Welcome back to brutally honest, a wow podcast.

I'm brutal.

Surprise surprise, just got done recording episode 12 with Marcelian flame and sky from the comeback kids.

I I'm just I'm just going to go out on a limb here.

I'm going to say it.

I think this might be the most kickback, laid back, relaxed, authentic.

Just go with the flow episode yet.

I've really been trying to move away from things being super scripted and just lobbing questions of people.

So enjoy the episode.

Let me know what you think below Lots of stuff to comment on, lots of stuff we talked about.

Enjoy.

I'll see you on the other side.

Oh, real quick.

You'll notice in the first like 4045 minutes in the episode that Marcellian and flames microphones were not operating correctly.

We fixed it around that 4045 minute mark.

So yeah.

Anyway, I just wanted to let you know we know about it.

It was handled.

Enjoy.

All right, you guys ready to rock'n'roll?

It is High Noon.

Ready, Freddy?

Let's do it.

Nice.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back.

Brutally honest.

A wow podcast is coming at you.

Episode.

Is this 12 I think?

Yeah.

Episode 12.

Holy moly, man.

They all blend and blur together week after week.

I am joined today by three powerhouses in the community.

I don't listen.

I don't need to introduce these guys, but I'm gonna introduce these guys.

We have Marcellian and flame in the house.

Of course these guys are known for their their class guides, their tearless meta analysis across rating mythic plus.

I mean, where does it stop with you 2?

I mean seriously, you guys seem to do it all these days.

Am I, am I allowed to say like is, is it appropriate to say that I think that you guys are are helping shape the, the how players approach the game these days?

Is that too much?

Am I?

Am I going too far?

Oh boy, that's a That's a big one.

We're, we're definitely very opinionated, I would say, but we try to make a, a difference in, you know, whenever we put out our opinion and what we think stuff is like, you know, this is how we think of it.

We interact with the community in different ways and everybody approaches this way.

And if you need some help, you know we found that this.

Works and stuff.

We always say.

Invite your non meta spec.

They could be a much more better player than that meta flavour of the month.

Dude, we always say that.

We always say play what you find is fun.

OK.

So in that regard, we're, you know, we're sleeping OK at night.

Right.

So in other words you're saying play survival instead of BM or MMM play?

Is that?

What I'm picking up.

Oh yeah, no, completely.

I mean you.

Read between the lines.

Perfect.

Yeah.

I I tuned into your stream.

Well, I think it was it was it yesterday?

Yeah, it was yesterday, right?

Or was it this morning?

I don't remember.

You were playing survival in an aura, Cara.

And I'm just like, Oh no, not.

Not survival anything.

But survival, please, I'm not a survival fan, in case you couldn't tell.

Thank you guys for being here.

I really do appreciated the course.

You guys have been extremely gracious and generous with your time today, and you guys have been awesome in the back end.

I'm going to leak all of our DMS to show everyone just how nice you've been.

I would I would avoid leaking the DMS if.

That's, that's, that's fine.

Listen, it's, it's a pleasure and it's an, an honor actually.

So, and it's, it feels good to be on the other side of the microphone, so to say.

Yeah, it, it's awesome.

And really, and and Speaking of awesome, we have the other half of the comeback kids.

We had Lance last week.

We are joined by Sky himself, not from New Zealand, mind you.

I confirm that NZ Sky is not from New Zealand.

We sat down with his brother last week, of course, talking about everything.

But you guys are awesome.

Thank you very much for being here.

Sky You've you've got such a your fingers on the pulse when it comes to the big picture of wow right now, a healthy dose of player experience.

You love pushing back on things.

You love discussing things.

And I know you said this.

I think right before I started screaming or recording, I should say, I love when people kind of go off script and they just go in in a direction that that they're passionate about and what, what, what they what they care about.

So please man, as the show unfolds, just take it away dude.

Just.

Listen, I'm I'm going to try my best not to ramble too long and annoy you guys, but I I'm sure just like all you here, we could talk about wow endlessly for hours, but no, it's an absolute pleasure to be here, especially meeting Marcellian and flame.

Dude, I've been watching these guys.

I grew up watching Marcellian and flame.

I know that may make them steam old, but hey, maybe they are a little bit.

But I was here.

I I grew up watching these guys.

Me and Lance would always freaking come back from school, be like Yo, Marcellian flame to put out a new video that we watch and of course, brutal.

I've I've been introduced to you over the last probably like month.

I know Lance is super in touch with like the community of World of Warcraft.

