Episode 156: Under Where? Under There? Oh, Undermine!

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

[00:00:22] Uncensored Home for World of Warcraft news and opinions. This is Unshackled Fury.

[00:00:30] The siren song is calling, and goblins are on the line, as we unwrap an early winter veil gift and take a peek inside.

[00:01:13] So welcome back for episode 156 of your Uncensored Home for World of Warcraft news and opinions, Unshackled Fury.

[00:01:22] I'm your host, Berzerker, and with me once again is the one-man gaming cartel known as Mr. Jez Corden.

[00:01:30] Welcome back again, good sir.

[00:01:33] Hey buddy, glad to be here, Jiro, with your fine lovely self on this fine lovely Sunday in November.

[00:01:42] Yes, beautiful, beautiful November weather.

[00:01:46] Back again for another episode of Cinema for the People.

[00:01:51] Pure cinema.

[00:01:53] Pure cinema.

[00:01:53] I hope everybody out there is enjoying the 20th anniversary hoopla for World of Warcraft.

[00:02:01] There is certainly a lot going on these days, not just in game but out of game.

[00:02:06] Over here I saw a wonderful 20th anniversary kind of retrospective in the New York Times.

[00:02:14] It was pretty sweet.

[00:02:16] Lots of good little anecdotes and things.

[00:02:19] With the actual anniversary, Jez, coming up here in just a few days, November 23rd I believe here in the States is the actual 20th anniversary.

[00:02:30] And while that is cool, and this is always the anniversary time of the year.

[00:02:34] One of the things I've been thinking about recently is it feels really weird.

[00:02:38] Maybe it's the change in the weather, the temperature, the humidity.

[00:02:43] I don't know what it is.

[00:02:44] But I feel like right now, or at least two weeks ago, I should have been getting ready for a BlizzCon.

[00:02:50] And it wasn't.

[00:02:51] It was weird.

[00:02:53] I didn't like it.

[00:02:54] Do you get that feeling at all?

[00:02:58] Where you're at like, oh, it's BlizzCon time.

[00:03:00] Or is it just like, ah, it's just more noise in the background of all the conventions you have to deal with?

[00:03:07] I mean, honestly, like, we haven't really been covering like Warcraft and Blizzard stuff specifically for that long.

[00:03:16] It kind of took me like, I had to end up in a leadership position before I could be like, okay, now I've got the authority to say we're covering Warcraft and no one can stop me.

[00:03:26] You know, so it's sort of like only the last couple of years really where I focused on BlizzCon from an editorial perspective.

[00:03:34] But like before that, I used to be just like so busy that I missed so many BlizzCons.

[00:03:40] I missed so many BlizzCons anyway.

[00:03:42] And as you know, I've never attended because it's so far away.

[00:03:45] No.

[00:03:45] But I really hope they bring it back in the future because I really want to attend.

[00:03:48] I really want to go to BlizzCon.

[00:03:49] And now I potentially have the means.

[00:03:51] They shut it bloody down.

[00:03:53] Yeah.

[00:03:53] So typical.

[00:03:54] One of my dreams is to get you, you and me and the homie Rommel to a, I think as you said, a taco stand somewhere.

[00:04:03] Mm hmm.

[00:04:04] Down there in Irvine and get you, get you some fine California cuisine.

[00:04:09] That is bucket list item top five right there.

[00:04:12] Maybe even top three.

[00:04:13] I do love California tacos.

[00:04:15] You got some good shit out here.

[00:04:17] Um, on the heels of our last episode, uh, there at the end, stuck my neck out on that one.

[00:04:26] Um, we all know how that went.

[00:04:29] Um, but I did, I did want to say coming out of the end of the last episode to have a little, uh, political talk.

[00:04:36] Um, I really want to thank everyone that reached out because I don't know that I have ever had a response in totality.

[00:04:52] Like I had the last episode because I say it all the time, just like we record these things and we shoot them off into the ether.

[00:04:58] And most of the time, nobody writes back, nobody comments, nobody says anything.

[00:05:02] So it's like, I don't know.

[00:05:03] Does anybody fucking listen to this thing?

[00:05:05] I look at the metrics.

[00:05:06] I mean, clearly somebody is downloading it, but you know, it's like, we never really hear commentary or get emails or nothing.

[00:05:13] And, and after the last episode, I had quite a number of people that wrote in or messaged me or whatever it was.

[00:05:20] And I was really kind of touched that, um, so many people cared enough to, to write in.

[00:05:30] And, um, even people who didn't, even people who disagreed with what I had to say, even, even with people that weren't happy about it.

[00:05:38] Um, and did in fact say like, yep, this is it.

[00:05:42] I'm not going to listen to the show anymore.

[00:05:44] They were all really respectful.

[00:05:46] And I don't know what that says about my audience or like the world of Warcraft community at large or what, but, um, we got a really fucking good audience here, Jez.

[00:05:55] And a lot of good folks that listen to this show.

[00:05:57] And even people that disagreed with what I had to say and were like, yep, that's it.

[00:06:02] Even then they were respectful about, you know, that disagreement.

[00:06:05] So I, I, I really want to thank everybody who took the time to write in.

[00:06:10] And, you know, I don't really have a lot of words of encouragement, um, for you at this moment in time.

[00:06:17] Um, but I will say, you know, Jez, uh, you, you're, you're around in the gaming, uh, uh, sphere quite a bit.

[00:06:26] And you've been around for quite a long time, you know, maybe it's just, you just call me old.

[00:06:31] No, I'm older than you.

[00:06:33] Uh, but you've been around long enough.

[00:06:35] Cause you know, I don't know what it was, mate, mate.

[00:06:38] Coincidence or not.

[00:06:38] I just felt like punching some Nazis this past, you know, week or two.

[00:06:43] And so I started playing Wolfenstein, uh, the new order and, uh, boy, what a good fucking game that is.

[00:06:52] Uh, along with, uh, the new Colossus, I believe is part two where, uh, if you don't know in Wolfenstein, it's basically an alternate history where the Nazis didn't lose world war two.

[00:07:02] It's kind of like man in the high castle, which I don't know.

[00:07:04] Coincidentally, I've started watching that again.

[00:07:06] Uh, I'm not really sure why maybe there's a connection to it.

[00:07:08] I, who knows?

[00:07:10] Um, but there is a phenomenal, badass soundtrack for Wolfenstein.

[00:07:20] And so that leads us into jazz, our metal album of the week.

[00:07:24] And I'm actually going to throw it over to an artist, not just one particular track because it is the composer, Mick Gordon, who created the soundtrack for Wolfenstein, uh, the new order.

[00:07:38] And you may know him better for being the, uh, the composer behind the recent doom and doom eternal games.

[00:07:47] And those soundtracks, which are fucking phenomenal.

[00:07:50] Uh, I know that there was some beef, uh, with him and the developer.

[00:07:54] And so I don't know, I think some shit went South, uh, following the doom eternal.

[00:07:58] But, uh, if you have never like listened to these, these, these tracks, these, these, um, soundtracks before highly encourage you to do it.

[00:08:08] The, the Wolfenstein one is, is pretty out there.

[00:08:11] It's got some just wild sound theory to it, but, uh, the doom ones are just rip and tear, baby.

[00:08:19] That's that you threw it through.

[00:08:20] That's what you're doing.

[00:08:20] Uh, were you a fan of, uh, any of these works as they came out into the, into the world?

[00:08:30] I'm a dude for sure.

[00:08:31] I mean, I have to tell you it's pronounced Wolfenstein.

[00:08:34] Oh, Wolfenstein.

[00:08:36] My, my bad, my bad.

[00:08:37] The man who lives in Germany, you're going to tell me.

[00:08:40] Uh, yeah.

[00:08:41] And, um, but, uh, yeah, Wolfenstein, the new order and the, the, the new Colossus, they're both fantastic games.

[00:08:48] Like machine games are a fantastic developer and it's one of the reasons why, like, I always feel, I always feel, I have this bias against licensed games.

[00:08:57] But like when that, when I heard that Microsoft was making an Indiana Jones game, I was like, oh man, licensed games.

[00:09:04] They, they're either really good or they're really terrible.

[00:09:06] But then I read that it was machine games, obviously the made Wolfenstein.

[00:09:10] They're working on it.

[00:09:11] Oh, they made the Indiana Jones game.

[00:09:14] Yeah.

[00:09:14] They're making it.

[00:09:15] Oh shit.

[00:09:15] It comes out on December 10th.

[00:09:17] And I went and played it a few weeks ago in London, um, an event.

[00:09:22] And I was like, oh my God, it feels like a Wolfenstein game.

[00:09:25] It's, it's not a, uh, it's not a, you know, a blood bath shooter like Wolfenstein is, but it still has that sort of, that machine games feel.

[00:09:35] It's really hard to describe what I mean.

[00:09:36] You just have to go and play it.

[00:09:37] It's, you know, to, it's a smooth, beautiful journey in a weird way.

[00:09:41] It's a, it's a, yeah, it's gorgeous, smooth and, and, uh, wide, wide linear.

[00:09:47] I suppose is what, what they're, what they call it.

[00:09:49] It's like, yeah, it's a linear game, but that there's a lot of, there's a lot of exploration there and a lot of reasons to explore.

[00:09:56] And that team also made the, the, the Riddick games like, uh, Chronicles of Riddick, Butcher Bay and Escape from the Dark Athena, I think.

[00:10:05] Hmm.

[00:10:06] Well, something, something Dark Athena.

[00:10:08] So yeah, a lot of great pedigree, but the, the music's fantastic.

[00:10:12] I love the title screen music in that game.

[00:10:13] Oh yeah.

[00:10:14] Um, and, and, and Mick Gordon as well is a, is a tour de force.

[00:10:17] If you've, if you've never watched the Mick Gordon, there's like a small video documentary about Mick Gordon composing the theme to doom on, um, on YouTube.

[00:10:27] I absolutely love that little documentary.

[00:10:30] He's talking about like, okay, like we, we, we were trying to use a guitar, but then we decided it didn't have enough string.

[00:10:36] So we went with a eight string guitar or something.

[00:10:39] And then we, we tuned it like, like a one and a half steps down or something like that.

[00:10:43] I can't remember, but it was just like, we were, we were trying to get this absolutely filthy, filthy, filthy sound with the, with the guitar.

[00:10:51] And, um, and God, my God, they absolutely nailed it.

[00:10:54] Just, um, absolutely fantastic.

[00:10:57] And then also we performed the doom soundtrack at the game awards quite famously.

[00:11:01] Yes.

[00:11:02] Which is also very, very fantastic.

[00:11:03] So yeah, Mick Gordon's a ledge ledge.

[00:11:07] Yeah.

[00:11:08] It's there's a, there's a phenomenal body of work and he's done some other games.

[00:11:12] I think killer instinct and some other stuff.

[00:11:15] Um, but yeah, those, those tracks doom most of all, uh, probably the most famous, just fucking crushers.

[00:11:23] So, uh, if you've never really thought about it, you, you've maybe heard it, but you didn't know who it was.

[00:11:29] That's who's responsible.

[00:11:30] Uh, another, another crazy Australian out there doing some business.

[00:11:34] Uh, but for you, Jez, Jez, you're coming.

[00:11:37] We're going to do a double shot.

[00:11:38] Uh, you have your own artist that you want to bring up this week.

[00:11:43] So tell the good people what metal you've got for the masses.

[00:11:48] Man, like I was, um, I went out drinking the other day.

[00:11:52] Always a good start to a story.

[00:11:54] Yeah.

[00:11:55] Well, one thing I often do when I, you know, when I'm lying in bed, you know, feeling sorry for myself after, you know, getting, getting inebriated is I listened to Spotify.

[00:12:04] And one of the, one of the things I've been doing recently is discovering bands that have been rolling around in my brain or rediscovering brand like bands that have been rolling around in my, in my brain.

[00:12:17] Um, that, um, I sort of didn't check out properly at the time or didn't appreciate enough when I was younger and my tastes were perhaps less, I don't know.

[00:12:29] Uh, can't think of a nice word for it.

[00:12:32] It tastes were perhaps less less varied or something.

[00:12:35] Maybe.

[00:12:35] Yeah.

[00:12:36] Um, so, uh, but, uh, this band is, um, Godflesh, uh, you know, um, which is a, they're an industrial metal band from, um, although they prefer, they prefer to be called post punk, I think, but, um, that they are intents and purpose.

[00:12:53] That's real bad.

[00:12:54] Um, that they're, uh, they're banned local to me near Birmingham.

[00:12:58] And they're also, they're often credited with inspiring a lot of what we consider now to be industrial music, metal, nine inch nails, and lots of bands have cited them as a, as an inspiration.

[00:13:10] And, um, I didn't realize how closely associated they are with all the bands I like, like swans and killing joke and stuff like that.

[00:13:18] But yeah, Godflesh are, if you like industrial metal, if you like, you know, the stuff like me, I bet Mick Gordon has some Godflesh in his library.

[00:13:26] I was about to say, what a, what a good combo he got here.

[00:13:29] Yeah.

[00:13:30] It's just, uh, just, you know, loud eight string, filthy guitars and, um, sort of thundering mechanical sort of sound.

[00:13:42] It's, uh, cause they use, they use a drum machine for a lot of their music rather than a human drummer.

[00:13:45] Um, which, you know, it gives that, it gives their sound a very, uh, I dunno, it's, it's very, it's very unique and it's almost like a signature of their style.

[00:13:58] Um, so yeah, like they're, and they've released their album in the last couple of years after reforming again.

[00:14:04] And I was delighted to hear that the, you know, their old stuff sounds fantastic and timeless, but their new stuff also sounds really fantastic too.

[00:14:12] Like they haven't clearly haven't lost their touch there.

[00:14:15] So yeah, Godflesh, fantastic band.

[00:14:17] I'm, I'm obsessed with them at the minute alongside, uh, Strapping Young Lad, which I think I mentioned last time.

