Episode 162: Rules To Live By

[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. Uncensored Home for World of Warcraft news and opinions. This is Unshackled Fury.

[00:00:30] Spring breaks keep rolling on, and someone is playing a fool. We're ready once again to dive deep into the world of Warcraft.

[00:01:12] So welcome back for episode 162 of your Uncensored Home for World of Warcraft news and opinions, Unshackled Fury. I'm your host Berzerker, and with me once again is the man who puts bay into Baywatch, Mr. Jez Corden. Welcome back again, good sir. Do you do those on the fly, or do you like plan them beforehand? I mean, I've planned them minutes before, but...

[00:01:42] Creative, but not that creative. Yeah, I appreciate the intro. Well, I'm now back from vacation. You had your vacation, I have my vacation, and now if people don't know, Blizzard is like on vacation for two weeks. So... There's not gonna be a lot of stuff happening, I think, right now.

[00:02:07] So we're still in a little bit of a lull, but thanks for prepping the islands for me, Jez. They were very welcoming on the... I know it's a different island, but the... Very welcoming being out there once again, out in the Pacific, and the warm, gentle embrace of the weather there. It is... Phenomenal. I imagine it's probably a starker change for you, but... It's still a pretty nice... It's like a hug.

[00:02:37] It's like a nice warm hug when you get off the plane, you're just like, oh, this is nice. Dude... Humid. When... When we left Germany, in the morning, the car was frozen solid. We had to like, literally like, melt the car before we could leave to get to the airport. So... Wow. It was quite a stark difference, yes. I was like, it's just a little cold here. I didn't have to do that.

[00:03:06] Oh, man. Well, uh... Well, yeah, I was... I was... Only gone. I sound like such an asshole saying that, but... You know, only gone for a week, but it's nice to get away, and I did pick up a little bit of hardware. I... Repierced one ear and got the other one matching, so... Now I've got some... Now I've got some nice shopping I've gotta do, but... So, let's check it out. See that under my ear cuffs here? Yeah? I got some nice... Oh, wow. You know, got the black... I got the black studs. Cause, you know... Oh. Smell. Metal, bro.

[00:03:37] I go with rose gold. That's what my wife... She got her seconds on each ear. I'm like, I can't. Did you do that in a store, or did you do it at home? So, here's the thing. I don't know what they do in Europe, but here in the United States... I don't know if they're still around, but there used to be, or there still is, a jewelry chain, like a store. It's called Claire's. You ever heard of Claire's? It's a Simon in Europe. Okay. So they, you know, they have like the gun, and like they do the gun, like a little gun.

[00:04:07] You know, that's what they do like, you know, when like little girls go and get their ears pierced. It's predominantly intuitive. It's not everybody, but it's predominantly. All right. And then they use the gun, cause that's like the easiest way to do it. And you know, it's not the best, and it's kind of the antithesis of the whole piercing experience. But that's what was done for a long time. And so when I got my, my one ear pierced, this would have been 2000. Shit. This would have been 2000. Uh, that's what I had done. Me and my buddy went down. He got two, I got one, it went boom, boom.

[00:04:36] And they, you know, they did the thing and it felt so, you know, so manly in this Claire's getting pierced with a gun. Uh, but this time, this time went and got an actual, like a piercer. Uh, if this is a, any importance or information to anybody, uh, that matters, a Zen tattoo in Kihei on Maui. Uh, they have a piercer there. She's very nice.

[00:05:02] And, uh, she walked us through the whole, and we did the whole, it was the legit thing, man. It was the whole, you know, the needle and the thing, and we did the whole gimmick and yeah, it was, it was all legit. So I didn't do it myself. My girlfriend. Sorry, go on. No, I was gonna say, I didn't do it myself. I had it professionally done. Well, my girlfriend had her ears pierced at Claire's about 10 years ago. And, um, you know, she did all this stuff.

[00:05:29] She had the disinfectant and did it all properly, but still her ears got really badly infected. And she's got like, now she's got like scar tissue inside her ears. So now she, she can no longer have ear piercing. Oh, that's, that is what people talk about. Uh, I don't, I don't think I'll give Claire's a miss. I think I wouldn't do it. No, I wouldn't do it. I know the way we did it. I mean, that's the way I would recommend it.

[00:05:58] And again, I'm just changed. It's been a while. It's been 25 years since I had it done. And the, the rules and the, uh, recommendations and the procedures for aftercare are much different. And anyone that's had a tattoo certainly knows that aftercare is very, very critical and important to your recovery. Uh, so same thing here is she gave us a spray. That's, you know, cause the old days it was like you put like rubbing alcohol or whatever it was. You had to turn them right. You had to turn them every once in a while.

[00:06:27] So they wouldn't get stuck or, you know, some stuff like that. Um, but now you don't, you don't turn them. You don't do any of that stuff. I got the spray. I spray it on a couple of times a day, uh, morning and night or morning, noon night. If I feel like it, then so far, so good. Everything seems to be fine. I mean, I also heal like Wolverine. So as far as I'm concerned, it's probably already done, but, uh, don't go to Claire's. If you get anything out of this episode today, don't go to Claire's.

[00:06:56] So, uh, and some actual like regular agenda item here, uh, metal album of the week. Jez, we're going to go back. We're going to go way back. We're going to go back before you. We're going to go back even before me. We're going to go back to the hallowed days, the 1970s.

[00:07:21] All the way back to February 10th, 1978. When one of the most seminal albums of any kind ever came out. The self-titled Van Halen. Now, some of you might be going, Oh, that's not metal. This is like one of the cornerstone foundations of metal influence.

[00:07:47] And you can go through the whole, uh, the whole album. Every song is a certified banger. But you know, if you, if you haven't listened to it in a while, this is where eruption comes from. That really famous Edward Van Halen, King Edward, the true King Edward Van Halen. Uh, this is where like that, that very famous tapping ability, right? That he made famous and that just ripping solo. And then kicks into the cover of you really got me.

[00:08:17] Uh, this album running with the devil straight out of the chute. Uh, Jamie's crying atomic punk, uh, ice cream man, which just has David Lee Roth on full display. Um, it's dynamite. One of the best albums of all time. I'm going to upset you. Uh, hit it. I've never listened to Van Halen. Really? I don't think so. I don't think so.

[00:08:46] I probably heard, you know, cause some of their songs are, it's kind of like the Beatles, right? You think you haven't heard the Beatles, but then you definitely heard the Beatles cause the songs is just so famous and ubiquitous. So maybe I have heard a song in a movie or something like that, but I've never actually just sat down and listened to them, dude. Right. Cool. Well, uh, you, you get a couple different things out of it.

[00:09:10] Uh, the early Van Halen, like this is late seventies, early eighties, the David Lee Roth front man era, you know, big sound, big attitude. They were, they were all excess all the time. And then David Lee Roth leaves in the mid eighties, Sammy Hagar, who was famous in his own right, uh, with Montrose and solo acts. Like he came in as the new front man. And then the entire vibe of Van Halen changed. They became affectionately, at least in our house known as Van Hagar.

[00:09:41] And they had this like kind of softer. I love you. You're my girlfriend. Let's hang out. That kind of vibe. Like a lot of their songs. So that's, that's how I think of them. So I just, I think I just assumed that would be my cup of tea. I think that's the, that's the, the, the, the Sammy Hagar influence, I think is getting you on that one. If you go, if you go back, pull up, just pull up this album, Van Halen, just the very first one. Then there's Van Halen too.

