Latest / For Azeroth!: A World of Warcraft Podcast / #339 - For Azeroth!: "One Button to Rule Them All"

Transcript

#339 - For Azeroth!: "One Button to Rule Them All" · For Azeroth!: A World of Warcraft Podcast

• 0:00
  It's Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark.
• 0:02
  Don't take that tiny little gold head unless you're sure that bag
• 0:06
  of sand is almost the same weight.
• 0:07
  Because I don't want to be running from anything, really.
• 0:10
  I just don't want to run. But I don't want to be running
• 0:11
  from a giant ball that's going to crush me.
• 0:14
  OK, that's where we're at. Sorry, I just didn't say that
• 0:16
  for Lord to run. For the Karen tour for.
• 0:22
  Pandaria. For calendar to the.
• 0:27
  Burning region for Gilnaeus has not died for the Lichkin for
• 0:36
  the. Sindora for the Alliance for.
• 0:39
  The Horn for Azeroth. Hello and welcome back to
• 0:46
  another episode of For Azeroth. I am one of your hosts Manny AKA
• 0:52
  the true villain Manny and I am joined by my 2 Co hosts.
• 0:56
  First introducing Lex running fresh from the dog park.
• 1:00
  Hello, how are you and how has the World of Warcraft been
• 1:04
  treating you? The World of Warcraft been
• 1:06
  treating me great. I have over 300,000 gold.
• 1:09
  So I'm I, I literally am living the dream.
• 1:12
  This is the best thing ever. I will never direct like I, I, I
• 1:16
  will be buying gold until the day I die.
• 1:17
  I this whole like doing work and like grinding and like
• 1:21
  professions. No, this is amazing.
• 1:23
  It's $20 and get 300,000 gold So, so I'm great.
• 1:26
  World of Warcraft's gonna be, really.
• 1:28
  Good. There you go.
• 1:29
  There you go. I'm glad for that and we're as
• 1:32
  we're starting to like now be days away from a new season.
• 1:36
  Having that gold now is solid. Going to my other Co host, we
• 1:43
  have Sean. Hello Sean.
• 1:45
  How are you and have you been grabbing some tokens?
• 1:49
  I am also I'm over 1,000,000 gold because I bought 2 tokens
• 1:53
  the night that we talked last week at 300,000 each and then
• 1:57
  this, it was like yesterday or the day before they were back up
• 1:59
  to 322 and I bought another one. I was like, I got AI, got a buy.
• 2:04
  Well buy well, the markets high is what they say.
• 2:07
  So yeah, I'm also rocking it. I love buying Wow tokens.
• 2:11
  I would never buy gold any other way, that's for certain.
• 2:15
  And I realized the tone I used there made it sound like I
• 2:17
  would, but I wouldn't is what I wouldn't buy gold any other way.
• 2:22
  It's a segue from later that you might not understand right now,
• 2:25
  but you'll get it. Then you'll be like, oh, that's
• 2:27
  what he meant and why he gave us this ridiculously long
• 2:30
  explanation for that sentence nobody paid any attention to.
• 2:33
  Well, I think I got to take advantage of that Segway so that
• 2:38
  people can at least get the connection because our first
• 2:41
  news story is that Blizzard is reminding people that there is
• 2:46
  only one Safeway to get your gold and Wow.
• 2:49
  I mean, other than making professions.
• 2:51
  If you want to buy gold, make sure you are using the token
• 2:55
  system. Blizzard has put out a statement
• 2:58
  just today, before this show, talking about the risk of going
• 3:03
  through third party sites and through less than reputable
• 3:10
  vendors. We'll call them.
• 3:13
  Even if you don't have your own account or information
• 3:19
  compromise, which is historically being a major
• 3:22
  concern, you still might be funding some illicit stuff.
• 3:28
  People who buy, buy gold. Where do you think the gold
• 3:32
  comes from? Sometimes it's people, they get
• 3:34
  their accounts hacked, all their gold and stuff gets like cleared
• 3:38
  out and Blizzard has to to recover it and do all that.
• 3:42
  But sometimes they can't. They can't in time or people are
• 3:47
  away from their accounts and don't notice.
• 3:49
  And that's where the gold is coming from in some cases.
• 3:52
  Other cases it's it's the bot farms.
• 3:55
  It is the the people who are working various like, I don't
• 4:03
  want to call them sweat, sweat factories, but they're they're
• 4:08
  just like unscrupulous people that are creating this gold.
• 4:12
  Honestly, if you want to get gold and give to the community
• 4:16
  and you don't want to put it through through the token, sell,
• 4:23
  sell raid farms, people want mounts and stuff.
• 4:25
  And if you've got a team that does that, that's a great way of
• 4:28
  generating gold for you and your team.
• 4:30
  And, and do it in a way that is actually within the, the ELU or
• 4:36
  EULA and user license agreement. And I, if I've, I've had people
• 4:45
  where it's like, OK, like we found this rare mount, like
• 4:49
  let's say it is the, the time lost proto Drake.
• 4:52
  And it's like, OK, one person run to the main city.
• 4:59
  Let's sell this because we can get like 4 people on this and,
• 5:03
  and sell that thing. And people will pay like 10s of
• 5:06
  thousands of gold, twice the amount of gold that, that Alex
• 5:11
  had or more for, for this stuff. That's how you that's how you
• 5:14
  make the gold. What what about you guys are
• 5:20
  have you ever had like any crosses with gold, gold farmers
• 5:25
  or anything like that? Like maybe not directly, but in
• 5:29
  your experience I also to you the first Lex so.
• 5:32
  I I started playing World of Warcraft in like classic classic
• 5:35
  days when gold farming and and gold selling was a thing that
• 5:38
  happened in like trade chat and people are constantly getting
• 5:41
  banned for for doing it. Which is actually one reason why
• 5:44
  it took me so long to buy a token is because I had it
• 5:48
  drilled into my head for so long that like buying gold is like
• 5:53
  really shady. And I knew that it was through
• 5:56
  World of Warcraft. Like I, like obviously I
• 5:57
  understood that it was fundamentally different from
• 5:59
  like whispering a person online like on, on trade chat versus
• 6:02
  buying the token. But I just like had such a
• 6:04
  stigma against gold buying that I was like, like, obviously I
• 6:07
  can't do that. Like, I'm not a gold buyer, but
• 6:11
  I, yeah, I, I do remember back when it was exclusively
• 6:16
  something that was sold buy like kind of like back alley, sort of
• 6:21
  like, hey, you're looking for some gold.
• 6:24
  And I, I think it, it was actually kind of brilliant the
• 6:27
  way that World of Warcraft and, and the Blizzard team was able
• 6:30
  to be like, OK, this is clearly something that people really
• 6:33
  want, right? People are like gold.
• 6:35
  We, we are banning to our best ability and people are
• 6:38
  constantly buying gold. So players want an ability to
• 6:41
  trade money for gold. So let's give that to them,
• 6:46
  right? Let's take over the market so
• 6:47
  that we can regulate it and manage it and it doesn't become
• 6:51
  sweatshoppy. It doesn't become stealing from
• 6:53
  people. And.
• 6:54
  And that's been really successful because, yeah, why
• 6:56
  would I buy gold from some weird back alley rando when I can
• 7:00
  quite literally just go to the Blizzard store and buy gold that
• 7:04
  I know is handled appropriately? I know it's going to show up the
• 7:07
  way I want it to. Like everything's going to be
• 7:09
  nice and clean. Yeah, that safe and secure
• 7:11
  method is definitely a competitive edge against third
• 7:15
  parties. Sean, do you do anything to like
• 7:19
  generate gold other than tokens? I like, I mean I do our Guild
• 7:24
  does sale runs. I usually give my portion of the
• 7:27
  sale run to the Guild bank because our Guild bank funds all
• 7:29
  of our flasks and our feasts and our Vantas rooms and everything.
• 7:33
  I'm I'm not this might cause some discomfort, but I'm not
• 7:39
  anti bots or anti farmers. I think they keep the cost of
• 7:45
  materials down on the auction house because there are so many
• 7:48
  of them. If it wasn't for these bot farm
• 7:52
  and let's OK listen folks, I know how that sounds.
• 7:54
  But if it wasn't for the bot farms, the price of mats to make
• 8:00
  potions and to make flasks and feasts would be so much higher
• 8:03
  because we would have to be paying the exorbitant prices
• 8:06
  charged by the mom and pop profession farmers.
• 8:11
  So I guess what I'm saying is I'm pro big box consumer auction
• 8:15
  housing. I once in B of A there was this
• 8:19
  little farm zone down in Drustfire where you could like
• 8:22
  blast. They were like lizards I think.
• 8:24
  And then you could skin them. It was lizard.
• 8:25
  There's also like a little hedgehog thing you had to kill.
• 8:28
  There's two world quests there. One was for like lizards and one
• 8:30
  was for like weird hedgehog things.
• 8:32
  And I remember this moonkin that was always there and it was like
• 8:35
  4 moonkins and they were all named like HHXY X4 like or not 4
• 8:40
  like you know what I mean? Like it was all all of these,
• 8:42
  none of the names were actual names and they used to just park
• 8:45
  in the field and blast Moonfire and Starfall and that was it.
• 8:49
  And I used to show up and because there was only four of
• 8:51
  them, I was able to get tags and I would like stand in the middle
• 8:54
  of the the four moon kins and snag these tags of mobs coming
• 8:58
  in. And then I would like quickly
• 8:59
  skin while they were tagging more because they would like
• 9:02
  blast a bunch and then skin a bunch of blast.
• 9:04
  And I would be like skinning and then blasting and tagging and
• 9:06
  then skinning. I'm like one of those birds.
• 9:08
  You know how alligators have those birds that live in their
• 9:10
  mouths and eat like the dead flesh from between their teeth
• 9:13
  for them to keep their teeth clean?
• 9:14
  That was it was me, but with this moonkin who was just blast
• 9:17
  anyway. I don't know if you're listening
• 9:20
  HH472H6 Thank you and I'm I'm not against yeah, I'm not
• 9:27
  against bots. I I am against RMTS do not buy
• 9:30
  gold. The token exists for that
• 9:33
  reason. Go through the the the proper
• 9:35
  measures, but I do appreciate the bots that keep the prices on
• 9:39
  the option of slow Manny. I can feel you seething.
• 9:44
  I thought I was doing a good job keeping a straight face while
• 9:47
  you talked all this absolute nonsense.
• 9:51
  But since you asked and you haven't actually asked, but I'm
• 9:54
  going to tell you anyways. Yeah, like there's there's no
• 10:00
  half good in this. Like if they're botting and
• 10:04
  they're using the like swarm, swarm of bots, they're they're
• 10:08
  typically either a multi boxer, which Blizzard has cracked down
• 10:14
  on in the last few years, right? Or they are part of a bot
• 10:18
  operation and that those bot operations, they're not doing it
• 10:22
  to keep prices down. In fact, often times they will
• 10:27
  work against each other if the prices are being pushed down too
• 10:30
  much. Because the way that they
• 10:33
  operate is to make real money. And the way that they make real
• 10:37
  money is by creating gold. And the way that they create
• 10:39
  gold is through the bot. So like it all flows into the
• 10:43
  same at the same problem. Now if it could be done in a way
• 10:47
  that somewhat helped without causing the evil, I think I'd
• 10:53
  still be against it. I think that Blizzard has done a
• 10:56
  number of things to help people. Like they haven't gone as far as
• 11:05
  like, you know, Garrison farms, which totally stop stomped
• 11:09
  prices for for goods in warlords.
• 11:13
  But they have done things like if you do the Patreon orders,
• 11:17
  you get random mats that you can then put on the auction house if
• 11:20
  you're not using, which puts extra mats on the auction house
• 11:24
  or or use for yourself. They have a number of those
• 11:29
  random treasures that also give you a bunch of good.
• 11:32
  So there is that stuff. But even with that involved, I
• 11:37
  think that a lot of the stuff that people that guilds can do
• 11:41
  now, like the cauldrons that give everybody their two flasks
• 11:48
  or the feast that persist through death.
• 11:51
  There's a lot of things that can help groups so that they can
• 11:55
  pull their their resources together and not have to spend
• 11:58
  that much. Like for my Guild, I am the guy
• 12:01
  who keeps bringing the cauldrons so that not everybody has to to
• 12:06
  get flashed. I'm sure in all in like many
• 12:11
  guilds, you have people who are like donating some herbs and
• 12:15
  some stuff to, to the common good so that like whoever is
• 12:19
  like the Guild enchanter or the Guild, the Guild inscriptionist
• 12:24
  and stuff has some, some things to, to work with.
