All right, welcome back to the bench.

Power by Wilhead.

We are joined by Squishy and Growl for episode seventy three, where we finally have long awaited for the day that we have content and Squishy, how have you been, dude?

We don't have content yet.

There's not a lot to talk about.

We have the concept of content, the concept of condon that's what we're calling it.

It's like the announcement of an announcement.

Of yeah, I mean we we do.

We also have blizz con.

I mean, like you guys going yes.

No, actually I might go, but then no one would know if it's me.

So I Squishy knows a guy that could give you a hat, like a helmet, I think, or of a hat.

Oh shit, I don't know.

I'll just be undercover.

I'll just come up to you.

Guys think hey, big fan, nice to meet you.

Then you know, off in the distance.

Froga did that to drat Nose last Luskan in person and he goes, hey, man, big fan, could I get a picture with you?

Dratis had no fucking clue, who frock.

That's actually so good?

I mean, how would you know?

Right?

I have no way of knowing.

I knew him.

I don't even remember where I had seen him before, in pictures or something, and so I knew who it was.

And then him doing that to Dratus maybe he laughed so hard.

That's a lead us to go in like a v tuber.

Have you seen the v tuber things where like they have instead of instead of them in person, it's like a stand.

They carry on the iPad.

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Jesus clear.

Okay, I think I'm staying home like I usually do.

So we got uh.

Obviously, I don't think there's anything to talk about with muscon Ian made a post trying to, I would say, calm down people in regards to add ons, but honestly it was mostly just to be more transparent about what the goal of add ons that on changes were and what was actually happening and kind of what to expect beyond that, you know, myth the plus testing is starting tomorrow at you know, actually today whenever we're recording this, then they've changed like some random stuff.

We've got some random news about twenty first anniversary and whatnot.

Do we want to start with the Ian?

How's a coastis pest?

Because I think it's probably the most information that we've had this week.

Yeah, we got it.

We had a really important post here that you completely missed out on.

There's a new unrelenting rallying Cry of the Dragon Slayer buff on Hardcore and Anniversary Realms.

It launched an eleven AM today.

They gave everybody and Nixy a buff everywhere permanently, which is, uh, basically just like makes your guys stronger, and it's normally something that you only get when Gilds drop it for Raid and yeah, it's I don't know, a lot of the hardcore people are mad because everyone that plays while I is mad.

But you can turn it off at the end if you want to.

And yeah, it kind of caught me off card.

So I was leveling this morning for fun because there's nothing else to do.

My character was struck by lightning and I got a buff that I've never seen before.

Is this classic plus?

Yeah?

I mean classic Plus.

There's been there's actually been so much like I feel like classic andyes, they like play and it's like fun, but there's just not that much content in Classic and so they get bored and then every year kind of everyone starts to like revisit it again.

So we're starting to get like all the like Zaru and Peekapoo and all those guys like revisiting Classic again, like the new thing is the ultra hardcore or whatever.

And it's like we're seeing everyone talk about Classic Plus.

Even Soda has been talking about it, and it's like, I gim a little.

I mean, I think they'll do something eventually, but I feel like we're so far away, especially with a new retail expansion of launching soon.

I mean people, I was watching some stuff on it.

It seems like people were speculating that Classic Plus wouldn't get announced until bliz Con, and people were worried that it was going to be like a Season of Discovery esque thing, which I think that Season of Discovery was actually fairly well received, but it wasn't the Classic Plus that most people were hoping for, right, Yeah.

Well, the thing about Classic Plus that's hard is, and we talk about this with many things and wow, is that it means a different thing for many many people, right, Like some people their idea of Classic Plus is like they want all these you know, extra raids and like endgame content and new items to get.

Like some people want new leveling zones and places to go and like they don't go the endgame.

Yeah, some people want new classes and stuff, so it's like it's like so basically seasonal discovery.

They like, in my opinion, they owe Mega retailified it like it just turned into retail again where it was like you have daily quests and they like, oh, we have to respect your time, blah blah blah.

Like Classic is notorious for just completely fuck controlling you and being like walk all the way down to the edge of the earth, like okay, now walk all the way back and then it's just I feel like that's just like part of the charm and the allure of the game.

And so they if they wanted to do a Classic Plus, I think they need to think about things in the lens of like trying to make a game from two thousand and five instead of making retail because the way it seemed like like they already had a Classic Plus right, it was called the Burning Crusade, Like if they just continue along the same path of like what does everybody want?

Like, you know, how do we expand the end game?

Like they're just gonna end up in the same place that they were before.

Push any thoughts that's hardcore.

That's hardcore.

That's okay.

Everyone hates classic.

I just had to troll with first.

All the listeners are just like, god damn it, girl's playing classes again.

I don't know.

I feel like, right now, wow is so dead.

I would be I would consider entertaining something that was like less serious for Mortal Warcraft.

I mean, that's Linx right now.

Linx is the thing that's keep being wild alive right now.

Like ironically, Li Mix is a great AIRPG that is better than D four Linx.

I don't know, it doesn't scratch that.

I don't know.

It's just not something that I'm like super interested in.

Like for me, I'm looking at this new TFT set that's going to be dropping soon on like all right, yeah, could be due.

I mean there's there's again, just also infinite number of games that are catching people's attentions right now right like like you know Arc Raiders again, girl, you know.

I can't go to it.

Actually I was.

I was making dinner the other day and I saw my roommate was playing it.

He's got like a few buddies that play a lot of shooters.

He didn't seem I don't know, I was kind of like hoping that he was going to be like, oh, yeah, this is the craziest game ever to give me an excuse to buy it.

But he's kind of like, I don't know.

Maybe I think he had like just started and hadn't quite gotten into it yet.

But I'm still waiting.

I'm still getting feelers up.

I don't know.

I feel like I'm at that annoying stage right now, where like I don't play, like I'm not really playing anything, but I don't really want to play anything, you know, Like there's plenty of games, like I still haven't played Expedition thirty three, I still haven't played boulders Kate three.

Like there's still so many games that I could play that if I really wanted to like sink my teeth into a game.

But I'm just like I just I just remember like going over my grandma's house and then like seeing she just watches all these old movies from like thirty years ago.

I'm like, how do you just watch the same movies all the time?

And then now here I am like turning into it, just like yeah, I just want to play the same game I've always played and watched the same shows that I've always watched and eat the same food that I've always eaten, and it's like, I think that's I'm getting old.

Yeah, I think.

I mean, are either you guys interested in the fact that Mythic plus is coming out of the beta today?

Yeah?

I really need, I really need to start getting the content back up again.

I've taken a little bit of like it was literally like an accidental stream hiatus, Like there isn't really even a reason for me not to be streaming other than my days are literally just like me sitting around or like you know, yeah, putting around the house and watching YouTube and listening to a podcast and then yeah, like okay, I play hardcore Wow for two hours and then I like watch my friend's stream and then it's like yeah, I don't know, there's just nothing going on in Wow.

But I think I'm gonna try and jump on the beta as soon as they get keys going wow.

I mean this the twitch section is not doing particularly well.

Like for me, I've just been kind of focusing on changing some of the content style for my YouTube videos and stuff like that, like prepping that.

But even when I try to stream, it's just like the entire category is like not doing super well, mostly because you know, people have seen everything they wanted to see with the war within, and I suspect that as Midnight starts to ramp up the content, will you know, do a little bit better as people get more excited for what's going on.

But I do think, you know, with us starting to get some some testing for Mythic Cluss as well, that gives us content to actually do.

Yeah, I think more so, what I'm excited about is just to see how the things change with regards to dungeons, right, Like we're going from an era of ad ons to no add ons, And is Blizzard actually going to hold too with the you know, simplifying encounter is not having fifty casts at one time that you all need to kick simultaneously, Like, is that actually going to happen here?

Yeah?

And we'll find out by the like probably around the time that you're watching this.

So that's what I'm excited to see.

What's your gut action?

You think that they're gonna make enough changes to casts and stops to where the game feels you know, slower pace but still fun and kind of what do you expect out of Mythic Plus just a little bit slower, or do you think it's gonna be like still way too overwhelming.

I am the wrong person to ask for that, because I see a bunch of people who are like I set up by UI on the beta and I've lost eighty percent of the functionality that I used to have, And I set up my U on the on the beta and it's pretty much exactly what I use.

Yeah, yeah, I.

I can log into my alpha account right now and like show the audience.

But I uh have been messing around with the tarothl UI, and I know there's like some other add ons, like I think plater now has a branch.

Yeah, what was that other one?

Pladonator, Pladinator, Where's great?

Like, like, I feel like I've seen a bunch of the UIs.

Okay, the downside of the UIs is that they don't have buffin dey both tracking in a way that you really want.

But most of this stuff is actually fairly so visible and looks roughly like a UI that.

You would see on live.

I would say, like the doubt, the thing that is definitely going to drastic a change is any add on that relates to encounters like that is very different now.

I think the other thing is the biggest change for a lot of people.

It's just gonna be how things look because there's no there's no cutting it like, the things look worse like it looks ugly.

A lot of uys just look ugly now because of how you know, how tight things are, especially on target frames, like target frames look hideous.

But like.

For the game itself, like I can play perfectly fine because nothing's changing for me realistically.

My my, my UI got an upgrade because I use fucking ex Pearl still on Live.

Yeah, I was gonna say, you say you your you guys are gonna be ugly now.

I'm sorry, but I've seen screenshots from my viewers and chatters.

I've seen people streaming mythic plus on Twitch.

There y y'all's u I was already ugly.

Okay, there's this is If anything, if any, this is gonna accidentally make it a little bit prettier.

I was kind of thinking about this, so I'm just gonna continue pushing the copium and being the Blizzard chill here.

I was thinking like, okay, this is I was ready to say that this is gonna be a rough patch, right, like there's gonna be some some pain points here, dude.

The first patch of war Within was fucking brutal for Mythic Plus, Like do you remember that?

Like, yes, it was.

There was like one of the hardest Mythic Plus patches of all time.

Like I highly doubt that maybe I'll eat my own words here, but I highly doubt that it's going to be more frustrating to Pug in the ten plus range in Midnight than it wasn't war Within, Like, if you made it through war Within, then you will be okay in Midnight.

Also in terms of raids, I mean, Narabar Palace was absolute brutality for me in the guild that I was in, Yes, and uh and uh what was the last raid in Dragonfight?

The one of the fire rac immet.

Still that was absolute brutality for me too, Like those two raids, and then that first season a Mythic Plus was like literal brutality difficulty.

I just don't see a world where this is like more frustrating or worse.

I feel like it's gonna be a really really good season and I think there's a okay, So it's possible that the add ons are really frustrating and people get annoyed.

But it's also possible that it works out okay and it starts bringing people back, right, Like, hey, this sounds interesting, Like I can just jump into the game.

I don't need to worry about downloading add ons, like you know, a lot.

There's this idea that like, oh, people are gonna quit because their add ons are going away, or people quit because their add ons, you know, they didn't like add ons or whatever.

But I think it's just really hyperbolic, and I think that really it's just like, you know, it's just something that will make things a little bit easier and give people an excuse to come back, and like, yeah, g a try at least, which is what everybody wants at the start of every expansion.

Right.

It's kind of like, uh, in terms of your enjoyment, just think about it on a scale of one to one hundred, and it's like, how much of this thing actually contributes to you?

How much does this thing contribute to your enjoyment?

You know, for me, most of my enjoyment of the game comes from playing with friends, you know, us like probably those let's just use numbers here, say sixty percent of my enjoyment of this game actually comes from playing with friends.

You know, ten percent comes from mythic plus ten percent comes from you know, encounter design and raid and just the systems.