[00:14:23] Yes. Yes. Well, there you go, folks. Uh, you're getting the, you're getting the one, two combo of, uh, Mick Gordon, the composer and Godflesh old school and new school post-punk industrial metal, whatever you want to call it.

[00:14:37] But for times like these, when you may be laying in bed, staring at the ceiling, feeling a certain way about the world, this is the kind of good shit you gotta listen to to help you get through those moments.

[00:14:46] So, uh, those are your recommendations, uh, for this week. So go forth, uh, and enjoy those.

[00:14:54] Now, jazz, I got, uh, I got a rage item for us this week that, uh, I, I, well, I lost my shit, uh, at a certain point on this one.

[00:15:04] And maybe you've got a lens that will help calm me down, but, uh, there's one I gotta get off my chest.

[00:15:09] So let's go.

[00:15:13] Let's rage.

[00:15:18] I think people that have listened to the show long enough know that I, I'm pretty forgiving when it comes to world of Warcraft running promotions.

[00:15:29] And I know that people have problems with them for different reasons and this and that, and you know, stuff that you can buy and store mounts and it being, you know, exclusive to one continent or another.

[00:15:41] And, you know, I, the legitimate concerns all around.

[00:15:43] Right.

[00:15:43] But I have typically been pretty forgiving, uh, of all of these events that have gone on.

[00:15:49] And right now we have this super mountain dude, Dorito gaming thing that's going on, uh, with world of Warcraft and other games, uh, where you can, you know, buy various drinks and get codes and turn those codes in and you get points and you turn the points in for shit.

[00:16:06] So one of the items I definitely had my eye on because it was data mine.

[00:16:12] However long ago, I was like, Ooh, that's pretty bad-ass.

[00:16:15] That would be the hate forged blaze cycle.

[00:16:19] And I was like, Hey, that's kind of bad-ass.

[00:16:21] You know, what do I have to do?

[00:16:21] I got to get 600 points.

[00:16:23] It's a hundred points for like a 20 ounce bottle of, you know, zero mountain dew.

[00:16:28] Oh, that's, you know, I could do that.

[00:16:30] I could buy a few of those.

[00:16:30] No problem.

[00:16:31] No worries.

[00:16:33] So I just, I've, I've been making my, my way, you know, every once in a while, I'm in the store.

[00:16:37] Hey, I see one.

[00:16:38] It's got the display and it's got the code or, you know, it's got the little promo printed on the label.

[00:16:42] So I know it's got the code.

[00:16:43] So, you know, okay.

[00:16:44] I grab one here.

[00:16:45] So I've been, I got a few hundred points, you know, not, not, not enough yet, but I'm working my way up to it.

[00:16:50] And then I find out jazz that they have run out of the hate force blaze cycles.

[00:17:01] I did see that.

[00:17:02] How in the good God damn fuck do you run out of a digital item?

[00:17:08] Yes.

[00:17:08] Now, now I know, I know what you might say.

[00:17:10] Well, they only have so many codes or they only printed so many codes.

[00:17:13] How can you sell 50,000 Brudos or however many did.

[00:17:18] I just made up that number, but how could you sell like unlimited Brudos and other digital goods elsewhere?

[00:17:23] But you run out of this when I have yet.

[00:17:25] Now, mind you, I have yet to see a single 12 pack of any one of these or any Doritos.

[00:17:31] I've only seen the 20 ounce bottles.

[00:17:32] The promotions barely started and they have run out of one of their best digital items with no verbiage underneath saying, well, we might release more later.

[00:17:43] Like I did on a few of them.

[00:17:45] How does this happen?

[00:17:48] How does this happen?

[00:17:50] I think it's just a case of being very badly thought out.

[00:17:55] Hmm.

[00:17:55] Uh, clearly that didn't expect it to get run through them so quickly.

[00:18:00] Um, I've got a good friend in America.

[00:18:02] Shout out to him.

[00:18:03] Who's trying to get me one.

[00:18:05] And now I guess that's not going to happen.

[00:18:07] So GG, I guess.

[00:18:11] GG indeed.

[00:18:12] Good.

[00:18:13] Goddamn.

[00:18:14] I, I, I, I gotta say it's my, this might be where the worm finally turns for me on these promos.

[00:18:22] Cause, uh, I don't know if this one's cursed or what the deal is, but just kind of looking through the list.

[00:18:29] Uh, cause I hadn't looked at it.

[00:18:30] I logged in, I made an account.

[00:18:32] So I got, you know, put in my codes and start racking up my points or whatever.

[00:18:36] And I, I looked at the list of stuff and it was a pretty healthy list of stuff, but you know, for us in world of Warcraft, there's a couple of these, they call them aprons, but they're, you know, they're basically like, you know, stylized tabards in a way, uh, where you have like a ranch and a,

[00:18:52] like a little, like a, like a, like a remote with a big red button on it.

[00:18:57] It's the bot wranglers apron.

[00:18:58] So I guess like you're working on a bot, like you're doing, uh, you know, some sort of, you know, battle bot type situation.

[00:19:05] And there's, you know, cause there's a belt and there's the actual bots.

[00:19:08] And then there's a pet that they brought back.

[00:19:10] And then, and then out of nowhere, there's this play cycle.

[00:19:13] So what is, tell me, I'm almost at a loss for words here because what is, what is the rationale for having.

[00:19:22] What is clearly a popular item tied to these purchases that you'll never be able to get again.

[00:19:28] Like, I guess it's like the trading card game.

[00:19:30] They're like, ah, maybe in 10 years, we'll put it on the trading post.

[00:19:33] Is that, is that kind of where we're at?

[00:19:35] Is that what, is that what we need to expect now?

[00:19:38] I think a hundred percent they'll come to the trading post eventually.

[00:19:41] Like at least some of the other colors or something.

[00:19:43] Cause there's, there's colors that aren't, they haven't figured out where they come from yet.

[00:19:48] It's like a green one too, right?

[00:19:50] Yeah.

[00:19:51] They're in the game, but people don't know how you acquire them.

[00:19:53] So it's almost certain that they'll come to the trading post.

[00:19:56] I don't think blizzards going to make that.

[00:19:58] I think they're going to give, who is it mountain Jew permanent exclusivity on that stuff.

[00:20:02] Yeah.

[00:20:02] Um, so it's just a matter of time, but it's also, it's still monstrously irritating the way all this is played out.

[00:20:08] But sometimes I just feel like, you know, teams aren't, haven't communicated effectively.

[00:20:14] Maybe someone probably just didn't explain that.

[00:20:17] Oh, we probably need more than 10 codes here.

[00:20:19] Um, just a, you know, casual, casual kind of oversight.

[00:20:23] Um, yeah, I don't know these things happen, right?

[00:20:25] Because I was speaking to someone recently at Activision and, um, or at least someone familiar with what Activision is up to.

[00:20:34] Um, not necessarily in Activision itself, just casually talking about the, um, the fact, uh, they've just put a third, they've just put a non blizzard game onto the battle.

[00:20:46] They've put a valid on it recently.

[00:20:49] Yeah.

[00:20:50] So they put a valid onto battle net and, um, it was, uh, a valid is a upcoming Xbox game studios game from Obsidian who make, uh, you know, Piers of Eternity and grounded and a bunch of other games like that.

[00:21:03] Right.

[00:21:03] So it's, it's very odd and it's very interesting that this is happening.

[00:21:08] Right.

[00:21:08] Uh, because it shows that, you know, this launcher, which up until now is generally associated with Blizzard could expand out to other games within Xbox and Microsoft's portfolio and other studios, you know?

[00:21:25] Um, so I was talking to them about like, you know, cause there's a conspiracy theory in the WoW community that they're doing this to inflate the value of the, the token, the WoW token.

[00:21:35] Oh yes.

[00:21:36] So yeah.

[00:21:37] And the person I was speaking to who is, you know, in a position where they could, you know, talk to, or, you know, share feedback about these plans from an official capacity.

[00:21:47] They didn't even think about the WoW token as a factor with, within some of these decisions.

[00:21:52] Right.

[00:21:52] Yeah.

[00:21:53] So it's kind of like, I think sometimes it's just a matter of the, the, the communication wasn't there on these, on some things sometimes because there's so many different moving parts or so many different teams involved with this.

[00:22:07] Mm-hmm .

[00:22:07] And probably like someone on Blizzard's analytics team, if they had been involved maybe with the marketing team who were putting this mountain true promo together, they probably would have been like, actually, we probably need some more codes here.

[00:22:18] Mm-hmm .

[00:22:18] Cause you're going to end up in a situation where people like, so many people are going to be like, I'm going to buy all this mountain true to get this, this specific iron.

[00:22:25] Yeah.

[00:22:25] And then they're going to feel cheated as hell.

[00:22:27] And it comes out that you can't get that.

[00:22:28] That's right.

[00:22:29] I actually think in, yeah.

[00:22:30] I actually think in Europe, like if they haven't properly communicated that the supply is limited adequately enough, they could actually like, you know, get fined or something like that.

[00:22:41] So, um, it's funny.

[00:22:44] It's funny times.

[00:22:46] Yeah.

[00:22:47] I, that's one way to put it.

[00:22:48] I just, I, I was sitting there reading.

[00:22:51] I'm like, I, I, I just, yeah.

[00:22:54] It was annoying.

[00:22:54] Clearly a massive miscommunication.

[00:22:57] Like I, I, I assume that they have to have like all of these codes and you know, there's some backend way of doing all this stuff, but I just, as big a campaign as that is to already have run out of one of the most popular items, it seems insane to me.

[00:23:11] And if you look at the list of all the other stuff, they've also already run out of it.

[00:23:17] It makes no sense to me because basically it was the luck of the draw in terms of your distributor.

[00:23:23] Like if you were close enough to one of the bottling plants and they got the stuff to you first, because you happen to be at a grocery store that was close by, like you got the codes.

[00:23:35] And I've also heard of stories where people like bought a bunch of stuff, but the codes had already been redeemed because people had either gone into the packaging or something else that happened.

[00:23:43] So this, this whole promotion, this is the first time I've ever felt like they really screwed the pooch on one.

[00:23:50] And I, I don't, I'm sure there's contractual obligations into how some of this stuff has got to work, but I also can't imagine that Mountain Dew Doritos and that whole conglomerate.

[00:24:03] They, they also can't be happy that this has already run out and already happened because now people aren't going to buy all their shit.

[00:24:08] So yeah, it's so dumb and it just doesn't work.

[00:24:11] Clearly something went wrong here.

[00:24:13] Yeah.

[00:24:13] So, so, so if you're out there and you haven't bought your hate, hate forge blade cycle yet, well, I guess you can go on eBay and see if there's any codes left.

[00:24:21] Cause what I checked it the other day and they were going for about 25 bucks on the handful that I saw.

[00:24:26] My guess is they're going for a lot more than that now.

[00:24:28] Uh, so I guess if you want one, that's how you're going to have to get one.

[00:24:33] Or you can just lobby them and maybe they'll open up some more codes or something, but unbelievable.

[00:24:38] Hopefully next time they'll do better, learn some lessons.

[00:24:41] But for now, uh, I guess I'm just going to go back to drinking other stuff and that damn amount.

[00:24:47] All right.

[00:24:48] Uh, we got a lot of news, obviously big, big to do going on with the Warcraft direct and some other things, uh, that have happened since last we were here.

[00:24:57] So let's go ahead and get into our news as I, uh, want to do on the show.

[00:25:13] I'm going to, I'm going to bury the lead a little bit, uh, because before we get the Warcraft direct and patch 11.1 and jazz, your exclusive interview with Mr.

[00:25:24] Mr. Ian has a costous himself, my, uh, my dream date, we did have another little bit of news and stuff that happened right after we dropped the last episode where as you know, as we left the show.

[00:25:40] Patch 11.0.5.

[00:25:42] The anniversary patch was not entirely well received.

[00:25:46] People were not really thrilled with it.

[00:25:48] There are all kinds of problems.

[00:25:49] There are, you know, the, the anniversary stuff wasn't necessarily that exciting.

[00:25:53] There are a bunch of bugs and latency issues and raid problems.

[00:25:58] There's all kinds of stuff happening.

[00:26:01] And maybe it was just coincidental timing, but as sure as shit felt like they pulled the ripcord on this one.

[00:26:06] I'm like, Oh, by the way, 11.07, the siren aisle, new shit, like be distracted.

[00:26:12] Don't pay attention to the patch you're upset about right now.

[00:26:15] Let's focus on something else.

[00:26:16] Uh, so we did know what patch 11.07 was going to be, or is going to be, uh, it is a new island called the siren aisle.

[00:26:32] And it looks kind of reminiscent of when we went to the forbidden aisle for those of us that aren't dragged there and went there for the first time.

[00:26:41] And it seems like there's exploration, some questing, some secrets, a bunch of ketchup stuff and a ring, another ring.

[00:26:51] That's the sounding kind of familiar as the something else we had that had slots and different things.

[00:26:57] And they give you power and ketchup.

[00:26:59] Uh, it seems like this island may in and of itself be a BFA island that never got used.

[00:27:08] And so creative use of old assets.

[00:27:11] Hey, listen, shit.

[00:27:12] I guess if it saves us time and money, right?

[00:27:13] What's wrong with that?

[00:27:15] Uh, but overall, this looks like, uh, I don't know.

[00:27:20] Is this just purely ketchup mechanic or ketchup gear stuff for the masses, Jez?

[00:27:28] Well, there is some ring thing, which, you know, I imagine might be DPS for some current bestie slots for some specs, maybe.

[00:27:40] Maybe it'll give, like, people who are riding on normal access to a mythic level kind of ring for DPS, maybe.

[00:27:48] Or, I haven't seen the Sims yet for some of those configurations, but this isn't the first time they've tried a socketable ring as a sort of, not mid-season, I don't know what to call it, mid-season mechanic, kind of.

[00:28:04] I can't remember what it was called now.

[00:28:06] Was it from Mechagon they did the ring before?

[00:28:09] Or some...

[00:28:11] We've had a ring, we've had, like, a necklace, I think.

[00:28:15] We've had kind of a couple iterations of this now.