He is in everyone shows podcast like he I don't even know how he does it.

So it's a pleasure meeting you as well.

And I'm happy to be here, man.

I'm happy to talk World of Warcraft.

Like Marcellian said, I'm happy to be on the other side, you know, receiving the questions to answer rather than the guy, you know, trying to organize everything.

It's really nice to kick my feet back, actually do nothing.

So I'm I'm ready to just do nothing so well.

Please do as much nothing as you want.

I'm I'm a bit, I'm a bit rambling, long winded myself, so I understand.

Listen, 12.0 has been out for the, you know, the past few days, not even a whole week yet.

I think it's probably the first time in a while that wow feels a little different.

I mean, the War Within has been fairly stable within the context of itself and very similar to Dragonflight, but midnight's changing quite a bit here.

So we're going to be talking about that and a whole lot more, and we're just going to dive right in right away here.

Hold on.

I'm going to, I'm going to try to get fancy here.

Everyone stand by.

Let me see if this button works.

Hold on excellent lovely.

We do have a poll running today so far.

Let me refresh this.

We have 34 responses from the poll.

You can find it in twitch chat.

If you're watching this on YouTube, good luck.

I think my buddy Drewish will link it to you in in in YouTube.

But the first question, the first poll was right now.

Are you logging into wow because you want to or because you feel like you should?

And the overwhelming majority said they want to log into wow right now.

I, I answered, I, I answered that I'm not logging in right now, not because I don't want to, but because I've been playing a lot more beta than live.

But I'm happy to hear that a lot of people are excited to be logging into Wow and that they're wanting to log into Wow.

I think that's obviously healthy for the game and in a good direction to be taking things in the midnight.

But I want to know what are your first impressions, guys?

You've obviously been doing maybe did alpha, obviously been doing beta a lot.

Like I said, the pre patch has been live for a few days.

I want to start with Marcelli and Flame.

What are your first impressions going into Midnight so far?

Well I'm not surprised by the pre patch.

I remember very vividly the pre patch for War Within which was.

Much, much worse.

Than this.

So listen, this is the problem with the pre patch is the the fact that it came with with all of the I'll say big ass changes with the Y with the cooldowns, the cooldown managers, the damage meters and with the add on apocalypse and all of that.

That was huge and they were not ready for that.

If you can get past that.

And I didn't find it that tragic.

I was maybe 1 of the lucky ones who didn't have many errors like apart from my arcane blast disappeared right from my bar on my arcane mage.

I had no issues whatsoever.

I couldn't like wait to finally get off the laginess of the beta service and back into the live service and actually feel these changes with the classes.

And I had a great time so far, but I was just doing myth the plus with friends.

So that's, you know.

Yeah same same here mostly.

I did actually encounter a couple of add on issues but not as many as some would say.

It's probably because I would guess not all of them are are syncing with the client perfectly.

I think the pre patch was running a different client than the beta one.

Let's let's make it real.

They shed on, they shed themselves over the pre patch.

It's clear there's no denying there's no looking behind the bushes.

They they shed themselves.

Oh.

Yeah, they said.

I'm not saying about the Bush, I'm saying mostly about the other.

It's not not work.

I don't know what what goes into things working probably, but overall it was fine.

I actually was kind of happy to get out of beta because I've always been, I've been on the beta.

We've been doing beta a lot.

Yeah, I just, I just wanted to play my stuff.

I've been hyped about Midnight for quite a while and I just after playing beta and all the class few works, I just couldn't get back into life and to play the classes that were not going to be the same once the expansion releases.

So I find like I feel like I'm playing the actual wild.

That's been the wild for us for about two months or more.

Yeah, I think they're not the biggest.

The biggest thing.

The thing is like for people.

Who?

Played beta know beta service always feel wonky when you play any class because there's that lag that's always on beta service.

You don't have that on the live version like when you go into a mythic plus right now on the live game on pre batch, everything feels smooth as butter and that's what I wanted.

That was I was most anxious for like I want to get back to that like and the fact this is not a positive and then I'm going to like leave it up to Skype.

This is not a positive with this add on apocalypse stuff, since I did not need to load huge chunkin ass biting the resources.

We call us or out of my PC and game my game.

No bullshit.

My game felt so smooth.

No really, and I use R Qi.

I use it, but it's still I use R Qi, I use Playdot.

I use Playdot.

I used details because of work.

Then I dropped it off because like, hey, what am I doing here?

Fuck it.

So I used a couple of add-ons, but dude, the game felt so smooth.

