Latest / For Azeroth!: A World of Warcraft Podcast / #257 - For Azeroth!: “Season 2 Erupts!”

Transcript

#257 - For Azeroth!: “Season 2 Erupts!” · For Azeroth!: A World of Warcraft Podcast

• 0:00
  No more dress, rehearsals no more lead-up season 2 is finally
• 0:04
  here. So let's get into it kahlan.
• 0:08
  Don't endure for the alliance.
• 0:24
  For answer our hello and welcome to for Azeroth your show.
• 0:30
  Where we go beyond the headlines, I've been gone for a
• 0:33
  while and there's a lot to catch up on but there's a lot coming.
• 0:37
  So we're not going to be able to get through it.
• 0:38
  All that said, I'm Manny and I'm your host and let's talk about
• 0:43
  some important things have been happening in the World of
• 0:45
  Warcraft. The first thing I want to talk
• 0:47
  about is that we are now in season 2 of Embers of
• 0:50
  neltharion, which means we have the new Mythic plus we have the
• 0:53
  new raid We have the new events that are going to be happening
• 0:57
  in the fire rack. Invasions, I honestly felt that
• 1:01
  they should call them burning points, but whatever it means
• 1:04
  that we've got a lot to do and that's good because there was
• 1:09
  actually this feeling last week for some people that there
• 1:13
  wasn't enough to do. And I have to say, some people
• 1:17
  because this is a very split feeling for the different people
• 1:23
  who are playing the game. Some people have been busy, you
• 1:27
  know, life happens, you move house, you have a lot to do at
• 1:30
  work. There's just stuff to happens
• 1:33
  and that means that you're coming back to the game and you
• 1:39
  feel a bit overwhelmed even last week where we didn't have all of
• 1:43
  the full season stuff. It was just intro Quest.
• 1:46
  There's been changes to classes, whether you are Shadow priest
• 1:50
  and you got your changes with this patch or you are a
• 1:55
  Retribution Paladin and that came with 10 .07 and even some
• 1:59
  other classes where bills have been enabled for me.
• 2:02
  I switched my build from the elemental enhancement build over
• 2:08
  to what used to be physical. But because of the changes that
• 2:11
  they've made to talents is now being considered the storm or
• 2:15
  stormbringer build and that means that I had a week to learn
• 2:20
  the changes with this new rotation, This new Talent, these
• 2:26
  new abilities that I wasn't playing last season, but if you
• 2:31
  are more casual and you're just playing around, you didn't have
• 2:34
  to deal with that. If your more casual, if you
• 2:38
  stepped away from the game in between Seasons, you're coming
• 2:40
  back this season. There might be a lot that you
• 2:43
  have to deal with a friend of the show Raven from Girls Gone
• 2:49
  Wild. She was one of the people who
• 2:52
  have been busy, despite the fact that she covers the game on a
• 2:55
  weekly basis and talks about different things.
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  She jumped in wanting to play the new stuff in 10.1, but the
• 3:04
  way that it set up, you have to do the intro quest for the
• 3:08
  Forbidden reach before you jump into 10 .1 content.
• 3:13
  That meant that there was more stuff for her to do and get
• 3:18
  caught up on as it were. Some teams have cleared through
• 3:23
  the raid for ages. Some teams just got the raid
• 3:27
  done. Some teams, they didn't quite
• 3:30
  get it to complete but now we have a new raid coming in.
• 3:33
  This reminds me of 5.2 where things were coming, so quickly
• 3:38
  that some people couldn't complete the content that they
• 3:41
  already had. But how do you hit that balance?
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  Where you're able to give content to keep the most engaged
• 3:51
  players engaged. And yet, not overwhelm your more
• 3:56
  casual base. And I think that for the most
• 4:01
  part, the team is doing it, right?
• 4:06
  Because the things that will keep people really engage.
• 4:11
  Like if you're an economist and you're trying to get your head
• 4:15
  around, these barter bricks to get some of the new patterns, or
• 4:18
  if you are a big person into the PVP season and as they do these
• 4:26
  changes, it disrupts. It's what the comps are or even
• 4:30
  how the, how the balance is operate.
• 4:33
  I think that keeps people who are really engaged engaged
• 4:37
  without necessarily overwhelming everybody else, but it's not
• 4:44
  perfect, because if you are playing a Retribution Paladin or
• 4:49
  you're playing a shadow priest and you are playing in a very
• 4:54
  casual level, you come back, your buttons were changed and
• 4:58
  that's the That they were really trying to avoid in the past I
• 5:02
  personally rally against it. I think that if something is not
• 5:08
  working too fast and that the community, and even the
• 5:13
  developers themselves are not happy with.
• 5:16
  I don't think it needs to wait till the major patch or in
• 5:20
  between expansions before you address that, it would suck if
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  Shadow priests were just forever broken in.
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  Till 11.0 and that's when they'll do a pass at it.
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  I know that the retribution Paladin's incredibly disrupted
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  season 1 at the end for PVP and that there were issues with
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  brought paladins. In fact, if you look at the
• 5:50
  should you play guides for a lot of the tanks?
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  There is this real feeling that everybody's playing in the
• 5:59
  shadow of protection paladins and how much they bring to the
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  table? And of course, that's going to
• 6:09
  get a dress just as quickly, you've seen some Nerfs for
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  protection paladins, you've seen some Buffs for other tanks and I
• 6:17
  really like that they are generally bringing up the other
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  classes to a better level of performance rather than strictly
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  Nerf the fun of a particular class. and the ongoing tuning
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  means that if you are not doing so well, in terms of relative
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  performance that you don't feel like your trap, they're 40, and
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  until the end of time, And I think that that's worth the
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  disruption, but you guys have to let me know.
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  In terms of the genuine content that's coming through.
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  Like I said with the barter bricks or with the 10, .07
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  stuff, these are things that are for the most part.
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  Optional. Yes, you have to do a little bit
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  of story, doesn't take you much time to get through the story,
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  but on top of that in 10 .07, the zero.
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  Lick Caverns aren't locked behind any of That stuff in the
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  Forbidden reach, you don't have to complete the vaults to then
• 7:29
  go into the the reach and that means that if you are somewhat
• 7:33
  casual, you can play. The Vault, you can go around
• 7:40
  there just to test a, try it out, get the pets that you
• 7:44
  wanted, or get the mounts that you're trying to collect.
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  If you're a casual Mount player, I have a friend and a friend of
• 7:52
  the show who genuinely doesn't play much of dragon flight.
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  Their most playtime is in the quote-unquote old world catching
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  up on all of this stuff that they've missed over.
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  Over the course of the years so that they play through, not
• 8:13
  really story but looking for those mounts and those secrets
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  and stuff in Old zones that they can do it as much casual Pace,
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  because this point, they basically out level it, they've
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  got gear, that's meant to catch up to get you into the latest
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  stuff and that's their, that's their way of play.