[00:28:20] Yeah.

[00:28:21] But, yeah, I mean, it's just to give people something slightly new to do, I guess, in the interim, before the meat and potatoes of a full-blown new season.

[00:28:31] Yeah.

[00:28:31] Which I'm fine with, you know.

[00:28:34] I tell you what, I'm fine with this for a couple of reasons.

[00:28:37] First of all, my backlog is horrendous, man.

[00:28:40] I've got so many games I want to play.

[00:28:42] There's so much stuff beyond WoW that I really want to play right now.

[00:28:46] Yeah.

[00:28:46] I still haven't finished Dragon Age.

[00:28:48] I still haven't finished...

[00:28:49] I still haven't even finished the campaign for Diablo 4, Vessel of Hatred, which I pre-ordered ages ago, and I barely touched it because there's just been so much other stuff I wanted to play.

[00:28:59] There's also, like, Stalker 2 coming out, Indiana Jones coming out.

[00:29:04] There's just tons of games to play.

[00:29:05] So I'm kind of happy, personally, that they're giving me something that I don't really have to care about 100% and can maybe just sort of gloss over while I'm playing for something more serious.

[00:29:17] But, you know, I know a lot of people who, you know, really want to just play WoW are probably a little... might be a little bit disillusioned with this patch.

[00:29:26] Because, again, it doesn't seem particularly exciting or interesting.

[00:29:30] But I don't know how you feel.

[00:29:31] How do you feel as someone who's, like, you know, a little bit more casual these days?

[00:29:35] Because, like, I got ahead of the curve.

[00:29:38] My guild got ahead of the curve the other week.

[00:29:40] Oh, congrats.

[00:29:41] Yeah, in Heroic, yeah.

[00:29:42] And I do kind of want to go for Keystone Master this season, maybe.

[00:29:47] So I'm at Keystone Hero right now, which is 2,000 rating.

[00:29:51] So I'm thinking about going for Master as well.

[00:29:54] So maybe this is good for me because it'll keep my guildies playing for a bit longer so they can carry me to that.

[00:30:04] But I don't know, man.

[00:30:05] How do you feel about it?

[00:30:06] You know, as far as the island itself and, you know, I guess we'll pick between three different factions who we're going to help.

[00:30:15] Kind of like what goes on down in... with the spiders, right?

[00:30:19] You got to pick one of the three that you're going to help out for the week or whatever.

[00:30:23] It's going to be some of those kind of mechanics.

[00:30:24] I mean, that stuff is... it's fine.

[00:30:26] The ring itself, the Cersei's circlet.

[00:30:30] But, you know, for somebody who doesn't raid actively, it sounds like it might be something worth kind of chasing down and maybe getting a bump.

[00:30:37] The things that they've data mined about it...

[00:30:40] There's three gem slots on this ring.

[00:30:43] There's the Singing Thunder Citrine.

[00:30:45] The Singing Sea Citrine.

[00:30:48] And the Singing Wind Citrine.

[00:30:50] And some of the effects that they've mined out...

[00:30:54] You know, here's Roaring War Queen's Citrine.

[00:30:57] Your spells and abilities have a low chance of triggering the Singing Thunder Citrine effects of four nearby allies.

[00:31:04] And then some other stuff.

[00:31:06] And then, you know, here's one that increases your mastery or your frost damage or fuck all whatever.

[00:31:14] So, you know, secondary stats.

[00:31:15] So, there's, you know, some of that kind of stuff, which is fine.

[00:31:18] I mean, it's not like, ooh, I get a new ability where I get to, you know, throw both of my swords at a distance.

[00:31:25] And then, I don't know, yell at them so loudly that they get scared and they come back to me.

[00:31:30] You know, that would be rad.

[00:31:31] You know, something like that.

[00:31:33] But really, for me, it's the story.

[00:31:35] I understand that this is going to have some sort of a wrap-up for Dalaran.

[00:31:42] You know, as we all know, came in on the intro.

[00:31:45] Dalaran got blown up pretty rigorously.

[00:31:49] We did not lose Khadgar after all.

[00:31:51] But he is in a wheelchair, which I don't know if we've talked about this before.

[00:31:55] If you go into the main building in...

[00:32:01] Oh, fucking...

[00:32:02] What's the city in Khazalgar that we go to now?

[00:32:06] Dorn...

[00:32:07] Dornigal.

[00:32:07] Thank you.

[00:32:08] God damn it.

[00:32:09] Dornigal.

[00:32:09] You go into the main building in there where the portals are and the quartermaster and all that stuff is.

[00:32:14] When you first go in on the right, he's sitting there in his arcane wheelchair and he's talking to Elyria, I think.

[00:32:21] So there's a little kind of scene that goes on there.

[00:32:24] If you've never stopped to see it or pay attention, you should.

[00:32:27] It's kind of interesting.

[00:32:29] I don't know if this means that Khadgar is permanently wheelchair bound.

[00:32:35] That would be a really interesting choice for that character.

[00:32:39] I know in terms of representation, we haven't seen that a lot for our characters.

[00:32:44] So that would be kind of an interesting move for them.

[00:32:49] But there's more to that storyline that they want to wrap up or conclude.

[00:32:53] And I don't know anything about it yet.

[00:32:55] We haven't talked about it.

[00:32:56] We're not going to talk about it just yet.

[00:32:59] But that to me, you know, the story is always the big thing, right?

[00:33:02] So to see whatever wrap up they have for that, very, very interested in.

[00:33:09] You know, we're at a point now where we're back to wondering what the fuck Zalatath is doing or what's going on.

[00:33:17] You know, we know the queen got defeated in the raid and then we saw feet and then that was kind of the end of it.

[00:33:24] So seeing, you know, whatever the continuation is, that's kind of the big thing for me.

[00:33:30] So it'll, you know, keep me back.

[00:33:31] I haven't been playing as much myself recently just because I've wanted to crawl in a hole and die for the last few weeks.

[00:33:37] But other than that, you know, I'll be back in and playing and I got to get more questing done because I haven't even gotten caught up on the big storyline that's been going on in Dornigal with all of the secrets and things that we're learning.

[00:33:54] We're talking about the Titans and shit and we haven't talked about that either.

[00:33:57] So that, that to me is the thing.

[00:33:59] And if there's some cool secrets, that's awesome.

[00:34:02] I know along in the patch, they're also having a bunch of new mounts.

[00:34:05] There's a, there's a long lost storm crow mount that never was available that that's now going to be available through a series of events.

[00:34:14] I think, uh, going to get new customizations.

[00:34:16] You can get your Arathi ears, Jez, if you really want them.

[00:34:19] Uh, you can get those sweet elfin ears for your human characters because I know you play them so often and you're Kul Tirans.

[00:34:27] So often.

[00:34:27] Um, so often.

[00:34:29] So there's some of that kind of stuff.

[00:34:30] It could be fun.

[00:34:31] We'll see.

[00:34:31] Uh, but it really is the stopover for what's coming, uh, next, which, which, you know, well, um, yeah, I, you know, I think, I don't know.

[00:34:43] I worry that this is too familiar, but maybe that's a good thing.

[00:34:49] I don't know.

[00:34:50] I, I think sometimes as players, we have unrealistic expectations.

[00:34:54] We're like, every time there's a new thing, I want it to be like new, new, like really new.

[00:35:00] I hear people all the time.

[00:35:01] Oh, that's just a reused skin or that's a reused model on a thing with a new skin or whatever it is.

[00:35:07] And I kind of care less about that.

[00:35:09] Um, but in terms of the challenge or the space or whatever, um, sometimes I think I have unrealistic expectations.

[00:35:17] I want something that's going to blow my mind every time, as opposed to, I recognize that there are limited resources in the world and they have to make the best use of their time and figure shit out.

[00:35:28] So if that means they got to go back and pull up a map from, I don't know, eight years.

[00:35:31] How long has it been since BFA?

[00:35:34] Uh, three, four years.

[00:35:37] I mean, it's been five years, six, seven, seven, eight.

[00:35:42] Boy, 2020 was Shadowlands, right?

[00:35:46] Okay.

[00:35:47] Yeah.

[00:35:47] I don't know.

[00:35:48] So it's been a, been a, it's been a hot minute before that, uh, been a while in a minute.

[00:35:55] So, you know, I think, I think that's fine.

[00:36:01] The proof is going to be in the pudding.

[00:36:02] Are there fun activities at the end of the day?

[00:36:04] Right.

[00:36:05] As you can tell us in a little video where all the developers awkwardly look at the camera and like, tell us stuff, which by the way,

[00:36:13] I love that they're just pulling up, not really media trained people to do these videos because it, it feels so authentic to have a bunch of nerds that work on the game, like getting let out of the dungeon for five minutes to talk about the exciting shit that they're working on.

[00:36:30] And just watching their like genuine glee and excitement over telling people what they're working on and doing, because they didn't never get a chance to do that publicly.

[00:36:42] That that's kind of nice.

[00:36:43] And you know, yeah, it's awkward.

[00:36:45] It's not going to be the greatest, you know, spokespersons you ever saw, but there is a certain amount of enthusiasm that I do enjoy seeing in their faces.

[00:36:54] And it does get me excited a little bit, but yeah.

[00:36:58] 1107.

[00:36:58] That's that's the stopover because let's go ahead.

[00:37:05] Talk about the real thing.

[00:37:07] Everyone wants to talk about is we finally had the Warcraft direct after much mystery and waiting.

[00:37:15] We knew there wasn't going to be a BlizzCon.

[00:37:18] They said, well, we're going to do this Warcraft direct.

[00:37:20] It's going to be this online thing.

[00:37:21] Okay.

[00:37:21] Well, what the fuck does that mean?

[00:37:22] Well, we'll tell you once we get closer and they didn't tell us until it was real close that they were going to talk about the future of Warcraft and this and that and all these things.

[00:37:33] And finally, it was unleashed upon us.

[00:37:36] And where I want to start, because there was a bunch of stuff.

[00:37:41] There was a whole bunch of stuff and it wasn't just Warcraft, but we're going to start with finally got a 2025 roadmap.

[00:37:49] Hadn't seen one yet.

[00:37:50] We're kind of wondering what was going on.

[00:37:52] These roadmaps have now become the thing.

[00:37:55] This is the Chronicle used to be the thing.

[00:37:57] I remember when they released the first Chronicle and they had the cosmology chart.

[00:38:01] They were like, oh, shit.

[00:38:02] This is now going to be the thing to which we reference all other discussions.

[00:38:06] Well, now it's become the roadmap.

[00:38:07] Now, every time there's something going on, we got to look at the roadmap and we're going to, you know, kind of read the tea leaves to figure out.

[00:38:12] Okay.

[00:38:12] Well, what winter means?

[00:38:14] Which month?

[00:38:15] Spring means which summer means which months?

[00:38:17] So, you know, now we're trying to, you know, figure out and prognosticate where we're going.

[00:38:22] But we did finally get the 2025 roadmap.

[00:38:24] And the major beats that we can see right away is patch 11.1, which is finally announced.

[00:38:32] We have a new zone called Undermine, which we have a new zone, which is Undermine, the long fabled and talked about goblin zone.

[00:38:42] We have a new raid, the liberation of Undermine, where we're going to, I guess we're going to have to fight your boy Gallywix on that one.

[00:38:51] There's a new dungeon, Operation Floodgate, a new drive mount system, which we'll talk about in a second.

[00:38:58] Some new delves.

[00:39:00] We'll have cartel renown.

[00:39:01] And there's going to be some warband UI updates in warband's camp collection.

[00:39:07] So I assume that means maybe some different backgrounds and some other stuff they didn't talk about just yet.

[00:39:12] But a couple of other sub patches with 11.2 coming sometime, looks like early-ish to mid-summer.

[00:39:23] New zone.

[00:39:24] What could that be?

[00:39:25] New world events, new dungeon, new raid, new open world challenges, warband updates, brew fest updates, and season rewards refresh.

[00:39:35] But then what do we not see?

[00:39:38] No 11.3.

[00:39:41] We get an expansion reveal for World of Warcraft Midnight in late summer following patch 11.2.

[00:39:49] A couple of other sub patches.

[00:39:52] And then at the end, there's a very telling little icon that they've changed once now that is part of another thing we're going to talk about real quick.

[00:40:02] That was announced in this Warcraft Direct.

[00:40:06] But it is shaping up, Jez, in my opinion.

[00:40:12] And I think the opinion of many.

[00:40:15] It is shaping up that the War Within is going to be the shortest expansion cycle that we've ever seen.

[00:40:23] With what looks to be midnight.

[00:40:26] I don't know.

[00:40:28] Coming out sometime in the winter?

[00:40:30] Late winter?

[00:40:33] That's crazy.

[00:40:34] Something like that.

[00:40:36] What would the poorest two?

[00:40:37] Like 18 months maybe?

[00:40:41] That would be about right.

[00:40:44] Maybe less.

[00:40:45] Yeah.

[00:40:46] 18, maybe 16, something like that.

[00:40:50] They did promise it was going to be shorter.

[00:40:53] Yeah.

[00:40:54] The thing is, they've been saying for years, they want to hit annual.

[00:40:58] They want to do annual.

[00:41:00] They've been saying this since way before I was even doing this.

[00:41:04] I remember them saying this all the way back in the start of the Activision era, really.

[00:41:10] Because that is what Kotick likes.

[00:41:16] He likes the annualized feat system.

[00:41:18] He likes that.

[00:41:19] He likes making card annualized.

[00:41:21] He wanted to make Overwatch and Destiny annualized as well.

[00:41:25] And when Destiny was under Activision, obviously it's not anymore.

[00:41:28] But that was always the plan.

[00:41:30] Yeah.

[00:41:30] Or at least his goal.

[00:41:32] And that's why they ended up part in Waze.

[00:41:33] Because Bungie's just really not settled for that.

[00:41:37] But Blizzard wasn't either for doing annualized Warcraft expansions.

[00:41:42] Because the expansions were typically these gigantic things that had long patch cycles.

