Welcome back to episode eighty three of the Bench, where Blizzard has nerved and I repeat, nerve, the most important content of the game, Transmog costs officially nerved hot fix reduces prices by fifty percent.

Players were very, very sad that transmog outfits have been costing in the thousands of gold, and so Blizzard decided that, you know what, you guys were right, they need to be costing in the hundreds of gold.

And so they have acquiesced and they've decided that they're going to be nerving the hot They're going to be hot fixed, nerving the prices of all the transmogs that we guys can get more outfits.

Congratulations to all the maulgers out there, Squishy, Yeah, how is this?

Affects are basically found the only way to farm and l and updating the transmog system and causing a bunch more costs and adding a bunch of gold to people, and so they've finally reconciled for that.

The funny thing is you kind of joke on that.

I'm pretty sure transmog is probably one of the most used systems no matter what players base here from.

Unless your name is tittles, Well, I.

Actually don't believe in transmoking.

Yeah, okay, I'm opposed to transmok.

I think that whenever you look at the legacy of the game, think about it, whenever you were standing in storm Wind and somebody walked by with that cool Tier three mog, whenever transmogging didn't exist, you knew that they were an elite player.

And I think that we should go back to simpler times.

Sarcastic or.

Else, that's what he's saying.

Yeah, I'm being sarca.

I don't know.

Oh, I actually truly believe that.

I actually am a.

I think that part of your like the items looking cool is part of the value of the item.

And while I like the value of also being able to like collect things and giving merit to old raids and stuff, I think when you find a piece, being able to show it off that you have it equipped and it looks cool is oultweihs that.

And I think that having everybody just dressed is like the Omega super Champion of the World with all of their stuff.

I think kind of like ruins that for me, But I understand why a lot of people like it.

I'm not saying I think it's because, in my opinion, and transmog is too close together, Like say transmug didn't exist today, and you have some people running around in.

Hero Hero track like tier right where you can see that versus the myth track people.

It kind of looks samey, whereas in the you know, especially in like Classic or BC or something like that, you would see people in leveling greens right where.

It's just like, I don't know, it's not very I don't think it's I don't think it makes sense given where the game has gone, do not have it, But I think I do understand your point.

I think there could be a hybrid.

I think if you like had a distinct weapon glow or something that was only available if you like got CE for the tier and then like it had limited time or something like that could work.

You know, like you get this really really bright white glow when you when you get CE, and then the next tier just goes away, so it's limited time.

You can get it every tier like that kind of thing.

There's kind of too much stuff, right, I mean, look at look at like look at something like a Hall of Fame title.

I mean, do either of you guys care about Hall of Fame titles.

I suspect the answer is no, I don't.

But part of that is because I've earned it many times.

I think for people who have never earned Hall of Fame title, I remember when I rated in my first guild.

The first time we got Hall of Fame, people were pretty excited about it.

Do I care about the title?

The title?

The title, not the accomplishment, Like, and it's kind of the same.

The accomplishment or the achievement not really the title.

Yeah, And it's kind of the same thing with this is the reason I don't think the weapon Glow would necessarily work is because I don't think the weapon Glow is something that's like unique enough.

Even something like the mythic Dementsius Mount or you know, the mythic mounts in general, How long does it take until those become not that cool to ride around on?

Like, that's just a question of popularity rights, do you guys?

Well, when Liquid kills the Boss the first week and there's only two or three people in the world with the mount, they sit on the mount in town and it's all of cool, right, So I think it's just a matter of everybody has their threshold of when when we're playing the game and we care about the prestige of something, Eventually the prestige of something becomes something that we don't care about, right when enough people have it or enough time has passed.

That's us though.

You know, some people just want to mount that I would.

I would almost even say a majority of people want them mount just to look cool and want to be on a cool mount or something that fits their MOG rather than to show off something they did in game.

I actually don't know, though I say more I say most people, but I don't know.

I do think the the like prestigious achievements or whatever, or mounts.

I think a lot of people do care about those as well.

It's just kind of a I think it's just kind of a difference of opinion, right, Bluetoo took the game one direction where they've added mog to everybody.

They created this new kind of way that people collect and play the game, where the opposite of that would be creating things that are that continue to be more prestigious.

And I mean, I don't think that either is right nor wrong really here, just kind of a difference of where Blizer took the game.

Yeah, I think a big difference now is lately a lot of the prestigious things are just difficult content and while isn't really grindy, it's just being really good at pressing your buttons or being really good at networking and being part of a good guilder team.

Right.

But I think that's something that wow is definitely missing, is I don't know, that's sort of like grind Yeah, I don't know.

I guess that's like the classic versus retail differential.

Is I feel like in classic you can just grind a ton and play a ton, and even if you're not that serious or like try hard of a gamer, just putting in time, eventually you have cool stuff to show for it.

And that really doesn't isn't as much of a thing in retail.

I feel like you have to be really entrenched in the mogs and mounts and stuff to have a lot of respect and understand those mounds that are like really hard or reputations that are really hard to grind.

But maybe I'm just too far out of the loop.

I think titles and mounds are just so there's so many of them, right, Like mounts are one thing, but like let's let's be honest here, when it's the last time you saw a title on anyone, I'm pretty sure like a lot of people just filter those out at this point.

Yeah, it's kind of it's kind of the same thing as mogged.

Like visually, it's just kind of like a whatever you have too many weak ora sounds or whenever you used to have too many week core sounds, rather you would just kind of no longer be able to hear it.

And it's kind of the same thing with like looking at mogs, all of them look samey, you know, like sure, your mog might be a little bit cooler than anybody else's, but like I don't really whenever I'm walking around town, I don't really notice somebody's mog.

That's like fire, like you know that everybody's mogged.

Yeah, I just don't pay attention as much.

Also, random like just keep diving into the subject and derailing the topic of the podcast immediately.

I a video popped up on my feet.

It came out this morning from a guy named Jake.

He's like a smaller creator.

It's like, didn't have that many views, but he basically the video is called like how Blizzard Lost its soul and he's basically talking about One of the big differences about Old Blizzard and New Blizzard is everything is so streamlined.

You load up the game and it almost tells you what to do, and it tells you what your achievement should be and what your goal should be.

An old school game is more so you kind of just load in and play, and I feel like you won't.

The way he described it was that when you have this like achievement track or the game is telling you what to do, you almost play it too much.

It's almost like that mobile game loop where you just play and play and play because you're trying to check all the boxes because that sort of like satisfies that dopamine.

But you end up kind of like running yourself into the ground and getting to a point where you don't really enjoy the game versus like setting goals yourself and doing what you wanted to do.

And then that way, you just like feel happier about what you're doing, and you feel happier about when you're ready to stop, because you're just like, oh, I can pick this back up at any time.

But with Wow, you kind of get people who like, don't you feel like there's a lot of like really disgruntled WOW people, and I feel like that was an interesting way to kind of explain why, because I always joke about the Wow community complains about Wow and all this stuff, and it was kind of like an interesting way to justify it.

And I was wondering your thoughts on it.

WOW community has always been disgruntled, right, I.

Mean, people are always angry these days now.

I guess just everybody hates everything nowadays just wants to be mad.

Maybe I'm overthinking it.

Especially on social media.

I don't know.

I'm not really sad.

I'm not really so convinced that as that.

I mean, I was having a conversation with the Vanda the other day and we were talking about the different differences between like Classic and like current retail, where basically every single expansion since Vanilla was released, Lizard has tried to cut back on the amount of friction that exists in the game.

And some friction that they cut back on was good, like removing the fact that you need to level sixty levels to be able to play the end game content that was probably friction that getting removed was nice.

I you know, I don't think it.

I don't think that was necessarily something that had to you know, you didn't need to level sixty levels for the Burning Crusade whenever that expansion came out.

But at the same time, at some point there is there can be such a thing as too much friction ends up getting removed.

I don't know if I necessarily agree with that guy's assessment, but I do I do see what he's saying in terms of like the achievements versus the you know, endless grind style.

I do think that Classic and Current Retail are just completely different games to the point where you can't you really cannot compare the two.

Speaking of which, exclamation Point Challenge titles.

That level six still.

We uh so the story behind that is we challenge JB because JB was like bored on Street to get to level twenty without I mean, he's sort of set it up himself, but basically to get to level twenty and hardcore Classic and JB.

For people who don't know him or watch the stream, he is the most retail brain retail player ever.

Like he you know, slams keys all day, would love to be on tournament realm, Like doesn't even like hearing.

He just wishes that he could just like play play play like retail you know whatever.

Like I mean, I'm kind of like that sometimes too.

