Episode 184: Back To Business

[00:00:00] 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.

[00:00:29] The waves are receding, fall is beckoning, and big things are soon to pass as your boys of summer are back once again to dive deep into it all.

[00:01:12] So welcome back for Episode 184 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 always threatens you with a good time, Mr. Jez Corden. Welcome back again, Goodster. Hey man, it's good to be back. It's been a hot minute, hasn't it? It's been a break. I promised. I promised it would be and then... I needed it.

[00:01:39] Yeah. And then we had to extend one additional week because quite frankly, I don't think either of us were feeling very good. So it was just a matter of timing, but we're back. We made it. And we do have some summer tales to tell. We're not coming back empty handed. I know there's a lot of 12.1 stuff where we're just a couple of days into the new patch and getting a chance to check it out and see what's what.

[00:02:11] But like I said, we do have some summer business to get through and wanted to share a few things. So I know a few things that you've been up to, but for folks that maybe weren't in some of the corners of the internet that I've been in, tell folks what you've been doing. I've been working, working and working and working and working a bit more.

[00:02:36] Yeah. And that's just all of it. It's just Xbox kind of man. And like the summer, Xbox decided to blow itself up over the summer. So a lot of... You heard something about that. Yeah, a little bit. Blizzard completely unscathed, funnily enough. But the rest of Xbox is not doing so great right now.

[00:03:02] So there was a lot of work, a lot of articles to write and research to do. So it's kind of like, it's kind of fortunate that started happening when we decided to take a break because I absolutely needed my weekend. Yeah. The last few weeks. But, but it seems like we've come out the other side of it now. Good timing. Season two is here as well. Yeah. I also took a break from WoW because it's just, I just couldn't fit everything in something. Yeah.

[00:03:30] And just as we speak about half an hour landed back in the UK, traveling back from Germany. So it's been a very, very busy, busy, busy, busy. It's just, you're screaming in wheels, still smoking, getting into this recording. I know you're here. I am picking up my bags. I'll be there soon. You were giving me the updates. I'm like, man, this is, this is, you're rolling hard. I, this is what happens when you're, you know, cause you're a bit younger than I am. And I think you can still get away with it a little bit.

[00:04:01] I probably would have had a coronary by now. And you're like, no, sorry. It's just, it's the jazz show. Now I, I no longer exist. Well, that's, that's my, there's my luggage on the bed. I haven't even unpacked it. I haven't even unpacked yet. This is how dedicated you are. You're, you're making time when it's what? Near midnight? It's a, yeah, it's, it's midnight, but I let you down last week. So I didn't want to do it twice. So here we are.

[00:04:30] Never let, never let down. Always glad to be here. And yeah, you, as I messaged you about it, funny enough, you know, sometimes your worlds collide in ways that you don't expect. And what is it? Moore's law is broken, broken Silicon show podcast, whatever it is that I've watched for years and years. Cause that guy's like the king of leaks.

[00:04:52] Like this, I've built my, I told you I've built my entire 2027 PC rebuild around the timelines that he's leaking about Intel and Nvidia and like what's going on with the 60 series or the 50 super series. And like, he's the guy. So you were talking mostly, I think Xbox stuff primarily on that one. Uh, how did that come together?

[00:05:15] Well, he leaked, um, the Xbox helix chip Magnus, which, um, like I, I kind of made my career leaking the Xbox one X and the Xbox series S cause, um, some big outlets said that there was not going to be two Xboxes this gen. There was just going to be an, you know, like a series X. And I was like, no, no, I've got good information. There's going to be two. There's going to be a series S series X. I kind of made my reputation on that.

[00:05:44] Um, uh, leaking Xbox hardware, but like, uh, more's lawyers, more's law is dead. Drop the, um, the Magnus chip thing. That was like completely off my radar. And I was like, Oh shit. I got scooped. Got it on my game. But yeah, the dude knows his shit, man. Like seriously. That's that's right. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. He's on it. Magnus. Yeah. Magnus. Like it's not the code name. It wasn't the code name of the Xbox itself. It was the code name of the AMD chip.

[00:06:14] Um, uh, I don't have AMD sources. I've only got Xbox sources, but like from, because of his leak, I was able to get other leaks. So it helped me out a lot. Right. So yeah, dude's awesome. He just reached out to me and he was like, do you want to come on the show? You know, some people sometimes have like sent me things he said about Xbox and about my reporting in the past and try to stir, stir drama between us. I think. But, um, but no, he's a really cool dude. Really gracious dude.

[00:06:43] And he taught me a lot in a very short space time. Cause I don't know much about tech. I don't, I just, I'm just a guy with a keyboard. You know, the dude's really smart, really smart guy. Yeah. It was, it was wild seeing the two of you together. I'm like, man, this is like my world's colliding. I was like, all right, here they are. You know, not that I ever forget about how big your reach is. That's why I think it's again, it will never cease to be hilarious to me that you do this with me.

[00:07:12] And this is like way small potatoes when you're like out there with the Xbox stuff. And you, uh, who, who is it that you were in? Todd Howard. Yeah. I interviewed Todd Howard. The other. Even I know who that is. The Skyrim guy. The Skyrim guy. Skyrim guy. Yeah. I was really blood flawed when they offered me an interview with Todd Howard. Cause only a couple of people got to interview him. I think it was me and Jason from Bloomberg.

[00:07:39] So yeah, I was really, really humble to Jason Schreier. So I was very, very felt, you know, humble, you know, to start. I don't want to speak to the guy, but had a job to do. Cause he's a first though is just one of the studios departments that were hit really hard with layoffs. Um, blizzards completely escaped it so far. You know, part of me is wondering like, are they waiting until after blizzcon to drop the hammer, you know? Um, but blizzards had a very, very good year.

[00:08:06] And, uh, you know, I leaked Johanna Ferry's internal emails last week. I don't know if you saw that. I did. You did. Yeah. So, uh, she was saying that, uh, blizzard is now the biggest Xbox studio. Um, the biggest, you know, moneymaker. So that they've had like, they've overtaken call of duty, which is insane. And that's all of blizzard together. So that's like overwatch. That's overwatch warcraft. Yeah.

[00:08:36] And also it's like, um, well call of duty had a really bad year last year with black ops seven. I think it was a call of duty. He had a really bad year, which helped blizzard take that spot. The blizzard had a really good year. Like overwatch, overwatch is like bigger than it's been since, uh, since COVID, I think they said. And like COVID COVID was like, yeah, 2022. So like COVID all service games were flying during COVID.

[00:09:02] So for them to be as, for Overwatch to be as big as it was during COVID is crazy. Right. Um, and, uh, they didn't say too much about world of Warcraft, but, um, but also, uh, Diablo for Lord of hatred absolutely, uh, did really well as well. So, uh, yeah, I think blizzards in a good spot right now, thankfully, but, um, yeah, we'll see what happens.

[00:09:29] Cause there's still a bunch more layoffs to come for Xbox. Unfortunately, from what I've heard. Oh, that's not good. Yeah. I could, I could see them waiting until after blizzcon, if there's some hammer to drop on blizzard, which I've got a feeling that if they do do some layoffs for blizzard, it'll be minimal.

[00:09:51] I would think, I think like what I can see happening more so is layoffs in Xbox game studios. So potentially high low studios, um, high low studios is just, they have wasted so much money. Like hundreds of millions of dollars. Oh, because of just, just floundering, you know, credits.

[00:10:21] It's, it's, it's really, it's really astronomical. The, the failing of three, four, three now, hello studios. But, um, I dunno, we'll see what happens. It sucks talking about laugh stuff. Cause you know, it's a people's large, right? Yeah. Yeah. Well, maybe blizzard can do a tour around and tell people how to take care of business or something. I dunno, a little familiar.

[00:10:47] Johanna Ferry's strategy is like, Johanna Ferry strategy has just been incredible. You know, like, I dunno what it is. She does, she done differently to the previous leads of blizzard. Like, um, especially like Mikey bar and stuff, but she's been, she'd been absolutely killing him on. So I would hope that Microsoft looks to blizzard as an example to be followed rather than something to be cut back on. But, um, you know, it's hard to say what they'll do.

[00:11:18] Yeah. We, we never know exactly, but you got a good finger on the pulse of it. So I, I would, I would suggest kind of following your lead on these sorts of things, but, uh, um, yeah, glad, uh, glad you got to do some cool stuff. Get some time off. You know, that was, that's always the purpose of, uh, typically summer and winter breaks around here is the recharge. And yeah, I, I did not really play a whole lot during that stretch of time. Cause we knew it was coming and I want to get a break.

[00:11:47] Um, and I realized I messed up my, uh, my slides situation here, but as you know, I did not have a break, which was I got to take a tour of the blizzard campus. Yes. Something I've wanted to do forever. And through a, through a very generous connection that I have there, we, uh, were down in Southern

[00:12:15] California and we had one day where there was, it was just kind of a travel day between Anaheim and San Diego. We were going and went, went to the zoo down there and saw some pandas. Um, but on the way there we did have a little bit of break. And so, uh, sure enough was able to schedule a time to get down there and to see it face, a face, uh, face up and, and, and close. And I took some photos, Jez. Nice.

[00:12:45] It seemed like a good place to share them. I agree. We're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna do this here. Let's see. Uh, boom. We're gonna, nope. That's our album. It's coming. It feels coming. It was Viking. Here we go. Uh, so as we were leaving, lo and behold, we happened to pass by the Anaheim convention center. So it felt really weird to be right next to where we're going to be in a month.

[00:13:09] Uh, but it was also very fitting that on the way, passing right by, you know, the only other place that I've really experienced all of this, uh, in person. But of course we get there and what's one of the first things you see. It's like, you pull right in through the gates. Uh, I had to get buzzed in through security and they took my IDs and the whole thing. And you go right through the gates and the orc statue and the little courtyard is like right there.

[00:13:37] Like we parked maybe 50 feet from where the work statue was. We were just, it's just, it's like right there. It's not hidden behind anything or hard to get. It's just literally right there. Uh, so my family was with me and we got a chance to, you know, see it there. And, uh, we took the, you know, took a few pictures and you can see, you know, it's, it's not what's funny. It's not a very like big place. Like I thought it was going to be maybe just cause in my mind, it's so mythical and epic.

[00:14:07] Like I thought it was going to be a lot bigger than it was. Um, but there, there we were, there was the orc statue, um, walking in through the kind of the front doors. There's my son and our guide. And you kind of get a sense of like the scale of like entering this place. You know, the main building, this is the, I think this was building too. I think this is where the, the Warcraft team, uh, is housed.

[00:14:30] And one of the things that unfortunately did happen while we were there, uh, since we are so close to BlizzCon, there were a lot of areas that we were not allowed to go because there were things being discussed or worked on like out in the open. And so there was even one point where we were walking down a hallway and our guide kind of looks around the corner there and he sticks his arm out and he goes, this is as far as I can let you go.