[00:41:47] But one of the things they have been doing over the last year is beefing up their...

[00:41:52] Well, reallocating resources towards game development.

[00:41:55] And because we have heard about a lot of layoffs at Blizzard over the last year.

[00:42:01] But a lot of these were in publishing, PR, internal comms.

[00:42:04] And things that Microsoft parent company can do, essentially.

[00:42:08] And from what I heard, that a lot of these resources weren't necessarily cut from Blizzard.

[00:42:13] They were reallocated towards beefing up dev teams.

[00:42:16] Having multiple teams in place.

[00:42:18] To make it more Call of Duty-like.

[00:42:21] In its ability to deliver content on a more rapid cadence.

[00:42:25] So I remember when they first announced at WorldSoul.

[00:42:27] I sort of had this expectation immediately that this means that Blizzard's going for shorter cycles.

[00:42:35] Expansion cycles.

[00:42:37] Like one of the things that I asked in my interview with the Warcraft team was...

[00:42:43] Should we expect the same level of quality when it comes to story delivery as we got in 11.0?

[00:42:50] Because delivering story that's that good constantly, that's expensive.

[00:42:57] And it's a huge undertaking to do it well.

[00:43:01] And rushing it is not really conducive to maintaining the quality bar they've set.

[00:43:09] So they said yes.

[00:43:11] I mean, obviously they're not going to really say no.

[00:43:13] But they sort of elaborated.

[00:43:15] But yeah, they went quite far in saying like...

[00:43:18] We've sort of set up the team to approach it like this.

[00:43:22] Where we have these story beats that are already set out.

[00:43:28] And that we're going to gun to keep the quality bar at the level we've kind of set it at.

[00:43:35] So I think that even they've been sort of cognizant of the fact like...

[00:43:38] If we're doing this with high quality cinematics and high quality writing and...

[00:43:43] You know, things like the...

[00:43:45] Things like Cat Gar's wheelchair, for example.

[00:43:47] Like I've seen a lot of people try and criticize that.

[00:43:51] And be like, oh, it's dumb.

[00:43:52] Why doesn't he just use magic?

[00:43:53] Or why doesn't he float around?

[00:43:54] You know, he's the most powerful mage.

[00:43:56] He's the most powerful mage since sliced bread.

[00:43:58] If sliced bread was a mage.

[00:44:01] But they explain that by saying like...

[00:44:04] It's explained somewhere else that the chair was kind of a gift from a mage he liked or something.

[00:44:13] Something like that.

[00:44:14] Basically, the point is Blizzard thought what people were going to cry about.

[00:44:19] And they made the effort to add an explanation.

[00:44:24] You know, and I feel like in ages past, they wouldn't have the time or the budget or perhaps even the wherewithal to even bother to think of an explanation for something they wanted to do.

[00:44:34] Yeah.

[00:44:35] Because Rule of Cool dominates how WoW delivers its story.

[00:44:40] But as we've seen in the past, sometimes the Rule of Cool really trips them up.

[00:44:44] Like some of those scenes where Sylvanas burns that cutscene where Sylvanas burns down the tree is fucking cool.

[00:44:51] I don't care what anyone says.

[00:44:53] That is awesome.

[00:44:54] That is a cool ass thing.

[00:44:55] And as a Forsaken player and a Sylvanas apologist and an Alliance hate-up, as someone whose family was mercifully murdered by the Alliance in my headcanon,

[00:45:09] they had it common, is what I'm saying.

[00:45:13] But the problem is that Rule of Cool and all that sweet art they did for that scene and all the patches and all the warfronts and all that stuff they did with it.

[00:45:23] There was no one there who was like, okay, so what we've done is pretty huge.

[00:45:29] Speaking from purely Gravitas scenario, but we've not really thought about what does next.

[00:45:36] So what goes next to sort of make some of this stuff make sense or de-escalate?

[00:45:43] Because obviously you can't just keep escalating until we hit the World of Warcraft equivalent of nuclear annihilation.

[00:45:49] Because that's not really how Warcraft plays out.

[00:45:53] So they went with this cool idea for a storyline, but they didn't flash it out well enough.

[00:45:58] And I feel like the current team that's in place might have had the time or the expertise maybe to actually go and do something more intelligent with that whole story bit.

[00:46:11] But I don't know.

[00:46:13] Maybe I'm giving them too much credit.

[00:46:15] We need to see where it all goes at the end of the day.

[00:46:18] But as long as the quality is good, I don't mind shorter expansion cycles personally.

[00:46:26] You make a really good point about the sort of rule of cool.

[00:46:30] And that reminded me, again, similar pitfall in the past was when they wanted to do Warlords of Draenor.

[00:46:37] And they're like, oh, we're going to get all these guys together.

[00:46:40] And it's going to be super metal.

[00:46:42] And it's going to be all this stuff.

[00:46:43] And I think in Metson's mind, it was cool.

[00:46:46] And maybe the rest of that part of the team, they were like, oh, this is a great idea.

[00:46:52] But the execution on it didn't line up.

[00:46:55] And I always think of how Kargath Bladefist was one of the first guys we killed.

[00:47:01] And he was one of the coolest.

[00:47:02] You put him in that freaking animated short.

[00:47:05] And he is the most badass dude of all time.

[00:47:07] This orc don't take no shit.

[00:47:10] And we wipe him out for his boss in a raid.

[00:47:12] And I was like, that's not cool.

[00:47:16] What the fuck?

[00:47:18] So being more thoughtful, to your point, it does feel like there is more foresight, more forethought going into these things.

[00:47:28] And to that end, shorter expansion cycles, they're trying to tie this whole large story together into these smaller chapters.

[00:47:36] And so in this roadmap, right, we see that whatever the expansion reveal is going to be in late summer, I assume leads us to believe that 11.2 is going to be pretty fucked up.

[00:47:46] That could be, I think a lot of people think this is going to be some sort of ethereal thing or, you know, void-y dark magic.

[00:47:54] Some shit's going to go down.

[00:47:56] That leads us then into midnight, which is supposed to be all fucked up.

[00:47:59] But at the end of this roadmap, tying in with this, and what was at the very end of the Warcraft Direct, and Jez, I need your help with this one, was the tease at long last for player housing in World of Warcraft.

[00:48:18] Yay!

[00:48:19] Player housing, yay!

[00:48:20] So you say that, and I ask myself, what is the big deal about player housing?

[00:48:28] Because we had a garrison and people hated it.

[00:48:30] And that was basically the same thing to me, although I understand that it isn't to the world at large.

[00:48:36] So explain to me why player housing is such a big goddamn deal.

[00:48:42] Dude, dude.

[00:48:44] Right, okay.

[00:48:46] Well, this is the problem, right?

[00:48:48] This is the problem with that tease, because player housing right now could be literally anything.

[00:48:54] Right.

[00:48:54] Like in our heads, in my head, and I think a lot of people are excited about this feature, in their head, it's kind of like, it's another way to express your class identity.

[00:49:04] So I did plan to ask a deeper question about this in my interview, but I really lost track of time when I was doing my interview.

[00:49:11] I only had a specific allocated amount of time.

[00:49:13] But in another interview, which I think I saw on wowhead, wowhead.com, it was like, they were talking about how you'll be able to change your interiors, you'll be able to change everything that's inside it.

[00:49:28] And it's just another expression of your class identity, I guess.

[00:49:31] At the end of the day, it'll boil down to how much they actually do with it, right?

[00:49:37] Because I don't think like, I wasn't around for Waller's Adrenaline, but I did do the garrison stuff after the fact, because I really wanted to get the mounts from it for some reason at the time.

[00:49:48] Even though, in hindsight, the mounts aren't actually that cool now.

[00:49:52] I feel like, I was like, why did I bother doing all of this with the stupid claw of Seath or whatever it was?

[00:49:59] But at the time, I wanted to get the mounts.

[00:50:01] So I went back and I did do Waller's Adrenaline, like after the fact on an alt or something like that.

[00:50:07] And yeah, garrisons were not that great.

[00:50:10] But also, I don't think they weren't really an expression of player identity.

[00:50:15] They weren't player housing, they were garrisons.

[00:50:18] If you were like, if you were a Forsaken, for example, you still had an Orc base.

[00:50:23] It was an Orc, it was an Orc base.

[00:50:25] It wasn't a player housing.

[00:50:26] It was an Orc military base with a bunch of characters that you didn't really get total control over.

[00:50:33] You didn't really get a lot of control, basically, is what I'm saying.

[00:50:36] And the point of player housing, in my mind, is to give player complete control over every aspect of what that looks like.

[00:50:41] So the furniture, the decor, a place to showcase and celebrate your achievements.

[00:50:46] I saw Onyxia's head, for example, mounted on the wall.

[00:50:51] So I presume each boss will come with a trophy you can attach to your house.

[00:50:56] That was what that hint was.

[00:50:58] Similarly to what they do in Diablo sometimes,

[00:51:02] there's a chance that the boss can drop a trophy that you can attach to the horse.

[00:51:06] That represents the fact you've killed that boss.

[00:51:09] So I've got a tusk from...

[00:51:12] I can't remember the monster's name now.

[00:51:15] Is it Ashara or something?

[00:51:17] Ashaba?

[00:51:17] I've got a tusk from killing that thing during the beta

[00:51:21] that you can't get anymore on my horse in the game.

[00:51:25] And that's sort of like, you know, it's a celebration of my achievements in the game.

[00:51:32] But, you know, it could also be something that they put in the game and then leave and forget about.

[00:51:38] One thing that really bugs me, well, is when they put things in the game and then they do nothing with it.

[00:51:42] Like, guild perks is one of them.

[00:51:44] The whole guild leveling system.

[00:51:46] Like, why even still have that in the game?

[00:51:48] I don't know.

[00:51:49] Just get rid of it.

[00:51:49] Yeah.

[00:51:51] It's pointless.

[00:51:52] You know, just give everyone that stuff by default.

[00:51:54] Like, if you're not going to do anything with it,

[00:51:56] if they did do stuff with it, that'd be cool.

[00:51:57] You know, like extra, you know, or maybe that could even tie that to the player housing system.

[00:52:03] Like, if your guild gets ahead of the curve,

[00:52:06] maybe everyone in the guild gets this super cool trophy or something like that.

[00:52:10] I don't know.

[00:52:11] Or everyone who is on the kill.

[00:52:12] Or, you know, maybe there's new stuff to get for your house from the trading post.

[00:52:18] Or maybe there'll be a new profession tied to it.

[00:52:21] Maybe archaeology will come back and archaeology will be tied to it.

[00:52:24] But there's a lot of ways that could go down that route.

[00:52:28] But it has to actually be something that they work hard on and do justice to.

[00:52:34] Because it could very easily be a terrible feature that is underbaked,

[00:52:38] doesn't give people what they actually want out of the system.

[00:52:43] And then ultimately ends up getting abandoned.

[00:52:45] So, I do hope that it ends up being something really good.

[00:52:49] One of the issues with Final Fantasy's player housing is the fact that it's based on a lottery system.

[00:52:55] I don't know if you know this, but...

[00:52:59] I've heard about this.

[00:53:00] This is crazy to me.

[00:53:03] It's the dumbest thing I've ever seen in my life.

[00:53:05] But basically, the way...

[00:53:07] Final Fantasy XI...

[00:53:09] XIV, sorry.

[00:53:10] Has dedicated servers for their player housing.

[00:53:13] Which is cool in a way.

[00:53:16] Because it sort of creates these districts that you can literally walk around.

[00:53:20] And you can see everyone's player houses.

[00:53:22] The problem is, letting every single person in the entire game have their own house

[00:53:27] would require an absolutely monstrous amount of server data.

[00:53:31] And since those features aren't necessarily...

[00:53:35] Those features aren't necessarily contributing directly to revenue,

[00:53:40] it's hard to justify it from a business perspective

[00:53:43] to add more servers for player housing in Final Fantasy XIV.

[00:53:48] So, there's like a finite amount of player houses that are there.

[00:53:51] And the only way you can get one is if someone basically goes AFK

[00:53:56] for a really long period of time.

[00:53:57] And their lease over the house runs out.

[00:54:00] Oh my god.

[00:54:02] Yeah, it's terrible.

[00:54:03] And then it's like a lottery.

[00:54:05] It's like a random chance if you'll be the person who has allocated that lot

[00:54:10] or something along those lines.

[00:54:12] Or you have to be online at the right time.

[00:54:14] Like, steal a slot in the street or whatever.

[00:54:17] And there's a very, very, very limited amount of real estate in Final Fantasy XIV.

[00:54:23] Dumb as hell.

[00:54:24] It's dumb.

[00:54:25] It's terrible.

[00:54:25] But obviously, Blizzard is not going to do it that way.

[00:54:27] Because they aren't dumb as hell.

[00:54:30] And they'll have a scalable solution that's probably going to be based on their instance system.

[00:54:34] I would imagine that it's going to be all these...

[00:54:37] I imagine these things will be instanced.

[00:54:39] And it'll probably be like...

[00:54:41] It'll either be something like...

[00:54:43] You know, maybe they'll do...

[00:54:45] I mean, it's good when you have the power of hindsight behind you.

[00:54:48] And you can just be like, okay, well, these are the ways Final Fantasy fucked it up.

[00:54:51] Let's not do it like this.

[00:54:53] And, you know, one of the ways...

[00:54:56] A bunch of things they could potentially do for this feature is...

[00:54:59] Maybe they could have something like Final Fantasy Street System where, you know, you can walk around a street in Stormwind and see everyone who's got a Stormwind skin on their house, for example.

[00:55:10] And maybe it'll populate the street with some random people's houses, exteriors or whatever.

[00:55:16] But I imagine it'll probably...

[00:55:19] If I had to guess, I imagine it'll probably be more like Final Fantasy XI's housing system.

[00:55:24] Final Fantasy XI had a housing system as well.

[00:55:27] And the way that worked was it was more like apartments.

[00:55:30] And you went into an instance and then you were in your apartment, which you could then kit out with...

[00:55:35] You know, you could put herbs in there, for example, for alchemy.