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  So, knowing all these different ways that people play And seeing
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  how them focusing on content that is optional means that I'll
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  see people who completely skip over particular sections and
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  some people who will come back to those particular sections
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  afterwards when things slow down, otherwise or people who
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  are constantly grabbing up that content, as soon as it's
• 9:02
  released, I myself have yet to do.
• 9:05
  Do any dragon riding races. So I don't have a bronze for
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  like even the the something as easy as the waking Shores.
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  Grab I assume it's easy because the first the first Zone but I
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  don't have like a bronze in waking Shores or completion.
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  If there is one of complete all the races, I think that's
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  something that I'm going to come back to and love when it's later
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  in the season, but it's also allowed me to do.
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  And test out things that I normally wouldn't last week.
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  I went very hard in the initial elements of 10.1 within the
• 9:53
  first day, I capped out on my flight Stones Plus It took me a
• 10:00
  little longer to get the Well Blink, rest and then longer
• 10:04
  still to get all of my Drake quests Crest rather.
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  But that was the push for me and it kept me very engaged in among
• 10:16
  that I did other things. You guys know that I am pretty
• 10:20
  fanatical about getting my mounts.
• 10:22
  So it was a big dry for me to try and get the seething slug
• 10:27
  Mount and that received a couple of hotfixes throughout the week
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  in order to clarify or help with the painting of that mount.
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  I know some people were really pushing for auction house stuff
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  just the gold goblins and it has been a very interesting week for
• 10:54
  that because I'm slightly aware of that.
• 10:57
  There were spikes at the beginning of the week.
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  There was a somewhat of a crash in all the people on the Reddit
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  thread. Send in their Discord saying
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  like oh my goodness, the sky is falling.
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  What's going on here? Where some veterans had said
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  that they had seen this Behavior.
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  For that means that even people, whose gameplay is only Loosely
• 11:20
  connected with what is going on are getting like Loosely
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  connected with what is being developed, but very connected
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  with the player behavior of those engaging with the content,
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  they're getting their level of content from that.
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  And so, I think when I hear some people will be like, oh, there
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  wasn't really much for me, it's because there they're kind of
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  feeling the pain, or maybe I don't like equating it to
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  trauma. But it is kind of like a trauma
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  response. I would say that it's a learned
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  behavior because of the way the game has been before and the way
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  the game was before, remember back to the yesteryears of
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  shadowlands, the way they great. With the way the game was
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  before, was that Week 1 and the first couple of weeks, there
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  would be so much grinding mandatory content to do.
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  You would have to complete, make sure you complete the first two
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  chapters to unlock this so that you're not behind in the raid or
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  that you get this new ability, which is going to be very
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  important this season. And that's no longer a thing.
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  There isn't the new abilities behind the heart of Azeroth.
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  There isn't the new concordance in Legion, there isn't the new
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  ranks of renowned that will increase your soul, buying,
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  which everybody had to do to make sure they weren't letting
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  down their raid team, or being behind for PVP, and getting
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  destroyed or not having the power that they need.
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  Need to get to the highest ranks of Mythic Keystone dungeons that
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  doesn't exist and in its place. You have the option to pursue
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  what you want to do and people have been added.
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  So ingrained that there needs to be a 1-2-3 of content to do
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  right at the beginning that they don't understand that this is
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  now more and make your choice of ABC.
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  And the stuff that is mostly connected or reminiscent of that
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  mandatory content, is the story stuff in 10.1 last week.
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  We got the first three chapters of story where we went into the
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  caverns. Fun stuff, great amount of
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  gameplay. In fact, I would say if we were
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  back in the yesteryears of shadowlands and before we would
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  have only gotten the first chapter, of course, it would
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  have been connected to some power system that we needed to
• 14:29
  needed to do. And then we would have had these
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  five chapters doled out over five weeks with one little extra
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  bit of Azurite power that you would get at the end.
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  So make sure you do that because that's a bulk of your ass,
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  right? Power that you would need to get
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  to force us into it whether you liked our new kniffen allies or
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  not, whether you wanted to do the digging or not because the
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  digging was the best way and you only got the maps at the end of
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  the chapters. That's how it would have been.
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  And that's kind of what people were expecting or have been
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  expecting throughout dragonflight maybe in looking to
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  grab power but you don't grab Power by doing these things that
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  are forced upon you. You got power, if you want the
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  power by doing the stuff that you want to do, With the new
• 15:25
  upgrade system, that's coming through.
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  You could focus purely on rating and you'll get stuff to upgrade
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  your gear which has not been the case since season four of
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  shadowlands and didn't our system that people love if you
• 15:43
  are out doing open-world content and chasing after rares, you can
• 15:52
  Farm up stuff to improve your gear. and get to a higher level
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  year, then you would would have been in these previous systems,
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  which would have required you to do the weekly warfront or to run
• 16:05
  through Tor gassed and I think I'm now just getting my head
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  around that or maybe the community is now, beginning to
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  realize that, not that they didn't realize That they don't
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  have to do things, but they realize that now they're not
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  forced to there and they're not directed to.
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  I think direct it to is the best thing, right?
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  Because there isn't a Impressed upon direction that we as a
• 16:45
  players need to go. There are many people who are
• 16:51
  aimless who look at something like the Translating, the, the
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  full Borges, and they go. Well, why would I do that?
• 17:05
  I can't tell you because I don't know what motivates you they put
• 17:11
  it there. It's cool content.
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  You can take it or leave it. I left it because there was
• 17:16
  other things that I wanted to do, but that's the right choice,
• 17:21
  do what you want to do. So now that first week 10 .1
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  like I said I went balls to the wall trying to get all of the
• 17:36
  fragments that I could remember that.
• 17:39
  For each rank of fragments, you can get 150 of them before you
• 17:45
  reach the cap. But I went about it in a way
• 17:49
  that I guess I was Min maxing around the cap.
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  There are couple things for those of you who are Min.
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  Maxing need to remember one is that there are rewards that
• 18:06
  store fragments In a non in a different state.
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  So if you get rewarded a Crest let's say you get rewarded a
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  weblink rest and it's directly giving you the real plane crash
• 18:22
  and not giving you fragments that doesn't count as 15
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  fragments because you never it was never in fragment form.
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  So you get those traps one of the weeklies.
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  Gives you the opportunity to get 450 in gear or give you an item
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  that when you open, it will give you 15 of the Drake fragments.
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  If you never open that that doesn't count towards your
• 18:49
  fragment cap and so you can get your hundred and fifty and then
• 18:53
  still have another 15 contained within that, which meant that
• 18:57
  you technically got 165 in that week.
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  And that's the weird been maxing.
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  I was doing this week. I've technically got in 2300 of
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  the flight stones and x amount of each of the crest that's
• 19:13
  above the cap. And that to me was fun that
• 19:17
  really pushed me of being like okay how can I do this?
• 19:22
  But I would hate if that was the mandatory Behavior because I
• 19:28
  know my friend who doesn't like that and maybe a lot of people
• 19:33
  who are Ting would be like, that's crazy.
• 19:35
  And I hate that I would hate to feel behind because of that.
