Episode 151: The War Within is NOW

[00:00:01] [SPEAKER_01]: Warning. This program contains strong language, auditory violence, and mental nudity. It is intended only for mature audiences. Listener discretion is advised.

[00:00:21] [SPEAKER_03]: Welcome to your uncensored home for World of Warcraft news and opinions. This is Unshackled Fury.

[00:01:01] [SPEAKER_01]: The voices have drawn us in as a new land beckons, and the time to take the fight to the enemy is now.

[00:01:10] [SPEAKER_01]: So welcome back for Episode 151 of your uncensored home for World of Warcraft news and opinions, Unshackled Fury.

[00:01:20] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm your host Berzerker, and with me once again is the one-man hero talent known as Mr. Jez Corden.

[00:01:28] [SPEAKER_01]: Welcome back again, good sir.

[00:01:30] [SPEAKER_02]: Hello, hello, hello, hello. Yes indeed, it's all Hound's War Within this week. Pretty exciting.

[00:01:38] [SPEAKER_01]: We are. We are right in the middle of it. We were talking right before we recorded. It's hard to take a break right in the middle of it right now because it's just...

[00:01:49] [SPEAKER_01]: To get to the end, it's good folks. It's really good.

[00:01:58] [SPEAKER_01]: So, so today I mentioned a couple times doing like a live show and this isn't a live show because we're not on Twitch in that way or anything like that.

[00:02:05] [SPEAKER_01]: But this will be probably a little looser of a show than usual.

[00:02:11] [SPEAKER_01]: So if you hear like hiccups and fuck ups and noises and things like live with it because that's how it goes during fucking expansion launching.

[00:02:21] [SPEAKER_01]: It's more fun this way. So as we record this, we are right in the middle of early access. Both Jez and I have been in.

[00:02:30] [SPEAKER_01]: We've been fucking around and seeing the thing and we're going to talk about that.

[00:02:37] [SPEAKER_01]: But when this episode drops, it should be Monday. It should be release day.

[00:02:44] [SPEAKER_01]: So hopefully nothing will get too spoiled.

[00:02:47] [SPEAKER_01]: And if it does, the course of this conversation won't be long until you see whatever we talked about. So sorry.

[00:02:53] [SPEAKER_01]: But we are going to try to keep it relatively spoiler free ish this first episode.

[00:02:58] [SPEAKER_01]: Give people a chance to see the story because there are some really good story beats.

[00:03:05] [SPEAKER_01]: There's one in particular that Jez and I have already messaged each other about.

[00:03:10] [SPEAKER_01]: And it's so fucking good.

[00:03:16] [SPEAKER_01]: And we'll have to wait one more episode to talk about that.

[00:03:19] [SPEAKER_01]: But we will and you'll know if you haven't. If you have seen it, you know what I'm talking about.

[00:03:24] [SPEAKER_01]: If you haven't seen it, you will.

[00:03:27] [SPEAKER_01]: But I promised before we get to all the good Warcraft stuff, I promised that this week I would get the metal album of the week like back to like metal, like metal metal.

[00:03:39] [SPEAKER_01]: Not like, you know, a side vein or, you know, tangential or whatever.

[00:03:44] [SPEAKER_01]: No, we're going we're going hard and heavy right to the heart of metal them itself.

[00:03:52] [SPEAKER_01]: So for this week I have for you another fantastic Bay Area band that if you haven't heard of them, here's your introduction and you're welcome.

[00:04:06] [SPEAKER_01]: So the album for this week is The Blackening by the band Machine Head.

[00:04:13] [SPEAKER_01]: And if you don't know who Machine Head is, they've been around a long time.

[00:04:17] [SPEAKER_01]: Rob Flynn is their lead singer. He was part of a band called Vile Lentz.

[00:04:23] [SPEAKER_01]: Vile-Lentz. Another great Bay Area thrash metal band.

[00:04:28] [SPEAKER_01]: Put this shit in your ears.

[00:04:30] [SPEAKER_01]: It is hard and heavy from the front to the back, and it's going to make you want to run through a Nerubian or a brick wall or whatever you got in front of you.

[00:04:39] [SPEAKER_01]: It is hard and heavy and I love it.

[00:04:42] [SPEAKER_01]: And they've been around forever and they're still making music.

[00:04:44] [SPEAKER_01]: So if you ever see them anywhere touring, go fucking see them.

[00:04:50] [SPEAKER_01]: They are a classic, awesome metal band.

[00:04:53] [SPEAKER_01]: But as soon as you put this album on, as soon as you fire up The Blackening, there's a little bit of an intro to that first song.

[00:04:59] [SPEAKER_01]: You're going to be going, what's Berserker talking about?

[00:05:02] [SPEAKER_01]: But then when it hits, fucking hits and then it goes for a whole album.

[00:05:07] [SPEAKER_01]: It's badass.

[00:05:10] [SPEAKER_01]: Jez, are you familiar with Machine Head?

[00:05:12] [SPEAKER_02]: I'm familiar with Machine Head.

[00:05:13] [SPEAKER_02]: I haven't listened enough to Machine Head, unfortunately.

[00:05:19] [SPEAKER_02]: I must dedicate some time to listen to some of their stuff more.

[00:05:24] [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know why I haven't.

[00:05:26] [SPEAKER_02]: It's just I've always meant to, but I just never have.

[00:05:33] [SPEAKER_02]: On the on the playing over because I'm back in Germany now, I was listening to Static X.

[00:05:40] [SPEAKER_02]: It did make me think of this segment.

[00:05:47] [SPEAKER_02]: I really love Static X, man.

[00:05:50] [SPEAKER_02]: I just love Wayne Static's voice.

[00:05:53] [SPEAKER_02]: They were huge.

[00:05:54] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, they were so big when I was a kid.

[00:05:59] [SPEAKER_02]: Some bands of that era kind of dropped off for me over the years.

[00:06:02] [SPEAKER_02]: I used to listen to bands like Dry Kill Logic and Edema and stuff like that.

[00:06:08] [SPEAKER_02]: Some of these new metal spin-offs.

[00:06:14] [SPEAKER_02]: Some of the bands like Core and Static X and Deftones, they've sort of remained timeless for me.

[00:06:22] [SPEAKER_02]: I really need to check Machine Head out.

[00:06:25] [SPEAKER_02]: I will endeavor to do that after this show when I get back into the Ringing Deeps.

[00:06:31] [SPEAKER_02]: There it is.

[00:06:32] [SPEAKER_02]: Battle some spiders.

[00:06:33] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, perfect.

[00:06:34] [SPEAKER_01]: Perfect.

[00:06:35] [SPEAKER_01]: Perfect.

[00:06:36] [SPEAKER_01]: Did you, you mentioning all these bands, did you ever get the Oz Fest tours?

[00:06:43] [SPEAKER_01]: Did they ever come anywhere near you?

[00:06:45] [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know.

[00:06:47] [SPEAKER_02]: Honestly, I've never been to a festival myself.

[00:06:51] [SPEAKER_02]: Some of the big festivals in UK include things like Download.

[00:06:56] [SPEAKER_01]: You get fucking mega huge ones.

[00:06:58] [SPEAKER_01]: You get the best ones.

[00:06:59] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, like Boston Brewery, Reading and Leeds and stuff like that.

[00:07:02] [SPEAKER_02]: But I just the idea of being this com like I'm a creature of comfort man.

[00:07:11] [SPEAKER_02]: The idea of being slimy and muddy in a field and with all tons of drunk people just does not appeal to me, man.

[00:07:20] [SPEAKER_02]: Just does not.

[00:07:21] [SPEAKER_01]: It is a scene.

[00:07:22] [SPEAKER_01]: It is a scene.

[00:07:24] [SPEAKER_01]: There's no doubt.

[00:07:25] [SPEAKER_02]: For one night only like to see a band.

[00:07:27] [SPEAKER_02]: That's great.

[00:07:27] [SPEAKER_02]: But to do it like over the course of a whole day and then maybe two or three days if you're staying for the whole thing, especially with some of the prices like Glastonbury.

[00:07:37] [SPEAKER_02]: Hundreds of pounds now.

[00:07:39] [SPEAKER_02]: My mom has a ticket from Glastonbury 1 and it was like three quid or something like that.

[00:07:47] [SPEAKER_02]: Oh my god.

[00:07:48] [SPEAKER_02]: Five dollars to get in.

[00:07:50] [SPEAKER_02]: Wow.

[00:07:51] [SPEAKER_02]: Maybe it wasn't even that much.

[00:07:52] [SPEAKER_02]: Maybe I'm overestimating how much it was, but she's got like she's got like she's got like a collage of all the tickets.

[00:07:58] [SPEAKER_02]: She's seen Ozzy Osbourne and all these kind of black Sabbath, you know, all those bands.

[00:08:06] [SPEAKER_01]: Awesome.

[00:08:08] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, they used to do three stages for these OzFests where there was the main stage and then there was the second stage out in a parking lot somewhere.

[00:08:17] [SPEAKER_01]: And then there'd be like a little third stage somewhere.

[00:08:20] [SPEAKER_01]: And then you could see all kinds of stuff.

[00:08:22] [SPEAKER_01]: That's funny.

[00:08:23] [SPEAKER_01]: Static X. That was the last time I ever saw them.

[00:08:26] [SPEAKER_01]: They did good.

[00:08:27] [SPEAKER_01]: They were one of the openers, I think on the main stage.

[00:08:29] [SPEAKER_01]: One of the years out here.

[00:08:31] [SPEAKER_01]: Shoreline amphitheater for those in California and maybe near the Bay Area shoreline amphitheater was the spot.

[00:08:39] [SPEAKER_01]: But yes, this week, this opening week of the war within the blackening by machine head with with we're going to throw in one more.

[00:08:47] [SPEAKER_01]: There's a bonus, a bonus album courtesy of Jason over there at the starting zone.

[00:08:54] [SPEAKER_01]: The an album that's actually called the war within by shadows fall.

[00:09:01] [SPEAKER_01]: And that is also like just fucking metal up your ass from start to finish.

[00:09:07] [SPEAKER_01]: So if you want something that's more thematic in name, there you go.

[00:09:12] [SPEAKER_01]: The war within my shadows fall.

[00:09:14] [SPEAKER_01]: You can listen to that, too.

[00:09:17] [SPEAKER_01]: Uh, beyond that, jazz, it's the best time.

[00:09:23] [SPEAKER_01]: It is the best time.

[00:09:24] [SPEAKER_01]: Be a World of Warcraft player.

[00:09:27] [SPEAKER_01]: Launch seasons are always just amazing.

[00:09:31] [SPEAKER_01]: And the feeling that you get, I think, as a player is always wonderful before jumping in like officially for the opening days and leveling.

[00:09:42] [SPEAKER_01]: And doing all that kind of stuff.

[00:09:44] [SPEAKER_01]: Do you have any rituals that you do?

[00:09:47] [SPEAKER_01]: Do you do pair anything?

[00:09:49] [SPEAKER_01]: Do you do anything to get yourself ready?

[00:09:51] [SPEAKER_01]: Do you stock up on something or is it just another day at the office?

[00:09:54] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, I for me, what I tend to do now is I tend to like clear my bags out, sell my mats a few weeks before while the market's still ticking over.

[00:10:07] [SPEAKER_02]: You know, and get, you know, and then park my character where it needs to be.

[00:10:14] [SPEAKER_02]: And then I kind of like try to take a break from the game before expansion drops.

[00:10:19] [SPEAKER_02]: I also even if I do get better access, I try to play it as little as possible so I don't get spoilers.

[00:10:26] [SPEAKER_02]: So they feel like when you feel when you experience everything polished and connected together, those story beats we're talking about earlier, there's just so much more impactful like that.

[00:10:36] [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, so how about you?

[00:10:39] [SPEAKER_02]: So do you have rituals?

[00:10:44] [SPEAKER_01]: I end game.

[00:10:46] [SPEAKER_01]: Same thing, right?

[00:10:47] [SPEAKER_01]: Try to clean out bags, try to get prep, try to get ready, clean everything.

[00:10:51] [SPEAKER_01]: And it's also out here in the real world.

[00:10:53] [SPEAKER_01]: My desk, I give my desk a thorough cleaning.

[00:10:56] [SPEAKER_01]: I usually try to dust off my PC and kind of like make my space nice and nice and clean and organized because as has been the tradition.

[00:11:08] [SPEAKER_01]: Since the release of Wrath of the Lich King, me and the homie Rommel get together and just level with each other for several days solid.

[00:11:19] [SPEAKER_01]: And so, you know, now I've got a pile of dishes and coffee cups and my trash cans full of stuff and like have to make room to hunker down in here for a few days.

[00:11:32] [SPEAKER_01]: So yes, since Thursday it's been pretty solid and my family has been good about leaving me alone.

[00:11:38] [SPEAKER_01]: And I block everything out on the calendar so everybody knows.

[00:11:43] [SPEAKER_01]: Don't expect me to be anywhere but literally right where I'm sitting right now talking to you.

[00:11:50] [SPEAKER_01]: And still going to be that way tonight because luckily for me speaking of concerts, my wife and child will be out at a concert tonight.

[00:11:57] [SPEAKER_01]: And so I got all night tonight to continue enjoying what we're doing.

[00:12:04] [SPEAKER_01]: So before we get to the expansion itself, we have a pre-patch event.

[00:12:11] [SPEAKER_01]: We talked about this, I think, a couple of times back and forth with the Radiant Echoes event.

[00:12:17] [SPEAKER_01]: And I found it to be very helpful with the amount of XP that they were giving and then lowering.

[00:12:26] [SPEAKER_01]: And so I actually have, Jez, this is the first time it's ever happened.

[00:12:29] [SPEAKER_01]: I have four, I have four max level characters going into the launch.

[00:12:33] [SPEAKER_01]: That's never happened. Never. Ever. Ever.

[00:12:37] [SPEAKER_01]: That's how easy it was to level with this event.

[00:12:41] [SPEAKER_01]: Like you just, you go in. I noticed that people were kind of going from one single kill kind of little bubble to another single kill.

[00:12:50] [SPEAKER_01]: Like there was some where you had to collect things and then there were some little sub events where you could just kill like one guy.

[00:12:56] [SPEAKER_01]: And people were, groups were just ping pong in between the ones where you just had to kill like one big elite or something.

[00:13:01] [SPEAKER_01]: And so you're just grinding out that rep and that XP to open up, you know, okay, kill an Exia or kill the Lich King or whatever it was.

[00:13:09] [SPEAKER_01]: And then boom, you go kill that one, get a bunch of XP and boom, we're back out killing.

[00:13:14] [SPEAKER_01]: And it was just a continuous circle, just nonstop, it seemed like.

[00:13:20] [SPEAKER_01]: And I think it's still going on right now. We still got one more day.

[00:13:24] [SPEAKER_01]: It probably will be done by the time this episode hits.

[00:13:26] [SPEAKER_01]: But I found it to be insanely fast and quick.

[00:13:30] [SPEAKER_01]: And I was leveling from 60 to 70 in, I don't know, less than 90 minutes an hour.

[00:13:36] [SPEAKER_01]: It was crazy. I've never seen that before.

[00:13:41] [SPEAKER_01]: Did you participate or take advantage of that at all?

[00:13:45] [SPEAKER_02]: No, honestly, I was just, I've been very busy over the summer, I suppose.

[00:13:54] [SPEAKER_02]: Gamescom and all that kind of stuff. So my participation in that kind of stuff was pretty minimal.

[00:14:00] [SPEAKER_02]: I did experience it though.

[00:14:01] [SPEAKER_02]: But and also obviously my peeps were talking about it and stuff like that.

[00:14:07] [SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, it was a godsend to those of us that don't level at all our alts.

[00:14:17] [SPEAKER_02]: I just don't really alt, man.

[00:14:22] [SPEAKER_02]: Demonology, I've been playing Demon Warlock since the end of the NER.

[00:14:29] [SPEAKER_02]: And I've tried alting and I'm just like, where's my demon?

[00:14:34] [SPEAKER_02]: Where's my demons?

[00:14:35] [SPEAKER_02]: I tried playing a hunter and it's just like, man, this wolf just ain't hitting right.

[00:14:41] [SPEAKER_02]: It's just not hitting right for me.

[00:14:44] [SPEAKER_01]: I do because every time I jump on something else, I'm like, where's my whirlwind?