But he actually did get to level twenty, and it was very interesting to hear him talk about hardcore and classic and like appreciate the good parts of it.

He's still a retail player.

But anyway, now we're trying to trick Tittles and then getting too level twenty and to see what he thinks.

I actually think Tittles is like a little bit more of like a how do you say, like an old soul, Like the fact that you said the uh, the part about transmog and caring about your weapons.

Also, like the music you listen to.

You kind of listen to older music even though you're not olding me.

So I don't know, I feel like you would enjoy it, but your heart stuck at level six.

I mean, I've played games like this before, but like realistically, the thing with Wow, Uh, I've never actually leveled character in Wow.

Like ever I started in WAT, I've only gotten character boosts like I've never I've never actually leveled a character from Fresh.

I don't really like leveling, but I don't know, maybe maybe this will make me feel differently about this entire thing.

But yeah, I died on my first character in some my child likes to grief me and tell me things like there's a chest in the back of this cave or something, and so then I had to go battle a bunch of yetties.

Then I died.

It was it.

We were sorry.

There these are window goes.

These aren't yet.

He's a very different Yeah.

The first cave.

Every every starter zone in Classic has the first cave of hostile mobs, and that's where many people perish.

Yeah, now I'm on an undead mate.

Yeah, I don't know.

Yeah, the Pumpkin Patch I won.

I defeated the Pumpkin Patch.

Don't worry about that.

But yeah, I don't know.

I think that hardcore is interesting.

I think that they're just completely different games, Like you're you're objective in something like Vanilla, or you're objective in something like Retailer.

Just it's not even playing the same game in my opinion.

Yeah, it's it's crazy how you can look at any one expansion and see how you went from point A to point B, but when you compare Retail to Vanilla, it's like they are really truly two different games, like what your your whole experience from when you start to when you finish and what you're doing is like so dramatically different.

The gameplay itself is the same, but it's interesting how like the objectives and stuff have have changed over the years.

Have you guys ever listened to eliminade stand podcast?

What I have not?

I have not heard of it.

It's a main stand atriarch Doug Doug and Aiden No.

I believe.

One of the things that they were talking about, like a couple of weeks ago was something with focus grouping, and dude, I I think I just had like I had like a revelation.

So one of the things that they were talking about is whenever you get too much feedback from people, it can actually become detrimental to the product that ends up getting created.

And I had a revelation.

I was like, I wonder if wow, I went down this path, so hear me out.

So one of the studies came out, if you pull too many people about their favorite flavor of ice cream, the flavor that you end up turning into, like you get that is the group's favorite is vanilla.

Even though very few people have their number one choice of favorite ice cream is vanilla Growl, and I had this conversation about like fun versus balanced like a couple of weeks ago, and the focus grouping thing where everything ends up turning into vanilla kind of reminded me of World of Warcraft because something that I realized, and especially whenever I started playing hardcore more for all these six levels, is that whenever you're a World of Warcraft player, the only thing you complain about is friction, and you only have negative sentiments towards the game, and you never talk about the things that you enjoy positively, which is so interesting.

And I wonder if Blizzard has taken the game down the wrong path because of the negative sentiments towards things like borrowed power, friction or whatever else, and it would have been better if they were taking big swing with things, because something that we've been talking about in the last couple episodes is that we don't know if Blizzard's, you know, making a big enough change with Midnight And uh, whenever I was listening to that, I just sat there and thought about for a secle or wow, this is this is crazy.

I wonder if this sel blazer got here kind of a weird.

I actually completely agree, have you.

Did we talk about this last week?

I remember when we talked.

About this, we talked about stones and all this shit.

The did we talk about the Classic Wow survey that Jordie put out?

That was this?

That was this week?

Right?

So I actually completely relate to what you were saying about too much info being good.

So essentially, Jordie, who's a classic creator, came out with this website where he's aggregating what the community thinks about Classic Plus.

I think it's Classicplus dot Wow or Classic Wow dot plus or something like that.

Anyway, It's it's like a giant survey, like it's literal hours of survey down to like, you know, what you think about this spec and what do you think about this class?

I don't know if this is the right website, uh anyway, but I was filling out the surveys because that sort of thing interests me, right, the idea of a Classic Plus or what sort of content they do there.

But he starts asking all of these in depth questions like one one example is what are your rank?

All of these quests depending on what you like to do, right, and a quest might be kill x mobs collect x drops from the mobs, travel to point A, kill one really tough mob, blah blah blah blah blah.

Right, and as I'm sitting there ranking them, I'm like, this isn't how this works.

Like it's not like this is the best quest and this is the worst quest.

A questing experience is about having all these different kinds of quests that you do and your creator you're trying to like create an experience.

And so the more I sort of answer these questions about like what's better, what's what, you know, I feel like, you like, I don't almost don't want them to listen to this, you know, like I almost don't want them to say, oh, so people really like kill mob quests, therefore we should put way more of these, or oh the community says this, therefore we should do this, because I feel like this is going down the same road that that retail did, where it's just like over time, each little jump from each expansion, there's a bunch of quality of life things or things that improve, but you kind of lost what was in the game.

Yeah, so if you click that red button take survey, yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean so, but it's it's essentially just take my word for it.

It's literally just hours and hours of questions and surveys about every little thing about Classic and with the idea that I'm pretty sure he just wants to aggregate the data so that if Blizzard is working on Classic Plus, which we might talk about later, you know, they have this data or whatever for what people actually want.

But yeah, it's just interesting because I was kind of taking the survey and I was almost thinking, like, I don't want what the community wants, like I want a group of developers who really care about crafting and good experience to come up with something.

It's tough, I mean, because that's that that is ultimately Blizer's job.

And then it comes back to the age old you think you do, but you don't, and Blizzard needs to be able to stand strong in their convictions and but also listen to the community at the same time.

Right where things like convenants sucked.

The players stated that covenants were gonna suck, and the community ended up being right, but Blizzard was like, we're we're gonna, we're standing for with this.

But the problem is if you're Blizzard and you're standing firm with us to not get backlash.

You better be right, it's classics.

Do you want to talk about the classic player stuff?

I mean, grow were already kind of there.

Uh yeah, I mean we wait, we may as well.

So are we going to go into the interview or the sorry the what what did they even call it?

The State of Azroth there go, Yeah, there's a name for it.

Uh yeah, we'll go over the classic stuff because there isn't really much of it.

So I feel like retail is kind of on a path where people knew what was coming.

You know, we have Midnight coming out, we know there's gonna be a point one patch, blah blah blah.

So a lot of the classic stuff is kind of in the air of are they going to do wad classic?

What are they gonna do after mop?

Are they gonna do a Classic plus or another season or Discovery thing?

So a lot of the community anticipation was what they were gonna, like, are what are they gonna talk about with classic?

And they did not talk about anything.

They basically just said, Yep, we're just gonna keep doing Missi Pandaria, and I think they announced that they're going to do some like small new stuff in there.

They said something about like challenge cards or something, but I don't know exactly.

I didn't play MOP, so it's hard for me to decipher how new stuff is and what it means.

And then she basically Holly did a teaser to class I mean she basically said classic plus without saying Classic plus, but gave literally no information she which I I think everyone was kind of bummed about it at first, But at the end of the day, I think that's kind of good because I think that I.

Thought that was more just like a joke, like like legitimately just a joke.

Oh maybe I actually should I actually took it as the opposite that that was them saying like, Okay, we hear you.

We know you want this, right and I think as soon as you acknowledge that, I I guess I feel like as soon as they acknowledge that, then that means it's coming.

I don't know, Squishy, what do you think I.

Have to the ways growl?

I thought it was just a badly timed joke, like classic players are hungry for more information and then giving them nothing and then still making that joke is just like.

Read the Room Blizzard.

Yeah, yeah, well that's sort of what I was thinking, is like, there's no way they're actually gonna do that joke and then not have an announcement at BlizzCon, right, Like that would be so people would be writhing in the streets if they make that joke to all the Classic people and then be like, yup, and there's still nothing.

Last Bliss in twenty twenty three, they announced that like SAD was coming out the week after, and I mean, look, look look at what's going on.

And so we got Phase five, the Siege of Orgermar in the summer, and then we got blizz Con in September, and they don't really have anything for Classic for the rest of the year.

I mean they are they actually just gonna be like the exact same thing that happened with SOD where it's like, yep, next week Classic plus I mean they could I mean, like my general take on it is, I honestly think it would have better for them to just not mention Classic than to make that joke.