• 12:27
  Now in some guilds that, like you were saying at the beginning
• 12:30
  of season 1 and so forth, it's far more organized.
• 12:34
  You have particular people who are doing particular branches of
• 12:37
  the trees and other guilds. It's far less organized.
• 12:41
  And it's like, OK, who, who is able to do this?
• 12:44
  Great, let me send you this sort of this stuff so you can Max out
• 12:48
  your professions. But if you have bots that are
• 12:53
  like throwing the price down to like to to like the point where
• 13:00
  it's only profitable if you are a bot operation, well, then the
• 13:04
  Mon pause stop doing it, which means all the money start going
• 13:07
  to the bots, which means that you're causing causing like that
• 13:12
  immediate money transfer to the people who are then going to
• 13:15
  sell gold and compromise poor Alexis friend's account or my my
• 13:19
  friend's account. So now bots are the bot farmers
• 13:23
  are never going to be good. We'll agree to this, Sean.
• 13:29
  Actually runs the bot farm is what I'm getting out.
• 13:33
  Of this, yeah, I'm botting right now.
• 13:35
  It's just supply and demand. If there was less supply through
• 13:39
  from the bots, the demand would be the same, the cost would go
• 13:43
  up. I can't afford to pay these
• 13:45
  people minimum wage, so I need these bonds.
• 13:52
  I, I, I was not good in economics, so I'm probably about
• 13:55
  to screw up some econ stuff. I, I mean, my vague
• 14:00
  understanding of supply and demand is not that one to one,
• 14:03
  especially in, in, in things like this.
• 14:05
  I would, I feel like like if the price of mats is so high that
• 14:11
  only like a few people can realistically get feasts, the
• 14:18
  market would adjust to that. I think.
• 14:20
  I thought I had a better economic article or argument
• 14:23
  than I than I do like, like it, it the, the, the money, like
• 14:27
  money moves in multiple directions.
• 14:29
  And so like the money that's being like if, if, if, if mats
• 14:33
  are really worthwhile, then like your guild's going to have more
• 14:36
  money because the people who are doing the mat farming will be
• 14:38
  able to make more money. But then also that's going to
• 14:40
  like right, Econ kind of balances itself out.
• 14:43
  I really thought it was going to sound really smart when I
• 14:45
  started this sentence. No, you're, you're hitting on
• 14:47
  the elasticity of the demand right as the prices go up and up
• 14:53
  and up, people start pinching their their wallet, the demand
• 14:57
  drops, the prices have to come back down, right.
• 15:00
  There is a point where it doesn't matter that you put that
• 15:03
  thing up for 20 million gold. Nobody's going to buy your like
• 15:07
  one stack of herbs for that, that amount.
• 15:09
  And so Sean's Sean's talking about like how they pushed the
• 15:14
  the price down. But even that has a elasticity.
• 15:18
  There was a fairly infamous story where this new enterprise
• 15:26
  on the on the bot farming was going was finding a way to like
• 15:33
  circumvent Blizzard's, Blizzard's detection and was
• 15:39
  finding a way to like get so much product that they were
• 15:44
  flooding the market. And so a competing bot farmer
• 15:48
  figured out what they were doing and told Blizzard to get them
• 15:52
  shut down because it was costing them money.
• 15:55
  They, they, the prices of everything or what they were
• 15:59
  doing had been tanked so much that they're, that they're like,
• 16:04
  the only way this this can work is if we teach Blizzard how to
• 16:09
  stop this. And then Blizzard catches more
• 16:12
  people and then that cat mouse game keeps going.
• 16:17
  But at the end of the day, Blizzard's fighting these bot
• 16:20
  farmers. It's costing them money.
• 16:23
  I would love those that that money, those resources to go
• 16:27
  towards other things that they could be spending their time
• 16:30
  developing, developing and improving like the cooldown
• 16:35
  manager. Oh great, Segway.
• 16:39
  Sean, do you want to tell us about that?
• 16:41
  Manny, do I ever want to tell you about this?
• 16:42
  OK, so folks, here it is. Buckle up, get ready.
• 16:46
  The Cooldown manager launched back in 11 point 1.5, I want to
• 16:50
  say, and it was a casserole of nonsense.
• 16:56
  It was locked abilities that you couldn't change and locked
• 17:00
  positions that you couldn't change, and it just was
• 17:04
  lacklustre. Some people found value in it,
• 17:09
  but the vast majority of people who were looking at it as being
• 17:13
  a replacement for weak ORS, which we assume it's going to be
• 17:16
  in the future, we're very disappointed by it.
• 17:20
  And then Blizzard said, hey, don't worry about it.
• 17:22
  We're gonna keep working on it. And everybody sort of gave this
• 17:24
  list of things this show as well gave this list of things we're
• 17:27
  like, hey, this is stuff you should have known, stuff you
• 17:29
  should have done. Blizzard made a post here
• 17:32
  talking about the future of the cooldown manager and it's pretty
• 17:36
  exciting. So I'm gonna I don't want to
• 17:37
  read it word for word because it's allowed, but the link is in
• 17:40
  the FAZ Discord over at bit dot LY slash FAZ discord.
• 17:44
  And in all honesty, you could probably find this on any
• 17:46
  community website like Icy Veins or Wowhead or the other ones,
• 17:51
  but there's a lot of functionality.
• 17:52
  So first up, biggest thing, advanced cooldown settings.
• 17:55
  One of the strongest pieces of feedback they received was the
• 17:58
  players want to be able to customize the bars and the
• 18:02
  frames to only show specific abilities and not just which
• 18:06
  abilities to show, but they want to be able to reorder them.
• 18:09
  So Blizzard today we're going to give you that.
• 18:10
  So I'm going to give you the highlights here that they gave.
• 18:12
  Here is what is coming, what we'll be able to do that they
• 18:14
  have developed already be able to pick and choose which spells
• 18:18
  or abilities you want to display or hide.
• 18:20
  This is not still not an exhaustive list with a week or
• 18:23
  with a week or you can put you can track any speller ability.
• 18:26
  They are still giving me a list of here's the ones we think you
• 18:29
  want to track and you pick the ones you choose.
• 18:32
  That's OK because they also added more spells to that list
• 18:36
  as well. Then you could change the order
• 18:38
  of the displays in the cooldown manager frames.
• 18:41
  Great, this is a must have. People want to be able to change
• 18:44
  these toggle with a mouse over. Tool tips and ability timers
• 18:47
  appear also a huge advantage. A lot of people like to do this
• 18:51
  on we cores as well. Toggle with or without tool
• 18:53
  tips. I don't think you can actually
• 18:55
  toggle total tool tips in the base UI.
• 18:58
  It's a it's a something you can do like LVI and stuff like that.
• 19:00
  It would be great to be able to toggle all tool tips or use a, a
• 19:05
  key modifier to show it in combat.
• 19:07
  So they're not showing in combat because those tool tips, even
• 19:09
  though they're popping up in combat sort of away from what
• 19:12
  you're looking at, still FPS you're using, still frames
• 19:14
  you're using. So that's maybe something for
• 19:16
  the future if you're listening. Let us toggle all tool tips all
• 19:20
  the time. Next, set whether the abilities
• 19:23
  appear in the essentials or the utility frame, and whether the
• 19:27
  buffs appear as icons or bars. That one's a huge one.
• 19:31
  A lot of folks like to track in two different ways and different
• 19:34
  things, and some people like bars and people like icons, some
• 19:36
  like a mixture, giving us those choices, choices we need to
• 19:39
  have. It's going to allow you to show
• 19:40
  unlearned abilities. If you haven't selected the
• 19:42
  talent yet, that one's less important, but OK, we'll take
• 19:45
  this. And then you're going to be able
• 19:46
  to search for specific abilities, which is a huge
• 19:49
  advantage if you are a developer for anything, whether that's a
• 19:53
  World of Warcraft, add on World of Warcraft itself, an iPhone
• 19:56
  app, or whatever. If you're a developer and you're
• 19:59
  making anything, give people a search function.
• 20:01
  Let us be able to type what we're looking for in the search
• 20:04
  and have it be a good search function.
• 20:05
  I like this one from Windows where I type in the name of an
• 20:08
  app that I have installed on my PC.
• 20:11
  I'm going to try not to yell, folks.
• 20:13
  I don't want to become negative and incoherent.
• 20:15
  But then it doesn't show up. So please give us good search
• 20:19
  functionality. These are all huge WS this this
• 20:21
  whole article. It goes on for more that to
• 20:23
  reorder them, you can drag and drop them into the position you
• 20:27
  want them. They are giving us the ability
• 20:32
  to track different items, different abilities to track as
• 20:35
  many as we want. And this is this is the next big
• 20:38
  thing you want me to stop so you can jump in here and this Manny,
• 20:41
  because no, no. Keep going way more like I'm
• 20:42
  going to I I will talk about some things afterwards, but like
• 20:45
  give them full breakdown. Cool.
• 20:47
  Next up, they they're adding debuff tracking.
• 20:49
  This is huge. One of the things people like to
• 20:52
  check is their debuffs. So you want to check your dots,
• 20:55
  you want to check any of that kind of stuff.
• 20:57
  They're going to let people have the option to track offensive
• 21:00
  dots in either a new frame or as part of the existing cooldown
• 21:04
  manager. This is also huge and they're
• 21:06
  going to let us select which dots to track.
• 21:08
  So you want to track whether rend is on enemies, stuff like
• 21:11
  that. This is this is great.
• 21:14
  So it's it's really, really happy and this makes me really,
• 21:17
  really happy, but it's not the one that makes me the happiest.
• 21:19
  This next one is Blizzard made a post after the cool I managed
• 21:23
  came out where they talked about they gave us the the add, the
• 21:26
  add on apocalypse, the ad apocalypse.
• 21:27
  They talked about removing add-ons and one of the things
• 21:30
  they said was removing combat add-ons in game that tell you
• 21:33
  what your other party members have done or are able to do
• 21:36
  tracking their abilities. And that was pretty unanimously
• 21:40
  pushed back against as this is this is bad.
• 21:42
  How do I know when to use Pi? How do I know if an external was
• 21:46
  used? How do I know if a person has a
• 21:48
  defensive available that kind of stuff.
• 21:50
  And they, they, they heard the feedback.
• 21:52
  This is such huge credit to the Blizzard, this article, like I
• 21:56
  was excited for for 11.2 and I've been sort of like, I mean,
• 21:58
  you all heard last episode maybe I was sort of like on the
• 22:02
  direction things have been going for some other stuff.
• 22:05
  This is like a huge W. It's like Al Pacino said, just
• 22:08
  when I think I'm out, they pull me back in.
• 22:11
  And that's my Pacino impression. Hopefully everybody liked that.
• 22:14
  Could you tell immediately it was Al Pacino?
• 22:16
  Yeah, I was. I was sitting there like, Oh my
• 22:17
  God, Where did Al Pacino kind of join this podcast?
• 22:20
  I love it. I love it.
• 22:22
  So they they're rolling back on that there Manny is seething
• 22:25
  again. They rolled back, they rolled
• 22:27
  back on that and they're now allowing us to track defensive.
• 22:32
  So they said from players, mostly tanks, we've heard they
• 22:36
  want the ability to track if a player has used external
• 22:39
  abilities or buffs with a duration on them, such as paint
• 22:41
  supper, life, cocoon. They're letting us track it in a
• 22:44
  separate window off to the side. This is so good.
• 22:49
  We need to be able to I need to know if I have paint up
• 22:52
  available. I need to know if I have an iron
• 22:53
  brick available. This is the stuff we want to be
• 22:57
  able to track and they're they're including it.
• 22:58
  They're rolling back on their ability not to allow it.
• 23:01
  Then they at this point, so I'm as I'm reading this, I'm typing
• 23:04
  in my Guild discord. I'm like, this is AWI can't
• 23:06
  believe they're letting us have this.
• 23:07
  And then I type. The only way this would get
• 23:09
  better is if they were to let me to have sound cues like we cores
• 23:13
  do the very next thing. Well, bam, the very next thing
• 23:17
  in the article sound alert alerts.
• 23:19
  Now my we gore is like say things to me.
• 23:23
  They speak hey, Sean frontal move to the left, that kind of
• 23:26
  stuff. They're really specific.