[00:14:48] [SPEAKER_01]: Where's my Odin's Fury? It's not there. What the fuck? What kind of class is this?

[00:14:53] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, they get four up now.

[00:14:58] [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe you didn't participate in any of this, but I know because I saw and I know you want to talk about this.

[00:15:05] [SPEAKER_01]: There were, among other things, two pre-launch videos.

[00:15:12] [SPEAKER_01]: I want to call them that that were put up by Blizzard.

[00:15:16] [SPEAKER_01]: We knew we were going to get some kind of we talked about like a war bringers type short like that sort of thing.

[00:15:21] [SPEAKER_01]: And there was one that they released Red Thread of Destiny or Threads of Destiny.

[00:15:26] [SPEAKER_01]: And it was how Zalatath essentially got to the Nerubians.

[00:15:29] [SPEAKER_01]: And you see her coming out of that crazy looking mural and doing her whole corruption bit.

[00:15:38] [SPEAKER_01]: But and it's great. And I recommend you watch it.

[00:15:41] [SPEAKER_01]: But just I know that I'm going to throw this to you right now.

[00:15:45] [SPEAKER_01]: The Alaria light and shadow cinematic.

[00:15:48] [SPEAKER_01]: I know this was all this was all you just had your name all over.

[00:15:52] [SPEAKER_02]: I know you. Yeah, man.

[00:15:58] [SPEAKER_02]: The cinematics they put out to sort of begin driving hype for the war within were fantastic.

[00:16:05] [SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, I know this is not a popular opinion, but about for Azeroth, at least narratively speaking,

[00:16:11] [SPEAKER_02]: was probably my favorite expansion.

[00:16:14] [SPEAKER_02]: And I don't obviously with Shadowlands, some of those plot threads didn't land very well in the end, should we say.

[00:16:22] [SPEAKER_02]: You know, I think like the way they built that expansion off was fantastic.

[00:16:27] [SPEAKER_02]: And they did the whole war bringers thing, you know, the N'zoth fish and, you know, all that.

[00:16:34] [SPEAKER_02]: And N'zoth himself, you know, that whole that whole season, the N'zoth season is probably my favorite season maybe ever.

[00:16:42] [SPEAKER_02]: I love that raid. I love that boss fight like everything about it was just fantastic.

[00:16:47] [SPEAKER_02]: And like to see like we've started getting these similar kind of similar kind of treatment with these sort of motion comics,

[00:16:57] [SPEAKER_02]: which I like some people don't like in my notice, but I think they I think they're really fantastic.

[00:17:01] [SPEAKER_02]: Awesome. Yeah, I love them like the arts just incredible.

[00:17:05] [SPEAKER_02]: And obviously, like they're not they're not going to blow up the budget in the same way like the intro CGI will.

[00:17:13] [SPEAKER_02]: But my God, intro CGI as well is just fucking.

[00:17:17] [SPEAKER_02]: They are Blizzard has been consistently the apex of CGI for decades now, like decades.

[00:17:25] [SPEAKER_02]: Like they are always like pushing it to the next level.

[00:17:30] [SPEAKER_02]: Like that is just incredible that they're still able to maintain that is one of the best CGI cinematics I've ever seen the intro to the War Within.

[00:17:39] [SPEAKER_02]: But, you know, Light and Shadow specifically.

[00:17:45] [SPEAKER_02]: I was the actual presentation of it was fantastic.

[00:17:49] [SPEAKER_02]: There are I do have some concerns about Elyria.

[00:17:54] [SPEAKER_02]: She's kind of she's she's kind of she's coming off as a she's very similar to Tyrande, man.

[00:18:02] [SPEAKER_02]: I kind of feel like Dog with the bow and sort of on the haunt, you know, revenge and all this kind of stuff.

[00:18:10] [SPEAKER_02]: And and also like wrestling with the the Night Warrior stuff and and like instead of the Night Warrior, it's the void.

[00:18:19] [SPEAKER_02]: You know, it's kind of like this.

[00:18:21] [SPEAKER_02]: She even sounds like and looks like Tyrande, I suppose they're both elves.

[00:18:26] [SPEAKER_02]: They both use a bow. So the whole time I was thinking like Elyria is way too similar to Tyrande.

[00:18:32] [SPEAKER_02]: And I kind of feel like this could have been a Tyrande role.

[00:18:35] [SPEAKER_02]: This could be like Tyrande is like because the whole thing about the Night Warrior that has that's void coded man in some way.

[00:18:44] [SPEAKER_02]: Like the whole night and darkness that's void coded, man.

[00:18:48] [SPEAKER_02]: I don't care what anyone says. So this could they could this it could be Tyrande in this role right now.

[00:18:55] [SPEAKER_02]: She's she's got she's still the Night Warrior or whatever.

[00:18:59] [SPEAKER_02]: And Zala Tathi is manipulating that aspect of her or whatever, you know, I don't know.

[00:19:06] [SPEAKER_02]: But we won't get deep into spoilers.

[00:19:09] [SPEAKER_02]: But like light light and shadow has been out for a while now.

[00:19:12] [SPEAKER_02]: But I also I think like Blizzard should if it was me, I would be cognizant of the fact that the plot threads here are very similar.

[00:19:22] [SPEAKER_02]: Not just to Tyrande, but you know, you could go back even further and I can't remember a name now.

[00:19:27] [SPEAKER_02]: The chick who was hunting Illidan. I can't remember her name.

[00:19:31] [SPEAKER_02]: May have Shadow Song. May have may have yet.

[00:19:34] [SPEAKER_02]: You can go back even further. So I was may have again, you know.

[00:19:37] [SPEAKER_02]: So I think there's something there's something to be said that they could work a little harder to differentiate between Tyrande potentially and Illyria.

[00:19:49] [SPEAKER_02]: And and I also like I'm also salty, man.

[00:19:56] [SPEAKER_02]: I'm just going to say it. They're trying to replace Savanis, man.

[00:20:00] [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, they're trying to they're trying to replace replace my wife, man.

[00:20:04] [SPEAKER_02]: And I mean, she is a wind ride. Yeah, it doesn't say it doesn't say right.

[00:20:08] [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, some way and I know Savanis made a few small mistakes, very small, tiny mistakes.

[00:20:18] [SPEAKER_02]: But hey, live and let live right.

[00:20:23] [SPEAKER_02]: You know, maybe it could be so honest, you know, redeem myself and just be like, Hey guys, I'm back.

[00:20:28] [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, by the way, I'm a good guy now. I'm going to help you guys with that.

[00:20:31] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's all good.

[00:20:35] [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, fuck it. Maybe she could just be working for Salatath and just like, well, actually, guys, could you imagine?

[00:20:41] [SPEAKER_02]: Holy shit.

[00:20:43] [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, man. I don't think I don't think we'll see Savanis for a very long time.

[00:20:47] [SPEAKER_02]: So I'm not but I think that could work a little bit harder to develop Illyria's character beyond just an angry, huntress elf.

[00:20:56] [SPEAKER_02]: Just like, yeah.

[00:20:58] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, and in particular, I know what this light and shadow cinematic you you appreciated the level of violence in particular.

[00:21:05] [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, yeah. Yeah. We talked about it.

[00:21:07] [SPEAKER_02]: It does feel like oh, yeah.

[00:21:10] [SPEAKER_02]: I feel like Warcraft is taking a darker tone.

[00:21:13] [SPEAKER_02]: And I have to wonder if that's Chris Metzen's influence in some way.

[00:21:17] [SPEAKER_02]: Like again, no spoilers.

[00:21:19] [SPEAKER_02]: But like some of the stuff in the war within already is like, bruh.

[00:21:24] [SPEAKER_02]: This is like we're stepping deeper into horror territory here.

[00:21:27] [SPEAKER_02]: And I feel like we have to we have to step into horror territory if we're dealing with Lovecraftian space void horrors.

[00:21:35] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, let's let's not make them fluffy cartoony Pixar void horrors.

[00:21:40] [SPEAKER_02]: Let's make them actual like not quite Diablo level, but like at least sort of like, oh my God, that's actually uncanny and creepy.

[00:21:49] [SPEAKER_02]: And there is some stuff in the war within.

[00:21:52] [SPEAKER_02]: No, again, no spoilers that that sort of starts treading in that direction.

[00:21:56] [SPEAKER_02]: And it's fantastic to see, you know, and we're not even we're not even at like midnight yet, which presumably from this expansion title, that's going to be God scary.

[00:22:07] [SPEAKER_02]: I got a feeling we might actually lose in this expansion.

[00:22:10] [SPEAKER_02]: And the next expansion is dealing with the aftermath of losing, you know, and that way.

[00:22:16] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and and you know what?

[00:22:20] [SPEAKER_02]: What does it actually what does a void lord actually look like?

[00:22:23] [SPEAKER_02]: You know, they've got if the old gods look pretty terrifying in of themselves, but they're just weapons of the void.

[00:22:33] [SPEAKER_02]: So the void laws have to be a next level of horrific and corrupting.

[00:22:39] [SPEAKER_02]: And I think like some of the some of these sort of more violent darker story beats are sort of setting the groundwork for that maybe.

[00:22:45] [SPEAKER_01]: But hey, we'll see. Yeah, it's possible.

[00:22:49] [SPEAKER_01]: If nothing else, now we understand how Elyria's costume changed or armor change.

[00:22:56] [SPEAKER_01]: It was like, how does she go from the one that we've seen to the blue and the white?

[00:23:01] [SPEAKER_01]: And she just throws all that shit in a fire.

[00:23:03] [SPEAKER_01]: So, I mean, that's one way to do it and make a change.

[00:23:07] [SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, again, no, no spoilers.

[00:23:11] [SPEAKER_01]: But that is a a through line during the campaign for sure is Elyria and single mindedness.

[00:23:22] [SPEAKER_01]: And how may that affect something?

[00:23:26] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, the interplay with Anduin and all he's got going on like there's there's there's a lot there.

[00:23:34] [SPEAKER_01]: Let's talk a little bit about what it is.

[00:23:37] [SPEAKER_01]: Remind everybody what's going on.

[00:23:40] [SPEAKER_01]: So this Monday, August 26th and I know there's a map and there's some times and you have to check your local time and see when exactly things are going to launch.

[00:23:50] [SPEAKER_01]: But finally, we're going to have the full open launch.

[00:23:54] [SPEAKER_01]: We'll have all the zones.

[00:23:55] [SPEAKER_01]: Isle of Dorne, Reying Deep, Hallowfall, Ash Kahet.

[00:23:59] [SPEAKER_01]: You'll have your Earthen.

[00:24:02] [SPEAKER_01]: Let's see.

[00:24:03] [SPEAKER_01]: You'll be able to go into your into the delves.

[00:24:05] [SPEAKER_01]: You'll have hero talents once you level up.

[00:24:09] [SPEAKER_01]: What else am I thinking of?

[00:24:12] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, sky writing.

[00:24:13] [SPEAKER_01]: We have sky writing already.

[00:24:15] [SPEAKER_01]: A pro tip.

[00:24:16] [SPEAKER_01]: If you don't like sky writing, which I've seen people complain about sky writing are all wrong.

[00:24:20] [SPEAKER_01]: If you want static flying in Kaz-El-Gar, you have to just go explore everything.

[00:24:28] [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that's the reward for exploring everything.

[00:24:31] [SPEAKER_01]: So you still have to explore everything and get your flight.

[00:24:36] [SPEAKER_01]: Let's see here.

[00:24:38] [SPEAKER_01]: On top of that quick rundown of dates.

[00:24:42] [SPEAKER_01]: So early access was the 22nd.

[00:24:46] [SPEAKER_01]: Let's see.

[00:24:47] [SPEAKER_01]: Looking at 3 p.m. Pacific time release for War Within Widely on the 26th.

[00:24:54] [SPEAKER_01]: Season one.

[00:24:56] [SPEAKER_01]: So that's and they're and they're splitting up heroic again.

[00:24:59] [SPEAKER_01]: Apparently, they want to get more people time.

[00:25:02] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm mixed feelings about that.

[00:25:04] [SPEAKER_01]: But September 10th, season one.

[00:25:07] [SPEAKER_01]: So that's normal and heroic raid difficulty.

[00:25:10] [SPEAKER_01]: Raid Finder Wing One, Mythic Zero Dungeons, Heroic Seasonal Dungeons, a new World Boss and PVP Season One.

[00:25:21] [SPEAKER_01]: So that does not start until September 10th.

[00:25:26] [SPEAKER_01]: Then September 17th, Mythic Raids finally open up, Mythic Plus Dungeons open, Raid Finder Wing Two opens and Raid Story Mode opens.

[00:25:36] [SPEAKER_01]: I do want to touch on that story mode.

[00:25:38] [SPEAKER_01]: And then the 24th of September, you have Raid Finder Wing Three.

[00:25:43] [SPEAKER_01]: So those are kind of the major dates of everything that's coming.

[00:25:50] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm trying to think of it.

[00:25:52] [SPEAKER_01]: There's season four Dragonfly that ends.

[00:25:58] [SPEAKER_01]: But for us, Jez, you and I who have thus far quested through what is to come for folks that haven't had early access.

[00:26:10] [SPEAKER_01]: I know I got to 80.

[00:26:12] [SPEAKER_01]: I believe you are also at or near Max.

[00:26:14] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm 80 now.

[00:26:15] [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, you're 80 now.

[00:26:19] [SPEAKER_01]: The fear that I had coming into this expansion was that Dragonfly universally, I think, regarded as a good expansion.

[00:26:29] [SPEAKER_01]: Where it ranks in the Pantheon, no pun intended.

[00:26:33] [SPEAKER_01]: It's a good expansion compared to Shadowlands.

[00:26:36] [SPEAKER_01]: Who knows?

[00:26:38] [SPEAKER_01]: We'll see.

[00:26:39] [SPEAKER_01]: So the question was, could they do it again?

[00:26:42] [SPEAKER_01]: Could that momentum keep going?

[00:26:44] [SPEAKER_01]: And I think I knew within the first 20 minutes they'd done it again.

[00:26:53] [SPEAKER_01]: So I've seen all four zones.

[00:26:55] [SPEAKER_01]: I played through the campaign in its entirety without giving anything away.

[00:27:02] [SPEAKER_01]: I will also tell you, you will need to do other side quests to get to max level.

[00:27:08] [SPEAKER_01]: The campaign itself is not enough to get you all the way up there.

[00:27:11] [SPEAKER_01]: So Jez told me before we start recording, you I think are doing the smart thing.

[00:27:17] [SPEAKER_01]: You're taking your sweet ass time and you're clearing out the zones.

[00:27:22] [SPEAKER_01]: I am.

[00:27:22] [SPEAKER_02]: I am like, I mean part of the motivation with that is like the warband system, right?

[00:27:27] [SPEAKER_02]: So now like the renowned tracks for all your characters, which is really cool.

[00:27:31] [SPEAKER_02]: But I also like, I really want to get deep.

[00:27:34] [SPEAKER_02]: I like getting deep into the lore and some of the explanations for some of this stuff or sort of get an idea of where Blizz is going.

[00:27:41] [SPEAKER_02]: With the story because I really do.

[00:27:43] [SPEAKER_02]: I really am invested in the story of Warcraft and like even though like some of it's, you know, a bit hand fisted and sometimes doesn't work out.

[00:27:53] [SPEAKER_02]: I also really appreciate that they have to get content out on a regular cadence.

[00:27:57] [SPEAKER_02]: And this is a writer, you know, I'm a writer by trade and I know about deadlines and I know about, you know, quotas and having to, you know, get things out on a on a sometimes when you have to get things out early.

[00:28:11] [SPEAKER_02]: Quality takes a hit, right?

[00:28:13] [SPEAKER_02]: And like you have to think like, OK, well I could I could work on this for an extra week and or two weeks or three weeks and make it perfect and perfect and perfect.

[00:28:22] [SPEAKER_02]: Is that going to drive any extra traffic to the article?

[00:28:24] [SPEAKER_02]: Probably not.

[00:28:27] [SPEAKER_02]: And then it's like, well, I'm just going to cut and ship it, you know, because at the end of the day I'm going to keep the lights on, which means publishing at a certain speed.

[00:28:36] [SPEAKER_02]: And I think when Blizzard's like up against it and their parent company, whether it's Activision or Microsoft now, they're saying to them, OK, we need this by this date.