Yeah, I've had, I've had the same.

Experience I I'm sorry I'm not I don't mean to interrupt you, but yeah I I want to interject real quick because I I've been an add on fiend forever I say this every episode so forgive me everyone I've used weak ores for as long as they've been around I use 1000 weak ores.

I use 1000 add-ons and right now I have jumped on the live and of course beta a bunch and it is it's buttery smooth by comparison.

Man, it's, it's wild.

In terms of resource resources being consumed, it's big and I know it's not the best.

They did not implement the best.

I mean, the cooler manager is we're going to talk about that probably.

But you cannot deny that those add-ons like especially details and and weak cars, those ate up a lot and now you can 100% feel it without them, you know, eating that shit anymore.

Real quick, somebody from chat said it sounds like only Marcellian's mic is hot.

Is yours muted by chance?

Flame it.

Shouldn't be?

No, I mean I can hear.

You guys can tell him, OK, it's fine, we can hear you.

It just sounds like his mic is picking up what you're saying and instead of the mic in front of you, we can hear you.

I just want to.

I want to make you or want to.

Put your but your worries at.

Ease.

I think that is better, yeah.

Say again should.

Be well, if I've I'm almost giving it a nice little kiss.

It's about as close as I can be without taking a bite out of.

It I'm just I lowered a little bit my volume, so I'm putting this.

No worries Scott, what do you think man?

What are your first impressions so far on Live with the Midnight Prefatch?

Man, you know, it's funny hearing Marcellian and Flame talk.

We probably go through the exact same things as content creators and players.

Like everything they said is exactly the things I've been going through.

Like I've been playing beta the last and alpha the last 2-3 months straight.

I'm never on live and everyone's always messaging me, hey, when are you logging in?

What are we doing?

I'm like, bro, I'm I'm working like I'm I have, you know, 30-40 fifty specs, however many I don't even know to go through tests, figure out, learn, study and go, you know, it's a lot of work.

So transitioning finally into now it being implemented on to live.

It's such a breath of fresh air.

It's like I can actually play live World of Warcraft again, not, you know, mythic plus delve simulator.

So it's it's fun, it's cool.

And you know, like they were saying.

Also, I do got to agree, ditching add-ons for me personally has been really nice.

I was really worried at first, just like I'm sure everyone else in this room has as well, but going on the beta, seeing that there was no add-ons, it was really rough at first, but now being implemented now into live and everything's integrated through blizzards, you know native systems and everything, it feels surprisingly really good.

Everything is smooth now.

Classes and everything like that is absolutely a mess.

It's a mess right now and it's everything's being designed through Apex talents is right, you know end game and stuff.

So overall, I mean, first impressions are good.

It's World of Warcraft and pre patch it's meant to be broken and wonky hype into leading into the new expansion and everything like that.

So I'm I'm good, I'm having a good time.

It's fun.

It's World of Warcraft again.

That actually raises a good question like how, how, how messy would you say the pre patch has been?

Because I, I, I will say I don't want to lead the witness, but you know, I guess depending upon obviously a, what type of content you're consuming or pursuing and B, what role you're playing will obviously that comes into play because healers right now little different than say, I'm a hunter than my experience.

My experience is it's mostly OK Healers, not so much.

So like how messy do you guys feel the pre patches from where you're sitting?

I mean, so far it's been surprisingly better than most pre patch, at least in terms of its in terms of its functionality.

I cannot really talk about here's I know that they're probably struggling with some visibility issues.

I don't know if that's exactly what's going on.

I've been kind of guessing and tanking so far in the pre patch.

I haven't really gotten accustomed to to the healing yet.

I healed on the beta with no add-ons.

So in terms of accessibility and UI inter options that we have available to us, I didn't really have a lot of issues, But I also, you know, I'm, I'm a beginner healer, so I wouldn't be able to express how, you know, high end healers would be feeling about it.

I haven't rated yet, so I don't know how the rate frames come up, but it's been so smooth that I actually forgot that it was supposed to be like a rocky time in in the cycle of releases.

So I just I just kind of remember it's like, oh, right, right, right.

There's been some bugs right now, but I just they just flew by.

Yeah, I I wouldn't call it messy necessarily brutal.

I think it was just kind of stale because there was really nothing happening, right?

Like obviously you got everything that was promised basically for the pre patch, but we don't have the event yet, right.

And if there's like the healer situation, yeah, it's shit for healers mostly, especially healers that have to track multiple puffs and stuff.

You know, rest of druids come to mind all the time.