To be fair, the Classic players at this point are pretty beaten down to the point where I don't I actually didn't even see that much frustration, Like they were just kind of like, yeah, yeah, when we knew it and then they move along, So it was a little bit disappointing in that regard.

My tinfoil theory is that I think they're going to do WAD Classic because I think that lines everything up of Miss Pandaria ends they do WAD Classic, also TBC ends, they do Wrath of the lich King and they finish the anniversary the three series, and then they announce Classic Plus or whatever that means to them at BlizzCon and then that's in development during during WAD Classic and Wrath of the lich King Anniversary, and then they make some sort of big move after that where they end WAD Classic, they end the Anniversary, and then then they sort of like merge a lot of the classic player base, expecting them to go towards what their new classic project is.

That's kind of my my tinfoil of like what the next roadmap coming up is going to look like?

WAD Classic.

Isn't it wild to say?

I mean, I don't know what what is like kind of modern?

I mean this MOP is really modern.

MOP is really modern.

We're talking abot a little bit.

I mean, dude, why do you have the fucking guild merger where you're merging ten and twenty five.

I mean, oh yeah, I also think this is a hilarious l for Blizzard to take bringing Wad Classic and then not doing Legion Classic, right.

Yep, I mean what without the delays in content will probably be okay.

But I'm pretty sure MOP Classics already pretty dead, isn't it, Like in terms of total population, there's still people doing stuff on there.

But like I'm convinced that there's ai that Blizzard has figured out how to put them in group Finder, because when when the Throne of Thunder came out, I was trying to do group Finder dungeons and it was miserable.

There was like no cues, I could never get matches.

Everyone was like miserable, Like you could tell you were playing with other miserable Classic players.

But I've recently been like trying to farm stuff up because we're like basically done with the raid and I'm like kind of griefing, and I'm like way behind my all my things, and I'm all of a sudden getting cues and every in my cue is like playing reasonably and no one is being mean, and it's just like I'm it just feels like a normal experience again, and I'm like, hmm, this can't be the wild like MOP should be dead, Like it feels like there's nobody, Like you go into Group Finder, like you know how there's like all the different groups of like Arenas and Custom and Raids and Legacy, Like when you go in the LG literally it's all empty, like there's nothing there in Classic at least on our servers, it's completely empty.

And then to get cues for l OFG has been like really really weird for me.

Are you guys rating ten man?

Yes, we are rating.

We rated.

So I joined.

I was playing with some retail people in Kata and I did the first tier but then stopped because that was when hardcore came out.

And then I joined a new guild of retail friends with like Evade and Twigs and some some other Final Fantasy buds and we're doing ten man.

We did, uh whatever the first tier was.

It was like three different raids right mogishon Palace to Terrace of the Endless Springs and Heart of Fear And now we're doing Thrown a Thunder and we're basically like on Laishen right now, we we just rade like six hours like super casually.

No requirements to play whatever you want.

Just just have fun, just game.

What do you think about ten men raiding?

So it's hit or miss ten man?

When you have a job, you feel so impactful.

So like Riven, So there are three range dps, Me, Evade, and Rivens.

Rivens is an absolute demon who never does any mechanics.

So me and Evade are the range dps.

So like if there are ads that need to die, it is like me and him, like we're the only people, you know, we have to coordinate, Like, oh no, I have my damage is messed up here of Ade, you need to help me, and like we're if you forget to do your job, like it's it's very noticeable to the whole raid, And I really like that, Like every single person in the ten you know, it's sort of like a dungeon group, right Like if you're in a dungeon group and you're not doing your job, it's like noticeable right away if they're if you're a dead weight.

I really like that.

However, you can tell that the raids are designed to be four twenty five man and so you end up with certain weird fights with like weird comp restriction or weird mechanics that become very very difficult with only ten people, or if you're missing certain key classes, Like in a twenty five man you almost guaranteed you have one of every single class, right, but in a ten man you very likely might not have one of certain classes, and it's like, oh, we don't have a DK for grips, Like this fight is actually impossible, even though it's not even that hard of a fight.

I shouldn't say impossible because it's mop or whatever, but I would like ten men to come back though.

I think it's interesting, but I would like to see things designed around ten men, not just bific raid but you can bring ten people.

Yeah, I mean I agree with that.

Like ten persons you feel ten players you feel more impactful.

Twenty I feel more like a cog in the machine.

A lot of the times you don't feel like but like, if you're doing something with another person, you are very clearly helping the raid, and it feels like you are impacting the raid very clearly, whereas twenty a lot of the time you are, you know, one of a couple of ten doing a certain mechanic.

So yeah, just interesting, interesting thoughts because like I feel like, we for a little bit have been discussing the fact that we want ten men in return, but I don't think these are ever biting on that logistically.

It's also just getting ten people is so much easier than getting twenty people, right, Like, I think imagine getting twenty people to like a party at the same time near impossible, right, Like, the fact that guilds are able to do it for so long is incredible, but ten ten's a lot easier.

I think it's just that it's a more intimate feeling, and like the way that the encounters would be designed, like the encounters could be designed would be more interesting.

Now, the obvious issue is that they're with twenty players.

You can assume that every comp has a d K or something like that, where now if you're doing if you're doing tim in raiding, you can't really create encounters with the assumption that somebody's gonna have a death Knight in their group, right.

Yeah, I mean to segue a little bit.

I think the reason that you're asking about this, and I don't think anyone cares about the map other than retail.

Now they essentially the big announcement are at least the big takeaway for me is they talked about having point five patch raids.

Yes, am I understanding this right?

That?

Both in the point five of the first patch and in the point five of the second patch, they talked about the idea of having a raid whatever that means, right, Like, was it just a single boss or oh, it's both of them point seven to in point five?

No?

No, no, no, no, no, the point seven sorry, twelve point seven?

No, it's point seven point one point five.

Yeah, yeah, point seven and one point five Okay, So not that that matters that much, right, They're just patches in between patches.

But so I think the reason that why this topic is on everyone's mind is because, to me, this sets up a perfect opportunity to Blizzard, for Blizzard to start messing with things in terms of the raid, right, so they can still keep their raid tier.

They've already shown that they kind of want to jumble things a little bit.

It may be just because of story, the reason that they're separating out the ones at launch for Midnight.

However, they're still jumbling it up a little bit.

And now if they release these small, not so serious, sort of like mini raids in between, that might only be one or two bosses.

To me, this is a perfect opportunity to try a quote unquote like what would a five man raid look like?

What would a ten man raid look like?

I don't see any reason why why they wouldn't try and experiment here as opposed to just like putting a random boss that's just another twenty man mythic.

I don't know what do you guys think is that come out of this?

So I do think it would be interesting if they start experimenting with stuff, But the counterpoints of why they wouldn't would be because starting to mess with the ecosystem of raids becomes pretty pretty tricky, especially once you start messing with raids size, Like what happens to guilds if you start messing with raid size where you cut down from twenty to ten, are those guilds or a lot of guild's gonna die?

Like?

What ends up happening with that is is a ten man ray gonna be one tank or two tanked?

I think is always a pretty interesting discussion point because I think, you know, trying to even out the amount of tanks, it would make more sense if it was one tanked.

But also at the same time, ted ban has always been two tanked throughout the history of ten Man.

I don't think it would necessarily be a problem, but I do think if you start messing with like the fabric of how many players are zoning into it, especially for the highest level of content, which is mythic, I do think it would be a little bit weird.

What's your kind of redone the squitchy because I feel like you have your finger on the pulse more.

Than growl and I I mean, Blizzard is a large ship and it takes time to kind of change things, right, change direction.

I do think this is a perfect opportunity to try new things, whether or not they actually do it, that is kind of the question, right, Like the timing is like herbo boost level like timing almost it feels like and so like if everybody's gear capped touting we can talk about later, but there there's options to maybe try.

I don't know, something weird fifteen man, ten man, twenty five man.

What else would you try?

Like, okay, things that aren't just affecting the raid size?

What are other unique things that they could go for?

Different types of mechanics that Wow typically doesn't do.

We haven't touched mechatorque level of mechanics for a very long time.

That was not very well received, but maybe in twenty twenty six it'll go better.

Like there's a lot of different there's the idea of semi random bosses, where you know bosses have major mechanics that percent health and then just use a random set of basic abilities between it.

Fully random bosses where bosses just don't have a timer and you just have to react to what you're seeing on the screen.

Like many different types of mechanic options I think could happen.

Like these standalone bosses are great opportunity for them to try new things done, and I really hope they take it.

No rainte yeah, I mean completely secret boss like it fully encrypted, everybody gets to go and blind at the same time, would be cool.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

So bots that disables all of your add ons when you walk into.