[00:28:46] [SPEAKER_02]: Things probably get caught or like law things get overlooked and stuff like that.

[00:28:51] [SPEAKER_02]: So I just kind of like I take it for what it is and accept it like, you know, flaws and all.

[00:28:56] [SPEAKER_02]: But like on that on that point, it's kind of why like I'm trying to go through and experience everything that did do because I know like how hard they've worked on all this stuff,

[00:29:05] [SPEAKER_02]: especially now like the writing team has been sort of completely reorganized with, you know, I can't remember his name now.

[00:29:13] [SPEAKER_02]: But the previous the previous architect of the story left last Steve Deneuser.

[00:29:20] [SPEAKER_02]: Steve Deneuser left last year. Right.

[00:29:22] [SPEAKER_02]: If I remember Jesus, it's been a year already.

[00:29:25] [SPEAKER_02]: And Christa Golden's got made redundant, I think.

[00:29:29] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:29:29] [SPEAKER_02]: Which sucks.

[00:29:30] [SPEAKER_02]: But it's a completely it's a new landscape in when it comes to storytelling.

[00:29:37] [SPEAKER_02]: Obviously, Chris Metson's there now.

[00:29:38] [SPEAKER_02]: I think Chris Metson said in an interview, the podcast that he wasn't there for War Within.

[00:29:46] [SPEAKER_02]: So like what he's been doing is fleshing out what comes after and towards and through War Within, not necessarily the start of War Within.

[00:29:56] [SPEAKER_02]: But but it does.

[00:29:57] [SPEAKER_02]: So like what we sort of see now is maybe the remnants of the story beats from the old team.

[00:30:04] [SPEAKER_02]: But I honestly think like these remnants are pretty damn fire, you know.

[00:30:10] [SPEAKER_02]: But on that note, I also really want to take my time because you want to absorb all the story.

[00:30:15] [SPEAKER_02]: You also want to see the art and the zones.

[00:30:17] [SPEAKER_02]: And often I think like I don't know how you feel about this,

[00:30:21] [SPEAKER_02]: but I think like giving people flying straight away is very convenient.

[00:30:26] [SPEAKER_02]: When you've got all those dragon riding, you know, contrails all over your screen,

[00:30:31] [SPEAKER_02]: you kind of you can't appreciate the art of the zones as much and the amount of work that's gone into them unless you're forced onto the ground first.

[00:30:39] [SPEAKER_02]: I've actually been riding around manually a lot just to really take it in.

[00:30:47] [SPEAKER_02]: Backtracking.

[00:30:47] [SPEAKER_01]: I've been running through Darnagall.

[00:30:49] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, man.

[00:30:50] [SPEAKER_02]: Just walking.

[00:30:51] [SPEAKER_02]: Darnagall is like an amazing city and all that stuff.

[00:30:55] [SPEAKER_02]: But I really yeah, I just want to take it slow because like when does the season start?

[00:30:59] [SPEAKER_02]: It's not for a while yet, right?

[00:31:01] [SPEAKER_02]: A few weeks, couple of weeks, something like that.

[00:31:03] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, September, whatever date I just gave.

[00:31:08] [SPEAKER_01]: September.

[00:31:10] [SPEAKER_01]: Clicked it off here.

[00:31:12] [SPEAKER_01]: What is that?

[00:31:13] [SPEAKER_01]: September.

[00:31:15] [SPEAKER_01]: September 10th, September 17th, September 3rd.

[00:31:21] [SPEAKER_01]: That's a broad range, dude.

[00:31:24] [SPEAKER_02]: I could ask Microsoft Copa.

[00:31:25] [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, I don't.

[00:31:27] [SPEAKER_01]: It is the 10th, September 10th.

[00:31:30] [SPEAKER_02]: So it's like a decent chunk of time before we a couple of weeks, you know, before the season actually starts.

[00:31:38] [SPEAKER_02]: So it's kind of like, why rush?

[00:31:40] [SPEAKER_02]: You know, I see like a lot of I see people in my guild like staying up all night like, oh, I'm level 500 now, you know, and it's like, dude,

[00:31:48] [SPEAKER_02]: you're going to have nothing to do for two weeks, man.

[00:31:50] [SPEAKER_02]: Like you can't even you can't even go higher than Delft tier three right now.

[00:31:55] [SPEAKER_02]: So why go mad?

[00:31:56] [SPEAKER_02]: Why go mad with it?

[00:31:57] [SPEAKER_02]: I'm just going to chill, take my time, do the side quests, take it in and just enjoy the story for what it is and and you know, get some loot along the way.

[00:32:08] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:32:08] [SPEAKER_02]: Mess around with all.

[00:32:10] [SPEAKER_02]: I love it.

[00:32:12] [SPEAKER_02]: Loving it so far, man.

[00:32:13] [SPEAKER_02]: So good.

[00:32:15] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's a winner, folks.

[00:32:22] [SPEAKER_01]: And if you've been playing through the early access, I'm going to assume you probably feel the same way or at least understand why people would think so.

[00:32:32] [SPEAKER_01]: If you haven't jumped in yet and you're waiting or you're just doing it now.

[00:32:36] [SPEAKER_01]: God damn.

[00:32:39] [SPEAKER_01]: It is lands are gorgeous.

[00:32:41] [SPEAKER_01]: The music, by the way, the music, the soundtrack of this expansion.

[00:32:47] [SPEAKER_01]: Is fucking phenomenal.

[00:32:49] [SPEAKER_01]: I just I don't know.

[00:32:52] [SPEAKER_01]: Dragon Flight had some good ones, but man alive.

[00:32:57] [SPEAKER_01]: The zones just feel right.

[00:33:01] [SPEAKER_01]: There are to your point, you know, the campaign is the campaign.

[00:33:04] [SPEAKER_01]: The campaign's great.

[00:33:06] [SPEAKER_01]: But there's so much of that little side stuff.

[00:33:08] [SPEAKER_01]: There is one side story and I don't want to say much about it, but there is one side story on the Isle of Dorn.

[00:33:19] [SPEAKER_01]: That again, it it I knew where it was going.

[00:33:24] [SPEAKER_01]: But just going through it and reading all the story about why something was happening and then getting to that conclusion.

[00:33:32] [SPEAKER_01]: You end up out in the ocean.

[00:33:33] [SPEAKER_01]: You'll know what I'm talking about.

[00:33:35] [SPEAKER_01]: I was like, fuck man, this is this.

[00:33:39] [SPEAKER_01]: How can this be happening in this video game?

[00:33:41] [SPEAKER_01]: It's 20 years old and it's like not like it doesn't seem serious on the surface, but fuck me running.

[00:33:48] [SPEAKER_01]: Like the thing that they just touched on was like so real and so deep.

[00:33:52] [SPEAKER_01]: And if you've ever experienced certain things in your life, maybe with certain family members.

[00:33:58] [SPEAKER_01]: Fuck man.

[00:34:01] [SPEAKER_01]: It's it's such a treat and it's such a pleasure.

[00:34:04] [SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, I do recommend doing what jazz is doing and just take your fucking time.

[00:34:09] [SPEAKER_01]: Just enjoy it like this doesn't give anything away.

[00:34:13] [SPEAKER_01]: I was down in ringing deeps for instance, and I was doing this one quest where you got to go, you know, got to find a guy.

[00:34:21] [SPEAKER_01]: And you find a guy and a guy is in this in this room in this structure down there.

[00:34:25] [SPEAKER_01]: And all you needed to do was turn the thing in like you didn't have to fight anybody in the do anything.

[00:34:29] [SPEAKER_01]: You just had to turn the thing in.

[00:34:30] [SPEAKER_01]: The guy was there and I walked in the little room where he's in and I'm looking around.

[00:34:35] [SPEAKER_01]: Look at what's in here.

[00:34:35] [SPEAKER_01]: Look what they did. Look what they built for a room in this place that's never really going to be used for anything.

[00:34:43] [SPEAKER_01]: And there is stuff all over the walls and in the room and there's like a desk and there's tools and there's all these things.

[00:34:49] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm like somebody spent a lot of time putting this together.

[00:34:54] [SPEAKER_01]: And this is just one little room in one structure in this big ass zone and this huge expansion in this enormous world.

[00:35:02] [SPEAKER_01]: Like just the attention to detail is astounding to me and the care and the love.

[00:35:11] [SPEAKER_01]: And it's just it's part of what makes it so fucking great is just those little moments, those little immersive things that go on.

[00:35:22] [SPEAKER_01]: The spiders. Yeah, they're scary. Yeah, I don't like them.

[00:35:25] [SPEAKER_01]: Did I turn arachnophobia on? No. You know why?

[00:35:28] [SPEAKER_01]: Because the crustaceans are worse. So I'm just going to have to live with the spider people and that's just going to be how it's going to be.

[00:35:36] [SPEAKER_01]: There's nice ones and there's mean ones.

[00:35:39] [SPEAKER_02]: Seriously, like they thought like, oh, we've got a cool arachnophobia mode.

[00:35:43] [SPEAKER_02]: And their decision was to put fucking crabs there instead.

[00:35:49] [SPEAKER_02]: Like crabs are almost spiders. There's literally a spider crab in real life.

[00:35:55] [SPEAKER_02]: Armored. Armored. Armored spider crab.

[00:35:57] [SPEAKER_02]: And there were spider crabs in Battle for Azeroth, for example.

[00:36:04] [SPEAKER_02]: I'm just thinking I'm just saying that like you couldn't have chosen something less creepy.

[00:36:09] [SPEAKER_02]: Like some of those like big, I don't know what you call them now, those big lobsterish kind of mobs they have in the game.

[00:36:17] [SPEAKER_02]: These huge, creepy, dead ice stalks.

[00:36:20] [SPEAKER_02]: I'm thinking you chose crabs?

[00:36:25] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, surely like it would have been better. I don't know.

[00:36:28] [SPEAKER_02]: They could have picked cows or something.

[00:36:30] [SPEAKER_02]: I think anyone's then nobody would want to kill them.

[00:36:34] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I don't know.

[00:36:35] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, my wife was like, why don't they put like make them like bunny rabbits and stuff because then nobody would want to kill them.

[00:36:40] [SPEAKER_01]: And you have to do that at some point.

[00:36:42] [SPEAKER_02]: Have you seen what? Have you seen grounded arachnophobia mode?

[00:36:45] [SPEAKER_02]: Have you heard of the game grounded? You were telling me about this.

[00:36:47] [SPEAKER_02]: How did that work?

[00:36:48] [SPEAKER_02]: So in grounded, grounded is a survival game where you shrunk to the size of an ant and you have to survive in someone's backyard.

[00:36:55] [SPEAKER_02]: Right. Like honey, I shrunk the kids.

[00:36:57] [SPEAKER_02]: Very cool game. Very, very good game.

[00:36:59] [SPEAKER_02]: And they were the first, I think, to come out with an arachnophobia mode, obviously, because a lot of the mobs in the game are giant fucking spiders.

[00:37:07] [SPEAKER_02]: And they are terrifying. They move like spiders.

[00:37:09] [SPEAKER_02]: They want to murder you like a spider.

[00:37:11] [SPEAKER_02]: They're horrific.

[00:37:13] [SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, and they were like, OK, well, we probably need an arachnophobia mode or a bunch of people ain't going to be able to play this because the spiders in that game are terrifying.

[00:37:21] [SPEAKER_02]: Like I am not arachnophobic necessarily, but they're terrifying.

[00:37:25] [SPEAKER_02]: You know, giant spiders.

[00:37:27] [SPEAKER_02]: But their idea was like, OK, we're going to remove all their legs and just make them floating balls.

[00:37:35] [SPEAKER_02]: With eyes.

[00:37:36] [SPEAKER_02]: And I was just thinking that's pretty fucking creepy, too.

[00:37:39] [SPEAKER_02]: Actually, these disembodied balls with eyes floating towards you.

[00:37:44] [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know, man.

[00:37:46] [SPEAKER_02]: But honestly, I don't know what I do.

[00:37:47] [SPEAKER_02]: I don't. It's like you say, like you could replace them with bunny rabbits and but then you wouldn't want to kill the bunny rabbits.

[00:37:52] [SPEAKER_02]: Like, what do you do? I have no idea.

[00:37:54] [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know.

[00:37:55] [SPEAKER_02]: You can make them robots, maybe.

[00:37:57] [SPEAKER_02]: Robot.

[00:37:57] [SPEAKER_02]: There you go.

[00:37:59] [SPEAKER_02]: Robot spiders are probably less scary than regular spiders.

[00:38:03] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:38:04] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:38:04] [SPEAKER_02]: I think so.

[00:38:08] [SPEAKER_02]: Either way, I don't think I'm going to make it work.

[00:38:11] [SPEAKER_02]: I don't think I haven't seen any any Nerubians that really look like spiders, to be honest.

[00:38:18] [SPEAKER_02]: A lot of them don't.

[00:38:18] [SPEAKER_02]: You've got those flying things that don't look like spiders.

[00:38:22] [SPEAKER_01]: Those are creepy as shit.

[00:38:24] [SPEAKER_02]: They're creepy, but they don't look like spiders.

[00:38:27] [SPEAKER_02]: The Anubarak kind of things.

[00:38:29] [SPEAKER_02]: They're more like beetles and spiders.

[00:38:30] [SPEAKER_02]: And then you've got like the sort of dry half human, half spider.

[00:38:36] [SPEAKER_02]: They don't really look like spiders either.

[00:38:39] [SPEAKER_02]: But I don't know.

[00:38:40] [SPEAKER_02]: The spider debates.

[00:38:42] [SPEAKER_02]: We've probably run through this.

[00:38:44] [SPEAKER_02]: Rage is on.

[00:38:44] [SPEAKER_02]: The spider debate rages on.

[00:38:49] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, Ashka Head is it's fucking something.

[00:38:53] [SPEAKER_01]: I haven't got that yet.

[00:38:54] [SPEAKER_02]: So maybe my opinion on spiders will change when I do.

[00:38:58] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, there's going to be a lot of them.

[00:39:00] [SPEAKER_01]: I'll just say that.

[00:39:02] [SPEAKER_01]: No, you know, I don't think I'm giving anything away by saying that.

[00:39:04] [SPEAKER_01]: But I think with the zones, how they put it together brilliant.

[00:39:15] [SPEAKER_01]: The shape of each one of them is stunning.

[00:39:23] [SPEAKER_01]: Going into Hallowfall for the first time is like a religious experience.

[00:39:26] [SPEAKER_01]: It's something that every Warcraft player has to have at one point is that first time that you fly in there and you just the whole thing opens up to you.

[00:39:35] [SPEAKER_01]: You're like, holy shit.

[00:39:36] [SPEAKER_01]: This is unlike anything I've ever seen in this game before.

[00:39:40] [SPEAKER_01]: And it is stunning.

[00:39:43] [SPEAKER_01]: And the people in the zone, the armor, fucking a wrath, the armor is some of the greatest things I've ever seen.

[00:39:49] [SPEAKER_01]: It's the best one of the best sets in Warcraft.

[00:39:51] [SPEAKER_01]: Top three probably of all time.

[00:39:55] [SPEAKER_01]: That that's just unreal.

[00:39:58] [SPEAKER_01]: Bringing deeps, the story, the culmination of that story.

[00:40:01] [SPEAKER_01]: Unbelievable.

[00:40:04] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's just it's solid all the way through and I can't wait to get back in and just keep banging away on my quest log and picking stuff up.

[00:40:12] [SPEAKER_01]: And I've been enjoying the Delves.

[00:40:16] [SPEAKER_01]: It's doing what it's supposed to be doing where, you know, it's solo content or I mean, you can do follower dungeons down.

[00:40:23] [SPEAKER_02]: I did a bunch of those and those are yeah, I did some follow dungeons and Delves with my brother because like initially I've got a bone.

[00:40:32] [SPEAKER_02]: First of all, side track.

[00:40:34] [SPEAKER_02]: I've got a bone to pick with the fucking whale community.

[00:40:37] [SPEAKER_02]: I've joined like a couple of pug runs where it's just like the tank just because of the way it's got.

[00:40:44] [SPEAKER_02]: And this is this is something Blizzard needs to fix really.

[00:40:47] [SPEAKER_02]: The way stats scale right is just completely fucked in a new expansion.