• 19:42
  So good on blizzard for the way that they have put this
• 19:46
  together. But the one thing I think that
• 19:49
  they're lacking right now is single player content that is of
• 19:56
  a challenging nature. I think that if we had something
• 20:01
  along the lines of The jailers gauntlet.
• 20:08
  Or. Brawler arena there.
• 20:13
  Sorry, Brawler's Guild. That people could attempt to
• 20:19
  defeat for bragging rights again.
• 20:22
  Not for power. We don't want to make this
• 20:23
  mandatory And for cosmetic rewards, I think that's what
• 20:30
  would be perfect. Everybody loved the Mage tower
• 20:34
  that is the golden Pinnacle of this kind of content.
• 20:39
  They've since done other stuff in the my, in, with the mindset
• 20:44
  of the of the Mage Tower but they've constantly been
• 20:48
  attaching power. Rewards to it to make it
• 20:52
  mandatory in my mind I think that's what really sunk tour gas
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  on the Alpha and the beta. I loved too.
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  I gassed. It was just my goodness I get to
• 21:05
  be super powerful and in return. These enemies are super powerful
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  but it's just it was this Power Trip of like okay can I get
• 21:12
  through this? I loved doing the visions of
• 21:17
  Nazareth When I wasn't doing it to empower, my Cape, when I was
• 21:22
  doing the challenge modes for the Mast to get that done or
• 21:26
  trying to get the perfect run and both Storm win in Orgrimmar.
• 21:30
  In order to get that at that achievement and it was like,
• 21:33
  okay. Can we do this?
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  How is my root? Pull what?
• 21:38
  What can I do with this boss in order to get that done?
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  That was some of the most engaging content and I did a lot
• 21:48
  of that. At single player, sometimes I
• 21:52
  would do that with, with a friend.
• 21:55
  I remember when it was first doing divisions, each week, one
• 22:01
  guilty, and I would go and do the Visions.
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  What it was mandatory and it was fun to do it with, with my
• 22:10
  friend SS like, a group activity.
• 22:11
  So I don't have an issue with it scaling but I just want some
• 22:15
  sort of instanced PVE Ang mode to go do that.
• 22:22
  You can do on your own that you don't need to organize a group
• 22:25
  for for people who Do not have fond.
• 22:32
  Love of the current instance and games like Mythic plus like the
• 22:37
  raid. But that's where season 2 now
• 22:42
  starts kicking in because we are getting all of that organize
• 22:45
  content. So like I said we have Mythic
• 22:51
  plus coming up and this week for Mythic plus is going to be huge.
• 22:56
  I think that with the changes that they've made This is a
• 23:02
  really great point to jump into Mythic plus the they have
• 23:07
  learned a lot of lessons or heard a lot of the commentary on
• 23:11
  season 1 which means we have no seasonal affix and the a fixes
• 23:22
  are coming in much later. So we're if you were doing a 10
• 23:25
  key, you would have had your seasonal affix, you would have.
• 23:28
  Had the two other affixes now? Now, you only have one ethics
• 23:33
  because the initial affix instead of coming in at level, 4
• 23:38
  is coming in at level 7. The second, a fix instead of
• 23:42
  coming in at level, 7 is coming in.
• 23:46
  I believe level 10, I could be confused on that as I think it's
• 23:50
  14, my apologies it's 14:14 so And there's no Cecil affix.
• 23:58
  Like I said, which means it's a lot more time.
• 24:02
  Learning the dungeons. Before you learn the, before you
• 24:07
  have to deal with like, complications from the affixes,
• 24:10
  they've changed a lot of the affixes so that you can focus
• 24:14
  more on the dungeon itself. And the fact that everybody is
• 24:20
  quote, unquote learning these dungeons, at the same time.
• 24:24
  Means that this is a pretty good reset for people who just want
• 24:31
  to come in. There is no burden of knowledge
• 24:33
  that you should have learned it last season because we've
• 24:36
  already run through these dungeons for months now and
• 24:40
  everybody knows where the skips are and what the roots are.
• 24:43
  That's not an issue anymore. The fact that because of this
• 24:47
  reset, all of our keys for people who have we're doing Keys
• 24:51
  last week are dropped by By at least, nine levels, and that's
• 24:57
  not including all of the people who saw no reason to do Keys
• 25:01
  last week. And so we'll be starting out
• 25:04
  with a level two key. This is a perfect time to jump
• 25:10
  in with your friends with pug groups and just work on your
• 25:16
  score because there will be people who are going to have
• 25:21
  that add-on and are going to look at your score from last
• 25:24
  Season and that's what they're going to make to determine her
• 25:27
  on whether there are going to be a lot more people.
• 25:30
  Who are going to be sitting at equal playing field roughly.
• 25:37
  And will run with you. Obviously there's meta specs and
• 25:44
  there are the beat the meta specs and that will be a
• 25:50
  determination that always is but it's such a fun time.
• 25:55
  And with the way that all these affixes have changed the
• 26:01
  dungeons have changed the meta itself.
• 26:03
  Hasn't really been developed or at least fully understood so
• 26:09
  that That filter of, oh, I don't want to take you because you're
• 26:17
  this doesn't really apply as well or it shouldn't.
• 26:23
  The reason that I say that, the reason I stopped short of saying
• 26:26
  that it should that it won't apply, it's because people are
• 26:29
  going to still have in their mind.
• 26:32
  Oh, this is a really good spec from what they've heard from
• 26:37
  Theory, Crafters, from influencers.
• 26:40
  And what they know, From last season.
• 26:43
  So they will say like, oh yeah, of course, of course, we're
• 26:46
  going to go take this person because they were so good last
• 26:48
  season even if it doesn't necessarily transfer over to
• 26:51
  this season. So there's always going to be
• 26:54
  those biases and stuff, but I still think it's going to be a
• 26:57
  great time to jump into Mythic plus and for those of you who
• 27:03
  are worried about the dungeons because there are two dungeons
• 27:05
  that particular people are worried about one is the under
• 27:09
  Ott and the other is bracken hide Hall.
• 27:12
  Whoa, I would say look, well, maybe don't look at the patch
• 27:18
  notes because there you would have to be looking through a lot
• 27:21
  of hotfixes, but take my word for it.
• 27:25
  They have changed a lot of stuff in.
• 27:28
  Both of those dungeons, to make them more friendly, towards a
• 27:35
  wider range of comps. A lot of the abilities that
• 27:38
  throw on these diseases and curses are I'll interruptible or
• 27:44
  disrupt the bubble, which means that even if you don't have a
• 27:48
  hard interrupt, you can use a knock up a stun knock-back,
• 27:52
  whatever to disrupt the cast. And of course then for other
• 27:58
  people who maybe don't have that robust disruption, they could
• 28:05
  also just cleanse the diseases or those curses and if you Not
• 28:12
  have any of that. I don't know what to tell you
• 28:14
  like. I don't understand how a
• 28:17
  five-person team of any five different specs.