• 23:28
  But so this I don't suspect we're gonna get that level of
• 23:31
  specificity in in what sound alerts we can use.
• 23:35
  It does say that they will have a will have a list of sounds to
• 23:38
  choose from to customize our sets in in a dream world
• 23:42
  Blizzard, if you would let us use NPC dialogue lines or boss
• 23:47
  lines that would be amazing if I could have Gina tell me when my
• 23:51
  frost bolt is ready. Obviously a bad example for
• 23:54
  those of you who don't know I don't play frostmage.
• 23:56
  If you weren't able to tell from that reference on on the major
• 24:01
  cooldown frost bolt anyway, sound alerts are coming so
• 24:07
  that's awesome and then this is the last thing additional edit
• 24:10
  mode customizations. So I was talking to a guilty of
• 24:15
  mine who is an add on developer for one of the most installed
• 24:19
  add-ons in the game. And I was we were talking about
• 24:22
  this feature and he was like, are you really going to be happy
• 24:24
  with it? Like your UI is so specific.
• 24:28
  And I was like, as I'm reading this I'm thinking in in my head,
• 24:32
  I already know I don't like the look of the Blizzard default
• 24:35
  icons with the rounded edges in the great border.
• 24:37
  I like a perfect zoomed in 30% square and I like them to be
• 24:41
  spaced like 2 pixels apart. And in my head I'm like, I
• 24:44
  already know I'm going to be stuck using the default Blizzard
• 24:46
  icon and they're going to be just too far apart from my brain
• 24:50
  to like it. But they said they're working on
• 24:52
  some additional edit mode customizations that are some
• 24:56
  quality of life stuff as in like resizing and repositioning
• 24:59
  elements with greater flexibility.
• 25:02
  Let me just squish them a little bit closer together.
• 25:04
  I can learn the love the icons if I have to, but if you give me
• 25:07
  a zoom, 30% fasdev 30% zoom on those icons because that removes
• 25:11
  the borders and brings me in just a little bit.
• 25:13
  They look so clean and nice. It's like a nice MLT where the
• 25:16
  mutton is nice and lean. Anyway, it's a huge W.
• 25:20
  This is all that was my Billy Crystal from Princess Bride.
• 25:24
  For anybody who's not aware, much better than my Al Pacino
• 25:28
  Manny is seething this article. I don't know why you keep saying
• 25:33
  I'm seething. It's a massive W there.
• 25:38
  There's a, they're looking at making it so you can export UI,
• 25:41
  so you can export, you can build them and export them.
• 25:43
  So those of you who do, who make UIS, Lux DOS from talking to
• 25:45
  you, maybe you can make one in game.
• 25:48
  You can export for folks to install just, you know, an
• 25:50
  import code and they're looking at making it, you know,
• 25:53
  adjustable ones that load based on spec, all that kind of stuff.
• 25:57
  I am really, really excited about this.
• 26:00
  I think that's a good breakdown. I basically went through the
• 26:02
  whole article. Yeah.
• 26:03
  I mean, you, you, you did a quick run through the whole
• 26:06
  article. I think I'm glad that you're
• 26:09
  able to get that information in so that people know what we're
• 26:11
  talking about. Obviously there are going to be
• 26:15
  things that they need to continue to iterate on.
• 26:18
  There are going to be things that people are going to
• 26:21
  request. But like, I am so glad that
• 26:24
  they're continuing to work on these things.
• 26:28
  They're continuing to improve, improve these things.
• 26:30
  I think that if we get this version that they have outlined
• 26:35
  here, a lot of people could remove a lot of add-ons that
• 26:40
  they're they're using. And that's that's what I'm sort
• 26:43
  of looking for. When they did the UI overhaul,
• 26:46
  there are a lot of people who are like, OK, I guess I don't
• 26:49
  need to use bartender anymore. There are a lot of people who
• 26:52
  are like maybe I don't need to use LVUII Think with LVUI it
• 26:57
  just has so much years of adding in customization that the bass
• 27:02
  Blizzard UI has not quite narrowed the gap enough that
• 27:08
  people can safely drop off of that in that case.
• 27:11
  But there were a bit like bartender is a lot more bare
• 27:15
  bones. Sexy map is something that
• 27:18
  unless you really look exactly what sexy map did, hey, the UI
• 27:23
  change allows you to now move that map out of the corner, out
• 27:27
  of the middle of nowhere and bring that into a better
• 27:29
  position. So there's a, there's a lot of
• 27:31
  things that are that are there. And this goes to that question
• 27:36
  of when Blitzer's saying, Hey, we're going to try and get it to
• 27:40
  like, you know, 96%. Is this getting to that 96% now?
• 27:46
  Would you say it's closer to 90%?
• 27:48
  I think the, I got to say the first iteration, I wish when
• 27:53
  they put it into live, they had just marked it as early release
• 27:58
  or beta. I think that that kind of
• 28:00
  connotation on the feature would have changed the conversation a
• 28:05
  lot because it like Sean before this article, you're like, hey,
• 28:10
  they get one chance to make that first impression and that first
• 28:13
  impression universally, not necessarily.
• 28:16
  Maybe not universally, but overwhelmingly was pretty bad
• 28:22
  for the cooldown manager. And people are saying, oh, why
• 28:25
  didn't they wait till they got up to this point to then release
• 28:29
  it? And I don't think I want that.
• 28:31
  I think that I would want them to put forward that first
• 28:34
  iteration, but mark it as this is beta.
• 28:39
  This is like not not anywhere near the final release.
• 28:43
  We're not expecting you to use this to replace everything, and
• 28:48
  I think they would have gotten much better feedback, especially
• 28:52
  when you're doing stuff with UI changes.
• 28:55
  Just flat out PTR cycles are never going to be enough.
• 29:00
  Beta alpha cycles are never going to be enough.
• 29:04
  You need this out with a full player base looking at it,
• 29:08
  sending their flames on on the forums, putting out their
• 29:13
  podcast and be like, oh, Blizzard, if this is what you're
• 29:16
  doing, I can't trust you to do anything right like you like
• 29:20
  it's sometimes harsh feedback, but you need that.
• 29:24
  You need that feedback. What do you what do you guys
• 29:28
  think about cooldown manager? Like Lex?
• 29:30
  I got we got to give you a chance to give you a piece on
• 29:32
  this. I really like this.
• 29:34
  So I was not really interested in the cooldown manager when it
• 29:37
  came out at all. But looking at this, so as many
• 29:39
  of you guys know, I'm a tell me when girly partially because I
• 29:42
  find weaker is confusing and I like just there's too many
• 29:45
  moving parts and it's big and I just want my box that says that
• 29:48
  I dragged the cooldown fan and it fixes it.
• 29:51
  And this actually seems like it's going to be a much better
• 29:52
  and cleaner version of tell me when.
• 29:54
  So as a non weaker, weaker girly, this sounds great.
• 29:57
  This is everything that I want and I like the fact that it's in
• 30:00
  the game itself and I am actually really, really excited
• 30:02
  about this. To your point, Manny, I think
• 30:05
  that's a really fairpoint of making it so that they're
• 30:08
  specifically saying this is the beta testing of this specific
• 30:14
  thing that we're trying to play with.
• 30:16
  I think they could even do something like make it like an
• 30:18
  opt in feature of like I want to be yeah, like an early access
• 30:23
  feature tester or something, like in game feature tester or
• 30:25
  something. Because then they're also not
• 30:27
  going to have to deal with the anger because it feels like a
• 30:29
  fun cute little like not only are they not saying this is the
• 30:33
  final iteration, don't worry, everything's OK, but they're
• 30:35
  making us feel special and cool because we get to test the cool
• 30:37
  little thing and we get to play with the cool out of Android.
• 30:39
  Isn't that so cool? And so it feels like a plus
• 30:41
  though we're getting the stuff early as opposed to a negative
• 30:43
  that it's kind of because, yeah, they, they must have known that
• 30:47
  most of this was coming, right? Like most of this is it's, it's
• 30:50
  obvious just from the fact that they have the UI abilities that
• 30:53
  they have, right? They know who we like
• 30:55
  customization. They know that we want to be
• 30:57
  resizing and changing things and searching and picking things
• 30:59
  like. And I think, I think that a lot
• 31:02
  of the anger was that if they tell us this is what we're
• 31:05
  giving you, we'll change it in the future.
• 31:08
  That feels bad versus, hey, we don't have time to make it fully
• 31:12
  complete. Play with this and tell me what
• 31:14
  you think. It's a very different ride.
• 31:16
  Yeah. Another thing that I think they
• 31:21
  are going to have to look at kind of going along what Sean
• 31:25
  was saying about like particular ways you want to set it up that
• 31:29
  customizations and stuff like we cores got in spades.
• 31:33
  The color of the bars, the fact that like my bars can change
• 31:38
  color when they get to a certain point.
• 31:40
  So it's like, oh, the bars gone red, I know it's in the epidemic
• 31:43
  section and the fact that I can have debuffs on my frame.
• 31:48
  So it's just like, hey, if it's not on my target, right, like
• 31:52
  the debuffs on my target, sure, but like in a group where I'm AO
• 31:57
  ING and I want to have these debuffs on everything, like is
• 32:00
  it going to be on frames? That's kind of a missing part
• 32:02
  that sort of slides right into this, especially if when they're
• 32:06
  we're talking about the quote UN quote add on apocalypse, the
• 32:12
  like, it immediately begs additional questions.
• 32:16
  And simply just with like, even if I can't, if I'm picking from
• 32:23
  a list of pre selected sounds, that is like Jana being like
• 32:30
  frostbolts coming off a cooldown because we're just going to
• 32:32
  continue to ride that into the ground.
• 32:34
  I would like it to be a warning, just like maybe a second before
• 32:41
  frostbite comes comes off cooldown or when only when
• 32:47
  Frostbuck frostbolt procs and is empowered like that, that might
• 32:53
  be it. And those sort of tracking like
• 32:56
  yes, you can get people who like build those weak ORS for you for
• 32:59
  the race, the world first teams for or like you can learn how to
• 33:03
  program those yourself. This one is going to be a lot
• 33:06
  more user friendly, but limited. And I think that's going to be a
• 33:12
  trade off where I, I loved when I would do my, my Sprint like
• 33:20
  it's, it's like rogues have Sprint and when Sprint was
• 33:26
  active, I'd have like the Super Mario Invincible stars music
• 33:31
  going. And so it's, it's strange, but
• 33:36
  anybody who's heard that, you kind of know the tune.
• 33:39
  And so I would know just from where I am in the tune, how much
• 33:42
  longer I have on my Sprint. That's a very particular thing.
• 33:48
  Weird. Thing.
• 33:49
  It's a very weird thing. It's it works though, like you
• 33:53
  can, but like you could do it for like, oh, I'm gonna have my
• 33:56
  bubble. And rather than have like a big
• 33:58
  thing come in and be like, your bubble's wearing off, you just
• 34:01
  have a tune and you're like, oh, Lady Gaga's singing this.
• 34:03
  OK, I know it's about my bubble's about to pop, right?
• 34:07
  Like there's so many things you could do with audio cues that I
• 34:09
  love doing. I know Sean has like 1,000,001
• 34:15
  different things being like frontal cleave, get out of here
• 34:22
  or that sort of stuff. And so I'm hoping that the list.
• 34:26
  Pink Pony Club, all of it. I'm hoping that the list of
• 34:31
  things is long and has enough specificity that people can use
• 34:36
  it, especially when we're talking about accessibility.
• 34:38
  Because I love every time we get raceable first, which is
• 34:42
  something we're going to be going into again when we start
• 34:45
  talking about stuff like Undaunted, a Guild that is
• 34:48
  pushing through mythic content and they are a Guild that is
• 34:53
  composed of members who are who have audio impairment.
• 34:57
  So all the audio stuff is great for me, but obviously doesn't
• 35:00
  work for them. They instead use a number of
• 35:03
  different things to like circumvent that.
• 35:06
  There are times where I was rating normal heroic where I
• 35:11
  didn't need DBM because I knew when the boss said whatever
• 35:14
  catch phrase that they threw that they threw together, that
• 35:17
  that was them doing their big move.
• 35:20
  Having these things set up that aids not only myself but anybody
• 35:25
  who has accessibility issues is is great.
• 35:29
  And I don't want the bars to be one color and then have to worry
• 35:34
  about color blindness with the color blind mode.
• 35:36
  I'd love to just be able to set them to colors or set them to to
• 35:39
  like animate or move based on particular conditions.