And then it's like, you know, a couple percent, like one percent comes from art in the open world right like these And then you start, like, you know, getting into really small stuff and it's like, how much does the UI really matter?

And it's like, you know, the UI matters somewhat, but it mostly is just a vehicle for how you experience the game.

Like for me, I feel like my class matters more to me than the UI does specifically, But everybody, everybody is everybody has their own weight for things.

I think it's probably the most important thing.

And it's like trying to figure out how much things actually matter to you is important.

I think that you that UI elements and combat ad ons are undeniably getting less powerful, but that doesn't mean that the game is going to necessarily be worse.

For wear, like, the game could be better and U I and your UI is less powerful.

Those two things can simultaneously be true, but at the same time for this, for somebody else, the game could get worse and it's like, you know, trying to figure out like how much what matters to you is kind of an important thing here, because this really does feel you know, we joked about it being wow too months ago, and I really do feel like we're kind of moving into moving into that more and more where you know, cutting back on at ons is like a crazy change.

If you if you pre ordered or whatever, like did the super big addition?

Do you have access to beta nowt Like yes, everybody?

Yeah, So I think you know, this is something that Squishy brought up that I thought was a really good point previously, is a lot of people just have this uncertainty that they don't know right, Like they can't really play the game.

They can't see like over the next coming weeks, they're gonna release Mythic plus people are getting on the beta.

You're gonna be able to play max level characters, Like if that's something you know, You're gonna get to get your feet wet a little bit and see how these things play out.

And so far, Blizzard's been pretty attentive with with changing things and giving communication week to week, So hopefully, you know, fingers crossed that that continues throughout the next couple of months.

Yeah, we will have to see I mean ray testing and mythink less testing coming out.

I mean, give it a try, honestly, that's the best thing you can do and see what you feel like is actually missing and stuff like that.

Yeah, and okay, so I mean kind of segueing this into something else that was like pretty important.

Probably the most important piece of news this week was a post that Ian Hazekosis released talking about combat philosophy and add on disarmament in Midnight.

And you know, let's obviously I think that you could take some time and read this.

We'll probably just cover the highlights and the most important parts of this.

So do we want to start with disarmament, what's changing or why now?

Because I think that those are probably the three pieces that were the most important.

I think for me, the important thing is this is the things that we've been saying that Blizzard that like you had to read between the lines in order to kind of understand, yes, because Blizzard has not come out and said this until now, and so like, I think it was good that they finally said this, that they probably should have done this at the start of alpha, but it's better now than ever.

Yeah, this is kind of like I think this is a good post.

It would have been a much better post a month ago or two months ago.

Yes, so that people understood better.

I will say though, like you know, for if you use some critical thinking here, like I could have wrote this post.

Like you know, I I think most of these things that that Ian was saying or like you know, his arguments, they're not necessarily going to dispel your your you know, thoughts or fears or whatever.

They're more just like, you know, Okay, this is why we do it.

This is the alternatives, you know, this is why we chose this path.

But I mean, I'm not saying it was a bad post.

It was just like, you know, a little silly that it came out after they've already done all this, when this was like a you know, hey, this is what's going on, this is what we're trying to do post.

Yeah, okay, So talking about the Adam desmart armament, why I think that this can kind of be synthesized into a couple of you know, key points that he made here.

I'm just gonna read a couple of these then we could talk about it.

Why we have never designed four add ons in the sense of making a specific encounter or class mechanic with the intent that players would write add ons to solve a given puzzle, we have inevitably had to design around them for the past several expansions.

We have to accept that even a non cutting edge content, a majority of players will turn to any available tools to make things easier.

And then the other thing that was, you know, very notable about this section was add ons should no longer offer a competitive advantage in Wow Combat.

But they didn't mention Wow coming to console here.

That's that's why they're doing it, right, Tedle, shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up.

Do you know the number of people who still believe that, by the way.

Somebody somebody said that to me unironically, that they thought that Wow was coming to console, Like I I think I met somebody.

I met somebody irl that plays Wow, and they're like, I heard that Wow was coming to console, and I go, that was That's not even true?

Like what do you mean you heard that?

The the number of people who still ironically believe that this change was made because Wow is coming to console and because Wow is not coming to console, they go, way, so why are they changing add ons now?

Boggling to me, absolutely boggling.

Yeah, you just don't get it, Squeishy, You're just you can't can't believe I don't.

I can't believe you.

Guys, believe me.

In they're secretly making it for console.

They're going to ruin the game, and then all the millions and millions of console players that are going to flood in to play World of Warcraft at midnight are just gonna line Blizzard's pockets with this new simplified one button rotation that they can play on controllers.

This is absolutely the most profitable path for Blizzard to go down.

Yeah, I think that this this why section on Why the Disarmament really made a lot of sense, and it's kind of what we were talking about for a while where the game has the pace of the game has increased so much to the point where the design felt really tough.

I mean, uh, we're trying to express class fantasy while engaging in moment to moment gameplay with add ons instantly solving a raid coordination challenger collapsing a new wants to combat decision into a simple binary situation.

We would get fedback supported by data that are design felt flat and it's like, I think that this really does make a lot of sense, because we talk about mechanics being either too easy or too hard, and very rarely do we get something that's in between, where it's like, either the mechanics are too easy or they're too hard, and if they're too easy, it's because it got solved by an add on, or if they're too hard, it's because for some reason they have designed brew Twister ovenacs because they thought that that was going to be an acceptable encounter, And you're like, okay.

Well, I think the interesting thing here that he mentioned is like designing a bosting normal and heroic as well, cause there's a lot of people who think that weakras are only for normal and heroic, but there is absolutely a distinct pressure, especially in the early part of a season, to use these weakras, even if you're in a normal heroic pug.

I think the biggest example was Lords of Dread, where I'm pretty sure even pugs used the what is the spy helper or like them, foster helper, weakra that you just had to have installed because that was just the way that you did the mechanic, and it trickles down regardless of what difficulty you're at.

I know that people are gonna get mad for this example, because they had this conspiracy theory that Fractice was designed as like the you know, the boss to end add ons or something like that.

But people legitimately link fractalless like Northern Sky and liquid packs whenever you walk up to practice in a heroic pug and then they're like this is the safe spot follow the week or and it's like, is this really the way that the game ever should be played?

Not not necessarily like okay in these situations, It's like, I don't think the game should ever have gotten too a state where this is an acceptable solution to anything.

Yeah, when I was reading this post, it made me think back to a few episodes ago someone asked the question the phrase good for the game or healthy for the game?

What does that mean?

Right?

And while I didn't have a good answer at first, so I was kind of like this is a silly term.

Now after reading this, I think now I can kind of con s actualize what I think it means or what, you know, how I want to use it going forward.

And it's that like, you know, if it's something that only affects you.

That's just sort of like, you know, it is what it is.

Some people enjoy it, some people don't.

But the thing is, sometimes things that you get, you know, affect other people, right Like just for example, I know, you know, the retail people are not gonna like this example, but uh, flying right Like, there are a lot of people that like it to feel like an MMO, right, Like they want everyone to be walking and people to be in towns.

They don't want you to just teleport and fly everywhere, right, And so you can make the argument that like, well, if you don't want to fly, just don't fly.

But really it's like, you know, it's you're not saying you don't like flying.

What you're saying is like you like the way the game feels when there's no flying, and I think that like, you know, this add on thing, I can say that, Okay, this is unhealthy for the game because you know, you go to this heroic pug and you don't want to use this week or and then like you're just actively griefing and or like you're gonna get kicked, right Like, it's not a matter of of like, oh, I'm going to use my brain for this fractalist and I'm gonna be really smart and do the mechanical like you just that is not allowed for the most part.

Yeah, and there of course gilts that still do normal and heroic without weak wors.

But like there's still a pressure there for them to install these things, because, like, let's be real here, they help, Like you may choose to do the harder encounter, but the truth is that pressure is always gonna be there because they are best for a reason.

They take your cognitive load away from what you were trying to do.

I've seen the argument stated though that like, if you were able to install World of Warcraft, you're probably able to install add ons.

Why is it a problem that add ons are in the game, and as strong as they currently are, Why would that even be a problem.

I actually pretty strongly disagree with that.

I think that there's a significant learning curve to understanding add ons in terms of like not just like okay, download a week or like, but to actually get to the point where you're fluent in your using them to their full extent and customizing them and troubleshooting.

Like I would say a majority of the people who think they know how to use add ons really don't, and like, you know, as someone who does, like UI help or whatever, it has a stream like people ask the stupidest question, but like that's okay, right, Like I I'm here because you know, I want people to have a good UI and I want them to enjoy the game.

But to say that, you know, oh it's easy, blah blah blah.

Like I've definitely seen people who say that, oh, Uy's easy, just click install forehead, Like how can you not do it?

And I'm sorry, but you just have a dog shit UI and you're you're missing out on tons of value.

Like they say that, but they're not like living how they preach, right, Like I just think that people that say that use Like I remember specifically when I first when I first started playing the game.

I'm like reasonably fluent with computers, and when I first started playing the game and I discovered party frame at ons.

Now granted, I did use a voodoo, which is the worst add on of all time to try and use, but like I was struggling, Like I'm sitting here like googling stuff and like watching tutorial videos that are like thirty minutes long and shit to like figure out how I like order my buffs and like put them how I want them and change the colors how I want them, And it's like, I don't know, it's not that easy, like people everyone says is that easy, but it really really isn't.

Yeah, I mean thinking about installing a week or a pack even, it's like if you're explaining it to a person, you go, all, right, now you have to download this add on color week oors.

So what does it do well?

It allows you to install more things.

That allows you to do more things.

Okay.

So now now you've installed weakors.

Now you have to install this week or a pack.

Okay, what does this do well?

It gives you everything you need to know about the entire rate, Okay.

I think I think the arguments like the steps are the steps to do that are like fairly easy, right sure?

And so like I mean, if you're able to download, like okay.

You down right?

So you okay, if you download the game, then you download the liquid virus week or a pack has done your screen and now you have giant icons and glows for all these mechanics and you barely know what they do, and it's telling you to go back right, and it's like you know that's not using as well, like you're just downloading a pack and then you're just still trolling.

Yeah, I mean you're like, that's what I'm saying.

I mean, but the but the main thing is Tittle's there's still like I mean to the counter of the argument, it's like you still have issues with weak or versioning.

I mean, yes, it's not my I mean you still have week or versioning.

I mean every guilt that went through brew Twister over X knows about this pain of like wodn update the week our blah blah blah.

Who doesn't have the note updated?

Like, but the that isn't the direct point there, I don't think, And it's are you really playing the game?

If you're just playing?

Simon says at that point.

I think I actually think that his reason, like that the answer in this is is kind of stated in the post and it's like in this bolded text where add ons should no longer offer competitive advantage in while combat.

And I actually think that that's kind of what this entire change boils down to, is that they believe that Adams should not provide an advantage in combat.

And you know, you sit down and you think about it, and you're like, they're probably right that something that's not offered as part of the base game should not be an advantage in combat.

And so now I think that the biggest outcry is from the part of the community that believes that Blizzard is going to mess this up and they're gonna make the game worse.

Is there anything that Blizzard can do to like, you know, qualm these concerns or do you think it's just gonna be like Blizzard needs to just deliver a good product and that you know that will kind of, you know, curb all these issues or do you think it's like, is there anything that they can say that actually solves this or is it something that just has to be done with action.

Well, I just think that here's the thing though, right, Like, this is people, this is people's concerned, like the idea that add On shouldn't help you in combat, Like, I think everyone probably unanimously agrees that that's a thing.