[00:14:59] You guys can't go further than this. Uh, there's just a whole lot of that kind of stuff going on. Uh, but here were the main doors to get in and, uh, went into, uh, the lobby way there. And right in there, they've got, I don't know if you remember when I think this was warlords and they had the big, uh, Gore house sitting on top of the taxi cab and times square. And this, this is the one. So they brought it in and it's in their, their main lobby now.

[00:15:24] And when you come in there, um, there's a museum and I didn't get a very good shot of the door here, but you can see kind of on the right hand side where it's, you can almost see the word museum. Um, they have a curator for this museum and every so often they kind of refresh everything that's in here. And of all the things that I saw, Jez, they had the photo, the actual portrait of Zalatath, the one that everybody puts in their house.

[00:15:53] Well, that's the real one, uh, right there. We saw it. They keep it in the museum, uh, along with, you know, some other kind of cool things. You can see every little piece of it had something about, you know, most of the franchises. Uh, so this was some of the Warcraft stuff we saw particularly to the housing. They had like the, you know, the, the hearth stone or the, the, what are they called it? The post that's right there, you know, that marks your property and some of the things there.

[00:16:20] Um, this was the one attempt that I made to photograph something super secret and cool. And you can see how well that photo turned out. So I can't really tell you what that was. Um, it was probably, it was probably the auditorium that they have there, but I didn't hold my phone still enough. And so I got all fucked up. So sorry about that guys.

[00:16:43] Um, but in it, they also kind of had some of these larger, uh, uh, like pictures, pictograms, whatever you call us put together. Were they talking about the character developments? They had one of the Kerrigan, Sarah Kerrigan from Starcraft, uh, obviously Zalatat there. So really neat to kind of go through and see, you know, what their processes are like and talking about the evolution of these characters and kind of what informs, uh, what they do over time. Uh, also building lands. They had a whole, I had a whole section about hollow fall.

[00:17:12] So I took one of these photos, just talking about like how they came up with it and what it is and sort of that kind of thing. I took this one for you, uh, we'll fist though and we'll fist those developments and kind of how they came up with it and what they did. Uh, and I thought this was just a bad-ass kind of picture of that old thing. Um, that was neat. And then also a copy of a 1999 map that Chris Metzen made of Azeroth.

[00:17:41] And so you can see kind of how they originally envisioned this land. Almost 30 years ago. Um, let's see, let's see if this works. Here we go. You can kind of get a sense of where they thought we were going to go, what we're going to do. Um, let's see. I can probably keep it on this while we go. There we go. Now I've always known that on campus they have their own Starbucks.

[00:18:09] And sure enough, after we went into the little museum, had to make a stop at the Starbucks. So we did where they have a secret menu of their own with like 20 different drinks on it named after all kinds of things and all kinds of different shit in it. And the one person there was very nice and we were by ourselves. So she was like, Oh, make whatever we, whatever you guys want. So I got, uh, in the upper right hand corner there, I think they called it the blizzard drink. I was like, well, it's, it's just seems like it's the all encompassing everything in a blender bucket.

[00:18:38] As a guy who drinks his coffee black, this is about as far to the other extreme as I'll go. Uh, but it was very good and it was loaded with sugar and it kept me going for the whole thing. Uh, but yeah, it was super cool that they have, you know, their own cafeteria, which I, we did end up having lunch at after all of this was over. And sitting right next to me was Taron Gregory talking to some person sounded like maybe a reporter or somebody that was also there as a visitor. Uh, I did not bother him.

[00:19:08] Although I kind of regret that I should have just like jumped over his table and be like, Hey, it's me, but I'm not that important. And I had to let them go, but it was cool to see, uh, Tara in there. And then of course, all of the statues, uh, at the various buildings that they have kind of spread around campus. They have all these big statues that if you've been to Blizzcon, you've probably seen these, you'll probably see them when you go down there, but this is where they live. The other 300 and something days of the year.

[00:19:35] Uh, so the super cool Rainer statue I've seen a few times and he looks, you see this in person. He looks grizzled as fuck. Like he's seen some serious shit and it's, it, man, he's seen some things. Also Illidan also seen some things and he's crazy looking in this thing. And these statues, mind you were like eight, nine feet tall or enormous. So Jez next month, you're going to see them. That's going to be rad.

[00:20:01] You're also going to see your girl who also has an amazing statue. This thing is huge, super high detail. I mean, like all of these things it's, it's wild. And they just have these kind of spread out in these lobbies. They have like six or seven buildings and in each one, they just kind of have these statues and art is crammed into them. Um, tracer, a couple of the other art pieces that they have. These are, I think blizzcon key arts, uh, that they've had, they've had posted up around the place.

[00:20:32] Uh, um, I've seen a lot of these statues. They take them to games. Commune, you know, they move them around. Yeah. For the big ones. Um, blizzcon. I know I've seen a bunch of them. I don't know what happened to the very end one. Um, maybe it'll be back or maybe got shipped overseas. I don't know. Um, we're in. We're into the overwatch area. They had a bunch of cool overwatch art. Uh, here's the, one of the original Warcraft three items.

[00:21:01] Uh, this is a display that they've had. This is like their original Warcraft three frozen throne display and it's old and it's kind of dinged up and chipped up in certain places, but they've got it preserved in just a random ass hallway. it's pretty sweet seeing you know a piece of history just hanging out in a random hall this is also for you here's your undermined car, here's your goblin car live and in person

[00:21:30] didn't turn it on so I didn't get to see all the cool green lights and you know smoke coming out of it but it's just there in their parking garage just hanging out so I guess you can go take a ride in it but that was fun and if you go too close to certain doors you can see that they have stuff like danger ninjas and pirates and lasers and shit so don't go in there cause that's not for you saw that one, the Tyrael statue if you've ever seen this

[00:22:00] the tendrils on his back light up and they hum and you can hear like lightning crackling and stuff like that seeing all that was pretty wild this is for Rommel there's some Varian comic art just on a wall that was sweet seeing our boy looking glamorous as a gladiator little gosh and then we got to see what I might consider the piece de resistance which is the Blizzard library

[00:22:29] this is something I've seen lots of photos of they do some of their video presentations in here but essentially what the library is is like a collection of all of their books all of their games and a lot of the stuff that inspires them or gives them ideas about things and you go in there and there's just all of these works that they either house or they use for reference or if somebody's looking for something you can go check it out

[00:22:58] there's games all kinds of things that they use as guides and inspiration you can see a bunch of the franchise stuff here the Warcraft stuff Starcraft stuff books board games I didn't even know they had board games of Starcraft I've never even seen that before and I was like man I can't hide this under my shirt but I definitely would love to pick that up somewhere

[00:23:27] you may have seen in the past I think it was Ian and maybe Holly did a presentation right here in these chairs in front of this wall with the cosmology chart on it it was pretty it was pretty cool seeing that up close and they also got some art books right there the Blizzard World poster that they had which was above this big table that opens up into like a gaming table these boards come off the top of it and I've seen again photos of this

[00:23:56] over time and they've got Nixie's head up on the wall so definitely getting their their housing stuff going and then just more shelves of all the books and shit that they've got in there here's your Sylvanas statue I know you desperately wanted to see Sylvanas live and in person and it was about as close as I think you're gonna get they also had the Stormwind mailbox from the movie from the Warcraft movie they had one of the props there just hanging out

[00:24:25] in a random lobby across the street in a building you would never suspect had anything to do with anything that we do it's just it's just a business part it's crazy pretty sure I know what's going on in this secret project area where no visitors are allowed because when I mentioned something about something I got a very coy look and I'm gonna take that it's confirmation that BlizzCon is gonna be amazing

[00:24:54] and I can't wait for an announcement that may have something to do with the franchise that we've been waiting to come back a long time it'd be great and I also thought it was cool that they had like for Hearthstone this it's like a like where you badge in instead of just like a black box on a wall I have this Hearthstone compass I thought that was pretty neat and then Jez last thing for you the original Diablo costume from 1997 that somebody used

[00:25:23] to walk around in and they've had it mounted up and displayed in their offices for a long time but this if you go back way back to your childhood this was the the real life Diablo that was walking the mean streets of might have been San Diego no San Jose maybe that's where they were back then but I thought that was pretty neat then of course last but not least there was a Junkrat statue and then that's me in front of the Orc

[00:25:55] that was the one I posted I think on Twitter so there you go that was it that was the tour I was so nervous I forgot to turn the car off I just parked it then got out and started walking away how long how long was the tour roughly three hours wow we walked around and it had lunch so the whole thing took like three hours we took our time and it was just the WWE building tour was about

[00:26:24] half an hour but um to be fair it was it was pretty new I think that they hadn't they hadn't long been moved in there like I think like a year or something no applies to the big Andre the giant mural yeah so there wasn't much in there it was pretty empty um but yeah I suppose Blizzard's been there for a hot minute right quite a long time I mean that's been their main studio I mean they've had that location for a long time and then you know

[00:26:54] kind of everything's consolidated there over the years but yeah I very fortunate it was just us the my family and our guide and uh thanks to them again for letting us do that it was it was very surreal it was very surreal I kind of couldn't comprehend that I was there it was just like I'm trying to be cool and I'm the only the only I think kind of jackass-y question that I did ask is when we were eating lunch because I was like listen I don't I don't have to see it I just want

[00:27:24] to know like where is Chris Metzen's office I just want to know just like where where in this space does he live that's all I want to know and what they told me is probably the most perfect answer and it tells you everything about Chris Metson was well his office is over there in the main building but he's never in it he's always just out on the floor talking to the Warcraft team and I was like yeah that sounds like the guy

[00:27:54] so yeah that was that was the big kind of to do yeah we went some other cool stuff but like that was that was really special and I'm jealous you'll get your tour you should get your tour you're I mean you're coming to BlizzCon so you're you're like one step away and it is close like if you if you see how close Blizzard studio the studios are to

[00:28:25] the convention center it's like 20 minutes they're like super close to each other that's it makes a lot of sense that they would have picked that location to do the convention because it is close considering that they probably pay untold thousands to move all those statues over to the location yeah we don't want to pay by the model too much I remember um the first time I went to Gamescom or maybe the second time I'm pretty sure it was the first time Blizzard had a really

[00:28:54] big spread there because I think it was the year they were announcing overwatch I think if I remember correctly so like they had like a whole sort of corner of a hall to

[00:29:27] thinking of but E3 is gone no more E3 well they still have offices in Europe right I mean that's who that's who you talk to right as the Blizzard folks over there no I talk to Blizzard folks in America I don't know if they have UK folks I mean they've got like a UK PR team but it's not like it's not big I don't think they've got like a Blizzard office in the

[00:29:57] that's that was that was the big one that was the big part of my summer break and then the only other thing that I wanted to touch on before we get to our metal album of the week which I've already spoiled I cannot believe how many content creators there are in our space I think it's because I

[00:30:27] creators of Warcraft space has been primarily podcasts and then you know you had some you know a few big YouTubers come in and so you kind of got like those two I have come across so many creators through TikTok that's that's kind of my primary brain drain certain parts of the day and I just come