• 35:45
  Yeah, I, I, I want one point. I want to highlight we are in
• 35:50
  this post Cooldown Manager update world where we're
• 35:56
  positive about this change and we're looking forward to what's
• 35:58
  coming. Because when they when they
• 36:02
  rolled out Cooldown Manager at 11 point 1.5, they didn't turn
• 36:05
  off the ability for weak chorus to do the things Cooldown
• 36:07
  Manager does. We were able to exist and they
• 36:10
  were like here's an offering. We were like this isn't it?
• 36:13
  We're going to keep doing what we're doing.
• 36:16
  It's so important to me that when they get to the point that
• 36:20
  for each of these new add-ons they develop that they want to
• 36:23
  keep in game, it's so important to me that they don't turn off
• 36:28
  our external add-ons that do the same functionality until they're
• 36:33
  at this 9095% state when Blizzard rolls out their
• 36:37
  nameplate update, which I I pray is coming soon. 20 years in the
• 36:43
  making, long overdue. When they roll that out, it
• 36:48
  needs to go live while things like Plater are still live.
• 36:54
  You can't. If they had turned off We Chorus
• 36:57
  and nobody could track you guys and you were forced to use
• 37:00
  Cooldown Manager when Cool Down Manager launched 11 point 1.5,
• 37:02
  it would have been horrible for the game and for the player
• 37:05
  experience. We are now in this world where
• 37:08
  the Cooldown Manager looks like it's making.
• 37:12
  It's going to have a renaissance or a resurgence where it's going
• 37:14
  to be able to be functional and do the things we need to do.
• 37:17
  But we didn't have to suffer through a full patch cycle of
• 37:21
  misery. They have to I.
• 37:23
  I desperately, desperately want them to keep that mentality.
• 37:26
  Before you start turning things off, make sure you have a
• 37:29
  replacement that is suitable. It's Indiana Jones and the
• 37:32
  Raiders of the Lost Ark Don't take that tiny little gold head
• 37:36
  unless you're sure that bag of sand is almost the same weight
• 37:39
  'cause I don't want to be running from anything, really.
• 37:41
  I just don't want to run. But I don't want to be running
• 37:43
  from a giant ball that's going to crush me.
• 37:45
  OK, that's where we're at. Sorry, I just had to say that.
• 37:48
  No, I, I, I wholeheartedly agree.
• 37:51
  I think that they do need to have everything ready to put in
• 37:54
  place before they yank the supports that are already there.
• 37:57
  We don't need the game literally collapsing on its UI because
• 38:01
  they've removed what was propping up players.
• 38:05
  And by that same token, I think that this is going to be
• 38:08
  something that like moves with a with like kind of a snowball
• 38:14
  effect, like as you get all these hooks in so that the base
• 38:18
  UI can track these things that the base UI has these kind of
• 38:21
  customizations. It seems easier to then transfer
• 38:27
  like to port that those same hooks into their name plate,
• 38:31
  their name plates to port those same hooks into the next thing
• 38:35
  that they, they want to change, like their, their version of a
• 38:39
  DBM thing that that's put out there.
• 38:43
  And so I'm, I'm happy for that. I also think that as we get
• 38:48
  this, I would like them to be able to further adjust things
• 38:54
  that are in the game that have sort of been the half steps up
• 38:58
  to this point. We have personal resource bars
• 39:02
  that people sometimes you sometimes don't.
• 39:06
  We have the little their version of weak or so like when you get
• 39:15
  that proc for fire mages and you have the 2 bars that are to the
• 39:19
  side of you. Yeah, maybe we don't need that
• 39:22
  anymore. If it's being tracked on on a
• 39:24
  thing to like clear out the noise to get some visual
• 39:27
  clarity, you can like opt in and out of various parts, adding
• 39:32
  that same sort of customization to things that have come before
• 39:36
  as well as things that have come that will come afterwards.
• 39:42
  I got to ask you guys, what is the next thing that you hope
• 39:47
  that they start taking a swing at?
• 39:49
  Because I think a lot of this is going to be a continuing journey
• 39:53
  even after this stuff comes out where I'm expecting and hoping
• 39:57
  that they continue to like further refine the cooldown
• 40:00
  manager. But what's the next?
• 40:03
  Thing that you hope they take a swing at.
• 40:05
  Let's start with you, Lex. DPS charts.
• 40:08
  I mean first of all it's not necessarily a hope.
• 40:09
  I just think it's like at this point from everything they said
• 40:11
  basically guaranteed. But that would be nice.
• 40:13
  I do think no hate if the details coder is listening to
• 40:19
  the show, but I do think like I, I use details.
• 40:21
  I love details, but I think that a, a, a system that's kind of
• 40:24
  integrated in the game a little bit more deeply might be really
• 40:27
  useful. And, and having those like
• 40:29
  toggles and things a little bit a little bit more again, like
• 40:33
  within the game might, might go really well.
• 40:35
  And I, I just think it would be a, a useful thing to be able to
• 40:41
  put put right in again. It's one of the most used
• 40:43
  things. I've been talking about it for a
• 40:44
  while. I can't imagine anything else
• 40:45
  coming next, but that would be my guess.
• 40:49
  OK. OK.
• 40:50
  Sean, what about you? That's a great answer.
• 40:53
  Lex didn't steal my answer, but it's a great answer with my
• 40:55
  second answer. Number one is nameplates.
• 40:58
  For me, I need. I love Plato Plato's great, but
• 41:01
  I really desperately need to see Blizzard's nameplate offering
• 41:04
  sooner rather than later so that we can get to version 2IN case
• 41:09
  their version 1 is like their version one of the cool down
• 41:11
  manager Yeah, so I guess version 3 because if we're in nameplates
• 41:16
  version one right now, Yikes. Let's get the let's get name.
• 41:19
  I just I honestly like even just something as simple as telling
• 41:23
  me what mob is being targeted makes the nameplate so much
• 41:25
  better. It's just such a huge
• 41:27
  disadvantage like yeah nameplates.
• 41:30
  That's what I want. That's my answer, although
• 41:31
  details will be really cool too. Imagine a world where the damage
• 41:36
  meters are implemented by Blizzard.
• 41:39
  So you invite an augmentation evoker to your group and the
• 41:43
  hooks are already just built in and you see their actual
• 41:46
  contribution instead of an estimated contribution.
• 41:51
  That would be great. I actually think I'm going to
• 41:53
  not let Manny answer and I'm going to steal your answer in
• 41:56
  reverse, Sean. I do actually, now that you
• 41:58
  mention that I think tanking using Blizzard's threat system
• 42:04
  specifically is like basically impossible.
• 42:08
  Like I, I did it one like for one dungeon because I didn't
• 42:11
  realize that I hadn't updated my add-ons and it was quite
• 42:15
  genuinely one of the most restful experiences of my life.
• 42:18
  I think that having threat generators and and on name
• 42:22
  plates and things like that would be, if not only like would
• 42:25
  be great. Like I think that is critical to
• 42:27
  playing the game. So I take it back.
• 42:28
  I want name plates updated too. OK.
• 42:31
  Well then I want details. How do you like me now?
• 42:35
  All right, well, you guys, you guys have switched places there.
• 42:38
  That's fine. I I like Lex's initial answer,
• 42:46
  but thinking about it, there's a couple of add-ons that work
• 42:50
  through communicating in their own little secret channel and
• 42:55
  they cause a lot of lag for the game at times.
• 42:59
  And my God, I'd love to see those replace or something that
• 43:02
  doesn't cause me that much stress because I have sometimes
• 43:06
  you start a fight and it's just like my frame rate.
• 43:09
  What the hell? Yeah, I'd love to see the end of
• 43:14
  that. I I would, that would just be
• 43:16
  like a nice little optimization for me.
• 43:21
  But I think that like the weirdest thing about Blizzard
• 43:26
  doing a DBM replacement, a big wigs or little wigs replacement,
• 43:32
  is the fact that it, I don't think those systems will work
• 43:40
  until Blizzard says your third party ones don't work.
• 43:46
  Because the biggest thing about those is they're based on
• 43:51
  strategies that the team, that the teams come up with that that
• 43:55
  get put into that and then are put forward.
• 43:58
  If it's the Blizzard, Blizzard's not going to tell you what the
• 44:00
  strategy is. It almost feels like they're
• 44:02
  always going to be at A, at a, at a slight deep thing.
• 44:08
  And the other part of it is that like usually teams work on the
• 44:12
  same one. It's like, hey, team, we're all
• 44:14
  going to be using DVM, We're all going to be using little wigs.
• 44:18
  So our timers are the same. And then we're going to start
• 44:20
  introducing people having a third one that's there too.
• 44:26
  It's, I feel like that's going to be the hardest one to like
• 44:29
  get everybody on to the same same adoption until they go,
• 44:35
  yeah, we're making the choice for you and that's going to be a
• 44:39
  scary one. I don't think that'll be like
• 44:42
  big weeks timers. DBM timers are identical.
• 44:44
  There is no discernible difference in like the the
• 44:48
  actual time displayed. The only difference that most
• 44:52
  people would have seen is how the information is portrayed.
• 44:57
  So one will say like stack if it's an ability to stack on, and
• 45:01
  another one would say the name of the ability.
• 45:04
  So instead of telling you how to deal with a mechanic, it tells
• 45:06
  you what the mechanic is type of thing.
• 45:08
  Although, yeah, but so as far as timers go, they're identical.
• 45:11
  I think Blizzard implementing their own timer version that
• 45:13
  even just tells you the next mechanic coming up.
• 45:16
  I'm, I'm very looking, very much looking forward to that because
• 45:19
  it means it works right out-of-the-box and doesn't need
• 45:22
  Liquid or Echo to be running the raid first to give us those
• 45:25
  timers. So we'll be able to have them
• 45:27
  right away. Yeah.
• 45:28
  But yeah, I, I think that will be fine.
• 45:30
  Having all of those function at the same time.
• 45:32
  The only time to run into issues even in like guilds that are,
• 45:38
  it's mostly heroic guilds, cause mythic guilds are using weak or
• 45:42
  packs in conjunction with one of those usually Bigwigs.
• 45:46
  But the only issue you run into in heroic guilds is so like with
• 45:51
  Ovanax, where you want, because the way Ovanax was designed, if
• 45:54
  you used Bigwigs, it would mark the players who were to pop
• 45:59
  eggs. And then the raid leader would
• 46:00
  have marked on the ground with world markers which eggs those
• 46:04
  people would go to. So triangle person runs to
• 46:07
  triangle marker. The you run into the issue if
• 46:10
  you have half the group on DBM and half the group on bigwigs
• 46:13
  because it can't properly mark them, that that's the only time
• 46:16
  that becomes an issue. And then I mean, that's not, I
• 46:19
  don't think that's the thing Blizzard has to fix.
• 46:20
  That's just the raid leader for your team needs to be organized
• 46:24
  enough to say, hey guys, we're all going to use Blizzards or
• 46:27
  we're all going to use Bigwigs or we're all going to use DBM.
• 46:30
  And then once we have a tier where we see the Blizzards is
• 46:32
  good, give us a full tier where all of it is available, Blizz.
• 46:36
  Then they can. Then I'm comfortable and you
• 46:38
  know, and there's no hiccups. Then I will be comfortable with
• 46:40
  them going in and saying, OK, we're going to turn this
• 46:42
  functionality off for everyone else and we will be the only
• 46:44
  ones providing it. I really desperately hope that's
• 46:47
  how they do it. Don't.
• 46:47
  Worry, sorry, I'm going to let you it's but I want to ask Sean
• 46:51
  like sort of follow up. OK so like in the next raid when
• 46:55
  we're going into Manafort Omega, the penultimate boss has a combo
• 47:00
  sort of move where it does like it's got it's got 2 moves that
• 47:04
  it will do and sometimes it'll do the same move twice, right?
• 47:09
  Often one of the add-ons will be like taught now or to like a
• 47:17
  provide to make sure you're not taking that.
• 47:19
  But I could never think Blizzard would actually be like taunt
• 47:22
  now. It would be like you have a
• 47:24
  stack of this and you're kind of looking for the next ability.
• 47:27
  And I find that that's one of the things that is gonna
• 47:32
  immediately fall into that 4% and therefore people are not
• 47:36
  going to switch off of it because that 4% is so enabling
• 47:40
  for tanks and such. Like how?
• 47:41
  Like like it's not a matter of the the.
