Latest / For Azeroth!: A World of Warcraft Podcast / #318 - For Azeroth!: “Rook and Rooftops”

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#318 - For Azeroth!: “Rook and Rooftops” · For Azeroth!: A World of Warcraft Podcast

0:00
Oh, I love the idea of Garrison's.
0:02
I still love the idea of Garrison's.
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I know, look, if you have to blacklist me immediately, I get
0:06
it. But I like the idea of them.
0:09
And honestly, it's so interesting because Guild Wars 2
0:11
does have an equivalent that I think works pretty well, which
0:15
is their sort of Guildhall system.
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For. The Karen tour for.
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Pandaria. For calendar.
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To the burning region for Gilnaeus, but has not died for
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the Lich King, for the Sindori, for the Alliance for.
0:41
The Horn for Azeroth. Hello and welcome back to
0:47
another episode of For Azeroth. I am one of your host and the
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only host that will be on this episode.
0:54
The true villain Manny or just Manny?
0:57
And I am joined by the ever wonderful Rook.
1:01
Hello Rook. Hi, Manny.
1:03
It's so good to be here. Excited to talk today.
1:06
I'm excited to have you on. Thank you so much for coming on.
1:09
Of course people will know you from so many things because you
1:14
are the MMO aficionado. You play so many different Mmos
1:19
you joy like Guild Wars 2, which is going to be a big part of
1:23
this conversation. Of course, you've casted for Wow
1:27
and you've done reveals for how many different franchises?
1:30
I I got to ask like, how did you get into just playing Mmos?
1:35
What brought you to the genre? Oh my gosh, you know, it's so
1:39
funny because I actually came to it later that a lot of people
1:43
did. I was almost exclusively a
1:45
single player gamer for my entire life, not necessarily
1:49
100% by choice. Because the moment that MMO
1:52
started to come out, I was like, this is what I want.
1:55
This is exactly what I want. I want to be able to take these
1:57
journeys with people. I want to like, go in and face
2:00
these challenges together. I want to explore these worlds
2:02
together, make memories together.
2:04
But there was a little something in my household called We don't
2:07
believe in computers and video are bad.
2:09
So my mom never had computers that could like handle Microsoft
2:16
Word, let alone complex games like MMORPGS, nor would she hear
2:20
of paying for a sub. And so I spent most of my time
2:23
gaming at my dad's or at friends houses when I could until I
2:26
finally got my own platform. And then I got into it, right.
2:29
And the funny story is that I actually bought a copy of Final
2:32
Fantasy 11 and just hoped that it would work, that the system
2:36
requirements weren't requirements, but maybe just
2:38
more like guidelines. And it never did.
2:43
And it wasn't until after college that I was able to
2:45
finally go, OK, you know what? I can actually sit down now.
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I can start playing all of these games I've wanted to for my
2:51
entire life with people and I can afford my own Subs.
2:55
So that night just kind of I went off.
2:57
I wanted to see what all of the different games had to offer.
3:00
I wanted to see what the genre as a whole had to offer and to
3:03
make memories of people across all of these games that we love.
3:06
So it's just, it's, it's been Mmos for me pretty much ever
3:09
since. Although I do still enjoy single
3:10
players. You know when I can get them in
3:12
with the patch schedules for other games.
3:16
So which one did you go to 1st? What was your first MMO that you
3:19
tried? World of Warcraft, it was Wow.
3:22
It was wow, and I played Wow up. I think actually Draynor,
3:29
Draynor released and I've been playing a bit before that.
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Draynor came out. I was so excited.
3:35
So I played the Draynor. I played, I played through
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Draynor and somehow didn't immediately quit.
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No, I'm kidding. No, no, no.
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I actually loved a lot of the ideas in Draynor.
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But then I kind of decided I was like, I'm going to kind of
3:50
expand out and see what other games there might be or what
3:53
other journeys there might be. So then I kind of went from
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there. Did 14, did Guild Wars 2, did a
3:57
bunch of others in between. So Spittor was in there as well.
4:02
I played a good amount of SO OK. So then traveling through all of
4:08
these different worlds, all of these different fantasies and
4:11
everything, you've seen what these other games have for
4:14
housing. And now World of Warcraft is
4:17
trying it's attempt, it's take at player housing.
4:22
And we got this big article that talked about it's three main
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pillars, you know, being social, having this endless expression
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and being like a ongoing continuous thing.
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And in my opinion, and maybe you could back me up on that, that's
4:41
typically what housing has been for many of the other games,
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except maybe social in some ways, I feel like the big shadow
4:53
of Garrison's is a big part of why that is is such a tent pool.
5:00
And you as a quad baby and we got to say a train, a train or a
5:07
child. Yes, I was born in the Wilds of
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Draynor. It was wild Outland clown all
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the way. Still making it in even to other
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distant worlds like Draynor. Oh man.
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But so then in Draynor we you had Garrison's like, which is
5:23
what everybody fears. How did you like Garrison's when
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you first were playing it? I guess.
5:31
I love the idea of Garrison's. I still love the idea of
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Garrison's. I know, look, if you have to
5:36
blacklist me immediately, I get it.