But yeah, as flame was saying, like we we played healers on on on the beta.

I played discipline a lot and and holy and yeah, sure, the rate frames, the party frames are not ideal and they have a long way to go till they get to some level of customization, not functionality customization that sell would do or something like that.

But I managed, I managed.

So I wouldn't go like do me all, all on it.

I know it's shit.

So it's not in a perfect world, but in terms of like, OK, we know healers have it bad and hopefully that's the will be ironed out up until the the release of the first season.

I'm not talking about the expansion.

First season needs to be like, you know, perfect in terms of that messy pre patch.

I won't call it messy.

I would just call it stale because you didn't like apart from, you know, a lot of lua errors, a lot of adults not working.

It's really not much to look at, let's be honest, like a different event.

I mean, OK.

How, how are you guys?

How are you guys?

Have you guys, I guess I should ask, run into any Lua errors just using default UI I have on personally.

Yeah, go ahead, go ahead.

I no, I was going to say I haven't.

I mean, I'm kind of been accustomed myself to and getting used to because on beta I wasn't using a lick.

I wasn't using nothing.

I was really going to like see if Blizzard can handle it to where I don't have to use one add on.

I can do my 10111213 whatever mythic plus and like will I have problems while I run into gameplay just basic like feeling of like something being not right, something feeling left out, something feeling empty and listen I I'm going to speak for myself.

I can't speak for everyone, but I felt fine.

It was functional, it was doable.

It's not like impossible.

And I think that's an important thing Blizz has been trying to do there.

They've been trying to make it to where the normal everyday player can hop back into Wow either after taking a break for a long time or, you know, a brand new player.

They can come back into Wow and they can do XYZ content without needing a freaking list of add-ons that you got to get into the old interface folder that we used to do back in the day.

So from that perspective, no, it's been pretty smooth and I I haven't had any issues from a base normal fresh Blizzard coat on live right now for ANYWAYS.

I I was on I was doing raid testing on Friday and this lua error.

Anyone who did raid testing, I'm curious if this is your experience, but I was whatever group I was with, anytime we had the LFG turned on to replace somebody who left during raid testing, do these errors just kept popping up And it was killing me because we'd be in the middle of combat, we'd be in the middle of testing a boss and then boom.

And I didn't have bug.

I know, I know bug sack, bug grabber.

Trust me, I know about, I know about them.

I didn't have them installed because I don't have.

Anything installed?

Right now I know about it, don't worry.

I've been playing the game for a long time.

It's OK.

No, but it's it's one of those things to where it just kept popping up.

I'm like, Oh my, how is how is a default UI doing this?

It was driving me nuts, but that's I.

I'm curious if anyone else has had a similar experience.

But I'm I'm, I cannot say.

I'm glad to hear that.

One second.

No, you.

I cannot say at a large issue.

I had a couple of errors but mostly because of just add-ons not syncing properly.

I was getting the add-ons preventing this.

Do you want to ignore it or disable it?

And I got this with like just like 2 add-ons that I could definitely live without.

It wasn't necessarily they weren't, they were not UI add-ons.

They were mostly quality of life auction house style add-ons which are which are mostly fine because I run the the basic UI pretty much out-of-the-box.

Outside of maybe like Plater, I don't run anything else and I didn't have I don't think a single issue with Plater so far.

But.

Same here, yeah.

Yeah, Have you guys being, I mean, listen, you guys are obviously a big presence in the community.

Yep.

You got a big channel and stuff like that.

So you have a lot more feedback, a lot more conversation going on, like socially speaking, from people doing into your stream, leaving comments on your, on your YouTube videos.

What what, what is the general consensus right now from your audience?

Are people engaged, having fun, having a blast, kind of just waiting for the actual expansion to launch?

What do you think?

Or again, what are you hearing?

It's a good question.

I would say that people are more engaged right now than they were prior to like if it anything midnight and we can we can definitely see in in in the comments.

Obviously the thing about comments on YouTube, a lot of them, like the majority of them come from, you know, the tumors and frustration all that did because they're like super vocal, right?

But we do see an increase in like, OK, this is really cool.

I like this, especially when we're talking about, you know, some, I don't know, fun tanks or fun DPS or what you should make stuff like that, right?

People are kind of expressing that they're very excited to try this and this spec.

Now, obviously that's related to the content or whatever.

I would say even judging by numbers alone, because like as a content creator, you kind of see this, right?

You know, when the game is popular and it's doing good, your stuff does good as well.

You cannot deny that.

