I, I'm not a fan of the sort of scarcity resource that
35:23
they're, that Final Fantasy 14 and games of that kind of ilk
35:28
seem to have going for it. I don't, I don't think that's
35:31
going to work for the wild population.
35:33
So I hope they don't do anything like that.
35:36
I mean, I would, I would love to be able to go and like live in
35:41
like some of the more elven places just in a nice kind of
35:45
hole in a tree. That would be nice, I guess.
35:50
I mean, I guess I think we're, I don't think we're always going
35:55
to have the level of customisation that ESO has
35:59
because it because it's a huge engine change to have this like
36:03
very precise 3 dimensional kind of thing.
36:06
I really hope they do better than they did in Garrison's
36:10
though, and I really hope they don't go to a situation where
36:14
it's like, and here is a room and your bed must be here and
36:19
like this is where this item of furniture must be.
36:22
I really hope they don't do. I hope that they they get like a
36:25
good level of customisation. Obviously Wow isn't a game where
36:30
we've had much ability to customise things like in the
36:33
Garrison you could work, you could put the buildings in a
36:35
different place, but you couldn't you couldn't do that.
36:38
You could change the banners, but you couldn't really do very
36:44
much. So I'm hoping they're going to
36:47
have a lot more customisation than that.
36:48
I think. I mean, I, I think what, what
36:51
would be sort of at the halfway house I can see between the two
36:55
games is probably you get like a shell of a building and maybe
37:01
it's, you know, through a door that's currently just decorative
37:04
in, in a settlement. Or maybe it's a completely new
37:08
building in the middle of a like Elwyn Forest or somewhere, I
37:11
don't know, or Jade Forest. I'd love to go and live in
37:16
Pandaria, please. And you kind of go in and it's
37:21
like a shell of a house, but there's like specific locations
37:26
where furniture can go, but that there isn't too much of a
37:31
restriction on exactly what item of furniture it can be.
37:35
So it's like this is an item. This is an item slot where you
37:38
can put a large item of furniture.
37:40
And your large item of furniture could be a bed, could be a
37:43
settee, could be a table, could be, you know, there are
37:45
different sort of classes of furniture and this is a slot for
37:51
a particular type of furniture, but it's not going to restrict
37:53
you too much as to what that item could be.
37:57
I can sort of see something like that probably working for a
38:01
while. So you've got a reasonable
38:03
degree of control over what your space looks like, but not it's
38:07
not sort of too fiddly. I mean, it would kind of be
38:10
amazing if they if they went all of the way down the ESO rabbit
38:13
hole into this sort of three-dimensional space, but I
38:18
just don't think that's really, really where the game is at.
38:24
I really hope, I really hope you do have the opportunity to show
38:28
off things that you've done in the past.
38:31
So maybe I don't know I you know, but.
38:35
Just you don't like the trophies.
38:37
But I mean, I don't, I don't really like the trophies, but
38:41
then I don't have the past with the SO that I have with like
38:44
Wow, like if I could get, I don't know, like a Shard of ice
38:53
from the Arthur's fight or something, some kind of, you
38:56
know. A fishing pole to commemorate
38:59
the Arthur's fight. Fishing pole to commemorate the
39:02
Arthur's fight? Yes.
39:03
First, the first time I killed Arthur's, I was accidentally
39:06
holding my fishing pole because I was playing Boom kin at the
39:09
time and you can't tell whether your weapon is equipped if
39:12
you're playing a Boom Kin. I was wearing fishing hat as
39:18
well. Anyway, why did it take you 160
39:22
attempts to kill Arthur's duck? No idea, No idea.
39:26
Yeah, if you could get some, you know, I, I don't think everybody
39:30
needs to have a nixie's head hanging up over their fireplace.
39:33
But if you could get some kind of like trophy or some kind of
39:36
thing for doing like big fights that you could demonstrate what
39:40
you've done, I think that would be cool.
39:41
I also think, you know, armour is a huge, like armour sets are
39:46
a huge part of World of Warcraft and Transwog and all that kind
39:49
of thing. So I do think they're going to
39:50
need to put some way of people displaying their favorite armour
39:54
sets or their favorite transmugs or their favorite, you know,
39:58
maybe somebody wants to have a kind of walk in wardrobe where
40:00
they've got all of their like, you know, particular favorite
40:03
items on mannequins around the room.