5:37
But I like the idea of them. And honestly, it's so
5:41
interesting because Guild Wars 2 does have an equivalent that I
5:44
think works pretty well, which is their sort of Guildhall
5:48
system. And Garrison's to me felt like
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an idea that almost to some degree needed to function more
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like Guildhall's and Guild Wars 2.
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But given the weird limitations, right?
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The fact that like you couldn't like have people really visit,
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like you were time locked behind a whole bunch of stuff.
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Like it felt like you should be able to make meaningful progress
6:09
and like expand it, but like it just felt really arduous to do
6:13
that constantly to like try and make even the smallest amount of
6:16
progress in it. The concept of it was good to
6:20
give you a way to interact with the world, to give you a place,
6:22
a home base that you could actually kind of root yourself
6:25
in to give you theoretically, like you were talking about a
6:28
social outlet or meeting point in theory, which didn't really
6:33
happen in execution, right? And in Guild Wars 2, right,
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Guild halls are kind of like that where you can as a Guild
6:39
have these halls, There's a whole mission to go capture
6:41
them. They're fully customizable.
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You can decorate them. They have all of these huge like
6:47
collaborative material sinks where you can upgrade parts of
6:51
the hall. And then it offers you
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functionality from buffs to, you know, even being able to build
6:57
your own race courses to like all this different stuff that
7:00
you can do in them now. Like, does the player base
7:03
always fully take advantage of that?
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That's another discussion, right?
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Like that balance of wanting a more solo endeavor, perhaps in
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personal housing versus having something like a collaborative
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Guild house. But garrisons I think were a
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good idea. It's just that they weren't
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quite implemented I to fully round out that vision and
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especially not in that social element.
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I felt like at least I don't know about you, that's how I
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felt. I, I had a lot of stuff that was
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happening during that time. I was living down being called
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like the Guild Killer or something like that.
7:34
It was, it was a time. It was a time player housing it
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in terms of Garrison's, it was for me, it was a bit of min
7:43
maxing. It was a bit of like what I
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wanted to do. I I got what I wanted out of
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Warlords and that was mostly enough tokens to pay for like 5
7:53
years of Wow. So I'll be happy with that and
7:56
I'll leave the Garrison's as a as your area of expertise.
8:02
So with these Guild halls, how are they controlled?
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Is it that the Guild leader makes a decision and then like,
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sort of rallies the troops? Is there some sort of like just
8:14
people are putting towards whatever projects are open and
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whatever gets completed first is what happens?
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Like, tell me more about these collaborative efforts.
8:22
Yeah, so guildhalls are like an older system in Guild Wars 2
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that, you know, recently they actually much like World of
8:29
Warcraft with their last expansion here, they just
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released individual housing, right.
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So both of these exist, in case anybody's curious.
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But guildhalls were kind of the original system that they had
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that essentially, yeah. You would, you know, you're
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Guild. You can be in multiple different
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guilds and Guild Wars 2, but you can kind of tag which one you
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want to be active at any given time.
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And then your Guild hall is something that's accessible.
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You can set, you know, boundaries and things.
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If you're one of the leaders, you can appoint sort of officers
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and stuff like that that have different access to things,
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right? So you can create different
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ranks where you can say, you know, these folks are allowed to
9:02
access all of the bank, all of the other stuff.
9:05
These, you know, folks might just be able to come in, use the
9:08
portals, things like that. And you can, you know, open and
9:12
close it, visitors, those sorts of those sorts of restrictions,
9:15
which usually are good for privacy or security, but you can
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kind of delineate that. And then, yeah, people can
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collaboratively contribute. So you have sort of a Guild bank
9:25
that you can have different permissions in where either they
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can deposit a bunch of stuff or maybe they're kind of, you know,
9:30
storing up mats or they've got some gear that's good for
9:33
beginners, but that they don't really have A use for.
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And they can't really sell for much.
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So they might put it in there and people can access that and
9:40
take that if there's new players that want to make use of it.
9:42
And then when it comes to the sort of bigger upgrade projects,
9:46
like the buildings and things, the Guild halls are individual
9:49
maps. And those maps, like I said,
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usually have some sort of capture mission.
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So you can only have one Guild hall captured and like active as
9:56
your Guild hall at a time. If you want a new one, you have
9:58
to go out, do the mission reset, all that kind of stuff.
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But once you capture Guild hall, you can kind of pick from the
10:03
different ones that were released from different
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expansions. They're themed to different
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areas, different locations. They have their own like bit of
10:09
lore context, and the little capture missions are different.
10:12
And then once you get into them, you can, and like I said,
10:15
upgrade all the different aspects.
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And they're huge maps. They're basically like zones in
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their own sense where you can upgrade buildings all over it.
10:23
But you also usually have like waterways where you can do
10:26
fishing, You have mines where if you upgrade it, you can get
10:30
nodes that folks can go through and they can harvest different
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things that are in your Guild. There's like a PvP arena that
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you can upgrade. There's a sort of portal hub, so
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you can go to the Guild hall and that Guild hall can be your
10:43
central focus. And then there's also kind of
10:45
unique furniture crafting called scribing, where it's kind of
10:49
arduous to level up, but if people decide to commit to it,
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they can go in, they can do scribing, and then they can
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create unique Guild hall decorations.