[00:30:57] that we're like the last of a generation like it is such a different vibe and there's so many people and there's like a lot of really good stuff there's lore people there's people making videos about you know all the new stuff there's collectors there's people just

[00:31:27] for warcraft that is out there it's just it's so clearly shifted to another thing and I suppose if I ever had to start over and have the time or energy to do it I

[00:31:57] first up get out of here from 2016 from March of 2016 one of the greatest concept albums of all time yams viking by the mighty amona marth this is the pull up the info here it's essentially a story about a guy who accidentally kills a dude who was going to be married off to the woman that he loved and it's like his journey trying to

[00:32:27] like he flees and then he tries to get back to her and it's like the whole saga and then you learn about you know yams vikings like these mercenary vikings and just how badass they were and there's some really banging songs on this thing and it is one of my favorite Amona Marth albums that always gets me fired up anytime any place there's a couple videos for it that are kind of fun but just like the whole concept of these dudes just training

[00:32:57] and beating the shit out of each other and that's just what they do because they want to be unkillable they want to be the best and so they just that's just how they live it's hardcore all the time so yeah it was one of my favorites immediately and I've loved it ever since and we gotta get back from summer break with a kick ass album that's got a whole bunch of badass tunes that get you fired up and this will do it y'all was biking straight out of

[00:33:34] this week mine is a new band I've discovered recently called LOWEN L-O-W-E-N you might like them because they are sort of they're often recommended in the vein of a modern moth but instead of being sort of viking coded they're persian coded and um a farcey coded and ancient mesopotamia and babylon themed nice so they're they're

[00:34:03] a british band and the lead singer is a woman an iranian woman and her vocals are just unreal um but the album's called uh it's called i'm gonna pull it up here do not go to war with the demons of mazandaran that's what the album's called wow and it absolutely blew my mind like this album came out in 2024 i think okay um spotify algorithm

[00:34:33] recommended me and i was just i was just immediately in love with this band they are tremendous so it's you know it's sort of it's prog doom prog and doom with a arabic kind of twist um i think people who like uh system of down probably like them uh but yeah they're just fantastic definitely check them out all right low and i like what you described i'll be jamming that over to the uh in-laws for dinner

[00:35:03] after we're done recording here i'm gonna figure that out i'll give you my full report tonight while i'm editing i'll do it i'm gonna check that out all right well with uh summer vacation out of the way with uh our metal album uh metal albums uh now recommended to you gotta get to a rage topic this week that i think is uh is is universal uh to a point and uh

[00:35:33] it's also once again time for me to uh turn the show into uh sort of part part diary so hold on everybody i got a real one for you let's go let's rage so it's not about gaming uh this is about this is about real stuff so i'm gonna apologize i'm sure the ai fucking

[00:36:03] chapter maker will just figure out what this is so if you don't want to listen to this you can skip on to the next section i guess um so we've been gone uh since uh early mid june and part of the reason why we take a break at that time is just because we got like birthdays and the end of the school year and then there's fourth of july and there's vacations this is like all kinds of shit going on so right after i mean like the week after we uh

[00:36:33] dropped our last episodes this was back in mid june i had my birthday went to san francisco for the weekend and had a good time there went to some giants games uh that team is terrible and that's probably the last baseball i'm gonna be watching for god knows how long um but had a good time went to the phantom of the opera uh which was all kinds of badass and i don't care if you don't like musicals that that's the most metal

[00:37:02] musical there is like it's just thunder and shit like it's so fucking good and you can't convince me otherwise but had a great time there uh but while i was actually at the phantom of the opera i noticed something uh that was going on with me that i've been kind of battling for a little bit this is gonna get gross and i apologize everybody if you're honest to this again you can just fast forward but um i have been dealing with or trying to delay seriously dealing with uh

[00:37:32] an abdominal hernia that i've had kind of pseudo have had like i can feel that like there's something kind of happening uh but it hasn't quite presented itself fully and so if you don't know what that means that means that my abdominal wall has a little hole in it and sometimes your innards can get pushed through it sometimes that's just sometimes that's your intestines sometimes that's your meats

[00:38:01] it can be a variety of things and so i've i've for a while had a little huh how did that happen well i don't really know entirely uh i think it's a combination of factors um i had i think it's a posture issue i think it's an equipment issue because i had a chair that kind of like made me sit like kind of arched out or like pushed out my stomach a little

[00:38:31] bit and frankly just being overweight and you put it all together and probably lifting too hard and uh something got stuck like there was always a little something that was trying to work its way out but i could always kind of just like nudge it back in and i noticed when i was at the show there was like a little hard lump like right in the middle of my stomach and it wouldn't go away and i couldn't push it back in and i was like oh fuck i think it's the problem

[00:39:03] so that was a saturday end up uh what is it sunday sunday monday tuesday somewhere in there i'm like well maybe it'll go away maybe it'll kind of work its way back in you know just kind of deal with whatever i think it came about maybe tuesday a couple days later and i was like this hurts like shit i've been delaying it as long as possible but i'm gonna have to go to the emergency room and here is where the nightmare begins and this is what the rage segment is really about is the

[00:39:33] state of american health care i have tried as much as possible to not go to the emergency room to not go to a hospital because i know the one that i have to go to and if you live in the sacramento area you know what i'm talking about uc davis medical center which is where everybody goes the regular people homeless people the crazy people prisoners whoever like somebody shoots the cops gets in an accident that's where

[00:40:02] they take them somebody's losing their shit and is throwing their shit on a bus and smearing it on a sidewalk that's where they go you know old people young people everybody goes to this place so it is like a fucking war zone there 24 7 whatever you think is the worst emergency room you've ever seen it's that place so i'm like all right it's eight o'clock in the morning we're gonna get down there gonna drive down there and just i can just whatever it takes i'm gonna deal with it i get in there and they're

[00:40:32] like all right do some intake we're gonna try to push it back in here's some good drugs which were all right no that part's not so bad and we're gonna push really hard to try to push this thing back into your gut like okay fine give the meds they would they put me in the back into this ancillary room this is just like a just like some other waiting room next to the waiting room they push they push they push they push they push and you can imagine how that how great that phil can't

[00:41:01] get it to go back in they're like wow this is really stuck i said yeah that's what i said and then jez i am then lost in that room for four fucking hours because nobody told anybody else where i was or that at that point i needed an mri or some other uh cat scan thing to see what exactly was going on with me so i'm just there laying on a bed in a random room just waiting for hours and hours and hours and

[00:41:30] hours i see on the app that they've got for this system that i'm being scheduled for a cat scan but then it like gets scheduled and it gets canceled then it gets scheduled and it gets canceled four times this happens i'm like what the fuck is going on i finally grabbed somebody i'm like hey i don't know if you work here but like where am i supposed to be going what's going on uh i don't know but you're gonna have to go back to the main waiting room i get back to the main waiting room and there's like 10 times as many people as there were when i first got there at 8 30 in the morning so it's just going off there's nowhere to sit i got a

[00:42:00] homeless guy who like broke his leg and he's like accosting me and my wife and i'm like okay i gotta go for a walk now i gotta go over here i hear my name called they go we've been looking for you why haven't you been answering our calls to get you to a cat scan like motherfucker you put me somewhere else i haven't heard shit if i go back to another they walk me back to another part of the hospital like okay sit here and wait we're gonna do the cat scan as i'm waiting this woman clearly just came from a car accident and i found out later yes she had hit a tree she comes wheeling and

[00:42:29] screaming in pain and all this stuff they're like well we gotta get to her first i said yes please do an hour goes by finally they get me back there i get the scan okay now i go back to the waiting room and then i wait it's okay yeah you got a thing yes i know i gotta think okay come to this other room and we're gonna talk to the guy about surgery okay we're gonna talk to the guy about surgery i go in a room i talk to the guy about surgery he's like well if you want to wait for two days here at this hospital we might be able to get you in i said two days this yeah because everything is full and we don't

[00:42:59] know if we can get to you in like the next two days maybe three days you think you can stay here until then i said well i can't live like this so yes please i'll just wait it out i said okay we'll just wait it out i get put in not in a bed but like a gurney and wheeled into another room at nine o'clock that night with like 10 other people some poor nona who's next to me snoring her ass off i can't sleep i don't know what's going on get me down the next morning they wheel me to

[00:43:29] another room at four o'clock in the morning some guy was taking my blood i don't know why get me down next morning they put me in what i can only describe was a makeshift room in a war zone where it's like basically cardboard that has been duct taped to metal poles in a big room room to try to make makeshift cubicle bays just to put people in and while i'm waiting in there then the next morning i hear

[00:43:58] these two people these two women that are next to each other and they're screaming at each other telling each other to shut the fuck up the cops get called one of them gets kicked out they're still arguing and screaming another one's almost gonna get tased and i'm like jesus christ what what is going on what am i doing here what is happening finally i've now been there about 30 hours a team of doctors come in a team of doctors squeeze into this little makeshift cube where i'm laying there wondering what the

[00:44:27] fuck i'm doing and i say well here's the situation you can either get surgery here sometime in the next two days and it'll essentially be the trauma surgery version of this where they're just gonna cut you right up the middle let's cut the thing out and stitch you back up and that's gonna be it or you can wait and get scheduled to see somebody else on a consult and they have a fancier robotic

[00:44:57] version that is less invasive that they can do and fix you up okay well if you can make that happen quickly like an emergency consult kind of thing then sure i can wait it out to get that okay we'll tell the people emergency consult we'll make it quick hopefully you can see somebody in the next couple of weeks you know next week or two at max i said okay

[00:45:26] i can gut it out till then just get me the fuck out of this nightmare hellscape that i'm currently been in for the last however long let's get a schedule okay fine so i'm waiting i'm waiting they're like okay we're gonna move you up to a bed in a room now like why are we moving me up into a bedroom i'm leaving like don't put that fine take me up there still take me up there so now i'm on like the seventh floor of this place i'm finally getting some peace and quiet except for the poor guy old guy next to me who's got the worst case of hiccups you've ever heard and that's why he's in the hospital because it

[00:45:56] won't stop hiccuping so we're waiting doc next doctor comes in and says okay well i talked to the surgeon and this is what we're gonna do and you don't want to have it done now you want to wait and get the consult and like do like the fancier version of his center say yeah okay i will wait let's do that okay fine gonna get your discharge papers we'll get you out of here okay great as i'm waiting the first team of doctors that came in the first head doctor she comes in and tells me essentially she talked to the

[00:46:25] surgeon who would do the surgery that i'm now going to put myself on a wait list for and she says she might not do it because i'm too fat so i'm like well i don't know what to tell you if you've never looked at me and you've never talked to me and you've never seen me and all you're going off of is my body mass index my bmi yeah it probably doesn't look great but i guarantee you i'm i'm i'm

[00:46:55] just i'm large if you see me in person i'm a large i'm a larger human probably doesn't mean as much about me as it might somebody else i don't know but this is what i want to do so please make this happen okay fine i'll relay your concerns and we'll make a schedule jez the soonest once i left the hospital i left the hospital i came home i'm like god what a nightmare i'm so glad take a shower and lay in my own bed this is horrible after all of that