• 47:46
  If if Blizzard's offering doesn't include instructions
• 47:52
  like DBM and Bigwigs does, and it's literally just this is the
• 47:56
  next mechanic that is cooldown manager version one.
• 48:00
  That is a terrible, terrible move.
• 48:02
  You need you need to have that function.
• 48:06
  There are people who have never tanked the raid before who go in
• 48:09
  and because they're they're already nervous as as as they're
• 48:13
  already very nervous. I didn't swear for you, Manny.
• 48:15
  They're already very nervous, but the only reason they're able
• 48:19
  to do it is because bigwigs or DBM tells them taunt now and
• 48:23
  then they know to taunt now if Blizzard's functionality is
• 48:25
  literally and like even like there are players who are like
• 48:28
  they don't know I have to stack. They don't know, you know, get
• 48:30
  out. They they don't know the name of
• 48:32
  the mechanic. If they if it comes up and it
• 48:33
  says, you know, heroic onslaught, I don't know what
• 48:37
  that means. If you don't, if if their
• 48:38
  functionality doesn't also include a directional statement,
• 48:44
  that's a huge failure. That is a massive, massive flop.
• 48:48
  It needs to it. It fundamentally needs to even.
• 48:51
  Sorry. Go ahead.
• 48:51
  Sorry. I was gonna I.
• 48:52
  Mean like I, I The thing is that I think one thing Blizzard has
• 48:55
  said to us repeatedly is that they feel kind of stifled by how
• 48:58
  much we use add-ons to fix mechanics right so that we don't
• 49:04
  have to learn how they go. And so I don't think I'm kind of
• 49:09
  with Manny that I think one reason Blizzard wants to pull
• 49:11
  some of these DVM and things away from us is because they
• 49:14
  want to not have they want to have mechanics feel like things
• 49:18
  we have to figure out. Again, I will say Ian did say in
• 49:23
  the interview way back when that one of the things they're
• 49:25
  planning on doing is simplifying so that you don't it.
• 49:27
  It's less complicated, right? It's easier for a new tank to
• 49:31
  jump in and be like, oh, I know exactly like this thing goes on
• 49:35
  me and that always means I talk swamp and things like that.
• 49:37
  I will say I don't really trust Ian from that interview anymore
• 49:39
  for reasons that we will discuss in the future.
• 49:42
  But but that is what he said is that they would like they, they,
• 49:46
  they understand that right now it's really complicated and
• 49:48
  they'd rather simplify things and then still make us figure it
• 49:51
  out, then leave them this complicated and have us use
• 49:56
  other things to solve the the add-ons for us.
• 49:59
  So I agree with you. I think that it's going to be
• 50:01
  really, really tough when they do that.
• 50:03
  But I kind of also agree with Manny that I think that that's
• 50:06
  actually what they want. They want to make it harder for
• 50:08
  us to do the mechanics and they want to make us figure it out.
• 50:10
  So not trying to show prejudice based on the messenger and talk
• 50:15
  about the message itself. When I, when I think about like,
• 50:19
  let's say we're dealing with like, like at the end of
• 50:23
  midnight, we're up against like Nega Shawn.
• 50:25
  And so Nega Shawn has like right jab and left hook, right?
• 50:30
  And it's like you can't, you got to make sure you don't take two
• 50:33
  left hooks or you got to make sure you don't take two jabs.
• 50:36
  I think the solution is that the the theoretical Blizzard thing
• 50:41
  would say jab, jab, hook, hook and you'd be like, OK, hook's
• 50:46
  coming up. And so the tank, whether they're
• 50:48
  new or experienced or stuff, says, oh, jab, I've already
• 50:52
  taken that. I need to I need to not take
• 50:56
  this again or hook the my friend's taking a hook already.
• 51:01
  I need to taunt and with if it said taunt, then the only skill
• 51:06
  testing is how quickly did you react to it telling you taunt.
• 51:10
  And if it says jab, you're like, oh, did it?
• 51:13
  Did you already take a jab? They can make that timer less
• 51:17
  tight or make the moves become more and more tight as you go up
• 51:21
  in difficulty to like be a skill expression because I don't know
• 51:25
  how you how you would otherwise challenge a tank on that
• 51:34
  maneuver other than it being a twitch reaction thing if you're
• 51:38
  already telling them what to do. Two things #1 the.
• 51:46
  I think so at first. I just want to address Ian's
• 51:48
  comment. I'm fairly certain that when
• 51:51
  they even Morgan De has made some other comments, when they
• 51:54
  make those comments, they're not referencing bigwigs telling you
• 51:58
  to stack in a mechanic. They're referencing
• 52:00
  computational weak or as that solve situations like the Ovanax
• 52:04
  bugs or the Ovanax eggs. That's the level of complex
• 52:07
  we're saying we don't want these to solve things for you.
• 52:10
  We want to simplify. You can't get any simpler than
• 52:13
  taunt on one, you know what I mean?
• 52:14
  Like that's there's no simplification there.
• 52:17
  And the number the second thing is if they take if, if so,
• 52:21
  Blizzards, again, this is all hypothetical.
• 52:24
  We don't have any idea what Blizzard's bigwigs replacement
• 52:28
  is going to look like. But if Blizzard's Bigwig
• 52:30
  replacement comes out and it is just telling you the names of
• 52:34
  mechanics, you will kill casual rating, it will.
• 52:38
  It will die in the streets. Because I know the names of
• 52:43
  mechanics. Because it's my, it's literally
• 52:44
  my job to know the names of mechanics.
• 52:46
  I'm willing to bet even in this channel I could name mechanics.
• 52:50
  And not only would you not be able to tell me what it does,
• 52:52
  you wouldn't know what boss it's from.
• 52:55
  You told me what some. Cases you wouldn't even know the
• 52:57
  raid you. Told me what boss is from.
• 53:00
  I'd have a much better chance, but if you just you were like,
• 53:03
  I'm going to put up a bunch of emojis that signify a boss or a
• 53:06
  raid and you have to figure out what it is.
• 53:08
  No, no, that's clearly like a random skill testing question.
• 53:13
  I'm not gonna remember all of the all of the mechanics from
• 53:17
  all of the bosses on like week -1 going into Manafort.
• 53:22
  And that's the most relevant to me right now.
• 53:24
  Like it's gonna take me some time.
• 53:25
  But that learning curve is still a learning curve.
• 53:29
  And. I don't.
• 53:30
  I think you're over, and we're gonna talk about this in an
• 53:35
  upcoming news article, but I think both of you might be over.
• 53:45
  Not overvaluing, but you might be inflating the skill level of
• 53:49
  the vast majority of the player base and I think they need that
• 53:52
  help. Well, and the other thing I'm
• 53:54
  realizing as we're having this conversation, I think the
• 53:56
  current Blizzard like the if if you turn off DDM, the game or or
• 54:01
  Bigwigs or whatever you use the game does tell you a lot of
• 54:03
  things. And I think they actually do say
• 54:06
  things like run away and spread like So I actually as I'm as I'm
• 54:10
  thinking this through, I think this is actually an answered
• 54:12
  question because I think Blizzard currently tells you
• 54:14
  what to do. I do think potentially the like
• 54:17
  telling you when to taunt swap might not happen.
• 54:20
  I think the I think the like scalpel level, you know, here is
• 54:24
  exactly what you're going to do is probably going to go away.
• 54:27
  And I think the Blizzard probably wants that to go away.
• 54:30
  But I do think that the like the general like, oh, is this a
• 54:35
  stack? Is this a spread?
• 54:36
  Do I like, what do I do? Is already Blizzard teaches it
• 54:40
  to us through the icons, right? They're all identical.
• 54:44
  Like all stacks look the same. All spreads look the same.
• 54:47
  You know, the, the things you stand in to the drop on you look
• 54:51
  the same. Things you get out of look the
• 54:52
  same. Like, so I, I think they do
• 54:55
  those sorts of things. They're going to continue to
• 54:56
  tell you because they're already telling you visually.
• 55:00
  Yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah. I also think 'cause you're also
• 55:04
  above the casual level of play. I mean, you're literally on a
• 55:07
  podcast about the show. So you're, you're above, Hey, I
• 55:10
  play casualty level. So, you know, to recognize that,
• 55:12
  Oh, it's got these weird lines coming up from the circle.
• 55:15
  That means stack. That's meant stack for four
• 55:17
  tiers. I know what I stand in that I'm,
• 55:19
  I'm like, we're going to talk about it soon because I, I, I'm
• 55:22
  going to, I'm going to get to say I was right about a thing.
• 55:26
  But I think the vast majority of people who play this game and
• 55:29
  rate at that normal to low AOTC level don't know the same stuff
• 55:34
  that that you know, you know what I mean?
• 55:36
  You're. I don't expect them to though.
• 55:38
  I think that they they can learn and it will take them longer to
• 55:43
  get through it because they have to learn they.
• 55:44
  Only have six months in the tier, Manny.
• 55:46
  Yeah, yeah, I don't. I expect somebody who is
• 55:50
  learning for the first time that when Sean gives you a jab, you
• 55:56
  don't want to take it again to suddenly be pushing mythic in
• 55:59
  the same tear. Like it's just like you can have
• 56:02
  people not get like their their like friendship.
• 56:05
  Verb I'm talking. Mimic No, but I'm saying, but
• 56:07
  I'm saying like even like a friendship verb, like heroic
• 56:10
  AOTC, right? I can I can find people who have
• 56:17
  challenged beating the last boss on normal or maybe even getting
• 56:21
  to that last boss. Their team is friends and
• 56:24
  family. Their team is just a casual
• 56:27
  group that comes together once a week, doesn't download stuff,
• 56:32
  doesn't look at strats. And they go like oh man, Chant
• 56:36
  does a jab and I don't know why I can't take the second jab
• 56:38
  right to struggle. And then some of them will be
• 56:41
  like, OK, I'm going to look at this thing called the Dungeon
• 56:46
  Journal and says, oh, Sean takes his job, right?
• 56:50
  Like they're just. Going to stop playing, they're
• 56:51
  going to say oh, that's too high, I don't want to do that.
• 56:53
  Like, put like and put like. Those are the people.
• 56:55
  I'm talking about those people. I'm not talking about those
• 56:57
  people. I'm talking about the people who
• 56:59
  are above them, the AOTC Raiders now who are only able to get
• 57:03
  AOTC because an add on is telling them how to deal with
• 57:06
  the mechanic. And I will argue that they
• 57:07
  don't. I will argue that the people who
• 57:10
  are like running in and be like, I'm going to go download this
• 57:14
  add on because Lex told me to download this add on and this
• 57:16
  add on tells me that when Sean jabs jabs me once I I need my
• 57:21
  friend to taunt, right? Those people could still get
• 57:25
  through it. It would take them a little bit
• 57:27
  longer, but they would. But somebody in that entire
• 57:32
  group of their, them and their nine friends or up to 29 friends
• 57:36
  would eventually be like, hey, what?
• 57:38
  What happens if I if instead of you taking two punches to, to
• 57:43
  the face from Sean, I step in and I take a hit and they're
• 57:49
  like, Oh my goodness, we've done it.
• 57:51
  And you know what? I've invented blind rating.
• 57:53
  I'm sure there are groups out there that do this right?
• 57:57
  I think that Sean is correct in what Blizzard is actually going
• 58:00
  to do because I think that Blizzard, like I, I think that
• 58:03
  the goal is to make people happy, which is valid.
• 58:05
  It's a video game. People be happy when playing a
• 58:07
  video game. And I don't think they would
• 58:08
  upset people to the degree of removing that, but I think that
• 58:12
  Manny is correct. Like simply due to the fact that
• 58:17
  if it was true that people would not be willing to play this game
• 58:20
  without things like DBM and bigwigs, classic World of
• 58:23
  Warcraft would not have existed. Like raining in the early days
• 58:25
  simply would not be real. And people figured it out back
• 58:28
  then, right when when everything you kind of had to like talk
• 58:31
  through with your friends and there weren't extensive war like
• 58:34
  guide videos dropped every two minutes And you couldn't just go
• 58:37
  on icy veins and figure out everything.
• 58:38
  Like my dad still has stories of like sitting with his friends
• 58:41
  and them like, you know, like going in the the target dummies
• 58:46
  and like calculating out exactly, exactly what their
• 58:49
  rotation should be. Like it might be a smaller pool.
• 58:52
  And again, I think Sean, I think Sean, you're right.
• 58:54
  I think that this is like, realistically, they're not going
• 58:56
  to take this away. But I think that people I, I, I
• 58:59
  mean, I get, but we reigned blind on purpose.