The boss room, that would be a great opportunity.

If they're like, let's try and see what rating happens with no add ons.

This is our way to do it.

Like that, not saying that's the worst idea.

I don't know how you guys feel about this.

I'm actually excited that the announced that we were going to be getting raids and the twel point zero point seven and twelve point one point five, mostly to the fact that it feels like that's way better content than what we had been getting from the generic cycles that we had in the war within where Turtotius Turbous really was like it was okay the first time and it really just did not do it for me the second time.

But the patches have felt like, even while we are getting content at a pretty accelerated pace compared to historic World of Warcraft, it still feels like I kind of crave more sometimes, and I do think something like the new raid content, if it's fun like that, is that is fantastic.

I was actually super stoked.

I was surprised that as retail players we got anything, but the fact that there was an announcement that is that's pretty big.

That they're doing like one Boss raids.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think it's really really good.

Yeah.

Good.

Also, I want to point out that they did not talk about we We got flack on previous podcasts for not being excited and knowledgeable about the praise system.

Okay, I don't even think Blizzard knows of what the praise system is did they even talk about prey at all?

It's just on this thing is like a bullet pointing.

I'm pretty sure they didn't even It's not even.

They're literally just like brow plus plus that's all.

That's all they kind of are.

It's just like an increase of the outdoor zone difficulty.

What were the comments saying about us not knowing anything about the praise system The pray system is like that we were saying that there isn't a headline feature?

Is that?

Is that what it was in response to I don't know.

I anytime I read the comments, I just have to like block on my memory, so all I remember is selling about the praise sism and comments and mad.

So the funny thing is the pray system has gone like has been out on the beta for a while, like the general ideas, you go hunt a thing, you know, you're doing quests along the way.

There's some problems about it last I heard, which is like if you dive to start the entire chain again.

But even on like Reddit, there's like posts from a couple of months ago that are like the pray system sucks, and I don't know if they've done stuff recently because I haven't done it yet myself.

But the idea isn't I don't think this is content for us.

But that's okay, you know, as long as it hits the people that are interested in it.

Yeah.

The problem is I don't know that it's hitting the people that it is supposed to before.

What what do you just think about the labyrinth stuff?

I think that's cool.

That to me was actually one of the more interesting things they now.

So basically, Blizzard came through and they said that they were looking to try to make dels more interactive, and they said that they were coming up with a thing called the Labyrinth where it was basically a mega del What else do they say about it?

They didn't say much else.

Right, Yeah, I mean just that it was a mega delve, right.

I mean, I'm, you know, a notorious people think I'm a Delve hater.

But part of my critiques with delves is that they're very uninspired and they're kind of like go underground and do this quest or like do these two quests.

I like the idea of expanding on the system and like giving you know, having there be some depth to it and actual exploration and like doing stuff I just question if if they're creating an environment for that to Like I guess I just want to see how that's gonna work, because I feel like, yeah, like they showed this map that was like basically giant of like you know, ten different rooms or whatever, and there's like a central chamber and there's all these ways to go, and like, if that is the case, that's gonna be super super cool.

Like I almost get flashbacks to like you know, like BRD or like mega dungeons or like doing it on hard motory.

You have to like do all the mechanics special, right, Yeah, they have a lot of room to play.

My only worry is, like right now, I pick I view delves as like a loop pinata thing that people just do and they want it to be easy and they want to be done with it, and they want the best rewards possible.

So I kind of worry that the focus like, oh there's some crazy reward that comes out of this, and then everyone just rushes through it and looks up the guide on how to get through everything fat, you know, as opposed to just like creating something cool and leaving it there and letting people kind of find it.

I guess it's just always so hard to balance the rewards of this type of content, right.

Or structure from stuff like this, like the the thing that the reason that a lot of people like Delves is because they are free hero track pieces of gear, whereas something with like this, I think if they actually went into the more aggressive, like cosmetic route, that it could actually be cool, assuming that they end up making it something that you actually want to do or you know, there is like some challenge that's associated.

It didn't have to be like the hardest thing ever, but there is there needs to be like something, right.

I actually think you're missing a big part of it.

It's not the free hero trek here, it's the fact that you solo.

Yeah, yeah, I think I think you are very much missing them.

Like it's not just hero trek here, it's you can get it while doing it solo because sometimes I just want to listen to some music and fucking just play some World of Warcraft by myself.

It's both.

But yeah, sure, I you know that's that's that is valid because I I like, go ahead.

The way that I see this, it is essentially a solo Mega dungeon that that like, in my mind, that is the way that I'm picturing it.

You know how hard it was.

You know, we talked with like Farfa but doing a mythic tazev or like Harvo one, and how hard it was for him to get that done.

Like if you could do let's just say, like Tazavsh solo and it was tuned for solo, that sounds like a great time.

I know all about you, but I would have fun with that.

So like, if that's what they're going for, great, honestly, like regardless of the rewards, Like, think of how much fun I mean, I mean, we are different targets.

I think that's how much fun we had with Kaiveza week one, and that was for a cosmetic real.

Age tower banged.

I'm I'm I stand by the fact that the Mage Tower is like a goaded content and that wasn't.

Even Yeah, I don't even go to say that we're not the target audience.

So to me, one thing that Wow is really missing currently that I think it needs to figure out desperately is something for you can do, something that you can do to progress your character solo, like when you just log in delves is kind of that, but it's just it's not quite there.

Yeah, you know, like basically in the past, there have been grinds that people quote unquote say are mandatory, right like, oh, you have to do you know, get all your sockets, or you have to farm this reputation or whatever.

Right Like, there's basically they give you either pre raid bis pieces or even items that are better than items you get out of the raid.

Therefore people view it as mandatory, and so everybody's doing it.

Delves the gear is not mandatory, it is something you can kind of do, but the rewards still fall a little short, and there's not really anything special from Delves.

There are those trinkets, and I know there are some classes that might want them, but it's universally there's not a whole lot of reason to log in and do Delves unless you want to.

And it's like that's sort of what I mean about that reward is how do they find that balance of like I don't I would love to log into Midnight right now and have something that I can do to progress my character and like, you know, feel like I'm not wasting my time, okay or sorry, I obviously not.

Right now is a very weird spot because it's pretty patched, but yeah, you know what I mean though, right, Like, I'm kind of like getting bored of hardcore.

I kind of like don't feel like playing another game or like starting out, like I want to play Wow, but like I you know, unless I want to get all my friends and go into a mythic plus or like show up to radtime, I can't really play right.

Whereas in older versions of WHOW you could just log in and progress your character meaningfully, and like, yeah, you can translog farm, but at the end of the day, we're all here to make our guys strong and do big damn or big heels or whatever, and so it's just I don't know, it's just a really hard balance.

I'm interesting to see.

I'm interested to see how they strike that balance because I think Delves missed.

And then the other complaint that I have about Delves is just the objectives are so different depending on what class you're playing.

You know, like if you have a class that's very good at soloing stuff and like can self sustain, you're just like holding w and like not caring.

And then likewise, if you're playing like a shadow priest, you're just like dying to white swings right, like so many people have had that experience of Delves.

Is I want challenging single player content, but it's not like I'm just getting white swing down to death.

This is stupid, And so I just think they're gonna have a really hard time like creating this whole labyrinth of all these different challenges and stuff, like what are all the challenges?

What are they gonna be?

It could be really cool, but I think they need to be role or class specific, you know, like have a healer chamber and a DPS chamber and a tank chain and like, yeah, I don't know.

I mean, I don't disagree with that.

Like, while Delves are great for solo content, the balance of them, like the reason that we were hating on Dell's really early on, which is because they parts of them were frustrating.

Yeah right, But like the fact that more like more solo content is never bad, Like let's be honest here in this day and age, people love solo content, and.

So I don't think more soloicon is ever bad.

I think that the lad that was a surprising thing that they announced.

Like I'm hyph for this, Like I'm curious what the rewards will be but honestly, like, regardless of that, I'm sure there will be achievements.

I'm still there, Like, I'm sure there'll be a mount.

There might even be like co Clear the Dungeon or the Mega Dell death lists or something, you get a mount or something like who knows.

It can be worse than warfronts.

So they got that going for them.

It can be because dastally duos existed.

Now dastly do is.

We're not as aggressive as warfronts because you needed to do warfronts occasionally.

I did not have to do dacaarly dos.

I think warfronts are better than that.

It's gonna be honest, sure, all right, other other news, So, something that players noticed whenever they were analyzing this roadmap was how close twelve point one is to Bliscon.