[00:47:24] that was june that was two months ago jez how soon was the consult that got scheduled i have no idea october oh boy so i get a hold of somebody that we know and i say hey listen that is not gonna happen that october is that's the most and i will i will get a change of clothes and some snacks and i will march my ass back to that emergency room and i'll fucking camp out there and wait with everybody

[00:47:54] else to get this thing taken care of if you can't do any better than that okay well let me see what we can do so jez a very long story short i finally have my consult in four days so it has been two months of having this hole in me which unfortunately has also gotten bigger because i can tell that it's gotten worse it's probably about the size of a quarter now whatever's going in there you can probably stick at least a couple

[00:48:24] fingers in it because of what's going on so dealing with that and then the cherry on top of it all jez not only do i have like long term spinal issues not only do i have now this crazy hernia problem they were doing some blood work as i mentioned had some blood work during all of this and there was something about my blood work that came back that they didn't like and i said okay uh

[00:48:52] we need to get an mri of your brain like today i said okay right let's go ahead and schedule that yes my brain my noggin all that so get an mri scaring the shit out of me a day goes by two days three days four days five days go by and i'm like i haven't heard from anybody is anybody gonna tell me what this mri showed or said or anything

[00:49:17] a week goes by 10 days go by just 10 fucking days go by and finally i get a readout not my doctor just the just the sec going okay here's what we see i said okay that doesn't sound good can my doctor please tell me what it is that we're looking at another week goes by

[00:49:42] does finally just a few days ago this how long all this shit is taking had a consult with my doctor who tells me unfortunately i do have something growing in my brain that's not supposed to be there good times for me so hopefully we have started a medication

[00:50:11] regimen which hopefully is going to help this situation but it has been a bit of a run dealing with the u.s health care situation and how cattywampus disorganized and just generally overrun the entire system fucking is and i don't know what it's like everywhere else i can only speak for this but it has only gotten

[00:50:40] fucking worse it's a fucking nightmare only consolation i have is that i have good health insurance and i've paid relatively little out of pocket compared to everything i've had done to me but needless to say there's been a lot going on i mean do you know what's going on with the brain stuff yes i do

[00:51:08] is it bad what's that is it bad it is a small thing now that is fucking some stuff up but it's not like they don't think they're gonna have to surgically go in and do anything at this point we're

[00:51:34] hoping that the medication that i'm now taking will help kind of stop everything that's going on and if it can stop what's going on then uh that would be good and then you know hopefully we can kind of maneuver and live with things from that point um but yeah that was that's what i

[00:52:03] was waiting to hear about was okay are we seeing something or we're not seeing because the mri tech was like well we think we see something but we're not sure and i'm like that is not the kind of surety that i need in a situation like this i need you fuckers to tell me like what the hell is going on so endocrinologist thankfully somebody who knows what the fuck they're looking at and seeing um was able to talk me through what's going on um but the saga to get here has just been

[00:52:34] un-fucking-real and i've still got more to go because the surgery that at some point i'm gonna have to have because i don't know how they're not gonna i don't know they can't say no to me not for this it's like a six-week recovery time so we might have another extended break coming up in the fall jess i don't know kind of depends on what they tell me it's kind of funny right like british

[00:53:03] people complain all the time about like the health service the trains and like everything else but yeah no matter where else i go i'm pretty lucky in the sense that i can be like quite well traveled i go to america a lot i speak to a lot of americans you know my girlfriend's german so i spend a lot of time in germany i think england's the best fucking country on earth man i was like trying to trying to like um

[00:53:32] i was comparing like getting a train in germany and like everyone in england complains how expensive the trains are i'm like the same trip in germany cost twice as much twice as much and if you want to like you know you don't pay anything for health care either and yes every time i've needed health care the nhs has been there it's been painless quick and easy job done it's good not to

[00:54:01] brag or anything no please do it's abysmal it is it is it is then you know we don't get too political on this show very often uh past a certain point i guess but for-profit health care is a horrible model it shouldn't it shouldn't be political like germany nowhere else on earth has a full-profit health care model nowhere on earth it is a reason for that and there's a reason for that i mean

[00:54:33] i i my experience typically is like i go to the doctor i've got a schedule a couple months out whatever you know it's kind of become routine that like it takes that long to see somebody and you know medications whatever usually there's quicker ways to message people through the systems that they have but like when something's really going on man it is unbelievably bad and

[00:54:59] if you've ever wanted to feel like all of your humanity all of your individual identity is stripped away from you get lost in the health care system because you're no longer you you're a number on a chart or a sheet somewhere and yeah they'll lose you for four fucking hours when you're having some of the worst pain of your life and you just gotta lay there and go well hopefully they remember i'm here

[00:55:29] so yeah it's been a it's been an interesting couple of months um this isn't going to be resolved certainly by the time blizzcon rolls around so when you see me you know we'll still be dealing with some of this uh shit so um it'll be interesting i disneyland was kind of like my uh my preview of coming to blizzcon of like all right well if i put on 15 20 000 steps a day like how am i faring and uh you know we'll make it we'll make it

[00:55:57] work but boy howdy i'll be glad when this is done so so that's the catch up that's the rage segment that's what's going on and uh i'm sorry if you if you if you think otherwise about the american health care system then clearly you haven't had enough problems or you're just rich and you don't have to worry about shit um like my mom who apparently can just go to any clinic anywhere and they got the

[00:56:25] money to do fucking what all so you know i guess it all depends all right we're like an hour in and it's been very little about actual warcraft stuff on a warcraft podcast so i'm gonna go ahead and start shifting gears because uh we do have a new patch and we got stuff going on

[00:56:43] uh with patch 12.1 so let's get into that so we're now what like five days in uh the patch 12.1 curse of ula tech uh goodness and after having a nice long break where i went to neither nig tall or delvar or davis or wherever it was that we were supposed to be going

[00:57:12] in the last uh little mini patch uh i didn't i didn't really do much of that i'm sorry to say but i was really excited uh to get back in because uh you know 12.1 we got all the big all the big stuff right new zone new raids new dungeons new delves all the all the good stuff uh so if you've been in it you know we have a new zone the coiled isle and

[00:57:38] by no means was a secret because you could see it off the coast of zulamon and we were pretty sure that's where we were gonna be going uh and sure enough the the veil was lifted uh as we are chasing i think and jez i'm curious to get uh your take on this i think Zul'jan is one of the best characters of this expansion this story so far

[00:58:05] and sort of his journey now of being a troll who has lived through and seen some shit and does not believe in the loa that the loa have failed us the loa let us down you know my sister the hashe who is supposed to be you know the leader of all of this now and totally buys into the power of the loa he is completely the opposite fuck them fuck this whole thing i need to find a

[00:58:32] source of power that is something other than the loa i'm i'm i'm i'm zuljan i'm the grandfather of zuljin i gotta i gotta figure out a way and so i don't know maybe he's getting bamboozled by malacrass maybe he isn't but he ends up finding a way to unlock everything that's going on over there at

[00:58:53] the coiled island to gain access uh to the ultimate the tech power that is there i really hope that this is and i know i've heard other people say this i really hope this isn't the end end of zuljan because i have really enjoyed watching both him and Zul'jara i think they're both great characters as you know you know me died in the wool alliance but this troll story i have really enjoyed

[00:59:19] watching play out and i can understand everybody's reasoning for doing kind of what they've been doing so for you or guy what do you think about all this i think zuljan is based and poison peeled frankly um no i do i do really like zuljan um i haven't done i haven't done the full story yet

[00:59:46] obviously the the season itself hasn't started um the new the new sets look fantastic and you know me like when i see a cool bit of transmog i kind of find myself because i was honestly i was honestly thinking of skipping this season um because i've been so busy at work and you know everything's been nightmarish and chaotic yep and i saw the transmog and i was like oh boy that is a really cool

[01:00:19] looking venomous gladiator silk armor do i want to grind 2400 writing again and i think maybe i do yeah you do yeah i do um so i thought you know what i'll play it anyway um also i miss my guild a little bit you know um yeah but i also saw people on twitter saying that it was good you know saying

[01:00:45] that like the coiled isle events which i haven't unlocked yet they're saying like the coiled isle events are pretty cool the coiled isle itself is a cool area um obviously the story is pretty interesting and like i saw some people saying things like um oh it's so weird that zalatath's kind of out of the picture now and it's all about zuljan and i think that they do that very intentionally to give us a

[01:01:09] break from zalatath you know which i appreciate if i i'm so i i like zalatath but i'm so sick of elyria man i hope i hope i hope zalatath kills her off for good because i just i never want to see elyria ever again she's so whiny and annoying and one-dimensional i just can't stand elyria windrow

[01:01:31] um but uh yeah it's like i think it is nice to get a break um there are still there are a lot of things about warcraft these days that bug me from a philosophical perspective i think i do think that still the writing's a little bit you know saturday morning cartoon you know compared to like you know warcraft 3 for example i mean i was playing warcraft 3 recently um i was doing some nostalgia

[01:01:59] tripping uh for reasons which might become apparent um after blizzcon but um but uh i was you know i was playing warcraft 3 and i was just like you know warcraft 3 still has this sort of cartoony vibe to it right it still has got the goblins the silly goblins but it had this like it had this edge to it right and i've also been doing a lot of warhammer 40k at the moment and i was like a lot of a lot of

[01:02:29] a lot of blizzards properties emerged out of the fact that they couldn't get the warhammer license you know so warcraft is their warhammer starcraft is this warhammer 40k right um and you can really feel that inspiration in old school starcraft and old school warcraft where it was like it's still a bit cartoony like 40k like 40k is like it's grim but it's also a bit cartoony and a bit

[01:02:57] silly like the orcs for example in the orcs in warhammer 40k are very they're very tongue-in-cheek and silly but it's like it's still very adult though it's very very adult you know if we're being serious warcraft was never that that adult you know it was never that gritty but at least it had like a bit of bite and a bit of edge and i do i do like i do like um we we talked before about what medicine said

[01:03:25] not medicine has it cost us eon said when i interviewed him and he said like one of the things he's seen in modern times is that everyone kind of shares the same kind of feedback based on what their favorite influencer says it's kind of what he said and like i saw what he said it was yeah yeah it's a paraphrasing but like and i kind of agree with that to some degree but i do think

[01:03:50] like when i sit there and use like metacognition and really really think deeply about how i feel about modern warcraft one of the things that i do agree with that is the consensus is that the writing is lost its bite its edge its balls frankly um you know like that nothing ever seems like the stakes never seem that high you know there's never there's never any horror or there's never

[01:04:18] anything horrific these days there's never anything like um the last time they did it was when they burned the tree down right and there was there was i loved that so much i was like that is badass and i think you were in the minority though i was definitely minority i i i think the player base is kind of swung i think i think the issue with the tree burning was the resolution was handled badly like they're