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Sometimes those are even made from things like raid drops that
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you get. And you can have like trophies
11:02
that show all the different raids that you've done, or you
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can craft special items from different raid drops that then
11:08
can be used in your Guild halls and things like that, which is
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pretty fun. So the Guild halls were kind of
11:13
the precursor to the housing as we now have it and Guild Wars 2
11:17
as well. OK, let's let's talk about the
11:20
housing. So if Guild halls are this
11:21
entirety of a zone right, what are player housing like?
11:25
Are they just like a building within a zone or are they their
11:28
own instance? How does Guild Wars 2 handle
11:31
that? Yeah, it's a little shacked on
11:33
by the river. And no, it's a, it's a, it's
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actually, it's a zone 2 funneling it off.
11:37
It's a little smaller, right. So the Guild halls are probably
11:42
on par with more of like one of the small world maps, whereas
11:46
the maybe a little bit smaller than that.
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Whereas the personal housing is a bit of a smaller zone, but it
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is still a zone. So you again, you have a whole
11:55
waterfront area. You can even put furnishings
11:58
underwater. You can have like an underwater
12:00
bar and stuff and you can swim in things.
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You can go up. There's like sort of a hilly
12:05
area that has sort of mountainous stuff and there's
12:08
some caves and things back there.
12:10
And then there's the house itself, which does have multiple
12:13
rooms and things like that that's sort of in the middle, as
12:17
well as a sort of stable area. And then a couple different sort
12:21
of crafting areas. And those are like structures
12:25
that are fixed on the land. And this first particular one is
12:29
themed after the most recent expansion, Janthier Wild, and a
12:32
region there that's home to these bears called the coden.
12:36
And so it kind of has the same styling as a lot of their
12:40
structures because it's tied into the story.
12:41
And the way that you get this homestead kind of relates to
12:44
them and their land. But it does seem as though
12:47
they're going to be expanding it kind of like Elder Scrolls
12:49
Online, where ESO has a bunch of different mini map houses
12:55
basically that you can get of varying sizes and you can have
12:57
all of them and you can instance to all of them.
12:59
And you know, it's not like limited like you get one house
13:03
or you get this or that or so it's something where I wouldn't
13:07
be surprised if Guild Wars Two continues to expand and add more
13:11
homesteads. But right now we just have this
13:13
one particular map that's part of Janther Wilds.
13:16
OK, so with the this place being in Janther Wilds, can you like,
13:24
I guess really a lot with Guild Wars too, because they're all
13:27
these Guild halls? Does the particular location of
13:30
your Guild hall or this house give you sort of power?
13:34
Can you like Hearth your Guild hall?
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Does your Guild hall have a bunch of portals?
13:38
Does your house have a similar transportation network?
13:43
The Guild halls do, which is really cool that like you can
13:46
upgrade and unlock a hub that allows you to portal to a
13:49
variety of like specific kind of locations that might be of
13:54
access or ease to you. As far as I know, this is me
13:58
like double checking my memory like did I just miss it?
14:01
I don't believe you can with your personal homestead.
14:04
That may very well be something that they implement in the
14:06
future because they have implemented some furnishing
14:09
items that you can get that are additional utility things.
14:13
Like for example, there was a new mastery, which is sort of
14:18
the horizontal progression system that Guild Wars 2 does.
14:20
There was a new mastery that was added in the expansion.
14:28
Hold on, my brain just stopped for a second.
14:31
Our beautiful Kanthan expansion that we had with the Dragons,
14:35
which was two expansions ago, they introduced a jadebot
14:39
basically, which is this little like robot companion that goes
14:43
around with you. You can upgrade it, you can get
14:44
different pieces, all these different things.
14:47
And it's, it's like it's a really fun little guy and a
14:51
gorgeous expansion. But you can actually like go to
14:54
Cantha now and get that workbench that allows you to
14:57
upgrade him and you can put that in your personal homestead.
15:00
So it's one of those things where they haven't yet put a
15:03
portal hub in for the personal home instance, but you can get
15:07
there pretty easily. Go back and forth and they put a
15:09
bunch of other little things that I thought were kind of fun.
15:11
Like your other characters, if you're not playing them, can
15:14
show up in your homestead and you can have them there.
15:17
They get like a bonus for like resting at your house kind of
15:20
thing. But you can like run up to them
15:22
on your other characters. Your mounts show up in the
15:24
stables as well and you can choose which skins you want to
15:27
show up there, which is awesome. This harvesting node.
15:30
So that's similar between the Guild halls, except that
15:33
previously in Guild Wars 2, you had this thing called your
15:36
personal home instance, which was not a customizable house.
15:41
It was just sort of like a room. And depending on what starting
15:45
race you picked, the room was sort of there.
15:47
And if you did different achievements or collections,
15:49
stuff would show up in it. And so you could access that.
15:52
There's a fun one where you can collect a bunch of cats, like
15:54
stray cats around the world and like free them from various
15:57
impediments if they're like frozen and ice and stuff.