[00:10:07] And you know, you can go on from there, but, uh, I mean, this is quintessential. It's, it's influenced everything that came after it. So I will educate myself. Highly recommend it. All right, folks. Uh, there you go. Metal album of the week, 1978's Van Halen. All right. I got, uh, I got a very important rage, uh, topic. We've got to get to, cause we've got to follow up on something. So let's get into it.

[00:10:45] Now, Jez, you, you and I, we do our best to bring what matters to the folks in every episode. We really try to nail down the vibe and the information that we think people need access to. And if we come across something, if there's something that we see or is given to us that crosses our purview, they're like, folks need to know about this.

[00:11:13] Even if it might come, uh, at a personal cost, we will do it. And so recently, if you look at the last thing before this episode that was loaded into ye old Unshackled Fury playlist, you may see. We had an exclusive leak about a video presentation. This is an audio leak that we got of a video presentation of a new profession coming in midnight related to the neighborhoods and the player housing.

[00:11:41] They're going to add a third slot spec for professions. They're going to call it realtors. If you wanted to take it up and you could help haggle for houses and set prices for commissions. And it was going to be a whole thing. And then turns out it was fake. Yes. Oh, no. Oh, damn. Bamboozled bro. Bamboozled. Who, who would do this to us?

[00:12:07] I mean, here we are trying to do a public service and people are taking advantage of us. I can't believe it. It happened. All right. I can't believe it. All right. Listen. Uh, yes, that was, that was not real. I, I completely made that. It was AI and, uh, it's scary now how advanced AI tools have become, because let me tell you, I just pulled up any random

[00:12:37] free one I could find. And they had, I don't know, 50 different sample voices and you could change the attitudes and the pitches and the tones. And you could do a lot. And so everything I made up, I made up and it did it. And it sounded like that. And I probably could have worked on it for another day or two and made it sound even better. Um, but the AI tools are definitely terrifying. Yeah. They're a bit freaky, man.

[00:13:04] It's going to be interesting to see what everything looks like in five or 10 years. That's well, as they continue to like scoop up voices. Cause on this one, they're like, Hey, would you want us to sample your voice? I'm like, fuck no. I'm sure somebody already has. Cause they just pulled through all podcasts on earth and just started sampling every voice there is. Uh, yeah, there's no escape, man. No escape. No, you, you, are you and I even here right now? Are we, are, are you, are you, are you and I even real humans talking or is this just AI?

[00:13:35] Have you, have you heard of, you know, simulation theory or panpsychism and stuff like that? Yeah. We all live in a simulation, bro. It's the matrix. It's, it's, it's kind of scary how many, you know, problematic physics equations seem to work themselves out. If you assume that all the dark matter in the universe is actually just part of the simulation, you know, it's a scary. It's going to be scary, bro. Maybe, maybe none of, none of this is real.

[00:14:05] Maybe we're just NPCs in an MMO called life being played by aliens and world of Warcraft is an in universe MMO from the MMO that we are existing as NPCs. Oh man, this is, this is, we're getting inception level deep here. This is freaking me out. Uh, this is a world of Warcraft podcast. I promise. But yeah, we're, we're, we're going deep. Going, going deep on the, uh, on the metaphysical here. You could take it to the next level.

[00:14:35] Maybe the, maybe the aliens that think we are their simulation, maybe they're living a simulation as well. Ooh. It's like, uh, it's like the end of Men in Black when our whole universe is just a marble in a bag. Yep. Man. Well, there you go. Uh, it turns out after all, we did not have a legitimate fake cause I made it before I went on vacation and I promised you we'd have something. And we did, but, uh, but the fun keeps rolling on.

[00:15:06] Why don't we go ahead and jump into our news? For those of you that have listened long enough, you know, April fools gag is somewhat of a tradition around here. Uh, and I'm not the only one blizzard still. Bless their hearts. They still maintain an April fools patch note.

[00:15:32] Uh, if you recall, Pandaren were once the subject of an April fools gag and they obviously became real. So you never quite know. There might be something buried in there that has a, has a hint of truth. But, uh, once again, blizzard put theirs out. I thought there was some pretty good ones in here. Uh, one of the ones I enjoyed was the new dungeon, the undermine DMV. Uh, this three minute long dungeon starts with a minimum 90 minute queue to get into.

[00:16:01] And there's no way to speed things up. All you needed to do was talk to one boss and they really could have done the whole encounter on their dungeon website. And as somebody who recently spent two hours at the California Department of Motor Vehicles, one of the most famous DMVs. Uh, yes, this is true. It was a, it was a two hour wait for a three minute solve. And, uh, that's how it goes. Do you, do you know what a DMV is?

[00:16:29] Jez, have you experienced an American DMV or do you have something similar? I do. Um, I don't, everything related, everything like that in the UK is online. Like when I, when I apply for my provisional, I did it on the internet and the turned up in the post the next couple of days. Right. Uh, I had a problem with something like I had to register my vehicle and the registration never got processed. And so now I had to go in there with my receipts and my stuff and go, okay, what happened?

[00:16:58] And they go, oh, well, it was this one thing. And then click, click. Yeah. I mean, I don't think we have anything equivalent. I mean, we could do, I don't drive, so I don't know, but like, I do know about the DMV from, it's just a huge meme, isn't it? Like there's a Simpsons thing about it. I actually got to experience the DMV for myself. Kind of.

[00:17:17] There's a quest in full out of 76 where you have to like, you have to, I can't remember what exactly what it's for, but you can't get access to something unless you like, you know, register a vehicle or whatever it was. So like the, it's, it's like a virtual DMV and it's like with robots running it and you have to like go back and forth between different computers over and over again and sign forms.

[00:17:40] It's, it's, it's, it's, it's supposed to be, I suppose, comedic or whatever, but I did, I was walking around in Undermine earlier and I did notice that there is a, there is a goblin DMV in one of the buildings, I think. Which is quite funny. Which is quite funny. It's not, it's not used for anything. It's just flavor, but it's a, there's all the buildings that have some purpose. I really love Undermine. Like it's so detailed. I am.

[00:18:07] I went in one of the sewer areas earlier and there's like a little fight club in there. Yeah. There's a vendor in there that lets you buy like fighting poses that you can only use in that sewer, which I thought was really interesting. Like a little book that gives you a 30 minute buff and it's like, assume the fighting pose of a mage, you know, only usable inside this area. And it's like, it's, it's cool, but it's also like, why?

[00:18:35] Cause we don't have brothers guild. That's why. Yeah, I guess. It's tantalizing. Why didn't they bring that back? It's, it's kind of wild. They haven't brought that back. Cause we delves and all that kind of, you know, the solo content portion kind of feels like the ideal time to do that. But Hey, I mean, we're going to get most likely getting Legion remix in the future. And we are getting Legion remix. That probably means Legion tower remix, a mage tower remix, which kind of like the brawlers guild, I guess, in so difficult, soloable content.

[00:19:06] So yeah, it's me interesting to see all that come. I guess brawlers guild just had its own flavor that I really loved. Yeah, I guess, but it'll come back. It'll come back. All right. Well, along the lines of, uh, other jokes, we have the new raid, which was the deeper cave below the bottom. So after years of going down into Azeroth, uh, we're going to go below that. What's below the deepest depth. Only our friends, the digger miners. No, for sure. So we are accompanying them.

[00:19:35] They go straight down to, uh, capital the bottom and then go down from there. Uh, let's see, what else do we have? We have the new, new dungeon is an old dungeon. New system swim, uh, helps you swim. Uh, new system war couples. I thought this was a good one. Uh, pick two characters and assign them a lifelong commitment on the character selection screen.