The issue is that blizzards in will never get the features that add Ons have, right, Yes, the depth and the level of skill in the hard work that has gone on over the years of the add On team, Like nobody likes having to download add ons and do all that stuff.

But what people like is the customization that Blizzard will never be able to.

Have right on your UI, right like on your UI.

Yeah, so I think that unfortunately, if you want that right, if you want add ons to not give you an advantage, part of that involves just axing down the capabilities of add ons, right, rather than building up like they're hopefully doing both right, axing some of the bad things that add ons do in terms of computations, and also building up the base Blizzard UI.

And I think a lot of people just don't have the faith that Blizzard UI will be able to get built up to where they wanted to or realistically like they want it to be built up to, you know, to the level of plat where you can like write scripts and do all this crazy stuff that there's a zero chance that Blizzard would do.

I mean, Blizzer would never make it to that point because okay, Blizzard would just never add an ugly menu into their game for better or worse, like they want things to look hold on, I see, why do you think that they don't show cvars in their game?

Is like part of the default, you know, part of the default games because cvars are fucking ugly, right like, and they're complicated and would confuse players.

That's the reason you can't change your spell Q window as part of the base game.

But it is a custom variable that you can access.

It's the same thing I think with like A.

That's that to me is the worry about the whitelest blacklist menu is like trying to teach players spell IDs and stuff like that is you know, in giving them a menu that doesn't look like ass That's that's a tough challenge because right now they're giving you buffs and d buff tracking based on things that they think that you want in a way that they think that you want it.

But obviously the players are used to something that's more customizable, and so of course they're gonna be mad about that.

I think there'd be There's not much they can do here because realistically, people are losing stuff.

It is it is inevitable people are gonna lose stuff.

And while I think we agree that it's probably for the best of the game and you don't need that stuff, people will fundamentally disagree.

And that is, okay, the closest thing that I think they can get is to release that fucking blog post an encounter design that I keep you know that I mentioned last week.

I think where they legitimately just need to come out and say and show examples of how their encounter design is actually changing, because at this point they've said it what like four or five six times across multiple interviews in blog posts, and they just need to actually put some word like pictures, videos to those words.

We're just gonna blindly.

Trust, I rememb We're going to see it.

With the raid testing this week and myth the Plus testing coming on Tuesday.

We're gonna see it.

But like, who is going to trust us?

The content creators who are clearly have our own agenda and are trying to influence Blizzard with our own agenda.

No, this needs to come directly from Blizzards.

Fee our he really speaking, He's really speaking truth this episode.

I would like to play World of Warcraft.

I like the game to be could.

Yeah, like if if I was pr at Blizzard, like this Adam post should have happened.

You know, right when the on the you know, the offa first started, it seemed like they knew that was happening and for some reason just didn't do anything like this.

They knew people were gonna like they should have known people were gonna have that upset about this, and they've kept talking about how encounters are going to and the sentiment right now mon the community is rightfully, I don't trust Blizzard to do this, So why haven't they done anything about that?

Why are they just sitting there?

Are they just expecting all this to go away?

Like I don't I don't get it.

One really funny part of this post.

I don't remember where exactly it was, but I think it was the why now and Ian basically said we were thinking about like doing this throughout midnight, but we were so far ahead and making such good progress that we decided to roll it out for midnight, which I thought was hilarious, right because I mean, was everyone If you would ask anyone, even people like us who are like for the removal of add ons, we would say like, yeah, I don't know if Blizzar are just quite ready for this.

But Ian basically went out and said, like, we're ahead of schedule for where we wanted to be, and we wanted to roll this out for midnight.

I mean this, this is a really interesting talking point, and I don't know if i've I was.

I was a little bit surprised that this was brought up.

He says, I'm not going to pretend that there was unanimous support, but the average take was something along the lines of it would be great if add ons weren't required, but I'm not sure I trust Blizzard to pull it off.

I feel like that is most people's opinion that I see.

Now.

Some people just you know, they prefer current current state of add ons.

They're probably never going to be They're probably not gonna be happy with the situation.

At the same time, I think that most people are probably in a similar state of this.

And he's like, and he starts talking about that.

Convinced that we're convinced that we were on the right track.

Whenever we read those kinds of feedback with the aims of the project, we shifted to building a roadmap of what it would take to pull this off.

Of this transformation, the team found that progress on the UI engineering was moving faster than expected, both in terms of the secret value system and in terms of implementing some of the replacements we knew we need, and that makes the readiness for the launch of Midnight real possibility.

And it's like the technical aspect of this is kind of interesting because basically what Blizzard is doing is so they went from a situation where everything was allowed except for a few exceptions to now nothing is allowed except for a few exceptions, and that is a very different, you know, situation with how add ons are going to be functioning, because now instead of the default state of everything is allowed, now the default state is everything is locked down unless it is very specifically outlined to be allowed.

Yep, yeah, yeah.

I mean I think And let's be clearer too for the people who haven't been like, you know, really keeping an ear to the news.

Blizzard has been loosening restrictions like over the last couple of weeks, and there's a lot more possible than initially.

Like whether or not it was their plan all along or it was just because of public outcry, I mean, it doesn't really matter at this point.

But there is so much more functionality already then we initially thought.

Right, So if you're going off of the like, you know, what did everyone say initially, Like I'm very interested to see now, right, Like what do you guys think about?

And I'm not trying to throw shade at these guys.

But what do you guys think about l VUI and weak Oras because both of them basically came out publicly and it's like we're discontinuing this, But I sort of see both of these things could exist in some capacity.

Like you know, we we talked, we talked about Tarathal's thing, and it's you know, whether or not it's week Ora's team and them or you know LVY or somebody else, there's going to be an all in one thingy right, like a UI thing, and there's going to be like little scripts that people use and plug and play thing like Weekors whether or not it's those Like, I wouldn't be surprised if they come back and be like, h no, okay, actually we'll continue the project.

I mean, this is this is I think that what Rilo says in this tweet is like one hundred percent spot on to the reason Weekor has never said that they can't work, just that what is left of what could provide is not worth putting more hours of unpaid slash under minimum wage work into.

And I think that that is the key takeaway right whenever you would go and look at the weak wors Patreon project.

I think that they were getting and I think week wors has got to be one of the best and largest add ons they were getting.

Like I think it was like forty five hundred to five thousand dollars a month for a few people that work on that team.

It is not just like a solo person project.

And that's not like you're not you know, two or three people aren't living off of five thousand dollars a month.

Okay maybe if you're not living in the US hypothetical.

If you're living in the US, though, you're not living off of five thousand dollars a month by yourself, I mean you could, but that's it's only one person.

But that's not only one person who's providing to the weak worse project.

And so then once you're like trying to split it up like multile ways, it's like, you know, like you said, under minimum wage work and it's a passion project and so that's why.

And then and then Blizzard takes away the passion because they're changing what allows what's allowed to happen.

And of course, like you know, some of these Atom developers are just gonna be like, yeah, wow, I'm not willing to do that.

That's not fun.

That's that's not why I got into ad on development.

And I think that some people I don't think it's right to be mad at the ATOM developers.

I think that the you know, oh no, not at all, yeah, exactly, whatever decision that they make, that's that's their decision to make.

But I do tend to agree that, you know, kind of with what Rilo said, the add ons could exist, they would exist differently than they have for forever.

But a lot of these developers are basically stating that the changes that are being made by Blizzard are not things that they find personally enjoyable, and it was a passion project to begin with, and the passions being removed.

The one thing I would I want to say is there is a very high likelihood at this point that installing ANAS is going to be just as required, but in a different way, because there are a lot of things that the base you why, probably doesn't exactly show the best.

Yeah, like you know, the base name plates aren't they're better, but you know, you have to have the name on the left side, like where the cast bar is, and the look of the cast bar is very different, Like if you there are ways to customize that still in certain ways with plater you know, or platinator, and I have a feeling that we are still going to see a bunch of custom you know UIs.

It's just they're not going to be able to do all the computational and the helping stuff that people have gotten used to, so like to kind of devil advocate myself, even like adults will still probably be just as required in high end content.

I mean, this is kind of just not the same not as required.

Yeah, this is kind of the same argument that Elzemir had last week, where you know, designing a UI is going to be the exact same process where you're building a UI that helps you learn, because everybody learns differently.

Figuring out a way that UI can convey information to you in an effective manner is a skill in and of itself, right.

It's the reason that I don't know, I don't know if you guys is, but I don't I think that all three of us probably make our UIs from scratch for ourselves based on how we learn best, as opposed to like, you know, taking from others.

And that's why, you know, maybe maybe taking somebody else's eyes like a building block, and then you know, changing it a little bit to match what your needs are is important, but at the same time you know that it's that change that's kind of the important part.

Yeah, I think it was interesting hearing Eli spin to talk about things yes or last week when he specifically talked about like the way that you know, everybody processes information differently, and I definitely agree with that, but it definitely feels like when you throw in text to speech notifications for certain events, it's almost like a cheat code, right, like for you to it's just like having that, whether it's a liquid reminder or it's like something that plays off of a spell, like being able to customize every single like auditory or whatever thing into exactly what you want it to, so you know you're going to react Like it's very very very powerful, you know, like to have to have a lady whispered defensive in your ear every single time, such that you don't even have to look at the mob and it just you're waiting till you hear defensive and then you press a button like it.

It is very very powerful.

I don't even know to I'd be interested to, like if there are people that don't that aren't benefited by that, you know, Like, I just feel like everybody gets it's not necessarily like, oh, this is better.

Some people prefer this, like just having more reminders and being able to customize literally every single source of input that you're getting is like just it's just so incredibly powerful.

Yep.

We got a comic a little, I mean, it's podcast, that's what we do.

Yeah, yep.

I think the last thing that was like really interesting from this post, I mean was the why now section.

Another common question I've heard is why do this now?

Why not wait until all of our built in functionality is fully polished and had multiple rounds of feedback, which I actually think that that's one one of the most common things that I've read is like, why don't they just wait until their cool down managers really fully fleshed out?

Why don't they wait until they make the name plates good?

And it was He goes on to say, when I first started talking about our concerns with the impact of add ons on the modern game nearly a year ago, we were still evaluating the feasibility of a solution as well as the right time frame.

I'm surprised they only started talking about the sea here ago.

I'm gonna be completely honest, yep.

But we also wanted to gauge community sentiment around the general issue.

Whilst history is littered with examples of the dev team trying to solve perceived problems that most players weren't particularly concerned about, and we wanted to reassure ourselves that we weren't headed down the same path here.

We were happy to see a lot of positive reactions to the discussion.

I'm not going to pretend that there was unanimous support, but the average take was something along the lines of and I said this earlier, it would be great if at ons weren't required, but I'm not sure if I trust the Blizzard team to pull it off.

So it's kind of the question are the down or are they going down the right path with something like this, and how does Blizzard get people to trust them?

And I think that for me, it's kind of the same thing as the Covenants, where Blizzard has to make card decisions to be able to continue to progress the game.

Right.

They are ultimately the end all, be all source for progressing the game, you know, and if they only listened to what players said in terms of feedback.

Let me just say the game would be bad because there is some dumb ass feed there's some dumb ass feedback that has given to them, Like, you know, wow, players are stupid.

If they listened to everything that we set on the bench, the game would probably be worse.

And so like they need to, you know, take the feedback from all the different facets of the player base and try to culminate that into the best game possible.

And I think that that's kind of the important thing, is like, as long as they're focusing on making the best game possible and not making the game worse, and they actually deliver on making the best game possible, I think that that's an important thing for me here.

It's less about like the I don't trust Blizzard.

It's like the they better deliver a good product thing, because again I don't I didn't necessarily care that covenants were locked down.