[00:40:51] [SPEAKER_02]: And you'll get like a level 70 player who's doing 1.5 million DPS because of the way stats scale a level 80 players doing like 200,000 DPS.

[00:40:59] [SPEAKER_02]: And then the level 70 players are like, oh, I'm doing way more DPS than you.

[00:41:04] [SPEAKER_02]: It's like fuck.

[00:41:05] [SPEAKER_02]: First of all, shut up.

[00:41:07] [SPEAKER_02]: It's fucking scaling.

[00:41:08] [SPEAKER_02]: Second of all, shut up.

[00:41:09] [SPEAKER_02]: It's normal dungeon.

[00:41:10] [SPEAKER_02]: Third of all, you also get these tanks who have got all the stats scaling so they will pull the whole fucking dungeon and then complain when you don't know where to go.

[00:41:18] [SPEAKER_02]: The game isn't even out yet.

[00:41:19] [SPEAKER_02]: We're still in early fucking access.

[00:41:21] [SPEAKER_02]: You cannot blame people for not knowing the layout of the fucking dungeon when the game is only just fucking launched.

[00:41:29] [SPEAKER_02]: So, yeah, I mean, if we're on YouTube, we get we get enough steam monetized right now.

[00:41:33] [SPEAKER_02]: But then after we're not on YouTube so I can drop bombs all I want.

[00:41:36] [SPEAKER_02]: And that is just so fucking annoying.

[00:41:38] [SPEAKER_02]: Damn right.

[00:41:39] [SPEAKER_02]: Not Microsoft.

[00:41:40] [SPEAKER_02]: I'm so used to yelling at Microsoft.

[00:41:43] [SPEAKER_02]: Blizzard needs to rethink how stats scale post launch of an expansion because it's been like this a few expansions now.

[00:41:50] [SPEAKER_02]: It's just it's just broken.

[00:41:52] [SPEAKER_02]: You know, I think like it's kind of cool where you like you come into expansion, you decked out and all your epics from Raiden and stuff.

[00:41:59] [SPEAKER_02]: And it's like, oh, I'm really powerful.

[00:42:00] [SPEAKER_02]: I can one shot the mobs and all this kind of stuff.

[00:42:02] [SPEAKER_02]: But at the same time, it just creates loads of these kind of granular problems.

[00:42:07] [SPEAKER_02]: But but indeed.

[00:42:08] [SPEAKER_02]: So one of the cool things, though, is you can you can ditch all those annoying pugs and these edge lords and all that shit.

[00:42:14] [SPEAKER_02]: You just do a nice little follow engine.

[00:42:17] [SPEAKER_02]: And there ain't no there ain't nobody pulling the whole dungeon in heroics.

[00:42:21] [SPEAKER_02]: Not now anyway, because heroic is taking a jump in difficulty compared to previous expansions.

[00:42:27] [SPEAKER_02]: But but yeah, you can just do a follow the engine and just ditch all the pugs altogether.

[00:42:30] [SPEAKER_02]: And they are really, really good.

[00:42:32] [SPEAKER_02]: Like the AI and the put the the follow the AI followers are just so, so good.

[00:42:37] [SPEAKER_02]: They do the damage rotations like the tank all run and even if you start pulling extra packs, the tank will run and try and pick them up.

[00:42:45] [SPEAKER_02]: And they even give you directions in the dungeon.

[00:42:47] [SPEAKER_02]: It's like, oh, we go down here and they'll ping them up.

[00:42:49] [SPEAKER_02]: It's so very good.

[00:42:51] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, they drop a marker.

[00:42:52] [SPEAKER_02]: So crazy.

[00:42:53] [SPEAKER_02]: But I also love the devs.

[00:42:54] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I've been doing devs with my brother.

[00:42:56] [SPEAKER_02]: So it's really cool.

[00:42:57] [SPEAKER_02]: Like, you know, bite size kind of content.

[00:43:00] [SPEAKER_02]: I'm really interested in how it might affect the progression economy, I suppose.

[00:43:07] [SPEAKER_02]: If like if people feel like they don't need to do to jump into guilds to do high end content because they get everything from devs and whatever.

[00:43:17] [SPEAKER_02]: I do wonder if that's going to hurt the guild rating scene.

[00:43:23] [SPEAKER_02]: But maybe it won't.

[00:43:24] [SPEAKER_02]: Maybe they'll just bring in a ton of new players.

[00:43:28] [SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, a lot because I really I really fundamentally believe if you're taking the time and effort to organize a guild, which is a lot of work.

[00:43:37] [SPEAKER_02]: The rewards have to come with it.

[00:43:39] [SPEAKER_02]: You know, and I suppose like raiders do get stuff like, you know, ahead of the curve mounts and stuff like that.

[00:43:46] [SPEAKER_02]: But they just palette swaps all the mounts these days.

[00:43:49] [SPEAKER_02]: I think like they need to they need to be careful not to unbalance the rewards of organizing a raid guild.

[00:43:58] [SPEAKER_02]: But that's my perspective because I'm a raider at the end of the day.

[00:44:00] [SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, the devs are fantastic.

[00:44:01] [SPEAKER_02]: I really love them and the follower dungeons are great too.

[00:44:05] [SPEAKER_02]: Really cool.

[00:44:07] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:44:09] [SPEAKER_01]: And they've been they've been a godsend.

[00:44:11] [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that's something that I've been talking with Rommel about this while we were leveling.

[00:44:16] [SPEAKER_01]: It's such a it's such a different experience this time around because this is the first time in more than a decade that I've been leveling without the impetus to be raid ready.

[00:44:30] [SPEAKER_01]: Like there's I don't have a raid team anymore.

[00:44:35] [SPEAKER_01]: So it's like just being unbound in this way is strange to me to be able to just go out and not think about.

[00:44:44] [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, well I need the best and the brightest and how do I get there?

[00:44:47] [SPEAKER_01]: And how do I chart this course?

[00:44:48] [SPEAKER_01]: And I got a game this or do that or blah, blah, blah.

[00:44:51] [SPEAKER_01]: And to be honest, I haven't been that good about it in recent years anyway.

[00:44:55] [SPEAKER_01]: But this is the first time I've not really truly given a shit about it.

[00:44:58] [SPEAKER_01]: And it's kind of strange.

[00:45:01] [SPEAKER_01]: Like, oh, it's a piece of five seventy one gear or whatever.

[00:45:04] [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, cool.

[00:45:05] [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know what that means, but cool.

[00:45:07] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, for what it's worth, I believe I'm looking here at Delve tier level eleven.

[00:45:15] [SPEAKER_01]: You can get up to six or three gear out of the bountiful Delve reward.

[00:45:21] [SPEAKER_01]: And then let's see out of the great vault because the Delve is part of the great vault.

[00:45:26] [SPEAKER_01]: Now you can get up to a six sixteen piece.

[00:45:28] [SPEAKER_01]: It's got to be pretty high.

[00:45:30] [SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, I think so.

[00:45:32] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. So it's not the high.

[00:45:34] [SPEAKER_02]: I think that's heroic.

[00:45:35] [SPEAKER_02]: I think that's a really I think so.

[00:45:36] [SPEAKER_02]: Which is the yeah, that's the that's the level I write.

[00:45:39] [SPEAKER_02]: It makes me wonder like is mythic mythic writing going to be easy because one of the well,

[00:45:44] [SPEAKER_02]: I suppose one of the things you could say about where right now is that mythic is really it's inaccessible to most even quite dedicated writers, you know.

[00:45:57] [SPEAKER_02]: So maybe they want to get more people through mythic because I suppose like if you give heroic is more accessible, maybe you can out gear and stuff.

[00:46:06] [SPEAKER_02]: But I don't know.

[00:46:07] [SPEAKER_02]: I think those hard, super hardcore players, they need their rewards and their accolades as well.

[00:46:13] [SPEAKER_02]: Right. Yeah.

[00:46:13] [SPEAKER_02]: That's like the most the most dedication you can possibly make to the game.

[00:46:17] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I tell you when you know, towards the end of the period of time when my last raid team was trying,

[00:46:24] [SPEAKER_01]: we were trying to save ourselves and trying to recruit.

[00:46:26] [SPEAKER_01]: Everybody thinks they're a fucking mythic raider now, like trying to find just a heroic raid team or trying to find just heroic raiders.

[00:46:34] [SPEAKER_01]: It was damn near impossible.

[00:46:35] [SPEAKER_01]: The old days, right?

[00:46:36] [SPEAKER_01]: You go to the forums on your server and be like, hey, I got a team.

[00:46:39] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm looking for somebody or whatever.

[00:46:41] [SPEAKER_01]: And now it's, you know, fucking discord servers and people putting their stuff out there.

[00:46:46] [SPEAKER_01]: Everybody thinks they're a mythic raider.

[00:46:48] [SPEAKER_01]: And we couldn't pull anybody like, oh, you mythic team.

[00:46:51] [SPEAKER_01]: We're not a mythic being.

[00:46:51] [SPEAKER_01]: Wow. Well, I'm too good for you.

[00:46:55] [SPEAKER_01]: So I honestly am kind of happy to see alternative forms of challenges and gearing and stuff just selfishly because I'm not part of that right now.

[00:47:07] [SPEAKER_01]: And I don't know that I'm going to be again.

[00:47:10] [SPEAKER_01]: And I will likely never be part of a raid team the way that I was before, where it was way, way back when it was four nights a week or whatever it was.

[00:47:19] [SPEAKER_01]: And it's been two nights a week with the team I had for the long, long time.

[00:47:24] [SPEAKER_01]: And I've switched guilds and it's a great guild and they got a good team, but they raid too early.

[00:47:29] [SPEAKER_01]: So I'm probably not ever really going to be able to join them in any meaningful way.

[00:47:33] [SPEAKER_01]: So to now look at Delves as an opportunity to be challenged and to do stuff.

[00:47:39] [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, even just going up, you know, like you mentioned, the third tier, you know, seeing kind of how they're adding on different little things kind of like the, you know, the dungeon of fixes.

[00:47:49] [SPEAKER_01]: Right. There's these other little additional things that make it more challenging.

[00:47:53] [SPEAKER_01]: And so you have to kind of game out what you're doing and think about.

[00:47:56] [SPEAKER_01]: But the advantage is the Delves are only supposed to be what five to 20 minute adventures.

[00:48:03] [SPEAKER_01]: So it's not meant to take you an hour, not meant to take you super long.

[00:48:07] [SPEAKER_01]: And even me, who's just kind of I don't think I think average in terms of skill.

[00:48:13] [SPEAKER_01]: I've enjoyed them. Good challenge. Got through them and I can see where this will have potentially some longevity as long as you keep making new ones, because people will eventually get tired of, you know, whatever.

[00:48:25] [SPEAKER_01]: I think 12 that we have and there's three versions of each.

[00:48:29] [SPEAKER_01]: So plus the super secret boss or whatever that is for the 13th Delve.

[00:48:33] [SPEAKER_02]: But and they're also going to they're going to swap out the follower you with season over season.

[00:48:39] [SPEAKER_02]: Right. Yes.

[00:48:41] [SPEAKER_02]: And also add. So like the super secret tier 13 boss, which is supposed to be like mage tower level hard or like, you know, warlock green fire quest level hard from back in the day.

[00:48:54] [SPEAKER_02]: I think like the idea is that the new follower will because that's a brand quest to kill that dude.

[00:49:01] [SPEAKER_02]: So I think like the idea is that a new a new follower will bring a new quest and maybe a new tier 13 boss, maybe or a new Delve along with it.

[00:49:10] [SPEAKER_02]: Because one of the cool things I suppose about Delves is like there are these sort of like 10 minute dungeons that could potentially make more of them quite quickly.

[00:49:21] [SPEAKER_02]: You could even stick them in the old world.

[00:49:23] [SPEAKER_02]: You could have a fucking Delve in the Barrens.

[00:49:25] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you could stick a Delve, I don't know, somewhere really random like desolace or fucking.

[00:49:35] [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know.

[00:49:36] [SPEAKER_01]: There's a fellwood cave somewhere that needs exploring.

[00:49:39] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, Dead Wind Pass.

[00:49:40] [SPEAKER_01]: There it is.

[00:49:42] [SPEAKER_02]: I know. But there's a lot of cool locations in WoW that like you could add a Delve to without upsetting the lore of the zone.

[00:49:48] [SPEAKER_02]: Like or even expanding the lore of the zone.

[00:49:51] [SPEAKER_02]: Like for example, here's one I think Stockades could be a fucking Delve.

[00:49:57] [SPEAKER_02]: Make Stockades a Delve.

[00:49:58] [SPEAKER_02]: You could also add like you could do city Delves like Ragefire Chasm in Ogremar.

[00:50:02] [SPEAKER_02]: You could do a Delve in the Undercity where it's like oh this part of the Undercity is still fucked up by the Blight explosion.

[00:50:09] [SPEAKER_02]: Go in and clear it out or something.

[00:50:12] [SPEAKER_02]: You could do all sorts of shit with Delves.

[00:50:14] [SPEAKER_02]: It's a really exciting system.

[00:50:15] [SPEAKER_02]: It's like the inverse of Torghast, which was just like, okay, we've got this fucking depressing vertical cemetery basically.

[00:50:26] [SPEAKER_02]: And I really liked, I loved the idea of Torghast.

[00:50:30] [SPEAKER_02]: It just did not land.

[00:50:32] [SPEAKER_02]: But this feels like Torghast unleashed in a good way.

[00:50:39] [SPEAKER_02]: I think, yeah man, I just, it's a shame because I feel like I should have.

[00:50:43] [SPEAKER_02]: I think something like Torghast maybe works in Diablo or something.

[00:50:47] [SPEAKER_02]: But I think like wow, you need a bit more variety maybe.

[00:50:52] [SPEAKER_02]: Like when you're playing Diablo all you're doing really is looking at your damage numbers.

[00:50:55] [SPEAKER_02]: You're not really looking at anything else.

[00:50:58] [SPEAKER_02]: But when you're playing like wow, I think like the environment, because you are like it's like a third person camera perspective.

[00:51:03] [SPEAKER_02]: I think the environment does play a big role in making you feel like whether or not you're doing a chore or not, I think.

[00:51:11] [SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, I'm really excited for Delves. I think the features landed really well.

[00:51:16] [SPEAKER_02]: But one thing I suppose to segue into another topic if you're damn with it.

[00:51:23] [SPEAKER_02]: One thing I don't think is landing that well is hero talents.

[00:51:28] [SPEAKER_02]: And I don't know if you agree with me on this, but like the hero talent stuff, I'm really iffy about right now.

[00:51:34] [SPEAKER_02]: And I say this as a Demonology Warlock who has very, very good forwarding hero talents.

[00:51:38] [SPEAKER_02]: You got one of the best ones!

[00:51:39] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I got one of the best ones. And it's like I got fucking I can summon a pit lord for God's sake now.

[00:51:46] [SPEAKER_02]: You know, I wanted to summon a pit lord since vanilla and they've let me do it now. I'm loving it.

[00:51:52] [SPEAKER_02]: But this is exactly why I'm concerned about it because I see some of the other talent trees and they're just lame.

[00:51:59] [SPEAKER_02]: There's just nothing there. There's like no extra graphics.

[00:52:01] [SPEAKER_02]: There's no extra variety. There's no flashiness and there's no...

[00:52:05] [SPEAKER_02]: So it feels like it clearly feels like you can just tell they went really hard with the Abolist Demonology spec.

[00:52:14] [SPEAKER_02]: And some of the other specs are just like we ain't got a clue what to do.

[00:52:17] [SPEAKER_02]: And this is like when I was when I goes back to what I was saying earlier about like having to rush things out, you know, to meet a deadline.

[00:52:24] [SPEAKER_02]: I think hero talents is absolutely one of the things that should not have been rushed out.

[00:52:28] [SPEAKER_02]: I think A, they should have been tied to the class rules in some way.

[00:52:33] [SPEAKER_02]: I think it's weird that we just suddenly, oh, we're suddenly heroes now and we suddenly can learn all these abilities.

[00:52:39] [SPEAKER_02]: Some of the some of the hero talents have big lore implications.

[00:52:42] [SPEAKER_02]: Like why is my hunter now using shadow magic?

[00:52:46] [SPEAKER_02]: There's no explanation for that.