• 28:24
  Wouldn't have abilities to use some if not one of those and
• 28:31
  they went back in and deliberately reduced the amount
• 28:36
  of those that you will need. So there isn't any double
• 28:39
  interrupt pulls in. The first head of the first boss
• 28:44
  they've reduced that there are very particular spawning
• 28:50
  patterns for different ad so it's not randomly you'll get to
• 28:55
  casters and you have to stop them both.
• 28:57
  It's always going to be one caster and to Two fighters and
• 29:02
  they've been very considerate about that.
• 29:05
  I know when I was speaking to the Developers.
• 29:11
  One of the questions that I asked was about, was regarding
• 29:15
  this was like, okay. Like if I've noticed that you've
• 29:19
  made changes to Freehold one of the ones that people are loving,
• 29:24
  I noticed you made changes the Freehold where the the attacks
• 29:29
  don't have built-in slow or snare in them that attacks don't
• 29:35
  have the same weird cone and they're doing that specifically
• 29:40
  because they I want it to be readable.
• 29:42
  They want people to be able to learn these dungeons quickly,
• 29:47
  because as much as people love Freehold, And some of these
• 29:51
  dungeons that are coming back. Those Mobs Had abilities that
• 29:58
  almost had baked in affixes and they removed a lot of those as I
• 30:03
  call him bait in affixes. From the dungeon, the Council of
• 30:07
  pirates, no longer has a 0 which, which Captain are we
• 30:13
  gonna have on our side this time?
• 30:15
  Because that would vastly change the difficulty in combination
• 30:20
  with a fixes. That was something that people
• 30:22
  had to worry about. Back in the days of BFA.
• 30:26
  And now it looks to be that it will always be the same captain
• 30:30
  on your side, which means you're going to be only dealing with
• 30:33
  the randomness of the affixes. When you do this dungeon. that
• 30:41
  said, rating is the next part that I want to talk about.
• 30:47
  I did some testing while things were on the PTR, guys.
• 30:51
  Even though I know I haven't been putting out a show, I
• 30:54
  haven't like left for our. And in the background, I have
• 30:58
  had the absolute pleasure and privilege of being able to speak
• 31:02
  or rather put questions towards Ian.
• 31:05
  Has a Kostas. You guys can look at the EU and
• 31:09
  n a developer talks that Ian had just a short while ago.
• 31:15
  I also have the privilege and a pleasure of being on the World
• 31:20
  of Warcraft Community Council and we got to sit down and talk
• 31:23
  with a dungeon designers and put questions to that.
• 31:27
  Amazing team. I do want to address something
• 31:32
  that came up in comments and I feel that I'm going to defend
• 31:39
  the wow, Community Council because people were saying oh,
• 31:42
  what about the, the items and this sort of stuff.
• 31:45
  Why didn't you talk about that? We were specifically told that
• 31:51
  that was a different team. When we were talking to a team
• 31:55
  about Mythic plus about the dungeons, that's the encounter
• 32:00
  team that we were speaking with, and the rewards team is a is a
• 32:06
  different set of people. People there was a little bit of
• 32:09
  overlap because you've got you know, high-level members of the
• 32:16
  team like Morgan it a day there and of course markandeya can
• 32:20
  speak to that because he's watching over, not just the
• 32:23
  encountered team, but other teams but that wasn't the team.
• 32:27
  We were speaking with we're speaking with the encountered
• 32:30
  team, they the council members, even some that hadn't shown up
• 32:37
  on that. At day had submitted questions
• 32:38
  on. A lot of them were about the
• 32:40
  rewards and there was further clarification saying like listen
• 32:44
  encounter team rewards are different subject, focus on this
• 32:50
  and so would that room with that restriction, I think that the
• 32:56
  People that were, there are some really great questions that.
• 33:02
  On topic and that people would want to know.
• 33:06
  In fact, speaking with it has a Kostas, there were a lot of
• 33:11
  different questions where people were supposed to be 10.1 but
• 33:14
  people talk about way in the future.
• 33:15
  It's like, okay, well, now that we've got our cross faction
• 33:21
  guilds. Why can't we do everything cross
• 33:23
  faction, which is the natural question that comes from.
• 33:27
  It's like, okay, cross faction guilds give this much.
• 33:31
  But what about the Rest of it and in because he can speak to
• 33:36
  the rest of it did put forward a lot of those things where it's
• 33:41
  like, okay can't do this right now.
• 33:44
  This is this is a technical issue versus this.
• 33:48
  Being a philosophy. Philosophy thing where if I'm a
• 33:52
  hard-line allies player and I don't want to deal with those
• 33:55
  horrid dogs, I shouldn't be forced to deal with with those
• 33:59
  people. Those people booth I shouldn't
• 34:02
  be forced to deal with the Enemy faction.
• 34:06
  When I cue for a random LFR or LSD that that doesn't work for
• 34:14
  the way that I want to play. So it's always been an opt-in in
• 34:18
  my humble opinion, this should be much like a lot of systems
• 34:24
  deal with cross platform where you put a tick in.
• 34:28
  And it's like are you okay? Going into L fdlf are
• 34:35
  cross-faction you've now opted into this in the interface and
• 34:40
  so you get to do that Q the reward faster Q times period,
• 34:47
  like when you expand the amount of people, you are able to play
• 34:51
  with the immediate reward is faster, Q times.
• 34:56
  If they want to, then maybe do some further.
• 35:03
  Active for people who do it one way over.
• 35:05
  Another, I highly would be against that because I just feel
• 35:09
  like putting your fingers on the scale one way or the other just
• 35:15
  seems very odd. When it's generally, just let
• 35:19
  people play as they want it. Even if it was something like,
• 35:22
  hey, if you choose to do cross faction, you have a chance of
• 35:27
  the boss dropping a cosmetic reward.
• 35:31
  If you choose to do not Um, just your own faction.
• 35:36
  The boss, the boss is could drop.
• 35:39
  A different cosmetic reward that is based on your faction.
• 35:43
  Well, then the completionist are going to be forced to do both of
• 35:49
  them and until they get, like if they get one, then there are
• 35:54
  going to feel compelled to not do that one until they've gotten
• 36:01
  the other, and then they're just going to fall back into the
• 36:03
  behavior that they wanted to do. Anyways.
• 36:07
  So I don't Think that at any kind of reward.
• 36:12
  It really works. They're not in the short term
• 36:15
  and not in the long term. But I do think that just a
• 36:19
  toggle in the matchmaking thing much like you can toggle to be a
• 36:24
  dungeon guide, you can toggle to be involved in Trials, faction
• 36:28
  or not, that would be fine. And that would allow immediately
• 36:32
  for the people who wanted just queue up with a five-man team,
• 36:37
  to be able to do random heroic dungeons with their friends or
• 36:44
  LFR with their friends. Of course that's me saying
• 36:48
  something that is I don't know how hard that is.
• 36:52
  Be a behind the hood to implement but now I've digressed
• 36:58
  we were talking about the raid. As I said, I've been testing the
• 37:04
  different encounters. I've really loved them.
• 37:08
  The test that I did were on heroic.
• 37:10
  I felt that the bosses were pretty easy to understand.