And I'm not just didn't squishy thoughts on this because a few months ago Blizzard announced that both AWC and the NDI we're gonna be at Bliscon on September twelfth, the thirteenth, And now we see on the roadmap that twelve point one comes out in the summer.

What's you gotta read on this?

Like?

What the fuck is I mean?

Season one to starts mid March, right, like typically it's like six months, so March, April, May, June, July, August, September, which means like by we knew BlizzCon date for a while.

My assumption was like twelve one releases the day, you know, like the week or two after Blizcon.

That made the most sense to me because everybody assumed, I think, because.

You know why you're like, you know, your power Users, your Razor world first, being like we're mid raids, see you guys at Blizcon, and then like not going or anything like that.

But for the md I to be there, I feel like twelve to one now has to release like a month, but the month and I happened beforehand.

Yeah, like I think the I think the month is July.

I mean it's possible if they start shrinking the distance between season one and season two, right, but like, is that gonna be fast?

Like they're increasing the speed of their content even.

More than tell you I'm down.

I'm down.

I was just I was just shocked to see it.

Oh yeah, I mean I came out of this.

I was like, oh yeah, Indiana is gonna be able to go on?

And then I see this and I'm just like, you know, whenever I see Summer, I'm thinking that this is gonna be like August, the month.

The month I was assuming here is gonna be like August, and they're gonna try to speed run the racial role first, they're coming the patches coming out like the first week of August or something like that.

Then the rac orle first is over.

Then the bliszk on September twelfth.

But that don't make any sense for an AWC or a blizz con at at uh.

They're an ABC or ANMBIA blisk on the making, So that's either.

Yeah, that is like the biggest question mark there because it doesn't make sense given what we know about time frames.

And now if they are spinning things up, that's cool because I'll be honest, like the end of every point seven patch has kind of been really dead for the game now, right, Like we talked about how point seven patches is usually you know, a week or two of content and then it's just back to like, I go play their games now, and if you work as doing content faster, maybe they're like, yeah, we want to increase the speed of our content, but man, that that might cause him, its usually blizzard, So twelve oh seven comes out, there's like an early May months mid May or something like that.

Like, because it's every two months, we usually get a patch, So what if it's like a month and a half now, so like April May May would be twelve o five.

I think this has to be earlier to lie, No, that have to be earlier.

Yeah, I don't know, Like you see what I'm saying, Like, I don't know, Like this is there's potential as well that twelve oh five is way earlier because twelve five doesn't have much.

You're cooking.

I mean, okay, for the stupid people in chat, what exactly is prop lunt?

People?

People are hype for this?

Are you asking for a friend by chance?

Yeah?

I'm asking for what is this?

People?

Were?

What is it?

Is it a reference to its hype?

Yes?

Yeah?

So basically I don't know.

Does that have origins in Gary's mod?

It's like an old school yeah, it's it's it's basically an old school game where essentially you you can disguise yourself as some sort of object and then it's sort of like a hide and seat game.

Right, So imagine like you can disguise yourself as a chair, and then you go somewhere and now someone has to find you.

But if they remember where what the place looks like, they know there's not supposed to be a chair there, and so basically like you're trying to fit in as an object as well as pos It's basically like a total like goofball for fun game.

And I'm like, I think it's a mega mega cool that they're it's a little bit late, like prop Hunt's been a thing for a very long time, it's kind of coming gone.

But I think it's very cool that they're adding stuff and like they're really experimenting with the housing and stuff they can do there.

It's a really silly game.

It's clipworthy, like it'll go great.

Like one of the best things you could do about the game is when the hunter like walks past you then just see a moving chair running away in the background, like it's it's a good time.

Like games still do prop Hunt.

I think it's good support for creators and streamers too.

Thinking back to I was watching an old Only Things vid the other day and Soda Pop and did the like hide and Seek and the raid they would like clear out a raid and then people would hide and then they would like try and find them with their UI off.

But like that's a total player created thing that they did.

If there were more things like that where you can just mess around and just invite your guild or whatever and just play a prop hunt while you wait for the you know, the guy you stuck in traffic or whatever, I think, like that's actually really really cool and it like creates just like Squishy said, it creates moments of you know, a really ridiculous clip that goes viral or something silly happens, and kind of like, I don't know, I think it really fosters the community having stuff like this.

Dude, I saw a viral clip the other day of Only Things one where you were antagonizing a kickstreamer who let a different twitch streamer die on a warrior or on a priest.

I've been known to antagonize.

But yeah, I don't know.

I don't think that the months or the seasons that they had for this roadmap, especially given the cadence that we've had for the last couple of expansions, it felt like we were going to get an accelerated patch because, like like Swishy said, we have been on what six month cadence?

Yeah, I mean this reads like it's four month cadence or something crazy.

Yeah.

Also, just to kind of state the obvious, I don't think Blizzard cares that much about MDI, Like, I think it'll just probably be a scuffed MDI where the teams just aren't as well practiced as they could be in really jumbled schedules.

I'm pretty sure this has happened before, with like a Race to the World first and an aw C or something that like lined up and it was like really hard and like people had to decide which one they would play or whatever that do both.

And I think, unfortunately, it'll just be I don't want to say a scuffed event because for the viewers they probably won't notice that much.

But from a player perspective, yeah, it might be really really annoying.

Was the thing.

And so like I don't know, like I don't know how logistically you get all of this done.

I mean, there's this weird thing in twelve one and five.

It says new content and systems that is that is like the most nothing.

But like.

Content in systems.

That's what it says is a bullet point I mean systems.

Okay, like that that's kind of mebe but systems new systems is a very interesting thing.

Yeah, because yeah, to me, that reads is like you know, at like something that's coming in the game, like again like essences.

Or we're getting augmentation to boogloo that like new system of support specs officially.

Oh boy, like that that like as as mimi as that is, that is the level that I think of when you highlight new systems, something that is like actually going to shake up the the the the game pretty significantly.

Now I could be misreading that, but like you know, extended Apex Talents, extended Hero Talent track like something of that, or AP.

Returning who the fuck knows?

Ruption is what I think of one of my first reading systems.

Yes, ap that sort of thing.

But like there's a very real possibility that whatever that system is is kind of like part two of twelve one in a way.

So they're okay, kind of just tossing blizkon in the middle of it.

Maybe, Yeah, I don't know, I mean, this is it.

That was something that I noticed and people were I saw people talking about it too.

But we'll get later.

I'm sure It's also subject to change, right, Like if they hear the feedback and people are like, yeah, I want to wait until after Blizkon, they might be okay delaying.

Who does.

I think the MDI and ANBC being being at Bliscon is cool because, uh, you and I both went to twenty three.

It was like, I don't know, there wasn't a ton of stuff, and I think it's one of the things that it was not well focused.

Let's put it that way.

Yeah, exactly, And I think that having something like that there is helpful.

So it made it made sense whenever we heard that they were bringing it back or like oh thank god, I.

Mean they could just do the entire tournament at Liskon.

I have no idea.

I'm gonna be honest.

I mean, I've been hearing.

I've been hearing some rumblings that this is gonna be a crazy Blizcon because I heard I've heard that Overwatch has something like very big that's under wraps that they're gonna do something with.

I've also heard that they talked something about the StarCraft ip that there's something new in StarCraft that's being and then also obviously like they have the classic plus stuff which I think has roots like basically everybody that plays I don't know it could they can actually have a lot of stuff like it could be.

I mean to be fair, like we're sitting through like what we're calling like some of the most boring downtime ever, right, so I mean it makes sense that Okay, we're gonna get some good stuff if we're wading through this.

I would hope you coming to BlizzCon.

Girl.

No, I mean there's like a small chance, but oh shit, it's not a zero Do you think do you think that if I went to BlizzCon but didn't tell anyone, I would be recognized.

Well, I know what you look like, so I would recognize you at least.

I mean that photo is by now.

I'm pretty sure I took that photo before I have ever played Wow, to show it to say how old.

Do you think you look that different?

Uh?

That else is gonna get the facial recondition of technology.

Ai.

Shit, he's getting the glasses that that analyzes the crowded, said Peter.

I don't know, probably not.

Maybe, No, I don't I don't know.

It's your boy.

This is just I don't want to say it's zero percent chance because it's so far away, like you never know what fucking world I'll be in or what mind state I'll be in at that point.

Yeah, I enjoyed my ana noominity.

You guys see Elsmere crash out.

Which time.

Uh well, this one wasn't about Oracle discrease.

This is about Holy Paladin.

Of course.

Holy Paladin got some changes on the Midnight Beta where Crusader Strike was returning, and he was pissed.

Drini was pissed.