[00:52:47] [SPEAKER_02]: So you could have tied that to the class rules and it would have been a cool way to bring back class rules.

[00:52:51] [SPEAKER_02]: Even if it was just like a literally a five minute quest,

[00:52:54] [SPEAKER_02]: Lore B, you know that people would have loved that and also would have gave them more context.

[00:52:58] [SPEAKER_02]: And B, a lot of the hero talents just feel like they're underbaked and need more fleshing out.

[00:53:03] [SPEAKER_02]: Maybe even need to be fully reworked because I think like we're getting into I think we're going to get end up in a situation where it's like Covenant again,

[00:53:13] [SPEAKER_02]: where people feel like, oh, we I love the aesthetic of this hero talents back.

[00:53:17] [SPEAKER_02]: But I'm forced to use this hero talents back because of the extra two or three percent DPS that it's going to give me.

[00:53:24] [SPEAKER_02]: I think we're going to end up with Covenant again.

[00:53:26] [SPEAKER_02]: I think a lot of this stuff could have been an extra talent tree row.

[00:53:34] [SPEAKER_02]: And I don't know if you've had you feel about it.

[00:53:37] [SPEAKER_02]: How is the warrior? How is the warrior talents been working out?

[00:53:40] [SPEAKER_01]: I think I know I think you're dead on because the one I always think of the warlocks getting to summon demons and, you know,

[00:53:51] [SPEAKER_01]: hit lords and like that's that's one. The death knights, you get the four horsemen.

[00:53:56] [SPEAKER_01]: Yes. Riding out onto the field of battle to help you. That is some bad ass shit.

[00:54:00] [SPEAKER_01]: Right. Don't look at the fury slayer tree.

[00:54:05] [SPEAKER_01]: There's nothing it's boring. There's it's it's stat boosts basically.

[00:54:10] [SPEAKER_01]: And it's like you should I should you know what should happen is I should have some kind of buff that when some right mix of shit happens that like

[00:54:20] [SPEAKER_01]: the spirit of Varian Wren like comes over me or if you're horrid, it should be the spirit of, you know, Veroc sour thing like comes down and like, I don't know, is is shrouding you as you beat the shit out of someone like that would be bad ass.

[00:54:35] [SPEAKER_01]: Like that would be amazing. And there is nothing like that for fury for slayer.

[00:54:40] [SPEAKER_01]: Now, for the mountain thing, there is some cool shit where there's like lightning and you're like blowing people up with, you know, that kind of stuff.

[00:54:49] [SPEAKER_01]: Now that one's fleshed out a little bit more. I'll give them that the mountain thing one thematically cooler slayer.

[00:54:58] [SPEAKER_01]: Nothing. It is there is nothing like I am shocked. Yeah, still.

[00:55:03] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean that it got out this way when like yeah you have these other specs that have some really amazing class stuff.

[00:55:12] [SPEAKER_02]: When I interviewed, I interviewed Blizzard about this concern back in was it May? I think it was May.

[00:55:20] [SPEAKER_02]: And they made the point to me that some people might not want flashy.

[00:55:24] [SPEAKER_02]: So part of me wonders if like they've intentionally given one talent tree flashy and another one not flashy.

[00:55:31] [SPEAKER_02]: So people who prefer the because some people like pick, pick glyphs, for example, where they reduce the shadow form or they pick a glyph which gets rid of moonkin form, you know, stuff like that.

[00:55:43] [SPEAKER_02]: Right. So maybe their thought process was we need each one to have a flashy and not flashy.

[00:55:48] [SPEAKER_02]: But at the same time, it just feels like now you just sort of, you know, again, it's sort of like what if I want to play?

[00:55:56] [SPEAKER_02]: I don't want to be a mountain thing because that's more of a dwarf thing.

[00:56:00] [SPEAKER_01]: Where if I want to be a slayer because I'm an or. Right. And yeah, I mean how many warriors of old did you pick or like the class all the warrior class all the, you know, right cool.

[00:56:14] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, the spirit of right cool like coming down and they could be a million different things that you could pick.

[00:56:21] [SPEAKER_02]: They could just ramp up the blood effect if you're a slayer, you know, like, yeah, like you hit the mob and then like huge chunks of flesh fly off or something like that.

[00:56:31] [SPEAKER_02]: And yes, yes, I was. Exactly. I was watching some of the monster into wild streams like some of the new abilities you get in that is just crazy.

[00:56:41] [SPEAKER_02]: Like you jump on the monsters back and then like dig your sword into them and there's blood flying everywhere.

[00:56:46] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and I just think World of Warcraft has these mechanics like where there's like chunks of blood and chunks of flesh like 3D chunks flying off.

[00:56:56] [SPEAKER_02]: And you know maybe there's I don't know some kind of I don't know technical reason why they couldn't do that.

[00:57:02] [SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, I do feel like clearly some some classes got the short end of the stick when it comes to hero talents.

[00:57:08] [SPEAKER_02]: And I think some of them, some of them probably do need full blown not just like tweaks but a full blown rework like the druid ones for example.

[00:57:16] [SPEAKER_02]: You got if you're a druid you got two pigs. They're both elf themed. Yeah, like if you're a resto druid they're both elf themed.

[00:57:24] [SPEAKER_02]: So if you're a troll, you're a troll druid. Sorry, you're now an elf.

[00:57:28] [SPEAKER_02]: You're a keeper of the Grove, which is fucking elf or the other one, which is elf, which is makes me feel sick as a you know as a horde.

[00:57:39] [SPEAKER_02]: Like imagine this you burnt their home down your troll.

[00:57:43] [SPEAKER_02]: So you have your troll and your role playing a forest troll and now you've been forced to be an elf.

[00:57:52] [SPEAKER_01]: Bro, I don't know.

[00:57:53] [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know. Some of this some of this stuff just needed a way more thought thought going into it and it just feels like I kind of feel like they're a bit off more than they could chew with this.

[00:58:03] [SPEAKER_02]: I think they should have maybe just made it an extra talent row.

[00:58:08] [SPEAKER_02]: And then just called the end point talent like the talent that lets me someone to pit Lord call that hero talent or something.

[00:58:14] [SPEAKER_02]: And dude, maybe even like, I don't know, give me an ultimate meter or something like Overwatch that builds up and then I hit the button and pit Lord comes out.

[00:58:24] [SPEAKER_02]: You know, because like then at least it will be balanced, you know, for without because I one of the things I think they're really wanting to do with this hero talent system.

[00:58:34] [SPEAKER_02]: They didn't want to give people extra complexity or extra buttons to press.

[00:58:38] [SPEAKER_02]: A lot of the abilities are passive and I get that especially as a demon larger warlock.

[00:58:42] [SPEAKER_02]: I get that. You know, like I remember in Cataclysm, I think demonology warlock had like something like 14 keybinds.

[00:58:50] [SPEAKER_02]: They had to piano out to do that amazor rotation.

[00:58:55] [SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, it was wild man.

[00:58:57] [SPEAKER_02]: But I get that.

[00:59:01] [SPEAKER_02]: But at the same time, like that's why like something like an ultimate ability, which almost comes through like a trinket or something.

[00:59:07] [SPEAKER_02]: I think that could have given you the flavor of what they're going for with some of this stuff without leaving some classes out in the lurch and making it too time intensive because it does feel like they just ran out of time on some of this shit.

[00:59:22] [SPEAKER_02]: Like some of the some of the hero talents didn't come through till very late in the beta and they didn't get much time to be reworked.

[00:59:29] [SPEAKER_02]: Like the warlock stuff is reworked a lot and I can tell someone at Blizzard really likes playing warlocks right now.

[00:59:35] [SPEAKER_02]: Because warlocks get a lot of attention.

[00:59:37] [SPEAKER_02]: There was there was times when they didn't get a lot of attention, but they get a lot of attention now.

[00:59:41] [SPEAKER_02]: And you can you can see which classes don't get attention.

[00:59:44] [SPEAKER_02]: Monks, for example, ain't nobody at Blizzard playing a monk clearly.

[00:59:49] [SPEAKER_02]: You know, but this was my rant on hero talents.

[00:59:55] [SPEAKER_01]: No, no, I think you're touching on something because part of it is it's new and there's going to be more iteration on it.

[01:00:01] [SPEAKER_01]: I think I hope so.

[01:00:04] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, as you're as you're saying all this, I'm thinking about something, you know, I'm always talking about warrior stuff and you know how much jazz that was about Slayer and this and that.

[01:00:13] [SPEAKER_01]: And I think the problem is jazz is that there's only like three people that listen to this podcast.

[01:00:18] [SPEAKER_01]: And like I probably need to be going out on the forums.

[01:00:20] [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe if I wrote this shit out on the forums and was like, listen, Blizzard, I need the spirit of Varian Wren to take over my body as my hero talent or something like I need to feel like there is something cool going on because right now in my spec, in my hero talents, I feel no different.

[01:00:40] [SPEAKER_01]: The only thing that makes me feel any different or cooler about being a warrior right now is my transmog, which I got some good ones and it's rad.

[01:00:48] [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm happy about it.

[01:00:50] [SPEAKER_01]: But ability wise, I've had the same spear for three expansions now.

[01:00:58] [SPEAKER_01]: All right.

[01:00:59] [SPEAKER_01]: Cool.

[01:01:00] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I love it.

[01:01:01] [SPEAKER_01]: I'll keep it.

[01:01:02] [SPEAKER_01]: But no, I one of the questions I had here was sort of like highs and lows right for the expansion so far.

[01:01:10] [SPEAKER_01]: And I do think that that feels it does feel like I don't know the underdeveloped appendage at the moment where everything else is just humming.

[01:01:20] [SPEAKER_01]: Everything else feels so good.

[01:01:22] [SPEAKER_01]: Looks good.

[01:01:24] [SPEAKER_01]: The rollout was great.

[01:01:25] [SPEAKER_01]: The intro quest even rolled out a few minutes early for early access.

[01:01:30] [SPEAKER_01]: So, I mean, it's been pretty fucking smooth, but this does this does feel like the one thing.

[01:01:37] [SPEAKER_01]: So, yeah, we'll see.

[01:01:40] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm sure they'll keep it really.

[01:01:42] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I have to laugh too.

[01:01:44] [SPEAKER_01]: Once the raids hit, then people will complain about this tuning and that tuning and this thing and that thing.

[01:01:49] [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, there's all these half patches or, you know, sub patches we're doing now so they can add things or change things or like, oh, now we came across these people and these people learn this thing.

[01:02:02] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, oh, that's cool.

[01:02:03] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, something like that.

[01:02:05] [SPEAKER_01]: But the other thing that I was thinking about just speaking of rays and I did mention this earlier is, you know, there's going to be a story mode now.

[01:02:14] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah.

[01:02:15] [SPEAKER_01]: For the race, which again, we'll see what happens.

[01:02:22] [SPEAKER_01]: We'll see what happens.

[01:02:23] [SPEAKER_01]: But for those of us that don't have raid teams anymore or like you are stuck and not progressing, whatever it is, this sounds like it will be an opportunity to see the last encounter in a raid.

[01:02:37] [SPEAKER_01]: And it's designed for groups of one to 10.

[01:02:40] [SPEAKER_01]: So you could go in solo and see the last encounter of a raid so you can play through that by yourself and see how does the story continue or resolve or whatever.

[01:02:52] [SPEAKER_01]: And a huge fan of this for no other reason, again, selfishly just so I can see something that I probably wouldn't have been able to see ordinarily.

[01:02:59] [SPEAKER_01]: But two, oftentimes there's a quest that has to do with killing that last boss.

[01:03:06] [SPEAKER_01]: And unless you have a team, you're not going to see it or you got to do LFR and that's a whole nest of vipers.

[01:03:13] [SPEAKER_01]: So it just being able to take it into your own hands again, like the devs, like the follower dungeons, like all these sorts of things where they're catering now more towards people like myself who, you know, are just me or me and one other person.

[01:03:26] [SPEAKER_01]: I fucking love it, man. I absolutely love it and we'll see what happens because it's not going to come out for a few weeks.

[01:03:33] [SPEAKER_01]: But I'm really looking forward to that. I think it's going to be cool. It could be cool.

[01:03:39] [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know about you.

[01:03:41] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so I noticed a lot of the dungeons have a story mode aspect to them.

[01:03:47] [SPEAKER_02]: Like when you finish the main quest beats around or near a lot of the dungeons, some of the main characters that walk into the dungeon with you and you'll do some story stuff there.

[01:03:59] [SPEAKER_02]: I noticed more so than ever, which is really cool.

[01:04:04] [SPEAKER_02]: And I think maybe one of the thought processes behind this is like we want to onboard more people into raiding because, you know, raiding is the thing that keeps people coming back repeatedly and keeps them subscribed for longer.

[01:04:17] [SPEAKER_02]: I would assume that the chase in the gear item level is what keeps people returning.

[01:04:24] [SPEAKER_02]: And I think they probably want more casual players to tap into that, which is why we've got Delves now and we've got Delves being attached to the weekly vault.

[01:04:37] [SPEAKER_02]: So I think like the story modes are probably a good thing.

[01:04:39] [SPEAKER_02]: It's give you a taste of the raid and it's not like it's not like raids haven't been completely inaccessible to players anyway because you can do an LFR and it's virtually brain dead in LFR anyway.

[01:04:53] [SPEAKER_02]: But I think like the cool thing, in so many ways, like follower dungeons now you'll be able to experience the story beats of the raid without having to deal with the Pugs in LFR.

[01:05:06] [SPEAKER_02]: You know, running ahead, jumping around, all that kind of stuff. So I think it's a good thing.

[01:05:12] [SPEAKER_02]: I think it's really cool that they are doing it this way and it'll also elevate WoW story, I think, and get more people invested in that aspect of it as well.

[01:05:23] [SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, I'm all for it at the end of the day because I think like if anyone's sort of precious about it, I mean like, well, only raiders should get to see it.

[01:05:30] [SPEAKER_02]: I'm just like, well, that ship sailed when they added LFR and they added LFR like what? 10 years ago? Something like that.

[01:05:37] [SPEAKER_02]: So the ship is well sailed on, you know, only raiders having access to the story and stuff.

[01:05:42] [SPEAKER_02]: I remember when my raid guild fell apart fighting in Mount Hyjal. We fell apart on Archimonde.

[01:05:53] [SPEAKER_02]: And then like I didn't have a raid guild for ages. I just couldn't find one for whatever reason.

[01:05:57] [SPEAKER_02]: So like, I think I took a break and like I missed out all of the story beats with Illidan.

[01:06:04] [SPEAKER_02]: And I was, you know, Black Temple. I missed the whole tier.

[01:06:07] [SPEAKER_02]: And I was just I was really sad because it was like, you know, I'm a fan of Illidan since Warcraft 3 and all that kind of stuff.

[01:06:14] [SPEAKER_02]: And I just missed out that whole tier because, you know, and all the story beats and all the plot threads missed out on all of it because I didn't have a raid guild.

[01:06:22] [SPEAKER_02]: So I think, you know, LFRs, you know, A, that gives people the story beats.

[01:06:31] [SPEAKER_02]: But then you have to deal with the pugs. This would be way more immersive.

[01:06:34] [SPEAKER_02]: I think this is a much better way of doing it.

[01:06:36] [SPEAKER_02]: I would honestly prefer it if they just did, but I would prefer it if they did like a story mode the whole dungeon.

[01:06:45] [SPEAKER_02]: I think that'd be pretty cool. Like do a follower raid.

[01:06:49] [SPEAKER_02]: Screw it. Do a follower raid that, yeah.

[01:06:53] [SPEAKER_02]: I'm waiting for it.

[01:06:54] [SPEAKER_02]: Just do a follower raid. You could have like 10 NPCs.

[01:06:58] [SPEAKER_02]: You know, maybe you just get one cache of loot at the end or some flight stones or something like that.

[01:07:03] [SPEAKER_02]: Call that story mode with followers.

[01:07:05] [SPEAKER_02]: And it's not just the last boss because I think they are robbing players of a bit of the epicness of a full raid by only making it the last boss.

[01:07:16] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. But I don't know.

[01:07:21] [SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, I think it's good. That's what I'm waiting for.

[01:07:23] [SPEAKER_02]: A follower raid would be cool man. I mean why not?