Necessarily I cared that covenants were locked down, and it was the wrong decision and made the game worse.

Right, if it didn't make the game worse, I didn't care that covenants were locked down, but it made the game bad.

And it's like this is a kind of a similar thing.

If if it makes the game worse, and it makes the game bad, it doesn't matter that they kept ad on to removed ad ons.

It could be the right decision, it could be the wrong decision.

But if they make the game worse, that's almost independent of this problem, right, And they need to make the game better, not worse, and this is just part of making the game better in their mind.

Yeah, I'm just not really sure, you know, just say that, oh wait till the coold on manager is good, or when it's fully fleshed out.

Like in Blizzard's eyes, I feel like like they don't expect to just release midnight with dog shit nameplates or dog shit cold on manager, right.

Like it's not like they're sitting in a boardroom somewhere and being like, yeah, all right, cooldown managers like forty percent, but that's good, we can delete that ons.

You know, like while as a player base, when we compare it to weakors or like the capabilities that we had, it feels like it's forty percent.

You know.

This is like I just you know, it's not really a thing, right, Like I think when Blizzard says like, oh, you know, we're like wait, till it's fleshed out or whatever.

Like I just think that in order to get that feedback, like in order to take it to the next step of like to get where it is now to make it better or at least where it will be on launch.

I guess they're still a work in progress, but they just need us to be playing the game with all of these tools and then seeing how it goes, right, Like I think it's a matter of like what should be allowed and what is good and like you know, like I keep seeing people link these clips on Twitter, especially of like oh, look at all the name plates.

They're flying everywhere.

No no, no, but no no, but they're completely trash.

But like there's no way the game is just gonna go live and you're just playing Whack the Moll with nameplates, so they're flying all over your screen, right, like very clearly that's just like a funny beta bug or whatever, and like that's not intended and that like you know, that's not a thing that it's gonna We're gonna go into the next expansion with that, right, So I mean, like in terms of what people want, like you know, we're talking about like Heavy Week or our customization and like being able to color code mobs and rename mobs, like these are things that Blizzard doesn't even know, Like they even said they don't want some of these things, right, It's not a matter if Blizzard can't roll out these features or they're not ready.

It's like, you know, Blizzard wants to find out are these features good?

Is this good for the game?

You know?

I don't think it's like if they just sat in a room for another year and really cooked up the nameplates in cool On Manager, that it's gonna somehow get way way better.

Like I think it's just a matter of like, Okay, we need to play the game now with these new set of rules and see how it goes, and then we can make adjustments from there.

Yeah.

It The funny thing is with the whole nameplate thing, for for what it is ultimately is Blizzard's game, and if they were like this is how we want nameplates to be, it would suck.

But like I'm not saying they'll actually do this, like to be clear, but they determine what they feel like skill is in the game and what makes the game fun and if they for some reason want that to be part of the skill and fun of the game is well within their rights to as long and their vision is everybody's on the same equal ground.

I don't think they'll actually do that.

I think that part of the problem with the add on or not the add on the UI is that it's just fucking ugly.

Like I think that there's one of the bigger issues with the UI stuff that doesn't really get addressed by Blizzard at all, and they're just like, yeah, that should be add ons, you know, uh space, Why don't they make their UI just not fucking ugly?

Like?

Why are they.

Dead specifically ugly?

What do you mean do we.

Think that these these nameplates look good?

Like hypothetically if you couldn't use an add on to make to make the nameplates look better.

I think that these these nameplates are just not conventionally attractive given what players tend to try to use.

I think you're out of touch on that one.

You think that these nameplates are on.

I don't think they're like, they're not like the top of the line plater, but I bet you they look better than the that A lot of the things that you know of a lot of excuse me, a lot of what people use.

I think one of the biggest changes of the plates too.

I think one of the easy, like the couple of the easiest changes of the nameplates are just like random built in functionalities first and foremost, just being able to change it from this like slim bar into something that's bought like a box shape game changing, you know.

So you just want to make the hype bigger, Like that's that's that would like you're saying that the nameplates are ugly and then your fixes to make the hype bigger.

Okay, I just think that the dude, I just think these are ugly, Like what do you what do you want?

Like, yeah, I think that this are ugly.

You have you gone through the options at all?

Like there is a box one there?

Yes.

All I'm saying is I think it's a lot more opinionated than you might think.

So I mentioned that I was playing a little bit hardcore and I had a conversation with somebody who's I would consider a very good mythic rater, and they said they think the classic default name plates look more attractive than the current name plates.

They like the classic name plates and they think that.

I mean, ever, people just have their opinions on what they like and what looks good or whatever, right, Like, I don't know, again, I don't like.

I don't like that there's a gradient on there to me, Like I'm not the biggest fan of that texture, especially with like it not really matching some of the other stuff.

Right, But like I don't like, I'm not really I don't know again, like ugly, like I think, and all that stuff is easily customizable with add ons, right, Like if aesthetics is your main like breaking point where you're like, I really the aesthetics of these things really bother me, that's all still well within what add ons can do and fix, right, like getting an ed.

That was literally my point is like I think that part of the some of the some of the stuff that I have, Okay, I want to say saw I will say one complaint that I have with like the Blizzard UI is that it is just genuinely pretty ugly and like non custom It's not that it's non customizable in the sense that, like you know, an add on could could take this and customize it.

It's more like I wish that it was customizable almost in the base game, like I wish I wish that some of the features that add ons provided were just part of the base game.

Oh, I agree with that.

I mean that's something that you know, we've mentioned Tartal one hundred times now, but that was like one of the first things he did was like he figured out, how do I change the texture of everything?

How do I change the font of everything?

Right?

And it's like one of the you know, how do I change the size the text size or whatever?

And it's like, yeah, there's no reason that shouldn't be in the game.

But also like I don't know, yeah, I don't think that.

I don't think that's that big of a deal that, like you if you if you're like I'm upset by the font on the nameplates, and I won't you know, I don't think it's that out of the realm to like say that, No, no.

No, no, I don't think it's like it's not like I'm upset with the font of the nameplates.

It's like I wish that I could, like, through the default game make it better looking.

I agree, yeah, yeah, but I think that that's like we're we're like ninety eight percent of the way they are.

Then, you know, like I think that's not most people's concerns, although it could be.

I think most people are still stuck on the functionality of it rather than I mean, but again, I one hundred percent agree with you, right, Like, to me, why isn't there a dropdown that just says, make all of my fonts in the entire game?

This fine, make all of the textures this texture, you know, Like.

Why can't why can't I change nameplates to be a specific texture, like a more refined texture.

Why is it only based off of like three predetermined you know, sizes and stuff.

Like that like that, right, I mean, I tend to agree with that.

I think part of it is like everybody is going to be different.

Yeah, sure, and that is where Adams come in, and like they cannot design the basey for everyone because everybody wants something different.

They could try to expand more features, but they're not gonna.

Get they love they're lovers of drop down boxes.

I wish they would be more lovers of sliders, because I think sliders give you more decision as an end user.

Like I'm able to work off this Basui nameplates, but like my bars are way too wide, like way too wide for what I want, Like they have no with their height slider.

They have a general like scale slider, so if you want a bigger height, you have to extend it wider.

And it's just like I can work with this, Like I played a little bit.

I did a dungeon, except all the bars are like this wide, and I'm just like it's fine, I guess, but I'm just gonna install playter and fix it on my own.

Like yeah, in like default, like why why isn't there a better resource display?

Personal?

And the personal resource display sucks and like why is there why is there not a better resource display?

Like I.

That those are the interesting questions because we're gonna get to it.

But they actually went into more detail.

Well in a post for the Value, I discord on specific things that people have been asking for, and this is something that I really think they needed to do for a while.

Yes, okay, let's let's talk about this expanse sure.

So first of all, the what Ian Hazikos has posted publicly was a very PRD statement.

I think it was very general.

It helped contextualize everything, but I think the thing that people wanted to know was the specifics here because people have been asking for a lot of requests, and this post addressed some of the exact specifics, the first one being if you want to scroll down tittles while making counter designs for the decisions for the player.

This is pretty obvious.

They don't want to let people do that.

That's everything to do with computational add ons.

They They've said that many many times.

The next one was really interesting is create They don't want people creating optimal rotation helpers.

Oh yeah, uh, that was the one just above that.

Isn't there a rotation helper in the game.

There is now a rotation helper in the game, but it is not optimal, right.

You either get a penalty, a GCD penalty, or you are pressing the button yourself with an assisted glow, which is also not the optimal rotation.

And Grel, I know you pointed out a really interesting line here, and I think you should highlight it or did you forget?

Oh yeah, no, no, no, I remember, I thought it was very funny that he In this answer, he wrote, this is why our combat and assistant feature is not optimal by design, aiming tunnels keeps moving the screen, aiming to help players achieve average or even slightly above average dps.

So he basically I don't know if he accidentally admitted this, but he basically said that the one button rotation is average or even slightly above average DP.

Yes, whatever that means to him.

Okay, that was actually the mind boggling to read, because that was our biggest complaints about the OBR forever was that it was way better than the average fucking player.

And it still is, like we more more.

I guess maybe it was just fear mongering that people were actually gonna start using it that probably weren't supposed to, because it actually does it above average GPS.

It is.

The craziest part is that people still aren't really jumping on the train of it.

Is this like old men yelling at the clouds or something like we were all like, the one button rotation is gonna do all these bad things and then it came out and literally nobody cared and I looked like an idiot.

But like it hasn't like it's still probably is going to be a dause increase for a lot of people, like they just like, yeah, I don't know, I just think it made it's funny.

Maybe we actually I mean, maybe, dude, dude, these fucking podcasts and these content creators that just view these terrible takes and just ruin the game for the average player.

I cannot believe we would do such things.

I do think though, that if they say, okay, say fifty percent of people start using the one button rotation, that is the colossal failure of your game.

No oh, yeah, it's terrible, but no one's using I mean, I feel like people are using it exactly how it was tended, and everything is working out great, right, Like, if you want to level some stupid character, maybe you're just like mog Farming or like, you know, you just don't care.

You're doing a Dell, like a low delve, Like you just have it and you press one button and you go on.

But then, like in any real content, I don't know, I don't know, but I mean, I'm definitely eating eating my own words here in the fact that it had virtually no impact on the game.

It is crazy that it does, Yeah, it is.

It is absolutely absurd to me though, that they admit that it is above average DPS and they're like, yeah, we're happy with.

All right, what else?

Yes, but just just just just to kind of wrap that for it up, like, it's clear that they don't want off the overage helpers, so Achille like, even if they opened up, the API very dead.

But the thing to mention here is the API is affected atoms that provide functionality that return information about the players cool downs and auras.

And it is for this reason that the APIs are likely to remain secret aka you will be unable to make an add on to track other people's cool downs.

That is the conclusion there, because they are limiting they don't want people to create rotation helpers.

I mean, okay, what do we think about expect like OG?

Uh, well, so its own ag is its own little thing.

In terms of not OG, I feel like people drastically blow out of proportion how much they're looking at other people's cool downs.

Like I think if your age, I think, if your maide uses ice block, you should know that they're in an ice block or alter time, or you know, if your warrior uses shield wall, you should know that they use shield wall.

But I don't necessarily think you need an icon on your screen tracking the cool out of everything and showing if it's available.

Uh, with kicks, it's kind of interesting.

I also think people drastically overrate how useful a kicktracker is.

For example, you go to like you go to a boss and then everyone's kick or stop is up and then it uses an ability do you kick it or not?

Like, well, the kicktracker doesn't tell you that, Like the only time a kicktracker is useful is when everybody's kick is out and then you need to press something.

But like, why aren't you pressing something anyway?