15:59
And then all the cats show up in your homestead or in your
16:03
personal house, but now they also show up in your homestead
16:06
as well if you toggle them. And there were unique sort of
16:09
gathering nodes that you could get as well that would unlock in
16:12
those instances that now also show up in your homestead.
16:16
So it's something where I think some of the features that we
16:19
don't see quite over in homesteads yet, I would not be
16:21
surprised if they come in the future.
16:24
But there are a lot of other things that they added in that I
16:26
think give it a lot of utility outside of just, you know, being
16:31
something that you can just have fun decorating.
16:33
You can earn money from it and you can get, you know, materials
16:36
and other things that you might need through it as well.
16:38
OK. So Speaking of like the utility
16:41
and that sort of power that can come from home, Guild Wars
16:47
obviously with that teleportation network that's in
16:49
the Guild hall, how easy is it to get around the world in Guild
16:53
in Guild wars too? Can you just typically teleport
16:58
and fast travel without much struggle?
17:00
Or is it more like Wow? Or it's like, unless you have
17:03
like your mage friend, you got to trek it back to town and you
17:06
got to use your Hearthstone. Like what?
17:08
What's the difficulty in getting around the world?
17:12
It's not nearly as hard in Guild Wars too.
17:14
I have to say. Whenever I like jump back and
17:17
forth between Mmos, there's always that moment where I'm
17:19
just going, wait, what? I have to Hearst.
17:21
Oh my gosh, I have to Hearst like or whatever it is, right?
17:25
You know, I love it in Wow because I do think that it
17:29
incentivizes you to continue to engage with the world and to
17:32
move through it and to like learn a lot of the ways through,
17:35
even though it's gotten easier over time, right To but to learn
17:38
a lot of the ways that the maps connect or that zones or regions
17:40
kind of tie together. Guild Wars 2, very simple.
17:43
They have a series of waypoints and those waypoints, you can
17:47
pretty much just teleport to them at any time.
17:51
They're all over. And as you unlock them, you do
17:53
sort of map exploration that gives you experience and other
17:56
things. And then once they're unlocked,
17:58
you can just teleport to them. And they also have some features
18:01
like teleport to friend, which are items that you can get in
18:03
the game. Typically you you might get them
18:06
from some like special activity, special rewards, but you can
18:10
also purchase them with money. But, but Guild Wars 2 allows for
18:16
you to convert in game currency into cash shop currency.
18:19
So it's they try to be really flexible back and forth with
18:22
that. So if there are like utility
18:24
items you might want to pick up, you don't have to like pay hard
18:27
cash, but those teleport to friends essentially will allow
18:30
you to teleport to a friend anywhere.
18:32
So if they're on another map, even a map that like maybe you
18:36
haven't unlocked yet, you can like go over to that map and
18:40
join them with some of the expansion exclusive maps.
18:43
You might need to own that expansion, but it's kind of a
18:46
way that will allow you, you know, if you're like leveling a
18:48
tune or something and you just kind of want to take it over to
18:51
run with some friends. You don't have to be like, I
18:53
can't leave the starting. So like you could actually go
18:57
and hang out. So moving around in Guild Wars 2
19:00
isn't isn't as much of A hurdle as it can be elsewhere.
19:04
OK, so that that means that the relative power of that
19:08
teleportation network isn't as crazy as it would be in Wow.
19:11
And I always, I always like to make that distinction because if
19:15
that same network was in player housing, that would be far more
19:19
power there. So what kind of utility, what
19:22
kind of power do you get in the Guild halls and the homesteads?
19:27
In Guild Wars? You were speaking about being
19:30
able to create furniture. Can you do other professions
19:33
within your homestead or Guildhall?
19:36
Yeah, so it's, I guess it's kind of similar in Guild Wars too.
19:40
So you're crafting professions and things like that.
19:43
Similarly, you can only have, you know, like I think it's too
19:47
active at a time and then you have to kind of trade off in
19:51
Guild Wars two, you don't like lose experience.
19:53
So like, say that I, you know, have maxed out armor, but then I
19:56
want to go work on a different one.
19:58
I can like go activate that other crafting profession and I
20:02
won't like lose my levels or anything with the one that I
20:06
already had levelled up. It's just that I'll have to like
20:09
pay some in game money to like switch back and forth with the
20:11
professions, right? And so yeah, you can do crafting
20:14
and things like that in your, in your Guild halls, in housing.
20:19
And they have a unique crafting system within the homestead that
20:24
is your, let me find the exact word for it.
20:27
It's a new thing that they just introduced which allows you to
20:30
craft furnishings that are specific to homesteads as
20:34
opposed to scribe, which previously was what you could do
20:36
in Guild halls. So these are like 2 totally
20:38
separate things. The one that is, let me see, for
20:43
this one, I always forget it. This was me, not me.
20:47
Like making notes of it, honestly, but that's just how it
20:50
goes. Handiworker.
20:53
Handiworker is what it's called. So handiworker is kind of like
20:57
the new scribe in homesteading and it's its own thing.
21:00
It's not as much of A time investment as like scribing was
21:03
for Guild halls because scribes were kind of meant to be like
21:06
their own unique category of Guild member that, you know,
21:10
would be something you put time and energy into.