[01:07:27] [SPEAKER_02]: It's better to keep it the same difficulty as LFR but without having to deal with the pugs.

[01:07:33] [SPEAKER_02]: Because one of the big problems of modern web is that players see each other as tools.

[01:07:39] [SPEAKER_02]: They don't see each other as people and they just see each other as like a tool.

[01:07:42] [SPEAKER_02]: So rather than having to deal with, you know, people who see you as a tool, why not play with AI NPCs?

[01:07:48] [SPEAKER_02]: It's basically going to be it's going to be a better experience I think.

[01:07:52] [SPEAKER_02]: But I don't know. We'll see how it lands.

[01:07:57] [SPEAKER_01]: I think you're onto something.

[01:07:58] [SPEAKER_01]: I assume it's a tech issue as to why we don't have it yet because like you mentioned the AI so far on these follower dungeons is legit.

[01:08:06] [SPEAKER_01]: Like I got a battle res for God's sake.

[01:08:08] [SPEAKER_01]: Like I was like I didn't even know if they would do that or not. But they did.

[01:08:11] [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, I died.

[01:08:14] [SPEAKER_02]: There's one thing that doesn't know about followers though.

[01:08:17] [SPEAKER_02]: They don't know how to use the Warlock summoning portal.

[01:08:21] [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, so like my brother got stuck when I was playing with him and I was like, oh, I'll see if the followers are smart enough to help me use a summoning portal to get you out.

[01:08:32] [SPEAKER_02]: But they ain't they ain't smart enough to use a summoning portal.

[01:08:35] [SPEAKER_02]: So that's something to add probably.

[01:08:37] [SPEAKER_02]: Not yet.

[01:08:38] [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe they will eventually put that on the forum and they'll put it right under Slayer needs a bump of some kind.

[01:08:47] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I now that that tech is in game, it just feels like the possibilities are limitless in terms of being able to expand the availability of these story beats and raids and dungeons and all this content.

[01:09:01] [SPEAKER_01]: So it's not so locked into such a select group.

[01:09:04] [SPEAKER_01]: And I get it.

[01:09:06] [SPEAKER_01]: The exclusivity and all that kind of stuff.

[01:09:08] [SPEAKER_01]: I think that you still can do that with titles.

[01:09:10] [SPEAKER_01]: You can do that with the gear itself where yeah, there are going to be some gear models that only come out of mythic rates.

[01:09:18] [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that's the way it should be like that's fine.

[01:09:20] [SPEAKER_01]: You should earn that reward and that title and that thing.

[01:09:23] [SPEAKER_01]: And that's a locked period of time.

[01:09:25] [SPEAKER_01]: And you know, you can feel good about it or whatever.

[01:09:27] [SPEAKER_01]: Then they can bring it back on the trading post in like 10 years.

[01:09:29] [SPEAKER_01]: And then you can complain about it or whatever.

[01:09:32] [SPEAKER_01]: But I have a lot of hope for this tech and I've enjoyed it so far.

[01:09:39] [SPEAKER_01]: And the only other thing I wanted to mention before I get to my last question for you on this bit is just so folks know, I think they've learned their lessons about the mall and Shadowlands.

[01:09:52] [SPEAKER_01]: There is a skip for the intro.

[01:09:57] [SPEAKER_01]: If you get to 80, you can skip the whole Dalaran thing at the beginning.

[01:10:03] [SPEAKER_01]: And then with an alt, if you get your alt to 80 in any way that you want, you can get that alt up fucking doing whatever you like.

[01:10:12] [SPEAKER_01]: There is a skip that you can give to an alt at 80 to go skip past all the story stuff and just get straight to the max level questing.

[01:10:24] [SPEAKER_01]: So again, finding ways to boost these things and short circuit these things to make your life a little easier so you don't have to go through the mall 15 times when you're just trying to get your your minor up so you can make stuff.

[01:10:44] [SPEAKER_01]: Three days, three days we've had this now, because you and I and everybody else with early access on a one to 10 rating scale.

[01:10:55] [SPEAKER_01]: One being just the worst dog shit of all time and 10 being I can't believe this was actually made by human hands.

[01:11:02] [SPEAKER_01]: Where where would you rank your initial experience with the war within?

[01:11:07] [SPEAKER_02]: Right now I'm honestly at a nine.

[01:11:12] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, maybe an 8.5 because of the hero talents.

[01:11:17] [SPEAKER_02]: But like, yeah, as well as a warlock who's benefiting from the hero talents.

[01:11:22] [SPEAKER_02]: It's annoying when I think about emotions and empathy for others than an 8.5.

[01:11:29] [SPEAKER_02]: I think I gave Dragonfly an eight.

[01:11:33] [SPEAKER_02]: And I gave Shadowlands six I think.

[01:11:37] [SPEAKER_02]: I'm reviewing this for Metacritic at the moment.

[01:11:40] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think I gave Shadowlands like a six or a seven.

[01:11:46] [SPEAKER_02]: And I don't think I was reviewing games when Battle for Asworth came out.

[01:11:51] [SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, right now I'm at like, I don't know.

[01:11:53] [SPEAKER_02]: Well, this is an issue, right? We can't give 8.5 on Windows Central.

[01:11:57] [SPEAKER_02]: So because of tech, because of tech issues.

[01:12:01] [SPEAKER_02]: So I've got to give it an eight or a nine.

[01:12:03] [SPEAKER_02]: I think right now I'm at an eight probably because I think the hero talents are underbaked.

[01:12:09] [SPEAKER_02]: And they're a cool feature of, they're going to be a cool feature of the gameplay loop.

[01:12:14] [SPEAKER_02]: But like the art, I'm probably being a bit harsh.

[01:12:17] [SPEAKER_02]: But I'm always a bit harsh on Blizzard because I love the game so much.

[01:12:21] [SPEAKER_02]: So it's, the art's amazing. The music's amazing.

[01:12:25] [SPEAKER_02]: The story beats have been fucking amazing.

[01:12:27] [SPEAKER_02]: The characters are really good.

[01:12:29] [SPEAKER_02]: I wanted to hate Dagran, but I kind of don't.

[01:12:33] [SPEAKER_02]: I know.

[01:12:34] [SPEAKER_02]: I hate the Alliance-centric story, but it's, I think,

[01:12:38] [SPEAKER_02]: I think the reason this expansion is Alliance-centric is because the next expansion is going to be Horde-centric.

[01:12:43] [SPEAKER_02]: It's all East, Northern Eastern Kingdoms.

[01:12:45] [SPEAKER_02]: It's going to be all blood hell. It's going to be all forsaken.

[01:12:47] [SPEAKER_02]: So probably with a dash of Arathi in there.

[01:12:52] [SPEAKER_02]: So I suppose Worgen will be thrown in there somewhere as well.

[01:12:56] [SPEAKER_02]: Hopefully we get to kill them.

[01:13:01] [SPEAKER_02]: There's going to be a lot of Horde in the next expansion, I think.

[01:13:07] [SPEAKER_02]: But honestly for years, like the game was Horde-centric for years and years and years and years.

[01:13:12] [SPEAKER_02]: It was always for the Horde, Horde everything, Horde, Horde, Horde.

[01:13:16] [SPEAKER_02]: So it's kind of like, again, when I throw in that empathy,

[01:13:19] [SPEAKER_02]: I'm kind of glad that the Alliance is getting a bit more spotlight in recent times.

[01:13:25] [SPEAKER_02]: No complaints here.

[01:13:26] [SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, I'd probably give it an A.

[01:13:29] [SPEAKER_02]: But we'll see how the hero talents develop and get iterated on.

[01:13:34] [SPEAKER_02]: And then we'll see if that number doesn't go up to a nine.

[01:13:39] Yeah.

[01:13:40] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:13:42] [SPEAKER_01]: All good points.

[01:13:44] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I really wanted to hate everybody's new boyfriend, Daggeron.

[01:13:47] [SPEAKER_01]: But you know what?

[01:13:49] [SPEAKER_01]: He ends up being kind of solid.

[01:13:52] So yeah.

[01:13:53] [SPEAKER_01]: All right.

[01:13:53] [SPEAKER_01]: Let's go.

[01:13:57] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's the first thought that I had and I think this is one of the things I've messaged you is like they've done it again.

[01:14:04] [SPEAKER_01]: They've done it again because they are in a stride right now.

[01:14:11] [SPEAKER_01]: Team two, Warcraft, whatever you want to call them, Warcraft team.

[01:14:15] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, they are just in the middle of a run right now, which I don't know how long they can sustain it.

[01:14:23] [SPEAKER_01]: But enjoy the shit out of this right now because it is it is some of the best work that they've ever done.

[01:14:33] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, again, art, the music, all those kinds of things.

[01:14:36] [SPEAKER_01]: They're always great and they always do a wonderful job.

[01:14:39] [SPEAKER_01]: But all of the main story side stories, little events, just treasures, the fun shit you find, it's just there's all these things in there that really make the experience just fun.

[01:14:52] [SPEAKER_01]: Like, that's the point of it all. It's supposed to be fun.

[01:14:55] [SPEAKER_01]: That's why we do all this is not for fame or fortune or money and, you know, real world prizes for the most part.

[01:15:03] [SPEAKER_01]: It's because it's fun.

[01:15:04] [SPEAKER_01]: And that's exactly what this expansion has been so far.

[01:15:07] [SPEAKER_01]: So I mean, I'd give it a solid nine because the hero talent is it's underwhelming for me.

[01:15:13] [SPEAKER_01]: But I mean, it is a solid experience.

[01:15:15] [SPEAKER_01]: I think people are going to agree with that for the most part.

[01:15:19] [SPEAKER_01]: If you have like major complaints outside of that, maybe they're valid.

[01:15:23] [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know what they would be, but always willing to listen.

[01:15:28] [SPEAKER_01]: We haven't seen the earthen yet.

[01:15:30] [SPEAKER_01]: That's one thing that we haven't been able to get to on the early access.

[01:15:34] [SPEAKER_01]: You can pretty much do the questing to get like nearly all the way there.

[01:15:39] [SPEAKER_01]: And I have done that at this point.

[01:15:41] [SPEAKER_01]: So we have yet to see them and what they look like and how that kind of adds a flavor.

[01:15:48] [SPEAKER_02]: You're going to make one?

[01:15:49] [SPEAKER_02]: Hell yeah.

[01:15:51] [SPEAKER_02]: You thought about what class?

[01:15:54] [SPEAKER_01]: Like you need to ask.

[01:15:56] [SPEAKER_02]: Another warrior?

[01:15:58] [SPEAKER_02]: What?

[01:16:03] [SPEAKER_02]: Oh man.

[01:16:04] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I was actually going back and forth.

[01:16:07] [SPEAKER_02]: Do I race change my warlock to an earthen?

[01:16:10] [SPEAKER_02]: Because like one of the.

[01:16:11] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, one of their crystal patterns is purple.

[01:16:15] [SPEAKER_02]: I was thinking like, well those could be soul shards that I've stabbed myself.

[01:16:19] [SPEAKER_02]: That's badass.

[01:16:21] [SPEAKER_02]: That's badass right?

[01:16:23] [SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, I don't know.

[01:16:24] [SPEAKER_02]: I think I might actually branch out.

[01:16:26] [SPEAKER_02]: Maybe try.

[01:16:27] [SPEAKER_02]: You know, I've never played.

[01:16:29] [SPEAKER_02]: I've never played warrior beyond like level 10.

[01:16:33] [SPEAKER_02]: Never done it.

[01:16:35] [SPEAKER_02]: So maybe now this is the time.

[01:16:36] [SPEAKER_02]: This is the time to try warrior out.

[01:16:38] [SPEAKER_01]: This is the time and the place and the race and the space.

[01:16:45] [SPEAKER_01]: The things that rhyme.

[01:16:49] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's you know, warriors are old school man.

[01:16:51] [SPEAKER_01]: That's why we're available to everybody.

[01:16:53] [SPEAKER_01]: It's straightforward.

[01:16:54] [SPEAKER_01]: It's simple.

[01:16:55] [SPEAKER_01]: Throw on a shield and a sword.

[01:16:57] [SPEAKER_01]: Grab a big sword.

[01:16:58] [SPEAKER_01]: Grab a couple swords.

[01:16:58] [SPEAKER_01]: Grab a couple smaller swords.

[01:17:00] [SPEAKER_01]: Grab whatever you got and just start banging away.

[01:17:03] [SPEAKER_01]: It's it's you know, it's just old school ass whooping.

[01:17:07] [SPEAKER_01]: That's all it is.

[01:17:07] [SPEAKER_02]: Some of the earthen classes are weird man.

[01:17:12] [SPEAKER_02]: Like I haven't like that can be shaman, which I guess makes sense because the earth stuff.

[01:17:16] [SPEAKER_02]: But I haven't seen like any real.

[01:17:19] [SPEAKER_02]: Well, I suppose like they use lightning and stuff as well.

[01:17:22] [SPEAKER_02]: The storm dwarves.

[01:17:23] [SPEAKER_02]: But there's also like like why can they be can they be death knights?

[01:17:30] [SPEAKER_02]: Like why can they be death knights?

[01:17:32] [SPEAKER_02]: That doesn't really make actually I don't know.

[01:17:34] [SPEAKER_02]: Maybe I'm wrong about that.

[01:17:35] [SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to check.

[01:17:36] [SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to check that real quick.

[01:17:39] [SPEAKER_02]: We're ahead of the classes.

[01:17:42] [SPEAKER_02]: Let's have a quick look at this.

[01:17:43] [SPEAKER_02]: One thing that yeah, that can be death knights.

[01:17:47] [SPEAKER_02]: So like why can they be death knights?

[01:17:51] [SPEAKER_02]: Like is that going to they're going to have to explain that because are earthen even technically alive?

[01:17:57] [SPEAKER_02]: They're made of rock and you know, so I think that's kind of clunky.

[01:18:04] [SPEAKER_02]: That one that one is a little funny.

[01:18:06] [SPEAKER_02]: I'll admit.

[01:18:07] [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, actually.

[01:18:09] [SPEAKER_02]: Maybe it's maybe this is wrong.

[01:18:11] [SPEAKER_02]: So on the on the article, it says death knight in one part and then it doesn't in another part.

[01:18:20] [SPEAKER_02]: So OK, maybe they can't be death knights.

[01:18:22] [SPEAKER_02]: And according to according to this bit, it says warrior warlock,

[01:18:26] [SPEAKER_02]: shaman rogue priest, paladin monk, mage and hunter, which those make sense, I suppose for the most part.

[01:18:33] [SPEAKER_02]: But if they death knight wouldn't make sense, but in another part of the article, it says they can be death knights.

[01:18:38] [SPEAKER_02]: So I don't know.

[01:18:40] [SPEAKER_01]: Hunter, mage, monk, paladin, priest, rogue, shaman, warlock and warrior.

[01:18:45] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, OK.

[01:18:45] [SPEAKER_02]: OK, that makes sense.

[01:18:46] [SPEAKER_02]: That's fair enough.

[01:18:48] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, those make sense.

[01:18:50] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, those make sense.

[01:18:52] [SPEAKER_02]: Monk, monk, I suppose is a bit of a stretch.

[01:18:56] [SPEAKER_02]: But they are like Kazargar is quite near to Pandaria.

[01:19:01] [SPEAKER_02]: So I suppose you could do the whole thing where it's like, oh, yeah, some panda went there and taught some random.

[01:19:06] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I don't know.

[01:19:09] [SPEAKER_02]: But rogue, rogue's a bit weird.

[01:19:12] [SPEAKER_02]: But then we got toro and rogues now.

[01:19:14] [SPEAKER_02]: So maybe it's not weird.

[01:19:16] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I don't know.

[01:19:17] [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know.

[01:19:18] [SPEAKER_02]: Maybe I'll make my ship.

[01:19:19] [SPEAKER_02]: Maybe I'll make my shaman.

[01:19:21] [SPEAKER_02]: I'll make my shaman into a earthen maybe.

[01:19:24] [SPEAKER_02]: Maybe my hunter.

[01:19:25] [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know, man.

[01:19:26] [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know, man.

[01:19:27] [SPEAKER_02]: I only play options.

[01:19:29] [SPEAKER_02]: I only play warlock anyway, so I don't even know what I'm thinking about it.

[01:19:34] [SPEAKER_01]: That is some pretty rugged shit.