So you see it, right?

And we definitely saw it right?

And this is a strong indicator that, OK, maybe there's still going to be a lot of complaints.

That's never going to stop.

But I'm almost certain that a very, I would say sizable sleeping crowd has been woken up.

Prison.

Prison.

Yeah.

And they're not that vocal, but they're definitely, I feel that.

Listen, I think housing had a lot to do with this, but also the fact that they're simplifying or they went with this philosophy.

They kind of marketed this.

Like we were simplifying the game.

We were trying to make you fall in love with the game once again and not have you have like a NASA degree to learn a specific specific spec or anything like that.

So they they, they're going to push this.

And I feel for a lot of people that's much more enticing to come back to and try it.

Then, I don't know, maybe a new spec, even though a new spec is really cool.

But what I'm saying it's not.

But yeah, overall I feel there is a.

Positive wave, just judging by what we see in.

Our little corner of the world, let's say.

Yeah.

Yeah, no, absolutely.

I, I, I, I'm, I'm sorry to interrupt you.

I know you were about to.

No, I was going to throw.

I was going to throw it to you.

Go ahead.

No, I agree and, and they're right, man.

I love hearing other content creators like perspective on things because man, it's I I couldn't agree more.

Like he was saying how like, you know, views tend to go up, community consensus and happiness tend to go up.

And it's very true use go down community consensus and you know, I guess depression goes with it, you know, So he's right.

And I would say right now, yeah, things are positive.

It's pre patch.

It's a month before the expansion release.

This is the most hype time for World of Warcraft.

You'll experience once every two years.

So people are going to be eating World of Warcraft content up and they're ready to play because you know, they're giving their, they're going to give their all.

It's a brand new expansion.

It's a, you know, it's a new way for me to dive in and see if I can't do something different than last time.

They're they're ready to try a new spec and see new content creators and see what's going on.

Because listen, when it comes to World of Warcraft players, most of them, I could say a good majority don't actually quit Wow.

They just take breaks from Wow.

I know you guys know that.

I, I used to do it growing up constantly.

I would always just take a break, but I would come back to World of Warcraft.

So right now with all the changes to add on simplifying the game and then class pruning, simplifying.

I'm getting more comments than ever from people saying stuff like, oh, I haven't played since Wrath, the Lich King and I'm coming back and I'm excited XYZ.

Oh, I haven't played since TBC and I'm excited.

I want to see.

They're actually intriguing me.

I'm curious XYZ.

So yeah, no, I I would say it's very, very positive right now.

Things are feeling good.

I'm not getting so many dumors as of right now then I was maybe a couple months ago because you know, during that season 3 drought, I'm I'm sure Marcellian flame know what I'm talking about.

Season 3 drought was pretty rough and yeah, no, things feel good.

It's everything's, everyone's happy.

Papa champagne bottle.

Let's have a party, you know?

It's, it's, it's weird because in, in like there's like a lot of like I've seen a couple of streamers and, and, but mostly on, on, on Twitch, where like, man, where's the hype?

Where, where, where's the hype for World of Warcraft?

Because it's midnight.

It's like it's like OK, once again on the Internet, you're always going to have, you know, super vocal people.

You cannot judge it by that.

OK, so you cannot make like this is how the the ship is like stirring to no, I will say that usually pre patches, yes, I would say it shouldn't.

It should be the norm, but we kind of got used to this.

Every pre patch comes with with broken shit and you will because of that, a lot of people will lose the hype of it or something like that.

OK, that's.

And that will happen.

Yeah, what I'm saying is when we get close to the launch, then you're gonna see some actual fucking hype, cuz right now you don't know.

Cuz now we're not flooded with Blizzard's marketing team yet.

They had, they started doing a couple of ads here and there's some presents over there, but not that much.

You know how that train tends to accelerate once we get close to that expansion?

And that gets you happy.

I mean, if they're smart, they're gonna bomb us with another cinematic hopefully or something.

In that regards, they're gonna have a trillion different ads, they're gonna have a trillion different videos, a trillion different streams, promotions, all of that.

That's how you build the hype pre patch is I feel.

I think their philosophy for prefetch now is basically OK we have a ton of changes let's lay down everything here and up until season 1.

This is very important.

I don't think midnight expansion launch is gonna have much effects, but once season 1 drops, that's like the critical moment when most of these complaints, hopefully I'm coping.

I know we'll get ironed out.

OK, so I know, I know the discourse A lot of people are saying, OK, this is the time to be hyped and I'm I'm a fan of that.