21:12
Anybody can jump in to start being a handiworker, and it's
21:15
tied to the mastery system that's tied to homesteading.
21:18
So when you unlock homesteading in Chapter 3 of Janthier
21:22
Wilde's, you then kind of go and do a little story thing and then
21:26
it'll unlock a mastery track for you.
21:28
And you earn experience for that mastery track by exploring and
21:30
playing Janthure Wild. And then as you unlock those
21:34
tiers of the mastery, you unlock your handiworker crafting sets.
21:38
And so that'll like open up more furnishings for you.
21:41
You can create more advanced furnishings and do other things
21:44
within your homestead. So handiworking is basically
21:47
kind of this new more approachable version that you
21:52
can do that makes use of some of the homesteading materials.
21:55
And it's, it's a bit, I will say this, one of the drawbacks of
21:59
the new housing system that I think there's been a lot of
22:01
feedback on is that it takes a little bit to get some of these
22:04
special materials and convert materials and things like that
22:07
to be able to do the handiworking, which I think a
22:10
lot of folks were hoping would be a little bit quicker right
22:12
off the get go. And they may do some more
22:16
adjustments as well to that over time.
22:18
I wouldn't be surprised as they add more furnishings and things
22:21
like that. So, but the actual master
22:22
doesn't take too long itself. OK, OK.
22:25
So then with like a profession that is dedicated to this, with
22:31
the utility that you can get out out of the homestead, out of
22:34
your your Guild hall. Do you think that that would
22:39
obviously that can't go 1 to one to Wow, but like what do you
22:42
think that you should take from the Guild War 2 experience and
22:47
learn from? Like what do you think is the
22:48
number one thing? You're like, listen, this is
22:50
what Guild Wars does and you should really do that.
22:53
I'm talking to you. Ian has a ghost is Holly
22:56
Longdale. Whoever wants to listen?
22:58
I mean, I do love the social elements of Guild Wars 2 and
23:02
their the Guild hall and things like that, right?
23:04
Like having, if they want a social component, then I
23:06
definitely think they should look at how you can create, you
23:09
know, collaborative crafting upgrade stuff, how you can
23:11
create hubs that allow resources or other customization of usage
23:16
for players. Like Final Fantasy 14.
23:20
They technically have crafting stations that are like specific
23:22
to housing that you can use in guilds and you can craft like
23:26
higher tiers of certain free company buffs, right?
23:31
They didn't quite fully keep up with supporting that, but
23:34
something like that as well, right?
23:35
Like even in Guild Wars 2, if you unlock the sort of Tavern,
23:39
there's a variety of buffs that you can get that might give you
23:41
experience, gold gain, stuff like that that then you can go
23:45
in and activate, which is really nice and you can get that little
23:48
boost to yourself. So I think that would be great
23:51
for the social aspect, but for just like the housing aspect, I
23:55
think Guild Wars 2 knocked it out of the park with their new
23:58
homesteads because the like hands on ability to create
24:04
exactly what you want is unparalleled.
24:07
I think it probably comes the closest to like Wildstar.
24:10
Like Wildstar's housing was lauded.
24:12
Like everybody loved Wildstar's housing.
24:14
It was so good. It was so wild.
24:16
And Guild Wars 2, their company was under the same umbrella
24:20
before Wildstar was shut down. But Guild Wars 2 is definitely
24:23
drawn from some of that. So for example, you can take
24:26
items, you can blow up their scale, so you can make them
24:29
really big, you can make them really small, you can free place
24:31
them, you can change their tilt and skew, which is very similar
24:35
to like ESO. You can just like put it in the
24:37
air. You can put it in the ground,
24:39
you can put it wherever you want.
24:40
You can layer them on top of each other.
24:42
You can put it underwater, you can put it like it's wild.
24:44
The way that you can just customize things they added in
24:47
things like player statues. So if you like go up to this
24:51
thing and interface with it, it'll make like a copy of how
24:53
your character looks. And then you have a statue of
24:56
yourself and you can make it huge and like stick it in the
24:58
middle of your Guild hall or not your Guild hall, your homestead,
25:01
because it hasn't yet transferred over, but you can
25:03
stick it in your homestead and you can do stuff like that.
25:06
And you can then with that customize in a lot of ways.
25:09
So there's kind of an X-ray vision mode where you can see
25:12
the outline of things that you have placed.
25:14
Like if you've glitched it down into the ground or you've like
25:17
put it down, clipped it down into the ground or layered a
25:19
bunch of stuff, you can hit that X-ray mode and then you can see
25:22
and you can be like, OK, now I'm going to pull this whole thing
25:24
out, right? And you can go like Minecraft
25:27
Creative mode B, where you turn it to a little B and then you
25:31
just like fly around, which is the only MMO that I've seen do
25:34
this. But you can just fly around.
25:35
So like if you want to create some kind of jump puzzle up in
25:38
the sky for guests, because guests can visit your homestead,
25:42
like for guests to do, you can go up in the sky and you can
25:45
create a whole bunch of them. If you're building a whole
25:46
castle from the ground up around your homestead exterior, you can
25:50
just go up with it, whereas most other Mmos you're limited to
25:55
your character perspective and ground view.