Right, Like if you don't have a kick available or you have, you know, like you should just be stopping the spell anyway.

Like I think that if you were to, like let's say you were to program a bot and then try and explain to the bot how to use the kicktracker independent of any of the other team, like you would really struggle like trying to design a heuristic for like how you're actually using that.

I think people like I learned this from from pugging.

This is like I think I brought this tip up earlier.

Is what everybody wants to do is they just want to sit there and not press their buttons and have everyone else press their buttons, and then when you press your buttons, then they'll press it last.

And so my tip for pugs is just always send all your shit right away, because that's what everyone else wants.

Is everyone else wants to like hold their kick to the last second, or like wait till you use your kick because they're doing damage or whatever they're doing.

I will say that one of the crazier things that has been probably widely adopted over the course of war within you know it probably exists in Drivefight.

I don't rely see it too much.

The player script that tells you when you're kick.

The playerscript that changes the cast bar based on when your kick is available, and also adds a notch into the cast bar whenever your kick is going to become available as well.

He's unbelievably broken, like just in terms of like gameplay performance.

I don't even like look at my interrupt tracker anymore since I downloaded that add on, because I'm always aware of when my kick is available based on the name plates and what's happening on my name plates.

Oh yeah, I've been harping about this for so long, so I started using this at the beginning of the expansion.

It takes away the focused cast bar, it replaces it with a new cast bar that's giant in the middle of my screen.

It filters out spells that I can't kick, so it doesn't even show them if I'm not if I'm not able to kick it, if I can kick it, it'll show me on the bar depending on what color it is, if I can kick it or not.

If it comes up mid kick, it'll tell me when exactly I can kick it, And it tells me if the target is reflecting, and it reminds me not to kick it even if I can kick it because it's being cast on a warrior who's spell reflecting.

Like it's just not how the game should be played in my opinion.

Yeah, but yeah, So moving on, did you want to saynything about in regards to like locking down?

Oh?

Yeah, yeah, well so didn't they didn't They bring it like they added some sort of functionality to the game now where you can see when someone pops cool downs.

As an Oh.

Yes, what do you mean?

No external the external cool extern doesn't like, that's defensives only I have I need to do it in depth.

Look at that I have it yet, So I'm pretty.

Sure that they either said they're going to or did.

I'm pretty sure they implemented it already.

Were like, you're like your party frame glows, there's like a spell in your spell book to turn it on.

Am I making this up?

At Mike crazy?

I think you're making this up, but I'm not even I think that.

I think that if you're in the AGSPEC, there's a spell in your spell book that you can click and it toggles on like track research and then yes, and then it glows their frame when they pop cool downs.

I'm pretty sure that exists in the base game.

I think that exists.

I don't think for Midnight.

I think Live right now.

I'm not aware of this for Live, but I haven't played O, so.

Yeah, fuck off, you know you're right?

Wait what your right?

Oh?

All right?

I think that.

Yeah.

I just think that, like for all like August a very special case where you need to like they need to figure out a way, right Like if you if you're expected to be buffing your teammates during CDs, they need to find a way.

I think for things like power infusion or like blessing of seasons or whatever.

Even though I think some of that's going away, that's sort of up to you to coordinate it if you want, right, but for a class that's fully built on buffing teammates, yeah, they need some sort of way, but that should be again, that should be built into the game.

You shouldn't need to download an add on in order to play Aspect.

Yeah.

Okay, this is my my take, and it's probably an LT take, But I don't think it matters because you will.

You will know when it matters and you and any other time it will not matter because if you're in Raid, you're gonna have breath of youands for the fucking Demensius bird like everybody knows you're like that is That is when it fucking matters.

Yeah.

Sure, any other time you're kind of just doing your own thing.

And the biggest thing is you're no longer buffing for specific people, You're buffing the entire raid.

So the impact across like unless your entire raid is birding cold as the exact same point aka a demensiust burd and a Durgon encounter, I don't think it's gonna matter as much.

I think because I think it matters a lot for skill commander Augen mythic plus where you're able to see.

I'm talking to raid here.

Okay, sorry, starting with raid Raid.

When it matters, you will know because your entire rage is popping cool downs, at which point, yes, it matters, but you will know that at any other point you probably just send it and it will probably do just fine.

Mythic plus, I think, is a little little more complicated because you do want to pop it with other people's cool downs, But in a similar vein, you're probably just going to pop it when you think people or people are going to naturally pop cool downs.

If your tank pulls a giant pack, probably a good time to use it there, right, like, because it's very likely that your other classes are also popping.

There's also this thing that I'm gonna get fucking shunned for.

But you can also just you know, use voice.

Well, I.

Think I think that that's reason.

I think that's like a reasonable take.

But is that not increasing the skill disparity between somebody who's not using voice and somebody who's using voice by by more than the average specialization?

Obviously, you know, I think that undeniably using voice is very powerful.

But this is this is a situation where it takes, like, you know, a aspect that's being played by a professional player at the optimal level, and it increases the gap between the average person who's playing it, right.

I don't think it matters as much anymore ever since a got hit to fifty percent self damage and fifty percent buff damage, like when it was like eighty twenty or whatever the fuck the original was.

Yeah, your breath of Yon's window fucking mattered.

But now I think if you get a bad breath of Yon, you're probably losing more damage by holding it for when you think someone has cool downs than just slamming it on cool down off cooldowns of everybody else.

OK.

I think that's you know, I think that's a valid, valid assumption.

That is pure fairly crafting.

But like that's kind of how I feel, because we know for a fact people love to hold cool downs.

I mean that's how Scow Commander og was in season one, where you, I mean Scale Commander, whenever you're playing it, you were highly incentivized to send it on CD.

You would only ever, at least in season one, you would only ever hold it for upwards of ten to fifteen seconds because you actually need the eons to bridge your evan mite windows.

Right, It's like, I don't know, holding eons always runs in a bunch of other problems something.

No.

I was just gonna say that, Like, I think that's more of a spec design problem with a spec relies on you being in comms or add ons than it is like an add on problem.

Okay, other things.

There were simplifying names.

And.

We've talked about this one before and this people have asked for this, and I think there's a level where it makes sense, right if you have what is it, like bones splinter mage, bone splinter warrior, bone splinter healer, Like people just want the last name because that's when it matters.

And I think that is a very very fair complaint, and I think this is on Blizzard to not just do that.

But you know, I think Blizzard's reasoning here of simplifying names and not typing in frontal or AoE into the cast bar makes a lot of sense because it is fucking op and I think Graul fucking nailed it last week.

I think that's simplifying names and changing changing the names of mobs and changing the the ability names on mobs is like almost a different thing.

It's like it's like shorthanding.

It's like shorthanding versus you know, completely changing what's going on.

Well, so let's separate into two different problems.

So one problem is I'm gonna change bone sweep to frontal.

Right, I think that's a problem.

And it's not so bad to go into a dungeon and fail and not know what things are and learn, right, Like, we can't have this mindset that the first time you go into a dungeon you need to know what every single ability is and never fail it.

And like, you know, you don't need to know what every single cast or mob is and what every mechanic is and what everything well, and if you do know, you're not like, okay, well then look it up, you know, figure it out, take notes, watch a video, you know whatever.

I'm not saying you shouldn't allow people to do that, but it shouldn't be the norm.

However, like what Squishy said of like you know, skeletal bone mage guy and then like you can't even see where it says mage and everything every single mob the name plate says skeletal bone on it.

UH titles.

You should bring up the UH the really good name plate shortened one.

I was I was just pulling three because I remember I was looking at this the falls of a toement where everything is depraved, right, every single mob in here is depraved, well, and the only thing you care about is there there.

Can you see it though?

If it's on the name plate, and if it's reasonable to read, right, then I think that that's fair game.

If it's like so long that it's literally like getting uh getting cut off of the name plate and you can only see like a very small part of it or none of the important words, then that's a buzzard problem, right.

And to be fair, they've never had to worry about that because everyone just renames their own stuff in their own nameplates anyway, So like we don't even care if they do that before, but now it's like, you know, if they do this big pack of mobs.

One thing that comes to mind is necrotic wake in how there's like a bunch of skeletons and then there's the one skeleton that's the mage, and it's like very important to pick out that mage and kick it.

But there's like a bunch of skeletons around and it's like, well that's on Blizzard now, like they you know, hopefully they get that feedback and they figure that out.

Whether it's like you know, make it stand out more or slow down the cast or whatever to allow us to kick that.

But you know, I think that you shouldn't be able to just rename stuff to tell you what to do.

But also like having like the name plate should not be confusing, Like if you know what the mobs are, you should be able to see, Okay, this is the mage, this is this guy, this is this guy.

If you know what the mobs already.

Are, maybe this is just naive.

I mean, why do these mobs need surnames?

Like is it just RP?

Like why do they have to be called depray?

Why are the all of them called depraved?

Why can't they just be hound Master, Obliterator, collector dark Blade?

Why why do they have to be?

Back in my day when you when you play Classic Wow and you make a new character and you go to Elwin Forrest, there is Merlock, and there is Bore and there is Cobald.

But we were we've so we're so far from Elwin Forest by now titles and yeah, this is what I was talking about.

So there are issues with nameplates being shortened in not making sense.

And I'm assuming this is supposed to say disgusting cockroach was the name of the mob, but it got shortened to uh, yeah, that should it should that should not be on the name plate.

Grol please please help with the audio listeners.

So that the name disgusting cockroach is shortened to disgusting cock And that's just what it says on the nameplate.

When you pull this mob and you're in combat with.

It, make a but but that's that's I think that that's kind of the problem, right, is like, I don't really mind the fact that Blizzard's like, okay, we don't like this, and the renaming of abilities to frontal or you know, we rename you, renamed Dementsius's Massive Smash to knock back right, yeah, knock right, renaming those I don't like that.

I think it does it kind of removes some of the fantasy of it.

Removing the surnames from mobs isn't really that egregious to me, And if anything, it just makes it easier for me to identify quickly what mobs we are in combat with, because then instead of just giving me this stupid surname, it's telling me, oh, this is the how Master, Oh this is Thebliterator, Oh this is the collector oh this is the Dark Blade, right, Okay.

Yeah, I was kind of thinking of like maybe they could compromise with like precision mode or whatever, like use precise names and it just automatically chops off whatever.

Maybe.

I mean, I don't know.

I just think that I don't know.

The base game should just be good, Like you should be able to see what's a mage and what's not a mage in the base game, and that's it.

Like if they don't, I mean, I don't think this is that Okay.

There's a lot of things that I have no faith in Blizzard to do, but this one isn't that hard.

Like, you know, this is just changing a couple of strings and paying attention to a few, Like like a dungeon doesn't have that many mobs, right, Like a dungeons like what fifteen different mobs?

Like, yeah, this isn't that hard to figure out.

I will say this is not hard to figure out.

At the same time, I do think that there is kind of a play pattern problem at foot here where because the average Mythic plus run, you know, there will be pulls where you are pulling ten to fifteen mobs at a time.

It's kind of hard to actually see what's going on whenever you have that many mobs pulled.

Now, I'm gonna go on the record here and say that I actually prefer whenever we pull larger.

So I actually don't have a problem with this necessarily, but it is undeniable that the first pull of gambit, whenever you grab one hundred different shore Runners into this poll and it's just a clus fuck of name plates, It's yeah, of course, it's gonna be hard for you to tell what's the difference between MRK Brian shell Crusher, MRK Brian pish Mancer, MRK Brian scale Binder, like all of these random mob types.

It's like hard for you to quickly identify what's actually what because there's you know, twenty some odd nameplates on your screen.