• 37:15
  Remember when you're testing on PTR, Nobody's developed the
• 37:19
  strategy yet. You're just pulling and trying
• 37:21
  to figure out based on how hard the bat of the boss smashes.
• 37:25
  You on the right side of your face.
• 37:26
  Where's the left side? Your face to be like, okay, you
• 37:28
  know what, maybe we should be watching for that right, hook
• 37:30
  more, and avoiding that. And let's put up a defensive for
• 37:34
  the, for the left hook. And hey, good.
• 37:36
  We figured out a way to do this fight.
• 37:39
  I think I just equated World of Warcraft and counters to punch
• 37:42
  out, but that's really what it was where That's the way the
• 37:48
  game plays when you don't have those guides, you're watching
• 37:53
  the behavior, you're trying to figure out.
• 37:56
  It's like okay, left? Right left, Dodge backwards, and
• 38:00
  then you figure that out, except that you're doing that with 20
• 38:05
  30 people. However many people you brought
• 38:06
  along for your testing and I love that.
• 38:12
  That for testing, I think that that is some of the most fun
• 38:15
  that I have with these dungeon experiments.
• 38:18
  And so when shout out to Timber whatever, and that has its blind
• 38:23
  bosses where they go through and they try and figure out a one
• 38:28
  boss in the encounter to just learn on their own without
• 38:32
  looking at guides because I love that that play.
• 38:37
  I will say that blizzard is trying to To do much the same
• 38:43
  when they have these last boss has since since sf0 since the
• 38:49
  Sepulchre of the first ones. There are being bosses that they
• 38:54
  don't test on the PTR. This tear the last boss hasn't
• 39:01
  been tested and that means that when the teams get to it most
• 39:07
  likely later today or tomorrow, It's a completely unknown factor
• 39:16
  and a new experience and I love watching and learning that live.
• 39:25
  I think that based on what we've seen with SFO with Raz, agathe,
• 39:34
  That they've done a fairly decent job, tuning these with
• 39:38
  sf0. I actually feel like the final
• 39:44
  encounter and I can't tell you about Mythic because I never did
• 39:47
  this on Mythic but on heroic and with normal going up against the
• 39:53
  jailer Was. A really fun tight experience,
• 40:00
  pre nerves. But then SFO in general was
• 40:05
  overly tuned and lat it was too hard or harder than it should
• 40:11
  have been for the targeted levels.
• 40:14
  And so the Jailer before Nerf was a step up.
• 40:20
  And I think that that also continued through with Raz,
• 40:23
  agathe where the first couple of bosses most of the bosses all
• 40:30
  but Raz agathe in In the raid seemed to line up in levels of
• 40:38
  progression but razza get herself felt like she was from
• 40:44
  it to Cut From a Different Cloth, like they built, those
• 40:47
  incarnates different and dealing with what she presented on in
• 40:55
  terms of organization and how demanding she was on precision
• 41:00
  and Stuff, felt like a different.
• 41:03
  Raid. And I think that that is the
• 41:07
  issue that I hope that they don't repeat with Sark Arif.
• 41:12
  I hope that he is, however, difficult the rate n ends up
• 41:17
  being. I hope that's our growth
• 41:19
  follows. That natural progression.
• 41:20
  And doesn't seem like such a big jump up because whereas agathe
• 41:25
  had a number of things that were Fairly stringent damage checks
• 41:32
  that were fairly nasty. One shots that were fairly
• 41:39
  everybody's individual responsibility that all lined up
• 41:45
  to be different than other bosses in that in last here,
• 41:50
  asked of groups and I think that, that's I don't want to say
• 41:58
  it's fine because there are people who are running this that
• 42:04
  boss on normal and maybe it kind of asked a little too much from
• 42:09
  them. And that's a completely
• 42:15
  different discussion of what mechanics you can put into a
• 42:20
  normal boss and what kind of things you can ask of a normal
• 42:24
  rate team. But I remember one designer had
• 42:29
  said, and and this is not a World of Warcraft designer, but
• 42:34
  just another designer that I happen to listen to had said
• 42:39
  that, There needs to be a level of difficulty, which is akin to,
• 42:49
  how many people are required to execute this.
• 42:52
  Well, and in a normal fight half the team might as well be, let's
• 43:03
  say Island a I do their tasks. That's not amazingly.
• 43:09
  Well, Right. The Island, the island AI is the
• 43:13
  stuff that they've put into the Battlegrounds for the, for the,
• 43:18
  a I bought beating up versions of rathian.
• 43:22
  Such they fight and they can, they can dispatch themselves,
• 43:30
  they can do healing, they can move from point A to point B.
• 43:34
  They can interact with stuff, but to not Precision players.
• 43:40
  and when you have a friends and family group, which is what I
• 43:44
  would consider normal teams and maybe early, Like first two or
• 43:52
  three bosses of a heroic, right? I think those should be there
• 43:59
  and absolute pug groups that don't need Discord.
• 44:06
  They should also have a place, but when you have fights that
• 44:10
  require a level of coordination, where those teams cannot
• 44:13
  possibly do it, I don't think that those sort of mechanics
• 44:17
  should come in until mid her. Awake.
• 44:23
  And then Mythic very tight coordination.
• 44:27
  That's where I think that should be.
• 44:32
  End of heroic and Mythic. And that's the sort of that's
• 44:38
  the sort of thing that I believe in, in terms of just my general
• 44:46
  raid implementation, because Not every Raider.
• 44:53
  Is going to have their head on a swivel and able to do do like
• 44:59
  the absolute best that their class / spec can offer and not
• 45:07
  every team is going to build up their comps to handle every
• 45:11
  single scenario. And so you need to build in a
• 45:15
  kind of forgiveness into raid. Encounters until you get to the
• 45:22
  higher difficulties where I think then you're right to be
• 45:24
  able to demand. Hey, you need to be able to deal
• 45:27
  with this Mass disease that comes out whether through having
• 45:33
  the healing output or by having the ability to Deal with the
• 45:41
  disease directly and then at a higher level it's like no you
• 45:45
  cannot heal through this. You need to be able to deal with
• 45:47
  the disease directly and those are different levels and
• 45:50
  different requirements, but I don't think you should be an elf
• 45:54
  are being like, nope. You need to be deal able to deal
• 45:56
  with the disease directly or you just die because you have no
• 45:59
  idea if you're going to have a Healer that can remove diseases
• 46:03
  or if the few other specs that come in in different roles that
• 46:09
  might have. The ability to deal with disease
• 46:11
  are going to spec into that or have that on their bars even if
• 46:15
  they have spect into it. Anyways, lots of different
• 46:20
  asides here. I apologize.