40:06
Maybe that's a thing people want.
40:09
I think I think there's loads of options.
40:13
And I just hope, I hope they give us enough choice.
40:15
I'm a bit nervous that they're not going to give us enough
40:19
choice. Don't make it rubbish, Blizzard.
40:24
You want a big initial offering and constantly them adding some
40:28
stuff. Yeah.
40:29
I mean, literally, there are, I mean, probably 10s of thousands
40:33
of items in ESO now. And obviously we're not going to
40:36
start with 10s of thousands of items, but it's, you know, it's
40:39
the sort of thing that does get quite out of hand.
40:41
Sure. But yeah, I mean, I think it
40:45
needs to have a substantive kind of back catalogue that it's
40:49
constantly building on ESO. Yeah, ESO has a woodworking
40:55
profession which is not just for furniture.
40:58
It also they also make Shields and staves and stuff.
41:01
So they make some types of weapons, but but this gives
41:05
quite a lot of flexibility in terms of crafting as well.
41:08
So, you know, there's a profession where it's kind of
41:10
obvious that these people are also going to be able to make
41:12
tables and chairs and things. Usually random items of
41:17
furniture do not drop off bosses, which is good because I
41:21
think that would be weird. Like I just killed Arthur's and
41:25
he dropped a table. No, but quite often schematics
41:31
and designs. So instructions for building
41:35
items of furniture quite often drop off bosses.
41:37
So yeah. Makes sense.
41:41
Deathwing is not going to drop the kitchen sink, but he'll have
41:43
the pattern for the kitchen. Sink.
41:44
He'll have the pattern for the kitchen sink.
41:46
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
41:48
So I think that's that's all going to be sort of done quite
41:51
carefully because I just think otherwise it's just going to be
41:53
fucking weird. He just dropped a saucepan.
41:56
OK, fine. I mean, there are some bosses,
42:01
mostly in like Dead Mines that I could see dropping some.
42:05
Yeah, yeah, some cookware. Yeah.
42:07
I mean, there is certainly some thematically appropriate moments
42:10
where that might work. But yes, I don't in general
42:14
think bosses should drop actual items of furniture because I
42:16
think that's a bit weird. So then professions is a big
42:20
part of that. Then if they're dropping the
42:22
patterns and you're saying you have this woodworking, if it was
42:25
coming to Wow, would you want a new profession that sort of
42:29
focused on that? Or would you really want it to
42:32
be spread out amongst all the other professions?
42:34
Perhaps? Maybe focus on some professions
42:36
that don't have much to sell right now?
42:39
I think this is really difficult because I think professions in
42:41
Wow are in quite frankly, a really shit space.
42:45
And I just don't know. I, I don't really trust Blizzard
42:50
to do anything with professions. Like there's so much wrong with
42:54
the current profession system, in my opinion that it's quite
42:58
difficult to know what to suggest.
43:02
I kind of, it's like you need to fix the underlying brokenness
43:06
before you start going. And, you know, but obviously
43:09
people do want to craft things that are in their houses.
43:11
That's, you know, a thing that people enjoy doing.
43:15
But please, please just fix everything else first.
43:19
Get rid of this ranking like I don't like this like level 1,
43:22
level 2, Level 3 like it just it's too confusing.
43:26
I don't I don't like I don't like anything about professions.
43:28
Actually, let's just not even start.
43:30
But I'm. Definitely going to invite you
43:31
back for another episode for that rant, but if if professions
43:36
suddenly became what you would like it, you would think the
43:38
professions would be a good source.
43:40
I mean, professions, yeah, people love to.
43:41
I mean, it would potentially be a good way of revising,
43:45
revitalizing the sort of professions.
43:48
It would give them a kind of purpose, gives you an
43:51
opportunity to raise some money. So yeah, I do think you could
43:53
use furnishings or varying descriptions and you can
43:57
certainly come up with thematic thematically appropriate stuff
44:01
like Taylor's could make soft furnishings and like tablecloths
44:04
and rugs and things, you know, and alchemists, I mean, they
44:11
often have herbalism, so maybe they can do some sort of, you
44:14
know, flower arranging E type stuff or light shield, like kind
44:17
of alchemist, alchemist based kind of light displays or
44:21
something. I don't know.
