All right, welcome back to Tea Time with the Bench, where we cover Azrat's most exclusive and hottest drama.

I am joined by today's co hosts Squishy Welcome to Tea Time with the Bench.

Hello, glad to be here.

Do you have your tea tittles yep, Massive jug, Yeah, I have water.

I'm a water drinker and.

We got hailing from the Black Temple Devoured Demon Hunter enjoyer, Tea enjoyer Graul Welcome.

As soon as you said that tea sounded good, I am a tea enjoyer, but I do not have any tea near me.

I'm also a water consumptioner right now, it's.

How there's been.

Yeah, there's been a lot of drama this week, and we're gonna take a lot of time to talk about a decent out of it.

But we also have a bunch of other stuff to cover.

How have you guys been feel about the pre patch?

I guess we can start with the prepatch stuff.

To be honest, I'll start.

I have not logged in, so.

I actually spent I spent this week setting up my UI right alongside a lot of other people, and I've the emotional roller coaster that I've gone through has been interesting.

So at first I struggled a lot with figuring out the new sort of idea of what's going on.

But once I found a setup that I liked and I kind of figured stuff out, it's been starting to grow on me.

So when you developed weak wors for classes, I understand not a lot of people do this, but when you make like a week oors setup for your you know, middle screen UI, it is so how do I say, like manual?

You know, you're like, hey, this spell type it in this spell type Not really Yeah, there's not really any like plug and play or replicatable process.

However, now that it's built into the cool down Manager, once you sort of get all of the styling and everything that you like, it really is, at least with the way my why is set up.

It really was just like, Okay, now I'm logging into my priest.

Okay, here's all my rotational stuff, here's my defensives, here's my utilities, bang bang bang, like make sure everything works.

And it was it took so long to get my very first character set up in a way that I like it.

But as soon as that happened and then I started going from all to all them, like this is almost too easy.

Now.

It is a little weird because I think this is based off of cool that like Blizzard cool Down Manager profiles, which for some reason is separate from edit mode, Like you go into edit mode and then you save like you know whatever, you growl and that's your UI.

Oh yeah, But then the way that your spells are set up, like what order they are and what bucket they're in, is all in the cool Down Manager.

So I've found that to be a little weird.

But it's starting to grow on me a little bit, at least the way the middle like the cool Down Manager plus the I still am not happy that you have to download an add on just to make your cool Down Manager not suck, but it's starting to grow on me.

The add on, you know, the cool Down Manager add on plus cool Down Manager interaction with the having a middle screen UI.

I know a lot of people are probably gonna push back on what you said there.

I will say I've actually been feeling kind of similar, and I'll lay out my thoughts on it.

Where the more I play on Beta, So my UI in Midnight has I would say ninety five to ninety eight percent of the functionality as my UI from the War Within.

There are a couple of things that are missing.

It's not as customizable as I'd like it to be because Blizzard is locked down a bunch of the stuff, which I kind of find it annoying.

But I have sat there and thought, Man, I bet you in another month or so, it's going to be like, there's almost no difference between what happened in the War Within with my UI and what happened in Midnight with my UI where you know.

And I think it's one of those things that, like, obviously there are very subtle differences, but that's what they are.

They're subtle differences.

They're not like large game changing things.

It's like, oh, Blizzard has done this thing, and now it's annoying that I can't track my buffs and de buffs exactly how I want to.

I can only track them in this Blizzard mandated way.

But I think at some point you just kind of get used to it.

And I will say, I Squsha wasn't on last week, and I'm interested in his thoughts growl, and I kind of landed on the fact that we did question a little bit why did Blizzard make these changes.

I think that, you know, the changes that we landed on, we would have been just as good as if we didn't make any changes at all.

And I kind of still feel that way.

But also at the same time, a lot of people are dooming and not happy with the differences in their UI, and it does feel like maybe it's a little bit overblown, and the more that you play with the new UI system, you'll probably get accustomed to it.

I think a lot of people are uncomfortable with the change that they've been pushed into and they didn't want the change, so probably not after that either.

The Yeah, I mean, overall, I think the story of this Midnight prepatch and Midnight Beta and alpha has been add ons.

Nothing else that mattered.

It's all bit about the add ons, and I think it probably will be for the next couple of weeks as well.

Like that is what all the hype has been funneled to, negativity about add ons, And that's yeah, Okay, that's all everybody's going to talk about.

I mean, just just the load.

I mean, we're going to talk about it all the add on you know, week Oura packs no longer existing now turned into add on development and you know drama of streamer UIs and all this kind of stuff like that's that is all been what people have been talking about this reepatch and the fact that you know, Boss has died two minutes a mythic, but like that's it.

I kind of feel like it's there, just isn't really enough yet.

I don't know, like I'm interested to see, Like I know, I've been kind of feeling this fatigue about talking about add ons.

Although there is like, you know, a lot of developments in this episode.

We got some really juicy drama is drama, so this is everybody's grabbed your popcorn now, this will be a good one.

But also like I just think we're not quite ready to you know, like I think we kind of need the game to come out to really get into like the meat and potatoes of it, you know, like, yeah, what are we going to talk about the lower Like you know, I guess we can be like, oh, what do we think about this dungeon or that dungeon, but we've to be honest, A lot of things have been like pretty unchanged throughout the beta, right, Like I they're doing some tuning, Yeah, the most part, like what's been on there now is kind of been on there for the last few weeks, you know, I.

Mean Squishy, this is exactly what we Okay, So right before the podcast started, I was talking to like Sqush and I were just like chatting before Graul joined, and something I said whenever I first joined, I was like, man, this is the least hype I've been for an expansion launch in a hot minute, like it just in terms of like the features that are coming out with the game.

It doesn't feel like there's a ton that I'm like, Holy Holy, they're changing the game, and it's like that's kind of every everybody's only been talking about add ons, But then what are the what are the new features we got?

The praise system Okay, like they might even know anything about the praise system not really, this is like world content, right, I'd be willing to about money that system is going to be completely whatever Apex talents, which are Hero talents minus I guess the Devoured even Hunter, Like we don't even getting anything with the expansion, right, Which is that that to me has been more hype draining than anything else.

Not you know, I think we've talked to add ons to death but there where are the things that are supposed to be building hype, Like, where is the expansion features for the expansion?

Well, I don't know.

I just wanted to say real quick that people are saying that.

But at the end of the day, at least since I've started playing Wow, it's been the same shit.

Every single time you load up.

There's the eight new dungeons, you farm the new eight dungeons for a year, you level up, you do the story, the stories, whatever you wish it was better.

Then you go into the raid.

The raids would ever like your class is a little bit different, but it's mostly the same.

I kind of feel like Wow in each expansion, like you can look at, oh talent trees or oh this, but a majority of the expansion features that I've witnessed over my course of playing Wow have been disappointing.

I mean, like in BFA you have like.

Okay, they're disappointing, but doing something right.

They're doing something different BFA.

I mean like BFA had like what the open world PvP, and then Azure or like az right Powers shadow Lands and shadow Lands was like conduits and covenants that everybody.

Hated and legendaries.

Yeah, tour in the maw right, Like I think legendaries are really boring.

I think Dragonfly had the talent trees and I think that was like one of the most interesting things.

And now profession the system.

Yeah, yeah, profession gearing, but like I don't know, I just think that a lot of that stuff, Like to me, what makes the expansion is hot, like everyone playing and being excited about it, which also isn't here though too.

The problem and like that's why I'm that hypeis because well everyone is just such a dumer about it, and now I feel like I'm being a dumer.

But ultimately, you know, if everyone's playing the game and the game is fun and the raids are fun and the classes are fun, then the game is fun.

Like I don't really think the I like having new features, like I'm not gonna say no to something, but ultimately, you know, it's just changing how your character interacts and the talentries and talents and stuff is undergoing like a pretty big overhaul, Like everybody's character is playing pretty differently in Midnight than it is and war within.

Yeah, I was gonna say, like class changes are usually a pretty big thing.

You usually get some cool new toys and you know, prepatch or a new way to play.

But instead of you know, all classes just kind of got stuff removed, they went the opposite direction, so that's out, and then they just missed that big headliner moment.

You know, yeah, like wow, ten man rating coming back type thing, you know, like.

The see That's what I'm saying, like something like that that be.

Lit exactly Like they're missing that big headliner because everything that they've announced has just kind of been like, eh.

Okay, okay, I gonna go grow a little bit pushback while you are saying that these expansions didn't have much or some of the features that they were adding were like, you know, kind of flops and you know you're listing Azrod armor like even Titan forging and stuff like that.

Even expansions previous to BFA, you know, the shadow Ins debacle, at least the game was moving in like you know, there was new stuff that was being added.

It wasn't like formulaic, and I think that the problem is like there's not enough newness with this where I think that Squishy's term like the headline feature, I think that that is certainly something that feels like it is dramatically lacking with this expansion, where it's just like there's nothing.

I think they did not understand.

I think their headlining feature was supposed to be player Housing, but I think one they released it early and I know you guys talked about this, yeah, And two it doesn't hit everyone.

That's the problem with player housing is it only hits a various you know, not the entire player base.

It's definitely not the majority.

And I think that is the problem.

I don't know.

I think that it's basically impossible for them to hit the whole player base with any feature.

I mean, Devour demon Hunter isn't me because I don't play, Like even if you added a whole new demon Hunter class, I don't play that.

Right, It's not true though, like as Right Covenants, Hero talents, uh writing, yeah, dragon writing, the talent tree revamps that we got in Dragonfly, though those did hit the entire player base.

You know, even things as simple as profession gearing and crust upgrade system that does also hit the entire player base.

Sure, I guess that's true.

It's not impossible.

Look, I'm not saying I don't want these things, like I think, yeah, I would have loved to be you know, to have oh, ten man ratings back or oh, like there's this new crazy thing.

But ultimately my point is just like a lot of the things that expansions have touted or released have been not very good in the first place anyway, and it's like what makes her breaks the expansion, it's just the quality of the classes and the raids and the dungeons.

But no, I agree, No, I completely agree that I would love to have some sort of and I mean especially for the like the health of the game.

Right.

I just said, if there's hyper on the game and people are excited than I am.

I mean, even if these features don't necessarily excite me, having other people excited and you know, talking about it then in turn makes me happier about it.

Yeah, just a bit a bit deflating of an expansion launch in a way that because like, I play it and I'm actually like, you know, I think I'm going through the dungeons.

I have done a lot of beta dungeons lately and actually think the dungeons are pretty good.

I've heard that the raid is unbelievably average is kind of how I've been heard it described.

But like those things are fine, like sometimes you have an average rate, and I think that dungeons are fairly solid.

But the problem is, like, at least for me, the dungeons by themselves are not enough for me to just have fun, you know.

They're like the supplemental systems with like what makes World of Warcraft World of Warcraft and kind of creating that challenge for the players.

Those are the things that I find to be super fun.

But yeah, no, no, no, no, that's all right.

We're moving forward.

Then we're done with that.

In other news, do you guys see the ratio feature?

They are showcasing the amount of abandoned runs each week.

Which week would you guess Turbo Boosts came out?

If you guess week nine, you would be wrong.

Yeah, one of the significantly significantly less keys are abandoned.

Which funny is it continued throughout like you think it would go back up, right, Like why, I mean I would almost draw that to say that participation dropped as soon as I think drops, yeah, which is the complete opposite of what it was intended and what happened the first release, right, that's actually really interesting that just everyone was done doing keys and or like, yeah, that's crazy.

Actually, I.

Mean this patch literally, just as turbo Boost hit, the patch was just completely dead.