All the Holy Paladin mains were not very happy that Blizzard was basically making Holy Paladin, in their words, worse, and then not twenty four hours later, the Blizzard goes, you know what, you guys are right, and then that created Ellesmere to what I would describe is do like a dance party on stream where he had this so lights and shit like it was it was crazy.

It was so good.

Yeah, so I talked about this.

You guys gotta watch out for this.

But the Holy Paladins are some of the most organized, deceptive, evil group of people ever and like they are just behind like they are just working behind the scenes trying to overtake everybody, and like I don't know Holy Paladin is just gonna be op Like they're as strong as they're their their organization and their lobbying and like the support that they're getting right now in the beta.

I'm expecting another Ashon Hollow.

I'm expecting Ashen Hollow to night.

The funniest wee.

Actually, I think I saw from this was a bunch of other specs that are like if this was my spec, this never would have happened.

I think like the Feral Druids were like that, the rest those shavin's Like this is a pretty quick turnaround for Holy Collinids.

Do you think whining is too effective?

But yeah, that's what That's what I was gonna ask you guys, is like how much of this community feedback?

Like I'm just really really curious.

Let's just say alternate reality, Blizzard comes out with Midnight Beta and people just play the game and just give normal feedback, but don't just complain on Twitter and make videos all day and like be insanely negative and like tell Blizzard what to do.

I wonder what the game would look like like would Blizzard have found all of these things and like fixed these classes, or would it like would Blizzard be like are they completely clueless and they're just like, oh, Ellesmir made this video, And then the three people and in the Blizzard office are sitting down watching the Ellesmere video and then writing down the changes they have to make, Like I guess, I just wonder how big of an impact this is, like on their actual change with me?

I will.

Do you ever have the garbage can that you photish up the boomkins lens?

Leave me alone?

Why don't you answer girls questions in shadow lens I've created?

I've created mostly positive content recently, and adam clickbait, but but mostly positive content lately.

I don't know.

I think it's interesting because I feel like whining is too effective.

It's like the Rep Paladins shutting down their class discord stuff like that, Like I don't Blizzard reason with these.

People, but do But do they though?

Because I mean, chances are the whining and the stuff is warranted and they made it they had like they made a mistake with Paladins.

Maybe Blizzard just realized they made the mistake and then like did they need the whining to fix it?

It's sort of what I'm saying.

I think everyone everyone is gonna say that they do and that they're clueless, right, Like that has to be what what most people think.

Yes, I mean most people think, where were you say?

Sorry?

My general thought is I wouldn't be surprised if internally on the class team, like on a decision like this, they're gonna be split because it's very very perception based, where you might have half of the dev team being like, yeah, we should leave Crusader Strike out, the other half the debt teams like, well we should have Crusader Strike in.

And then you have one or a couple people who are in leadership or whoever's in charge of this making the final decisis where are like, well, I'm gonna piss off half the people of you like we can't come like we're just going to pick one, and the community feedback is what pushes it more into one direction over the other.

But you know, because I wouldn't be surprised if Blizzard knows some of this, or at least some people on the team already know this and share the same feedback.

But the problem is with people, the only feedback you ever get is negative.

I think that you get negative like people are ten times more likely or is a magnitude more likely to give something negative feedback than their positive feedback, right, So it's hard to actually know players true feelings on a thing.

Yes and no, I mean this kind of feedback is very is feedback too, like, regardless of how it's given, the level of anger or frustration absolutely conveys a level of feedback as well.

Well.

But like, do you really need to be like fishing to try to see?

I cannot comment on to like what the circumstances are they might have This might have already been into progress, because we know that builds usually get you know, done before, like the internal servers and dev tools are probably further ahead than the ones that are pushed to our you know, our public servers.

So this might have already been fixed in a future build.

But this is the one that went live just because of when it was compiled, and they just decid to fix it in earlier because of the feedback.

Like, yeah, I kind of I don't know exact I like what you said about the fifty to fifty thing, because like this is sort of how I in vision, and like most logically they're thinking, hmm, like maybe this is a good thing, Maybe it's not let's just throw it out there in a build and see what people think.

And then everybody freaks out and they're just like whoa, Okay, guys, just calm down like all of this, you know, like when something is that great, like people just freak out about it, and they're just like, Okay, well, we'll just fix it right now because we need them to shut up and talk about other things.

Like they I think they just like threw out an idea to see what people thought, and then because of the community overreaction, they just like doubled back on it and fixed it right away so that they could move on to other things.

I think Devour is a good example this where Devour.

The feedback for Devour has been fairly consistent throughout the entirety of the beta, but Blizzard didn't really enact.

They didn't really act on any of it until like pretty recently, and then they hit the spec with a couple of pretty good QOL changes.

But then you see something like Holy Palette that gets a change of the reversion of a change within twenty four hours, and you're like, could this have happened faster for other specs if you were as aggressively complaining, right, I.

Don't know if it's the complaining I'll be honest.

Blizzard historically, yeah, does not, in my opinion, value beta feedback as much as they do feedback on life, like the second is live.

If this is if the same feedback is being pushed, they will then almost certainly take action of it.

But if it's on beta, they might decide to wait.

Yeah, I mean I kind of came to I kind of came to the similar conclusion, uh, where I just kind of give the feedback that I give.

And I've found that complaining doesn't actually do anything right where you know, you're just complaining to complain, and like you should just focus on what you can control, where like if you're really not happy, fucking reroll right, like that's kind of how I feel about it, or don't play much that season.

The best is gonna do whatever they're gonna do.

My my opinion is the best time to complain, if you're going to complain, is after it goes live.

Like think about class like I think class tuting, right, you have beta class tooting, you have the bottom secks and be like we're so far behind it gets pushed to live.

You see those classes so far behind then you have the b is like you know what, Yeah, you deserve a big buff.

I log in, I played Beta moon Can.

Somebody comes in my chat goes, damn Moonkin sucks and I go yep, and they go, well, what are you gonna do?

And I go, I don't know.

If it sucks, whatever, it goes live, I'll re roll, like I don't know, agles will thor lose everything.

Yeah, I'll rise again on some other character, or maybe I won't play that much.

Right, there'sh.

Yeah, that's kind of how I felt about the UI stuff and like the damage meter for example, right, like if they push the damage meter all buggy with no damage and stuff, Yeah, it's so it's so bad, right, I guess for me prepatches alive, but maybe I should see it that way.

But I I just like it's hard for me to freak out or like cause that much of a stir on what's there on Beta, because it's just like, okay, well, give the feedback that it sucks and if they fix that, they fix it.

Like but maybe being louder, I don't know, are you really impacting that much of a change just by being louder?

Maybe I mean, some of the people in the comments say that we Blizzard listens to us, like we're the people that are making the game terrible and they're listening.

You know, we're the ones getting changes through Blizzer is sitting here or the notepad.

Okay, the cat with the waffle doesn't like resilient keys, let's delete those.

Blizzard listens to feedback.

Blizzards listens to player feedback like that is that is part of their job.

Their job isn't to listen to one person's feedback and enact change race on what one person thinks.

And they also understand too that my feedback and Tenele's feedback and Dorkey's feedback and Zorthis's feedback are going to be very very similar in the grand scheme of things compared to you know, the person that is a race world first person versus a person that is super casual versus like, you know, a PvP or like all of it.

You know, they're not they're not listening to our feedback and the potty c and then being like, okay, let's combine these because we're basically, you know, the.

SAME's valuable, and I think that that's something that's maybe missed on people where they think for somehow Blizzard might view our feedback as more valuable while we do cast a wider net since we you know, we have a platform, we're creating a podcast.

But like, our feedback ultimately isn't any more valuable than anybody else's.

I mean, we we play the game more and we think about things, maybe a little bit more in depth than the average person because it's our jobs.

But like, individually, I don't think our feedback is any more valuable than anybody else's.

The Ellesmere cried loudly, and then the Holy Paladins got reverted, so I mean w Ellesmere So that makes him what two and oh on get oracle disc preset nerve can get Holy Paladin reverted?

Right?

Oh?

Two and oh you're only thinking about the near term.

He got Holy Paladin's a battle res.

I don't know if you remember that.

I can't even He got ash Hollow to stay for what additional patch?

Yeah, there's he has, he has many more ws.

Ellismir is a very victorious, individ jewel.

I think he took an l on the uh the interrupts thing though, and the and the Healer dps.

Oh, the healer interrupts.

Yeah, you have to understand that it's hell low right now, dude.

Yeah, absolute, Yeah, that's true.

Actually, I don't know, how do you guys feel about that?

That healer DPS is like at an all time low.