[01:04:45] trying to they're trying to humanize sylvanus again and and i think like the the reasons for burning the tree didn't make a lot of sense but it was it was in the burning that it was like there was there was like a flavor of the calling of strathol you know i think they just they handled it badly and i think that's what the backlash was too really was the way that whole story arc was handled because

[01:05:09] but it all it all felt really out of character for sylvanas i think sylvanas had sort of she'd flirted with immoral things you know if you've done the hills bag quests or the you know the the wargan quests from cataclysm you'll know what i mean but like it felt like it felt out of character for her and and that's fine if they couldn't figure out a way of justifying it has she just gone mad you know does she does she

[01:05:37] know something we don't know and that was kind of like they led us on for months and years frankly and even now she's teasing that she knows something about the shadowlands that we don't know i think that's i think that's really why people were pissed off but i think since because of that backlash i do think blizzard is now scared to do right anything with any kind of edge in it any kind of edge blizzard

[01:06:01] seems to be scared to do it so i suppose like when i look at what they're doing with ziljan and ziljara and stuff like that i'm hoping that it resolves in a way that doesn't feel like oh friendship has won the day again friendship is magic everyone's happy and smiley smiley and ziljan ziljara kiss and make up i mean not on the lips obviously because well i don't know i mean maybe they that went inclined i don't know but um very game of thrones yeah but game of thrones i mean

[01:06:31] fuck it do it do it you know that'd give it some edge you know it's a bit controversial but you know it's game of thrones is popular right now i digress um i just hope that like it resolves in a way that doesn't feel like oh it's fucking powerpuff girls again you know or something like that so i'm tentatively optimistic about the direction it's taking um some of the in the initial sequences

[01:06:57] when uh what's her face or when you're a wayner or winner i don't like her either she's lame um when she she gathered all the elves and trolls together and there's a lot of um there's a lot of extra dialogue like you know stay a while in listen scenes where like they they talk about a lot of the things that people complained about which is like why do the elves suddenly love each other like

[01:07:24] why are they forgetting about all of their past grievances they start talking about those grievances again and that that kind of it felt to me like they've heard the feedback that they moved the what moved on from that too quickly so um it was nice to see them remain cognizant of the fact that these this is generational hate yeah it's very naive and utopic thinking to think that you can just

[01:07:49] erase all that overnight yeah and and i think it's that kind of writing that makes it feel like a saturday morning cartoon because if you do live in a country where like there are recent examples of generational hate cycles like you know northern ireland for example what i've seen an island of

[01:08:12] britain and and colonialism and all the rest of it you can choose to either be a cartoony kind of game that doesn't touch on complicated real life topics or you have to treat them with realism and respect and i think like i think like a lot of what happens in warcraft is allegorical to things that have happened in real life to some degree and it has to be because it's it's such a huge complicated kind

[01:08:41] of world now um so i don't know i think that's why i like zoolzhan is because he's not letting it go like you hear him when he when they have these interactions where he's like you they failed us like it doesn't matter how long ago it might have been that the loa failed us or like what's happened since then like he's he's entrenched in that and so it does feel like there is that going on along

[01:09:08] with to your point there's even some dialogue on the on the main quest line through the coiled isle where they ask like liadrin's there but they're like where's lorthomar they're like yeah no like yeah lothmar doesn't want to help no and that makes sense yeah it makes sense that makes sense so yeah lothmar seems um lothmar the whole way through seemed a bit kind of like he's been among the most

[01:09:34] skeptical and he should like he's seen like he's seen the full scale of the war between the amani and the amani and the uh the high elves and then the blood elves you know you see all that shit and you know as someone who's been playing wow for the for its entire lifespan i have killed thousands of

[01:09:57] amani like i read i raided solomon myself right for an entire season and grinded that fucking bare mount i was gonna say did you get your bare mount i didn't but um my guild did i did that was a hard one that was a very difficult one for those that don't know yeah um but you know

[01:10:20] it's it's weird to sort of i'm glad they're not glazing over it you know yeah and i suppose um it's it's become kind of odd i suppose as a as i suppose a citizen of azeroth because it's it's it's ultimately what our player characters are right they're citizens of azeroth they're kind of like yeah with these powerful with the champion we we see we we have political influence and all the rest

[01:10:49] of it but we've also we've also potentially if you're a veteran you've been directly involved in these conflicts a lot of like i would have been looting these amani dudes for bejus or something in another patch um all the all that like that's right it's all grubb no that's the gurubashi but you know all that all the loot and stuff i can't remember if the gurubashi and amani are like

[01:11:17] related in some way or they're separate empires gurubashi empire is separate to the amani right were they allied at some point i can't remember troll troll troll lore is very complicated and i'm not gonna pretend that i know i know all of that off my heart yeah um i remember there's um because i play on an rp server and they used to what was that called now there was a legendary eu troll guild called the second gurubashi empire and they were like they were so

[01:11:47] anal about lore accuracy so like i had friends in that guild and like i learned a lot of the troll lore from how how strict they were about you must know all of this lore about the gurubashi and the amani and all the rest of the troll tribes because it is it is quite deep you know and i'm rambling a bit now but um but that's why people get so passionate about this stuff is because all this

[01:12:11] all this law that they're touching on has literal decades of books and precedent and established law and history that blizzard is potentially walking all over to tell a sort of potentially disneyfied maybe even preachy kind of story and that's kind of my fear with this little john thing because you know and like i say we don't we don't get political on this show or whatever but there is

[01:12:40] there is this stereotype with west coast american game devs who like to sort of inject certain narratives into games and you know and i'm not like i'm not red-pilled and i'm not going in that direction when i say this right but it does feel like um there's a as a european there's a lot of

[01:13:05] american exceptionalism when it comes to discussing these topics i think personally and um so um and it's like americans often like to think they know what it's like you know to their experience is all encompassing it's kind of you know kind of sometimes i feel like some some americans behave that way on

[01:13:28] both on both sides you know this is that's not a political comment necessarily um so i'm i'm worried about where they'll take the zoolzhan thing is it just going to be like oh he's a toxic man doing poison things because he's got he's got masculinity issues and you know because he feels inadequate and stuff you know i'm just i just like am i gonna am i gonna be rolling my eyes by the end of this

[01:13:55] or is he gonna do something cool and badass you know he's probably gonna die i mean that's probably what they're gonna do you know he gets taken over is he gonna die a hero holy venom spirit and then that's it yeah i mean i remember like um i think one of one of the things that like i think a lot of people didn't like about sylvanas's story arc with the tree was that um she uh it felt like

[01:14:26] she ran away from her convictions almost you know um that's sort of like and i think that's why like garosh is so appealing to certain segments of the player base myself included because he was so unrepentant you know he was un repentant to the end to the better end

[01:14:46] he was he was he was angry in hell you know and that's not potentially a good way to be as in real life but it's fun to watch in a fictional setting you know whereas like i feel like every single world character now that nowadays is like oh i'm sorry i i didn't mean to do that oh i had trauma you

[01:15:11] know and all that kind of thing give us more there's a lot of that i agree i just want more unrepentant dicks you know and let if zuljan wants to go down this path i'd be i'd be interested to see him become an unrepentant dick like um zulgin i don't know i mean they killed that cool uncle uh you know the the lowest speaker they killed him and he he seemed momentarily upset but then kind of

[01:15:39] got over it so yeah he's he's moving forward but yeah i i all that stuff that you're touching on i think is is really front of mind heading into this patch and this part of the story of like how do they handle it people have been talking about it for a while about how concerned they are with you've you've set up some interesting stakes you've set up some interesting character work here

[01:16:03] like is the payoff going to be appropriate for what that is so i that is that is a concern that i am seeing it's a credit to blizzard's writing that people do feel invested in zuljan i think like i was watching a cutscene where uh i won't spoil it but there's a there's a cutscene like near the start of the coil dial story where um zuljan has an interaction with his sister zuljara and it's not like game

[01:16:32] thrones but um they uh they uh there's there's just there's a there's a moment where zuljan looks back at zuljarat and the facial the facial work the ex like his his facial expressions are so detailed when he's sort of like he's looking back like like you know sort of dismissively and i just noticed

[01:17:00] like there's a lot of amazing character acting delivered through that almost looked like facial motion capture and i was like was that hand did they hand animate that they get they just continue to improve those in in-game cutscenes they're amazing now yeah like he's like when it's like i know there's there's like there's like two levels of in-engine cutscenes there's like the in-engine cutscene

[01:17:26] where it's like you know it's just the character models moving around and then there's like the full-blown in-engine sort of machinima style pre-rendered cutscene yeah and then there's then you get like your full-blown cgi cutscene like at the start of the expansion but like the the in-engine pre-rendered cutscenes like they're just like so good now and i think that's another reason why like people feel invested in zuljan because he's so expressive he's really really expressive and

[01:17:54] there it's um but yeah i just but people are nervous because lizard tends to take good characters and then and good story arcs and then somehow them up like we saw with the tree you know because i i love that i love burning the tree bro i can't tell you how much i love the whole patch i think you talk about it at least every episode if not every other murdering i just like i'm surprised you don't have

[01:18:22] a tattoo of a burning teldrassil like going up your arm somewhere that's not a bad idea bro with a little catapult i hate that tree Sylvanas did nothing smoking husk you know yeah a little make a character yeah mate i just want diverse characters that just do that don't all behave in the same way like this is what i'm yearning for out of worldcraft and yeah zuljan is like

[01:18:51] like if you look at like liadrin varissa and hyleria okay like varissa and hyleria sisters so that that makes sense to some degree yeah all of the sort of hero characters that follow us around like they all behave in the same kind of way and it's this gets really boring man like they're only aesthetically different in some regards i don't know listen that's one of the reasons why

[01:19:16] i'm a varian rin person because like oh gosh he's just going out there and whooping ass and you know it may not have always been the right decision yeah he kind of softened towards the end but like he was very deep in his convictions about like i'm just gonna go out there and fuck shit up because that's that's my role that's my gig that's what i'm good at that's how i protect my people

[01:19:40] and there was there was a strength to that that i think you know resonates with some of us in a different way whereas i to your point there does seem to be a lot more like oh i'm not sure if i should do this i i feel a sense of they're also yeah they're all so unsure of themselves like yeah what like like like talia what's her name talia fordring is it talia uh talia yeah and then

[01:20:06] does it tessa grayman yes they are both the same character and like tessa grayman is so lame compared to gen grayman like gen was like a badass test screaming that's right test grammar yeah gen was like this badass who's like angry and hated the forsaken and that was cool and then they replaced them with like this shrinking violet kind of like oh i'm unsure and oh maybe the horde aren't

[01:20:36] that but you know it's almost like i want it's just like war i want violence i want death i want dead more rugged than that no maybe a little bit maybe maybe i'm misremembering but i just want more death that's a death slaughter and well it's coming it's coming i still feel confident that this expansion is going out on a low note we're like we're gonna get our asses handed to us and it's

[01:20:58] gonna be some bad shit i i still think that so that's that's essentially where we are on the story now we're heading into raid week and i assume we see a cinematic in like a few days it's the end of the raid and we'll find out you know more what happens and then they've already they've already