I mean, I don't think it's brand.

I don't think it's like knowledge, like new knowledge to anybody.

Like I think everybody kind of knew that the patch was so dead the moment that turbo Boost hit.

And I don't even think it was related to turbo Boos specifically.

I just think it was like that time of the patch hit.

Everybody's played out the entire cycle that they want to see, everybody's played out the expansion, and it kind of felt the exact same, and you're just like, all right, I'm out here.

Are we Blizzard chills or are we Blizzard haters?

I don't even know chills.

Oh okay, we're still shills the game of the A but we're still okay.

Good.

Yeah, I thought I thought we were here to create dramas whatever.

It was, true, true, true, we're consuming it has been growing, it has been growing.

We get to take the week off.

Those are also hit us with an announcement of an announcement, which you know, John Wildhead over there, you know, uh what this announcement of an announcement is.

Uh, it's an announcement of an announcement.

Any any speculation as to what this is.

We got blizz Conn later this year.

I mean, it can't be retail related, right, I.

Mean the only thing they said is roadmap for modern and classic Worader Warcraft.

So I'm surely they just slammed down the coast, right Like I was thinking like a new SOD season.

Yeah, maybe a classic plus.

Like that, I mean grout.

I assumed that the Classic committee has been feeding from what I've seen for some new content, right, like.

Oh, massively fiending.

Yeah, I mean, I think when it comes to midnight.

It's not to say that there's not new stuff coming out, but that's sort of already laid out, right, Like I think I think the retail roadmap will if I had to imagine, we'll probably have like they're gonna explain the first patch of the expansion, and then also they might have like one little small thing for fun, you know, you know, like a dastardly duo size event or a plunder.

Right, I'm not I didn't say quality, I said size.

Okay.

However, on the classic front, yeah, it's we're in a situation now where with Mob Classic everyone is talking about what are they doing after MOP, and we've kind of hit another roadblock.

I know, after Wrath of the lich King, everyone was saying, Okay, this is done.

Everyone wants the trilogy, what are they going to do with it?

But they ended up continuing on.

Now they're kind of you know, I think WAD was received as a very negative expansion or thought of it, you know nowadays, and so now everyone's kind of having those thoughts again of like, well, is this where Blizzard cuts it off?

Because I mean, if they do WAD, then then they're doing Legion, and then we're literally up to BFA.

So like the Classic is you know, has as it's gone too far if we get WADD because you know what's gonna come next.

And then it's like, well wait, so there's talks again about Classic ending, but then what there's some rumblings that, oh, they want to get all of these classic players back into retail somehow, and it's kind of like a lot of theories and you know, whatever about will they let classic people migrate over characters or keep collections or something like that.

They see it might be the end of MOP, Like you think this might be the end of MOP, and they start migrating these classic characters to retail.

I'm not sure.

I mean, personally, I think that they should just keep milking it until it dies, because why wouldn't they, Like, if anything, the biggest complaint about WAD was just that the break, like there was just no content.

But I mean, if they just release WAD on an extremely like sped up cycle, I feel like people like, I don't see why that's any different from MOP.

So then another front is Season of Discovery.

They basically did a seven patch long like over a year server on Classic that was like quote unquote Classic Plus, and then they basically were just like, yep, we're done, no more content, and then the servers died.

And everyone's kind of been speculating that this year is gonna be the big year that they talk about Classic Plus because clearly there is some sort of a market, there are people that want to play whatever.

What even does classic mean or Classic Plus mean?

The world may never know whatever the Blizzard comes out with.

I'm sure everyone's gonna complain because that's what wild players do.

But I think people are anticipating something like that.

Everyone is kind of staying at BlizzCon and then my Megacopium is hardcore as well.

I thought hardcore was a massive success.

There's tons of people that literally still play and rate on those servers, and they basically just didn't even bring it to TBC or care or do anything.

And now they're just they've basically abandoned all of the hardcore servers and they do nothing with I don't know what they would possibly do though, with hardcore.

So I'm huffing some copium that.

Don't Yeah, I do.

I do feel like Blizzard moves a little bit in the wheels of time, move very slowly.

For retail, they tend to seem a bit more agile and kind of go with the flow a bit more with things related towards you know, classic and SOD seasons and stuff like that.

So I could see them, you know, slamming down something very innovative.

I think it, you know, it would make sense and also again not really something that you want to hold for seven months until blisk on either if you're if you're a Blizzard, So I think it would make sense.

Yeah, I like it's I think it's possible we could see maybe like twelve one information.

It'd be really weird, though, but.

I couldn't maybe win, I mean, just seems unnecessary to announce that.

Now.

Do you think there's like.

Any chance we get like a plunder storm, Like it could be a plunder storm I could actually see that, or like plunder stor mode where it's kind of like this offshoot game mode type thing.

I think so, I think they've kind of set a precedent now at this point over the last two years doing roadmaps and putting things on the roadmaps, right, I think almost certainly that if they especially because they did an announcement of an announcement.

So one very interesting thing and kind of a tool that Blizzard has now that they're just firing away is the fact that housing decor is so in demand that people want and they can use that as a reward.

So they're actually, from what I understand, giving a drop if you just tune into whatever stream this is where they're announcing it.

So to me, that almost is like, hmm, maybe there is something here, and they like know that it kind of sounds like a nothing burger, so they're kind of like giving more incentive to get people there because they think it's going to be something hype.

I think it's.

Something I think it's something that's coming out quickly, right, is kind of my read because otherwise, the thing that you're supposed to do, like if you're a Blizzard here is you're supposed to be promoting the new expansion.

So unless you have something that's coming out like right now, like I don't think there is an announcement for them to make because like a twelve to one, Okay, we're just drawing hype away from the expansion launch right like they're they're supposed to.

They're supposed to be just like completely putting all their effort and energy into gassing up this new expansion, right, Promote, promote, promote, promote, But like if there's I think if there's if there's something classic related or potentially a new Plumber from season that's like launching, like all right as of the day of releasing this video, now you have this new game mode or something like that that that does kind of make sense logistically.

Girl, I need to correct one thing because I made a mistake this morning and I thought the Dark Portal decor drop was from watching the stream that wasn't actually what it said.

So I made a mistake.

I made mistake.

Then, yeah, it was learn how to get the decor during that day.

So it's so very distinct difference there that I made a mistake and like I fucked up here, Like I'm not afraid to admit that, like from a journalists right.

And their clickbait articles go.

If it makes you feel any better.

I didn't even read anything for Wildhead.

I literally just read their announcement and I thought that it meant that you just watched the stream as well.

Yeah, the wording was definitely less than idea, but like as the person that're printing it, like that's on me.

But regardless, that makes me think that this decor item is gonna be from something like play TV like the TBC intro to get this decor inem or something like that, because they've done that with multiple promotions, right, Like there was that mock promotion we to play like the intro of a monk on Mock Classic and you get something for it.

I don't know that makes a lot of sense given the decor item.

Is the dark port right, I know it's beginning of February.

Yeah, none of us know.

I think it's like the fifth.

So what what sorts of things could could they do for mid like Midnight or retail that we would see.

So I think big ones are still housing.

I think a lot of people are going to be excited for housing, and so different things that I expect coming with housing over the next couple of years.

One are like different neighborhood styles and aesthetics, right like to shipped with only the Alliance forest and the you know, the orc whatever.

But I wouldn't be surprised if they started announcing and rolling out more neighborhoods.

Another one would be a more improved system with like how to share and build and collaborate in houses.

Like one thing in Final Fantasy, for example, is you can sign someone else onto your house and allow them to build a room and do stuff in your house, and then then you can sort of like pay them or just like have two people that are friends or whatever that are living in this Like.

I think that sort of functionality is probably coming sometime very soon as well, and I kind of expect something in along those lines to be announced For retail, they.

Could probably add some friction back into the game somehow.

I don't know.

I'm not exactly sure how I would how I would begin to do that, but yeah, I mean did you see that?

Did you see that Towly tweet?

Apparently there's gonna be a big yank on the rip chord, but I don't know.

Oh yeah, that's all I did.

Actually think about the Towly tweet at this point, I think that they're not announcing that is back and then they just unveiled the curtain.

It's the weak horse because it's a holly loog dealer not getting all the warcraft putch page to announce they're walking back out on Let me just tell you right now.

I mean that'd be a lot of hype for a lot of people.

I will say, you're talking about I don't know.

But yeah, like you can make read you of a green square on your frames again and then the crowd goes wild.

Ten Man returning to retail.

That would be hype.

Holy shit.

I have a feeling the majority of this is classic related.

I think I think it's almost exclusively Classic related.

The more that I think about it now, especially with what you said about the Dark Portal, actually wouldn't be shocked if they're doing like some bridged TBC hardcore thing that they wanted to announce because TVC is coming out on the fifth right.

Or or a sod TVC type thing because where like it's TVC but weird.

See that's what I'm Yeah, something like that, yeah talent thing And bro.

You might lose me if they if they actually do an official TVC hardcore not because I'm that like it's that crazy, but like just the hope of them caring of our heart.

You might, like you're not showed on that way to the pond.

Yeah, I'm gone, I'm gone where I'm I'm entering the dark portal.

I'm being one with.

UH.

In regards to UI changes, as it turns out, there are workarounds to some of the UI lockdown stuff, and the way that players are getting around the uh add on debacle and UI lockdown is they're going into their their files for the game and deleting textures for things UH, thus allowing them to give squares and boxes.

Wow, this is so utterly stupid.

This is the dumbest shit I've ever seen.

Why are you allowed?

Okay, first, why are you allowed to do this?

Because it's the game file?

I mean, you install it.

The game with That's that's literally such a wild player answer to say, because it's a game file in no other game can you just edit the files and ship and then just load it up and then it's they're all changed, Like okay, not in no other game, but you know what I'm saying.

Uh So, essentially the way this works, my understanding is you and you create these hot icons that are like not normal icons, right, like, for example, a green square, but also that involves a giant transparent square that covers your entire health bar and then a green part of it in the middle, right right.

And so you have like all these icons stacked on top of each other, and all of them are transparent except for the one area that you want to see.

And the funny thing is that even affects like your spell book and affects you're like talent, because yeah, it's like everything is completely skull.

I personally think that this is, like, again, such a wild player thing to do, and no other game would you do something like this.

And I think that I can't imagine many people are going to go through this.

This is just a symptom of people missing what they had before and wanting something that they had before.

This is not an elegant solution.

This is ugliest shit.

Nobody in the world Weaver convinced me that this is efficient or good or that tons of people will adapt these solutions.

Here's the problem.

First of all, he's gonna turn this into a add on if the workaround doesn't get fixed.

So people will have this option if they want to, and people will take it.

I know that to be a fact.

And the main reason is there's still no buff and deba filtering.

Like I can't blame people for taking workarounds if they cannot get the information that they require because it's hidden in the sea of useless information.

You know how many people really need to see that.

You know, this person has both dream breath and the echo dream breath on them.

Yeah.

Like, uh, which one of you said that we were super hyped for the add on changes coming into this, that this has been a let down.

Probably grel but I echo that now.

Well, so you were actually talking earlier about add ons and like, oh what did we gain here?

And I kind of thought about this, and I was watching some other like content creators, and Okay, so from a standpoint of the add ons don't give a competitive advantage anymore, I would definitely say they've kind of dropped the ball on that, And failed, Like, I think that's undeniable that if you were somebody who used add ons before, you're just going to continue using them, and it's more inconvenient because weekors has gone.