Like okay, so oracle disbrease was part of last or this or last expansion that was basically pissed DPS where it did nothing.

Uh, Now it's like literally every healer is pretty much in that state.

No where they're just doing like virtually zero damage zero and not zero, but like much closer to zero than it's ever been.

Yeah, for record, they're doing probably a fifth a fifth of the DPS of other specializations, not factoring in raid buffs and stuff.

Wait, what do you mean of a dps DPS like, oh, I feel like they're doing I've oh, I feel like you have to really try to do a fifth.

I feel I would even say lower than that.

Oh my god.

You don't say the average verson is going to be doing like I.

Mean on AOI like they're like a twentieth, like a tenth to a Yeah.

Yeah, I guess maybe I'm thinking like overall, Yeah, it depends on what you're playing like Druid, for example, still does some okay stuff with Heart of the Wild and whatever, but.

Yeah, yeah, I mean it's it.

I think Healer has had a significant identity problem for a really long time.

I actually think Blizzard's getting damage intake on the beta, especially for a mythic plus.

I think that they're actually kind of cooking with the damage intake on the Beta in a way that feels really good to play.

I'm so I'm super happy from a DPS perspective about the damage intake on the BIT.

I don't really know what it feels like necessarily to Heal.

I don't think that there's any reason that they're that Healer's DPS needs to be this low.

If anything, that just creates the discrepancy between classes that have raid buffs and don't from a Healer perspective, even wider from dam from a damage dealing perspective.

Now, once you start thinking about read books too much, that means that the season's tuned pretty well.

So it's not like, you know, it's not.

The worst thing ever, but.

It creates larger disparities between them.

Were essay spishly sorry Healer DPS.

Oh yeah, as long as as long as there's like stuff for heelers to heal.

I think having a low DPS is okay.

It's when there's nothing to heal and they don't dodps, where they sit around to do nothing, that that's when I have the issue.

Because I'll be honest, I have a feeling this season we might run back into the was it shadow Lands?

No, it was after Shadowlands Dragonflight where things were too hard to heal and people are going to complain because nothing feels worse to DPS when you die and you pressed every button to save yourself.

Yeah.

I think that was my experience on data and it was fun.

Need to hear people say oh or rather to say that they were worried about healers being too easy or like losing the skill expression of being a healer, because I found that the like overall AoE damage and like heavy dots and dispel requirements and like reactions are quite high.

I think healing is like quite challenging right now on the beta and yeah, I see this akin to Dragonflight season one, where there is going I don't want to say there's gonna be a shortage of healers or it's gonna be the hardest role, but like it is not currently close to healer being payphone where you just like walk around and do whatever you want, like it is if you're going to this expansion, worry that you're not gonna be challenged as a healer at least in Mythic plus Keys.

I don't think that that should be a worry of yours.

A couple of the common tropes that Blizzard has for the dungeons, and these isn't just a thing for the healer role.

This is just straight up across every single dungeon.

Most dungeons have some pulsing AOEI mechanic on a lot of trash mobs and multimagic dispels go out onto players.

In most dungeons there are trash mobs that will put up multiple magic dispels and so the healer has to dispel one and start healing the other one intrioge the other person.

I know.

Like the last boss of Magister's Terrace is like just a pretty it's just a healer check, right, Like the mechanics of that fight are it's pretty much a target dummy for DPS almost agolately.

The volleyball boss volley Yeah, catch the ball for DPS and the healers fighting for the life the entire time with DP, you know, with the with the damage and take the dispels like having to dodge, Like, yeah, I have a feeling that we might run the same issue, and if healers were expected to do tps on top of that, that would actually be an issue for a lot of people.

Yeah, I don't know.

We I'm mentioned in seeing if this ends up feeling like Dragon Fight Season one, where if you play with good healers, nothing the matter, like this is, it's fine, But then the moment that you start playing with people who are less good or maybe not as experienced, you start to run into problems where you know they just are unable to hit these heel checks because the last Boss of Magisters, I mean, you're talking about it being a pretty hard heel check.

In my opinion, it's actually not that hard, but it requires your tank and your healer to kind of be on the same quadrant, and then your tank to do all of the mechanics that the healers should be doing, and so then your healer can basically just tunnel on bombing heels onto the entire party and get the dispell on the tank at the right time and that's it.

And so like your healer is literally able to afk and just heal.

But I mean you say just heal, but remember what was the second boss of Knockhood That was a pretty really rough one, well, last boss of verb Rife Wolves, like the last boss of Quarter of Stars as well, your healer was only required to heal.

And then they still fuck that up and died and wiped your group.

I don't know.

I don't feel like the heel checks are as far as Dragonfly season one's heel checks were, but it is undeniable that the heel checks on this season are a bit harder than they had been previously.

For sure, I think that growl sentimental like you can't pay phone is one hundred percent true.

There's a lot more rock checks like that third boss of Hols diffusion.

Rock checks are more of a thing, and you don't get one hundred to zeroed as often, meaning that defensives are used to just like mitigate damage as opposed to like prevent one shots.

Okay, all we got left is Q and A the growdy spawned.

What happened to that guy?

Uh?

I'm here, I actually have a complaint of the week, real quick of complaint with the chalance patch for Miss of Pandaria and the nerve fire Mage, and I'm mad.

Remember I was talking earlier about how I've been catching up.

I basically spent many hours catching up my character so that I could play fire Mage to contribute to my raid.

And they basically did what I saw as like one of them craziest gun down nerves I've ever seen of a class.

So they nerved combustion from fifty percent to twenty percent, and with the current build, okay for anyone who plays mop fire Majors like completely fucking broken, So that's part of the reason they're doing this.

But they basically nerve firemade damaged by like over a quarter I would say, maybe even more, like it is such a nasty nerve, and I'm mad I didn't I literally didn't even get the trinket that I needed to get in order to play the build, and we're just about to kill that boss and then they nerved my build and now I'm just I don't know, I'm gonna quit or something.

And that was the week.

Yeah, congratulations a girl for the complain of the week, make should rally the Firemage complainers on Twitter and you know, sociad.

I need a video I need yeah yeah, yeah yeah.

I think Firemide sucked early on in MOP and they actually buffed it like in MOP Classic to be like more viable, and then they just reverted the buffs and which is the same as it was.

I'm pretty sure you guys see this shit with fire Mage on retail where you don't piro execute Oh funny growl, you hear about this.

You don't pyro and execute now as fire.

Yeah.

I mean again, these are like rotational things that if this was how it was on live, like when it comes out, I would be a little surprised, Like it's definitely really really weird.

Uh yeah, I mean fire Mage is a really tough one where they just ripped up the identity of this class.

Like I talked about this a little bit, I think on the last pod where yeah, fire Mage didn't really have a lot of buttons or a lot of things to track like it was mainly i think critiqued because it was like a very high actions per minute class, like you had to be constantly reacting to PROCs really fast and like missing globals hurt you really bad, and so to rotationally change the spells a lot, you're like completely changing the way the class plays.

Like this is like a very very big remake if you're not jumping around in combustion all the time, because that's how it's been for a long time.

These darm mages have started complaining about defensives again, do not let them gaw that I saw, not let them gas like you know, I mean it's.

I mean, the parablast thing, it was only one point five percent.

Like, I don't think it's that required.

If you just do your rotation normally for most people, you probably gain more by just doing the rotation correctly rather than adapting to a new execute rotation.

What if you just use the one but notation.

Oh perfect, Yeah, that's why exactly, I mean.

You could Yeah that that to me seems a little bit weird, uh, more surprising than anything.

But that's it's those are those things that Blizzard sees the sims and they're like they're one hundred percent gonna change it, like you know, the van pyro to the point where you have to press it is it isn't this pre patch, Like, isn't isn't this a pre patch thing?

Or is this?

Uh?

I think is it not both?

Is it just is it pre patch only?

I think it might just be pre patch, but I'm not sure because.

I don't think Blizzard necessarily cares too much about pre patch stuff because you're missing talents.

You're missing I mean, not that tear does much, but missing Apex talents, Like, yeah, the Devour rotation was so wacky not having the Apex talents.

You just never press Collapsing Star despite that being your like main nuke because your nuke wasn't.

Oh that Yeah, okay, I keep talking.

Okay, well for the time for the audio only listeners who are very confused titles pulled up the Epstein wow post and it looked like he was like leaking a random one of his emails on accident.

We were all just like, very confused, dude, that's been that's been a hot hot topic.

Yeah, that's a that's been posted everywhere.

Basically the that they're releasing more documents in the Epstein emails, and apparently there's two notable ones, one of which Epstein created an account during Cataclysm under his email, and I believe the other one is he got perma band from Xbox Live for like mistreatment of others and being abusive or something.