• 46:22
  If this is a little bit more ranty spin a while since I've
• 46:25
  got a chance to talk about a lot of Warcraft and all of this
• 46:29
  stuff just sort of brings back the sort of thoughts that I've
• 46:33
  had in my head. That said, talk about mythoclast
• 46:39
  talked about the raid. I want to talk about some stuff
• 46:44
  going on around the game. this week, the EU communities had an
• 46:50
  announcement that blizzard would be doing a World of Warcraft
• 46:55
  Community discords program and this would be something that
• 47:01
  different discords would be able to opt in as long as the
• 47:04
  controlling person for the Discord would sign an agreement,
• 47:12
  and people looked over the agreement and they were
• 47:15
  concerned There was some serious concerns in fact a couple of
• 47:21
  prominent discords said we've looked at these terms we've had
• 47:25
  them translated for us because it's a lot of legalese and this
• 47:31
  seems too much to seems like ridiculous and we're not going
• 47:34
  to we're not going to be under this.
• 47:38
  One of the terms was a term that required people to not disparage
• 47:46
  or Or B, say negative things about blizzard about their
• 47:53
  Associates, and partners, or about their products, and
• 47:56
  services, and people flipped at this.
• 48:00
  They looked into this and said, whoa, wait, I can't criticize
• 48:05
  blizzard. And then what's this?
• 48:07
  They can find me $100. If I criticize them.
• 48:15
  And when they said, I they didn't mean just themselves.
• 48:18
  They were speaking about like the Discord.
• 48:20
  So somebody walks into your Discord and says, all pleasured
• 48:23
  sucks and they're, they're charging us, and they're an act
• 48:27
  of Liz's after money. This this is stupid.
• 48:30
  I know like we're going to we're not going to sign up for this
• 48:34
  and there were other complaints, there is a bought that the
• 48:39
  agreement requires that you put in to your Discord which will
• 48:46
  harvest data check through conversations.
• 48:52
  And it felt big brother-ish on top of that.
• 48:57
  Some of these Provisions did not expire when the contract
• 49:03
  expired. So, if you said, forget it, I
• 49:06
  don't want to be in the contract anymore.
• 49:08
  Some of these Provisions. Still apply to you.
• 49:15
  And so people were alarmed. In fact, one Creator had decided
• 49:24
  to take an AI program to translate the legal text into
• 49:32
  more understood. Plain English.
• 49:35
  Don't do this. I will say this right now, an AI
• 49:40
  to translate it is. Nice.
• 49:45
  It's a nice idea but it doesn't work for a number of things.
• 49:50
  The first one being that without getting too technical these AI
• 49:55
  translations are not always accurate.
• 50:00
  There's issues with large language models and you can go
• 50:03
  into conversations batch @t P. JT, G, PT, that is a different
• 50:08
  show, but I'd love to talk your ear about it is something talk
• 50:11
  your ear off about it, but this show, He's already going long so
• 50:14
  we're not going to do that. But regardless it is not a it is
• 50:21
  not a translation that I would trust or tell you to trust.
• 50:26
  It can give you a little bit more understanding, but it can
• 50:29
  also give you miss representations.
• 50:32
  The other part is that when you do Sections through a
• 50:40
  translation, you lack the context and contracts.
• 50:46
  Like this are 100% defined by the way that the different
• 50:53
  Provisions interact with each other, when it says that like
• 50:59
  the program and member cannot make - or disparaging comments.
• 51:08
  Right. That is not the Discord entirety
• 51:13
  because there is a very specific person and meaning for program
• 51:19
  member which is defined earlier in the contract.
• 51:22
  And there is a very specific and legal meaning behind
• 51:27
  disparagement which is beyond the contract.
• 51:31
  And so yeah, if I were to sign this contract, And even somebody
• 51:36
  who is greatly affiliated with the show like live, like Joss
• 51:44
  like Garrett or any of those came on the show and it started
• 51:48
  saying Bliss, sucks and act isil, blah blah blah, blah blah.
• 51:52
  Like I don't get in trouble for that because that's not my
• 51:57
  written or verbal speech. If they go into the Discord and
• 52:02
  there's a bunch of people saying like, oh my goodness.
• 52:05
  Would put it put out the new toy and thereafter money is just
• 52:11
  coming into the shop. Anyways, well that's fine.
• 52:15
  And if I were to go into the Discord as a program member and
• 52:20
  say, you know what, I don't think that blizzard is right.
• 52:23
  And doing this, here's here's five things that I think they
• 52:27
  could have done better and be and just be critical.
• 52:30
  And this I think they felt short on this.
• 52:33
  I think they did in properly and I don't think the messaging Was
• 52:35
  right in in here. That still is not a breach of
• 52:40
  that contract. Yes, you could call that
• 52:43
  negative. However, in contractual
• 52:47
  agreement that is fair criticism and a contract like this cannot
• 52:54
  override my ability to Like it. Like this is talk about this on
• 53:02
  a u.s. level because a lot of people know about a u.s. u.s.
• 53:06
  levels freedom of Association. Trump's that you can't curtail
• 53:11
  somebody's freedom of Association.
• 53:12
  You can't curtail somebody's free speech in particular ways.
• 53:18
  Yes. If I was under a nondisclosure
• 53:20
  agreement, that is something because those property rights
• 53:25
  intellectual Properties, or whatever can be protected, but
• 53:29
  Is. It is fine for me to to say yes
• 53:35
  there was a strike action. Right.
• 53:38
  And the and the people are striking striking asking for
• 53:42
  this and I think those are reasonable things to ask for.
• 53:45
  Even though in this contract, there is a provision that talks
• 53:51
  about that that as a party, sorry, a program member.
• 53:56
  You are not to associate with union.
• 54:00
  Now this was a another Clause that was completely
• 54:06
  misconstrued. Let me pull this up for you guys
• 54:10
  because people read part of it and went beyond like I guess
• 54:19
  they just sort of skimmed. It didn't go beyond that, but
• 54:21
  there's a section that says, no Union involvement and then goes
• 54:25
  into legalese about given the nature of the services performed
• 54:30
  performed that No program members game content will be
• 54:39
  produced within the jurisdiction of any Union.
• 54:42
  Guild Arrangement including and then blah blah blah blah blah
• 54:45
  blah. Okay?
• 54:47
  This doesn't mean that you cannot be involved with a union.
• 54:51
  This doesn't mean that you cannot talk to a union.
• 54:55
  But what this does mean is that if I get something created for
• 55:01
  me or work done for me, that is done by any member of a union,
• 55:13
  right? Blizzard is not on the hook with
• 55:16
  that Union. The program itself and the
• 55:21
  content I produce for that program cannot be done with a
• 55:24
  union because blizzard and a union have to stay a part.
• 55:27
  They can't have that Association so you can do the work.
• 55:32
  But you can't have a union person, do it, because the union
• 55:36
  will demand that, that, that they are properly compensated,
• 55:40
  and blizzard can't enter into that agreement, not through.
• 55:43
  You not through me. That's what that provision was
• 55:47
  just don't get work done. Right?
• 55:53
  That were then on the hook to pay for.
• 55:55
  And if the provision even says like, Hey, listen, if this, if
• 55:58
  something happens and we're not aware of, it were willing to pay
• 56:01
  pay up to this amount. I think it's 100 us for this
• 56:06
  work, but then, it's defaulting, the contract.
• 56:08
  You're not working with us because we didn't sign up to
• 56:11
  work with that organization that Union body.