• 59:02
  I think that it's there are a lot of people at casual levels
• 59:06
  who do want the challenge of the game.
• 59:08
  I just think that the like Venn diagram of people who are able
• 59:15
  to download track down and find these weak ORS or these add-ons
• 59:20
  and have been instructed to do that, right?
• 59:23
  And the the overlap of that and the people who are so illiterate
• 59:30
  of the game that they can't find the dungeon journal, right.
• 59:36
  Nothing. Can't find it.
• 59:38
  They're not going to look for it.
• 59:39
  They don't look for it now when they go into actual dungeons.
• 59:41
  But that's because they have the easier the easier route, right?
• 59:47
  Like I find that like if you keep catering to a certain
• 59:52
  expectation, people will accept that expectation more readily,
• 59:57
  right? This isn't about catering to
• 1:00:00
  casuals, right? This isn't about some sort of
• 1:00:02
  elitism. This is about, hey, you know
• 1:00:05
  what, I don't need to look at the dungeon journal because DBM
• 1:00:08
  is going to tell me it anyways. I don't need to do any research
• 1:00:13
  before I jump into LFR because LFR is geared that I could jump
• 1:00:16
  off the the edge and I'm still going to get lewd at the end of
• 1:00:19
  it. And I think that it can go like
• 1:00:23
  Blizzard doesn't need to keep doing DBM.
• 1:00:26
  In the way that DBM does DBM, they can adjust the fights so
• 1:00:30
  you never need a DBM in the 1st place right?
• 1:00:33
  They can change like adjust the bar so that like, hey, this guy
• 1:00:42
  who's doing a big nasty cast his he does this really long cast,
• 1:00:47
  he makes this big spell, all this energy goes around him and
• 1:00:49
  you go, huh, Just from visual cues, just from the once I get
• 1:00:54
  the spell off, I'm going to kill you.
• 1:00:56
  You got to go. Maybe I should interrupt or stop
• 1:00:59
  this ability, right? Like I just feel like there's so
• 1:01:02
  many different ways to skin a cat that just doing it, the DBM
• 1:01:06
  bigwig style isn't necessary and you don't need to cater to that
• 1:01:10
  anymore. And in fact, in fact, I think
• 1:01:12
  that the game would be better if you didn't because then people
• 1:01:17
  could like actually start being like, oh, you know what?
• 1:01:21
  I am going to try doing something more than outdoor
• 1:01:25
  content because now I know that my interrupt is actually a thing
• 1:01:29
  that I should use, which is the most elitist thing I'm going to
• 1:01:32
  say, but I'll stick by it. The like outdoor content is so
• 1:01:36
  brain dead that you can go through it half the time face
• 1:01:42
  rolling. And no, no, sorry, not even half
• 1:01:44
  the time. We've got the one button
• 1:01:48
  rotation. You can now literally face roll
• 1:01:52
  all outdoor content in like the War Within if you've got enough
• 1:01:57
  gear and I think that is horrible for the game.
• 1:02:00
  I, I, I do, I think I've said this on the show before, but I
• 1:02:03
  do really feel like World of Warcraft has hit a point that
• 1:02:06
  there's not creativity in it anymore.
• 1:02:09
  It's not about figuring things out.
• 1:02:10
  It's not about like putting pieces together and like
• 1:02:14
  determining what's supposed to go next or like getting a Strat
• 1:02:17
  that's best for your team. Everything has been determined
• 1:02:20
  by the time something goes live. It is just you watch the video
• 1:02:24
  and you perform steps in order. And I like which I mean, I play
• 1:02:29
  the game for my friends and I love the game.
• 1:02:32
  I do love the game and I think the story is fun and I think
• 1:02:34
  that like I love writing, but I do frequently feel like I can't
• 1:02:40
  like I have to do that because that's like, if not, I'm a bad
• 1:02:44
  Raider and I'm messing up my team and I'm making everyone
• 1:02:47
  like, you know, I would need to find a team that wants to go
• 1:02:49
  slow with me. And if those exist, they're very
• 1:02:51
  few and far between. Like we do blind rating.
• 1:02:54
  But even that we, you know, it's, we're not really going at
• 1:02:57
  the pace of like we're figuring everything out one by one.
• 1:03:01
  And I, I just, I, I, I feel like I can't get out of the do the
• 1:03:06
  easy thing that like just perform the way you're supposed
• 1:03:10
  to perform. But that's not really how I want
• 1:03:12
  to play, right? And I do actually think more
• 1:03:14
  people would also have more fun if the game was a little bit
• 1:03:17
  more figuring it out. But I don't think they're going
• 1:03:18
  to do that. And I think that we know that
• 1:03:20
  partially because of the decisions that were made of
• 1:03:22
  single button rotations. Let's move.
• 1:03:24
  Let's move to single button rotation.
• 1:03:26
  We'll leave on the fact that Manny has more faith in the vast
• 1:03:30
  majority of heroic Raiders than I do, and now let's go see why
• 1:03:36
  I'm right. So let's talk about the single
• 1:03:42
  button rotation because we have seen APC Gamer article where
• 1:03:50
  Ian, sorry, sorry, it wasn't Ian Hasiko, so I apologize.
• 1:03:53
  No, it's Morgan Day. It was Morgan Day was quoted
• 1:03:56
  saying Sean from recruit a friend.
• 1:03:59
  No, last name given is 100%. Right.
• 1:04:02
  Yeah, So it's exactly what? Happened, which is a weird.
• 1:04:04
  Caller, But I'm glad that you made the decision.
• 1:04:07
  All right, so Sean, you've had enough limelight.
• 1:04:09
  Let's leave this to Lex to talk about this if you want to give
• 1:04:13
  us a little recap of this article.
• 1:04:15
  Yeah. So essentially Morgan Day came
• 1:04:18
  out, they talked a little bit about the, you know, guided
• 1:04:22
  rotation thing. We're not going to, we're
• 1:04:24
  excited about the single button rotation because that's what's
• 1:04:26
  if I see a new. So basically what they said is
• 1:04:28
  that they don't intend to change it.
• 1:04:30
  What they're seeing is what they want.
• 1:04:32
  People are really happy with it. They're getting a ton of
• 1:04:34
  positive feedback, overwhelmingly positive feedback
• 1:04:36
  is what they said. And so this is what like this is
• 1:04:40
  how they're going to keep it. The method that the way that it
• 1:04:42
  is, the way that it's parsing, that is what's going to continue
• 1:04:46
  on. They said they have, they've
• 1:04:48
  heard some feedback about the fact that it's, it's boring to
• 1:04:52
  press a single button. Oh shit.
• 1:04:57
  But they, they are going to look at ways to make it more
• 1:05:01
  interesting. Which I think in the PC Gamer
• 1:05:05
  article they were talking about how some people will put the
• 1:05:08
  single button on multiple buttons.
• 1:05:10
  So they're pressing multiple buttons.
• 1:05:11
  Which respectfully, if you're doing that, I'm happy you're
• 1:05:15
  finding something that's working for you.
• 1:05:17
  That is potentially the most insane thing I read all day.
• 1:05:21
  But good for you. If you're joyful, I'm joyful for
• 1:05:23
  you. But they they don't really have
• 1:05:26
  any plans to change that immediately.
• 1:05:27
  Now I have a bone to pick and this is really not relevant to
• 1:05:30
  the game at all. This is me personally being
• 1:05:32
  embarrassed. But I'm going to pick it anyway
• 1:05:34
  because this is my podcast and I get to say whatever I want on my
• 1:05:36
  podcast because I have been very sharply saying there's no way
• 1:05:40
  they're not going to change this.
• 1:05:42
  And I try very hard to be thoughtful about when I'm
• 1:05:45
  speaking with confidence and say when I'm not sure and say what's
• 1:05:48
  unclear. And obviously I get things
• 1:05:50
  wrong, but I try not to say things that are incorrect.
• 1:05:53
  The reason that I said with very high confidence that they were
• 1:05:57
  going to change this is because Ian said in his interview that
• 1:06:01
  specific, I, I think almost word for word, they don't want this
• 1:06:05
  to be the type of feature that your raid leader is telling you
• 1:06:08
  you need to turn on because your numbers aren't good enough.
• 1:06:11
  And the feature comes out and the top players in the world are
• 1:06:15
  saying that it's better for them.
• 1:06:17
  And now they're telling me that this is what they want the
• 1:06:20
  feature to do, which is fine. If this is what you want the
• 1:06:22
  feature to do that that's fine. You can, I mean, I disagree with
• 1:06:26
  the call, but whatever. Like, you can say that's what
• 1:06:29
  you want, but don't lie to me and don't make me look like an
• 1:06:32
  idiot on my own podcast. Ian, tell me if you wanted to be
• 1:06:36
  better than almost any player who's ever lived and you just
• 1:06:39
  want us to do that. I have one more thought and then
• 1:06:41
  I'm gonna let other people speak.
• 1:06:43
  I think I, I've been mulling on this all day because as people
• 1:06:46
  know, I'm very stressed about the single button rotation.
• 1:06:49
  I think this is not good for the game's health overall.
• 1:06:52
  The more I think about this, I think that what the single
• 1:06:55
  button rotation is fixing is rotation bloat.
• 1:07:00
  I think that they're it's kind of fixing the wrong problem.
• 1:07:03
  I don't think it's really that most players want to press 1
• 1:07:07
  button all day. I think it's that most players
• 1:07:10
  don't want a rotation that's more than about four to six
• 1:07:13
  buttons. And so if you remove 90% of the
• 1:07:16
  rotation and make it so you're only doing your cool down,
• 1:07:19
  that's about four to six buttons.
• 1:07:21
  I think the better solution overall would be to not make the
• 1:07:25
  single button rotation be as strong the way that Ian was
• 1:07:28
  originally saying that we don't want this to be the thing that's
• 1:07:30
  taking over everything. But just to sharply pare down
• 1:07:34
  rotations and make it so realistically, rotations are
• 1:07:38
  four to six buttons and people are actually engaging with the
• 1:07:42
  core rotation through that. But if they don't want to do
• 1:07:44
  that, I also understand why that would be a development
• 1:07:46
  nightmare. So yeah, maybe you do just 90%
• 1:07:49
  of it is nothing and then you just focus on the like, I, I
• 1:07:52
  kind of get that right. I, I do actually think that's a
• 1:07:54
  solution to the problem. But what do you guys think?
• 1:07:57
  Sean, how are you feeling about this?
• 1:08:04
  So I agree with you that it would be better if players could
• 1:08:11
  outperform the single button rotation.
• 1:08:13
  Now whether that means the players should get better or the
• 1:08:16
  button should get worse, whatever way it works, players
• 1:08:19
  should be able to open for the single button rotation.
• 1:08:22
  I think from a rating standpoint, it allows people to
• 1:08:28
  that you can do more with mechanics.
• 1:08:30
  If you're only pushing 4 to 5 buttons, you can focus more on
• 1:08:33
  the mechanics. You can become a better Raider
• 1:08:35
  that way. I am unhappy that I was right.
• 1:08:42
  I desperately wanted you to be right, Lex.
• 1:08:44
  I wanted this to come out because there are players like
• 1:08:47
  my EU raid team is an AOTC team. They got, they do like early
• 1:08:50
  mythic bosses. They sort of mess around and and
• 1:08:52
  just play with early mythic bosses with their AOTC team.
• 1:08:55
  And there are people on that team who like yourself, we're
• 1:08:58
  very, very concerned. When single button was
• 1:09:00
  announced, we made an irate lead that team, we made a hard and
• 1:09:04
  fast rule. Nobody will be asked to play
• 1:09:07
  single button rotation. Nobody will be made to feel like
• 1:09:12
  they need to change. And we do not bench players for
• 1:09:16
  performance like for for low performance.
• 1:09:19
  If you're showing up and doing a weekly requirements, which for
• 1:09:22
  us are very, very low, it's 3 heroic slots in your vault, not
• 1:09:26
  including your raid slots every week.
• 1:09:28
  So that's like 4 delves or a couple of keys, whatever.
• 1:09:32
  But we have people who this came out and they were they were they
• 1:09:34
  were very nervous that they were going to be made to feel like
• 1:09:37
  they had to do it. And like you said, it is not fun
• 1:09:40
  pressing 1 button and then your cooldowns.
• 1:09:42
  I I did the I put it on one 2-3 and then just hit them randomly
• 1:09:49
  and it felt a lot like the way that I DPS.