25:57
So you have to like make yourself little steps to like
26:01
have a scaffolding to get up to where you want to play stuff.
26:04
So I think for me, for the social aspect, I'd like to see
26:07
things that are integrated that kind of incentivize
26:10
collaborative work goals. Warframe actually has a cool
26:15
thing for their Guild halls where not only can you all like
26:18
create structures and decorations, and then your Guild
26:20
members can immediately like they can go up to this little
26:23
ghost spectral version of the entire blueprint that you've
26:27
made. And then they can contribute all
26:28
of the materials to that to like help you create the items and
26:32
build it and it'll like place it immediately, which is cool.
26:34
But they also have like racing courses and stuff where you can
26:36
have little leaderboards for who you know has completed this
26:40
challenge course the fastest or things like that.
26:43
So on that aspect, I think stuff like that would be cool.
26:45
On the personalization and customization aspect, I think
26:48
that Guild Wars 2 has created a tool set that is like the most
26:50
flexible and interesting, the most free form, and it's been
26:55
really cool. So I'd love to see Wow put that
26:58
into to really remove any barriers in decorating.
27:02
OK, So one thing that stands out to me is that the Homestead
27:07
being this sort of instanced area, how would that work in
27:12
conjunction with like the neighborhoods that Warcraft is
27:15
putting in, putting in? So like that towering obstacle
27:21
course into the air, that would be like something that you would
27:25
see in your neighbor's lot and you'd be like, huh, I'm going to
27:28
like see if I can climb up there.
27:30
Like how do you think that that would create more limitations
27:35
because it isn't your own little garden that you have to share
27:39
that garden with up to I think, 49 other players?
27:42
Oh, I'm sure it will, right? There's no way there's not going
27:45
to be limitations because of that.
27:47
And that's something that I, I'm so glad that you asked, because
27:50
it is I, I was a little surprised.
27:52
I was a little bit surprised. Final Fantasy 14 has
27:56
neighborhoods and it's one of the only Mmos that I know of
28:00
that has a neighborhood system and it has caused them no
28:04
endless amount of pain. It's just, well, it just, it
28:08
limits so much. It limits the exterior of
28:10
houses. It limits how many of those
28:14
zones they can generate because in the way that they have
28:18
structured it and communicated it at least I have no idea.
28:21
I'm not a developer so everybody please feel free to correct me,
28:23
but the problem is, is that if you have a zone in which people
28:28
can load into at any time, you can't like deactivate that.
28:34
You can't like put it into rest mode if you will.
28:37
If like the person that owns the house isn't on the property, it
28:40
becomes its own almost constantly running instance that
28:44
has to be maintained. Now I'm sure there's a way to do
28:47
it. If there's like nobody in the
28:49
zone that you could, then you know, I, I don't know, again, I
28:53
have no idea how the exact terminology is So, but you can
28:56
put it to rest. You could let it chill and not
28:58
have to be like maintaining and running those zones all
29:00
simultaneously, which is part of what's caused some of the
29:03
neighborhood limitations in 14. But, and if anybody was to
29:07
figure out the programming for that, it would be wow, because
29:09
they're always very, very forward thinking and how they
29:12
often times structure a program or adapt or change the game over
29:16
the years. And so I, I do think there's a
29:19
way for them to do it. But I do feel like the
29:22
neighborhoods will have to have some kind of limitations, be it
29:26
in some of yes, like the rendering, how many things can
29:29
be rendered in the entire neighborhood?
29:32
How big or expansive those zones are?
29:35
Is it something where the exterior is more limited?
29:37
But you know, once you instance into a house, then there's
29:40
greater degree will the neighborhoods offer their own
29:43
unique group elements, right? Like where you know, it's worth
29:47
it to have a neighborhood because even if you can't build
29:50
a tower into the sky to jump off from 1000 feet into your
29:53
personal pool, you can still, you know, create a a crafting
29:57
hub together or a portal hub or whatever it might be.
30:01
Although of course, some of these things and wow, maybe have
30:03
more power and, you know, they, you'd have to figure out what
30:06
you think would be worth it, but not completely break the game.
30:10
But yeah, I, I, I'm curious myself.
30:14
I don't know how that I was, I was surprised, quite honestly,
30:17
that they went with neighborhoods.
30:18
But I feel like they would not have said it if they weren't
30:22
confident that they can do it better than Final Fantasy 14.
30:24
I love you Final Fantasy 14. I feel like this was a bold
30:29
choice they took on because they felt like they could do it
30:31
better and kind of live up to maybe some of the original
30:35
concept of neighborhoods. I don't know.
30:38
It it definitely feels like from your, from your talking about
30:43
Guild halls, it's their way of allowing people to have like
30:46
their own private area, but then still be social that you would
30:51
see your neighbor building up their like skyscraper or
30:56
creating their their pool or like contributing, contributing.