[01:21:21] teased for us the next chapter of picking up the hunt for zalatath so it it does feel like this is you know a momentary stop and it's going to have some sort of resolution but then somehow it feeds into okay now we're back on the hunt for zalatath so the respite at least in terms of what we know about the story it might be a little quick but you know these seasons tend to go on for a while so it's going

[01:21:50] to be a little bit until we pick that up so um that is that is the story that we're at we're seeing zuljan he's trying to get this ancient power that the amani's used to have in the form of ulatek this fucking giant oh snake serpent hydra something this is all kinds of bad um and we're doing this in the coiled aisle which has as some of us know have been there already plenty of outdoor activities

[01:22:20] uh you've got vaults of ulatek which i think is the i think that's the new dungeon dungeon uh oh new dungeons altar fangs that's right new dungeon is altar fangs we got a three boss dungeon there uh the eight boss raid that opens this week the venomous abyss uh we have new layers which are the new world boss uh versions i don't know if you had a chance to check those out yet the new world boss

[01:22:44] yeah instance i tried i tried it it's you know it's just a loop in your not very interesting so the world lost now works the same way that like a delve does right where you go to the location and then you queue up and it depends because there's uh normal heroic and mythic difficulties now is that right yeah like you can um well i did the world the world boss version so like that was really easy but i didn't try and hide of course i don't know if that's like gonna be a thing where you i suppose it's

[01:23:14] gonna be a thing where you pug it and stuff and like i suppose people will learn the tactics all the time but yeah i mean it's a cool idea it's similar to what um final fantasy 14 does with its trials right they're just like one boss instances but it's like it's not like blizzard hasn't done it before it's that's what anixia was that's what um uh you know gruel's lair had two bosses in it so it's not like there's not not precedent i suppose it's it's it's pretty cool that they've sort of

[01:23:44] made it a staple kind of feature i guess yeah we also have uh and i haven't had access to these yet so i'm curious how these go we're gonna have two sort of player progression systems there's going to be the altar of corrosion which is going to have a bunch of talents that we unlock uh the first one that i know i'm going to be gunning for someone that reduces the amount of damage you take from uh walking over the poison some of the areas uh that venom neutralization i think is

[01:24:10] going to be a big deal uh along with the corrosive codex which is going to have uh it's kind of connected to this a whole other set of abilities that you can unlock and the the currency that you need for those uh for these to unlock these corrosive uh powers only corrosive souls which you'll get by just doing activities that you usually do uh and you can have uh one at a time until i think you unlock

[01:24:38] six or eight and then you can have two at a time so you can mix match and get different crazy powers and you know venom all over the place uh and it and it works in all the zones so it's not just uh well dials i don't think so you can you can take that anywhere uh let's see what else we got here we have yeah the venomous abyss eight bosses jez you'll have to tell me how that goes because i'll probably

[01:25:04] see it on raid finder and there's probably going to be about it uh but uh we've got uh this week august 18th will be normal heroic mythic in raid finder wing one uh august 25th get story mode people like me uh raid finder wing two and then september 1st will be wing three september 8th will be wing four as we unlock uh all of that uh fun stuff the primeval sky friend is the mythic mount that's a

[01:25:32] great name i think is terrifying so there's no chance that i'm gonna be uh doing any of that uh but jez maybe the biggest thing for me housing updates lots of housing updates big housing updates uh we got blueprints now so if you're if you're super lazy and you don't want to do anything and you just want a super cool house you want to take somebody else's version of it now you can't uh i i saved my current

[01:25:59] one and blew it up and then put it back into place so i can vouch for the blueprints working i don't know if it's always gonna work but it's working now uh you can place a bunch of pet beds now you can have up to 100 pets roaming your house jez so i don't know what pets you're gonna choose but uh but you can do that a bunch of new decor all the usual stuff um added some some really cool rooms uh that

[01:26:27] are like these pre-made i think they're calling them artisanal rooms so uh there's a there's a couple different flavors of these things but i know for me had to pick up all the stormwind ones there's like an armory it's just you know it's just the outline of stuff it's not like there's things placed in it um but there was an armory a kitchen uh like a display hall a great hall kind of thing uh all all sorts of stuff and then there's the westfall barn if you really want that fall feeling you know you can

[01:26:57] get the westfall barn and get your scarecrow and your pumpkins out and all that sort of shit uh but uh big big updates there um so yeah overall in this patch yeah you've got the zone you got vault of ulitek public events cursed surges cursed fishing jez i know you're all about cursed fishing uh the venomous abyss raid altar fangs uh there will be i think three looking for the

[01:27:23] delves there's three new delves i believe um the ring of glory narledor isle and venom fall deeps which is the nemesis del uh so uh the homie ramo and i uh will definitely be checking those out and of course season two begins uh this coming week our cantina quests for people like me who don't get all bent out of shape about what's going on in there and i know some people got all pissed last time about

[01:27:50] it breaking certain lore things but you know what life moves on it'll be all right it'll be fine uh jez i can play with bots now in pvp so you might actually hear me about doing some pvp stuff i might actually do it you know it might be coming um and then uh new endeavors that's also the other housing thing we've got some new uh endeavors i know right now it's the uh it's the imani a troll

[01:28:19] one just so everybody can get a hold of that and see that uh there's a kobold one and onarin centaur one which i guess people like them enough that they get their own endeavor uh and tortolans i'm surprised it took that long everybody loves those fucking turtles so there's gonna be even though you have to kill i think a few uh possessed ones in the new raids so try to try not to enjoy

[01:28:43] knocking off those tortolans uh too much but in a in a nutshell that's what we've got right now and we'll be looking at this uh patch for quite some time as these uh big ones tend to be and i assume with blizzcon a month out probably gonna see something pretty quick about what's coming next and that way they can lay out what's going on at blizzcon about what you know what the big stuff is so

[01:29:12] uh on to blizzcon as a as a segue for us um i did talk some time ago about tickets and planning and access and like what's going on and uh jez for you still coming as as press yes you're still you're still gonna be there doing the doing the press thing

[01:29:36] yeah in theory in theory so this is this is i don't know maybe insider baseball type thing but for the for the content creator side of things it appears that the press access has been significantly limited um i didn't get press access which doesn't mean shit really but i don't know but one content creator

[01:30:02] who did and it's one of the big ones um there are other big ones that did not um i don't know what the strategy is i don't know what the budget is i don't know what's going on um i inquired as best i could but you know they're typically tight-lipped about these things as they kind of have to be uh so i don't have press access this year so it's just gonna be

[01:30:27] be and a homie rommel and jez hanging out having fun and then just gotta go work and then we're gonna go i don't know raid the food truck or something while he's got to go do an interview and then we'll pick him back up and then go hang out and do more cool stuff um so maybe jez can bring us down some free lunches we'll see we'll see what they've got set up um but uh did get invited uh to something for content

[01:30:56] creators so i i hope i'm not like giving away the store here but um i did get invited to something so i'm sure there'll be some pictures and video and media of that so i am very lucky and i grateful i should say to be at least looped into that and it sounds like that's kind of the main thing for us folks so i do want to thank blizzard for thinking of little old me uh whenever putting

[01:31:23] some of this stuff together because it does sound like some things have changed uh we don't know right now what the schedule for blizzcon is i assume a month out we should be finding out something about what they've got planned and where things will be and maybe this last minute decision making and i'm not gonna ask you to spoil anything but jez you seem to be pretty positive that this is gonna be a good blizzcon or there's gonna be

[01:31:50] some pretty wild shit happening so am i correct in this assumption well you know i uh i'm not gonna spoil anything but i have heard some really interesting stuff rumors okay there's a couple of things i'm really really hoping are true okay if you've been listening to the show for a while you know what kind

[01:32:13] of things i want blizzard to do uh-huh um one of the things i've heard is very exciting um but i think there's if another couple of things are true i think a bunch of folks are going to be happy um i think it seems like they're going hard for the anniversary because you know it's their 35th anniversary this year right and it's sort of oh is it or is that 40th this year something like that um

[01:32:42] it's diablo's 30th is it blizzard's 30th blizzard's 30th anniversary maybe uh okay so it's blizzard it's i think it's blizzard it's just blizzard's 30th anniversary okay okay oh was it how was that last year no that was warcraft's 30th was last year yeah i don't know it's some some some important date yeah um like and bethesda had their anniversary

[01:33:08] this year and xbox is having their anniversary this year so it feels like they're they're doing a lot of fan servicey kind of stuff this year and then if you saw if you saw quake con they they bought wolfenstein 3d to xbox backwards compatibility with play anywhere which was fun you know

[01:33:30] um so uh you know there's a lot of i think there's there could be some cool shit but again i don't know 100 if what i've heard is true but uh yeah yeah i'm pretty yeah do you think because my assumption is here we have 12.1 just came out i think we're all assuming that this expansion

[01:33:52] gets to a 12 2 and then we're looking at last titan do you think given the timing of how this all works out do you think that we're gonna get a little bit of last titan stuff do you think we're gonna see like a cinematic do you think it's just gonna be kind of some general thematic things that they're gonna dance around what what do you think is the likelihood we see like something big

[01:34:19] for last time i think they'll i think they'll go big for last time okay um they've done that before where it's like they talk about the final patch of the expansion but also the last and then the next expansion i think like i think there's a good chance them there isn't a blizzcon next year okay um uh because i know microsoft and whatever wants to save money and i do think they've got a lot of cool

[01:34:45] shit to show all at once here blizzcon is also a very expensive event to put on like it doesn't it doesn't make them any money like even tickets because the tickets are really expensive but putting on an event on the west coast is monstrously expensive yeah um and also it detracts from dev time you know so that cost that has monetary cost too so true and again this is just my

[01:35:11] speculation my speculation is that um we probably don't get blizzcon next year and they go super hard this year and that maybe like any other blizzardy kind of announcements they either put in the xbox show or gamescom next year instead of having a full-blown blizzcon but i think this year they're going to go really hard for blizzcon um and uh maybe blizzcon comes back the year after

[01:35:39] maybe they'll do it on the on a buy a buy yearly basis moving forward i don't know but that's just speculation i'm just very excited for what we're going to see yeah for every franchise that blizzard has yeah every single one feels like it's going to be big like everybody's going to get a piece of the pie this time and i mean everybody and that's going to be awesome so i think yeah you'll know jezz will know when certain things pop up even if we're not in the same place together you know that there's

[01:36:08] going to be at least i'm gonna you know two two drops of pee might be squeezed out of me out of excitement just just sitting in my seat and be super excited so on that note you know this was something that um was talked about right after we went on break because it kind of popped up again but i wanted to talk about it uh just a little bit with you is there was not you you there was a screenshot

[01:36:34] i want to say this was like a couple of years ago that somebody had taken of what was purportedly a confidential presentation document and it had a whole bunch of stuff on it you know there's no confirmation of what it is or is it true or whatever the thing is but if you look at the classic slash camelot it's the second row there of items it was recently data mined that there is