[00:19:59] Uh, with war couples, unlike war bands, war couples do not share much of anything, even though they've been together for a long time. I like that one. Uh, I had some stuff for housing. Uh, there's a hard mode by housing, hard mode, acquire your house. While also consuming one avocado toast per day and up to five lattes per week.

[00:20:24] Uh, if you don't recall, that was a, that's a reference to somebody saying somewhere that millennials could afford a house. If they just stopped eating avocado toast and drinking five lattes every day or something. Yeah. Um, the best ones might've been about the cinematics. And I love that they're self aware about this. Added an option to view all Zalatath cinematics at italicized two foot level.

[00:20:53] Remove the option to zoom out during Zalatath cinematics. Fixed a bug with the Zalatath character model where her shoes were unintentionally visible. The artist who implemented the shoes has been transferred to a different department. That's all Zalatath cinematics are now rated M for maybe not. I did like that. Those are kind of funny. Uh, and then of course the classes, we always have to have something for the classes. Uh, let's see.

[00:21:23] What did, what did you, I actually didn't look at the warlock one. What did, what did you get here? Uh, Oh, it was a nice guy spec. Yes. Look at that. New talent. Good friend. Yeah. New talent. Chill bro. New talent. Cool dude. And new talent. Great bud. Oh, That's so warm and fuzzy. They should put that in there. No, I think every, every warlock would love. I mean, we got shout master warriors. That's what we got.

[00:21:52] Uh, new warrior talents at shout master, a call of dinner time. Shriek of the swifty squawk that didn't come out. Right. And hello bellow. And now we, although I do like this last one warriors now yell continuously while charging volume increases based on distance travel. That's great. They should do that. That should be a glyph. Like give me my head, but glyph, and then do this, do this clip. That would be fantastic.

[00:22:18] And I know you listened to the show religiously make it happen. Uh, outside of that, we had holidays, uh, some other items and bug fixes, but I, you know, obviously cause I do it here. I enjoy the April fools gags. I kind of get the sense that they've maybe run their course. Nobody seems to really give a shit anymore. And I almost didn't hear or see anything about the blizzard one.

[00:22:47] Uh, maybe this is a, an age thing where I remember in the, in the old days of the early internet, like this used to be fun and people would have fun. And you know, some people actually would get tricked. I have done a couple of things on this show that did fool people. I just want to point this out for clarity sake, but, um, yeah, I feel like it might've run this course. Am I, am I, am I dialing in right on this jazz as the April fools gag, uh, across the interwebs kind of, kind of died a slow death. I think so.

[00:23:16] I think it was fun when like, I think when blizzard started doing it, there weren't many gaming companies that really bothered to do it at least not at the level that blizzard did, but now like everyone does it. So it's sort of like, I think, yeah, the novel is worn off to some degree, I think. And now everyone does one. And it's also now that there's so much of it, it's, it's kind of almost irritating. Like we, at least in my company, we sort of like, okay, it's April fools day.

[00:23:42] Keep an eye out for bullshit, you know, um, don't get tricked and all this kind of stuff. Um, so I dunno, I've kind of been over it for a few years myself. And I kind of think I've, I, but I also sit there and think you just being cynical and grumpy and let people have fun.

[00:24:01] You know, I tried to say that to myself, but I think, um, I think the, the general mood, I think, in society is a little bit skewing negative right now. Oh yeah. For a variety of reasons. So I think it's kind of like, it's kind of like the vibes are off. That's what the kids say, right? Yeah. The vibes are off, bro. No cap. No cap, bro. No caps. No cap.

[00:24:31] Zero hats. There's nothing like busting out the, the Gen Z, Gen Alpha terms to my child who then just face palms. And it's like, dad, that's our people's language. You can't say that. I was like, I always want to have a child just for that. You know, it makes a lot of the bullshit worth it. I'm not, I, you know, I'm not going to lie.

[00:24:52] Uh, when you, when you bust out a bunch of these terms and you know, you, you, you say the word gooning around your child and your child knows that you know what that means. And they're like, no, they're like, yeah, I know, bro. I know it all. So thank you social media, uh, for making that happen. Uh, beyond all of this, what wasn't, uh, a prank or a April fool's gag in any way was, uh, a while back.

[00:25:18] Now we're, we're a little late on this just because of vacations and timing and whatnot, but, uh, Blizzard put out a pretty detailed post about how, how they're going about designing and implementing, not just the player housing, but the interior design of the player housing and the options that they are trying to give us, uh, as we go through building this.

[00:25:49] And I gotta say, people know, listen for a long time, you know, on this show and other shows I have mentioned, I don't understand player housing. You don't get it. I think it's unnecessary. You can spend that time developing other stuff. I gotta admit, this looks pretty cool. Um, I, you know, I've only seen how world of Warcraft has been done the way it's been done.

[00:26:18] I can't really compare it, you know, things that exist in other games. I don't know about them cause I don't really play these other games. So people talk about player housing. I'm like, I know I remember the Sims. That's what I remember. Right. But I've never seen anything like that really in world of Warcraft. So getting this blog post where they pretty, I mean, you know, there were short videos, 10, 15 seconds a piece.

[00:26:41] I think that they posted, but they showed not just like a table, but how you could orient a table where you could put a table, how you could move it around, how you could have all these different options for its colors or, or textures or all of this stuff. Like I was pretty blown away, quite frankly, at how advanced all of this was.

[00:27:05] And so some of the examples that they gave, I had to say, I think I've turned around on this one, Jess. Oh yeah. I am. I am so stoked about this cause I am the kind of person who's just, who will spend the ages curating this stuff. Like the other day, like I really love transmog and all that kind of stuff. Um, I'm grinding. I hate grinding. I really do.

[00:27:29] But I'm, I'm finding myself unable to resist grinding that bloody matrix cape that you get from dark fuse rep in undermine, which, and the way you get it is grind. I think it's something like 8,600 market research, which drop from mobs. And it's like, you have to like basically get in a group on the group finder and just stand there, you know, tagging mobs for hours.

[00:27:56] I, I didn't, I didn't an hour of it the other day. And I think I've got 600 market research after about an hour. So it is like, it's a beefy grind. It's like 20 hours of grinding. If you want that matrix cape, that matrix, um, chess piece, you know, the trench coat. So I am the kind of person who will absolutely relish this feature.

[00:28:20] Um, I'm, you know, intrigued about how it affects the game as opposed to some degree. And, you know, cause even now I go to, I'm on one of Europe's most populated servers, but Ogrimmar is just completely empty. Everyone's either in Dawn of Gal and the server is so skewed towards Alliance. There's like no horde people replaying. So Ogrimmar is basically dead. It's like empty, you know?

[00:28:49] And, and some stuff like player housing is gonna, I suppose, further impact that if everyone's just hanging out in their neighborhoods and stuff. Um, but at the same time, it's kind of like, well, you know, it's already dead. So, you know, you can't doubly kill what's, what was already dead. It's double dead.

[00:29:10] But I do wonder, like, maybe this sort of hints that in Midnight, the main city of that expansion is probably just gonna be Stormwind and Ogrimmar again. Mm-hmm. You know, since it's gonna take place in Silvermoon and Coelthalas and the surrounding, you know, Northern Eastern Kingdoms. Right. I wanna presume that that means they're gonna rebuild the Undercity, hopefully. Yeah.