[00:55:40] You could grow herbs in there.

[00:55:42] You could have little pets in there and, you know, running around and all kinds of shit like that.

[00:55:47] And you could invite people into your apartment and stuff like that.

[00:55:50] I think it would be cool if you could see the house from the outside somehow.

[00:55:59] And I don't know how they would achieve that without going down a dedicated server route like Final Fantasy XIV has.

[00:56:06] Maybe it's just like, you know, when you instance in, it shows your house and then maybe some other random people's houses next to yours or something.

[00:56:16] I don't know.

[00:56:18] But I suppose we'll have to wait and see.

[00:56:21] It'd be really interesting how they come up with the solutions to this because it's either going to be completely instanced or sort of halfway.

[00:56:27] I doubt it'll be like Final Fantasy XIV system, but, you know, we'll see.

[00:56:33] I hope not.

[00:56:34] That'd be fucking terrible.

[00:56:35] Yeah, it's a bad idea.

[00:56:37] It seems like maybe to allay one of your fears is there was an interview with Daily Star.

[00:56:46] And Holly Longdale said about it is that, quote,

[00:56:57] Oh, wow.

[00:57:02] It doesn't sound like this is going to be serious about it.

[00:57:03] Yeah, it sounds like they're pretty serious about it.

[00:57:05] And so in my mind, right, I think we're all kind of thinking along the same lines.

[00:57:10] Okay, well, you had said something that I think very much has to be a problem that's solved immediately,

[00:57:19] which is if you have the ability to have a house, well, you want it to be in a place that represents you.

[00:57:28] Right.

[00:57:28] So like forsaken having like an orc, you know, it's like, you know, it's like as a night elf.

[00:57:34] I don't know that they want to have a house outside of Stormwind.

[00:57:37] You know what I mean?

[00:57:38] Like there's going to have to be location options.

[00:57:41] I feel like you can't just be in one or two places based on your, you know, your faction or whatever it is.

[00:57:50] Like to me, it feels like there's going to have to be multiple options for locations or else I don't know.

[00:57:59] You'd have a hard time as certain characters explaining.

[00:58:01] Yes, I made my home here when I don't like this place at all, but it's the only option I have.

[00:58:07] Like I think that would immediately feel bad.

[00:58:10] So having multiple locations to choose from, you know, we have phase technology now,

[00:58:15] so you don't maybe necessarily have to go into an instance thing, but they could phase it in some way where if you go to a particular area that you're phased into your own home,

[00:58:26] so you could see it from the outside, maybe got a little plot of land.

[00:58:29] I don't know.

[00:58:30] I think I'm stuck in kind of garrison mode where I think of it like as a plot of land that you'll be able to like do shit with,

[00:58:37] as opposed to like the apartment style thing that you were talking about, maybe where, you know, you walk through a door.

[00:58:43] Maybe the door is instanced.

[00:58:44] And so when you walk through the door, then you're inside your apartment in whatever capital city that you're in.

[00:58:50] Maybe that's the, you know, every capital city, you have like a, like an area where that's, that's it.

[00:58:55] You walk into your apartment and the door is the portal, like an instance, like when, you know.

[00:58:59] Well, this is the thing, you know, these are all the questions I need to ask because for me, house means the exterior as well.

[00:59:05] Right.

[00:59:05] I want people, I want, I want to be able to showcase and let people see the exterior and Final Fantasy knew that.

[00:59:11] And that's, that's why they did it like, okay, we're going to have, we're going to have streets and players will be able to buy a house on the street.

[00:59:17] And they'd be able to walk through the street like a neighborhood.

[00:59:20] That, that on paper, it sounds fantastic.

[00:59:22] But the thing is, then you've run out of digital real space, real estate very, very quickly.

[00:59:28] But the thing is like digital real estate is actually like a really interesting topic right now because there are like these games that exist out there, like Second Life, for example, where digital real estate has real, yeah, has real world value.

[00:59:44] Shit, I haven't thought about them in forever.

[00:59:46] Yeah, exactly.

[00:59:47] And those still exist and those are still pretty damn popular and big.

[00:59:51] So part of me when it's like, okay, if they're serious about this for the next 20 years, this could be like some, that could be far more ambitious with it and make it like into something far bigger and more exciting than just being like, oh, it's an instance apartment.

[01:00:05] Like maybe they, they could build this into a whole game into itself and be like, okay, we're going to have people who only play for housing.

[01:00:12] We're going to have like dedicated servers for this.

[01:00:14] We're going to have Second Life, like, you know, gameplay for this.

[01:00:18] We're going to have user generated content for this.

[01:00:20] We're going to let people actually live in Azeroth.

[01:00:24] We're going to have streets.

[01:00:25] We're going to have people setting up shops.

[01:00:27] I mean, they could go down that route potentially and develop it like-

[01:00:31] Architect sub-profession.

[01:00:33] Yeah.

[01:00:34] And like develop it like The Sims in sort of in that kind of level of detail.

[01:00:39] The Sims mixed with Second Life and go really hard on it.

[01:00:44] Maybe they're thinking about it that way.

[01:00:46] You know, like Holly Longdale is someone who very much likes the casual and the role-playing crowd.

[01:00:56] So like, and she plays, she plays the game from that perspective rather than the hardcore raider perspective.

[01:01:01] Although obviously, you know, she plays it from every perspective as the lead developer.

[01:01:06] But when she's playing, she talks about, you know, she plays on role-playing server.

[01:01:10] And, you know, and role-players are someone who, these are some of the most engaged players in the game, role-players.

[01:01:16] Oh, yeah.

[01:01:18] And they are people who subscribe forever.

[01:01:20] They never quit.

[01:01:21] And they, you know, role-playing communities, you know, it's a powerful tool for engagement.

[01:01:28] Like even in Grand Theft Auto, they've got role-playing servers in Grand Theft Auto Online now.

[01:01:32] And they've got housing systems in that where people, you know, role-playing and live in Grand Theft Auto.

[01:01:37] And I have said, and I've talked to analysts who said like role-playing is this vast, potentially untapped area for growth for games like this.

[01:01:49] So like they could go really hard on it, really deep and really like make it this huge feature that could live by itself within Warcraft.

[01:02:00] But, you know, maybe that's, I'm getting ahead of myself, but we'll see.

[01:02:03] No.

[01:02:04] I would like it to go that hard.

[01:02:07] These are the questions, right?

[01:02:08] And they're very open about soliciting feedback.

[01:02:11] And I assume that they have some sort of a framework.

[01:02:15] Like I don't think that they would announce this and not have done anything.

[01:02:18] So I assume that there's some sort of framework that they've already built out, some idea of what they want to do.

[01:02:23] But they're asking very actively for what do you want?

[01:02:26] What do you not want?

[01:02:28] And so, you know, it's kind of the conversation we're having here is I don't want just some fucking hole in an existing building somewhere

[01:02:35] that now I have this little instance department.

[01:02:37] Like I would love to have, you know, I don't know.

[01:02:41] Let's grab some of the Vrykul architecture and maybe build like a, you know, like the warrior class hall, right?

[01:02:47] Like that's the kind of vibe I would like for my own home and have different things inside it.

[01:02:52] Maybe somebody else.

[01:02:53] I don't know.

[01:02:53] Maybe somebody else wants a fucking tree house.

[01:02:55] Maybe put a, you know, some kind of other thing in there.

[01:02:58] Like there's so many directions it could go.

[01:03:00] And if they really are committed to a long-term like multi-decade journey on this thing,

[01:03:07] that does suggest that it should be a rather robust system that the imagination, you know, should be the limit.

[01:03:16] You know what I mean?

[01:03:17] So.

[01:03:19] I hope so, but we'll see.

[01:03:20] We will see.

[01:03:22] And to that end, folks, if you have thoughts and ideas, which it seems like a lot of people do,

[01:03:27] get out there and comment.

[01:03:28] They are actively soliciting feedback on this thing.

[01:03:31] And if there's things that you want, you don't want, you know, if you have these experiences,

[01:03:34] as Jez has mentioned with other games that have these types of systems in them,

[01:03:39] take the lessons learned.

[01:03:40] Tell them what sucked about it.

[01:03:42] Tell them what was great about it.

[01:03:43] Because I know I don't.

[01:03:45] I'm just like, listen, if this is what we're going to do,

[01:03:47] I'd love a place that has that kind of, you know, craftsman style or, you know, very woodsy sort of architecture.

[01:03:55] Maybe I can put a couple swords out there and, you know, I can hang out.

[01:03:59] You can invite people like, you know, with garrisons, you can invite people into your instanced area.

[01:04:04] You even got an achievement for it.

[01:04:05] Maybe that's how we solve kind of the public participation aspect of it.

[01:04:10] But it's a very big thing.

[01:04:12] I know Ro, a friend of the program, original host of Realm Maintenance and Rolling Restart podcast.

[01:04:21] He and I talked about this for years about, you know, player housing and this kind of stuff.

[01:04:28] And I never thought that they would do it.

[01:04:30] And I never have understood the hype around it or the want or the desire for it.

[01:04:37] But put a pin in it.

[01:04:39] And maybe a year from now when we see this thing and I'm like, holy shit,

[01:04:43] this is the greatest thing that's ever been added to World of Warcraft.

[01:04:46] I don't know why I ever talk shit about this.

[01:04:47] Well, then this is the moment, folks.

[01:04:49] This is the episode 156.

[01:04:50] Just remember, this is the time when I absolutely put both feet in my mouth.

[01:04:55] And was like, I don't understand.

[01:04:57] So player housing.

[01:04:59] Big deal.

[01:05:00] Coming a while.

[01:05:01] Coming as part of Midnight.

[01:05:03] My guess is that's probably part of the pre-patch.

[01:05:06] Pre-Expanse and patch.

[01:05:08] There about a year from now.

[01:05:10] So that's pretty crazy timing.

[01:05:13] But overall, otherwise, the patch itself, we're going to undermine.

[01:05:19] Which I am not well versed in goblin lore and goblin kind of backstory.

[01:05:27] And what's big and what's not.

[01:05:28] You know, I know who Gallywix is.

[01:05:29] I know that there's like cartels.

[01:05:31] I know that Undermine is a place that people wanted to go forever.

[01:05:34] And they've said that it only, you know, it makes sense.

[01:05:37] We're having an underground expansion.

[01:05:38] If there was ever a time, now is the time for Undermine.

[01:05:41] We're going to fight your boy Gallywix.

[01:05:43] We're going to have this whole raid where we're going to try to liberate the Undermine.

[01:05:47] What this has to do with the rest of the overarching story, I have no idea.

[01:05:51] And they seem fully aware of the fact that people are going, what the fuck?

[01:05:54] What does this have to do with Zalatath and the Void and Old Gods and Titans?

[01:06:00] And it seems like there's a tie-in.

[01:06:03] And they're very confident in this that we need maybe a lighter touch chapter before we go into probably what's going to be like some super heavy shit when we probably fail.

[01:06:15] And some real bad stuff happens.

[01:06:18] But they've talked about, you know, we want to get past the goblins just being the sort of caricature of jokey explosions.

[01:06:25] But we actually want to give them more depth and really talk about what's going on with them as a group, as a race, what's important to them, why things operate the way that they do.

[01:06:37] So from your perspective, Jez, when they announced, when you saw this, because you got to see it a little bit early,

[01:06:42] when you saw that it was undermined, when you saw that we were going to have this raid, there's, you know, this is the vibe that we're going to be going with for a good chunk of time.

[01:06:51] What did you think about all this?

[01:06:54] I mean, I kind of knew they were doing undermined just because based on what some of the stuff that was showing in the game was.

[01:07:02] There's a whole goblin section in that area.

[01:07:04] They telegraphed it, for sure.

[01:07:06] They really telegraphed it.

[01:07:08] And then I knew for certain, they added a little new conversation in the current patch, the anniversary patch,

[01:07:14] where two dwarfs are talking about, oh, the goblins found something.

[01:07:17] And it's like, yeah, it's got to be undermined.

[01:07:19] It has to be undermined.

[01:07:21] Like there's no way they're bringing so much, because it does seem random, right?

[01:07:25] It seems kind of random.

[01:07:27] Like how do the goblins fit into this storyline?

[01:07:29] And it's like, well, the only way they fit in is because we're underground.

[01:07:32] And the goblin main city, Undermine, or their most noteworthy city is underground.

[01:07:40] So it just makes this the only Occam's razor kind of thing, right?

[01:07:45] It's the only thing that really makes sense here.

[01:07:47] So I kind of figured that that'd have to be where we're going for the next patch, or maybe at least one of the patches.

[01:07:53] But, you know, so a lot of people were, I think we've even talked about on this show before,

[01:07:57] where it's like, does Undermine warrant itself a whole new expansion?

[01:08:00] Well, that is all about Undermine.

[01:08:02] Right.

[01:08:04] But I suppose it's at the end of the day, this is the Undermine expansion in essence,

[01:08:08] because it couldn't have just all been Undermine.

[01:08:11] It wouldn't have to be Undermine and then a bunch of underground areas.

[01:08:14] So for me, this is basically the Undermine expansion now.

[01:08:17] No one cares about Earthen.

[01:08:19] This is the Undermine expansion now.

[01:08:21] So I think it's awesome, because, you know, I'm a goblin at the end of the day.

[01:08:26] And so I'm a little biased, maybe, about goblins getting their, I say time to shine,

[01:08:34] but there's been a few patches where goblins have been given the time to shine.

[01:08:38] Like they were heavily, Mechagon was like a very gnomish kind of patch,

[01:08:43] but also the goblins were on the other side of that, right?

[01:08:46] Like they're often the flip, the coin flip, there's gnomes and goblins.

[01:08:51] They both make things and explode things.

[01:08:53] And they're both a bit eccentric and chaotic and stuff like that.

[01:08:57] So yeah, I'm super hyped for it.

[01:09:00] Kind of saw it coming.