[01:19:36] [SPEAKER_01]: That's that's like straight out of Diablo just jamming jamming shards into your body.

[01:19:40] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, man.

[01:19:41] [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know if I was going to roleplay.

[01:19:43] [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know how that worked out for the wanderer, but maybe it'll work out better for you.

[01:19:47] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, maybe.

[01:19:49] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, dear.

[01:19:52] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, we'll all see him tomorrow.

[01:19:54] [SPEAKER_01]: I guess or today, depending on when you're listening to this.

[01:19:58] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'll definitely be back.

[01:20:02] [SPEAKER_01]: But that is for the most part your rundown about what to expect.

[01:20:08] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, what we've had happened so far in this early access period, which, you know,

[01:20:14] [SPEAKER_01]: you brought up last time that people had kind of like the fervor had kind of died down

[01:20:18] [SPEAKER_01]: about all early access and that's good or bad or whatever.

[01:20:22] [SPEAKER_01]: And then I have noticed, though, during this early access period that people been getting

[01:20:28] [SPEAKER_01]: pissed off again.

[01:20:29] [SPEAKER_01]: One because people are going out there and posting spoilers like in trade chat.

[01:20:33] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, no.

[01:20:36] [SPEAKER_01]: Which I mean, listen, this as soon as this stuff hits, wowhead, anybody could do that

[01:20:42] [SPEAKER_01]: early access or not.

[01:20:43] [SPEAKER_01]: Like, I don't know that that's necessarily because of early access, but I'm sure it did encourage some people.

[01:20:49] [SPEAKER_01]: I did see a lot of comments about the haves and have nots.

[01:20:52] [SPEAKER_01]: And again, I'll be very clear about this blizzard in their infinite kindness to me.

[01:20:58] [SPEAKER_01]: Sent me both a code or the epic edition or whatever.

[01:21:04] [SPEAKER_01]: And they did also send me a collector's edition.

[01:21:07] [SPEAKER_01]: So I didn't have to pay for any of this, even though my wife did already get me a collection for my birthday.

[01:21:14] [SPEAKER_01]: So maybe a friend got the other one.

[01:21:19] [SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, I was going to get in anyway.

[01:21:23] [SPEAKER_01]: But I have seen some commentary pushing back on early access for us as players that got in.

[01:21:32] [SPEAKER_01]: It's been smooth.

[01:21:33] [SPEAKER_01]: I think Blizzard thinks it's been smooth.

[01:21:36] [SPEAKER_01]: So I have a feeling this is probably going to be the way of the future.

[01:21:42] [SPEAKER_01]: It also breaks up the leveling flow.

[01:21:44] [SPEAKER_01]: So you have fewer people coming in at once.

[01:21:47] [SPEAKER_01]: You probably have more people coming in Monday, but you did break it up a little bit.

[01:21:52] [SPEAKER_01]: So to follow up on your point, it does sound like there's been a few hurt feelings the past few days.

[01:22:01] [SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, I've made the most of it.

[01:22:06] [SPEAKER_01]: What are you going to do?

[01:22:09] [SPEAKER_01]: That's your rundown.

[01:22:11] [SPEAKER_01]: That's what we got. That's what's been going on.

[01:22:13] [SPEAKER_01]: That's what we've been seeing.

[01:22:15] [SPEAKER_01]: Spoiler free.

[01:22:16] [SPEAKER_01]: We will be talking story beats and spoilers on future episodes, though.

[01:22:21] [SPEAKER_01]: So just bear warning if you haven't gone through at least the campaign, you know, in the next few weeks.

[01:22:28] [SPEAKER_01]: Listen, we're going to be talking about stuff.

[01:22:30] [SPEAKER_01]: And that's just that's just how that goes.

[01:22:33] [SPEAKER_01]: Like I said, there's some things just and I got to talk about.

[01:22:36] [SPEAKER_01]: And I think we're using all of our strength not to talk about them right now.

[01:22:41] [SPEAKER_01]: Now that goes in the meantime, my personal lord and savior, Chris Metson, who, you know, reappeared and is now part of the Warcraft team again

[01:22:53] [SPEAKER_01]: and is out there vibing and doing his thing and creating stories.

[01:22:58] [SPEAKER_01]: And it's just the world feels better with Chris Metson at the helm once again.

[01:23:04] [SPEAKER_01]: The World of Warcraft team did release an interview with him as a WoW cast with Scott Johnson of the Instance Podcast fame.

[01:23:16] [SPEAKER_01]: And in it, of course, always good to hear Chris still getting used to the bald head.

[01:23:21] [SPEAKER_01]: But other than that, love seeing him here on that voice.

[01:23:25] [SPEAKER_01]: He is he is the man.

[01:23:30] [SPEAKER_01]: He talked a bit about the war within and beyond.

[01:23:38] [SPEAKER_01]: And I do encourage people to actually like go and listen to this whole thing.

[01:23:42] [SPEAKER_01]: But one of the things that struck me was he was talking about things in terms of like patch 11, which we're on now.

[01:23:52] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, the 11, 12, 13, 13 being the last Titan.

[01:23:57] [SPEAKER_01]: He was talking about how they're mapping things currently out to 17.

[01:24:02] [SPEAKER_01]: So that's six expansions beyond where we're at right now.

[01:24:06] [SPEAKER_01]: That's incredible.

[01:24:08] [SPEAKER_01]: That's bonkers thinking about the came in 40s.

[01:24:16] [SPEAKER_01]: But I'm going to bro, you know how close I'm going to be to retirement by the time that comes around?

[01:24:21] [SPEAKER_01]: Like, I don't even want to think about how fucking old I'm going to be talking about.

[01:24:25] [SPEAKER_02]: You're in your late 20s, right?

[01:24:26] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, of course. Yeah.

[01:24:30] [SPEAKER_01]: Perpetually, 2728.

[01:24:33] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it's well, and he's older than I am.

[01:24:36] [SPEAKER_01]: So I'm sure that they're looking at this going, man, this is the long haul.

[01:24:41] [SPEAKER_01]: But I love that they're already telling us.

[01:24:44] [SPEAKER_01]: And this is listen, and I'm going to get to something else here in a second.

[01:24:49] [SPEAKER_01]: There's a reason why I think they don't want Chris Mets and out there talking that much because he says too much.

[01:24:55] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah.

[01:24:55] [SPEAKER_01]: It's one of the reasons we've always loved him is that he just he talks to you.

[01:25:00] [SPEAKER_01]: It's like the never watch Boccia mania.

[01:25:02] [SPEAKER_02]: You know what that is?

[01:25:03] [SPEAKER_01]: No, it's a wrestling YouTube channel.

[01:25:08] [SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, they always they always have a segment called you talk too much.

[01:25:11] [SPEAKER_01]: And it's Chris Benson.

[01:25:12] [SPEAKER_01]: Like he's always going off and saying stuff.

[01:25:16] [SPEAKER_01]: But I do appreciate, for instance, they talked about how they are charting that course to, you know, there's this trilogy.

[01:25:24] [SPEAKER_01]: And then I don't know.

[01:25:25] [SPEAKER_01]: Is there another trilogy after this?

[01:25:27] [SPEAKER_01]: Is there a pair of stories that come after this?

[01:25:29] [SPEAKER_01]: Are we ever going to get a solo expansion self contained ever again?

[01:25:33] [SPEAKER_01]: Or are they all going to be these mega arcs of things like that?

[01:25:37] [SPEAKER_01]: That leads you to a lot of questions.

[01:25:40] [SPEAKER_02]: He also he also implied that Zalatath is going to be around for a while, which which, you know, you know, Zalatath.

[01:25:48] [SPEAKER_02]: If Zalatath is the end boss of this expansion, we ain't killing her.

[01:25:51] [SPEAKER_02]: You know, it's going to be in a Zara thing where she gets away or something.

[01:25:55] [SPEAKER_02]: So like, isn't the boss of this expansion who then who and then how many expansions are we going to be chasing Zalatath?

[01:26:02] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's when does Eridicron come back?

[01:26:07] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. When do the dude from Shadowlands that everyone like come back?

[01:26:12] [SPEAKER_02]: I can never remember his name.

[01:26:15] [SPEAKER_02]: The name now.

[01:26:17] [SPEAKER_02]: The vampire dude.

[01:26:20] [SPEAKER_02]: Dire, Sire Denathrius.

[01:26:22] [SPEAKER_02]: Denathrius. When does Denathrius come back?

[01:26:25] [SPEAKER_02]: When does when does Gallywix come back?

[01:26:28] [SPEAKER_01]: When does Gallywix come back?

[01:26:29] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, you already brought her up. When does Ashara come back?

[01:26:32] [SPEAKER_02]: Ashara. She's like mega powerful too, you know.

[01:26:35] [SPEAKER_01]: Yes. Way right.

[01:26:38] [SPEAKER_02]: And she wants to she wants power, power, power.

[01:26:41] [SPEAKER_02]: She's power mad.

[01:26:43] [SPEAKER_02]: And you think Zalatath and Azshara would be at least.

[01:26:46] [SPEAKER_02]: Thick as thieves.

[01:26:47] [SPEAKER_02]: Aligned in some way.

[01:26:49] [SPEAKER_02]: Somewhere.

[01:26:50] [SPEAKER_02]: So much.

[01:26:51] [SPEAKER_02]: What about Lydon?

[01:26:53] [SPEAKER_01]: Is Sargoyst dead?

[01:26:55] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, yeah.

[01:26:57] [SPEAKER_01]: So so I'm glad you mentioned this because folks in this interview, I'm going to play a little clip here.

[01:27:06] [SPEAKER_01]: Chris Benson was asked about that sword and here's what he had to say about it.

[01:27:12] [SPEAKER_00]: Will I be expected to walk in quest one and yank the sword from the planet?

[01:27:16] [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, interesting. That's an interesting one.

[01:27:18] [SPEAKER_00]: I would say to that.

[01:27:19] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm glad you brought that up.

[01:27:21] [SPEAKER_00]: Actually, the sword, the resolution of the sword that we started with at BlizzCon.

[01:27:26] [SPEAKER_00]: Actually, that's a 13 thing we're going to build to that.

[01:27:31] [SPEAKER_00]: And it's a it's a doozy.

[01:27:34] [SPEAKER_00]: One does not simply yank a sword from Azeroth.

[01:27:36] [SPEAKER_00]: I would even say you are not prepared for that moment and leave it at that.

[01:27:42] [SPEAKER_00]: But it is a 13 issue.

[01:27:47] [SPEAKER_02]: So how many expansions is 13?

[01:27:49] [SPEAKER_01]: What we all know that's last Titan.

[01:27:52] [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, my God.

[01:27:56] [SPEAKER_01]: So somewhere out there again, these threads, they talk about all these things that are hanging around out there.

[01:28:01] [SPEAKER_01]: And we know that he's out there with the pantheon and doing whatever the fuck it is that Illidan is doing.

[01:28:07] [SPEAKER_02]: He is the last Titan.

[01:28:10] [SPEAKER_01]: Is Illidan the last Titan?

[01:28:12] [SPEAKER_02]: No, Sargeras.

[01:28:13] [SPEAKER_02]: Sargeras is still out there.

[01:28:19] [SPEAKER_02]: The issue with Sargeras was always that he couldn't fully manifest in Azeroth because he was so far away.

[01:28:27] [SPEAKER_02]: Like millions, billions of light years away.

[01:28:30] [SPEAKER_02]: So we always needed some kind of portal to get to Azeroth.

[01:28:34] [SPEAKER_02]: He could send echoes of himself to Azeroth.

[01:28:38] [SPEAKER_02]: And that's why the Maelstrom exists in the first place.

[01:28:45] [SPEAKER_02]: Because the portal to bring him here exploded.

[01:28:50] [SPEAKER_02]: And he physically can't get to Azeroth.

[01:28:54] [SPEAKER_02]: So the whole deal with him being on Azeroth, you know, to stab the planet in the first place.

[01:29:04] [SPEAKER_02]: Was that even him or a projection?

[01:29:05] [SPEAKER_02]: Because he just sort of emerged out of a cloud.

[01:29:07] [SPEAKER_02]: I never really fully understood how that was.

[01:29:09] [SPEAKER_01]: I think that was him because I think that's him and Illidan fighting in that whatever pocket dimension.

[01:29:18] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's a bit strange.

[01:29:22] [SPEAKER_02]: Because then he just sort of appears and then it can only manifest for like a very brief moment.

[01:29:27] [SPEAKER_02]: But then like the echoes of the Titans, which must be pretty powerful in their own right.

[01:29:33] [SPEAKER_02]: Even though they are dead, apparently.

[01:29:38] [SPEAKER_02]: They sucked him in a vacuum like the Ghostbusters.

[01:29:43] [SPEAKER_02]: It's really the whole stuff with the Titans and their physicality in the universe is always confusing.

[01:29:52] [SPEAKER_02]: Because they're like if you go back far enough, there was the whole thing with Aegwynn.

[01:29:57] [SPEAKER_02]: And Sargeras possessing Aegwynn like Diablo.

[01:30:04] [SPEAKER_01]: That's how we ended up with Medivh going crazy.

[01:30:08] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[01:30:10] [SPEAKER_02]: So like clearly the Titans can exist in a corporeal form, even though they are these huge giants.

[01:30:17] [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know, we're getting well off track here, but it's just like...

[01:30:20] [SPEAKER_02]: It's it.

[01:30:21] [SPEAKER_02]: It's the we've still it sort of goes back to everything they've been teasing recently about like with Iridachron.

[01:30:29] [SPEAKER_02]: And this whole idea that what the Titans tell us is very much their perspective.

[01:30:34] [SPEAKER_02]: And they're like maybe not the most reliable narrator in the first place of their own history of what actually happened.

[01:30:41] [SPEAKER_02]: Iridachron obviously feels like the Titans were basically alien invaders trying to force their technology and their colonialism,

[01:30:50] [SPEAKER_02]: basically on Azeroth and be like, yeah, OK, we're here now.

[01:30:54] [SPEAKER_02]: You're going to be dragons and your culture is going to be our culture, which is Titan robots.

[01:31:02] [SPEAKER_02]: And we're going to put all of alien bases all over the place, literally everywhere.

[01:31:07] [SPEAKER_02]: You know, that's what it's been like the British Empire in a way.

[01:31:12] [SPEAKER_02]: The Titans are the British Empire.

[01:31:14] [SPEAKER_01]: The Titans are the British Empire.

[01:31:15] [SPEAKER_01]: That was that. That's what we're boiling it down to now.

[01:31:18] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. So I'll go.

[01:31:19] [SPEAKER_02]: I see. I don't know.

[01:31:22] [SPEAKER_02]: Oris Johnson or something.

[01:31:26] [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know.

[01:31:27] [SPEAKER_02]: I'm getting tired now.

[01:31:28] [SPEAKER_02]: Coming up to me.

[01:31:29] [SPEAKER_02]: That's all right.

[01:31:29] [SPEAKER_02]: I know it's getting late.

[01:31:30] [SPEAKER_02]: Give me.

[01:31:32] [SPEAKER_01]: No, I love it.

[01:31:33] [SPEAKER_01]: I love Jez after dark.

[01:31:34] [SPEAKER_01]: It's the best.

[01:31:37] [SPEAKER_01]: The thing that this interview also tells me that I really appreciate in getting away from the Alex of Friese Abbey era is they clearly have an end.

[01:31:48] [SPEAKER_01]: In mind, and they've said this, I think on a few occasions is that they clearly have an end where they want the story to go kind of major beats that they need to hit to get there.

[01:31:59] [SPEAKER_01]: And then they have to fill in the rest.

[01:32:00] [SPEAKER_01]: So it's not this like aimless.

[01:32:04] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, we'll just throw shit at a wall and see what happens kind of adventure.

[01:32:07] [SPEAKER_01]: Like they clearly know where they want to go and then take it from there, which maybe that's part of the reason why things feel stronger right now is because they have purpose.

[01:32:18] [SPEAKER_01]: And that's not always been the case.

[01:32:20] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, so anyway, if you haven't seen it yet, always good to hear Chris Metson is he is the king always will be and hopefully he manages to stick around for at least a few more years.

[01:32:37] [SPEAKER_01]: One of the kind of funny, interesting, I guess side issues with this is I mentioned that the interview was conducted by Scott Johnson of the Instance podcast fame.