I I stand behind that.

Other people are saying, hey man, but where's the hype?

But but.

Wait, wait a minute.

Yeah, yeah.

How?

Much how much to be hyped about right now?

Yeah, and I know there's a lot of people, sorry to just there are a lot of people that are criticizing all of the stuff that the midnight is coming.

But I do have to say, as much as it's worth going from the initial stages of the alpha and to the end stages of the beta right now, where we've seen the initial versions of the boss timers, the damage add-ons, all the specs worked, how the talents were implemented and all of that stuff.

The way that they are right now, the way that they hit pre patch is almost unrecognizable.

Sure, there's a lot of stuff missing.

Sure, it would be ideal.

But I feel like Martin said these are just probably going to hit as soon as the season launches, when everybody's gonna realize we actually have three rates this season to play through, even though it's still 9 bosses and so on.

But I feel like that's when the actual buzz is going to happen since we have the new Silver Moon.

And I don't think people understand or appreciate exactly what the new Silver Moon is until they actually step into it.

You say?

Yeah, there's a lot of things people are not alike.

Like they forgot quickly because they did.

They did a poor job hyping this expansion at games.com.

We we know the what that happened of they're like truncated every single bit of announcement.

I think they know as well they messed up over there and that was like a huge, huge missed opportunity to build up the initial momentum for the expansion, right.

But I feel like steadily they kind of picked up the the pieces, you know, more or less, you know, devoured DH is definitely a win.

Housing is definitely a win.

All of the the zones like the new dungeons, some of them are absolutely amazing.

They're going to be, you know, definitely wins.

Plus the rates, what I'm scared about, OK, and I haven't gone into it.

It's like the story beats.

I hope they don't drop the ball because I'm a little bit sensitive on that front.

A lot of people don't care about that shit.

That's fine.

But even if you don't care, you do care about the context.

In which you're playing the game.

Right.

So at least for that context, that needs to be good.

Yeah, I I I find myself not playing Wow for the story anymore, and I probably haven't for quite some.

Time.

I wonder why.

Brutal.

But I'm still playing the game, so you know, so.

So we had a viewer question come in from Alex, AKA All UI probably butchering your name, sorry.

And they want to know.

We'll start with you, Flame.

Have you decided on a main yet for Midnight?

Oh yeah.

That's his.

Sound sounds like it's it's an Alex that we may be familiar with No so Alex it's it's it's funny because when we actually started to do like class content and class guides, it was also when personally I started to take end game more seriously and I started to actually have what we now call a main your character that you play through the patch and progress through the patch and all of that and you sync most of your time for the.

Definitions of a main.

Yeah.

Exactly right and every every patch I changed it and I think in the world within it actually starts to become like a meme because the specs and it kind of started with Dragonfly, but the specs started to change so much and how they're played.

What the talents do.

People have criticized for instance Arcane made for being like almost a different spec every patch based off all the how they they change the talents and stuff to the point where personally I feel like bro I just don't like what what they're doing with this one.

But this whole thing spec changed so much that it feels like it's a totally different thing that powers play.

So I I always gravitate and

juggle between 1:00 or the other and no time in my personal or what history have so many specs change so much all at once than than they are now in midnight to the point where I used to be this this range player that like playing these types of range classes because they did this.

But now that changed so much that my LA player, now my attack player, I don't, I don't even know.

And it's like 40 of them now.

I raise you Legion.

Yeah, I didn't play anything.

That's weird.

I gotta, I gotta agree by the way, I listen as someone now whose job is it to test every spec and understand and try to just know everything you can about the game.

The past few months has made it so hard for me to pick a mane heading into this expansion.

I am having such a difficult time and even I, I've had a blast with healing when I never heal.

I've, I've never been a healer and I'm having so much fun with these healer specs and I, I can't and I, man, I don't want to speak for everybody, man.

I think they did a great job with the pruning to to make me like understand specs at a quick rate, but then also to master them.

You can see there's depth levels there as well.

So like there's so many specs right now in midnight that I'm in love with like a cross warlock mage, except for fire mage.

I know flame.

I can talk to you about that for two hours about what they did to that freaking spec.

Like I mean, I can go down the line, but you're you're absolutely right.

There's so many specs that are fun right now.

It's very difficult to pick a main.

Very difficult.

Yeah, what about you, Marcel?

The ongoing struggle.

Well you know, I cannot see nothing less or more than Flame has said, but I would say that I went through this before with with Legion because Legion was big on reworking everything.

On specs and stuff.