[01:09:02] But I think what really excites me about this from a conspiratorial point of view,

[01:09:10] do you remember like we've talked before about how I've got a conspiracy theory

[01:09:14] that Blizzard is gradually remaking all of the starting areas for all the different races?

[01:09:21] Yes.

[01:09:22] I just got this conspiracy theory.

[01:09:23] Yes.

[01:09:24] So I think now we've got Balameth, which could be a starting area for the elves.

[01:09:28] And now we've got Undermine, which could eventually be repurposed to be a starting area for the goblins.

[01:09:33] And then maybe one day there's a patch in Gilneas where they properly, fully refresh it beyond the reclamation,

[01:09:42] which gave us the lore of why we're going to Gilneas.

[01:09:44] But maybe when we're in the Midnight expansion,

[01:09:48] we've got an opportunity to remaster the starting areas for Blood Elves, Forsaken, and Wargen in essence.

[01:09:57] So that's part of my conspiracy theory, that this is all part of a giant multi-year long effort

[01:10:03] to gradually bring us back to actually having real starting areas for all the different races

[01:10:09] and get people on board into the game in a much more immersive kind of way.

[01:10:14] So hopefully this expansion, this patch, sorry, serves multiple purposes.

[01:10:19] I think the idea of, you know, getting, there was no way Galax was ever going to be

[01:10:25] reintegrated into the story if it wasn't now.

[01:10:28] And I think having him as the right boss is a good way to, you know, I suppose, send him off.

[01:10:33] So it's a very comeuppance because he's been responsible for a lot of bad stuff.

[01:10:37] You know, he's kind of been tolerated by the Horde for a long time.

[01:10:41] And he's been instrumental in the Fourth War.

[01:10:45] You know, he was always there whispering in people's ears.

[01:10:48] Oh, let's get the Azerite, you know, let's get the Azerite.

[01:10:50] That's what I was thinking of.

[01:10:52] And yeah, he's obviously an Azerite hound.

[01:10:55] And obviously there's a bit of an Azerite aspect to this whole expansion

[01:10:59] because Azeroth's hurting right now.

[01:11:02] He kind of represents that capitalist burn the planet for shareholders kind of mentality.

[01:11:09] So I suspect a lot of hijinks, a lot of humor and a lot of fleshing out of Gazlo,

[01:11:14] who I think he's gradually going to take a role as one of the more important characters in the game.

[01:11:19] Oh, Gazlo's awesome, you know, since Vanilla.

[01:11:22] He's kind of been one of the staples of the Horde, the sane parts of the Horde, I guess you could say.

[01:11:30] He's always been sort of somehow the Goblin has become one of the sanest people in the Horde, which is funny.

[01:11:37] That tells you something.

[01:11:39] Yeah, it does a bit.

[01:11:40] But yeah, I love it.

[01:11:42] I think it's going to be great.

[01:11:43] All up.

[01:11:44] I'm really excited for it.

[01:11:46] And also this expansion has been too Alliance heavy until now.

[01:11:50] Well, I know that that's a comment that's come up.

[01:11:53] And so as soon as I saw, I was like, well, that should help tamp some of that down a little bit at least

[01:11:58] because now you're going to get more of the Goblins.

[01:12:00] And I know that they're like, well, it's not necessarily an Alliance or a Horde

[01:12:05] because it's part of the story or whatever.

[01:12:06] We all know the truth.

[01:12:07] We all know the truth.

[01:12:08] It was very Alliance to start.

[01:12:10] And this is very much Horde.

[01:12:11] And they can say what they want, but we know the truth.

[01:12:14] But one of the, one of the things that they, or one of the big features that they also touted,

[01:12:20] which I am very curious to see how this works, because it could be super awesome or it could be dog shit,

[01:12:28] which is this new drive mount system where you're going to get basically a car.

[01:12:35] I'm not going to call them carts or something like that, but you're basically going to get a car.

[01:12:39] And it's like fast and furious style where you'll be able to customize this thing.

[01:12:44] And you can change, I guess you can change some colors.

[01:12:47] Maybe you can change some characteristics, but you can also change the, like the stats on the thing.

[01:12:54] So like, does it drift?

[01:12:56] Does it grip?

[01:12:56] Like, how does it handle?

[01:12:59] That's, that's, that is definitely a new attempt.

[01:13:04] That's something, that's something totally new.

[01:13:05] We haven't seen anything like this.

[01:13:06] It's supposed to go many times faster than a regular ground mount.

[01:13:10] Um, because there's going to be, there's not going to be any flying in undermine.

[01:13:14] And it's supposed to be like a packed city, I suppose.

[01:13:17] And so driving around is the only thing that makes sense.

[01:13:20] And, you know, lore wise, you're dealing with the goblins and having like a, you know, vehicle like that makes sense.

[01:13:25] Cause there's shit's going to be around, um, this, this to me, this is either going to be a plus plus, or this is going to be the biggest fail of all time.

[01:13:35] But I am so intrigued to see this and get my hands on it.

[01:13:40] Much like when dragon writing was first introduced, we're like, Oh shit, this is going to be revolutionary.

[01:13:46] Um, this has a lot of potential jazz.

[01:13:49] I am really excited about this.

[01:13:51] I don't know if I'm too excited.

[01:13:52] Uh, but maybe it's time for fast and furious to, to come to wow.

[01:13:56] I don't know.

[01:13:57] What did you think about it?

[01:13:58] I remember, I remember when this was like dynamined a while ago, like at the start of the expansion, I think where it was like, Oh, they're working on dynamic ground mounts.

[01:14:07] That's right.

[01:14:08] That's right.

[01:14:10] Yeah.

[01:14:12] And it was, it was for this, I guess.

[01:14:14] So I'm, I'm interested to know, like, are they going to expand it beyond undermine?

[01:14:18] Like, am I going to be, cause I will, I will say, and I know this is not the popular opinion.

[01:14:24] I, I, I'm very aware this is not the popular opinion.

[01:14:27] I think being able to fly all the time everywhere is unhealthy for the game.

[01:14:31] I think it makes the world feel smaller.

[01:14:34] I think it makes the game less social.

[01:14:36] I genuinely believe in my heart that it's, it's, it's too much of a good thing.

[01:14:42] Being able to fly all over the place, super fast all the time.

[01:14:45] I can see that.

[01:14:46] Yeah.

[01:14:47] So like, I kind of feel like a dynamic ground mounts could be a good compromise for that.

[01:14:53] But at the same time, it's like, undermine is designed for this stuff.

[01:14:57] It's going to have roads because goblins, goblins, you know, smarter.

[01:15:01] So we have advanced technology like roads.

[01:15:04] Whereas like, you know, Alliance, they sort of, they just have dirt tracks and stuff like that.

[01:15:07] We have roads and asphalt in undermine and Kazan.

[01:15:11] Well, well, Kazan's under lava now, I guess, but we, we, we did have roads at Kazan.

[01:15:16] Got paved over.

[01:15:18] Yeah, paved over.

[01:15:19] But, uh, but yeah, that's sort of where I'm at.

[01:15:21] Like, will they expand it beyond undermine?

[01:15:23] Um, I'm hoping it's good.

[01:15:25] I'm hoping it's well-received.

[01:15:26] I'm hoping people like it enough to be like, oh, actually, I'd like to see this everywhere.

[01:15:29] And then, you know, what, what does it look like when, you know, what does horse drifting

[01:15:33] look like?

[01:15:34] I think it could add a lot of dynamism to the game, especially if like, yeah, if, if like

[01:15:39] the next expansion, for example, they're like, okay, we're going back to the model of you

[01:15:42] have to earn flying later on.

[01:15:44] Um, uh, I would personally like to see that because I really, I really do feel like just

[01:15:50] flying everywhere.

[01:15:51] Like it takes something out of it.

[01:15:52] But for me, and I don't know if that's, I don't know if that's fair or not.

[01:15:56] I don't know if that's like a me thing or it's dumb, but I know people go crazy when they

[01:16:02] can't fly.

[01:16:02] So yeah, yeah.

[01:16:04] People, people don't like it.

[01:16:05] So I'm, I'm curious to say how well, how well received it ends up being.

[01:16:11] Yeah.

[01:16:11] I could see a situation where, you know, let's say, let's say things go bad and midnight

[01:16:16] happens and there's something going on that maybe you can't fly because then you like

[01:16:22] are an obvious target for something.

[01:16:24] Yeah.

[01:16:24] And so like you have to stick to the ground.

[01:16:26] Right.

[01:16:27] And so maybe this is kind of helping to set up for that future where you're going to be

[01:16:32] ground based for a while because if you take to take to the skies, you're going to get

[01:16:36] fucked up.

[01:16:37] Um, and you're right to an extent.

[01:16:40] I totally agree that the world does feel smaller when you're just able to go to point

[01:16:45] A to point B and you get shit done really quick.

[01:16:48] And, you know, I think for people that have time constraints like myself, it's a godsend

[01:16:53] because you're able to get stuff done quickly as opposed to having to, you know, get on your

[01:16:57] mount and, you know, ride all the way there.

[01:17:00] Um, but there is something lost in it.

[01:17:03] There's no doubt about it.

[01:17:04] I mean, the, the, I'll never forget.

[01:17:07] Going back to the very beginning, many, many moons ago, whatever, 17, 18 years ago when

[01:17:11] I first started playing and, you know, walking past the gates of storm and for the first

[01:17:16] time.

[01:17:16] And it blew my fucking mind because I thought I was just in a forest and there was like,

[01:17:20] Oh, there's Goldshire.

[01:17:21] Oh, there's a town.

[01:17:22] Oh, that's cool.

[01:17:22] There's towns.

[01:17:23] And then walk further up the road.

[01:17:26] And I see this whole big ass castle and this whole thing.

[01:17:29] It's like, Oh my God, this is crazy.

[01:17:31] This is amazing.

[01:17:32] Like what is going on here?

[01:17:33] Yeah, man.

[01:17:34] It's exactly what I'm talking about.

[01:17:35] Yeah.

[01:17:36] It's so good.

[01:17:37] You, you, you lose that when, Oh, I can just take to the sky and look around and go, Oh,

[01:17:43] look at all that stuff.

[01:17:43] You know, it, that, that discoverability is, is, is a big part of the mystique and the

[01:17:50] magic of wow.

[01:17:51] So I think that there is something to that, but you know, maybe not horses, but I could

[01:17:55] see where we have other ground mounts like the motorcycles or the trikes from the Azeroth

[01:18:01] chopper show.

[01:18:02] And, you know, some other stuff like that, the five people that got the hate forge blaze

[01:18:07] cycle, right?

[01:18:07] Maybe you can go out there and, you know, do some motocross.

[01:18:10] Uh, if that, you know, system kind of translates over to other mounts, but, uh, really excited

[01:18:16] to see how this works out and get our hands on it and see how it goes, but it's going to

[01:18:21] be, you know, probably not too long here in the distant future.

[01:18:24] So, uh, looking overall at patch 11.1, uh, we've got the zone, we've got the raid, we've

[01:18:29] got this drive system, get a new dungeon.

[01:18:31] We've got two new delves coming as well.

[01:18:34] Uh, and a Zekvir style third delve, uh, another arena map.

[01:18:39] Uh, we'll have obviously more story, uh, brand for the dells is getting a tank spec, which

[01:18:44] I know a lot of people are going to be happy about that.

[01:18:46] And the tuning on that I'm sure is going to be the source of much controversy as to how

[01:18:51] well brand lives or dies or how easy it is to keep him up or not.

[01:18:55] Or does it work for DPS two or healing?

[01:18:57] And I, God, I weep for the people that are going to have to balance that thing.

[01:19:02] Um, but before we move off of this, there are a bunch of interviews out there, but you

[01:19:08] Jez, you, as you mentioned already, you got the chance to stare into the dreamy eyes of

[01:19:14] Ian Hazacosis himself and ask questions.

[01:19:18] Uh, before we get to any, any more of the actual questions and answers, we know, we see

[01:19:26] the end result of these interviews, you know, the, the write-ups or, you know, we see videos

[01:19:32] for some folks and this and that for folks that don't know that aren't part of this kind

[01:19:37] of apparatus.

[01:19:38] Can you describe, can you give people an idea of what it's like when you actually do these

[01:19:43] interviews, like what the setup is and kind of what you have to do and the time constraints.

[01:19:47] And cause I don't think people really hear a lot about how this actually works.

[01:19:51] Uh, but you having been through it, can you kind of describe what that is for people?

[01:19:57] Man, I'm, I'm a bad person to ask for this really, cause I'm not, I'm really terrible

[01:20:02] at interviews.

[01:20:02] Like I'm really not good at it.

[01:20:04] Um, but in essence is what we're doing right now.

[01:20:07] You just hop on a call on Microsoft teams or something like that.

[01:20:10] And then you just, you know, ask you questions.

[01:20:12] Um, typically speaking, like for these kinds of game developer quest Q and a sessions, there's,

[01:20:19] there's pretty much nothing like you can't ask.

[01:20:21] They don't say, I know there's all these rumors, like, like, um, they tell you what

[01:20:26] you can and can't ask, but at the end of the day, like you can ask anything you want, but

[01:20:30] like you typically want to avoid asking questions in a way that will end up in a PR answer because

[01:20:35] they are trained by PR.

[01:20:37] Like if they ask about this.

[01:20:39] Definitely are.

[01:20:40] Yeah.

[01:20:41] Yeah.

[01:20:41] Yeah.

[01:20:42] Yeah.

[01:20:42] Exactly.

[01:20:43] Like there's stuff they can't talk about or they don't know.

[01:20:45] They personally, maybe they personally don't know the answer.

[01:20:48] Like I asked one of the, that's one of the wow classic team, what it's like to work in

[01:20:51] Microsoft and like, you know, there's a very PR response to that.

[01:20:55] And, you know, but, but at the same time they were like, we don't really see much of

[01:20:59] that.

[01:20:59] That's like a higher level at the end of the day.

[01:21:01] And yeah, it's, it's, it's more Johanna, uh, Johanna fairies who, um, who deals with Microsoft

[01:21:09] really and stuff like that.