However, if you're somebody who like definitely prefers not to use add ons or never used add ons, or are a new player, you have now access to a damage meter that's completely in game, a central weekor as hood that's in game y you know, okay week or is a stretch, and you have boss mods.

Right.

These were three features that most people would describe as like dispensable that you need to have, and they there weren't even an in game option.

It's not like there was a shitty one that people didn't like.

Okay, now there you know.

However, I just think it's very annoying, how primitive and how not good these versions are.

Like, you you really like damage meters, for example, I feel like was just a home run, right, Like I feel like the in game damage meters should have just been like unless, I mean, obviously I'm missing something here from a programmatic point of view of like, I don't understand how it works, but how did they just not roll out with damage meters that work perfectly and were just like details but.

Ditty cut out.

Yep, he died, but the essence of his points it holds true like it is.

I think the answer is there's a lot of legal red tape that, you know, for every single feature that Blizzard needs to implement.

Instead of you know, one person in a dark room programming this thing, there's meetings upon meetings upon meetings about do we want this thing yes or no?

How are we gonna make it?

Look?

What are we gonna do with this?

And then you have to like, you know, there's a lot of quality assurance testing that revolves around working at Blizzard that if you're designing an add on, you're allowed to ship it and it can be a little bit buggy, or it can throw liuit errors, where if you ship the base game and it starts throwing LUA errors, you're gonna have a problem.

Yep.

I mean the details meter is coded so badly.

I literally just crashed my discord from talking about it, Like that's how bad the details meter is.

Yeah.

I actually think there are certain aspects that I think that Like I use default rate frames, I've used them for years.

I think the new default rate frames are somehow worse than the old default rate frames.

I don't know how they did it, but it's worse and I hate them and I might actually try to find an out for them now because like I was trying to use it yesterday's raid and it's just not good.

There's too many debuffs.

It's two clogged.

Like it feels like they did not understand the use case for what people were using add ons for to make them, and so in they're designing their own stuff like they are, it was just very out of touch, Like instead of making bars for their their dBm and replacement, they built a timeline as their default.

But they can't hit bars now in beta, I think.

Yeah, but that was after a ton of feedback, and the fact that they built timelines first, I think just proves the point.

Okay, sure, fact that, yeah, the fact that they're that their damage meter did not contain deaths, did not contain you know, like enemy damage taken, you know, dispels interrupts.

Like their death their death log is hard to barce even still.

Yeah, they they dropped the ball with these at like these things, Like I think it's cool that they're there, but it's kind of just like that, how everything is in the Blizzard you I now is it's there, but it's really shitty and then you need an add on to replace it, and so like, it doesn't feel worth it to have undergone everything that we've gone through to have.

Okay, now there's a shitty week ora hood that you can have in game, and there's a shitty damage meter, and there's a shitty boss mods, and it's like, I hope that all of this stuff again, this is the copium that I'm huffing, is that now that everything is in place, they can start to iterate it and start to fix it.

Honestly, again, the thing that I'm most hopeful for is the cool down manager.

Like, I actually think the way the cool down managers set up is nice, and I think that the ability to just be like, here's every buff you could possibly track on your character, dragon drop the ones you want to see, I think that's good functionality.

Like I way prefer that over week eras and like setting stuff up and whatever.

But other than that, pretty much everything from a customization point of view and a functionality point of view is lacking and disappointing.

So we all took all on the entire betas cycle of the add on discussion, hoping that Blizzard was gonna get things right.

I mean, I think for me, there there were you know, they they chose the half and half approach right where they kind of did a little bit and then left everything else in.

And I think most no matter who you are, I think you'd whatever side of the adda discourse you're on, what do you wanted to keep it or leave it?

This is the worst possible outcome.

Yes, I think making you wile to change everything to get ninety five percent of what we previously had is a horrible option.

And I think no matter which side you were on, you would have rather them completely leave it the way it was or completely just kill all add ons, And that would have been better than the state that we're curly in.

The continue to kill all add on thing was interesting because I feel like that is the most misrepresented narrative of all time.

I don't think Blizzard was ever actually going for that.

But what they were trying to get you to do is get you into a state where you could use is the default you I if you wanted to.

I mean, but but okay, think about it.

Do you think killing all add ons, even though it's not what Blizzard wanted, would have been better than the ship show we got.

Right now, this this ship show is pretty unacceptable from from like a from me of my perspective, but I think it would have been better to kill all add ons, probably like.

It dungeon inivate contents like probably yeah, yeah, kill all.

Add ons again.

When you say, are you talking about literally kill all add ons or kill all.

I didn't really do anything with I don't.

I don't think the base why is good enough for them to actually have committed to that.

Now that I'm thinking about it more, I.

Think there's too many non combat add ons that are useful like or like loot console stuff, or just like yeah, or like being able to skin stuff and texture stuff.

I think there's too much that killing all add ons.

But if you would have said kill all combat add ons or like left it as square one where it couldn't read anything that the game is doing, I would be interested to see that world again.

I'm like, you know, I'm not for sure that that would have been better, but at least it has the benefit of like, Okay, let me go down the list and delete every ad on except for like a couple of things that are nice and like, oh, I want you know, that's fair.

You hear about some of these cringe workarounds that people have been going through.

Squishy which ones, I guess it's the more accurate question.

Oh, there's a lot.

There was one about guild message of the day changing the guild message of the day of combat to be able to read that.

I've heard of ones where players were getting kicked mid raid combat and getting reinvited by the instantly reinvited by the twenty first man to be able to read de buffs and stuff like that.

I've heard, like you whisper a guy outside the raids sitting in town so that they can do computational stuff.

There's a way to do it, external tracker, like a full on external tracker.

Yeah.

Yeah, there's a lot of workarounds.

Whispering a twenty first man in town goes crazy, by the way, and then like the add on, developers will start having bots on all the servers and you just message the bot and it spits stuff back to you and.

So stuff for you.

It's so bad, it's like it's this cannot this cannot be.

But anybody else I swear.

I swear it's just such a wild player thing.

And I don't say that like trying to be negative against all wild players, but just the fact that we've had all these things, right, Like, no other game do you have this level of crazy customization where you can like do computations and communicate each other like with your add ons and then do formulas and assignments like and it's just no other game would you think about these things?

Are trying to set this up, like I just trying to imagine like trying to integrate this into Counterstrike and just being like, you know, you just have this like automated hood where every time someone shoots their gun at somebody, it pings, and then it creates a map and it tries to guess where all of the enemy players are and it puts it on your screen so you know where that you need to rotate, and it's just like.

Well you need an anime wife fu.

Yeah, yeah, your gun needs to be replaced with an anime WIFEU that shoots you know, doros or whatever.

And it's just yeah, this is it's like just such a wild player problem.

Yeah, all right, drama time, drama time, all right, all right, I'm gonna try it to, you know, say everything at once, and then we can talk, uh, exactly what happened, because I think there is a lot and to be able to understand everything, I think you're gonna we're gonna need like a lot of context.

So I think we're gonna have to get through it all, probably at the same time, and then we can discuss where we kind of land on all of this.

All right, So the main actors involved.

Guy named danders Uh.

He creates a UI called Dander's Frame.

It is a party frame replacement add on.

It's pretty, it's new to this expansion.

Another guy who's involved, guy named nef used to raid in PC.

He created an add on called nep Ui.

It was in LVUI style replacement that basically started geting coded whenever lv stuted they were killing their project.

Another actor involved, Quasi.

He makes YouTube videos.

Creates quasi ui, makes really solid mythic plus level content.

Last person involved, guy named Lucky.

He creates LVUI.

So these are the four main actors that are involved.

Those are probably the most important people that we need to know given the story.

Okay, so where do we start?

So on the twenty first, So four days ago, almost a week ago at this point, Well on, hold on.

Sorry to interrupt your flow here, but I want to mention something that I think is important that a lot of people have been mentioning, so didn't A month or two back, Quasi got exposed for copying files in his add on, and he basically came out with a public statement that said the guy that I hired in the team that I'm working on copied stuff and I tried to make sure it wasn't there, but it is, and basically this long speech about how terrible it is to copy and how he should never do that, and how that's a terrible foundation and that it won't happen again.

Yes, I think that's kind of.

Yeah.

So I think that's kind of important to the way that which I mean is like very reasonable and that going to happen.

I just think that's important to judge now the reaction that Quasi is getting and people sort of interpreting his words and.

The wigs for some unrelated stuff not copy yet, but well so he was So that was basically basically he.

Was stuff in his UI was negatively impacting big wigs to the point where it would look like it was big wigs failing and then he I don't know if he would send people, but people would show up into big Wigs, you know, like looking for help in their discords or whatever.

And then it turned out that it was just quasi stuff that was breaking it, and the big Wigs people are there.

There are people Adams.

Yeah, so they basically, like I want to say, coded something in where it would just like not turn on and it would be like you were using quasi ui big wigs does not work on it turn off quasi ui or something.

Yeah, Okay, So there was that that was like two months ago where he got caught copying NEPHEWI files and basically said he was rewriting the foundation of his code.

Then this week Dander's the guy who makes danders frames important announcement exclamation mark Danner's frames and ne Fui compatibility.

NEPHEWI effectively is stealing files from danders frames.

This folder contains thirty five files with identical names and fultra structure to danders frames, and Danders was not happy, basically saying that she can't really do anything about the fact that NEPHWI is copying his files, but he is adding parts of code similar to what pickwigs did, where if you were using danderstrames, you are not going to be allowed to use ne Fui at the exact same time.

So Nephwi's response, Yeah, all right, I did it, and my project's done.

Gig's kind of and then he also said, ps is if you support quasi ui, I don't like you.

The add on a stolen code from an assortment of ad ons like Nephi, un halted unit frames, basic mini maps, CDM, tweaks UI and almost every feature is stolen code, and he's charging people for it, and people eat it up because I don't know why someone legal Applizzard dot com PSPs nine percent of new add ons have popped up that are coded with AI, because AI is very good at developing Lua, because it's a simple language that anybody can pick up within fifteen minutes if you know how to read.

And you know, he basically said that he did it, So NEPHEWI is gone.

Nef is now out of the picture, kind of a hey, y, show back up later, but it's okay.

Then Lucky from the Lui development team, he comes out with a tweet three days ago saying just so everyone's aware.

The UI slash add on Quasi is selling on his Patreon contains full one to one copies of LVI files and code.

This is against licensing.

I didn't mean to click that this is against licensing and will result in investigation via patreons designated copyright agent.

So for context, Quasi, the YouTuber now has decided that instead of creating a UI files on a different platform, he was then going to go ahead and create his own add on that was going to be an all in one.

And honestly, it kind of makes sense.

People whenever they're downloading, you know, UIs from streamers, they don't want to have to download a bunch of add ons.

They want something that's an all in one.

And so I think that Quasi going ahead and making an ad on does make sense.

I didn't.

I actually didn't know that he was getting into UI development until this basically started.

And so the UI that he was creating with his team was apparently allegedly copying some of the LUI files, and Quasi ended up coming out with a response basic saying that he copied some of the files, and then he lays it down.

He says, Qui was there before lvui Qui is available for minute beta before lvu I announced its intentions for twelve point zero, which you know, it's kind of like a thinly veiled argument saying that you can't copy if you were there before LVUI.

At the same time, that's not necessarily true because you could go and copy their older files, which is what seems like ends up happening.

But we'll get to that code copying pixel perfect who owns the copyrights to put sugar and can drinks.

There's only so many ways to skin a panel in Wow.

Pixel perfect scaling is a mathematical technique.