Rest in peace, survival.

And pretty combat role.

Pretty much in combat role yeah but in terms of like choosing mains and and and alts it's always been a process and at some point it became part of like our content.

It's like OK man, we're struggling with this shit we're testing all this We have this opinions about this place might as well you know, make some videos about them.

We still haven't decided and and you know I can I can say that there's a list there.

We, we, we did a, a video on that.

It was definitely, you know, rogues for me, DK's mages.

I, I healed a lot on discipline priests and I love what they did with, with void Weaver that the big Shields and stuff like, like sky was saying, like healing can actually become fun.

There's a, there's a chance over there for real.

So it's, it's definitely going to be a hard one, probably one of the hardest expansion to actually stick to to an A main and then go with all because you cannot really just play 1 spec in World of Warcraft.

You got to play more.

Yeah.

So Alex's, Alex's question was a meme.

We know.

We know this has become a meme at this point in our stream.

So yeah, it's fine.

Yeah.

I'll love you, Alex.

We're we're going to, we're going to jump ahead to the next poll question.

If you guys haven't answered the poll, you can type in the command poll.

I'm sure my buddy Jerush will throw it in chat as well.

But the question is, do combat, Do the combat add on changes make Wow easier or harder to play at a high level?

We'll answer that in a few minutes after you guys get a chance to answer it, I want to talk.

I want to talk about combat add-ons.

If you guys don't mind shift gears a little bit here.

Sure.

Oh yeah.

I mean we, we, we.

I know, right?

We already talked about how like I've been playing with 0 add-ons, which is completely different than how I played the game for 20 years now.

I will be installing, you know, various things leading up to midnight.

But do you feel like the combat add on changes are, are we reducing redundancy or I'm sorry, not redundancy, dependency.

Are we reducing that dependency?

Are we kind of taking care of things to where we're not getting bogged down like you said with resource hogs and whatnot?

Or, and this is going to tie into the next discussion piece, are people finding these really wonky broken workarounds that are just leading to bigger and scarier problems?

Like do you guys have a perspective on that?

I think, I think when it comes to World of Warcraft players and really quick, I, I don't want to cut you off.

They're always going to find a way for a shortcut, man.

They're going to find a shortcut.

Wow players are going to find the easiest Rd.

no matter what.

They're going to freaking make a video on it.

They're going to put a guide.

It's going to go on Wowhead right at the top of the list.

How you can cheat the game, you know, like that's how Wow players are.

And I learned that the hard way.

So they're always going to look for a way to to choose the systems what I'd like.

I don't know if that's a good or bad thing because like, of course there's sometimes where it can benefit you, but then there is sometimes in blizzards case where like shit like we, they, they're at it again, like we got to fix it.

You know what I mean?

So I I don't want to speak too much on that more selling flame.

You guys can go ahead.

I just wanted to say that no.

No, you're absolutely.

Right.

This is the nature of the beast.

The wall player is an evolving species that will adapt and adapt and upgrade itself and adapt.

We know this.

We this is not the first rodeo we've been with this.

It's OK.

So I mean, we have tons of examples on this, but I feel there's like 2 realities right now.

It's a hard question to answer, especially because you mentioned at a high level with the code analysis.

OK, so that's a hard one to answer, but I will say this.

The cooldown manager is insufficient for me.

The customization options for the cooldown manager and what I want to track, there's still tons of work to do on that.

There's a lot of things that I would love to track for my specs that I cannot right now.

I don't like all of the options they've given me graphically.

I like to customize a lot.

I mean, I like to make my UI 100% how I want to look at it, and visually it has to make sense to me.

This is very, very subjective.

Now, cooldown manager, it's OK.

You will not be able to do much progress at a high level I can guarantee that.

Unless I don't know, you're just like a super gig up ultra player that understands everything in two seconds.

I don't know.

The other side of the reality is this already tons of options and add-ons that basically look like recourse and RQI, which I love by the way, is one of them.

They basically have a better way of arranging the cooldown manager and giving you more options to like track and view it and customize it, right?

Much better than what Blizzard is doing right now.

So it's not like, Oh my God, they invented the wheel or something.

No, it's just a way better tool with much, much more customization options for you to track those cooldowns, right?

That's pretty much it.

But it looks like a freaking week.

Or it does.

And at this point we're like, yeah, we're back to square one in a sense that people will just come up with solutions and find replacements for what they got used to for so many years.

Because as wall players, as species, we tend to like our history, our comfort.

We got used to looking at these weak chorus majority of us, right?