• 56:15
  That's what that was. You can still as a program
• 56:19
  member work with any, you know, you want.
• 56:21
  You just Can't do it in service of this contract.
• 56:24
  That's it. Anyways, suffice to say. we have
• 56:32
  a lot of people in this community who love blizzard
• 56:38
  games and love dealing with the contract but are very wizard
• 56:42
  wary of Blizzard corporate and a lot of what has been happening
• 56:50
  Both. Illegally and through other
• 56:55
  stuff with blizzard. And so seeing a lot of the legal
• 57:00
  work involved with with such a program, they were rightfully
• 57:04
  weary and I do not fault them for that.
• 57:08
  There is some stuff in this. This contract that seems scary
• 57:15
  speaking from my own personal experience.
• 57:19
  I have dealt with similar contracts before, I've worked
• 57:22
  with a lot of different companies and so, I understand
• 57:28
  when contracts are heavily one-sided because the business
• 57:34
  is protecting itself that is unfortunately, to be expected.
• 57:41
  But the other part to it is that there is a difference between
• 57:46
  the writing of a contract and the enforcement of a contract
• 57:54
  and this is going to be a weird one because let's say that I
• 57:59
  flagrantly violate the contract To the point where one of these
• 58:06
  finds come would be applied to me if the fine is $100, there is
• 58:13
  no way. Unless I have directly upset,
• 58:19
  Bobby kotick himself that they're going to pay their
• 58:27
  lawyers which guarantee you would cost them more than a
• 58:31
  hundred dollars that they could extract from me to come after
• 58:35
  me. I would I think and I don't mean
• 58:40
  to say that like yeah keep violating until it becomes
• 58:43
  profitable for them to come after you.
• 58:45
  No no I just mean that single violations will most likely end
• 58:49
  in a car in a termination of the contract so that they can walk
• 58:53
  away from you without like if if for Azeroth suddenly turned into
• 59:01
  the anti Warcraft podcast where we always talk about.
• 59:05
  Oh that kind of Acts he's such Such a horrible person and, and
• 59:09
  have you seen what link seed posted last time?
• 59:13
  Wow. What are they doing that?
• 59:15
  They can say, you know what, we really don't want to be
• 59:17
  associated with you anymore, and cut ties.
• 59:20
  That's what this contract genuinely is set up to do.
• 59:26
  That said there is a lot of backlash and blizzard took the
• 59:34
  opportunity. I believe it was kind of
• 59:35
  accents. Talk about cake.
• 59:36
  I've asked saying that hey this is what the intention was.
• 59:41
  We have no intention for doing this stuff and we're going to
• 59:47
  Review the work, the language of the contract and we'll get back
• 59:51
  to you which is great to hear to hear the feedback and look back
• 59:57
  at it and say, okay maybe we can adjust these things.
• 1:00:00
  Maybe we can more clearly articulate.
• 1:00:03
  What - what we mean by - speech. That's great, but that doesn't
• 1:00:07
  solve the bought issue and people were worried about the
• 1:00:12
  bot because when you sign up with this, they want to install
• 1:00:16
  All a bot, like I said, it Harvest data from your Discord
• 1:00:22
  and what date are they going to harvest?
• 1:00:24
  We don't know. And what are they going to do
• 1:00:26
  with it? We don't know.
• 1:00:28
  Okay, let's explain that that a little bit.
• 1:00:33
  Because you may jump into a Discord and it might be one of
• 1:00:37
  these partner discords. And you don't know what in the
• 1:00:40
  world, it's Gathering from you. Right now.
• 1:00:48
  There is a bot that is used in a number of different discords
• 1:00:53
  which is most likely, the Bots that blizzard is going to use.
• 1:00:58
  And I believe when I had heard this from the EU Community
• 1:01:05
  manager, that it is the same bot.
• 1:01:11
  I should put this in a in the show notes, but You can look it
• 1:01:17
  up yourself. The bot is called sprinkles, I
• 1:01:21
  believe, let me double-check that.
• 1:01:24
  Sorry, horrible radio. I know.
• 1:01:27
  Okay, so the bought is called sprinkler and basically what it
• 1:01:35
  does is that it parses through text.
• 1:01:39
  So when you send a message, it can read your message, just like
• 1:01:43
  if you had a community, Manager in your Discord and then the
• 1:01:51
  because they're not going to have community members and all
• 1:01:53
  of these discords, they're able to look to do a search.
• 1:01:58
  So, people typed in PvP, how many people were talking about
• 1:02:02
  PVP and across their servers. There were 150 messages about
• 1:02:06
  PVP today and it's like, oh, that's low or that's high.
• 1:02:09
  I don't know how how many servers or like how how it was
• 1:02:13
  but let's say it's a million messages.
• 1:02:15
  My Enos that is an arbitrary large number.
• 1:02:18
  They can be like, okay, well what were people saying about
• 1:02:21
  PVP? And this bought will go through
• 1:02:23
  and it'll be like, okay the most common common terms that people
• 1:02:28
  said in relation to PVP are ret Paladin and broken and fix
• 1:02:35
  please, and so that can give a community Manager At a Glance.
• 1:02:42
  A read on what people are talking about, for, VP and
• 1:02:47
  that's what sprinkler does. It is basically just parsing
• 1:02:54
  through way, more messages than any one person could do.
• 1:03:02
  Now, what they can do with that Collective information, that is
• 1:03:08
  another part that's vague. They could turn that around and
• 1:03:11
  say, okay, marketing department, Let's do an advertisement about
• 1:03:16
  VP and how we've balanced it for this thing.
• 1:03:20
  And then they'll do some ad about that as you've seen.
• 1:03:25
  As you can imagine it's unlikely that we would see an ad like
• 1:03:29
  that. But it could influence when
• 1:03:32
  they're doing an ad to show a paladin more prominently or not
• 1:03:36
  sure pal. And because that's something
• 1:03:38
  that people do that might trigger an audience as it were
• 1:03:45
  And I hope. that I'm assuaging people's fears because there was
• 1:03:51
  a lot of fears in this, I hope that blizzard themselves comes
• 1:03:55
  out and gives a little bit more information because genuinely, I
• 1:04:03
  think that they put this forward in a in a wish to meet the
• 1:04:12
  people where they are, we have seen, regardless of your take on
• 1:04:17
  it, there is a lot of instability on our social media
• 1:04:21
  platforms, Twitter in particular, And a lot of people
• 1:04:28
  communicate and Discord. A lot of people talk about this
• 1:04:33
  stuff in our class forms in the secret, finders Discord,
• 1:04:37
  whatever in our Guild discords. And so, please are just trying
• 1:04:45
  to reach out there, but they have to keep themselves.
• 1:04:47
  They have to limit their vulnerability when they do such
• 1:04:54
  things. And so putting an official badge
• 1:04:57
  on, somebody does require that. They because this person
• 1:05:04
  themselves is not going to be a staff member employee of
• 1:05:07
  Blizzard that they cover themselves off.
• 1:05:10
  And that's what this agreement was about.