You multiply the screen scaling to get a crisp one to one pixel rendering shod to liberally make my UI blurry to avoid using basic math.

So in programming, it's pretty common to be using code snippets from other people or you know, basic libraries and these kind of things.

Developers copy code from one another all the time, and it's kind of understood that, you know, especially code that's on like Stack of Flow or publicly available repositories, it's going to get copied.

That's just kind of how it ends up working out.

QUASI doesn't necessarily say that here, but he kind of does right where he's saying that, you know, this pixel perfect scaling is a mathematical technique.

Thus I'm allowed to copy whether the files from LVUI.

He doesn't necessarily say that he's not copying, but he doesn't say that he is.

He's trying to justify that he did copy some of the files from lv I, and we'll get to that in a second.

Third paywalling.

Let's talk about this since we're drawing ethical lines.

That's examined.

The entire add Ons Ecosystems relationship with Blizzards two thousand and nine policy.

The policy at hand here, and some people get really crazy about this.

Add Ons must be distributed to free of charge.

Developers may not create premium versions of add ons with additional four pay features, charge money to download the add on, or charge for services related to the add on, or otherwise require some form of monetary compensation to a download or access the add on.

And he goes on to list a bunch of different things that have done this, including the the Liquid Reminders, timeline tool, your favorite streamers or week er, UI pack, zygerguides, rest xp trades, skill masterums, you guys, know some that are like that, and then Quasi basically said, yeah, uh, get bent.

I have a family to feed the time, and he's committing time to building a completely you know, new UI, and nobody's forcing anyone to subscribe to anything, like if you don't want it, don't you don't have to pay for it.

And then he and then he gives it a couple hours and then he changes his mind and he's decided that the Wow community is too toxic that he's done with the Wow community.

He's closing up shop with his UI.

He's going to be refunding people on Patreon if they want the refund, and he's done making content.

He's done being a content creyer, he's done being an out on developer.

He's he's basically closing up shop, and he's going to be moving on with his life.

Because the World of Warcraft scene honestly was, you know, more or less being very hateful and bullying him to the point where he's like, I got I just got nothing to do with me.

I will go take my ball and go home and I will do anything else.

So then that kind of called into question, what are the files that have been copied?

Luck you ended up posting some of the files that had direct one to one copies.

So here's the thing with programming.

Even if you have the exact same programming and here it's hard to tell if somebody's copying your code.

If anything, more often than not, you know, you, especially as somebody like you, if you don't get a computer size SERREI, you're just going to copy other people's code.

The thing, the thing that actually tipped everybody off that he was copying code is that he kept a bunch of the comments, which are things that weren't really unique to the which were things that were unique to the Lui code, which is how it got clocked that he was copying code.

Now again it calls into question like how much code is copying.

Ultimately, it does look like he's copying code.

A lot of people in cs I've seen a decent amount comments where they're like, yeah, it's pretty it's pretty common to do this.

At the same time, he didn't ask for permission to copying code.

It seems like he was taking resource bars from ne Fui, he was taking things from tweaks you I.

It seems like there was a decent amount of other add ons files that had been copied one to one with their comments as well, which then calls in a question how much of that was actually copied?

Hard to really say, but you, as it currently stands, we probably have a few hundred lines of code that are displayed that are pure one to one copies.

So far anything that I miss Is there anything that I missed?

Uh?

Something quite quasi?

Is basically quick?

Yeah, yeah, all right, where do we start?

There's a lot I think it is.

It is a lot.

Yeah, it's a lot.

So so to first talk about copying code and that and that sort of thing.

Copying code is very tough, and it's very obviously that you have to have some set of guidelines for like what is stolen and what isn't.

But at the end of the day, when you look at code, or especially within the confines of just world of warcraft, there may be only one way to do something right, Like there may be only literally one line of code or series of lines of code to make something purple or whatever on and I'm just thinking of a random example, right.

However, then there's the sort of the stuff around that, of the comments that you use, the order of things, the you know, the options men use and the things that there are tons of artistic ways to do it, and it's very clear to see whether or not you copied it or not.

I am not an expert to go like full in depth, but sort of like what Tuttle said, I got the impression that it wasn't just like, oh, he copied this for loop because this is the only way he could figure out how to get it to check the nameplay colors.

It was like, a he just copied this entire file in the comments from the original author are literally still in there, and I think that goes past the line, and I feel like that's something that's not okay.

Also that that's sort of why I commented on what he did earlier too, because I think that plays a big part into it.

This is this is how computer science people really think.

It's like, look, we have similar ideas.

No, you still an idea programmers, man, I stell your code, and for the programmer, it's not my code, right like, because as programmers you tend to you take everybody's code, right like more or less.

It's kind of like if you're taking a math test, everybody uses the same formulas to be able to get to a conclusion.

But if you're copying off somebody, like there are ways that you can figure out that you know you're cheating off somebody in a math test.

It's kind of like a similar thing.

Obviously it's not.

It's not the greatest analogy of all time.

But I think for me the biggest thing is elf y is licensed.

Like, I'm not a lawyer here, so this is my understanding of it.

ELFA why is licensed?

And if you take anything from something that is licensed, they have the opportunity to copyright claim you just full stop.

I believe whether or not they actually care is a different story.

And in this case, I think LVI cared because one it is now a paid add on and two they didn't ask and it was a pretty close copy.

If either of those things weren't true, I don't know that lv I would have cared.

But because of that both those things happening and his licensed, LVI cared.

And then now you're in with a copyright team of lawyers.

So the stealing is the stealing is obviously wrong, and he got reported to Patreon.

But this feels this felt recoverable right, Like from the code snippets that I've seen it doesn't look like it's a ton of code that got copied, and there are ways that are around it, and you know, he could have fixed this.

The fact that he decided to basically just say for all of the Wow community whenever he was he was saying basically, I have a family to feed, and then giving up on his Patreon and his successful YouTube channel and privating all of his videos.

It seems like those aren't necessarily in alignment with one another, and that to me was the thing that kind of caught me off guard, more or less because I've also seen what QUASII looks like.

I've been seeing some of the videos and stuff like that.

It looked like a very well developed add on.

It actually looked really nice, and so I've been in I guess he maybe just got bullied because the Wow community is mean.

I mean, frankly, the Wow community is very mean.

So like, I get it.

Yeah, to add in a little bit in his favor, and someone who's been kind of on his defense and posting some interesting things.

Actually we talked about him already as TAUI, and Tally has basically been showing off what Quasi sort of came up with, and like showing that there was a lot more to it, and he clearly worked hard into it.

Whether or not there's stolen code, that's kind of beyond the point.

I think one thing that's resonating with a lot of people that are like Tali is Lui basically, in my mind at least fanned the flames of all of the add on panic by basically saying like, we're not developing anymore, whereas Quasi Ui is like, Okay, here's a new stage of Wow.

Let's try and make things better.

And I think there are a huge portion of retail players who really enjoy the game and want things to be positive and want others to enjoy the game and anytime, like I think the last major issue this happened was when Shadowlands was dog shit and everyone was jumping bandwagon to Final Fantasy and like, how many creators do you know that like you know, talked about how Blizzard is terrible and Wow is terrible and I will never play this again and Final Fantasy is the greatest thing ever again, and then three months later they're playing Wow again.

Like I think that sort of again, not to say that that makes Quasi right or okay, anything he did but I think a lot of people are looking at LVUI and thinking, like you guys said you were done, maintained develop I'm not saying you should steal it, but I'm just saying like it makes it hard to be on their side or want to go after Quasi and want to support Quasi for at least like doing something right, Like at least he's trying to make something work, like you can say, oh, he's incentivized by money.

And again, I'm just I'm trying to present the way things are saying.

I'm not trying to come in old comes again saying that the guy who stole quote is right, That's not what I'm saying.

I'm just trying to present the available information in the viewpoints that people have here, and that like you know, a lot of people are looking at LVU.

I am being like you guys basically just said you give up on midnight, and then now you're coming back and saying, oh, here's all of our code.

But I mean that's kind of the that's kind of the conclusion I came to as well as but like if you're Quasi, like you know, even getting called out for stealing code a second time, that is still recoverable.

Right.

All you do is you apologize and you just fix it, right, and you just make a damn good add on and we'll talk about the pay walling in a second, and you pay all that that sucker, and you just move on with your day.

Right.

I think there's a So there's a lot of context.

I think did you mention that he took done everything?

Like literally, he has taken down his Patreon, all of his YouTube videos are unlisted, everything, like, well, his Twitter was deactivated before this, was it?

Yes, I I was looking for his potter the other day and noticed it was gone.

So I think he's had a bad relationship with the World of Warcraft community, or his relationship with Wow has been bad for a while, and this feels like it's been a catalyst to be like he was already thinking about stepping away.

He was pretty annoyed with like the state of Wow, and he's like, I'm out, you know what, I'm out.

That's fair, but like, given it just if it was a series of choices, right, Like from from a PR perspective, he was being investigated by Patreon copyright allegedly, and how bad would it look if he didn't immediately shut down his Patreon and he was found to be guilty.

Surely they give him the opportunity to like fix the stolen code though, right, Like, surely, and I'd be crazy, I have no.

Mean, yeah, I don't know how it works, but I'd imagine that.

Again, it's one thing if he I think that if he entirely copied lvui and then just replace the name of it with quality, he would get shut down.

Right.

But I think for and again I'm not saying this is right, but for copying individual elements or doing certain things like, I think they would say, hey, yeah, we found that you know, you you bummed a lot of this code.

You got to fix this.

We're going to kick you off.

I see that.

Yeah, I don't see this being a damning thing.

I mean, I I have a very I have a very strong theory as to why all this happened.

For sure, it depends because something that Nef said was that, you know, we're going back to the Java here.

Somebody that said, yeah, this is not the first time or the second time that somebody is alleged that they that he has been stealing their code.

And behind the scenes there's also been rumblings of allegations that he has been stealing people's code for a while, So there's a potential that there is this would be the first of a landslide of people deciding to come out out.

That is a possibility.

Okay.

I have heard people first hand accounts of people saying that they that he has taken their week oors and thrown it into his weakorra packs before not giving any credit or anything like that, his four pay week core packs.

But like, I don't know, like the reading reading these lines of code again, like I said, we're talking hundreds of lines of code in a project that is massive.

It felt fixable, but maybe maybe I'm missing something like.

Well, I think I think the biggest problem where everything went wrong and this is like I think a lesson to me is when you go out publicly and talk about how virtuous you are and shun people for doing things and say things are wrong, you better be damn sure your house is cleaned, right, like if you're if he would have went out and when Nephew, like, let's just say, you know, if he's like, yeah, you know, your stuff fucking owned.

And I basically couldn't even figure out how to get it that well and I copied it.

That was really shitty of me.

I should have at least given you credit.

Like, let's figure out how to make this work.

Right if you come out humble and reasonable and just admit what you did, because you did what you did right to say that, oh, stealing is bad blah blah, you're basically like very virtue virtuous, like, oh, how could this have happened under my watch?

But the problem is now everybody's looking at you with a close eye, and now you've lost that card to play of like you know, to say that right, oh oops, it happened again for the fourth time.

Right.

But I just think that when he when he took the line, he like he had such a ridiculous thing of like, oh, who invented putting soda or sugar and soda or whatever?

And it's just like, bro, just say you did what you did right, Like, just say, yo, this stuff was good and I used it in my UI, and you know what, I was pretty lazy and I should have found a way to uniquely implement it.

But I have all this shit on my plate and I just was an idiot.