[01:37:01] something related to classic with a code name camelot tied to it and once people saw that and dug this back up freak outs galore because if you look at this i'm gonna i'm gonna blow this up so hopefully people can see this we're looking at top line it's warcraft you got war within you got midnight and then last titan whatever's after that and then whatever's after that so you can see they're like trucking along

[01:37:28] and so far what we've experienced has kind of matched this mind you this is a few years old now then you've got classic and they're showing kind of the roll out of classic and then below it whatever this camelot thing is and opinions vary about what it could be is this classic plus is this mobile something whatever that might be below that you have warcraft chronicles rts and with a little bubble that says anime series above it which holy shit if that was ever true we've all been screaming

[01:37:55] for years why is there not an anime why is there not a uh animated something why is there not a live action something well if you look below that there's something about arthur's in a live action arthur's series which i have also seen other screenshots that people have reportedly taken of a whiteboard that had the entire show like worked out by episode of like who and what and what that

[01:38:20] might look like and so with that fresh data mining coming out this suddenly gained a whole lot of relevance and interest again and i know that you see things that people tell you things or share things with you so i don't want i certainly don't want you to betray anything that you may have been taken had to take into confidence but has this rung true to you in terms of like

[01:38:45] on the horizon from back then well it's weird right because um i thought like if i was like one of these grifter kind of youtubers i'd be sitting there like oh yeah i totally knew about all this i'll be i'll be completely honest i know i haven't seen anything about camelot yeah i haven't seen anything

[01:39:07] about warcraft chronicles rts yeah all the author's action rpg yeah okay this franchise slate so um uh uh it's hard to say without spoilers yeah um i'll say this i don't i don't want to push too hard we'll get you in trouble you're in the good graces these days my my belief is that blizzard is building

[01:39:30] up an rts team again put it that way so i don't know if that's sort of like um for this chronicles thing for example i have no idea what warcraft chronicles is but um i've heard of all the rts projects that are in the works yeah um so and i i think the my expectation is that they're slowly

[01:39:57] working their way back to making rts games similar to how microsoft kind of put together ensemble veterans to make world's edge to bring uh warcraft um age of empires back so age of empires has done very very very well for microsoft um it's a very niche genre but those

[01:40:22] users are highly engaged and extremely passionate and i think like in an era where fortnite just kind of dominates everything fortnite and roblox and whatever having like a smaller but heavily engaged hyper passionate fan base is worth having even if it's a small niche like an rts so evidence i've seen suggests that yeah blizzard is working towards making real-time strategy games again

[01:40:50] i'm not going to say what that looks like now but um i am if what i've heard is true i am pretty excited and it doesn't what i've heard doesn't necessarily line up with this warcraft chronicles thing but um i hope that that's where we're going with this with some of these other projects that i've heard of if that makes sense yeah yeah i mean obviously i'll eat anything that they serve me but

[01:41:20] you know to me i always go back to and this is something we haven't even talked about yet either is you know when edge runners came out what that did for cyberpunk and the edge runners and just as an aside the edge runners 2 trailer looks fucking insane and it got me so hyped up i started another street kid runs actually during the break i've been running through cyberpunk again uh just because i was

[01:41:47] like oh my god i'm feeling the i'm feeling the juice uh but you saw what that did to the franchise and especially for warcraft there's just always been so much meat on that bone that they have not done anything with other than one movie that got really fucked with and despite duncan jones's best attempts and some insane cgi on those fucking orcs it didn't really land the way that they wanted it to and so we

[01:42:15] didn't get to go anywhere else but it's it's the universe is just tailor-made for an anime or a live action or something that you can actually take the time and breathe the life into it and you know the Arthas story the the the kind of Arthasianist legend of that it's easy for a lot of people to pick

[01:42:39] that up i think um if that is in fact something that they were thinking about doing um an anime christ you could pick any era really and run something through even you know probably be smart to start at the beginning so people have a grasp of it from ground zero but man if they win because i still think someday they've got to do it whenever they announce some show or something that they're doing it's gonna

[01:43:06] it's gonna be crazy because people have been clamoring for this forever so seeing this and seeing something giving it some credibility man it it it i think it just makes the hopes for blizzcon that much higher because if you if what you're saying is true like they're gonna shoot their shot here and now because it's gonna be a while till they get another one of the same degree then man alive i can very

[01:43:32] be in a fourth the end towards the end of 26 you can announce stuff that would be mid early 28 why not so yeah this this one got a lot of people hyped and i know there's a bunch of youtube videos and other folks that are out there so if you haven't seen it um you know if you look up i think like reddit leak or something like that i'm sure you can find it um but i had this for you

[01:43:58] and i wanted to i wanted to touch on this uh while we had a chance because it uh it's a crazy one and in a month we're gonna know and then and then we'll come back and we'll talk all about it and see who was right and i think one of the um i think the the interesting concept about the chronicles rts is that like it doesn't necessarily need to interfere with modern established law because like while i'm a bitching complain about the current law what would piss me off even more personally is like

[01:44:27] splitting the timelines or having retroactive continuity and oh i don't i don't really i think kind of like it cheap it cheapens it to me when there's like oh we're gonna do one timeline for this audience and a different timeline yeah i don't like that either yeah it cheapens it to me so i like the idea of like for example like there are wars that have taken place in the universe that

[01:44:54] aren't really depicted very well in an mmo setting yep that perhaps you could really showcase the scale of how they're intended to seem you know um because the way the way i kind of imagine some stuff like

[01:45:14] um for example uh the burning crusade when we invade hellfire citadel and we bust through the dark portal and there's that that like there's all like the horny alliance fighting demons at the portal and stuff like that um they can't depict there's like dozens of soldiers right because if there was hundreds or

[01:45:38] thousands of soldiers right then the servers would explode i guess yeah and also like stormwind is less of a city and more like a village in the game right so compared to the concept art which show showcases is like this huge sprawling mega city base or if you look at the movie or the movie yeah huge sprawling magazine so um you kind of like when you play an mmo you kind of accept that like

[01:46:07] some things are scaled back for gameplay reasons yep like i think they've done a really great job in recent years ramping up that scale like silver moon 2.0 is a great example yeah and um and uh the nightborne city suramar for example that is probably the best city in the game but boy howdy that made my computer

[01:46:29] lag the computer it was laggy um but anyway i digress it's like there's a lot that could do with different mediums like arthur's action rpg warcraft chronicles rts they could show wars that we've you know events in the warcraft universe that have like a different spin on it or from a different perspective without necessarily retconning or breaking the established law or they could do things like remake

[01:46:58] warcraft one and two um you know maybe that's the chronicles bit he's remaking one and two with modern visuals and modern characterization and maybe tidy up some bits of the law that has been retro retro recon for whatever reason um like the the draenei stuff i suppose um you know could they could they go back and remake some of that kind of stuff yeah um and could they go even further back you know because

[01:47:26] world of warcraft's history spans tens of thousands of years could they go all the way back and do like i don't know um the war of the spider or something or could they do like the black empire or or you know i don't know stuff like that you know i suppose um there's a lot of potential there without necessarily breaking the the current timeline but it might not it might not even be true

[01:47:53] why not not even be true why not why not we're gonna we're gonna find out soon enough so there's uh there's your there's your most recent half verified leaks and we'll see we'll see what's coming um at least in terms of what uh what leaks there may be but uh in the meantime there was a very brief leak about something and then they quickly announced it and that is

[01:48:22] dungeons and dragons and world of warcraft do indeed have an official collaboration and it is for sale right now and if ever there was a peanut butter and jelly of the gaming situation it's this because i can't believe it took this long for these two franchises to get together it must have been a hell of a thing to work out i if i recall correctly i think john height who used to work for blizzard and

[01:48:48] was the warcraft gm now works over there at wizards of the coast so um i'm not entirely surprised i guess uh that this is this is finally coming but if you go and you look they've got quite a quite a readout of this thing um we've got let's see six new subclasses that are being introduced oath of the ebon blade and oath of the holy paladin the demon hunter ranger the shadow domain and discipline

[01:49:16] domain cleric and the path of the elements barbarian we have three updated subclasses swashbuckler rogue path of the spiritual guardian barbarian and warrior of mystic bruise monk 16 species from azeroth dracthir draenei earthen forsaken heron here meccanome pandaren tauren troll vulpera and worgen uh let's see what else we got 60 spells 25 magic items 50 monsters 30 dungeon bosses

[01:49:44] seven iconic dungeons reimagined and jolna rub black fathom deeps dead mines dire maul the next season's lair scarlet monastery shadow fang keep and 25 factions to fortify your legacy and there are a whole bunch of versions of this that you can buy including what i'm probably gonna plucking down for which is the ultimate collector's edition which has got all the books and gm screens and all the horse

[01:50:07] shit you could possibly want for a tnt campaign um but i mean this just seems like the most obvious fucking thing of all time and i can't believe it took this long for these franchises to get together um but i was pretty excited to see this it's just it feels it feels right considering how much of

[01:50:29] warcraft's dna like comes out of dnd like it's it's it's always felt like an unofficial tribute in a way i guess so i'm glad to see that they finally buried the uh the business hatchet on this uh to get it done but what was uh what was your reaction when you heard about this i mean i guess i mean they've

[01:50:55] done board games and stuff before like you showed some of my friend um i've never played dnd so i don't have much skin in the game but i know oh my gosh it's a it's apparently popular i've heard apparently have you really never played dnd no like i don't have any friends what i've never played oh my mind up no oh my god we gotta figure out a way to sort that

[01:51:24] that just doesn't seem right to me well i guess that'll make our uh q a time pretty interesting then when we get to uh when we get to that because we do have a question about that but yeah if you uh if you are so inclined there there are a variety of versions for this uh of this for sale or pre-order i should say they're not out yet uh but there's a bunch of different ancillary pieces but it's you know

[01:51:50] it's all the great warcraft art going on and you know it's ice crown citadel based uh adventure so you've got all the lich kings again the lich king is still the king i it is no other baddie that comes close i think in the common nerdy zeitgeist it just he's just he's the man that's just what it is even if you got dissolved into a puff of smoke and then less he's still very prominent in people's minds i guess when it comes to when it comes to the franchise so if that is something that you've

[01:52:18] been waiting for there you go you're gonna get your chance so get out there uh and get it now wow and uh that in and of itself is a great segue to our q a and it's been so long uh hopefully i can remember uh which sounded to hit and if i don't hit the right one i'm just gonna edit it out anyway so you guys get the benefit of that so let's see if i guess the right one

[01:52:50] i definitely got that on on the first shot so that's all that's all you people need to know all right uh these are all coming from our discord if you have not joined our discord please join our discord that's where we get our questions that's where i hit the at everyone thing and blast everybody's alerts and shit so i try not to be annoying about it but listen i need help so that's just how it goes the first up coming out uh from storm vintage love that name still what do you guys think of

[01:53:16] this product being the warcraft dnd are you gonna buy it and are you gonna play it yes and yes i don't know when i'm gonna play it i'm definitely gonna buy it because look at this addiction problem that i have if it comes out i have to buy it it's a compulsion some some people it's boozing some people it's cocaine some people it's uh pcp for me it's warcraft shit if you put warcraft shit out here it's gonna happen