It's it's possible for them to do something like have the subtitle of like Murk Brian and put on a different line that they can only expose that you know, the last the last name.

Part dot and then you get you get the name of the mob.

I could just see them putting it like on a different line in a way like you said, like a precision mode where it just hides the first part or puts it after or puts in a different spot.

You could just wear it to hide it.

Like there's a lot of hacks right now with adults on the on the Alpha right now, where you can set a visibility to zero to hide things because you can't customize things very much, so you just hide certain aspects.

It's but I the only this is necessarily an issue is when you put the when you put the name in the bar, if the name is above the bar, this actually doesn't happen, which I think is part of the problem.

Is just like that that one test case where you know, it just kind of fails that testcasse and they did testraativily for that case.

I think it's I think it's kind of a weird symptom of a different issue.

And I do think, you know, I think that it's kind of funny because we're largely in agreement of like the spirit of the change, because the spirit of the change is, you know, you shouldn't be able to simplify this name down to just healer.

You shouldn't be able to simplify this name to a specific thing.

But it's like, okay, well, now you're actually taking away the the common use functionality of this, which is helpful, but not actually doing anything that's powerful.

I'm just getting rid of the extra nonsense that's attached to this mode.

That they so you can be able to shorten it to healer unless the name is Depraved Stoneborn Healer, and then you should be able to shorten.

It to healer exactly right, Like that's exactly it.

But funny comment about how how crazy color coded name plates are is actually this season, I've been playing without text on nameplates, so I don't even see the names of any of the mob.

Uh.

Someone brought up this idea when I saw their UI, and I tried it, and it's actually like you don't need to see There's like a random fringe cases where like you need to color code certain weird things, but for the most part, I don't even have names on my nameplate.

Right do you not find that to be problematic in a dungeon like Priority the Sacred Flame, where it's like two mages in a priest and it's like three cast for moms, all with the same color nameplate.

Uh, I mean I just focused the one that I need to focus, and it's got a little icon on each one.

Okay, do you do not know which one the right one is by the first cast?

Like, well, well, well, I mean it just it just comes down to like how you play the game, right, Like you have mobs that you know you're gonna focus in each pole, so like those are a specific color.

You have mobs that you need to like literally focus as in focus target them.

Then those are a certain color, and then like you know, it's weird, weird fringe cases like fish dicks, you might want those a different color, or like you know, certain mobs that you only target certain times.

Like, but it's funny enough, like color coding nameplates is actually like way more powerful than being able to make custom names.

I think color coding nameplates is unbelievably broken.

I actually think that focus kicking shit.

Like people don't really talk about it enough do being the just ability of the native game to be able to put mobs on focus and focus interrupt them.

Holy shit?

Is that broken?

Yep?

It is very very good.

And you notice that when you play Classic and there's no focus.

Even the last thing.

Even if they wanted to give you this, I don't think they can because the way they have to limit this is they don't give add On any access to the NPCID because once they know the NPCID, they know what it is, and therefore you can change the nameplate.

And so I don't think there's any way for people to do this because also once you know what npc is, you know what ability is a cass, you know the timers that it's going to do, you know what cool downs is going to have, and you know what spells it's going to cast.

Like there's too much information that is given by you know, having the NPCID that I think that this will never happen.

So this one is like solely on Blizzard to fix or people will just have to deal with it.

And I don't think there's any between on this one.

Yeah, Okay, anything else from this UI post that was posted in the UI discord?

Uh yeah, So there is something that people pointed out in point one there at the bottom.

Uh yeah.

We acknowledge that we are not going to have time to address all the pain points you have been pointing out before prepatch, so it is out of utmost importance that we identify and work on the changes that will have the largest possible impact.

So they are flattered acknowledging here that they're not going to be able to fix everything, and they're specifically putting out the biggest vires.

I mean that's well, that's the way that any company operates.

I mean that's not a special surprising.

I know that players aren't going to be fucking mad about hearing them say that, But I mean, is that.

Really I think this is just like a safety net here, because what some people might see as a fixed issue or a problem or a bug might be intentional, right, Like, you know, they're they're just saying this, I think, to cover all their bases.

But absolutely no, there's gonna be problems, right, But at the same time, like there are problems with every expansion launch, like there was you know, there are weeks where I log in and then my play is just all of the textures are bugged and I just have giant green boxes all over my screen.

Like this is not like a completely unheard of situation where you log into the game and there are problems with the UI and the add ons.

I think that the the most likely conspiracy theory that I've seen in relationship to add ons is actually, funnily enough, been that Blizzard's doing this because they've seen so many people complaining about how bad performance has been in the game recently.

Obviously, Wow has this problem where it's locked to like single core performance, which means that CPUs with higher flock speeds tend to perform a little bit better in the world of Warcraft.

But it's it's been interesting because I feel like that that whatever I was reading people say with that conspiracy theory, I feel like it had more merit than some of the other shit that people are saying, like Wow coming to console and whatnot.

Yeah, I mean, let's be honest, while performs like complete dog shit.

Yeah, and then you don't you don't really realize it until you go, man, I'm just the Classic any of the podcast now, But you play Classic and it's like you slash reloaded.

It literally takes half a second.

Like it's like mind boggling when you do that.

And even even MOP Classic when you do a reload or whatever with and in granted I have much less add ons and weak wars on these games, but I do use ad ons, right, It's not like I'm just natty zero add ons in these games.

And it just the reloads and the load times in general, are just so much faster.

Yeah, So I don't know if I would say that's a conspiracy, but like and again that's like a fine reason.

Like I'm all for having better performance, right, Like how many times have like someone asked on your stream about PC spacks, so like, oh, I'm lagging and raid and it's like, you know, oh, you have to get this type of processor and you have to do this, and it's like, you know, single core in this type of video card.

And then but that might not even be it.

You might have you know, liquid we goor is blasting your PC anyway?

Dd you need an x DD yep, good old ice CD.

All right, moving on.

I think so I was annoyed by this.

You got ratio so hard, you got blown up, all right.

So Capez, the dev boss on question Mark question Mark Difficulty and question More Difficulty, got nerved.

Basically, they ended up changing the massacre mechanic, which was the mechanic where you had to end up focusing and facing the ghosts to be able to clear this off.

I think this, I understand this nerve.

Here's the thing.

It makes sense.

It was hard, it was a difficult challenge.

Players with high ping ended up suffering more than the averag player who was trying to do this, meaning that it was harder for them to be able to perform.

The reason that I think that this nerve sucks is because, first and foremost, I think that it is a solo challenge that players are allowed to not be able to complete.

I think that for Blizzard's perspective, they should never release a challenge that is unobtainable via players that have high ping, and I think that that is like an unacceptable thing that they have happened now.

I don't think that the but I don't think that the answer to this is then go through a NERF Dark Massacre, And the reason for that is because of what this kind of challenge is, right, it is a solo challenge for players that are supposed to be a hardcore challenge for not everybody to be able to complete, and I think that it's supposed to be okay if you're not able to complete this.

I don't think that Blizzard should have released it in a state where Dark Massacre was much harder for players who were playing with one hundred and fifty to two hundred plus paying And I don't think that that.

I don't think that was correct, but I also think it's it is an incorrect decision for Blizzard then to go through and nerf something like this.

Take a girl, I'll get blown up for you.

I can't think of a single person that tried to do kayves and then their ping was a major problem and then they quit.

Do you guys know of anybody off the top of your head.

You don't have to name them, but just do you know anybody?

Oh?

All right, yeah, the same person?

Okay, so is it one person?

Then?

I don't know.

Is it somebody that you work with?

Oh, I'm not trying to expose anybody here.

I just I just meant.

I just meant.

I literally don't know anybody who had said that, Like, oh, I tried kave and I had ping problems that I had to quit and I couldn't do it.

Like, I don't know of a single person.

I don't know the veracity of pink problems on this, Like there are pin problems in the game.

There, There absolutely are.

I don't know.

I've never like I've never seen It's definitely not widespread on tai Vesa.

But like Dementsius ping problems, I know that one to be fair to like we had issues with that on our prog.

Yeah, whatever, I'm gonna get blown up here.

Get good.

If you're in the if you're listening right now and you think that it was ping, Nope, you just suck.

Get good good.

I think that that's kind of the The interesting thing to me is like blizz are pretty heavily babies their audience in World of Warcraft, in content, whether it be you know, we get on here and we talk and sometimes we are we are definitely people who do this will whine about wanting things nerved because Blizzer will design the game in a fucking impossible way sometimes, but like you know, we're definitely bad about, you know, complaining about and wanting things nerved.

At the same time, Blizzard really does baby their audience a lot.

And there's very few challenge that I think are like the quote unquote get good challenges.

And I think that the Dell of kai Vez is like a perfect example of something that should be that right, Like I like and ensure if they if they're nerving dark massacre for the tolerance and stuff like that, because there were some players who were inadvertently affected negatively by Pang being super high.

That is a mistake.

Blizzards should have solved that before releasing the challenge, is my opinion on that.

At the same time, like, I don't think that the solution should then be to go through and nerve this.

I think the solution should be, you know, to get good because I think that there's gonna be more challenges in the game that requires you to just kind of fucking get good and Blizzards not really baby you, but I mean, I don't know, maybe it's a hot take.

The question that I have is how much was this actually left?

Has anybody actually like gone, yeah, it is.

Pretty fuck it is pretty fucking different.

Like you know, all the times that you would accidentally like turn late and get fucking killed by the AD like those no longer exist or or you're like slightly off center of the ad.

You no longer die to that.

So what are we talking about?

Like ten degrees?

Like how far could you be off?

Now?

I bet I bet I would have died, like I would say, significantly less, But I bet they like for me, it took me two hundred attempts.

I suck, it shouldn't have taken me two hundred stamps, But I was pretty bad.

I bet it would have probably reduced my attempts by like at least you know, thirty or forty.

So what you're saying is they brought it to like Nex's King levels of.

Yeah, yeah, it is like next It is like NeXT's King's mechanic.

Now, I mean.

I hear you on that.

I do think kay Beza's precision on those was rather tight.

It is like too, but like that's that was not the point, right, I agree with you, Like I could see them doing a slight nerve to it, just specifically for that reason, because it is not testing the general stuff with whow Like every time they add like a you know, a FPS turning camera mechanic, there are some people who struggle with it.

You know, I know somebody who struggled with the Jade fire Masters.

Like remember you get sent up in the area to point three clothes.

I remember a lot of people there were four turners and they literally couldn't leave the fucking mechanic.

Anytime that there is a different mechanic, there are people that are going to struggle with it, and I do think putting a very slight nerf in to make it slightly more lenient for a very punishing mechanic is fair because this isn't like you get hit once, you live, you get hit twice, you die.

This is like an eight minute fight where if you get hit once you just blow up.

So and like I can understand being a little more lenient on that.

The question is like, should anything be on the table for a nerve?

Right?

Like I think that Wow, again, it really is just like one of the I feel like I don't really like this because you know, Blizzard continues to design these fucking bosses and shit where it's just like, who is this designed for?

This was not designed to scale very well as you get gear in to progressively get nerved, and so you're kind of waiting for a boss to get nerved.

And I really don't like the meta of complaining about like and wanting things to get nerved, But it's like, is everything on the table available to get nerved?

Is kind of the interesting question that I have here, And it's like I wish that we design stuff that would just you know, scale a little bit better.

And the answer instead of you know, waiting for a nerve was actually just to get good.

I wish that was the answer more frequently than waiting for Daddy Blizzard to nerve something.

I mean, that's just the that's just the expectation, right Like m plush you get your turbo boosts.

Oh, you get your gear, everything is easier.

Raid you wait for the nurse, they get easier.