• 1:09:51
  I am not a good DPS. Yeah.
• 1:09:56
  So I don't simplification of rotations is one thing that
• 1:10:04
  could help. I think you're right in that
• 1:10:06
  case that a lot of people just struggle, but it's then you
• 1:10:11
  really like Warcraft is great. I I think instead of
• 1:10:15
  simplification, simplificating all classes, I think it would be
• 1:10:17
  better if work Warcraft had like a range like these are the low
• 1:10:23
  skill required classes that have a lower ceiling, but also a
• 1:10:30
  higher floor. And then these are the high
• 1:10:32
  skill classes where you know, players are able to do it.
• 1:10:35
  It's going to hurt any. Like if you play hunter and you
• 1:10:38
  really love hunter, but hunter is chosen to be one of the low
• 1:10:42
  low skill requirement classes, you're going to, it's going to
• 1:10:44
  feel terrible for you, but maybe you make it so that playing it
• 1:10:46
  really good does better. I I think the game needs that
• 1:10:50
  expression. There needs to be room for
• 1:10:52
  people that are good who, who, who love the game, who are
• 1:10:55
  passionate about the game. There needs to be a way for them
• 1:10:58
  to show, hey, look at, I am really good at doing this thing.
• 1:11:02
  I can push these buttons in the right sequence while I'm not
• 1:11:04
  standing in these things that DBM tells me to move out of.
• 1:11:08
  I, I think that needs to exist. But I, I mean, I also kind of
• 1:11:13
  think, I guess I don't have an opinion.
• 1:11:16
  I also kind of think that one button rotation can be really
• 1:11:20
  helpful. And like Morgan said, it can be
• 1:11:22
  really helpful to players who like myself.
• 1:11:24
  I'm not a great TPS. I didn't enjoy it, I'm not good
• 1:11:26
  at it, but it allows me. I can focus more on making sure
• 1:11:30
  I'm alive, making sure I'm doing the mechanics right.
• 1:11:32
  I can help more with calls if I'm not focused on nailing a
• 1:11:34
  rotation. So I don't know.
• 1:11:37
  I guess like what I'm saying is I don't know.
• 1:11:39
  I don't know where I land. I think there's pros and cons to
• 1:11:41
  all of it, but ultimately I want my friend to be happy.
• 1:11:44
  And right now it seems like my friend is not happy with it.
• 1:11:47
  So I would like for it to be changed so that my friend is
• 1:11:49
  happy. One thing I do want to say and
• 1:11:50
  Manny, I'm going to let you speak in a minute.
• 1:11:52
  I swear to God people are saying like this.
• 1:11:55
  The the PC Gamer article talks about that like casual guilds
• 1:12:00
  have started to push people to use the one button assistant
• 1:12:02
  even if they don't want to. I, I, I kind of want to see
• 1:12:08
  proof of this because I've never seen a casual Guild that
• 1:12:12
  prioritizes gameplay. And like, to be fair, our team
• 1:12:17
  will occasionally bench people for mechanic or for for numbers
• 1:12:23
  issues. Very rarely.
• 1:12:25
  We usually have quite a few conversations, but it is
• 1:12:27
  something that we will tell people like if we're really,
• 1:12:29
  really struggling to, to move numbers, we might ask you to sit
• 1:12:32
  a boss or two. But overwhelmingly casual guilds
• 1:12:37
  are the ones that are doing things like, we also immediately
• 1:12:40
  put out a statement like nobody ever has to use one button.
• 1:12:42
  We will never make you guys do that.
• 1:12:45
  And so I guess I, I'm, I'm curious who's actually doing
• 1:12:49
  that because I've heard it enough that it must be
• 1:12:52
  happening, but I struggle to believe that like, I, I, I, I, I
• 1:12:58
  guess I don't know why, why you would hang out with a casual
• 1:13:01
  group that's also sweaty. Like if you want to sweat, sweat
• 1:13:05
  and do mythic. If you want to play casual, have
• 1:13:07
  a good time with your buddies. Like I, I, as a casual player, I
• 1:13:09
  don't get it. But anyway, Manny, I just
• 1:13:12
  thought I'd let you talk. So what are your thoughts?
• 1:13:13
  How are you feeling about this? I think that our own personal
• 1:13:19
  experiences are going to be unique for us, but I don't think
• 1:13:25
  that we can always say that just because I haven't experienced
• 1:13:28
  something doesn't mean it doesn't, it doesn't exist.
• 1:13:31
  Like it's very hard to disprove a negative.
• 1:13:34
  Like there are going to be situations where people are
• 1:13:37
  going to feel pressured, whether explicitly or implicitly.
• 1:13:42
  And I think the implicit, this pressure is going to be the
• 1:13:45
  biggest thing. It's going to be looking at your
• 1:13:47
  own numbers and be like, man, I'm really not doing it.
• 1:13:50
  I could put the time and effort and learn, but since I live in a
• 1:13:55
  world where I prefer DBM, tell me what the hell I'm going to do
• 1:13:58
  rather than look it up. I guess I'll just keep pressing
• 1:14:01
  the one button. And that might be the quick
• 1:14:04
  solution, but that can also drain the fun out of it.
• 1:14:08
  As people have said, I've I've used the single button rotation
• 1:14:14
  on a number of volts just because I was like, hey, you
• 1:14:17
  know what, I'm going to get my hunter up to 80.
• 1:14:20
  And so now I have a little lady hunter.
• 1:14:22
  I'm not going to learn how to play as hunter.
• 1:14:24
  I hate hunters. They're stupid.
• 1:14:26
  I'm sorry. If you play a hunter, you're
• 1:14:27
  stupid. I'm kidding.
• 1:14:30
  I. Low low skill requirement
• 1:14:33
  Hunter. No, no, no.
• 1:14:34
  I'm, I'm playing, I'm playing. I was playing hunter.
• 1:14:39
  Hunters are one of the classes that I found very hard to get
• 1:14:42
  behind because their fantasy doesn't speak to me because I
• 1:14:47
  don't like pet classes in general.
• 1:14:51
  So I switched it to marksman so that I wouldn't have the pet.
• 1:14:54
  Like I'm doing everything I can to like make it speak to me, but
• 1:14:57
  I also don't have the time to learn another rotation on top of
• 1:15:01
  all the other ones. Especially since as a player who
• 1:15:05
  wants to manually input stuff, I got to do my job or I'm going to
• 1:15:08
  be way behind the single button rotation.
• 1:15:11
  So like there's already like weird sort of like changes.
• 1:15:16
  And I haven't done a tier where this has been a thing that for
• 1:15:20
  the entirety of the tier. And already there's like, I can
• 1:15:23
  see it eating at the margins. So when the next tier starts up,
• 1:15:29
  there's going to be fights where it's like, man, I'm really not
• 1:15:31
  getting this mechanic or I keep getting distracted around this.
• 1:15:35
  I'm going to be learning a new tear set and like what that what
• 1:15:38
  that means when that tear set comes on.
• 1:15:40
  Hey, should I start using on use trinkets now that I can simplify
• 1:15:44
  my rotation to a single button? Because there's a lot of people
• 1:15:47
  who are like, I'm not going to use on use trinkets because man,
• 1:15:51
  that's just too much for me. Well, what about if you use the
• 1:15:57
  one button, the single button rotation and now bun 2 can be
• 1:16:01
  your trinket, right? Like there's there's a lot of
• 1:16:04
  stuff that's in the game already where it's going to start eating
• 1:16:07
  at the edge edges. It's going to start working at
• 1:16:09
  the margins. And I don't think people give
• 1:16:13
  that enough credit because it's not going to be the raid leader
• 1:16:18
  who is going to like punch down at you that's going to do it.
• 1:16:22
  It's going to be when you're looking back at your logs and
• 1:16:25
  you see a significant portion of the raid that is doing better
• 1:16:32
  damage. And then you're also struggling
• 1:16:35
  with the mechanics. And you can see that like, man,
• 1:16:39
  if I just made it easier on myself instead of learning,
• 1:16:44
  learning the rotation, I could just take that stress off and
• 1:16:49
  help my team. And I'm not holding my team back
• 1:16:51
  as much if I start using a single button rotation.
• 1:16:54
  And that's what's going to eat away at the game.
• 1:16:56
  And then you're going to get to the point like every character,
• 1:17:00
  like use the single button rotation.
• 1:17:03
  I have no clue what's going on with their rotation.
• 1:17:05
  There's no hook in it that teaches me like, oh, I should be
• 1:17:08
  doing this or explains why I should be doing this.
• 1:17:11
  So it's not like I'm ever going to like wean myself off of it.
• 1:17:15
  It will become to the point where they make enough changes
• 1:17:18
  with your spec that you used to know that you can never get off
• 1:17:22
  that single button rotation again.
• 1:17:24
  And that's what I'm saying is a big issue with a single button
• 1:17:27
  rotation. It's insidious the damage it's
• 1:17:30
  going to do. Do you not think players will
• 1:17:41
  want to just get better if they're getting beat by the
• 1:17:45
  intentionally nerfed single button rotation?
• 1:17:47
  Does that not make you as a player say I need to get better
• 1:17:50
  at my class too so that I'm above this seven?
• 1:17:55
  You know this one button rotation.
• 1:17:56
  No, it'll be combined with the fact that they remove people
• 1:17:59
  from DBM and everybody will be like I don't want to learn, I
• 1:18:02
  quit. So that well, I mean, that's,
• 1:18:04
  that's sort of what I'm getting at.
• 1:18:05
  I'm saying like. We're coming at this from the
• 1:18:07
  same, like different perspectives on two different
• 1:18:10
  issues. And it's like, yeah, but that's
• 1:18:11
  my that's my point, right? If they're not going to take the
• 1:18:13
  time and effort to get better at their class to be better than
• 1:18:16
  one button rotation, what makes you think they're going to take
• 1:18:18
  the time and effort to learn the raid when we take away the
• 1:18:20
  add-ons that tell them to move? Because I think it's a hard wall
• 1:18:22
  and it's a single instance in, in a, in a raid where it's like
• 1:18:26
  this thing is killing me. And so people will be like, OK,
• 1:18:30
  what the hell is that one thing that's killing me?
• 1:18:32
  Whereas with a rotation, it's so many things that go into
• 1:18:35
  rotation that you have to learn, and that's a larger obstacle, or
• 1:18:38
  at least a a more intimidating obstacle that will stop people
• 1:18:42
  from going at it. Yeah, I I've been trying to like
• 1:18:46
  having the mindset of I want to get better at team and hunter
• 1:18:48
  because I know I'm not doing very well for like tears, right.
• 1:18:51
  And to be fair, I'm, you know, stupid.
• 1:18:53
  But I also like it like learning a.
• 1:18:55
  Don't talk about my friend like that.
• 1:18:58
  Well thank you, but I like learning a rotation is a longer
• 1:19:04
  and harder process than learning a mechanic.
• 1:19:09
  And then the other thing is like, I mean, to be fair again,
• 1:19:13
  I'm kind of safe because Demon Hunter, so much of it is the
• 1:19:15
  movement abilities that I really can't imagine.
• 1:19:17
  Like I guess I haven't really played a single button rotation,
• 1:19:20
  so I'm assuming that it wouldn't be much better than me, but I
• 1:19:23
  really can't. Like almost everything that
• 1:19:25
  makes Demon Hunter a good Demon Hunter is managed by the by
• 1:19:28
  movement, right? That's if, if I'm not watching
• 1:19:31
  what I'm doing, like that's the whole thing.
• 1:19:35
  But like just looking at these numbers, looking at the, looking
• 1:19:38
  at the fact that one of the best druids in the world got #1 DPS
• 1:19:44
  in his group of best players in the world, friends like I, I
• 1:19:51
  don't like the for the, the classes that do benefit from the
• 1:19:54
  single button rotation. I don't know how you do get
• 1:19:57
  better than this. Like it feels like it's more
• 1:19:59
  power. It would be one thing if it was
• 1:20:01
  more powerful than your average even AOTC Raider, right?
• 1:20:08
  Like if, if it hit about like 50% of AOTC Raiders are under
• 1:20:11
  it, that would be one thing. But when the top players in the
• 1:20:14
  world are telling us that this is as good, if not better than
• 1:20:18
  them, I'm not as. Good like I, I, I cannot work
• 1:20:22
  hard enough to be as good, if not better than the the best
• 1:20:26
  players who are doing the best cutting edge.