[01:32:51] [SPEAKER_01]: And I assume if you're listening to this podcast that you know what the instance is because it was like one of the OG war world of Warcraft podcasts.

[01:33:01] [SPEAKER_01]: Like it started, you know, around when Warcraft was new and, you know, it's one of the original ones that's been around forever.

[01:33:11] [SPEAKER_01]: And what's kind of funny to me is seeing the reception to the return of the instance podcast in conjunction with this interview because it's been gone for several years.

[01:33:23] [SPEAKER_01]: And then Scott Johnson decided not to continue doing it at a certain point and then brought it back.

[01:33:28] [SPEAKER_01]: Now, I guess the things are good and feeling better about things and the, you know, just to kind of open it up to the wider audience.

[01:33:36] [SPEAKER_01]: The conversations that I've had with people around the podcast community have been kind of hilarious.

[01:33:41] [SPEAKER_01]: It's just how widely varied the response has been where on one hand, I think as a listener, I think there's a lot of listeners that are like, yay, the instance is back.

[01:33:53] [SPEAKER_01]: It's the original Warcraft podcast and fuck the thing went straight to number one on the chart.

[01:33:58] [SPEAKER_01]: Like there's a you know, you can look at, you know, video game podcast rankings and it went straight to number one in the US like in one day.

[01:34:06] [SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, that's that's the kind of heft that that still wheels.

[01:34:12] [SPEAKER_01]: And so on one hand, it was kind of funny where some people and I understand this were like, you know what?

[01:34:19] [SPEAKER_01]: Fuck him and the horse he rode in on here. He comes Johnny come lately.

[01:34:24] [SPEAKER_01]: Things are good now. And now you come in and you're swinging your Chris Metzen connection around and talking about how you're going to get all these interviews now.

[01:34:34] [SPEAKER_01]: And you've been talking to Blizzard PR and, you know, we can't get shit for our place.

[01:34:39] [SPEAKER_01]: And then the other side of it is when I've talked to people like, oh, boohoo gives a shit.

[01:34:44] [SPEAKER_01]: Like, I it's so funny being part of this community because I get it.

[01:34:51] [SPEAKER_01]: I totally understand the frustration where I'll admit it for our show for this show.

[01:34:57] [SPEAKER_01]: I have tried to get so many interviews and have gotten completely shut out.

[01:35:02] [SPEAKER_01]: The one time that I got in on the interview with Ian Housacostas, man, I wasn't even supposed to be there.

[01:35:07] [SPEAKER_01]: That was supposed to be somebody else. And I just I got lucky.

[01:35:12] [SPEAKER_01]: I know a lot of other podcasts who are routinely pinging Blizzard to get interviews and are getting the same response that I do, which is nothing.

[01:35:21] [SPEAKER_01]: Zero zip zilch nada. And then you have, you know, one of the OGs come back and is just like, oh, we're doing this.

[01:35:29] [SPEAKER_01]: We're doing this. And I got this. And it's like all of a sudden, the doors are opened.

[01:35:33] [SPEAKER_01]: He probably knew from back then. And that's the thing.

[01:35:37] [SPEAKER_01]: So I get the frustration. I totally understand that.

[01:35:40] [SPEAKER_01]: And I'll admit, honestly, I feel a bit of that myself.

[01:35:45] [SPEAKER_01]: This is about relationships because it's as true here as it is in any industry anywhere.

[01:35:52] [SPEAKER_01]: Relationships mean everything.

[01:35:54] [SPEAKER_01]: And when you've got Chris Metzen and a former co-host that works at Blizzard and you know all these other people from way back in the day and they're still around like

[01:36:03] [SPEAKER_01]: that's always going to open a door for you that nobody else is going to have.

[01:36:07] [SPEAKER_01]: Like you have the biggest gun possible with medicine in your back.

[01:36:12] [SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, it's kind of funny to see it.

[01:36:15] [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, hopefully someday we'll get somebody here, you know, on this show that wants to be interviewed and we'll give them a fair shake and a good time.

[01:36:25] [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, Jez, I'm looking at you because I know that, you know, you're the man in the know that can hopefully one of these days wrangle somebody for us.

[01:36:35] [SPEAKER_01]: Not too much pressure.

[01:36:38] [SPEAKER_01]: We're going to keep trying to get somebody here.

[01:36:41] [SPEAKER_01]: But anyway, I just thought that was kind of funny just to see the wide range of reactions amongst the podcast community.

[01:36:47] [SPEAKER_01]: But speaking of your day job, and this is kind of one of the last things I've got here before we head out is Gamescom.

[01:36:55] [SPEAKER_01]: You mentioned Gamescom. Gamescom happened.

[01:36:59] [SPEAKER_01]: And Blizzard did have a presence there.

[01:37:04] [SPEAKER_01]: No major announcements.

[01:37:05] [SPEAKER_01]: Major, major announcements.

[01:37:07] [SPEAKER_01]: But the first thing that I wanted to hit on and then you can kind of fill us in on the rest of anything that you might have is they mentioned something called Warcraft Direct,

[01:37:15] [SPEAKER_01]: which is not a Blizzcon, which is not a Blizzcon line.

[01:37:20] [SPEAKER_01]: It's something else entirely that they didn't really expound upon.

[01:37:24] [SPEAKER_01]: Do you know anything about this or can you describe anything about this to the audience about what this may entail?

[01:37:32] [SPEAKER_02]: Well, this kind of comes from the whole Nintendo Direct thing, right?

[01:37:36] [SPEAKER_02]: I think like a lot of people really love the Nintendo Direct format and it's basically just Nintendo,

[01:37:45] [SPEAKER_02]: no ball, just sort of play by play.

[01:37:48] [SPEAKER_02]: Here's what you need to know kind of thing in a sort of longer format.

[01:37:53] [SPEAKER_02]: So Microsoft adopted this a few years ago as well because everyone was just like, stop doing these long interviews.

[01:38:00] [SPEAKER_02]: You know, we'd rather have, you know, interviews here and there, but then actually just give us the data like Nintendo Direct.

[01:38:07] [SPEAKER_02]: So Microsoft started doing these developer directs, they call them, and they drop these around January.

[01:38:12] [SPEAKER_02]: Usually, there's like the last two years have been a developer direct in January.

[01:38:17] [SPEAKER_02]: And it's just like Microsoft, maybe developers narrating some raw gameplay and just giving you the blow by blow kind of thing.

[01:38:26] [SPEAKER_02]: So basically I imagine it will be similar in format to the Warcraft panel that they do at Blizzcon,

[01:38:34] [SPEAKER_02]: where it's like they have a PowerPoint presentation and they narrate what to expect from the next patch or the next expansion or whatever.

[01:38:42] [SPEAKER_02]: But I do have a feeling this expansion cycle is going to be shorter than usual.

[01:38:46] [SPEAKER_02]: I think like one of the things Blizzard's always been trying to do since the Activision era was get down to a yearly expansion cadence.

[01:38:54] [SPEAKER_02]: And they've never really been able to hit it.

[01:38:57] [SPEAKER_02]: And I think that's one of the reasons this expansion is physically, it's physically smaller than like the world landmass is smaller than previous expansions.

[01:39:06] [SPEAKER_02]: I think that's because they're going straight on to working on the next expansion, probably to launch around this time next year.

[01:39:14] [SPEAKER_02]: Possibly. I believe we get like two to ride tiers out of this one.

[01:39:21] [SPEAKER_02]: In theory, the next expansion would be easy to make because it is the northern eastern kingdom.

[01:39:26] [SPEAKER_02]: So I imagine it's going to be everything north of the Spandalfan.

[01:39:34] [SPEAKER_01]: I was going to say like a Rathi Highlands on up.

[01:39:38] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, probably a Rathi Highlands up, I think.

[01:39:42] [SPEAKER_02]: So like they'll have to the terrain mapping will be there, but they'll probably be like up leveling everything.

[01:39:48] [SPEAKER_02]: So like Silverpine Forest, your Hillsbrad, your Hinterlands, your Plague Lands.

[01:39:53] [SPEAKER_02]: I wonder what they're going to do with Plague Lands man and the Ghost Lands and then redo all of Quel'thalas and then redo the forest trolls.

[01:40:03] [SPEAKER_02]: There's actually quite a lot of stuff they need to do there really to get it modernized because a lot of that stuff is like especially like the Ghost Land and Quel'thalas.

[01:40:11] [SPEAKER_02]: That's all like Burning Legion content hasn't been touched in Burning Legion.

[01:40:15] [SPEAKER_02]: You know, Zul'Aman I suppose would be like a dungeon or something.

[01:40:18] [SPEAKER_02]: The forest trolls even still there. They're going to be allies now.

[01:40:21] [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know. All that kind of stuff.

[01:40:26] [SPEAKER_02]: Because last time we saw Western Plague Lands it was recovering and maybe it's completely recovered now and maybe Eastern Plague Lands is still a bit fucked.

[01:40:34] [SPEAKER_02]: I mean Stratholme is presumably still going to be fucked, I would imagine.

[01:40:39] [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know man.

[01:40:40] [SPEAKER_02]: Eternally haunted.

[01:40:41] [SPEAKER_02]: Eternally haunted but getting off track again.

[01:40:45] [SPEAKER_02]: So I suppose like I can't remember what the original discussion point was now.

[01:40:51] [SPEAKER_01]: Talking about Warcraft Direct and what might have been in the tale.

[01:40:53] [SPEAKER_02]: So Warcraft Direct. I suppose like what they'll announce there is like the next raid tier and then probably also give a roadmap leading into the next expansion.

[01:41:04] [SPEAKER_02]: Maybe T's the next expansion because I do think they want to make this more rapid fire probably or a bunch of expectations and stuff like that.

[01:41:15] [SPEAKER_02]: Or maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it will be more traditional like two year, one year and a half.

[01:41:20] [SPEAKER_02]: Because when did Dragonfly come out?

[01:41:24] [SPEAKER_01]: It was a little less than two years because wasn't it?

[01:41:28] [SPEAKER_01]: It was spring.

[01:41:30] [SPEAKER_02]: Wasn't it?

[01:41:31] [SPEAKER_01]: No.

[01:41:31] [SPEAKER_01]: I thought it was like November. I thought it was like November of 22.

[01:41:34] [SPEAKER_02]: I have no perception of time anymore.

[01:41:38] [SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, so maybe one year is too much but maybe they'll talk about how the next two tiers and maybe give some teasers for midnight and what to expect there as well.

[01:41:49] [SPEAKER_02]: I do think they've embraced this more transparent hype cycle now.

[01:41:54] [SPEAKER_02]: Whereas like with Undermikeybara they gave us this whole fucking roadmap for Dragonfly. The whole thing and they nailed the roadmap really, really well.

[01:42:03] [SPEAKER_02]: I've never, you know, some things are a little bit like a two week, three weeks here and there.

[01:42:08] [SPEAKER_02]: But they nailed that shit so damn well.

[01:42:12] [SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, I think it'll just be similar to a Warcraft panel at BlizzCon with a lot of gameplay footage I would hope.

[01:42:20] [SPEAKER_02]: And you know, go and watch things like the Starfield Direct from last year for example of kind of maybe what to expect.

[01:42:27] [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know if it'd be... I presume it's going to be a Blizzard thing.

[01:42:30] [SPEAKER_02]: I don't think it's necessarily a Microsoft thing that they're calling it this.

[01:42:33] [SPEAKER_02]: I think it's just a matter of fact that this is this kind of format that's become really successful for platforms and publishers now.

[01:42:42] [SPEAKER_02]: And Blizzard is operating independently more than ever now, like independent of Activision and Microsoft too.

[01:42:50] [SPEAKER_02]: So a lot of this stuff is them doing their own thing and I think it's really awesome to see.

[01:42:54] [SPEAKER_02]: So I think it'll be good.

[01:42:56] [SPEAKER_02]: But they're going to save a hell of a lot of money from not doing BlizzCon this year, I tell you that much.

[01:43:00] [SPEAKER_01]: I was going to say, yeah probably a lot cheaper.

[01:43:06] [SPEAKER_02]: It's really expensive. They mention doing a BlizzCon is really expensive and like the tickets cost a lot of money but they don't break even.

[01:43:16] [SPEAKER_02]: So it's more marketing spend for them.

[01:43:19] [SPEAKER_02]: And I suppose like in this era... and it sucks because I really want to go to BlizzCon. That was a bucket list thing for me.

[01:43:24] [SPEAKER_02]: But in this era of free streaming on YouTube, it almost doesn't make a lot of sense to try and invest in all this time.

[01:43:33] [SPEAKER_02]: And also that's a lot of time developers could be working on the game instead of hanging out BlizzCon.

[01:43:40] [SPEAKER_02]: I think they'll do BlizzCon so they'll just be less regular but we'll see.

[01:43:44] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we'll get you out to the next one. I'll take you out. We'll get tacos.

[01:43:48] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yummy.

[01:43:48] [SPEAKER_01]: We'll make it happen.

[01:43:51] [SPEAKER_01]: 30th anniversary events, any guesses?

[01:43:54] [SPEAKER_01]: Those could be.

[01:43:56] [SPEAKER_01]: They mention those.

[01:43:59] [SPEAKER_02]: No idea man. I got no idea.

[01:44:03] [SPEAKER_01]: Something StarCraft related.

[01:44:05] [SPEAKER_01]: Will we see anything StarCraft related at any of the anniversary events coming up starting in our code?

[01:44:12] [SPEAKER_02]: I doubt it man.

[01:44:14] [SPEAKER_01]: Nothing tangential. Just like a space murloc doing something.

[01:44:17] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah maybe.

[01:44:18] [SPEAKER_02]: I think I've got this. I've had hints that StarCraft is coming back in some form, but I have no idea what that's going to look like. No idea.

[01:44:29] [SPEAKER_01]: Alright. We'll save it. We'll save it.

[01:44:32] [SPEAKER_01]: So yes, don't know a whole lot about this just yet.

[01:44:36] [SPEAKER_01]: Apparently we have anniversary events that are going to start in October.

[01:44:39] [SPEAKER_01]: There's supposed to be a bunch of surprises.

[01:44:41] [SPEAKER_01]: They did mention Overwatch 2 having some Warcraft crossover and they did show a Sylvanas Windrunner skin for Widowmaker.

[01:44:52] [SPEAKER_01]: So kind of cool there to see them pushing that hard.

[01:44:55] [SPEAKER_01]: So we'll see. We'll see what happens, but it will be coming right around the corner.

[01:45:00] [SPEAKER_01]: Last very last thing, very last thing because this is the end of August.

[01:45:04] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not going to do a full trading post ratings.

[01:45:07] [SPEAKER_01]: I just want to say if you look in there at the trading post this month, there are some unbelievable swords and storm hammers that you must get the transmon for.

[01:45:20] [SPEAKER_01]: They are they are the most unbelievable.

[01:45:30] [SPEAKER_01]: The goat. They are the goats. You have to get the goats.

[01:45:33] [SPEAKER_01]: Got to do.

[01:45:35] [SPEAKER_01]: All right, I think we've done enough damage for this episode.

[01:45:40] [SPEAKER_01]: For those who don't already know, where can the good people find you on the Internet?

[01:45:44] [SPEAKER_02]: Jez, you can find me right here on Shackle Fury, but also on Xbox two podcast on YouTube and also on Windows Central.

[01:45:55] [SPEAKER_01]: There it is.

[01:45:56] [SPEAKER_01]: My thanks to you, sir, for joining me once again and my thanks to all of you for listening.

[01:46:02] [SPEAKER_01]: And remember, you can always follow me and the show on Twitter at Berserker Rage and Unshackled Underscore Fury on Blue Sky at Berserker and Unshackled Fury, as well as on Twitch and Unshackled Fury and Real Berserker.

[01:46:14] [SPEAKER_01]: You can also join our Discord links for which are in the profile of the show on Twitter and on our bonus roll page.

[01:46:20] [SPEAKER_01]: Feel free to contact the show with your questions, comments or otherwise through any of those resources or on shacklefury.com and you can find this show wherever you get your podcasts.

[01:46:32] [SPEAKER_01]: Once again, thank you for listening.

[01:46:34] [SPEAKER_01]: Remember to keep your swords wet and your banners high and we'll see you in Kaz Algar.

[01:46:40] [SPEAKER_01]: Farewell.