[01:21:10] So you want to ask questions that you want to make sure like who you're speaking to first

[01:21:14] and you want to ask questions that are actually relevant to, to them and their work and what

[01:21:18] they're working on and stuff like that.

[01:21:20] But at the same time, you want to ask questions that people will actually want to read about,

[01:21:23] which is something that I'm not very good at.

[01:21:25] Cause I, I ask questions that I want to know.

[01:21:29] That's the best.

[01:21:30] Oftentimes.

[01:21:30] Yeah, it is.

[01:21:31] But like sometimes what I want to know and what, what people actually want to read about

[01:21:35] are often very two different things sometimes.

[01:21:38] So, um, so there's, there's not a lot of, there's not a lot that goes into it.

[01:21:43] They're just like, yeah, we'd like to, we'd like to offer you an interview.

[01:21:46] Do you want to do it?

[01:21:47] And I'm obviously going to be like, hell yeah.

[01:21:48] And then, then that's it.

[01:21:50] So it goes into it basically.

[01:21:52] Um, how much time do they give you?

[01:21:55] Um, it depends.

[01:21:57] Like some, usually like a dev interviews anywhere between 15 to 30 minutes.

[01:22:02] Like I, I had, like I mentioned, I went to an Indiana Jones preview.

[01:22:05] My dev interview for that was 15 minutes cause that, that a lot of people had to get through.

[01:22:09] Yeah.

[01:22:10] Um, but my dev interview with, with, with Eon was, um, I on, sorry, Ian.

[01:22:16] I don't know.

[01:22:17] I think it was about Ian.

[01:22:18] Oh yeah.

[01:22:19] Ian.

[01:22:19] Yeah.

[01:22:20] Um, with Ian, I was like, um, it was 30 minutes.

[01:22:23] So it was, it was a good, in my head it was cause yeah, it was a good chunk.

[01:22:28] Like usually in my head, it's like interviews are about 15 minutes.

[01:22:31] So I was planning for it to be 15 minutes for some reason, even though they didn't tell

[01:22:35] me it was 30.

[01:22:36] So I didn't prep a ton of questions, but it was 30 and I thought, Oh, I've got tons

[01:22:40] of time.

[01:22:41] There's no way I can, I'll probably run out of questions to ask, but no, the 30 minutes

[01:22:44] went by very, very quickly.

[01:22:46] And I didn't even ask half the stuff I wanted to ask.

[01:22:49] So yeah, I mean interview, I find them, I find interviews to be really hard.

[01:22:54] Um, I don't know anyone.

[01:22:56] I've never really gotten any help with how to do interviews.

[01:23:00] So, um, I'm still, you know what you could have done.

[01:23:04] What's that?

[01:23:05] You could have told me and I could have given you questions.

[01:23:09] Yeah.

[01:23:09] True.

[01:23:10] True.

[01:23:11] But there's another thing.

[01:23:13] It's so chaotic.

[01:23:14] Like, um, everything going on.

[01:23:17] I didn't even, I didn't like, if I don't have to do it that day, I don't even think about

[01:23:20] it.

[01:23:21] Cause there's just so much other stuff I got to do at the moment.

[01:23:23] Yeah.

[01:23:24] Well, these things typically come together like very late.

[01:23:28] It's, it, that's the other thing I know about kind of Blizzard in general is setting up

[01:23:31] these interviews.

[01:23:33] You don't get a lot of advanced notice.

[01:23:35] Typically.

[01:23:35] It's, it's pretty quick.

[01:23:37] Like, we're going to do this in a couple of days or something.

[01:23:41] Yeah.

[01:23:41] I had a pretty good notice for this one actually, which I was surprised about because I would

[01:23:45] have thought there'd be, there'd be worried about leaks.

[01:23:48] You know, if the amount of journalists and content creators that were invited to this

[01:23:52] stuff.

[01:23:52] So I was thinking like, that's, that's a, that's a big risk.

[01:23:56] Some of this stuff's going to leak, but no, it didn't leak.

[01:23:58] Uh, surprise, surprise to me.

[01:24:01] Cause you got to see the presentation ahead of time.

[01:24:03] I did.

[01:24:04] Yeah.

[01:24:04] A couple of days, a few days earlier, I got to see the presentation, which was awesome

[01:24:08] because it, you know, we got a small team when they sent you and it allowed me a lot

[01:24:11] of time to prep for it and write all the content ahead of time, which, you know, is always

[01:24:16] a huge, huge help when we can do that.

[01:24:18] But, but yeah, at the same time, um, usually the prep time is very, very minimal.

[01:24:24] I remember once I was at a Halo presentation and, um, or was it Gears?

[01:24:29] I think actually, I think this happened for Gears and Halo.

[01:24:32] I did a Gears of War preview and a Halo preview.

[01:24:34] Hmm.

[01:24:35] And I didn't even know I was having interviews and they were, and then they were like, oh,

[01:24:38] by the way, you're interviewing Rod Ferguson, who was at the time the lead developer of Gears

[01:24:42] of War.

[01:24:43] Yeah.

[01:24:43] Um, and now he's the lead developer of Diablo, funnily enough.

[01:24:47] So he's, he's ended up at Blizzard and then back at Microsoft after doing Gears of War.

[01:24:51] Um, and, uh, and I had, I had no idea.

[01:24:55] I had no pry warning or at least I wasn't aware of a pry warning.

[01:24:58] So I was, I was just terrible and, and I was very green at the time and I'm very grateful

[01:25:03] that Rod Ferguson basically interviewed himself for me.

[01:25:08] Hey, you got enough media training.

[01:25:10] You can do it.

[01:25:10] You know, you, you have like a handful of things you can just give them.

[01:25:15] Yeah, I suppose.

[01:25:16] Um, but I was, it was early days back then.

[01:25:20] I'm a, I don't get nervous anymore.

[01:25:22] Like I used to, but, um, nothing to get nervous about.

[01:25:26] You do great.

[01:25:27] Yeah.

[01:25:27] I mean, these interviews, all these interviews that you have are great.

[01:25:30] And, um, you know, you had some really insightful questions.

[01:25:33] I think that people, you know, for the fuller context, you know, can go to window central and

[01:25:37] see your full, uh, your full interview on there, but, uh, any other information or questions

[01:25:42] and answers you want to give the folks, uh, 411, uh, about on the podcast before they read

[01:25:47] it?

[01:25:49] Yeah.

[01:25:49] I mean, it was quite a development oriented Q and a, like we talked about how they came

[01:25:55] up with the ideas, what people can expect for the future of the way they're developing

[01:25:59] the game and stuff like that.

[01:26:01] We talked a little bit about, um, the, the reward system.

[01:26:05] I think that was probably the, for world of Warcraft players who are like more sort

[01:26:09] of mid core or hardcore.

[01:26:11] It might be interesting to know that Blizzard no longer thinks it's a good idea that you

[01:26:16] can go from delves straight into mythic plus seven, you know?

[01:26:20] So basically they think, they think it's a problem that the rewards from mythic plus

[01:26:25] one through seven, uh, easy, like harder to get than doing the levels, the set, the tier

[01:26:33] eight delves.

[01:26:33] So tier eight delves are too rewarding, which is like basically what everyone told them

[01:26:38] at launch, but they didn't, they didn't listen to.

[01:26:42] I think they were surprised the amount of people that would run delves for gear in addition

[01:26:48] to mythic plus.

[01:26:49] Cause it, cause right now, if you're, if you're a delve player and, um, you know, say, say

[01:26:54] for example, this, this is the point they were making.

[01:26:56] If you're a delve player today and you, you get up to tier eight delves and it's like,

[01:27:01] okay, I'm good at these tier eight delves.

[01:27:02] Now I'm going to try doing mythic plus.

[01:27:05] The first mythic plus that can give you good rewards above those delves is like mythic

[01:27:09] plus seven or six or something like that.

[01:27:11] A mythic plus seven is not easy.

[01:27:15] It's not like, it's not like a delve, you know, where it's like, like tier eight delve

[01:27:19] is easy as hell, but a mythic plus seven is, requires a lot of coordination.

[01:27:23] So it's a big, it's a big leap in, in challenge.

[01:27:27] And I think blizzards decided given the leap from a tier eight delve to a, in terms of reward

[01:27:34] structure, it's, it's, it's incongruent.

[01:27:37] So I think that what they're going to address that in season two.

[01:27:39] So I don't know what that means, either buffing the rewards from mythic plus or probably more

[01:27:43] likely nerfing.

[01:27:44] Sounds like us.

[01:27:45] Yeah.

[01:27:45] Our, our, our, us delve people are going to get screwed.

[01:27:47] That's what it sounds like to me.

[01:27:49] Yeah.

[01:27:50] Maybe, but it is just true that it's, it's, it is kind of weird that the, the, the rewards

[01:27:58] overlap so much, but the difficulty doesn't.

[01:28:00] So like it should, it is, it just doesn't make sense that you can do a tier eight delve and

[01:28:06] get that level of gear and then just sort of have nothing to do until super hard, difficult

[01:28:12] mythic plus stuff.

[01:28:13] So like, you know, I think it's about smoothing, smoothing out the difficulty curve maybe to

[01:28:20] some degree where it's like, well, okay, you've, you've mastered delves now.

[01:28:24] Um, now try going into maybe mythic plus four or something like that, or at least the equivalent

[01:28:29] difficulty and, and then still get good rewards from it.

[01:28:33] Because right now, if you go from a tier eight delve to the first level of mythic plus

[01:28:37] that actually gives you equivalent rewards, the, the difficulty spike is huge.

[01:28:41] Hmm.

[01:28:42] So I think that's really what it's about is making sure dealt people who've maxed out

[01:28:46] delves and don't have much else to do now can actually feel like the difficulty, the

[01:28:52] change in difficulty actually feels smoother, but, uh, they didn't give details exactly

[01:28:57] how they're going to achieve that.

[01:28:58] So I don't know if that means enough to rewards or enough to difficulty of mythic plus

[01:29:01] maybe, maybe there might, I mean, they could maybe make mythic plus easier up to like

[01:29:07] mythic plus nine maybe, but I did not get a sense that was what it was going to be.

[01:29:13] Um, the other thing they, they said that was interesting as well for, for people who

[01:29:17] are gearing up is they, they agree the crest, the crest system is confusing as hell.

[01:29:22] Um, especially for new players.

[01:29:24] And that was something my guild suggested I ask about.

[01:29:27] Um, cause I agree.

[01:29:30] Like even me, I, I don't really get what Chris I need.

[01:29:33] Um, I just sort of like, I put my gear in the thing and then it's like, you need these

[01:29:38] crests.

[01:29:38] And if I have the crests, then great.

[01:29:40] Exactly.

[01:29:40] If I don't have the crests, then I'm just like, well, I don't know where to get them.

[01:29:43] So I'll just keep playing until I get them.

[01:29:45] So yeah, the, the crest, the, it's the naming system really like the crest system is good.

[01:29:50] Like I've liked the crest system.

[01:29:51] Sure.

[01:29:52] Um, and it gives you, yeah, it gives you progression from doing all kinds of content, but it's

[01:29:57] just like the way that that shit's named, like it's confusing as hell.

[01:30:00] And they agreed.

[01:30:01] So I do think that, yeah, they're going to make it a little clearer, I think moving forward.

[01:30:07] There it is.

[01:30:09] Jez, Jez Corden, voice of the people.

[01:30:11] Once again, uh, getting the, getting the mainline time with the man himself, Ian Housel

[01:30:16] Costas, which as you all know, had the pleasure of very briefly one time and then at

[01:30:21] BlizzCon where I took awkward photos, but, uh, I always, I always enjoy, uh, hearing

[01:30:26] stories about, uh, what he's up to and how he's handling our business.

[01:30:31] And thank you, Jez for being our representative.

[01:30:33] So, uh, if you folks haven't yet go out on window central and see Jez's fine work.

[01:30:38] And there's a bunch of other fucking interviews and articles and all kinds of other stuff

[01:30:41] out there too.

[01:30:42] So the information will be flowing, uh, as we go on and, um, outside of the patch 11.1

[01:30:52] goodness and the player housing stuff, there were other things as well, uh, that, uh, I

[01:30:59] want to, uh, touch on just real quick here.

[01:31:04] Uh, I know we've talked about this a little bit before and long lamented Jez.

[01:31:10] I think we finally reached the point where the term classic has lost all fucking meaning.

[01:31:15] I don't think it means anything anymore when we have not only Mr. Pandaria classic being

[01:31:23] announced, but now we're going to have classic classic, which is just the fucking dumbest thing

[01:31:32] I have ever heard.

[01:31:33] Like, I just, I don't understand at this point.

[01:31:38] Why don't we just do separate servers where it's, you know, the, the, whatever self-contained

[01:31:45] version of the game.

[01:31:47] We got the, the vanilla, you got the wrath, you got the burning crusade.

[01:31:52] Why don't we just do this instead of, well, if you didn't play it the first time, we'll,

[01:31:58] we'll, we'll have like a 10 year lag and then you can, you can relive the experience or you

[01:32:04] can live it for the first time because you weren't there.

[01:32:06] And then behind that, we'll have another one.

[01:32:09] There's a third wave of classic classic.

[01:32:11] That's way there in the back.

[01:32:12] And that'll give you the chance to like, it's just, it's so you want to talk about the crest

[01:32:18] system being convoluted.

[01:32:19] The whole classic concept now has just lost all goddamn meaning to me.

[01:32:24] Like it just, it's so dumb.

[01:32:27] Like, and I know that there's people that want it and they're happy about it.

[01:32:29] And that's great.

[01:32:30] Good for you.

[01:32:32] Good for you.

[01:32:33] Um, but my God, just, we are going to see warlords classic, aren't we?

[01:32:41] Yep.

[01:32:44] Um, so they did announce all of that.

[01:32:50] So if that's your jam, good for you.

[01:32:52] Uh, I think more near and dear to a lot of Warcraft players, hearts, uh, of old is the

[01:32:58] remastered Warcraft one, two, and then they finally got back to work with the reforged

[01:33:03] three, they're fixing, uh, that stuff again.