[00:29:36] I wanna presume that they're gonna rebuild Silvermoon. Or maybe Silvermoon gets destroyed or something like Dalaran or something becomes a raid. I don't know. Mm. Um, maybe Undercity becomes a raid and then Ogrimmar just becomes the de facto, only place where the Horde is left. Maybe Ironforge becomes a raid. Yeah. I don't know, because presumably speaking, like over the course of that Midnight expansion, they'll probably expand rather than add new zones in other places.

[00:30:06] They'll probably just expand the reworked zones further south in my head. So it's kind of gonna, it's probably gonna be like, you know, we get everything up to the Thandall span. Mm-hmm. And this is just my imagination. We get everything up to the Thandall span, wetlands and all that, as the main leveling area, maybe. Maybe Horde, maybe a line start in, maybe a line start in wetlands and the Horde start in, uh, uh,

[00:30:36] Terrace Fall Glades or something like that. Yeah. And then maybe over the course of the expansion, they add more zones. So, you know, you could have a mid-patch cycle update that adds, I don't know, Dawn Mora with Ironforge as a raid, Searing Gorge and Blackrock maybe? And expand all the way down there. Maybe Blackrock becomes a raid tier again. Maybe someone's taken over Blackrock Mountain and they've reworked the Blackwing Lair. Yeah, I don't know. I'd be down for that.

[00:31:06] And there's quite a lot they could do, like if they're actually gonna remake a lot of these areas. Mm-hmm. Um, but, kind of with that in mind, I suppose those cities will become populated again, like Stormwind. Well, Stormwind's already populated on my server. It's overpopulated with half-naked Draenei, apparently. Ah. Um, but, um, I play on an RP server, you know. Oh, well there you go. It's just for reference. So, um... Who's the RP freaks? Yeah. So, I don't know.

[00:31:36] Maybe it won't be so bad. Maybe this is just the way it is going forward. Um, because I suppose if the expansion after this is Northrend, and then... But Dalaran's been blown up, and Dalaran was the main city in Northrend in Wrath. So, is Orgrimmar just gonna be the main city again, with the teleporter? I mean, I could see it. That's a good question. I could see it.

[00:32:02] Yeah, I'm sure with everything being, you know, it's a data-driven existence now, so I'm sure they know how many people hang out, and what locations, or what's popular, or what's not, or this and that. But, you know, we talked about, because you can't escape completely the comparisons between the garrison and the player housing. And with garrisons, right, everybody was just wanting to stay in their garrison, so you never saw anybody, and that's what it was. But, you know, with player housing, they've said, well, you don't want to do services.

[00:32:31] Like, no barber shops, no mailboxes, no certain things. Or I don't know, maybe they'll do mailboxes, but you gotta, like, leave the house to go get it or something. Like, they're gonna try to find a healthy balance between why you would stay there and why you would leave.

[00:32:46] But I'm looking at what they've posted already, and I know, because I'll get sucked into this, if I've got, you know, 500 things I got in a house that I've got a place or I've got all these options, I'm gonna be in there forever.

[00:33:05] Like, it's gonna take me three days just to figure out what I want my table to look like, where I want to put my dining table, what kind of chairs I want, do we have any kind of cushions to put on them? Is there a runner that needs to go on the table? Is there a centerpiece that can go on the table? Do I need to put out any place settings before I have that table? You know, am I looking at six, eight place settings? Do I only do it on the side? Do I do it on the side that's on the end? Do I do it just like on the ends? Is there like a candle, aubra situation somewhere?

[00:33:34] Like, that's one fucking table. It's gonna take me forever just for that one thing. And then there's gonna be a bed and a bookcase and a this and a that. And they, you know, one of the things they posted was like a mocked up floor plan. And I'm looking at this going, I will probably end up grinding some odd random thing because much like the big Lebowski, there's gonna be that one rug that ties the room together and I'm gonna have to have it.

[00:34:03] And you know, that's just what we're gonna do. And so I'm looking at this whole huge thing that they have. And mind you that they did mention that the interior of the house will not match the exterior. And I'm not quite sure what that means other than it'll probably look smaller than it. You know, it is once you go inside of it and it's got all these rooms, it's got all this customization that you can do. But I'm looking at just what they have here in this pretty decent sized layout.

[00:34:32] There's one, two, three, four, five, looks like five rooms. And then I don't know, is that a bathroom in the corner? Maybe I'm not quite sure but because there has to be an outhouse or something somewhere. You know, you know, there has to be. Uh, this is a ton of stuff and they've been pretty explicit about, you know, it's not even just the items themselves.

[00:34:56] It's things like the flooring and the wallpaper and like what's on this. I think on the ceiling, like it's, it's over. Like it's kind of overwhelming. I didn't think it was going to be like this. I'll be honest. I did not think it was going to be like this. And now I understand finally, I guess why this is such a big deal. And you'll have to be the judge of this jazz. But this seems to me if they keep going down the road,

[00:35:25] what they're going on based on this blog post, if they keep going down the road, this seems to me like this should satisfy what people want this to be in terms of its depth and complexity. But am I wrong about that? No, I think like one of the, one of the big issues with a game like wow, or you know, any online game, I mentioned for light 76 earlier. And, um, for that 76, obviously being like a sort of soft MMO kind of, you know, set in the fallout universe, which I play on and off sometimes.

[00:35:53] It's nowhere, I can't help in my head, but can keep comparing it to wow. You know, in terms of like the features and the balance and the itemization and that kind of stuff. And I just, I just keep sitting there thinking, oh, wow, does this better? Wow does that better? You know, but the one thing that obviously fallout 76 does very, very well is the housing system. Cause they just bought it over from fallout four. You can make your own little apocalypse shelter. And there's like thousands of items you can put in there now after seven years.

[00:36:21] So, you know, they're kind of the, they've got a blueprint about, they've got a blueprint from other games about what the expectation is and what the minimum level of quality is. And one thing that I do think Blizzard tries to do every time they make a game, no matter what game it is, they try to make it the best, you know, best in class, you know, and you know, Starcraft was best in class. World of Warcraft was best in class.

[00:36:46] Overwatch was best in class, you know, Diablo four, you know, debatably best in class, I suppose, depending on who you ask. But, um, it's a, that's sort of Blizzard's philosophy about some of this stuff. And more than ever, you know, since Kotick's gone, they just, they, their thought processes. Like if we can't at least be on par with the best out there, we shouldn't even bother trying. Right. Yeah. And you can see that reflected in the fact they cancelled Odyssey, you know.

[00:37:16] So, Project Odyssey was cancelled a couple of years ago, supposed to be a survival kind of game. I suppose similar in vain to Fallout 76. First person shooter, but fairy tale in nature, you know, you play like archers and things like that and fantasy, fantasy stuff. It was like a fairy tale kind of game. Um, they decided this isn't shaping up to be best in class. So, instead of ship a subpar product, they cancelled their thing.

[00:37:43] And obviously Blizzard has shipped subpar products in the past. You know, Warcraft 3, Reforged, nonewithstanding. Yeah. Um, that was like stark outlier, I think. Um, so, it does seem like with player housing, they've just been like, look, if we're going to do this, we've got to make it, you know, top tier. It's got to be on par with or better than Fallout 76, Final Fantasy 14 and other games that have these kind of systems. And it certainly looks to me like they're approaching that, I think.