31:00
Maybe it's a neighborhood pool. Maybe it's, we all come together
31:03
and we and we contract some goblins and make a neighborhood
31:05
pool. But like, I think that the
31:09
community aspect is going to be perhaps the neighborhood and,
31:13
and we'll see what that means. Because my, my worry and
31:17
something I would like to ask you about is I guess, again,
31:22
Guild Wars 2 is mainly what we're talking about.
31:25
But you are part of a the right radio and you do talk about
31:28
Final Fantasy. Do they have like Hoas or people
31:33
who who like say like you can't do that in this neighborhood in
31:36
Final Fantasy? Or is it, is it very much that
31:38
like you have to deal with whatever your neighbors are are
31:41
making? Yeah, that's it.
31:43
I mean, that's it. Now there's a point of
31:46
contention in the community, which is that sometimes certain
31:50
free companies are able to wrangle it as such that they
31:53
can't essentially buy out an entire neighborhood or a ward in
31:57
14, in which case then they kind of instate their own rules.
32:01
You know, if they're like a role-playing group, they might
32:03
be like, Hey, everybody used the theme around this, this or this,
32:05
right? But it's not like anybody has to
32:08
be beholden to that. And it's not like anybody has
32:11
control over that except for the person that purchased the lot.
32:15
So even if you know, like a Guild master was like, or a free
32:19
company leader was like, hey, you can't do that.
32:23
The person could still be like, sucks to suck.
32:25
I'm going to keep my paisa up in my yard.
32:26
Like, I'm going to have Christmas trees year round,
32:28
like, and there wouldn't be much that you could do except for
32:31
like bullying them out of the neighborhood, which don't do
32:34
that everybody. Don't do that, everybody.
32:36
So it's interesting that Wow seems to be more so of the
32:43
mindset of creating neighborhoods that may, again,
32:45
be like an extension of things like.
32:47
That's the impression I got at least, like of your Guild and
32:49
stuff like that where, yeah, maybe there would be things more
32:52
like the Guildhall permission system in, in Guild Wars two
32:57
that might apply to a whole neighborhood that maybe people,
33:01
certain ranks, things like that would have access to lots.
33:04
Maybe there would be kind of a general control of the
33:05
neighborhood. I I am not sure.
33:09
Like that raises questions about whether or not then you're going
33:14
to have like, you know, repossession of furnishings.
33:18
Does that go to your Guild leader or does that go to like
33:21
you if you put it all in a house?
33:24
I'm not sure how they'll do that in World of Warcraft, but I like
33:28
the idea of being able to have group environments.
33:33
Right, because Guild halls in Guild Wars 2 are more
33:38
collaborative endeavour and unless you're given permissions
33:41
to decorate by like a leader, it's not like you have your own
33:44
private room. Free companies in 14 have like a
33:48
private room system where you have the Guild hall itself or
33:50
the free company house, and then you have like a little doorway
33:54
and you can go up to that and there's like little individual
33:57
rooms that you can buy and maintain.
34:00
So neighborhoods kind of sounds like an interesting fusion of
34:04
ideas in different Mmos right now, OK.
34:08
And so then if excluding of course, what we've talked about,
34:12
is there any particular thing that you would warn the
34:17
developers about saying like, hey, this is a mistake that
34:20
Guild Wars 2 came, came across, please don't do that.
34:25
Oh gosh. You know, it's interesting
34:29
because I think Guild Wars 2's housing system that they
34:32
introduced at least was my current This is the best housing
34:36
system closely rivaled by ESO. But ESO has a very intense paid
34:43
money elements. It's not technically mandatory,
34:47
but the amount of money I have accidentally or been guided to
34:51
spend real money on ESO houses is.
34:54
We're not gonna. We don't need to, don't worry.
34:56
We won't speak of the crowns. But Guild Wars twos I think
35:01
leaned more into we will make it a bit more of a time investment,
35:06
but you will not have to, right? It's not something that
35:11
shoehorned into it like a real cash money system and other
35:14
things like that. Now, they did mention there may
35:16
be furnishing items you can purchase at, you know, at some
35:19
point, but that's not surprising.
35:21
Most games have a cash shop of some sort and Guild Wars 2 is
35:24
usually really good with it. So all of that to say, I think
35:28
that it's been released in a really wonderful state.
35:31
It's some of the most flexible and best housing.
35:34
The complaints I have are minor and they're not like a don't do
35:37
this or it'll be terrible because that's just how good the
35:39
Guild Wars 2 housing was. But it's more so that I think a
35:43
few things maybe that they need to adjust.
35:45
I think Wow could come in having already done so.
35:48
For example, you know, I mentioned earlier that it just
35:51
takes a bit of time, takes a bit of time to actually make the
35:54
furnishings. You have to go through this
35:55
process where you take materials that you've gathered like around
35:59
the world or from various places or nodes, and then you have to
36:02
refine them. So you go into your homestead,
36:05
you go up to these little interactable things and you
36:07
refine the materials and there is a weekly cap on how many of
36:10
those materials you can refine. And with that, you can upgrade
36:15
your homestead to get a higher cap and a lower cost of like raw
36:21
material to refined material exchange rate.