Like Kayveza, you wait for the nurse, it gets easier.

Like that's just I think that number one, it's not really that big of a deal, right, Like, I don't want to sound like an elitist sitting on my high horse and saying like, oh, these plubs should not be able to have the Kaivesa delve achievement.

More so, I just value achievement more more so, I just value the shared experience of like, you know, like let's say someone dms U Tittels and they're like, oh, I heard about your Kiveza and I just did kai Vesa and that fight was so fun.

You'd, you know, you you'd be like, hey, man, gre's but deep down, like both of you guys know that you did not do the same fight, right, Like, there is no shared experience between what you did and what they did.

If they walked into Kaiveza at seven to twenty item level, and that's fine, I'm not saying everybody has to do that, but like I think when it comes to single player games, especially like in you know, the pseudo single player multiplayer game, there is value in that shared experience, right, Like That's why a lot of that's a lot of contention around like Dark Souls and Elder Ring.

You know, it's like, oh you use summons, you cheated, or like oh we both killed that boss that was really hard.

Like it's I don't know if there's a right or wrong answer there.

Sorry, you can go ahead, swish.

Here's my take on it.

Because it's season limited, I actually think it was the right move to nerve this and because everybody needs to have everything, not necessarily, I think it's just like yeah, like yeah, like it's not trivial, but like if this was like a feat that you could do at any point, you know, other games have go back in and kill this really t boss like it's never going away.

I think it's fair to leave it as is because at any point in future expansions, as long as you know, they scale it up to correct gear levels, I think it's fine to leave it the way it is.

At any point you can come back, you can bang your face against Kaibe as a hopefully beat it and just keep going.

But because it's time limited, I think it's fine to nerve this slightly.

It's kind of like I don't think everything needs to be balanced in this game, right like, and I think that you know what I'm saying, right like, not everything needs to be balanced in this game.

And I think that Kyvez is a good example of something that doesn't need to be balanced just because of like what the challenge realistically is.

I think it does.

I just have limited that that's.

Yeah, everybody, I'm going around full circle.

I am like currently at the point where I'm just like, I don't really care about cosmetics.

Bring everything back, make everybody happy.

But I'm like, the more I kind of think about it, like it does kind of devalue it, right, Like are we all really just playing collector and dress up and that's all we care is how many hats we have unlocked and how many achievement points we have?

And like the individual like are we really so far gone that each individual achievement doesn't even matter anymore?

And you're just like I have forty two, three hundred achievement points and like the fact that you came back and did a raid fourteen years old and then just one shot every boss, Like does that Wow.

I just think that like achievements and accomplishments and cosmetics have lost their path a little bit in a while.

I don't mind how they exist currently.

Like I think, if you want to transmog your guy to look like a total badass, or like have a cool title, whatever, I don't really mind that so much, like have whatever mount that fits you or is cool for you.

But at the same time, like it does come at the expense of the people who also like want to have a cool achievement and like say that, oh I was here for this moment or I did kaives a dell of like week one or whatever.

And it's like I'm trying to think of how the world could exist where both of these things are side by some where, like you can be a collector and get everything you need.

But at the same time, it's just like it's it sounds so elitist, right, because it's.

Right.

It's like you know, like I don't know, it sounds so elitist, but like okay, let's say on your mountain tool tip, like you have a little gold star on there that's like, yeah, I actually did this when it was hard well, I mean I actually did this what it was current content, Like, you know, it doesn't really get it.

It doesn't really matter if you're trying to collect it or use it for the transmug.

But it's like something.

But again, it just feels like it's pushed so far back where it's like, originally it was the cool cosmetics and then oh, everybody wants the cosmetics, and then it's like, oh, well it's a title, but now everybody wants the titles and the achievements, and now it's not even those and now I need a star at the end of my achievement.

And that's all I get is the Prestige player, and it's I don't know, it's I think there's something to be said for having these cool things that people can earn, and I think that you everything doesn't have to be earnable as like some megasweat lord high end player thing too.

Right, Like there there's a series I've been watching on YouTube lately that someone it's called fish Locked, and it's some guy who started a level one character and he's basically going through all the expansions and all the games only fishing, and all he does is just get every single fishing achievement, every single like the Legion fishing weapon and stuff, and it's like, you know, he's putting a shit ton of time into that, and that's like really cool, Like you know, you know, you't have to be a cutting edge sweat lord to have stuff that's cool that you're proud of, you know, Like, I'm not trying to go that angle.

But that's hard.

It's hard.

I there are sides to both of this, but I just sometimes wonder if we're rolling too much on one side to cater to another side, is my point.

I mean, I don't think that kuive as a you know, I don't think these nerves end up trivializing Kuivesa and make it like free or anything.

It's not like that.

It's not at all.

Now.

It's more like, is there anything that could be sacred that blizzards should never like look to nerve because in my mind, like whenever you're looking at things to kind of treat that way, the kaives A delve Boss kind of is like a really good example of something that maybe shouldn't be nerved.

But again, at the end of the day.

I think everybody's got their opinion on that.

Searly the Legion Druid skins or whatever, the most the coolest freaking thing that there ever is that anyone would ever want.

Apparently that's the prestige thing where they're gonna draw the line.

With Yeah, of course, and you know this is why I said that they shouldn't have the Collector's Bounty.

Whatever.

You start opening up Pandora's box, you really start.

By the way, I've noticed a lot of people do not like Kaivesa.

I know, we fucking loved I've noticed that a lot of people like on Red End and stuff like that, do not enjoy.

Yeah, that's fucking hard.

That's okay.

I think that that's that's kind of the that's kind of the thing with Kyveza is that if it's fucking hard, yeah, people aren't gonna like it.

It's the the Goldilocks Porridge thing where I want things to be hard, but you know, I want them to be doable for me.

If it's too hard for me, that it's too hard, right.

Oh yeah, Like I agree with that.

I'm just mentioning, like, yeah, people people are not is enthused with it at this point in the experishi, I've.

I've complained about their design of solo player content for a long time, and I'm gonna continue doing that.

This is sort of the problem.

This is one area of design, right of every single mechanic is very very punishing, and if you get hit by it, you die instantly.

Right, That's one way they can create difficulty.

It's very unsatisfying.

As I think a viewer pointed out in a question one of the previous weeks, is like to instantly get one shot and have all your progress reset is very unsatisfying.

For example, let's say instead of that, the kai vezaphyte was an extremely tight DPS check where you needed to kill, like do a lot of damage by seven minutes.

Right, that would be a lot less or a lot more satisfying.

You know, even if you were a really bad player and doing it poorly, like you'd get to that time and then you'd have the boss of forty percent and then you'd get killed, right, but at least you'd be playing the game and you wouldn't be instantly dying.

Right.

There's so many different avenues in ways that they can expand and create single player challenges that they just don't do and so I think that to me like this is, you know, I'm just happy that they're doing some cool, challenging single player content.

But yeah, I agree that there's you know, while I want to say, like get good, you know, I really think the answer is like I agree, and they just need to make way more cooler single player challenges.

I disagree that.

Yeah.

All right, you got rached by dr no pretty hard though.

That was hilarious.

Didn't see that.

What did tunnel to say?

He said something about them wanting to said something about not liking the nerves on kai Vezda, and Dratnose responded to your tweet with, well, if you're only playing two hours a week, some people will never be able to get to the pull count that you got.

And the little bro at the end to bro.

Yeah we love that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean it's it's not wrong.

Okay, so I think Squishy has a question.

Yeah, uh so Grela the Brutusar came back.

Oh and what's funny is we had the all the stages right.

First you saw the data mine, and then it was like, oh maybe it might only be in China, and now it's just Yep, there is back of the store again.

Here we go get do the eu wouto gets sold out because of it?

It's gone.

Really Oh I haven't even looked at it.

Oh no, the Wow token is probably.

Yep, did you buy it?

No?

I am not, man.

I don't want to pay ninety dollars or millions of gold for just a male bag.

I don't want to, you don't need you don't want to give Blizzard five dollars per Wow?

Can you buy?

It's just terenrible because now we okay, imagine this.

We're five people, we load into Priory of the Sacred Flame, We're excited for a Brazil grind sash, and then somebody goes, hey, does anyone have an H mount?

I almost don't even want to get on mine anymore because there I know they're just gonna be like, oh, it's that one.

Do you have a mailbox?

Then when it's like, I don't know, man, it's crazy that they.

Didn't protect the prestige of the auction House mount for you.

Yeah, they didn't.

They didn't protect the prestige of me making a video on the last week of BFA complaining about not having it and then getting viewer donated gold and then buying it on the last week.

Yeah, my viewers gold.

That was very prestigious of me.

You know what was Holy fuck?

This is this is completely off topic.

I remember Zaru complaining that they brought back I think it was the fell Drake or some bullshit uh tcg mounts his twitch drops like a couple of years ago.

And meanwhile she got given the fucking feldric by a viewer.

I found that so ironic.

I was like, it's so funny that you bring that up, because my whole like randoms feel about like bringing stuff back or like prestige or whatever.

That was actually sparked by an interview that zar You did with Jimmy, who is a RuneScape creator, on a podcast recently, and they were talking about that about how the Wow community is very isolated and like basically any other game would have no expectation that you like bring back cosmetics or that you give people alternative chances to get stuff, and it's like a thing is there.

The one thing that I think Swishly pointed out that is helpful though, is like, uh, there's almost in a lot of other games, there's a way to earn it.

Still you know, like it doesn't just go away.

The problem is with Wow's like vertical weird progression and scaling that like these challenges literally go away, Like how would you even recreate kai Veza in the next expansion?

You know, whereas like in RuneScape, for example, like because it's mostly single player, that challenge is always there, that grind is always there for you, like in Final Fantasy, like the way that it's scaled or whatever, like that raid is always there if you want to go back and do it.

You know, Wow, it isn't so it is hard to compare.

But it's funny that, like it's such a Wow player problem to be, like, I can't get this mount anymore.

I need to be able to get it.

Well, I look forwar to it growl.

You have a month and a half to decide.

Oh man, the comments are gonna be so mad at me.

Look, guys, I'm just look, I'm as bored as you guys are.

Okay, you're mad typing in the comments.

I'm mad yapping on a podcast.

Okay, let's just all get along.

Even though everyone's already wrote their in their main comment and left by now that.

Yet you could you could turn it into content for like ten minutes.

I could do it.

I could do a stream donation goal, go live.

Do not fucking do that.

All right, let's move on to Q and A wrap it up this week.

All right, first question we have for Mason.

He says, listening to the latest episode seventy one, that this was last week.

We're going to be some into this, and I think you guys actually missed the point about homogenized feedback with Ian slash the afficses example.

The point isn't that everyone doing below tens loved affixes and pushers hated them.

Is that low level players wouldn't had not have have brought up affixes at all.

To Ian, they're just heart of the game and they accept that.

They don't think about it.

Instead, they would have strong opinions about transmog mount collection, raid design, or other aspects of the game.

The homogenization of feedback isn't that everyone has the same opinion about metic plus and Ray driven by high and feedback, except the only discussion points are about mythic plus and Ray.

Because high end players are our content are our content creators.

Okay, see that says it are content careers, but it says our hour content creators.

I think that this is actually a pretty well balanced take.

I actually think that he it's not that it I still don't think that I necessarily agree that with Ian about you know, that that is like the content creator's fault.

But I do think that there is kind of this problem with society, and I don't think it's a content creat thing.

Actually think it's actually.

That you took it there.

I think it's a social media problem.

I don't think it's like a content creator thing, right, Like, I think that it's the issue of like everybody's able to kind of create their own personal echo chamber with how social media is currently designed.