[00:38:12] Um, the one thing that makes me nervous about it is they're going to sort of, they're going to backdate. They're going to use your sort of feats of strength to backdate some of the features in this stuff. So, you know, if you killed Onyxia back in the day, for example, you should have an Onyxia trophy when the system goes live that you can stick up on the wall. And I'm sitting there thinking like, cause I've been playing this character for 20 years now at this point. Yeah.

[00:38:39] What? How much stuff am I going to have to fit into this space? You know, how many, how many body parts of dragons that I've killed I'm going to be putting into this building? I've got a, I've got a, uh, you know, a scale that I ripped off of, uh, Homeboy's back in Cataclysm somewhere. Gotta have a piece of Deathwing like propped up against the wall. Yeah. Or like a piece of his jaw or something. I don't know. It's, it's, it's kind of, it's really exciting the way they're going to do this.

[00:39:08] I mean, even Fallout 76, like you, some of the raid bosses you can kill in that game, they do drop, you know, blueprints and plans that you can turn into trophies that you can stick up on the wall in your house. You know, it's, that's one of the cool things about the game, like building your house and shit. So, uh, but yeah, Fallout 76 doesn't do a lot of the other stuff, particularly with the game. Pretty well, they only just added fishing to Fallout 76. That was like announced yesterday. I saw you got very excited about that.

[00:39:37] Yeah. I love fishing in games. Oh, actually, Fallout, World of Warcraft's fishing isn't the best. That's something that could improve on fire. Hmm. So maybe, maybe that's coming after housing. I don't know. A new fishing system, but yeah, I'm pretty excited about it, man. Yeah. You'll need to have more fishing trophies up on the wall. True that. Yeah. You'll have to, you'll have to go fishing, but yeah, it's best in class. That's probably the, that, that, that's a great way to put it.

[00:40:05] Um, this certainly seems to be how they're attacking it. And yeah, that's one of the questions I've had predominantly since they first showed the original teaser for this is going back over, let's see, an 18 year player career myself for Warcraft at this point. Berserker's got a lot of gear. Like, been through a lot, seen a lot, done a lot, killed a lot.

[00:40:34] What of that is coming with me? Um, but also what else is to come? Because clearly there's going to be, I think blueprints you mentioned, it's probably the best way, uh, to think about things right now is there's going to be other things that drop. There's going to be other things you want. There's going to be, I'm sure stuff that comes in a collector's edition and stuff that comes in the shop, you know, special for the season. There's going to be stuff in the trading post. I mean, there's going to be things everywhere. That'd be profession stuff too. Probably. Profession stuff.

[00:41:04] Blacksmiths can make a special decorative sword or something. I don't know. I just, you know, I just want a place to, I want a weapons rack. That's it. That's all I need. You know, just one, one, just stump in the middle to sit on and like a one log fire in a corner and a weapons rack. That's it. I can sleep on the floor or anything else. That's it. None of this other stuff is not online.

[00:41:32] I'm going to be in this place for months and weeks and years. And you may not, I may never do anything else again. This may be all I do. Like, this is crazy. This is so much work. But anyway, it was great to see all of this development and finally get a better sense of the scope and scale of what they've actually been working on.

[00:41:54] And I gotta say, I think the worm has turned for me and possibly the best way. So, uh, you haven't seen it. Blog is out there. It's been out there for about a month now. So feel free to go check it out about the, uh, interior design, uh, philosophy they have for player housing coming in midnight, switching gears completely.

[00:42:20] Does I, uh, fired up battle net Thursday night, got back from vacation, had a head hadn't had a chance to play yet. So, uh, being the homie, Rommel have a, have a standing date Thursday nights, fired it up. And what do I see splashed across the front page right there? Full advertisement, uh, for me to see on battle net is an ad and a prompt for me to buy doom.

[00:42:47] The dark ages, which last I checked is not a blizzard game. It certainly isn't. It's one I'm very interested in. And, uh, and I know you've got a lot more to share, uh, here in a minute about it, but, uh, I have to say, I am not used to seeing these non blizzard titles yet. Topping up on battle net. It's still a little like, Oh, did I click, did I click steam? Did I click the wrong thing? Like, what did I just open here? But this is, this is the way now, isn't it?

[00:43:17] This is, this is the Microsoft ecosphere, right? Yeah. Like I've spoken to people at Microsoft about this and like what they're doing and their, their reaction is pretty much like it's an experiment. You know, we want to see if, um, a blizzard fans are, would be interested in some of this stuff. Blizzard, there are battle net users who pretty much only use battle net.

[00:43:43] So the thought process is like maybe, and, and to the tune of tens of millions, right? We think, we think of steam as being the dominant platform on PC and it is overall, but that they only represent 50% of the footfall on PC. You've got a lot of footfall in dedicated launches, like the right client, for example, or how you have this home or whatever it's called for things like Genshin impact.

[00:44:07] And then you've got PC game pass coming up to, and, and then you've got battle net, which has, you know, tens of millions of users. I don't know if the figures are public or not. So maybe I shouldn't share those, but, um, I was really surprised about how many people are actually in that, you know, actively using that ecosystem, you know, across games like overwatch, uh, world of Warcraft, so on and so forth.

[00:44:33] And, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the small, but sustainable player bases on Starcraft and here's the storm as well. And then obviously Diablo when the seasons open flow there too. So, um, I suppose that thought process is like, can we weave some of these single player experiences into the mix too? And I think they've been generally speaking quite cautious about what they specifically put in there. They put a Vowd in there, which is obviously a Microsoft title.

[00:45:01] They're putting Doom in there, which is also a Microsoft title now since Microsoft purchased Enemax. I've heard rumors that one of Microsoft's more, uh, more popular, um, service games is also potentially coming to battle net in the near future as well. Um, one that actually, I think quite fits the battle net style. So that should be interesting to see if that comes true.

[00:45:30] And then there's also like, um, you know, other stuff probably coming down the pipeline as well. Uh, Tony Oaks pro skater three and four, I think he's, he's listening on battle net, which is launching in the summer. So, um, yeah, Activision kind of started this, right? They put Call of Duty in there. They put Crash Bandicoot in there. Yeah. That was weird when that happened. Yeah, it was. And I suppose the, the good thing is that on battle net, at least you can sort of, you know, hide those icons.

[00:45:58] If you don't want to see them, you click on the icon and then right clicking and select remove from favorites. But I do wonder like, cause this, when you click on the plus symbol to get the list up, it's becoming a long list, man. I kind of feel like they're, they're going to have to start like exploring other ways of managing this stuff. If you click on the game section, it is starting to look a little bit steam like with the big, you know, icons for the different games and it is a bit bloated.

[00:46:27] But all that stuff, you know, that click all games and then we've got Doom there, Call of Duty, which I don't replay. Diablo Immortal, which I completely forgot was on PC actually. So did I. Warcraft Rumble, beta is on PC too. So I, yeah, that's on the way. And you've got older games like Warcraft Remastered. I need to go and play those, man. The classic Warcraft games. Yeah. I highly recommend it. So I think like over the next year, that's going to, you know, you're going to see even more of that, I think.

[00:46:57] Like, and I sit here thinking like, well, what about the Xbox app on Windows? You know, you've, you've got that too. Like, are you competing with that with yourself? Like what's the plan? That's a good question. Because I will say this. I think Battle.net is a much better app than the Xbox app. I've never used the Xbox app. So I'll say, I'll take your word for it. Go and try it. It's, um, okay. It's just slow. You're really selling it.