44:23
I think, I think there are options.
44:26
It does feel like it needs a kind of like a woodworking E
44:29
type thing, but who knows. OK, well last episode I had said
44:34
that the blacksmiths could make the lava lamp.
44:36
Now I'm going to change it to The Alchemist making the lava.
44:40
Lamp. Fair enough, somebody can make a
44:42
lava lamp. So then what about the traders
44:45
post? Obviously that's something that
44:47
would likely fit in. Is that?
44:50
Do you think that'd be a good place to find it?
44:53
Yeah, I mean, I just, I think you could just get furnishings
44:56
anyway, like you just once you've introduced housing
44:59
furnishings just adds itself to the list of like Trans Morgan
45:02
pets and mounts. And maybe it's and I think it's
45:05
a good time to introduce something like that because to
45:07
be honest, there are too many pets.
45:08
Like I used to be a really avid pet collector and I just think
45:12
there's too many pets, there's too many mounts now.
45:15
So it's quite, I don't, I don't get as much excitement.
45:18
I mean, I know there are avid mountain hunters still who are
45:21
still kind of after absolutely everything.
45:24
But for those of us who are maybe like, Oh yeah, that's
45:25
nice. It's like there's too many now.
45:27
There's no, there's no point in giving me lots more pets and
45:30
lots more mounts because I mean, apart from the Alzheimer Druid
45:35
and I just instant cast platform.
45:36
But you know, it seems good to add another kind of type of item
45:42
that people can collect if they want to, because collecting the
45:45
furnishings is a big deal for some people in ESO, something
45:50
because you have in ESO, you have a thing that's called the
45:53
sticker book, which is basically like all of the collections
45:56
tabs. But it means you can see for
45:59
anything for armour or for furnishings or for like
46:02
anything, you can see what it is that you haven't got.
46:05
So it's like filling in to collect them is like filling in
46:08
the stickers of the sticker book.
46:09
That's why it's called the sticker book colloquially.
46:13
So that seemed like furnishing. Seems like a good kind of
46:17
collectible item for people who like doing that kind of thing.
46:20
All right. And then the last question is
46:22
really what do you think ESO has done that you would really like
46:27
Wow to sort of avoid take as a cautionary tale?
46:33
I don't know what I said to this last time.
46:34
I'm now trying to think. I think there was something in
46:36
it and it's now escapes my brain.
46:38
What did I say last time? I don't recall it was.
46:42
No, I. Don't know.
46:44
Yeah. It was a while ago.
46:46
I don't remember. I don't remember.
46:48
I mean, I guess, Oh, I think I do.
46:50
I do remember actually, obviously, how's it going?
46:52
So it was a huge, huge, huge rabbit hole.
46:57
There are, I want to say at least 50 separate properties and
47:07
10s of thousands of kind of items of furnishings and designs
47:10
and styles and like all of this kind of stuff.
47:13
I think, I think some of these collecting things need to be a
47:19
bit bit bounded. So yeah, maybe don't go too far
47:22
too fast. Don't don't make it too big too
47:25
quickly. Do it well.
47:29
And I think just do it properly. Just do it properly.
47:33
Probably is pretty vague that could that could mean many
47:36
things to different. People I know, I know, I know.
47:40
I just, I just garrisoned, man. I have the fear.
47:45
Well, thank you so much for taking your time to do this
47:49
again. I I really do appreciate you
47:53
give that time. If you guys want to check out
47:56
the other episode, that was last week Tuesday where we spoke with
48:01
Corey about Final Fantasy. I think that these two episodes
48:03
really do well to marry each other and show what different
48:07
people are looking for, what different games are offering,
48:10
and what World of Warcraft could potentially do.
48:13
Miss Raven, when you are not enlightening me about ESO, where
48:17
can people find you? You can buy me on the Girls Gone
48:20
Wow podcast. We are also on the Bonus Roll
48:23
Productions network. You can come and find our
48:26
Discord. That's the best place to find
48:28
us. We're at bit dot LY slash GGW
48:30
Dash Discord. OK.
48:33
And for now, that's going to be it for us today.
48:36
Until next time, may all your hits be quits.
48:40
Bye bye.