Let's try and you know what, I mean, like, but he he told everybody how terrible stealing was and now he would never cheat, and how you could never build a program on this foundational you know, stealing blah blah blah's when you'd say those words and you talk like you're so high and mighty, people, you know, that's a huge ax on your record if that ever happens again.

I think he was already just having problems with the Wow community in general, and he he just wasn't wasn't all in on it, like, because I think that we're content creators here.

It's not exactly the hardest life to live.

I mean, there are much much much harder things to do in life than be, yeah, the world of Warcraft content creator.

And you know, for him to like walk away from it all, I think that his mental had to been probably one of the bigger things that was weighing on him in that regard.

Well, So my theory and my thoughts about walking away from it is that I actually think this was like a pretty nasty and pretty solid fish act of him to do to say that, oh, I you know, I dislike the Wow community or I want to step away as an understatement, I think what he did was clearly an act of like your last you know, like I'm gonna get the last word, I'm gonna make the last strike.

He didn't need to remove all of his videos, he didn't need to delete his channel, he didn't need to do anything.

He's doing that.

Self destructive, I mean, do you.

I'm sure you know people I am like this, like whenever things are going really poorly for me, I am very like scorched or self destructive.

I personally think that the motive behind that, whether you want to admit it or not, is that you want to take any remaining goodwill or any fans or anyone that appreciated what you did and turn it against the people that destroyed you.

And you want people to say, hey, wait, where's that Quasi video?

Where's Quasi's Twitter?

And then you want people to say, oh, they made him turn it off, they made him delete it, they did not think.

I don't know, I don't know.

I don't think I agree with that.

I think he's just hurt.

The funny thing is that the two the two ways that I parse this are the two complete off of the size and the size that both of you are on right now.

Like on one hand, he just doesn't have anything to do with with well.

And on the other hand, he is absolutely just like I'm like, I'm over this, I'm getting you know, get I'm getting out.

Don't don't forget that.

There's a potential that he just comes back in a couple of months like he did last time and just hopes that people forgot what happened.

And if you think about that aspect, if you had to get owned by Patreon legal and found guilty or like gral said, going out in your own terms and having the last word while not admitting anything and then deciding to come back in a couple of months, which is the community going to perceive is better?

Which is which is going to keep the majority of your player base?

Now that is an option, and the other option, like you said, is he just hurts.

You know, he's done.

But from my point of view, he said that, you know, money is obviously the topic here, right, like we're gonna talk more about money and add on distributusy people were pocket watching him.

He was making like apparently the estimates were five figures off of his Patreon on a monthly basis.

But so think about that money, right, Even his YouTube videos.

Some of his long standing YouTube videos still do well and they show up in you know, tasts or something.

Yeah, why would you kill money that is still coming down the road.

That's what I say, because he's trying to hurt the people that hurt him, because he's he's creating this narrative to say that like, oh, I'm just trying to feed my family.

Money is so important, which again is like partially true, right if you have a family, you know whatever.

Like I don't know his exact situation, but you do care that is important.

He was making basically money, like I mean, yeah, but he's making I mean, what do you mean if he's not making retirement money?

Like what I'm saying is that what he says, what he says and what he did.

What he did and what he says do not align.

And whenever that happens, where somebody says one thing and they do the other, then you know what they want and you know what they mean.

They mean, what they acted and what they did, just because they what they say doesn't mean anything, right, So when he says, oh, money, money, this money, that or whatever, he literally lit money on fire just to create a scene and to make people you know, to create a narrative that like, oh yeah, we bullied Quasi off the platform and they hurt him, and he's like, I'd rather delete my And again, maybe there could be some winding problem with like he gets in trouble on Patreon, but then he has all of his videos talk about his Patreon blah blah blah blah blah.

Maybe there's some legal stuff in there that I don't get, but I don't think from what I saw that he's good.

He would get into that nasty of legal trouble.

I think I think worst case scenario would be he would instantly get banned on Patreon.

But me personally, like Squishy was talking about having this plan of I'm gonna disappear and reappear, so I don't I don't mean this in a negative sense, but I think Quasi appeals much more to like the broader player base or the average player than sort of this circle of like neph Ui and Lucky One and you know, all these people.

And I think a majority of Quasi's followers probably don't give a shit about any of this, or don't care or don't even know what's going on.

And I feel like he literally could have just completely ignored everything and not responded to any allegations and just continued on.

And if he gets banned off Patreon, he could have just appeared on some other place, you know, like many people do when they get banned off of one minds, like, the clear obvious play for him was just to ignore everything, which is what you do anytime they are allegations unless there's some sort of insane checkmate that you have.

That is the play, right if you look, if you look at creators who have faced you know, cancelation charges.

Again, if you're a terrible person in doing obscene things, obviously it shouldn't be okay to get away for it.

But that's the playbook that you have to do, right, You just ignore it, brush it off, stop talking about it, and people get bored and they move on to the next thing.

And that's clearly what would have happened here if he wouldn't have done his horror curiri or whatever and just ended it and deleted all of his stuff.

And I think he's I actually think he's probably gone for good.

I would also guess that maybe he has some other venture, like the fact that he did that so quickly in such a fruitful time.

Right, Like every creator knows how important it is, especially if you're him and you're you're monetizing your ui, how important this time is for your overall year.

Right, And it's like, yeah, I don't know.

I think I think he's gone for good.

The reason that I don't think you're right is because this was scorched earth on something that didn't need to be.

Like I like I'm saying, there is a there is if his number one priority is financial, there is a path recovery here.

Right, he could he could have changed that code, launched QUI and fucking catch that check to the bag.

Right he decided that you know, thousands and thousands of dollars was not worth it, that his mental was worth more.

And you see, his actions were so nonsensical that it was clearly just some sort of emotional crash.

I think it has to be emotional crash.

And and maybe, you know, maybe I'm applying the logic of I could see myself doing this, like I you know, sometimes I get into like an emotional lather and I'm just like I'm done.

I need I need like everything to change, and so like I can see I can see I can see how it happens, right, his his actions are not consistent with his words though, But like he because like in his first aim and he's like, I have a family defeed, and he's like, and then you just basically are like, you know what, never mind, my mental health is way more important than this money.

I'm going because now he's gonna be a fucking job.

He's not just there's no residuals to live off of.

He's just a private in all his fucking YouTube videos.

He has to go get a job.

Yeah.

I mean for me, like if I wasn't that spot, I wouldn't I feel like, I wouldn't unlist my YouTube videos.

I would just delete the YouTube app and just like log out of the channel, and you just right, you just go collect one hundred dollars check every so often.

I think if he was of a more and this is this is just like projection.

But like I think if he was of a more relaxed state of mind, he would have recognized that this is fixable.

Right, we can fix this, no matter how much of this code is stolen.

This is all entirely fixable.

Right.

Maybe maybe I'm biasing my my interactions with quasi because I actually did a video with him, like an interview sort of thing on his channel.

He was one of the most like well put together, in well organized creators, Like it literally felt like I was scheduling a fucking dentist appointment.

He was just like, yeah, I have nine and ten o'clock on Saturday and three pm on Sunday.

Which one is available to you?

And it's just like whenever I talk to anybody else, like we're like when I was like trying to get Draton notes Hunt for the game show, I'm like, yo, I want to do a game show.

He's like, yeah, sure, let me know.

And then I'm like, yeah, we record this day.

He's like yeah, that's fine.

Just instantly like just say yes, because like, yeah, I don't know, we're just fucking sit around at our computer all day where you know.

And it's like, I he was so well prepared for the video that we had put together, and he felt so professional that I just maybe I just view him as being a lot more calculated than someone who would crash out to do that.

But I could be wrong.

I don't know.

Everybody.

Everybody operates differently.

Let's talk about something that he did let's stop talk about Quasi.

Let's start talking about something that he did bring up there.

I think I think it's really important to say that.

We get dragged back yet all right, well, what we're not.

Public relations experts, and like, despite this situation, I know what Quasi has done for the player base, and I think it's important to note his like past experiences and like YouTube videos that have helped countless people, his you know, tips and chicks videos.

I know that there's a lot of like things that he's done good for the committee, and that you know that cannot really be commended.

I mean, that can't.

What am I trying to say.

Here, throw all that You shouldn't throw all that away like he did.

He has That's sort of what I was trying to say, is like, I don't you think.

This makes it a bad person, Like you know, some people, Oh god, some people like to apply like a moral compass to ship like this.

He's like, oh, he's a terrible person.

Brother, he's making a fucking ui world of warcraft, like he's I don't know, he probably I hope he's a great husband and a great father, Like I don't fucking know nobody who was it.

Was it Danders or Enough who made the comment about how like everybody is vibe coding.

I think it was Enough, right, And it is sort of a thing here, right To kind of realize is like this isn't for advanced coding firms going at it at each other, right, these are potentially yeah, potentially these are just random people who got it.

Like I sure as hell, okay, I have a little bit of coding experience, but that's long gone.

That was like, you know, random college classes.

But I'm here trying to figure out UI stuff and do weekors and stuff and make it for Like, I feel like a lot of people kind of stumbled into this arena not necessarily knowing what they get into.

And so while it's true that again stealing is bad, he should have known what he was doing and he handled it in a terrible way.

Like, you know, he is just some guy that's trying to make a UI because he gets spammed in discord every day by all of his viewers and spammed in comments to make a UI.

You know, it's like, just just think about it, right, Like not to say that quasi UI is bad, but it's very very similar to a lot of other uys that are already available for the same price or free.

Right, So the people that are hounding him to make a UI are like, you know, in that corner of YouTube where they haven't even ventured to know who one MDI and who the top team is on Radario and all this stuff.

Like these are people that just saw his guide and watch his video and it's like, hey, I want that, you know.

So it's it's hard.

Yeah, no matter what we said, you know earlier, Like the situation with ad ons is just complicated.

It's not black and white.

It's all over the goddamn place, and it's just it's mess and chaos.

Yeah, all right, let's start talking about paywalling add ons.

Because that's how you're you're ready for.

Some for context.

Our co host here does pay wall his add ons or his UI rather.

All right, so story about paywall.

So there are undeniably a lot of add ons, whether it be liquid reminders.

I think they got that got renamed right, it's no longer liquid reminders, it'smeline reminders, online reminders.

Uh, anybody's weak or in UI packs including growls with Wago facilitating these features behind the paywall.

Zygor rest x p T s M.

There are a ton of add ons that have UH for pay or you know, the UI plus extras model.

I have a way to try to get around some of this stuff, and some of the people that we saw, you know, more or less going after Quasi.

I think that one of the reasons that the LBI team wasn't super happy about it was because it felt like it was some of their code that they offer a free product and the Quasi was benefiting from it.

But then a lot of the player base took it one step further and we're saying that because Quasi's UI is paid, that is a problem, and there was a decent amount of heat that was happening on to him because of that.

So let's start talking about that.

I will give my takes on this first.

I think that paywalling add ons more than anything is like just not the way that I like to operate.

I view add ons and add on profiles as community made resources more than anything too.

The reason I also don't, you know, pay all add ons because I don't make all my add ons.

I don't make all the I don't make the add ons, and I don't make UH.

I don't actually make all of my like profiles and stuff like that.

So a lot of a lot of my UI stuff will be taken from other people at least in some capacity or like some parts of that.

So I never felt comfortable like paywalling any of that.

At the same time, if I were to pay wallet, I want everything to be one hundred percent original and using an add on that is created by myself, right, And so that's why I actually thought that Quasi's way of doing this was a bit you know, it made a lot more sense where he wasn't going through LVUI and he wasn't going through all these other you know, sell or whatever else and paywalling a profile, which is you know, basically circumventing the ad on developers getting paid in some capacity and just allowing him to get paid instead.