[00:47:27] Not pretty and stuff. I don't know. It's gone bad, but it's still not as good as Battle.net. But maybe it's not as good as Battle.net. Cause Battle.net only has a few games in it, but that looks like it's going to change. Yeah. Well, I mean that I remember when we started seeing that merge with Call of Duty and I'm like, man, this, this just fucking feels weird. And yeah, over time, right. You were able to hide things. And so all I ever see is just, you know, my Warcraft and Starcraft and Diablo and Overwatch,

[00:47:56] you know, all our normal stuff, Blizzard side. But, uh, yeah, seeing Doom, you know, was a little jarring. Part of it is because I love this franchise so fucking much and part, you know, and it's, it's something that's been around the majority of my life having come out, you know, a million years ago when it's original iteration. But then the revival that happened in 2016 with this latest sort of run for it, it's just such a phenomenal franchise right now.

[00:48:23] And it's so self-aware, like it knows what it is and it doesn't shy away from it. And it just gets more metal and more gory and more fucked up as you go. And it's just, but it's so much fun just ripping and tearing and doing all this stuff you do in the soundtracks were always just the most metal of all. Um, and so personally seeing that come across, I'm like, am I being targeted for this?

[00:48:49] Like, do they just know that I need to see this because they absolutely know I'm going to buy this or is this just happenstance? I think it was probably just happenstance, but, um, very, are you going to buy it for a bottleneck then? Uh, it might, I might, I don't know. I, I look at the price and I'm like, ah, 70 bucks for a standard game. I mean, I get it, but then I see like premium edition and I'm such a whore for all these things.

[00:49:18] And so I'm like, I don't know, am I really going to drop a hundred bucks on this? And the, you know, so it's more about like the, the equivocation that's happening in my mind right now, uh, especially coming after vacation when I don't want to spend one more dime right now than I possibly have to considering how much I left back on Maui. Uh, but yeah, it's, it's possible. It's possible, but I, I will be getting it at some point because, uh, not only was I excited

[00:49:44] just by all the, you know, preview stuff that they did in the cinematic and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I recently read an article. Um, Oh, it was by you, Jez where you got, yeah, it was by you. You got to get hands on experience with the damn thing. And, uh, now I'm even more pumped up, uh, based on your experience, but sounded super fucking awesome. So, uh, I know that this is a Warcraft show, but listen, this doom shit got fed to me on a battle net launcher.

[00:50:14] So it is tied in somehow. Uh, how was that buddy? Well, you did say it's not a Warcraft show, so I will keep it succinct, but it was fucking awesome, man. So doom dark ages is, it's like a prequel, right? It's set on, if you, if you familiar with the, the lore of the reboot, it's an Argent

[00:50:37] denur, which is a sort of, it's an extra dimensional planet where medieval ish, but also simultaneously advanced humans kind of live. Yeah. And there's, there's a sort of implication that the Argent denur colonized earth at some point. And that's why there's humans there. It's a bit, it's a bit vague, I think in the lore right now, but that's kind of like the hint, right?

[00:51:02] Um, and they're sort of like, they've, they've been vassalized or colonized by a super interdimensional alien race called the makers. I think they're called all the maker or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And they've kind of like, they've sort of enslaved or indentured the doom slayer, the doom guy. Right. Right. And the, the forces of hell, they ain't happy about this.

[00:51:28] Um, they, they don't like the humans being partnered up with these aliens. So they're trying to split them up. They're trying to spread their culty kind of ways. They use in the spies, cults, all kinds of things, very burning legion esque with their strategies, you know, send sleeper agency and try and manipulate the locals and then invade, right? When everyone's in some sort of political chaos. And that's kind of like where doom sets off. There's like a big, there's a big war going on.

[00:51:57] And I think the, the theme of this is kind of like, whereas like in doom eternal and doom, doom 2016, you're kind of like a one man army. Right. And this one, I got rid of a halo feel from it, man, because you're not alone. Technically speaking, you are sort of like, you're being wielded as a weapon by the humans and Argent Denur, the sentinels.

[00:52:25] And so like while you are ripping and tearing, there's also this huge war going on in the background, you know, with sci-fi ships and all that kind of stuff. And it really did give me a halo vibe. Um, but the death metal edition, you know? So, uh, there was all that stuff popping off, but the real headline act here is the new boots on the ground gameplay, which is the saw shield, right? Which is your new sort of, yeah, it's crazy. Yeah.

[00:52:54] It's a shield with a saw embedded in the edge and you can turn it on like a chainsaw. So you can use it as a shield to parry incoming projectiles. And when you do that parry, it sort of staggers the enemy. If you time it well, the, the parry window is very generous. So you're not going to have a hard time parrying any projectiles. I don't think, but there is a cool down. So you have to sort of be careful not to, you know, waste it.

[00:53:20] I suppose you could say, um, and when you parry this stuff, you, uh, you can do like, you can start doing your executions, ripping and tearing and all that kind of good stuff. And, uh, it was very, very good. It felt like heavier, you know, doing guys more of a night in this one. He's not doing, there's no monkey bars and no acrobatics. There's no, not as much platform raw platforming. It's a lot more like we want to sort of return to that sort of strafing slow,

[00:53:50] not slow, but heavy, heavier kind of gameplay. And you can feel that with these walking, like when he's walking the ground, thundering under his weight of his armor and stuff like that. So, and then you get, uh, a mace on a ball and chain, which is super fun. It replaces the melee attack, the punch. Um, once you unlock it, I think you unlock it partway through the game. And then you just mash demons heads in with this huge mace. It's, it's really fun.

[00:54:19] Um, but there was something that I didn't like the dragon gameplay. So if you've seen, yeah, the flying, if you've seen like the trailers, you'll know that there are, there is like, because it's sort of like a, a wider, more open world kind of, at least some of the levels are wider. Um, they wanted to do, they wanted to do like offer multiple perspectives.

[00:54:46] So instead of just being interior linear, I wanted to do some levels that were more open and you fly around them and you get a bigger sense of scale, right? Which I think is fine. And, and could, you know, could break, break up the, break up the game a little bit, you know, here and there. But the problem is I really hated the dragon game. Like the guns on the dragon felt bad compared to the doom, you know, doom slay's regular weapons. The guns didn't feel good. And the flying felt a bit stiff.

[00:55:14] And also you can only do like the power attack when you've parried a projectile, but the enemies don't use their projectiles sometimes. So I found myself just sitting there waiting sometimes for a projectile to come towards me. Oh, and, and that it felt like a traffic light, you know, you know, red light, green light kind of thing, especially because the projectiles were often red or green. Yeah. You know, so I was like, oh man, this, they've overthought the dragon a little bit.

[00:55:44] I think, um, I don't think it adds much to the game and hopefully they'll make you feel a little bit punchier, but it was a minor gripe. And I don't think it's going to be a huge part of the game. It just kind of use it to fly from point A to point B and then do a bit more doom slaying. Right. I actually was sitting there thinking, man, where I was flying feels better than this. Yeah. Dragon riding has ruined you. Yeah. Kind of dragon riding. I compare all games to wow. It's like, it's like a meme on my other podcasts.

[00:56:13] Like everyone's like, oh God, stop talking about wow. Wow. But genuinely, genuinely, I think wow is flying actually felt better. Um, but it's, yeah, but it's also like, dude, this is like a 20 year old engine. They've, they've, they've bolted flying onto this engine. And this modern game has sort of not delivered that. It's like what we were talking about with housing, right? Blizzard wanted that to be best in class. So it didn't just feel like tacked on.