And yeah, yeah, we will always take our opportunity to talk about political stuff that's not political.

If this one is very very funny seeing this enter the gaming realm of like, yeah, of course he's banned on Xbox Live.

Why wouldn't he be?

All right, let's move on to some Q and A.

We got one question for this week.

If you want to submit your question for the Q and A tweet at the benchwall on Twitter or DM that account and you will have your Q and A added to future episodes.

This week, we have a question from Jarl and he says, regarding the previous episode about add ons, at what point would you have considered add ons to cross over into the realm of actual cheating.

We've got things like autootation add ons, reminders will when to use your abilities, those kind of things, And then there were workarounds that you guys were talking about, like the guild message of the day thing or the whispering the twenty first man.

We all talk so freely about these things because it's become so normalized, But in any other game, things like this would be considered cheating and to be punished by the gaming company.

What would you consider to be cheating?

And how are these things that we're doing now not considered as such?

Having add ons be the answer to everything.

Well, nobody got banned for sneak dot Lua, and I think that that might have been the most egregious example of cheating that I've seen in a hot minute.

Squish you, why don't you feel this one first?

That is tough because Blizard doesn't enforce anything anymore.

I think there is a very clear line out of game stuff.

Every time something that has happened out of game, Blizard has around the line.

I think Warcraft Logs was going to do an overlay.

No, they were gonna do a.

Live combat damage meter, go to fire damage meter and like things that they could read out like through the combat log that Blizzard was like, No, absolutely not.

We're gonna step in here and make a boot post on it.

Anything elseide of the game I'm pretty sure is pretty off limits.

That's one thing that Blizzet has remained pretty consistently against.

Past that.

I feel like it's whatever, however Blizzard feels honestly.

Yeah, the problem as whatshy said is that they don't enforce it.

Sorry, if you want to continue.

Oh, my general.

My general thought is like anything that requires the add on or that used to add on API that's available is pretty fair game.

Though.

What I was gonna say is that I think I think there's two lines.

Basically.

Number one is being able to press buttons when you're not pressing buttons, like, for example, for it to automatically press barrier or for like anything like that, And I don't believe you can do that in game API, so that would have to be something you do out of game anything that automatically inputs a button press.

Although it's a little bit silly, right because you can have something that does all the calculations and tells you barrier and then you just press the barriers.

I don't know that you were using EGSC or whatever the hell it was called.

Oh I don't even remember anymore, but I know what you mean.

It was basically like a one button.

It was like an Omega.

It was like the one button rotation before it was the one button rotation where it was like create these like omega super convoluted macros and then you could just mash you It was basically the one button rotation and so anything like that.

And then also, like what they said with sneak dot Lua, when Blizzard tries to hide something and makes it a point to hide something, then using an add on to find that thing that they're hiding, in my whether it's an in game thing or auto game thing, in my opinion, is cheating.

Like if they're if they're saying, okay, this is a hidden value, you're not allowed to do this, and then you find some random bullshit work around to like see that data and then you use it that you know, that's cheating in my opinion.

But again they don't really enforce.

It, so like what the pack, Yeah, I don't know, and like they don't if they're not going to ban you, it really makes you question like what actually is breaking the you know, breaking the rules because like you guys remember the fired up shit that happened earlier on in the world within where he was just like focused targeting with spell Flinger.

Like for me, the I don't think is it if it's available in game, I think it's pretty fair game honestly.

That's so that's a little bit different that would be bug abusing or like exploiting, right, So that's not necessarily cheating, I guess, or in terms of like using a cheat, because I don't think he did anything he didn't do.

But at the same time, Blizzard also has a policy about exploiting bugs, right, And notably, the one thing they do enforce is anything with reputation.

If you're doing some sort of exploit to gain reputation with a faction in game, they will be very bad and they will enforce those And so yeah, I think, in my opinion, this is just a testament to how far add on, how add ons have gone too far?

Right, Like the fact that we're just sitting here bumbling over how the hell do we distinguish between what is a cheat and what is okay?

Is like no other game could have that, because no other game has this insane customization and logic add on culture that Wow has, right, Like, I guess I've always thought I sort of had this thought exercise of thinking about how you could integrate things in other games.

Like one example is like imagine, like in an Overwatch, every character has an alt and you have to build up an alt meter, right, and like, technically, what if you had an a like like what if you made a program that would like keep track of the time, and it would like hear the sound of a character alting and then know they went to zero energy, and then estimate on average how long does it take, and then it has a thing on your screen that says, Okay, Zaria probably has an ALT, Ryan Hart probably has an all, like Mercy has an all.

Like yeah, I mean that would just be like I think most people would.

Say, that's like just straight up cheating, Like they would just look at that and be like what Overwatch players wouldn't even think to do that, because only a wild player would do that.

But it's just I think the thought experiment of thinking about using add ons and other games is like pretty ridiculous.

Oh yeah, it just shows how crazy Wow is.

Write this down, come back to episode eighty three.

After the Race World First starts.

I bet there are going to be a lot of people that are going to be very, very mad after they see some of the possibilities of things that are doable with the Race worle First kills surrounding add ons, because I think I've heard word on the street is that there are some crazy shit that can happen, So oh yeah.

Yeah, I mean Blizzard.

The problem that Blizzard had is they left in loopholes right like that still use the API.

They decided to, for example, not lock down add ons outside of outside of combat for obvious reasons, which is fine, but because of that, you can whisper people outside the raid.

You know, there's a balance that Blizzard is trying to strike here between keeping add ons usable for customization and people you using the exact same add ons to work around their current systems.

And the current state that we're in I think is very much like Private Wars, where we're doing most of the same things in a very very roundabout way.

Yeah, and.

Because there are so many different ways to do these things, I would say that anything that involves an ad on API is pretty much fair game.

That's my personal opinion on it.

If Blizzard wants to fix it, they can fix it.

But yeah, sneak to dot Lua comming or something.

Who knows, well, I think it'll be more.

I think are very well.

No, and it's actually not cheating this time, right, it's just creative workarounds, right, creative work.

Yeah.

No, I actually completely agree with your racial world first prediction and that there is going to be some shit.

People are going to be fucking now.

There's before add on stuff was kind of like out in the open, like before this racial world first thing became a thing, and it kind of always was.

But now that we had this almost like an add on wipe, where the way that add ons have to do things is so different now now both you know, or multiple not even just the top two guilds have literal add on people that are in there that are just like testing stuff and seeing and like if they find a way to do something, what are they gonna do?

Oh, hey, everybody, we just found this really good day.

Hey, Echo, do you want this?

But over here Liquid we found out how to do this.

Do you want this?

Like there's no way right like, and then the question becomes like how do they do this communication with Blizzard right because there's a history of ask for forgiveness, not for permission, and so yeah, it's I think it's I predict that it's gonna get ugly, but for us as viewers, it's gonna be great drama.

So not in a bad way at all.

I think viewers are after sneak Out Luire are gonna be very very very hypercritical of any weird thing that appears on stream.

I think sneak dot Luo was one of those things that I am shocked that there weren't bands over like that.

That to me, I don't know why, Well how people and get banned over that?

You're probably too late, like what what I read?

It don't really matter, all right, Gral I'll have a question for you.

Yep, is this Keny or Tanzania?

I can't remember.

Uh, I think it's Tanzania.

We're playing the world though, Yeah, I don't know.

I I don't think it's either.

Oh is it?

Like, oh you're right, well, you're good?

Yeah, yeah, So Tanzania is not in geogest or so that's a country that I'm less familiar with.

What about the travel we gotta go from Turkmenistan to Bosnia and Herskovina?

Especially?

What country do you want to slam first?

I'm terrible a geography.

You know this, We've done trivia before.

Geography is my like, I'm the wote.

That we do?

We have through Russia probably the correct one?

Probably, yeah, probably through Russia.

Oh no, maybe not?

Is it?

Oh?

God was just stand Maybe.

I seen kazakhs Stan.

Yeah, maybe Kyrgyzstan.

Oh no, yeah, sorry, I've been Kazakhstan.

Turtles owns me a geography.

Is Serbia?

Is it Romania?

Uh yeah?

Serbia to the right.

And then.

All right we cooked.

Yeah there you go.

Yeah that was a Russia.

What's the fastest route you can be Ron Turkey?

Yeah, Iron Turkey, Bulgaria.

Well my got coosa o mont and I was never getting that fast.

All right, we won, all right, Ggez.

Well see guys next week.

Chat, goodbye, yeah later