He was creating his whole entire add on which was a paid for thing, which was similar to more like the Zygo guys, rests, XP Traits, kill Master and less similar to you know, Gating Weekora and uipax.

I think that Blizzard like, realistically, I would prefer if this shit was just like gone for pay add ons add on plus extras.

I wish that all of this shit was just completely gone.

But the problem is Blizzard does not want to police this, and so I think that this is just the reality of the city situation.

And I think that like as players, we have absolutely no fucking responsibility of trying to police this either if blizzarded, Blizzard are the people who are supposed to poleice this, not the average redditor, And so, you know, just randomly getting mad about this is completely fruitless and it's kind of like RMT, where uh, you know, getting mad about people RMT isn't going to fix anything.

Ultimately, Blizer is going to have to crack down on RMT if they want that shit to stop.

So I think I think it's important to note that there's a difference between profiles and add ons, Yes, and what Blizzard statements covers here is specifically charging for add ons and a very vague what was the wording exactly services related to the add on that.

That that is very formal monetary compensation to downloader access an add on I think encompasses profiles, though not necessarily because legally downloading or accessing the add on, as long as the files are there, you are downloading and accessing the files.

Like the way I equate a profile selling a profile is you buy computer parts and you're paying somebody to set it up the computer for you.

Yeah, right, Like what if Microsoft came by and it's like, you know, you cannot have somebody set up your computer for you, you can only do it yourself.

Well okay, but but example whise that that is essentially what they're saying.

And I think that that why they cannot police this is exactly what you said is they just can't do it, you know, literally, it's the same thing as like if I paid you five bucks to come over to my PC and set up the UI using the add ons on my PC.

I think they could police this that I don't think they want to.

Like realistically, there would be still some fringe cases that slept through this gip through the cracks.

But like, they're not trying to police this the same way they're not trying to ban the people who are selling gold and trade chat or selling gold on LFG.

Right, they're just not trying like they really could.

They could if they started like cracking down on pay for UI packs, the wago iOS stuff, all these add ons that have paid you paid features plus extras stuff, monstization model real.

I don't think it would take that long because you'd be able to encompass ninety five percent of this in like one afternoon if you're Blizzard.

Yeah, I mean, regardless of that front.

What why I think this is coming to light again is one people have always hated this, but two Quasi was legitimately just selling a Paywald add on, which is it's not a gray area anymore.

Selling a Paywald add on is directly against this, which is why people got more up in flames about this one.

Which is interesting.

I think that's selling a Paywald add on is better, in my opinion than selling a UI that has features that are like selling a UI for a different add on like I like, I feel like those are I feel like at least I'd rather have somebody like selling the add on ethically.

I agree with you, but that's not that's not the rule that Blizzard has.

So all right, I've been silent for way too long time with filibuster.

No actually, okay from I'm I think Blizzard's tos and Blizzard rules are completely irrelevant.

And I think if you're somebody who comes into this argument with what does Blizzard say is okay, and what is not I mean that's for what you know Blizzard can do right if Blizzard bans you, and I'm like, Blizzard shouldn't have banned me, But whatever they need service, Blizzard can do whatever they want.

Nothing about Blizzard's terms of service has anything to do with ethics and morals and what is right and wrong and what is cringe or not.

And the way people are talking about this issue is a moral issue, saying that they're not happy with people doing this right, Like you basically said, from a moral point of view, you don't feel comfortable selling your UI because you haven't done this stuff right.

I think the discussion of whether or not it's in the terms of services there is is fucking stupid.

It's completely beyond the point I'm here for, like the moral discussion of what's going on, And personally, I just am wondering, for you, guys, what is bad about what is bad for the community or bad for the game?

About selling profiles or add on packs?

Me there you go, all right?

I think for me it's the original add on developers don't get anything for it.

Why should they they?

So?

As opposed to what then, I don't make a pack and then they don't get anything either.

I do think they should get kickbacks for it.

I think i'm gon squishy here, Like, realistically, you are utilizing their add on and you're reaping ninety nine percent of the monetary value out of it, right, And I think that that to me feel there's something wrong.

There's a huge imbalance there.

How is that any different from you create a PC parts store and you buy PC parts and then build it.

And you had to pay for and you're not allowed to you're not allowed to sell it add on.

That that is the big point there.

If I would have no issue with selling profiles if add ons were also available to be paid, that is a different discussion.

I'm not getting into that.

But so so, if all people selling their profile raise the price by five dollars and then we gave five dollars to all of the add ons that we use, then everyone would be okay with that.

That's what you guys want.

Yeah, I think you're talking about them.

You're talking about the moral standpoint.

Yes, I just don't see.

I just don't see that the average public is something they want.

I think that I don't think that's why.

I don't think that adams should be I don't think that ads or add on profile should ever be sold for these reasons exactly.

Uh.

Well, selling is another interesting topic, right, Like is a sub benefit selling?

You know?

Like is I give you something like selling on Twitter?

I mean I find this agreeing that I find it very hard to pay back my viewers, especially those that support me monetarily, with anything other than just trying to keep making content, and seeing an opportunity that I can work harder to package my UI and keep it updated and allow them to download it and have an easy to use format where they can just go click, click, click, here's all the add ons and do this.

I see this as like one of the few ways that I can benefit people and say thank you and like do something back for them and helping me, as opposed to just like why do.

They have to be subscribers to get that benefit?

Uh?

Because I want to thank them for subscribing.

Because what do you mean you.

You want it to only be a subscriber benefit?

Right?

You see I'm saying, I, Yeah, I guess that does make sense, right, because the.

Viewers consumer right of my content?

Right?

You know?

The every viewers a consumer.

You know, there's gonna be some high value consumers, the whalers, the oilers perhaps, you know, but cut the same time, like, I don't know, I think that I get it, like I to me, I don't I never feel so strongly about it, and I think that like, like again, this is ultimately it comes down to what Blizzard's gonna do about it.

Like I don't give a shit, Like I know how I feel about it personally, and I, you know, operate within those balands.

But like if Blizzard's not going to actually do any action for it, I mean, it really matters to me.

Well, I don't know.

I guess I I do it though, right, Like you know, people are just saying people in the community are saying this is a negative thing, and like, you know, I'm not necessarily really super strongly about I don't want to be doing something that is bad or I guess I just still don't fully understand the idea of like l view.

I like, they create a free thing and they let everybody use it, and then I'm like, okay, well here's like a configuration of it, or you know what I mean, Like it's almost like okay, well, what if what if I create a program in Uh, some coding environment that's free.

Right.

What if I write a Python code and I sell the Python code and it does something?

Does does Python?

Should they get a kickback of that or whatever GUI that I use for.

Uh, Python's open source proving language.

I don't know what I mean.

And add on stuff I guess is not and they don't want you to.

Add on.

I mean it comes down to the PC.

I'm trying to argue.

I'm just trying to learn, Like I'm just I'm wanting to understand.

I think that I don't want to.

Be Realistically, the thing that the differentiator between Okay, you understand the difference between what Quasi was doing and what you do, right, Uh?

Yes, yes, sure, So that is the that is the key difference here, right, is that he was creating the add on itself, and you're creating a profile for an add on that somebody else made.

Yet you're getting one hundred percent of the money from their ad on that they're getting, you know, no residuals for which you know.

Then there comes the question of like should that even be a thing?

Which and that's my biggest thing is just like I think it's just weird and I think it is probably unfair that base ad on developers are not allowed to make money on a product.

Yeah, people who making profiles are is like, I mean they I.

Think the work around, I think the workaround that exists in the game obviously, Like it creates a weird situation, right, Like obviously, if lvui comes out tomorrow and says you need to subscribe to our Patreon to get l vui, then it would cause a huge uproar just because of how many people use lvui.

But I mean, the the workarounds that everybody use could be you.

I mean, think about what do you think about timeline reminders and bart stuff.

You can create any of the timeline reminders in game.

Like the biggest thing is you are by you are buying the customization options.

You're not buying the add on.

No, you can't even use that.

You can't even use the ad on you downloaded and it just had I mean yeah, but you have to manually put in every single boss and every single like it's like nonsense.

No, I bet zero people do that, Like literally zero people use that add on that they didn't pay for it or use the code.

I mean, I don't disagree with you, it'd be the same thing as you know how like add ons are bad.

You know how people were talking about like the reminder YouTube creator type thing like from a while back.

If you made an app like similar to Tosarios or whatever, and you could auto create a YouTube video and somebody made that tool and paywalt it, that is technically an ad on.

That is not an ad on meaning you could get you could get people to pay for it.

Like there's so many like gray areas around this policy, and I think that's why people have so such strong reactions.

Yeah, but who cares about the policy?

Like, no one cares about what Blizzard says is right or wrong.

They're not the moral arbiter for the world.

Some people get cringe about that kind of shit, which I think that these are the haters that probably cause Quasi to quit the platform.

Yeah, well see, like this is sort of my point is I think that part a lot of this spawn because people don't like Quasi, like I think it has.

I think it's both right, like people don't like him because of what he's done with this.

Uh yeah, I would say, I mean, clearly there is some problems with big wigs and there are some issues and clearly right, it goes both ways, right, Like, part of the reason they don't like him is because of the stuff that he does that has to do with this.

I'm not saying it's unjustified hate, but you know, there are plenty of other creators and add on people and stuff that I'm sure have done similar things that are you know, like I'm not gonna name any names, but there are some add on seller people who are literally never in the line of fire ever and make you know, heaps more money than I do and never get any hat But because Quasi is like not really looked at as highly by the competitive scene in the in crowd, it's it suddenly blows up and everyone is morally against this.

But I don't I could be wrong.

Maybe I'm wrong, like maybe some.

Of these people to be like no, I mean, you know, the people I think I think Wago should give kickbacks to the depths is basically I would give it, But.

I was under some sort of impression that the way that these services worked at a Wago Curse Forge was that they have ads embedded on their website and in their launcher, and then those ads give kickbacks to the ad on developers and that's why they do.

You want to tell him how little they make for that shit, or you won't be to you kid.

We're talking fractions of a cent per download groll.

We are talking like, oh, I don't know, Yeah, we were talking like fifteen dollars a month.

It's like it's like X dot com getting X premium or whatever the fuck that shit is.

Like, we were talking like that kind of amount of money for me.

The big thing, and where I think the majority of this backlash came from, is the whole like selling profiles thing has been a great area for the longest time.

I mean this add on discourse goes back years across multiple expansions, and I think we can all agree to that, right, Like, that's never like the selling profiles thing.

People bring up that line about the TOS over and over again.

Nobody has sold a full on add on for a very long time.

TSM was the last one, and they got.

Has some weird like premium stuff that's a little weird, but.

Like the Legion, TSM got like a new add on, like the TOS got amended because TSM was trying to create a premium add on.

I remember the premium stuff.

But like, but what all I'm trying to say is I think Quasi got caught in the line of fire here because this is the first fully paywalled add on in years and expansions.

Rather that I actually disagree.

I think nobody cares about that.

I think nobody cares about that blizzard that's only used as a weapon against him to say he's doing really wrong.

But from a moral or.

Community standpoint, I think that has no impact.

If anything.

I side with Tittles and that the fact that it's his own add on and he put like the more work he puts into it, the more perceived value there is, right, Yeah, like he you just as he.

Like the way I see it is you could literally put an add on, call it quasi ui.

It opens up on the screen, It does nothing, and it just has a box in there where you have to copy and paste the code.