[00:56:40] And I think the issue with the dragon riding this is that it does come off as feeling a bit tacked on, but there's still time for them to tweak it. Maybe it had some sound effects and just, you know, visual effects in general. Cause that was one of my issues with it. Like the guns on it didn't look good. So, but overall it was fantastic, you know? And, um, I can't wait to play the full thing. I actually started playing doing 2016 again as a replay for that.

[00:57:09] It's just, it's so smooth. Yeah. So good. So good. It's that, it's that groove in the brain, but, uh, yeah. So if you, if you want to hear more about Jez's, uh, firsthand encounter with, uh, the dark ages, uh, it does have an article up currently on, uh, window central.com. And, uh, yeah, it's the aesthetic is so great. You know, the, the, the visuals. So, oh my God, it's, it's, he alone has always been. And cool.

[00:57:37] And the, the way that they did it in the 2016 reboot version was just a massive sort of upscale of the classic thing that we knew, but this aesthetic, man, I never thought that just taking the doom guy and throwing like, I don't know, like, like a fur on his back and giving him a shield was going to give me like the, you know, half chub that I've got. But I mean, it's, it's so good. Like, it's like, I didn't think they could make this any cooler and they did. So how dare you throw this up on my battle net launcher?

[00:58:07] Cause you, you know, I'm going to break down cause I just have no willpower. But, uh, but yeah, very cool. Uh, you know, I'm glad you got to see it. And, uh, yeah, curious me too, folks give a shit or not, whether that comes across their purview, a couple of other sort of business related things I wanted to touch on is one. I thought it was interesting that they were getting rid of a guild name change service. They're getting rid of that from the shop.

[00:58:37] You can still do it in game for 200,000 gold, but they're getting rid of that in shop. Uh, Jez, is this sort of a move to, are we just putting everything in game because there's no difference between real money and gold anymore? I think that might be part of it, but I also just think most people probably just don't use the service and they're like, this is how this is a waste of a. Yeah. Like I never, people don't change their guild names.

[00:59:06] Generally speaking. The only times I can think of when a guilds change their name is when they've been forced to because they had something inappropriate. Right. So I think it's probably just a case of we're wasting, you know, SQL server entries with this. So let's get rid of it. Maybe. I don't know. Maybe it's being abused for some reason. I don't know. I, I, I just think it's just a case of nobody's using it. Let's get rid of it rather than have it there sitting there doing nothing.

[00:59:34] That's, that's my take on it, but yeah, maybe someone's hacking it or something. Maybe it's being used to DDoS the servers. Cause I don't know if you, uh, I don't know if you saw this, but they, people were DDoS saying the, um, the fine folks at only fangs, the, uh, hardcore guild trying to get them all killed and make them lose their characters. That was a big drama. I don't know if we talked about much, but we haven't talked about it, uh, since it happened,

[01:00:04] but I did see that. That was, I mean, it's not my bag, but that's pretty fucked up. It was fucked up. Yeah. Did they roll that back or no? They did. They rolled it back on that occasion, but they said that they're going to avoid making this a habit basically. Cause obviously like the whole point of hardcore is that it's, it's hardcore, you know? And yeah, you sort of like, if you lag out and you just have to accept that that's life, you know? But it, it does rise a good point.

[01:00:34] And it's when it's like an outside malicious force, like these trolls or whatever, which I have no idea why, who, why do that? It's like so strange to me. Like I don't have anything better to do. Yeah. I was trying to figure out like, is only fangs controversial in some way? Like that is this sort of like revenge or something, but it doesn't seem so. It just seems like some assholes being assholes for the sake of being ass. They were popular for some reason. And then. Yeah.

[01:01:02] And that post all the clips of hardcore. Don't they? I saw a clip of, um, I saw a clip of a lass. Oh man. How did she die now? I can't remember. She died in a kind of a stupid way, like fell in a lava or something like that. And she was really upset because it was like just before black wing layer dropped and she was going to run black wing layer or something like that. And I was like, oh man, that, that must be so painful. Like, and deal with that kind of stress. No much. Yeah. I'm sitting there thinking this is why I don't play hardcore.

[01:01:33] Yes. It's funny. My son has the classic hardcore shirt that I got him because the design was super cool. And I can't remember if I ordered it or I got it at Blizzcon for him, but like he, he trumps around the house all the time with that thing on. And I, and every time I see it, I think to myself, I could never do it. I can never do it. I get, I'd get three levels in and be like, this is my, my anxiety would be through the roof the entire time. Like I would just constantly be running away from things.

[01:02:01] And like, I wouldn't really be playing the game. I would just be in fear the entire time that all my time was wasted and my character was going to die. I did, I did Diablo hardcore very, very briefly. I did it. I did it on stream with, with, uh, with a friend. And cause in my head, it's like, Oh, Diablo is easy. You know, I, I can't see myself dying in Diablo. Hardcore. Yeah. And then lo and behold, they got you.

[01:02:30] Couple of, couple of fuck ups on one of the bosses and then slapped with AOE and then GG. That's what they do. Lost the character. These fuckers. Oh Lord. Well, there's your lesson. There's your other lesson. Don't go to Claire's and don't do hardcore. That's just, you know, don't do any of these things. Uh, what you can do though, is, uh, if you do go over to the blizzard shop, which sometimes I do recommend, uh, right now they do have some gear, uh, with, uh, iconic images that

[01:02:59] were drawn by show favorite and personal. Uh, you know, if he's not my personal Lord and savior, like medicine is, he might be, I don't know. Uh, Samwise did he, uh, some pieces of his art. It's one of his original illidan drawings. Uh, one of his original orc drawings, uh, a Torrin, uh, they have like a sweatshirt and there's some art, uh, an art version that you can get.

[01:03:25] There's a decal, uh, pack that you could get, uh, some pretty cool stuff. And, uh, you know, as we've talked about Samwise did he a probably more than anyone, even more than Metzen perhaps is responsible for the iconic art style of world of Warcraft. And he retired or left or however you want to word it, uh, some time ago, uh, from blizzard. But, uh, I thought this was kind of a nice thing for them to do is bring some of these

[01:03:54] classic designs back because it is, I mean, it's as much a part of the fabric of the game, uh, as anything, uh, else, no pun intended. So if you're interested, there is an orc hoodie for 80 bucks. Uh, there's the, well, it says night elf shirt, but I mean, it's, it's illidan. Let's be real. Uh, for 40, uh, 40 bucks, there's, uh, the Torrin poster, which is an 18 by 24 inch poster. So decent size, uh, 25 bucks.

[01:04:18] Sticker sheet, uh, is 12 bucks and the entire Samwise sketch bundle 152 us dollars. So, you know, convert that into wherever you are, but, uh, not my favorite designs. I will say, so I, I probably will not be getting in on this. Uh, but I also have, uh, one of his fine art pieces right behind me here of, uh, Arthas in his, uh, Lich King gear.

[01:04:46] So I have some gear. I already, I already have my Samwise gear that I, that I really want. Um, before we head out of here, we are going to cut this episode just a touch short. Cause, uh, we're doing this one a little bit on the fly, uh, here today as we record, but I wanted to bring to folks's attention that, uh, recently Blizzard had announced the winners of their, uh, wow student art contest. And there's some really cool stuff in here.

[01:05:16] Uh, some scenes that were created creatures, items, animation effects. Like it's, it's legit. Like some of this stuff that they need to put in game and they, they, sometimes I think they do. Uh, but the future, the future is in good hands. Uh, I'll save the trading post for the next episode. So for now let's, uh, go to our final piece and hit some Q and a jazz.