• 1:05:14
  Anyways. Let me know what you guys think.
• 1:05:18
  Do you think it was a big overreach?
• 1:05:20
  Do you think that there are particular terms in here that
• 1:05:23
  are still egregious? Do you guys still have concerns?
• 1:05:27
  If you were to see a blizzard partnered Discord?
• 1:05:34
  Would you have concerns about it?
• 1:05:37
  Let me know genuinely I would love to see you know legal eagle
• 1:05:42
  or ho egg law cover this but quite frankly I think it's a
• 1:05:49
  nothing Burger. I don't think that the language
• 1:05:52
  was like particularly egregious. It's just that you know, we're
• 1:05:58
  content. Creators most of us are not used
• 1:06:01
  to such binding contracts. last thing that I want to talk about
• 1:06:10
  today, And that is Blizzard, has put in a pattern where they want
• 1:06:17
  to use a i generated artwork to flesh out their game worlds.
• 1:06:25
  this is, This is something that I think is very antithetical it
• 1:06:37
  just against blizzard. As I know it, when I think of
• 1:06:43
  Blizzard artwork when I think of what's made world Warcraft last
• 1:06:48
  as long as it has my goodness, the game is showing its age.
• 1:06:53
  There's no way to stop it right when I think about how long it
• 1:06:57
  took for it too. Really show its age and how nice
• 1:07:01
  it is, despite its age. A lot of that is because of the
• 1:07:08
  Handcrafted. Beautiful artwork.
• 1:07:12
  That the developers on the art team.
• 1:07:15
  Do they churn out beautiful pieces tear after tear character
• 1:07:23
  after character environment? After environment?
• 1:07:25
  Special effect after special effect.
• 1:07:29
  Fantastic work all done with the Blood Sweat and Tears,
• 1:07:36
  proverbial Blood, Sweat, and Tears. of artists that they hire
• 1:07:42
  and Put to work, and they put hours and hours of time into
• 1:07:49
  this. the AI generation tool isn't meant to replace those
• 1:07:56
  artists, but it is meant to give them tools to speed up their
• 1:08:04
  work. Its ambitious.
• 1:08:09
  It is also problematic. If it even if it works out the
• 1:08:18
  way that they want it to where you could have something like a
• 1:08:23
  brick wall and what they would do is they would take a quick
• 1:08:30
  sketch. They would give that quick
• 1:08:34
  sketch as an input image and they would then give a Target
• 1:08:41
  image and the computer would learn how to get from the input
• 1:08:46
  image to the Target image and then they would give it a new
• 1:08:49
  Target image. And there's also a new input
• 1:08:53
  image and then it would try and generate based on that new input
• 1:08:56
  image. What a brick wall would be or
• 1:09:01
  what a Stony path. Be, you're just like, you know,
• 1:09:04
  a brick texture. And that would allow an artist
• 1:09:07
  to be like, okay, this should be further.
• 1:09:10
  So, let me generate that. That texture that I can now map
• 1:09:20
  on without having to draw out that texture myself, which is a
• 1:09:24
  heavy amount of art work involved, and to get it looking
• 1:09:29
  right. Can take awhile in a lot of
• 1:09:32
  iteration. With this, they could cut that
• 1:09:38
  down tremendously. but, If it's not done, right?
• 1:09:47
  It could be, it could make things look very shoddy.
• 1:09:51
  And here's the thing, even if it's done, even if this works
• 1:09:57
  out the way that they hope it will, the way that these, these
• 1:10:04
  AI generated artwork things work, is that they have to pull
• 1:10:09
  from a huge library of Work. It is, it is creating an art
• 1:10:19
  style basically based off of emulation of images that already
• 1:10:23
  exists. And this is why these these Rai
• 1:10:28
  generation, aren't things are attacked for plagiarism because
• 1:10:32
  they are not building it themselves.
• 1:10:35
  They are learning from the database.
• 1:10:37
  That is the internet. Now, blizzard to their, to their
• 1:10:41
  credit are going to have their AI models own.
• 1:10:45
  Only learn from their own artwork, which one will make
• 1:10:49
  their they're generated images more unique to Blizzard artwork
• 1:10:56
  because it won't be getting influences from outside stuff.
• 1:10:59
  But the drawback is of that is that they're less likely to be
• 1:11:04
  more accurate in what they put out because their library is
• 1:11:08
  going to be considerably smaller So this this might just be a red
• 1:11:15
  herring for them. I'm not sure.
• 1:11:19
  I just I where I worry, where it goes because what I have loved
• 1:11:24
  about and like, I just went through the whole Love Letter
• 1:11:28
  before and I don't want that replaced with something that is
• 1:11:32
  going to be fairly generic. We will see.
• 1:11:37
  It is something that they have put in a patent for, right?
• 1:11:42
  They want to do this. It is a noble thing to try and
• 1:11:47
  save your designers, some time, but we will see Mike your
• 1:11:55
  Bearer. Had a explained there there.
• 1:12:01
  Planned approach saying that blizzard will always strive to
• 1:12:05
  maintain blizzard quality. You're trying to associate
• 1:12:09
  associate, recent AI, advances, generative, AI to something.
• 1:12:14
  Completely unrelated our Approach at blizzard is to use
• 1:12:17
  machine learning and AI in ways that are additive empathetic and
• 1:12:21
  allow our talented teams to spend more time on the highest
• 1:12:25
  quality creative thinking and task So that was in response to
• 1:12:32
  a gamer rant article because gamer aunt had broken the story
• 1:12:37
  again I'll throw that gamer. It article into the The show
• 1:12:45
  notes and you can always check those out as well.
• 1:12:50
  But let me know what you think. Do you think that this will
• 1:12:55
  allow them to get out some some content more quickly and allow
• 1:13:00
  them to produce even more assets?
• 1:13:03
  That's the goal though. Mmm, maybe that is a possible
• 1:13:09
  advantage of this, is that if they can produce art more
• 1:13:13
  quickly, we could see even more being added into the The world
• 1:13:19
  where characters who don't get their own unique models, because
• 1:13:24
  my goodness, the amount of time it would take to create their
• 1:13:27
  own models. Might actually start getting
• 1:13:30
  unique models, because it doesn't take that much time.
• 1:13:34
  We could see more sets of armor because texturing, that armor is
• 1:13:41
  a lot easier and quicker than it used to be those.
• 1:13:44
  Those are things that we could see in the World of Warcraft.
• 1:13:49
  Is it going to come at a cost you guys let me know and if you
• 1:13:53
  want to join in the conversation, make sure you join
• 1:13:56
  the Discord. That's bit.ly slash fast Discord
• 1:13:59
  where we are talking about this sort of stuff all the time and
• 1:14:03
  now that I am back from vacation, the conversations will
• 1:14:07
  continue with me involved. I really do think that catching
• 1:14:12
  up a bit on everything. You guys have been saying has
• 1:14:15
  been really cool. So make sure you join us again.
• 1:14:18
  That's B Dot Li / fast Discord. And until next time, guys, may
• 1:14:22
  all your hits be credits.