Then you put the code in of your subscriber, and then bam, you get all the features like that's allowed.

Right, Like, that's more or less what a lot of these add ons do.

And it's like to me that workaround doesn't really need anything from like a moral or community standpoint, other than it's a workaround to get around the rules, and like nobody cares what blizard rules are.

Like, this is not the moral arbitrar or of like what what is good and what is bad and what we should and shouldn't do.

I don't.

I don't again, I don't do it because I think it's more like community thing and less of like an indu a.

You know, it should be a paid product.

I just don't think it should be a pay product.

That's my personal it's my personal stance on this.

At the same time, like I find it hard to care right like whenever other people do it, like I see, I see the benefit from the people who are getting it, but also there are just so many profiles that are free, like you don't actually you don't need to download somebody's paid profile more than anything else.

And I think that the only issue that I have with it morally is what Squishy said, where the ad on developers are not getting kicked backs at all and the only people who are making money off are the streamers, so that there is an imbalance there that should be fixed.

I guess I just don't understand how streamers selling their profile affects.

The ad on the Okay weak eras only was making four thousand dollars a month off of their Patreon.

I guess you know people who were selling weikor packs, how much were they making off their Patreon?

Right?

Uh?

Yeah, I mean it's not unfair, but at the same time, like it is what.

It is like well some yeah, because week oors is you know, because the lui is governed by a different rule than the people who are selling the packs.

But that's stupid.

I mean realistically, because of the situation, the imbalance that we're in, Like the thing that could happen and I'm not just like it's going to happen is if hypothetically, if all of the add on people decided to be like, we're not opetting our out ons anymore until we get kickbacks, that would be a pretty big statement and one that might see the ad.

So they're just mad that other people are making money, like they started a project.

Yeah why.

How much do you know how many hours it takes to like maintain weak ores.

But that's mutually exclusive from them what they they're doing.

Wait, what you should you should have to pay a licensing fee?

That would also be a.

Yeah.

Yeah, basically the realistically.

I would say, realistically aside from a few creators, like the amount of money that because I was thinking about this, because I remember Nagie was tweeting about this about how ad on developers deserve money or some kickbacks, right, and I agree, right, Like, I think it's kind of shitty, and I think that they are an important foundation in the community that they exist.

And then I was like, you know, again, this is only me, but I would consider myself probably middle of the road in the UI selling, right, And I'm like looking at my numbers and like, what kind of kickback could I possibly give from my Twitch subscribers back to you know, there's ten different add ons that I use, and it's like how much you know?

I okay, I would basically just sub to their Patreon at that point, right, Like that too, barts because I have to.

Actually I don't have to anymore, but I'm still sub to it.

How many Patreons am I sub too?

I actually frequently donate, but I usually usually to like creators and the like gift subs rather than developers, which again is like you know that maybe that shouldn't be the case, right, but like, okay, but my point is, like, okay, let's say I let's say I responded to Noggy on Twitter and I was like, actually, I'm sub to all their patreons.

Like would people be like, oh wow, Graouel is doing everything right, that's perfect.

People would be like, oh no, bro, you make all this money from your subs and you will give them that.

If you're doing it like that.

I feel like that's like, you know, that's better than every other fucking greater.

Right, Yeah, that's fair.

I mean I think that, I think that's reasonable.

But like my I guess my thought was just like, you know, there's only it's not like I'm sitting here, you know, piling in cash depending on what depending on what amount you would have to kick back.

Like talking about people who work very hard on their UIs right, Like would they still do that and be able to put in that time and hire the people that they do if they were giving half of what they gave back.

And hypothetically, like you know what if we'll just I mean, I don't think it should.

I don't know, I don't know what the number sho fucking be Like, hypothetically, what if half of it went to you know, you used to an add ons half of it went to the ten developers evenly, and then the other half went to you, Right Like that that's a way that it could be set up.

Alternately, you could just play a pay a flat licensing fee just like five dollars per developer or something like that.

Right Like.

Also, I mean, yeah, none of this stuff I would be against.

But again, like, isn't this on them to figure?

Like?

Why why am I getting the blowback?

Like I have to figure this out?

Like why do I have to figure you know what I'm saying that you're getting the blowback?

I think I think after this talk, I'm going to go through and sub to all these patreons because I think that's the right thing to do.

And I agree with that, But like, I don't think.

That you should be getting blowback, Okay, I don't think the community should be the fucking police of anything like this.

I'm aware that ship is fucking.

You know where that most happens Twitter and social.

Media YouTube comment section of the bitch.

Yeah, oh oh they're bad.

I mean today crawl, fucking idiot, capitalist pig.

I think, Yeah, I guess it's an it's an interesting discussion, but I think that, like, I just think that the idea of oh I'm just not gonna share my UI.

Then you know what I'm saying, because it's a lot of fucking work, like depending on what classes you play, how much stuff that you have to do, like keeping it, because like just to like put it into a perspective.

I know people can say, oh, you can do low effort stuff.

But let's say I put out a UI right.

Let's say at the beginning of midnight, I put out all my stuff right, and it's like, okay, all of it's there.

Not only is that a lot of time, but then in a month when something breaks and then the point five patch when stuff breaks or there's a new tier set, and now you need to track this.

Right, I'm swamped with people in my Twitch chat in my message, Oh fix this, fix this, Oh this is broken, do this, And it's like it's a full time thing.

And again I'm not trying to say like you're selling it.

I'm not.

I'm saying even if I wasn't selling a product, I'm saying that if I was to just post my UI for free, it creates a whole lot of work, to the point where I think a lot of people wouldn't want to do it.

I feel no obligation, like, dude, it for free.

I feel no fucking obligation to update that ship.

I'll update it whatever I update it, right, like forget that.

Yeah, I guess that's a healthy way.

That's a healthy way to look at it, like I should.

I just I would struggle, right like I would like someone comes to my discord and say, hey, my stuff's broken.

I'm like, yeah, it's not updated, and then they type of satamogi and then like I have to sit on that l you know, I don't know for me.

I guess for me, that's a lot harder.

But you know, I think that you're is definitely more right and better, and I think your path is definitely more correct right of just put out what you want to put out, no walls on anything, and then just do whatever you want to do.

I just to me, that's a harder.

That's a hard path as well.

I don't think there's a right and wrong to it.

I just don't want to be I don't feel I don't feel comfortable, like because like half of my fucking u I would be taken from other people and then I'm just like, you know, separating that out to like what half is mine?

What half is isn't isn't isn't it a little bit weird?

It's like, ah, fucking like, I don't know, and I also don't want to.

I don't want to do maintenance on this bullshit.

I'm gonna be honest, Like I update my UI for me, I don't really I don't updated for other people.

Yeah, I mean like yeah, like people said, you're selling a service, right, Like all these favors are selling a service constant updates, constant.

You know, you're checking you you sold the product, and you need to keep that product updated.

I think it's perfectly fair.

I think that my own meaning I also have to resub to get the new updates.

So you're getting.

Michael, I'm one hundred like I'm.

When I was talking about the difficulty of it, I was specifically saying if if it wasn't a paywall thing or I wasn't charging Oh yeah, in no way, In no way am I saying Yeah if I if I say hey, if you sub to me, you get my UI, and then you get it, and then I'm like, I don't want to update this, like this is a no people are dming me that's not okay at all.

That's not at all what I'm saying.

I'm saying you still get all that even if you don't put it behind any walls and you post it.

I think, I think it's not a paid product, and nowhere are you're responsible for, Like and they want to download your UI, You're like not responsible, Like you have no vested interest in you know, there's there's no shareholders to increase value from, right, Yeah, And that's just like these people are I think, in your right, in their right to sell it as a service.

But the problem is the out of developers themselves are banned in quotes yea from selling it as a service.

Yeah, And that that whole awkwardness I think is the whole problem here, because it's like some archaic wording, like when the fucking the thick Plusters got upset at Mistletoe way back when because of some archaic patch notes from like twenty nineteen.

You know, like that shit just needs to be figured out.

Also, if you're a commenter, don't be cringe and try to police things.

If Blizzard's gonna fucking let Blizzard.

Police, they're gone.

They're already on some random other video they're already their comments there.

They're angry.

Problem, Go download Luxos's week or a pack, or go download Like as Quasi said, there are free week or a packs.

They are no ways in forcing anybody to subscribe to anything.

As the Internet, everyone has free will.

He is right.

I agree with Glassy here.

Now I don't agree that you know, I don't know.

I don't know if it should be paid well, but.

Like I think I understand what you're saying, basically something along the lines of Like in in the early days of Wow, when they created a lot of these foundational add ons such as weekors, charging for them wasn't even really an option and they still don't even benefit that much for them.

And now other people, now that there's this huge foundation, other people have found ways to charge for things and do things and make money.

And they almost can't because they're already so entrenched that if weekors came out tomorrow and said, okay, sub do our Patreon or you have a five week or a limit on your your games, like, they would just completely Like Blizzard would basically rewrite the policy after them.

If they did that, right, like that would cause such a massive way and ruin so many things that.

Yeah, so I think I understand what you're saying now, Like it's unfair to the people who built this foundation to try and make money on it when you know they put in more worker than you and have been around for a long time, and what you're doing wouldn't even be possible if they didn't do it.

Off of World of Warcraft add ons, like very very you know, truthfully, nobody, nobody's getting enriched.

Off of World of Warcraft add ons, the World of Warcraft ad on developers.

They do it out of love for the game, and I think like a lot of people don't even like stop to say thank you and remember that there are real fucking people making these things that help them play the game every day.

That's what I was saying, Like you whatever weekors cut, we're saying that they're quitting, and then people like, why are they stopping?

Aren't they rich or something like that, And then we pulled up their Patreon.

They're making like forty five hundred dollars a month for three people to split three ways.

No, they're not getting fucking rich off like bucks a month.

Yeah, Like.

They're doing this because they love the game.

They would probably create this on their own time as a passion project or whatever.

And especially since they're not selling you anything.

They it's not a service, they're not selling you anything.

They can do whatever the fuck they want, and they don't owe you a damn thing.

But I would love for the community, love for the game.

They keep updating, they keep things going because they want to.

I think that's the really important thing to remember.

They're like, I don't know, I.

Gotta got a Patreon sub to MDT.

I've had one for like forever.

But I don't think that like, I don't think, you know, I don't think anybody's responsible to do anything.

Like again, everybody's got free will.

They liked how I feel like.

I like it.

I like that, I like the products.

You know, I want to subscribe to EMPTYT.

Yeah you know how you said I wouldn't.

Sorry, go ahead, I was gonna say, I tell us you know how you said?

Pearl?

Mm hmm you know that, said Pearl, Pearl?

Yeah you know that?

Still by UI, right, I thought I was finally gonna get rid of get ready to ditch it for this patch.

They announced that they're they announced that they're opted again, like a week or two probably dude, stick it around.

How mad would people be if all, like if if if every add on that you had to download costs five cents, do be fucking bad?

Right, like you will be spurious over it.

I just went into Google and I tried to find the plat Patreon to see what sort of money they make or whatever, and it just doesn't even come up.

The only Patreon that is making money probably like raid bots, right, like that has to be the only one that's like actually making because it's.

All of the UI sellers, all of their like, it is just a bunch of UI sellers patreons coming up.

When I google Plater Patreon, Patreon, I can't even find the plater patreon.

Oh my god, I can't find it.

God, I think because plater is it like details, Like, isn't Plater like another add on makes Plater, right, isn't it details that does there?

I don't remember?

Oh my god.

Yeah, I mean I think that.