[01:05:44] You want to do some, uh, questions and answers here? Let's do it. All right. So, uh, first up we have two questions that are, uh, the first is this comes from brother Navox on discord. What kind of help is available out there for people who have recurring dreams about missing timers on keystones? Uh, to that, I say, don't do them. That's my advice to you. Oh man.

[01:06:14] Uh, that is the help that I can offer. But, uh, Jez, do you, do you have any more practical services? Well, as a, a recent keystone master, I got my, got my, got my shiny mount. Was that keystone hero? I can never remember. I got the mount basically. Two thousand. I don't know. Um, it's a very, very nice mount. Um, but I had to get that mount. I'm doing everything this patch cause it's goblin, you know, it's absolutely, absolutely had to do it. I would say I actually have a clip.

[01:06:44] Um, although we don't do a video version of the podcast, but we have talks about it here, and there, but maybe in the future. But, um, I do have a clip of me completing a keystone with like literally two seconds to spare the clock. Uh-oh. I was going to edit that together and put it on socials, but, uh, although that me telling you that is not going to help you with the, with the dream, current dreams.

[01:07:08] I would say check into, um, Mr. Sunshine's therapy in Azkahit and that will, uh, that will, maybe that will help you out. Um, I don't know his prices, but make sure you've got some cage handy, I suppose. And then you can, uh, go and go and get some nice therapy, I suppose. There it is. Practical advice. Uh, second up we have, uh, from Gamsley also in our discord.

[01:07:35] Do we see publishers that have existing live services pivot back to sequels? Do we see a wow two, maybe wow two will just be a completely different vibe decades after the current timeline. I, I don't know. I'll kick this to you first, Jez. You're the, you're the industry insider. Um, I think we see, uh, publishers, uh, going back.

[01:07:59] I think in some cases, maybe I think like, for example, Apex legends right now, I think has really dropped off. And I think, um, having a sequel to Apex legends, like Apex legends two is something if they nailed it well, it's something that could revive interest in the game. Um, but we've also seen the flip side of that when a sequel fucks up a live service game with overwatch. So overwatch two, uh, needn't have even existed.

[01:08:29] And if you, you know, believe the current rumors, there are rumors right now that they might even be retiring the overwatch to name basically erasing all experiment from history. Yeah. So there is like, that would be smart. Yeah. I don't know. There was like, um, some code strings recently people data mind, which showed that the overwatch to some overwatch two strings had been just renamed to overwatch could be nothing, but it

[01:08:57] could also just be like, yeah, they're, they're getting rid of that shit. Um, so I think it's double edged sword. I think when a game is run its course completely, a sequel can help revive things. Um, you know, CS go is a good example. TF two is obviously a good example, uh, and all that kind of stuff, but execute poorly can be a nightmare. And I don't think, I don't think with world of Warcraft, I don't think it'd work.

[01:09:23] There's 20 years of fairly well, fairly well curated content there. And obviously there's issues with continuity when it comes to leveling old, some shit like that. But I think Blizzard will over time improve that. And I think keeping that world together is probably something they would rather do than make a sequel. Making a sequel to world of Warcraft would be an absurd undertaking in the current year.

[01:09:51] And if they fucked it up, it would be a huge risk. I mean, Final Fantasy 14 was supposed to replace Final Fantasy 11 as an MMO. And when that launched, it was a absolutely colossal failure. And it almost, it was such a huge failure that it almost buried Square Enix. They had to invest tens of millions of dollars to basically rebuild the whole game. And to their credit, they pulled it back around, but it was, it was touch and go for quite a long time.

[01:10:21] So I think we'll see a mix of sequels and a mix of stay in the course, um, wherever it makes sense. But I don't think we'll see an industry wide pivot to sequels. Yeah. Warcraft is almost a, it's just, it's its own thing. It is. It is. It's 20 years old. They're planning for another 20. I mean, if, if you take them at their word and let's just take this out to its logical

[01:10:48] conclusion here, if you have a 40 year old game that is a live service, 40 year old game, like we have, we can't even fathom what that looks like. That it's so far out there in the future. And who knows the planet might blow up between now and then, but if you have a 40 year old game, that's still running and still has millions of people on it. And it's gone through all these other adventures and different things.

[01:11:14] Like, I don't know, maybe after all of us are dead and the people who played Warcraft, like the original world of Warcraft are no longer around. Maybe, maybe, you know, I say, Hey, in, in the dark ages, there was a game and it was very popular. And now 50 years after the last subscriber has died, we're bringing it back. And you know, and now there's this whole other thing.

[01:11:41] Well, classic, classic, classic, classic, classic. That's the only way that I could see them making a sequel to world of Warcraft is if all of the current subscriber base was dead and nobody remembered it. And it was, it had been like long been out. Like I'm talking about like our grandchildren's lifetimes. It's just such a weird thing to have a game. It's been around that long being actively developed. It just, you can't really compare it. Whereas, you know, you also bring up overwatch. What a debacle this overwatch.

[01:12:12] I mean, from the get go from, I remember being there at, you know, watching the BlizzCon presentation and, and overwatch too. Okay. Overwatch too. Okay. Why do you need to have a two? Why don't you just keep working on this shit you already have? Like it was, it was so, and they, and then it's just not been good and they don't have a league anymore. And like, just the whole thing just kind of glad. And I know there's other factors for that, but like the whole thing just collapsed.

[01:12:42] And yeah, it's for some of them, as you pointed out, it, it could revive something if it's dead. But if you got something that's good, like don't fuck it up. Don't bifurcate your audience. Just keep going. So hopefully that provides some quality answers for you there. Uh, Gamsley. We need like a jingle for the Q and A section. It kind of threw me cause like all the other sections have like a little jingle. Okay. Can we need a jingle for Q and A bro? I can do it.

[01:13:11] We'll figure something out for the Q and A. Do you want it? Do you want it? We'll, we'll workshop this right now. Do you want this, uh, jingle to be something that is a serious or unserious? I don't know. Maybe it should be the most metal Q and A jingle ever. There it is. All right. I will work on that between now and then, and, uh, I will get a most metal jingle for our Q and A section.

[01:13:37] So that way we'll, we'll have the properly, uh, demarcated here, uh, on unchecked. All right. I think we've done enough damage for one episode. For those who don't already know, where can the good people find you out on the internet? Jez? Yeah. So you can find me over at windows central.com forward slash. X-Box or forward slash author Jez Corden.

[01:14:04] And you can find me at Jez Corden.com for all my social links and all that kind of stuff. I just linked the Jez Corden.com notes. It's much easier than saying at Jez, J Z C O D. You know, I missed the Z. I like the Z because we don't get that here. We just say Z. We're not as easy. Z Z Z Z Sucker. All right. Uh, my thanks to you. Uh, of course, my friend and, uh, and to all of you as well for listening.

[01:14:33] And remember, you can always follow me and the show on Twitter at Berserker Rage and Unshackled underscore Fury on blue sky at Berserker and Unshackled Fury, as well as on Twitch at Unshackled Fury and real Berserker. You can also join our discord where we get all our lovely metal Q and a questions links for which are in the profile of the show on Twitter and on our website, unshackled fury.com. Feel free to contact the show with your questions, comments, or otherwise through any of those

[01:14:59] resources or email us at unshackled fury show at gmail.com. And you can find this show wherever you get your podcasts. So once again, thank you for listening. Remember to keep your swords wet in your banners high, and we'll see you next time. Farewell.