[01:33:06] And I did, uh, purchase the one remaining version of that, that I did not have, uh, cause

[01:33:11] you do get a discount.

[01:33:12] If you've already brought like reforged and stuff, um, give players a chance to play through

[01:33:17] the old school original games, both in their original and updated format.

[01:33:21] Uh, I thought that was really cool.

[01:33:23] That's a good, that's a good anniversary thing is like bring back the original old school

[01:33:29] shit and give people a chance to see that.

[01:33:31] Um, pretty jazzed about that.

[01:33:33] And I know my son is too.

[01:33:34] He wants to dive through and see all the old school stuff.

[01:33:37] Uh, and then jazz, there was Starcraft.

[01:33:41] There was Starcraft.

[01:33:42] I know it's for Hearthstone, but there was Starcraft at last.

[01:33:46] We finally have something.

[01:33:48] I saw and heard the name Jim Raynor spoken out loud in a presentation for the first time

[01:33:54] in like, I don't know, a decade.

[01:33:56] Uh, and the fact that there's going to be a warrior, uh, tie to him.

[01:34:01] Um, I, I mean, it'll get me to play Hearthstone for at least five minutes, uh, when that happens,

[01:34:06] but it was, it was nice to see Starcraft get some representation, uh, finally in some

[01:34:11] form, please don't let that be the last of it.

[01:34:13] Uh, Plunderstorm will be returning in 2025.

[01:34:16] That is on the roadmap there.

[01:34:19] You can see it's going to happen fairly early.

[01:34:21] Uh, Warcraft Rumble, going to be on PC.

[01:34:25] Seems pretty straightforward.

[01:34:26] Uh, I don't know who the second developer was.

[01:34:29] I can't remember his name offhand.

[01:34:30] It was part of the presentation, but he was fucking hilarious.

[01:34:33] And I thought he did a great job.

[01:34:35] I don't know.

[01:34:35] Maybe we got to see if we can get that guy on the show.

[01:34:39] Um, yeah.

[01:34:40] And then I guess last two things on this is that if you haven't listened to him already,

[01:34:45] there is a five part audio novella called Heartlands and it's about Jaina and Thrall

[01:34:51] and what happened.

[01:34:51] Remember if you've done the, if you've done the intro quest line there, you know, give

[01:34:55] or take a couple extra quests, they did leave Kaz Algar and then they came back with

[01:35:00] a bunch of stuff, uh, and people, well, something happened between here and there.

[01:35:03] Well, you get Chris freaking Madsen doing the audio version of this just for you and me.

[01:35:13] And that's phenomenal.

[01:35:15] And I can't believe they actually got him to do it, but, uh, it's, it's fantastic.

[01:35:20] So if you haven't listened to any of those five part story, go get that.

[01:35:23] Uh, and then at the end, uh, of the whole presentation, it was really nice to see, uh, the concert that

[01:35:29] was filmed, uh, just a little while ago with all of the, you know, classic kind of Warcraft

[01:35:34] music pieces going from, uh, the original to, I think they went up through Shadowlands.

[01:35:41] I don't think they had anything from War Within.

[01:35:45] Uh, and they ended with Invincible and maybe I teared up a little bit when I heard that.

[01:35:50] I, there was no witnesses here, so I don't know that I have to cop to it.

[01:35:54] Uh, but it was the music in this game will always and forever be amazing.

[01:36:00] And hundreds of years from now, when I don't know, there may be one working version of this

[01:36:06] on a Smithsonian machine somewhere, the music will endure longer.

[01:36:10] I think than anything else, because people will find these pieces of music and they'll

[01:36:13] play them either like at a high school orchestra or some professional touring group or something.

[01:36:20] This music will live on.

[01:36:22] And so to hear all of that was pretty rad.

[01:36:26] Uh, so overall they gave us, I think quite a bit, uh, for what it was Warcraft direct being,

[01:36:33] you know, though, the one stop shop presentation that we're going to get, uh, for the foreseeable

[01:36:39] future.

[01:36:39] And I think it accomplished its goals, but, uh, for you, Jez, any final takeaways from the

[01:36:45] Warcraft direct or any of the other news that came out of that, uh, that you wanted to

[01:36:49] highlight?

[01:36:52] Um, I don't know.

[01:36:54] I think we covered pretty much everything.

[01:36:56] Um, I just really want to see what they do with, I'm really curious about what their long

[01:37:02] term plans are for the game.

[01:37:03] Because clearly, like everything that they sort of talk about lately is like, yeah, we've,

[01:37:09] you know, we plan in like the fact that Holly Longdale saying, oh yeah, we've got a 20,

[01:37:13] basically saying we've got a 20 year plan for housing is like, excuse me?

[01:37:18] You know, like they're clearly thinking long, longer term than they ever have with WoW, which,

[01:37:24] you know, we've seen the issues that can arise when they don't think long term and they do

[01:37:29] things like, you know, Sylvanas destroying Sylvanas as a, as a character because they didn't

[01:37:35] think about the consequences and, or they didn't have a good explanation for why, you know,

[01:37:40] the jailer was able to trick Sylvanas so easily and all this kind of stuff.

[01:37:44] Um, and then we get these ham fisted explanations down the line after the fact.

[01:37:49] And, um, and it's just, but like extending from that, you know, beyond the story pitfalls

[01:37:55] that we've had, like previously they would just think about that expansion, then, then

[01:38:01] forget about it.

[01:38:02] You know, we'd, we'd get all these like borrowed power, borrowed power systems that resulted

[01:38:08] in what I would consider to be a degre, a degradation of, uh, value.

[01:38:14] Cause if the expansion is full of features that are going to be thrown away at the end

[01:38:17] of the expansion, that reduces the value.

[01:38:20] You know, you, you pay for this stuff that's going to be deleted essentially.

[01:38:25] So I'm hyped that they're working on things that will stay in the game forever, you know,

[01:38:30] like, you know, dragon riding for example, and stuff like that.

[01:38:33] Um, and, uh, I think where I was probably in a healthier place now than it has been a

[01:38:38] long time, you know, uh, $90 store mounts notwithstanding.

[01:38:46] Yeah.

[01:38:47] You got to pay for this stuff at the end of the day though.

[01:38:49] Yeah.

[01:38:50] Yeah.

[01:38:50] You know, it's, it's a new world and the world of 20 years ago is a lot different than

[01:38:58] the world of now.

[01:39:00] And there's going to be those kinds of evolutionary changes that happen within the game.

[01:39:04] And I know they talked a little bit about the art style and whether it progresses or not.

[01:39:08] And there is very much a field and a vibe about world of Warcraft that I think most of us want

[01:39:14] it to maintain.

[01:39:14] And yes, it's, it's not the highest fidelity thing on the planet.

[01:39:18] And yes, they probably could update a few of the textures, uh, to, to something that's

[01:39:23] a little bit more modern, but still in keeping with their, uh, you know, art style.

[01:39:28] And I know that they're working on those kinds of things, but it is, you know, it, it grows

[01:39:33] as we do.

[01:39:34] And it's, it's wild for me to think about, well, 20 years ago, I, you know, wasn't married,

[01:39:40] didn't have any kids.

[01:39:41] Didn't, you know, as you know, in a completely different place in my life and career and everything

[01:39:47] else.

[01:39:47] And now where I am and shit in 20 years, I'll be retired.

[01:39:52] I mean, just thinking about stuff like that is it's bonkers to me.

[01:39:57] Um, and then talking about the game being around that long, I too have that question

[01:40:04] of what is the longterm plan?

[01:40:06] We're all wondering and it'll come, but we're all wondering, okay.

[01:40:10] So after the world soul saga, I know we're all jumping ahead, but, but then what?

[01:40:15] Like it's not the end of world of Warcraft because clearly you're building for the future.

[01:40:21] What the fuck is that?

[01:40:22] Like, what is happening?

[01:40:23] Like, you know, there's, there's, it's going to gnaw for a while, but.

[01:40:28] And Metson, like Metson flexing his creative muscles with the novella and stuff is, is this

[01:40:33] like, you know, you know, this, this speaks to the fact that the guys, the fact that they

[01:40:38] even bothered to do this is like, that's passion.

[01:40:40] They didn't have to do that.

[01:40:41] That is pure passion.

[01:40:43] So like, you know, you talk about being retired in 20 years, like Metson retired once already

[01:40:48] and came back.

[01:40:48] So for them, this is just fun for him.

[01:40:51] And I think like that'll be reflected in the game and reflected in the story that the blizzard

[01:40:56] are having fun with it again.

[01:40:57] And it's not like the, the pressure cooker that perhaps it was under, I'm not saying it's

[01:41:02] not hard to make a game like this by any means, but it does feel like there's a different vibe

[01:41:06] these days that, you know, that the pressure cooker that Kotick and the Activision shareholder

[01:41:14] culture put them under.

[01:41:16] He's hopefully lifted because Microsoft shareholders don't give a fuck what Microsoft does with

[01:41:21] its gaming stuff.

[01:41:23] It's all, for them, it's all about cloud and AI and all that bullshit.

[01:41:27] They don't care really much about it.

[01:41:28] Like obviously the gaming section has to turn a profit, but it's not everything Microsoft

[01:41:33] does.

[01:41:34] So it's less crucial.

[01:41:36] It's less, it's less pressure to at least to some degree, I think.

[01:41:39] So hopefully that'll be reflected in the game and I'm pretty excited about it.

[01:41:43] So I thought, I thought overall, like while the anniversary was not the best, um, the,

[01:41:49] the, the Warcraft director was a really great showcase of what, what to expect.

[01:41:53] And I'm really excited.

[01:41:55] Awesome.

[01:41:56] And yeah, it does, it does feel like the future is bright, uh, in World of Warcraft and it's,

[01:42:01] it's, so it's been a good second home, you know, third place.

[01:42:06] I think sometimes people call it, uh, for me and I think for a lot of people.

[01:42:10] So to have that continue on in the future will be, will be phenomenal.

[01:42:15] And one more thing before we go is, uh, speaking of music, the, uh, who is it here?

[01:42:25] I'm not sure who the company is behind it, but there's a company, uh, that is putting out

[01:42:30] the 20 years of music for World of Warcraft in, uh, on vinyl.

[01:42:36] So if you're like me and, and you have a record player, if folks that, I guess, I guess it's

[01:42:43] come back into faction to fashion to have a record player, because for the longest time

[01:42:47] we're like a, what is that an eight track?

[01:42:49] No vinyl LP.

[01:42:51] It's different.

[01:42:52] Uh, there is a, what appears to be a beautiful pressing that's coming of all of this World of

[01:43:00] Warcraft music.

[01:43:02] And I'm just kind of looking at some of the tentative art.

[01:43:05] Um, it's like Mondo is doing this, uh, just beautiful art, uh, that the, at least the test

[01:43:12] pressings or whatever it is that they're mocking up here, uh, looks just fucking phenomenal.

[01:43:18] So if you love this stuff and you have this, or you know, somebody that maybe this is a good

[01:43:23] gift for, uh, excellent, uh, opportunity to, to bring more of that music, uh, into your

[01:43:29] home on a regular basis.

[01:43:31] Cause you know, you can never have enough of it.

[01:43:34] So there you go.

[01:43:36] And it's 90 bucks.

[01:43:37] So it's not going to be cheap, but some days you just got to put on that wrath soundtrack

[01:43:42] and listen to invincible and have a good cry.

[01:43:44] Cause that's just how it's going.

[01:43:45] So, I mean, allegedly anyway.

[01:43:50] All right.

[01:43:51] I think we've done enough damage for one episode for those who don't already know where can

[01:43:56] the good people find you on the internet, Jez?

[01:43:59] Yeah.

[01:44:00] So you can find me on blue sky.

[01:44:02] Now I've ditched threads because they're suppressing links and I, yeah, but what's the

[01:44:08] point, what's the point of using thread threads.

[01:44:10] If like they suppress links is someone who likes to link thing.

[01:44:13] So blue sky does not suppress links.

[01:44:16] So I'm going to be, I'm going to be making blue sky my home and also that their engagement

[01:44:19] algorithms.

[01:44:20] Awesome.

[01:44:20] So, um, I've been on blue sky for like five minutes and I've already got better engagement

[01:44:24] than thread.

[01:44:25] So screw threads.

[01:44:26] I'm going on to blue sky now at jezcorden.com on blue sky.

[01:44:31] So you can find me there.

[01:44:33] And also, uh, all my links for all the places where you can find me are over on jezcorden.com

[01:44:39] now.

[01:44:40] Cause I've got a jezcorden.com URL.

[01:44:43] Oh yeah.

[01:44:44] And on shackle furies on there as well.

[01:44:46] So, yeah.

[01:44:47] Well, there it is a professional man over here.

[01:44:51] Uh, my thanks to all of you for listening and you can always follow me and this show

[01:44:57] we're still on Twitter, but it's going to be pretty limited from here on out.

[01:45:00] It's pretty much just going to be show stuff, uh, promotion, uh, cause I have to keep it

[01:45:03] and I mean, I don't have to keep it, but I'm choosing to keep it.

[01:45:06] But, uh, we're over there on Twitter at berserker rage and unshackled underscore fury and also

[01:45:11] on blue sky as well, which I've seen has been growing more.

[01:45:14] We'll probably start using that more regularly, uh, at berserker and unshackled fury.

[01:45:20] And we still are on Twitch somewhere at unshackled fury and real berserker.

[01:45:24] You can also join our discord links for which are in the profile of the show, uh, on Twitter

[01:45:28] and on our bonus roll page.

[01:45:30] Feel free to contact the show with your questions, comments, or otherwise through any of those

[01:45:34] resources or unshackled fury.com, our website.

[01:45:37] And you can find this show wherever you get your podcasts.

[01:45:41] So once again, thank you for listening.

[01:45:43] Remember to keep your swords wet and your banners high, and we'll see you next time.

[01:45:49] Farewell.

[01:45:49] Farewell.