Yeah, and because of that, it reinforces opinions that you otherwise would have had, or you're served that kind of same opinion over and over again.

But love, I actually love this comment.

I think it fits my narrative as well.

And that's that might be exactly what Ian's saying.

Is not that all the people love the affixes.

It's more that, like, you know, that's just such a non issue to them, and the only reason that other people are parenting it is because their favorite streamer is right, and like they might have way bigger concerns and like, you know, they just don't care, like they just don't care about the things that we care about nearly as much.

And I actually think that's one hundred percent right.

I think this is a very well balanced point from our comments are here, and I also love your comment about how this is not a wild player problem, this is a human problem of that, like we you know, there are certain issues that get one hundred times more attention that they should, and everyone is, you know, doing very very opinionated about certain things.

And then you could look, you could talk about another issue that's very very similar and people have no idea what it is or you know, anything about it because it's not in the current public eye.

It's like and it's blizzard like.

What they have to do is they have to be able to filter through things.

And I think it's kind of like the add On discussion, it's crazy because I ian literally you know, he says that's about content creators.

But then the in the ad On discussion, hold on, let me go back to this, he says that most players state that where is where's this quote?

You know, they would they wish add Ons, you know, didn't exist.

But they don't trust a Blizzard to be able to deal with that, And at the same time, getting the specific feedback of that is very difficult, to the point where you're gonna have to sift through a bunch of you know, people getting mad at you from from saying that you want to even delete add ons in the first place, to be able to get to the average opinion of that.

Uh, they would like ad ons to be removed, but they don't trust Blizzard to be able to do it.

Oh, here it is.

It would be great if adams weren't required, but I'm not sure I trust Blizzard to be able to pull that off.

Is that Actually I don't even feel like that's like a common content creator opinion or even like the common opinion of what I've been seeing from my peers on like Twitter.

The common sentiment that I see from my peers on Twitter is Blizzard is going barking down the wrong going down the wrong path.

They're barking up the wrong tree here, and they are making a huge mistake.

And so for them to be able to actually get enough feedback to be able to identify that this is the average opinion, this is what they say here, this is the average take.

To be able to get enough you know, sentiments that they determine that this is the average opinion is difficult, and I think that, you know, for them, then to go and say that about content creators is kind of funny to me because they are ultimately the end all be all decision maker, right, they are the They're the company that makes the decision that determines the direction of the game.

And so you know, I think that sitting there and being like, oh yeah, content creators are doing this this, X, Y, and Z, it's more just like they need to figure.

Out how to.

Determine what is actually going to be relevant in in terms of actual changes that are being made funny enough, and this is not like this is like completely unrelated.

I saw Farfa talking about something related to Yugio the other day.

So Konami put out a different format for Yu gi oh and all the players initially hailed it.

It's gonna be like it's gonna be the greatest thing ever.

And then Farfa was like, well, three weeks later and I thought that it was gonna be the greatest thing ever, and it ended up not actually doing anything that I wanted to do.

And it's like players are fucking stupid.

They actually don't know, they actually don't make the right decisions for the game.

And that's the reason that while you do listen to their feedback, their feedback isn't the only thing that matters.

Yeah, I think that there's a difference between like, you know, being like they're like, being a good game developer is just like anything else, right, Like you can drive a car, but you don't know how to make a good car.

You know, you can, you know, you can say, oh, I want it, I want this, and I want this and I want this, but it's like, in reality, like that's only a piece of puzzle.

And as a gamer, you might like, we we right, not just you.

We we might think we want certain things that certain things are good for the game, or healthy for the game, or better or more fun, but ultimately it is up to the developers to create that package that come up with it.

And that's kind of why I always default to being the Blizzard shill or the shill of the game company or whatever, because ultimately, like we sit here and we choose World of Warcraft out of every other game in the entire sea, you know, and it's like, if we don't even have faith a Blizzard to cater that to us, then like, what are we doing?

You know, there's many other good games for us to play like you, except if you've made it this far where you're listening to a World of Warcraft podcast, but you also think that you don't have any faith in Blizzard to create a fun package for you to play like you, You've been lost in the sauce somewhere.

I do think that something that I have seen is like players, I feel like have a pretty crippling addiction in an unwillingness to actually quit World of Warcraft for a myriad of reason.

But like it's kind of interesting because I mean, I feel like there's so many other, like really good games and hobbies that you could actually spend your time playing if if you were truly not having fun playing the game.

And it's like, you know, I've learned my big mistake is I see people angry, and I try and like give points and try and stop them from being angry.

But I think people just like being angry, Yes, like they want to be angry, and then they're angry, and then I'm trying to stop them from being angry.

And they're like, hey, I want to be angry, girl will go away.

And I just don't understand.

So this is a social media thing, right, Like, we're the most powerful emotion that's given.

I mean, it's it's been studied heavily where the most powerful emotion is anger and it's you know, multiple times more stronger than happiness or joy.

And so that's why social media will continue to feed you things that make you agitated or annoyed to the point where you know, you log into Twitter and all you see is you know, extremist rhetoric based on political takes that you don't have because you know, whatever company's.

Engage exactly basic engage, and it just.

Like triggers the shit out of you, right And it's.

Just in the corner, just quietly comments to the ground, He's like, all the aggro off of my takes this episode.

No, Like legitimately, though, I think I think this is per I like this, take a look.

I think I think it's probably true because there is I mean, but there are content creators out there who focus on the housing, are going to focus on the housing, transma collections, that kind of thing.

But it definitely has doesn't have the same wide appeal as the endgame raid myth a plus stuff just because but like, is that because it's not as popular like where where where is the line?

Because there are those creators out there, you know, mister GM still so Breezy, Like those guys focus on the more casual collection angle, and you know they have those takes as well for you know, feedback regarding various things.

Do they catch on?

Yeah, yeah, they do as well, I think.

So maybe it has to do with the fact that, like if you're somebody who's willing to search out World of Warcraft videos, you're probably of a different type of player than you know that you know, the mister gms and the Soulso Breezes that they not that there's no audience for that, but it's just you know, a different audience.

I would say, yeah.

But yeah, I mean I think regardless, it's interesting, Like like I like this idea though, and I think there's definitely some truth there.

I just wonder how far it goes and what is the actual cause.

Yeah, it is.

But at the same time, from like a Blizzard perspective, they just have to be able to filter through the bullshit.

Like frankly, like there's nothing.

There's no ifsends or butts about it.

It's kind of their job to have to filter through all the nonsense because it's kind of the reason that you can't let people dictate your class design decisions too.

You can't let feedback actually dictate your class design decisions.

There needs to be uniform design decisions in terms of classes, otherwise you're gonna have people like Mages telling you that they are weak defensively and have weak mobility and they need another blink charge and mass barrier two point zero.

What was that like, it's my ruba.

He's having trouble getting to the kitchens, all right, Last question from north Star.

He says, hello, since Mythic Plus hasn't been seasonal as long as PvP has has been, I don't know if you know this, but every expansion has had three or four seasons, with one exception Legion.

Legion have point zero and to point five patches that were seasonal resets, with the exception of seven point one and seven point three having the prean Tower season.

But simplicitly, let's just say point zero point five patches were new patches.

New seasons brought some new mounts, and titles and shared some stuff like transpont rewards.

Do you think a return to this kind of half seasonal thing would damp into the negatives of Turbo Boost and Mythic Plus more interesting throughout the season or with the just creat new problems So basically twice as many Mythic Plus seasons is kind of the question here.

Remember Legion actually with the point five patches that corresponded with new raids coming out.

Though not just yeah, it just comes down to content, right, Like if Blizzard doesn't come out and do new titles and new mounts and new achievements and you know, all this stuff, then yeah, yeah, that's great.

But I think the issue is, like, you know, to just reset everybody's score and do a turbo Boost only and then be like, okay, here's the new season.

Guys, Like that's a little bit like that falls short for sure.

So I like from memory here, and I was I was doing research earlier, so I might be a little bit off.

But for remembory here, seven point zero was pre patch of Legion.

Seven point zero point two was the patch the expansion launched on seven point zero point five.

Karrazan came out seven point one Trial of Valor came out, seven point one point five nightl came out, right, So I mean you're having like large content updates for each of those patches, where the point fives lately have been kind of that nothing.

Yeah, so I think or the content that they give doesn't in like change the player power, right, Like it doesn't add a new level of content.

Yeah.

Yeah, and then seven seven to two, uh, the Burning Shore came out, and seven to five and Taurus came out or uh too, Mistar Gars are nine tours two Mistre Garrets came out, but like there was like legendaries added in seven to like yeah, there's there's player power that was attached to all that stuff.

Yeah.

I think what I feel like is, I think turbo boost.

Let's split it two different ways.

I think the Dinars being able to farm random like trinkets is good.

I think that that coming in a point five patch is totally fine.

I think at this point the item level increase is kind of unnecessary and it lost its luster after the first time, and I think that should go away in future seasons in terms of breaking up.

And then I then you know, you wouldn't necessarily need to break up the season right like you.

If again, if they do have that content where they're rolling out tons of new cool stuff and they have a reason to it, like split the seasons, then that's fine.

But you know, to have split any of the war within seasons at point five pass for any reason other than oh, it's a turbo boost, which you know they're creating their own problem there, didn't really make a lot of sense.

I will say that, like I wish again, I think we talked about on it earlier, so maybe was talking about with friend or something like that.

I do wish there was more of an incentive to push early on in the season, and like separating out the season into two different seasons for Mythic Plus specifically would at least add an additional reason to push early on in the season, right when you're still getting that gearing, as opposed to think only doing Mythic Plus for gearing early on.

I'd be interested to how people in the comments feel about this, because we're detached from this player base for sure, but I feel like there is some merit in pushing early in the idea of staying ahead of the pack.

I feel like, in general, if you take MITI plus seriously, whether it's your goal is to get thirteens or thirties, you enjoy being ahead and raider io score of you know, the average people, the people around you, the people in your guild, because you want to get into better groups and like take things a little bit more seriously.

So I feel like a lot of people do enjoy pushing, and I think that like the oh, I'm just gonna wait till the end of the season crowd is more of a high end thing.

But I could be wrong about that.

I don't even know, like I'm not referencing the wait until the end one.

I just I'm not even referencing to wait till the end of season crowd.

I was referencing more like do tens for two weeks and then I actually start pushing crowd.

All right, swuitch, you organ say sorry.

I was just gonna say, like, I don't think half seasons are gonna work, because I mean, we talked about it last week.

It would get really boring to have to reset.

I don't even know how many people would participate if they did a second season of the exact same dungeons.

Yeah, that's yeah true.

That is impossible to actually get people to want to play that.

That would kill it more than.

Oh, that would kill it.

Yeah.

If the season ended and there was a new see that the exact same dungeons, Like, okay, I'm just done at the thick plus.

How would that even work?

Like you just lose all your radar ryos here and you get a plus two key and that's it.

Like people would hate careful consideration.

I think would be a terrible idea.

I do wish there was like more seasons or like again, just more of a reason to push early.

I don't think that the add more seasons thing makes a lot of sense, But you know there's something there, right, I do think that there is something there.

Yeah, it's it's hard to exactly nail down what you would want to that difference to be, though, Like it should be new dungeons because that would be impossible to actually keep up with.

But if it's the same dungeons, you're just like, I'm not gonna fucking play that.

Okay, Well, any final thoughts will be out of here.

Nope.

Just had to bring up Poke chips on for one last couple of shuffles.

As we close out the pods.

Which you want to give me hot takes about social media and it's impact on the human condition.

Please comment how many l takes Tells had in this episode.

Thank you very much.

It's just like it'll be like around the Horn except for L take and we all just have a number by our name.