• 1:20:28
  I don't have that ability. And so it's hard not to just
• 1:20:31
  even if it's not true, like I, I, I don't know what that work
• 1:20:36
  would even look like if I did. I would be professionally
• 1:20:39
  rating. Not really.
• 1:20:40
  That sounds like the worst way to live.
• 1:20:41
  And I'm so impressed by the the stuff that you guys do like.
• 1:20:44
  Oh my God. So I'm going to I'm going to
• 1:20:50
  talk to Fas dev Fas dev, I need to do yourself a favor.
• 1:20:55
  I need you to figure out how you're going to weaken the one
• 1:20:58
  button, sorry, single button rotation because I think that it
• 1:21:03
  even if no social pressures existed, it actively confines
• 1:21:09
  your design space if everybody can do 80% of their ideal damage
• 1:21:15
  or sorry, I think the example said 23% off.
• 1:21:19
  So you're looking at a 77% margin if everybody can do 77%
• 1:21:24
  of their damage. But you have bosses that are
• 1:21:29
  quote UN quote gear checks, right?
• 1:21:34
  That to me seems problematic if usually the gear check boss on a
• 1:21:39
  normal it doesn't require you to be 77% of optimal and which
• 1:21:45
  means you've just eliminated gear checks from normal.
• 1:21:47
  It may be heroic. You're basically demanding it on
• 1:21:51
  on mythic. I, I, I worry that when you can
• 1:21:59
  reduce everything to the single button rotation, that then you
• 1:22:04
  are once again demanding more of the mechanics that people have
• 1:22:08
  to think on the fly because every nobody has to figure out
• 1:22:11
  their rotation. Nobody has to keep their mind on
• 1:22:13
  the rotation and maintain that while they're also doing the
• 1:22:16
  mechanic. So I feel like they're creating
• 1:22:18
  these, they're saying that they want to fight the arms race with
• 1:22:22
  the add-ons, and then they're making their own worst enemy
• 1:22:25
  themselves and handing it to the people that are supposed to be
• 1:22:29
  challenging. I just like learning your
• 1:22:32
  rotation, being able to keep up that damage while you're having
• 1:22:35
  all this other things coming to you is the skill expression of
• 1:22:40
  rating 90% of the time, and this undermines it there.
• 1:22:47
  And so like, I feel like they're literally probing themselves
• 1:22:53
  into a corner here. Going to throw it back to you
• 1:22:57
  Sean, because he you're the only smiling party about the SBR.
• 1:23:03
  I'm only smiling because I feel like my predictions in earlier
• 1:23:09
  episodes came true and I like that feeling.
• 1:23:13
  I'm unhappy that my friends are unhappy, but it's nice to know
• 1:23:17
  that when I said I think you'll be surprised when you find out
• 1:23:20
  how few of the population can do 75% of an optimal rotation.
• 1:23:25
  No. I was right.
• 1:23:27
  Like. I just don't.
• 1:23:33
  It's I don't, I, I hear you both.
• 1:23:37
  I don't like if, if it's designed as an accessibility
• 1:23:40
  feature, how do you justify people that that physically need
• 1:23:44
  to use this to play? How do you look at them and say
• 1:23:46
  you are allowed to play, but I'm sorry, you're going to have to
• 1:23:49
  be worse than half the rate. You know, you're, you're worse
• 1:23:53
  than 75% of the rate. How do you that to me is where I
• 1:23:56
  think like, I think maybe the the reality is we need to tell
• 1:23:59
  everybody else to get better so that the people who do actually
• 1:24:03
  need to use single button because of physical limitations
• 1:24:07
  so that they're not coming into the raid team as a third wheel
• 1:24:09
  who are allowed to play. They're like when you give your
• 1:24:11
  little brother a controller that's not connected, you can
• 1:24:13
  come to the raid team, but you're going to have to do a lot
• 1:24:15
  less damage than everybody else. You know what I mean?
• 1:24:17
  So that's the hard question of accessibility.
• 1:24:20
  There is a certain point where the gate exists, right?
• 1:24:27
  We, we're trying to make this game open and accessible to all.
• 1:24:30
  We're trying to bust that gate open.
• 1:24:32
  But the gate does have to exist because that gate is there for a
• 1:24:38
  function. If you have Star Fox 64 and you
• 1:24:44
  have somebody who has motions motion sickness and they can't
• 1:24:48
  play Star Fox, can you design Star Fox without motion
• 1:24:51
  sickness? I don't know.
• 1:24:54
  If you then make the game stationary, is it actually Star
• 1:24:57
  Fox? I'd say no.
• 1:25:00
  There's a certain point where like at a certain point you have
• 1:25:02
  to say like, I'm sorry, this gate exists because it's so
• 1:25:05
  integral to what we're what we're doing.
• 1:25:09
  And with the SBR, that's not what exactly what's happening.
• 1:25:14
  You can have a single button rotation that is 50% effective
• 1:25:22
  DPS and if that allows people to clear a raid on LFR, you've
• 1:25:34
  created accessibility. If they're able to function and
• 1:25:38
  access normal and along with their team able to clear normal.
• 1:25:45
  Maybe it is that like you go, OK, so a Warcraft developer I
• 1:25:52
  once had a conversation with and they talked about the island
• 1:25:59
  NPC, we'll call it the island NPC factor.
• 1:26:03
  And it was how many island NPCS can be in a group and you still
• 1:26:08
  being able to clear it. What So like on LFR, how many
• 1:26:14
  players running at the level of a, of an island NPC can you have
• 1:26:20
  in the in the group and they're able to clear it?
• 1:26:23
  And that becomes a sort of factor.
• 1:26:28
  We have people who are in friends and family, people who
• 1:26:32
  need DBM to say taunt, people who don't understand that those
• 1:26:38
  waves mean that you should stack in there.
• 1:26:42
  Do you need on this difficulty everybody the stack at that
• 1:26:47
  point within 1.6 seconds? Is that a normal level
• 1:26:53
  difficulty thing? And do you need everybody to be
• 1:26:58
  doing 77% of their damage in or at all times in order to beat
• 1:27:05
  this boss? That's an accessibility thing
• 1:27:07
  where it's like, no, no, lower the bar, don't increase the the
• 1:27:14
  crutch. I'm going to unfortunately say
• 1:27:17
  don't increase the tool because a crutch is a tool.
• 1:27:19
  I know it's got a lot of negative connotations, but a
• 1:27:22
  crutch is a tool that allows somebody to access places that
• 1:27:28
  they normally would not be able to buy themselves.
• 1:27:31
  So you can make a more powerful tool or you can lower the bar
• 1:27:37
  for entry. And I think that the single
• 1:27:42
  button rotation doesn't need to make mythic nineteens super
• 1:27:51
  accessible. I agree there there.
• 1:27:54
  I mean there is some that example that is given it.
• 1:27:57
  It's the teddles example. He was in a pre made group of
• 1:28:00
  people that he literally pushes world for like almost world for
• 1:28:03
  his keys with and knows the dungeons and knows the poles and
• 1:28:06
  the poles were designed around boom kit.
• 1:28:09
  That's why he performed as high as he did.
• 1:28:10
  It was, you know, it was a David Copperfield that it was, it was
• 1:28:14
  designed to say here, look at how good this is.
• 1:28:17
  You know, everything was designed and funneled to that.
• 1:28:20
  Your average Boomkin player is not walking into a pug key and
• 1:28:24
  doing the same thing that he did.
• 1:28:25
  That's not that's not what's happening in that in that
• 1:28:29
  example. I I just, yeah, I don't know.
• 1:28:31
  I don't know. I don't have really a dog in the
• 1:28:34
  race. I, I, I, I'm or a horse in the
• 1:28:36
  race. I guess it's probably I.
• 1:28:38
  Don't know either either. Dog racing is a thing.
• 1:28:42
  Yeah, I don't know. I just, I think what I think is
• 1:28:48
  interesting is that single button rotation has sort of
• 1:28:51
  shone a light on the skill level.
• 1:28:54
  And when I, I'm specifically talking AOTC guilds, I'm I'm not
• 1:28:58
  worried about normal teams, but I think it has shone a light on
• 1:29:01
  AOTC guilds and a lot of people who feel like they're, they're
• 1:29:06
  fairly good at the game or realizing, Oh, I'm not as good
• 1:29:09
  at the game as I should be. And they're saying, Hey, that's
• 1:29:13
  too strong. It's not that I'm not as good as
• 1:29:16
  I thought I was. It's that that's too strong.
• 1:29:17
  Now, I'm not saying you two were saying that you were both very
• 1:29:19
  aware of your skill levels and you will make that very clear
• 1:29:22
  all the time. But there are a lot of people
• 1:29:24
  who who I feel like, you know, are in a situation now where
• 1:29:28
  they're like, oh, wow, hold on a second.
• 1:29:29
  I'm actually not my my where I'm at is not where I thought I was.
• 1:29:34
  And I think they rely on these tools a lot more than a lot of
• 1:29:38
  the population. Like the vast majority of the
• 1:29:40
  players in this game, we're holding on by the the thinnest
• 1:29:44
  of threads. So I actually have a quote here
• 1:29:52
  because like there are people who are saying similar things to
• 1:29:54
  you and I have a quote here because I when I came across
• 1:29:57
  this, I had to copy and paste this thing.
• 1:30:01
  This guy get good argument. This guy says right that there
• 1:30:06
  is a weird bell curve where the people in the middle like it.
• 1:30:09
  The people who are kind of bad hate it because they feel
• 1:30:13
  they're going to be forced to use it, and some of the people
• 1:30:16
  at the top are terrified the gap in how much better they are than
• 1:30:21
  the middle will be smaller. Now this, this is a thing, Like
• 1:30:28
  there are people who have this mentality in each of these
• 1:30:32
  camps, right? But there are real concerns.
• 1:30:36
  I think that the conversation around the single button
• 1:30:40
  rotation is going to be multiple camps coming at it from the same
• 1:30:47
  direction but for different reasons, and multiple camps
• 1:30:51
  coming at it from different directions, but for the same
• 1:30:55
  reasons. So it's very hard to say.
• 1:30:57
  Oh, the people who are scared of it, those are the people who are
• 1:31:01
  bad, right? There are some people that are
• 1:31:03
  like that, but I don't want to straw man those people.
• 1:31:06
  And the people who are happy with it, you know what they're
• 1:31:08
  like. They're relatively.
• 1:31:10
  All so bad. They're all so bad.
• 1:31:12
  They're happy that they can use it, right?
• 1:31:14
  They're happy they can use it. Yeah.
• 1:31:16
  So like, don't take anything we say as absolute.
• 1:31:20
  We're not just talking about you.
• 1:31:22
  And actually this quote was from Sean.
• 1:31:24
  I happened to be in a, in a stream and he said this quote.
• 1:31:30
  I'm like, I'm copying that. This is going to come up later.
• 1:31:33
  I said it, you said. This.
• 1:31:37
  You don't think me? You quoted me to me, quoted you
• 1:31:40
  to you. Diabolical.
• 1:31:44
  That's a great quote. I'm smart.
• 1:31:46
  I heard that and I was like, oh, that's got to be somebody who's
• 1:31:48
  really intelligent. Who said that?
• 1:31:49
  See, you're. Not right the entire time.
• 1:31:52
  You're not right all the time. That's hilarious.
• 1:31:55
  I was like, I agree with that. That's a great.
• 1:31:59
  He was like, I was. So I'm bored with that quote.
• 1:32:03
  That kills me. That's funny.
• 1:32:08
  I have a quote here I'd like to read you.
• 1:32:13
  Well done, Manny. Well done.
• 1:32:16
  That's great. Can I go eat my supper now?
• 1:32:19
  Yeah, we, we have been talking for a while here.
• 1:32:23
  Obviously me pulling up quotes from John from like a month ago
• 1:32:28
  is is a lot but. That's a super great quote.
• 1:32:32
  I can't believe I said I must have read that from somewhere.
• 1:32:35
  I don't know. That sounds way smarter than me.
• 1:32:39
  Listen, you've got some gems of wisdom, which is why I have to
• 1:32:41
  write them down. But there's a lot of stuff
• 1:32:46
  coming to the World of Warcraft. This is just the beginning.
• 1:32:49
  We are literally by the time we talk to you again, we will be in
• 1:32:55
  11.2 and going through all of that stuff.
• 1:32:58
  Lex will not be with us next week, but we'll get her first
• 1:33:03
  impressions when she returns. Until next time though, guys,
• 1:33:08
  may all your hits be goods.