[01:53:44] because let me tell you in a few months hey look at that in a few months i don't know how i don't know how i'm gonna do it but there should be a one-sixth bust of a very handsome man sitting back here somewhere that i have paid a lot of money for like a year ago uh because that's just i'm just i'm just a for all this stuff and that's how it goes so yes gonna buy it gonna play it at some point

[01:54:15] jez with that admission from earlier i don't know i don't know if you're gonna play it if you're gonna have it but uh why are you digging around down there i just i just i just realized like because i've come back i've come back to england for the first time in a while and i just realized like there's a pile of pile of boxes here from like various companies have sent me various things

[01:54:38] there's a collection edition warcraft collection edition and cruising wow boy there's a stalker 2 collection edition good to be the king look at his right it's it's you know there's a fallout 76 thing over there as well like i haven't been i haven't been back for for like months so wow i just got a pile of when you talked about boxes and stuff i was like oh yeah i've got boxes here as well

[01:55:05] so you'll you'll play it if somebody sends it to you is that what you're trying to tell me i mean i try i haven't i haven't played crimson desert at all and i haven't written a single article about so i do not know why they've sent me a collection edition but i appreciate it very very much because you're the man that's why i should probably give it a go what's in this box

[01:55:34] spotify the spotify sent me something as well what yeah i i've got no idea what this is i hear live unboxings are very popular so we'll we'll let this go on let's see what happens here it says spotify logo i don't know what it is it is a oh so this is for the xbox 2 podcast and it's a little

[01:56:04] a little award what the fuck we won apparently we've won a spotify wrapped award for the xbox 2 the night owl so i don't know what that means but well congratulations you're never gonna win anything on this podcast so it's probably good that you're bringing some of that award juice oh and a sound thing sonos oh that's pretty good sonos bar those are good

[01:56:33] is it bluetooth it's a bluetooth speaker yeah oh well thank you very much by far yeah sorry it's random wow it's probably wrapped and are these chocolates i think they're chocolate yes they are chocolates see for those of you that listen or have listened to this podcast or watch this thing for as long this is this is what a real podcast gets they they get awards and

[01:57:03] not like this well you know we get the hand-me-downs and a half empty amstead light bottles this is this is jesus christ these chocolates are melted because it's been summer so they're good pretty old though now that's the closest this show is ever going to get to a spotify

[01:57:26] award so at least at least it happened once it's good and a water bottle a bottle of water uh sorry i'm just i'm just unboxing things now well jezz's uh adhd takes home we're gonna go on to the next question uh something to think about while you're while you're looking at your

[01:57:52] goodies there uh we got a question from chat van who asked while most of us agree that the eight week patch cycle is too ambitious i can't help but feel like i'm so done with the current content is the patch cadence actually working better than we realize and uh to that i say it depends on as a you know we're talking about addictions it depends on how addicted you are i think to the game if you

[01:58:16] play it regularly and you wear out the content then yes it probably is because you are spending the time to consume everything that they've got and you can do it if you've got the time i just think that most of the player base just doesn't not anymore i feel like we're just generally older because as jez has talked about many times this game has a difficult time picking up new people and so this there's this

[01:58:43] tranche of us just kind of moving through time and getting older and we just don't have the time so i i think i think if you can do it sure i think it works great if you can't do it then i still think it's too short i don't know i don't know mr award winner what do you think i am i wrote i literally wrote an article bitching about the patch cadence

[01:59:08] so i did but like part of me is just thinking like maybe blizzard's right you know because um i i i i did go pretty hardcore last season i've never done the pvp grind before um i did i unlocked every single set all the way up to mythic and did the 3000 mythic plus right in i got pretty damn

[01:59:35] burned out i kind of like how hard i went on it yeah but um i'm ready to come back now so maybe the patch cadence is fine i think like those mini patches in the middle but i completely ignored those mini patches in the middle yeah so part of me is wondering like would it maybe be better to

[01:59:57] scrap those and work on more content for the main patch and just sort of have like a bigger blowout that can last a bit longer i don't know um i do wonder how like how much value blizzard gets out of those mini patches um i can't imagine this as much as these big bigger tentpole ride patches but um

[02:00:22] i assume blizzard's got a lot of telemetry and they know far better than me exactly unlike them uh but blizzard doesn't have spy firewood chocolate so maybe i don't know that's coffee that's delicious oh my god now i feel like you're just rubbing it in i don't know i don't know my ego can only handle so

[02:00:50] all right last question and jez jez i i think i outdid myself uh for this q a question i'm really i'm really proud of this one and you may disagree with some of the choices that i've made here um but i did i i let my own adhd take hold and i kind of had a little hyper focus on something when i got asked so here we go this is from uh professor rig also known as lore bites who is one of the

[02:01:20] again one of the wonderful content creators i've seen on tick tock who's constantly putting out hilarious shit and i'm like i don't know how people are smart enough to do this but god bless them they are what kind of music would you think all of the major racial leaders in wow would listen to bonus points if it's a kind of metal so jez i thought about this and i was like bonus points you want to give me bonus points i want all the bonus points so here's what i did for those that have

[02:01:49] been around you might have seen a documentary about the history of heavy metal you might have seen in that document they put out a chart of the heavy metal family tree and so what i did was i took our heavy metal family tree and i assigned who i just picked as the racial leaders or main leaders in world of warcraft and i made this chart

[02:02:15] so you may disagree with who i chose or what i put them under well here we go i'll blow this up a little bit it's a little hard to read because it is big uh but oh wow or anduin anduin uh you'll see him kind of in the middle i put him under thrash metal i just felt like you know really hard on this he's he's probably a metallica guy you know maybe anthrax he understands the the difference between metallica and megadeth and when he's staring off into the abyss he's just he's just jamming sanitarium

[02:02:44] because it's the last thing holding them together for night elf i picked tyrande and tyrande she's uh third row kind of in the middle she's a glam metal fan she just seems like somebody who's rocking the crew on a regular basis and when girls girls girls comes on she's just whooping ass and taking names uh for the dwarves that picked muriden and of course i had to pick power metal for burden dwarf

[02:03:08] you know you know he's rocking the man of war and the do and uh wind rose who sang the diggy diggy hole and hammer fall i mean hammer fall come on i have to go with power metal for the gnomes mecha torque mecha torque is clearly an industrial metal fan he's off on the right you see he's on the fourth row on the right you know white zombie definitely a white zombie fan uh rob zombie fan uh maybe he's getting

[02:03:37] into a little bit of the static x you know from back in the day like he just seems like an industrial metal guy draenei velin he's old he's very old so there's only one answer early metal way at the top of the tree deep purple led zeppelin like he was there when it was created that's that's the only that's the only version of this that makes sense uh for the worgen as we talked about earlier test gray mane test gray mane third row all the way on the right she seems like a goth metal fan to me

[02:04:07] somebody who is you know rocking out typo negative on a regular basis this just this just feels like her jam when she's up there holding the wall the gray mane wall uh for orc gotta go with thrall gotta go with the classics third row on the left he's a grunge fan he's rocking the alice and chains when he's out there in the grand wondering what he's done with his life you know he's he's rocking some

[02:04:33] stone temple pilots sound garden you know that that's that's his jam he's a little bit older but he still knows he still knows how to throw it down patrols rock on norwegian black metal it just seems very trolly dimu borgir has got to be in his playlist it just he seems like the kind of guy that he's throwing that on he's like you know what i'm throwing on some cradle of

[02:04:59] filth and i'm gonna fuck some shit up that just that just feels like rokan to me uh tauren bane stoner metal what other choice is there like you know that guy is up there rocking out just with that with that with that kind of that kind of vibe it's just it just seems like something you would listen to when you're sitting up on a tall outcropping in the in the middle of nowhere which is grassy plains out before you that just that just seems like the kind of thing i would do

[02:05:27] and don't worry i will post this whole thing in our discord so you can see it up close i know this is a little difficult to see uh but you'll i'll post it in this everybody can see and get your hands on it you can argue with me uh forsaken i picked lillian voss i had to pick one one individual death metal is there anything else for forsaken than death metal you could tell me that there probably is but she just seems like a cannibal corpse fan all day long rocking hard to corpse

[02:05:53] grinder and then maybe a little bit of dying fetus at the end of the night to kind of slow things down uh before it's time to rest uh blood elf lorthamar he's a new wave of british heavy metal guy right there third row in the middle he's a motorhead fan look at him tell me he's not a motorhead fan if you're telling me that you're a damn dirty liar because that's absolutely what he listens to motorhead iron maiden diamond head that's his jam i don't want to hear anything else goblin gaslow

[02:06:22] jez this is for you he's a new metal guy second row from the bottom on the right hat he's wearing he's clearly a limp biscuit fan get the fuck out of here there's nothing else that guy listens to limp back uh limp biscuit guys back uh all those guys disturbed avenge sevenfold that is the jam you know that's what he's doing pandaren we have two of them asa and g metal core right there uh

[02:06:48] third row uh from the bottom this is a corrosion of conformity group that's what this is that's what they listen to dillinger escape plan that's all of them and then last but not least track there azura thal and cinder thrash all the way at the bottom new wave of american metal they're chimera fans kill switch engage that's what's going on in that group all day every day so there you go

[02:07:13] those are my choices that is what i've done and i'll hear nothing different that is that is hardcore you should post that on the warcraft subreddit i think i will post it in our discord and i might put it on social media if other people want to post that somewhere they can i'm too scared of that place i'm too scared but i'll let everybody else uh do it but

[02:07:39] uh i could add a few more there's arguments to be made about who's really the leader of what who went and where but uh that is that is what we're doing for now so uh jez you can you can let me know if i did if i did your boy gazlow dirty but that just felt like that felt i think it felt right i agree okay all right so there you go does that have to be uh your your opinions out there folks but uh

[02:08:08] those are mine so all right come past two hours now i think we've done enough damage uh for one episode uh for the good folks that don't know out there where can they find you on the internet jez you can find me at jez cordon on twitter blue sky i don't really post much on blue sky mostly twitter just because

[02:08:33] that's where the action is um i hate it but that's where the action is um uh also over on uh winnercentral.com forward slash gaming and also xbox 2 podcast uh on all the other spotify kind of things there you go board winner go go check it out hear all the things and my thanks to all of you

[02:09:02] as well for tuning in here on youtube or listening on spotify and remember you can always follow me in this show on twitter at berserker rage and unshackled underscore fury as much as i don't like it it's true that's where all the action is that is still where we end up posting most everything on blue sky at berserker and unshackled fury which i really don't use at all but it is there and you can get a hold of us i promise all my alerts are on and shit as well as on youtube at unshackled underscore fury you can also join our discord please do it's where we post a lot of stuff

[02:09:32] links for which are on the profile of the show on twitter and on our website on unshackled fury.com feel free to contact the show with your questions comments or otherwise through any of those 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 and your banners high and we'll see you next time farewell