I think that in the in the wild space, the only the only thing that's like making money off Patreon has to be raid bots.

But like, do you do you know who could actually do something about this?

By the way, Okay, if they really wanted to Wago could and just what did you say that I completely I said, I.

Said, I said, if you're like one of the people who has the wago uh tie ins, you could just give kickbacks to the developers.

Oh, I'm just saying Wago could do it like on their end, like without just like going forwards, like a percentage will go to the add of developers.

Well, Wago doesn't technically well, I mean they do, I guess, but I guess, like I was thinking, the the UI package just integrated through Wago.

They don't get a cut of any of it.

They all it does is track.

I mean, they get at it because people are coming to their website and doing things Like I'm not saying they don't better from it, but in terms of the subs or whatever.

Like yeah, yeah, that's that's that's fair.

There's I mean, there's the way, there's way.

At the same time, like, I don't know, I think that people.

God, I hate World of War Cup players.

Sometimes people try to apply like morality to things like this, and it's just.

Like, I mean, yeah, I mean I think as long as you don't take it too seriously, I do think thinking about the implications of what you're doing and like how, you know, I think that's important.

Like that's sort of why I said it.

I know you laughed when I said it, but like that's more of what I meant, Like I wasn't trying to like, you know, what is taking the high ground or who's better than who?

Like I think it's important to think of how.

I don't know, I guess like when I try and live my life, I try and think of like if everybody did what I did, would the world be okay?

You know, and like it would be really really annoying and there'd be a lot of bad podcast takes.

But other than that, like I feel like I leave things that I try to in a better place than they content greater.

I'm closer to you than the average commentaror is, and I you know, I don't I don't think that you know, gating your weak ra or ui packs behind a sub wall, assuming that's original content is a bad thing.

Like I don't think it's a bad thing.

I think it's like, you know, just is what it is.

Yeah, I guess.

I just think that I'm interested that if these creators came out and said, oh, they made you know, donations to all of these add ons of people would be like, oh, yeah, this is great, we have no problems with this, Like I think, I don't know, like I.

Don't think the commun the community people.

Dude, I mean, yeah, that's true.

I guess that's a different you kind of just kind of yeah, that's a good point.

Yeah, they're gonna have grievances with you, but they're not the people who have grievances with you, Like, yeah, they're gonna they're like you said, they're gonna hate because they don't like you.

It's the same thing with the quasi stuff, Like I don't know, maybe they just say you because they don't like you.

Uh okay.

Other drama that we've had this week, there was a stream together bullshit, Holy bully.

Oh yeah, I forgot about that.

World of Warcraft players were using the stream Together feature on whenever they weren't playing together, which is crazy.

Started with the sour crowd people who were doing getting Classic, which you don't really Okay, so like you do dungeons together, sometimes you don't really play together all too much whenever were playing Classic, but by doing the stream Together feature, they increase their viewership and they have twenty two thousand views.

Then other people saw that that started happening, and people who are unrelated to playing unrelated things started to streaming together.

I mean, in the screenshot it's like a bunch of sour crowd people were doing it.

And then you have Aya anti Fusion, now Automatic Jack and Gingy all doing five different things, not playing together, also streaming together, which is like, I don't know, people got really mad about this.

I find this really hard to be upset about.

I'm gonna be honest again, I'm a content creator.

If anything, I'm the only person who's getting negative affected by this.

I find this hard to get mad about because it doesn't really do anything.

You don't get an increase.

You don't get like increased viewership on analytics, you don't get increased revenue from what ads watched.

You kind of get nothing more than anything.

It has you higher up on the World of Warcraft directory.

But maybe I'm stupid.

Who in the hell clicks on the World of Warcraft directory starts scrolling from views high to low?

Is that is that really?

Who?

You're stupid?

Yeah?

Yeah, directory?

So here's world no no, no, So here's the thing.

Right, So when it comes to people that are upset about this.

It actually comes from the top, right, So the drop off of if you're the top stream versus the second versus the third is very very steep.

There's huge value when there's something going on in Wow being the number one or the number two or the number three stream.

And so you found that the people getting upset about this stream together thing are the traditional people who were at the top of the World of Warcraft directory who wouldn't normally be now or now are not because of the drops, because of the German Sauer crowd people all grouping together.

And so then you found some of those people grouping together with each other because they're like, well, hey, if you can't beat them and join them.

And I think there is a huge monetary value as a streamer, especially the bigger you are, the bigger at snowballs, right like, if you're the guy who's at the top of the directory, the amount of extra views and random subs or whatever that you get.

From nobody's watching sour krawd people if you're not an English speaking person anyways, though, right like, well, so that that was actually a little bit of hard directory.

You click on the wild directory and the first thing you're you're you're given is it isn't high to low, it's recommended for you.

So then you actually have to go viewership high to low to see to actually get affected by.

This, right, I always do that, But maybe that's because that's how it used to being.

I'm used to it.

I don't even think I changed.

And I think you click on the directory to.

Me, Uh yeah, I do occasionally.

Oh my, I mean there's like a cycle right almost exclusively, Like yeah, but.

What if there's nobody on the sidebar, you want to watch Twitch for.

A second here.

So I'm not a streamer, but I have a I like I almost always have a Twitch stream like on my side monitor while working and stuff like that because I'm just living, breathe.

Well, So sometimes I will go into the Twitch category and I'll just scroll the scroll the directory.

Like I'm not a streamer, I'm a I'm a frequent user of Twitch, and like this to me seems like Twitch endorsed view bodding.

And we know how people feel about view bodding, and there was the whole discussion of view bodding because it makes you show up higher in the live channels and then you get more viewers because you're higher up, so more people click.

This is different.

But this is different than viewbodding for one very specific reason.

Those viewers don't count to your analytics.

There's no benefit, right.

No, there is because the higher you are on the the the that the Twitch leaderboard, the more new viewers you get.

Naturally, it also depends on the Twitch algorithm, like.

Well, I'm not looking at stream regardless, Like for very candidly, I'm not clicking on German stream regardless.

Well, we'll regard what tittles is saying.

I was always under the impression that if you were to view bot, that's a net negative in terms of viewers, right, Like, even if you get a thousand extra viewers on your stream from view boddy, there's no way you make more money than what you're paying on the view bots.

Otherwise that would be infinite money has right, Like if you made money, if you made money from those viewers based off of your analytics or whatever, then you would just you bought yourself one million viewers all the time.

Right.

But I think it's pretty well known that the higher you are in the category, the more natural view There's huge value in that.

Like, let's let's take you know, let's say Midnight Launch.

You know, Tedtles partners up with a bunch of other people and just shows up higher on the list.

People who are interested in Midnight because oh huge expansion launch are just there's more natural viewers that are coming to titles in the other streams.

Ah Okay, I think intuitively makes sense.

I just I find it hard to believe that people are clicking through the fucking directory and and clicking through the directory in a way that they're sorting viewers high to low and not sorting recommended for you because dude, again, like I said, I'm not clicking a German streamer.

Okay, lets it's Nigera, but I'm not clicking a German streamer regardless unless it's or Nigura.

I think I think you're a little bit in your shell here about the way that you play well, it is because you don't interact with any of the other classics, you know, you know what I mean.

Like, think about someone like me who I play mop classic and i play hardcore and I'm familiar enough with Vanilla to watch and i play retail.

Like yeah, I you know.

Also it's part of the drama with the German thing too, is there are streamers who traditionally normally stream in English who have their streams tagged in English, and then who are only speaking German now for this hour, which again is one hundred percent fine if they weren't tagged in English.

And so people are finding their streams, they're search they can't even filter the streams out because they're taps.

They're under English.

More than anything.

You shouldn't do that, and it looks like shit.

But like people got so mad and I'm like, on a scale of one to ten, this this has got a cap out at like a two.

There's no way.

I think this is just a huge don't hate the player, hate the game situation like this is Blizzard or Blizzard.

Holy shit, that was a slip.

Twitch has allowed this for so long and it has been such an obvious dumb advantage that you can do, and they just of course leave it to wild players to be the first ones to abuse it.

And I just don't understand why it increases your viewcount in the directory.

That's all they need to fix and this and at this point it's been such a problem, Like it's one thing if they roll out a new feature and everyone's abusing it on the platform.

But this has been a thing for what like over a year now that you can do this on Twitch, Like at this point, in my opinion, you're an idiot if you don't stream together, Like why don't one of us every time we load up?

I mean, I'm down.

If we want to get a group of people and stream together in the wild directory every day, I'm down.

I mean, you remember whenever you're playing Fellowship, we're just slamming the stream together, right like, oh yeah, yeah.

And then we had aj in our stream with like zero viewers, but he's just linked and he's just at the top of the directory.

Zero.

You didn't get any new viewers from that.

See, That's what I'm saying, Like.

Did I mean, who knows?

I don't know if I agree with that, but you know, uh yeah, I definitely a nothing Burger is definitely stupid, but it and they need to fix it.

Yeah I don't, but definitely don't look down on the streamers for using it, because I'm a streamer, and don't look down on me.

I think.

The last thing I'll say is like, imagine if you take you know, the season one launch with the race World first, and you combine all this, like the biggest streams together, Max, the broadcasts, who else?

Who is the big streamer, Roger Brown?

They're not okay, they're not combining streams with echo.

People hypothetically hypothetically say you do, and you get like, I don't know, four hundred k viewers on the stream together.

I'm pretty sure that's pretty.

High on Twitch.

I'm pretty sure that's bad because they're competing with one another.

Cinema is all I have to say.

Having chat combined with Max's chat.

Chats, that is it.

That is a myth.

With the stream the other feature you can, but there's like a setting it asks you do you want to combine chats and you just you don't have to.

No, you don't have to.

They change that.

You don't even have to do anything.

We need more drama from more tea times at the bench, so it should happen.

But like that would be excellent.

What I mean the there is uh they did that with the m d I, Like, is there anything wrong with that?

They didn't stream together with the competitors in the NDI this season.

I'm I think the stream together is great.

I think that's a great feature, it should not increase your view count in the directory.

Yeah.

Similar, Yeah, I.

Again one to Ted got a cap out of the two in terms of like how bad this could make me?

Again, ape of the people who can get negative effected by this, I'm a fucking streamer.

I don't care.

Yeah, if anything, I actually haven't even seen my viewership negatively impacted by this.

My viewership's going up, not down.

Well partially, That's what I was sort of saying about the directory was if you're not at the top of the directory, you're not really gonna notice that much.

But the people who I mean, I'm just gonna I'll just say Tally because Taly's been basic lately and I'm not trying to hate on him, but he's someone who notoriously gets a lot of viewers and benefits it greatly from drops, and he was one of the people who was like, Hey, what the hell is this going on?

Because now there's all the sour crowd people and he's not anywhere near the top five if he doesn't do it.

My estimated browser position of World of Warcraft and rest stream is forty second, So yeah, I guess it makes sense.

Yeah, all right, that's it any more dramas, hopefully not.

All right.

Final thoughts, don't be a hater.

You're not the World of Warcraft police any other final thoughts.

Uh, there has to be thoughts, but you know, with drama, so we love drama.

Hopefully there'll be more drama coming out this week.

Hopefully Quasi comes back off the top rope and just starts slamming down all the other add on guyspears.

I don't think he should have I don't think he should have quit.

Like whatever, no matter, we're out of here.

Watch the stream.

Watch the stream on Thursday.

Oh yeah, watch the stream.

Watch the blizzard.

Surely it's not a classic related Yeah, we choruses coming back in that they're announcing it.

Godd