36:24
But it is still something that is a little prohibitive in that
36:28
like if you're a huge housing fan and you come right in and
36:32
you're like, I want every piece of furnishing that exists, You
36:34
know, it essentially tries to pace you out a little bit more
36:38
in how you engage with it and make it something I think maybe
36:43
they didn't want like the market to get flooded by.
36:46
I'm not sure. I don't know, I'm not totally
36:48
sure. But for me, I'm like, I think
36:50
right off the bat, if you have longer term goals that take a
36:52
longer process for furnishing, that's fine.
36:54
If you have upgradable wings of your house, that's fine.
36:57
And those can be things that you're sinking a lot of mats,
37:00
having to refine specific things at a greater rate over time.
37:03
But I think that when it comes to just the actual like, get in
37:07
here, get all your furnishing stuff.
37:10
I personally think it would have benefited them to not have those
37:13
restrictions and just allow you to just jump into it.
37:18
You know, maybe y'all have to go do some gathering and things but
37:20
then not have to worry about a bit more of this chokehold on
37:23
refining or other stuff. Or a lot of these, you know
37:26
things that you need to get that are just a little bit longer
37:29
grind sort of thing just to make like a chair.
37:32
Because when you want to make like 5 chairs then it becomes
37:35
more of a problem. So there's that.
37:37
And I think the other thing as well is just that they're
37:39
working on raising the, I imagine they're working on
37:42
raising the amount of items you can have in one like portion of
37:49
the map of the house. So when you're trying to clip or
37:52
layer a bunch of stuff together, it's something where there's a
37:55
bit of a cap on those right now. So like you have to move over 10
37:59
feet or whatever to put down more stuff, which is OK.
38:03
But if you're somebody that likes to make really dense,
38:05
really layered customized housing like a lot of people do
38:07
in 14 or ESO, you want to be able to layer a lot of stuff for
38:13
the greatest effect in a small area.
38:16
But the trade off of that is that Guild Wars 2's maps and
38:18
housing, it's huge. Like it's a huge map, right?
38:23
So I think it does at least make you spread your stuff out a
38:27
little bit more so you're not just like you don't just like
38:29
walk in and there's like one corner of the map that's like,
38:32
wow, this is gorgeous. And then the rest is like a
38:34
wasteland. But those would probably be the
38:38
two things for me, and even with that, I think that they've been
38:42
some of the more minor setbacks as far as I've encountered in
38:45
housing in MMRPGS. Oh and also just to add on
38:48
because earlier my brain farted, the expansion is End of Dragons,
38:51
which is my favorite expansion in Guild Wars 2, so especially
38:54
ironic that I could not remember the name in the moment.
38:57
From 2022, Sean gave us the answer.
39:01
Sometimes my brain is just like, Nah, I'm not going to give you
39:03
that information. And then I sit here like, cool,
39:06
you know the one that's like Dragons.
39:08
And it was like the end of a 10 year story.
39:15
But you remembered the zone and everybody would be able to place
39:18
it if they had played the game. So I I'm going to give it to
39:20
you. Thank you.
39:21
Thank you. Yes.
39:24
Well, thank you so much for sharing.
39:26
Like all of this details and maybe we'll get more
39:30
information, who knows. It's great that we had this
39:34
first, first peak. I do encourage people the best
39:38
way of understanding the possibilities that the World of
39:42
Warcraft can do with this housing is to see what other
39:46
games are doing. And so I encourage you to of
39:49
course, check out Atherite Radio, where we find, of course,
39:52
recurring, and your stream where you're playing several different
39:56
Mos as well as some single player RPGs.
39:59
But is there any place that you want to shout out?
40:02
Where people can find you. Oh.
40:04
My gosh, sure, yes, I mean my own channel Rookery, that's RO
40:07
OK Uri, just like Manny said 8 the right radio, which is a
40:10
podcast that I do for Final Fantasy 14.
40:13
I also do the Lightbringers podcast for Guild Wars 2, which
40:16
is over on Jebro Unity's channel, spelled just like that,
40:20
Jebro Unity, all one word. And I have just been recently.
40:25
I'm so grateful, but I've been doing so much stuff in places
40:27
other than my own channel. So keep an eye out on social
40:32
media. You can find me on Twitter at
40:34
Rookery under score, and I've not yet fully moved over to Blue
40:38
Sky, but keep an eye out for that.
40:40
That'll happen too, probably soon.
40:42
But I try to let everybody know what I'm doing because there's a
40:46
lot of stuff. We just came off of TGP with
40:49
Blizzard, which was amazing. So glad to host that.
40:51
Some really cool competition and we have more coming up as well.
40:54
So as that is usually released, I'll try to let everybody know
40:56
where you can find me, when you can find me, and what sort of
40:59
cool events will be doing for any of the games that I host
41:03
for, Shoutcast for, or, you know, do other collaborations
41:06
with. And I'm so glad I got to do
41:08
this, Manny. I'm really, really pumped to
41:10
hear everybody's thoughts on all the housing and get to see what
41:13
we actually get in World of Warcraft.
41:15
Because honestly, I think it's going to be good.
41:18
I, I'm very excited. I'm looking to hear more, but
41:22
thank you again. And until next time guys, may
41:24
all your hits be good.