It's weird to play without them.

And I'm not talking, you know, when you have to have weak chorus for outlaw rogues or any other specs to No, I'm talking basically I when I made my weak chorus, I wanted like 4 abilities over there.

I just want them to glow up when they were available.

That's it.

That was my weak chorus.

Simple.

I didn't need super giga ship right?

But high level, like when you're talking about, you know, mechanics in raids and everything that translates translates to that that is gone.

That is not going to happen.

And even with that being secret stuff, there's still like Northern sky made an actual now you guys, I don't know if you rate it, but if you did, you probably use that pack.

People who did use that pack, they have an add on for for debts.

But I mean, people will come up with solutions.

So just to like wrap it up, there's two realities on this.

The cool down manager is OK entry level wise, not complete a high level and it 100% lacks full on customization and more tracking options.

You need more shit to be placed in there.

And 2nd they're already out there like working.

I had my RQI no problem and I customize it almost exactly as a week or like you know with a lot of stuff over there right?

Player works.

Granted not with all of the bells and whistles that could use in the past, but it works.

Plate inator popped up which is a really cool add on for your plates as well and has a ton of options.

Much more.

This is the thing the community comes up with much better tools for your customization needs for your personalization.

You made this game super personal for a lot of people, not only through their attachment to the some character store characters from the stories or for their main spec or class or whatever, but also for the UI.

This is like very true.

People are in love with their UI.

This is what's appealing for their eyes, right?

So I don't know if I answered the question because I just say something.

I was going to add to to what Marcelian said.

It's kind of easy to compare the midnight pre patch with the World within pre patch because the issue of add-ons isn't necessarily a new topic, but it did get popularized in the world within for a lot of reasons that we may or may not know.

Consecrate is making certain type of videos and comments.

We all know with the huge tool tips and all of that stuff, but it has been a growing problem for four years now.

Comparing it side by side, my experience in the pre patch, this time in midnight has been different because you've asked if it makes high end gaming harder or easier.

Of course that's a little bit relative because what we consider high ends is it a numbers game.

High end people can be considered anybody who's not doing keys over plus 10 cuz that's like less than 30% or 40% of the player base does that consider high end.

But I can if I put it side by side with how it was in the world within, even with the lack of add-ons, which the basic UI doesn't do an amazing job at showcasing everything that you need.

There are in terms of combat and how it is designed.

There are vastly fewer mechanics that will surprise you and that will punish you as much as they were in the world within us, at least in the first season.

There are a lot fewer casts to track and to interrupt as opposed to how they were in in first season of in the pre patch of the world.

But also you guys.

Remember first season of War Within?

God damn.

That was that was that was rough.

So I think what Ian said, I, I, it seems like they're, they're aiming for this goal, but what he said is that they don't want the overall difficulty that's perceived by the player to change.

But the way that the difficulty is going to be presented will be different since you won't have the influx of mechanics that are very difficult and very punishing to track, but you won't have that many tools to track them with either.

And although certain classes kind of still feel like they're stuck in the past where you need a few more add-ons, you need a few more options to track them.

In my experience most of them felt more or less OK, but I also have a a much higher tolerance to a a more basic UI than than your average wall player I guess.

Can you guys humor mirror?

Can you actually slide Marcellian's mic between the two of you?

I think his.

I'm pretty sure you're the only one that's live, Marcellian.

Oh really?

Yeah, just like I can tweak it to you real quick.

Hold on.

Let's see.

Let's see.

Sliding.

Just sliding now, talk real quick, Flame.

Hello, how's it going?

Is it better because I I feel like.

Well, thanks.

Get yours now.

Get yours now.

I can't tell.

So I really can't.

I can't tell.

I can't tell.

You.

I just pick up the thing I just checked on the microphone maybe.

Maybe it's.

Your laptop mic.

Well, what you can do is also is try tapping the mic, yeah.

Tap the mic real quick.

Yeah.

Nope, nothing I don't.

Hear that?

Try tapping yours, Marsilian.

Nope, I think maybe it's your.

Maybe discord has your laptop mics as the live thing?

OK, that would not.

We can hear you, but it's I I think it's pretty clear that your mic isn't isn't hot right now.

I'm Flame.

Damn it guys, it's your mic's.

Pun intended.

Don't feel bad I you're.

Quiet, but you know we can hear you.

No, we can.

We can hear.

You guys, Yeah, she doesn't has it, doesn't have that crisp, brutal static.

Whoa, whoa.

All right.

For sure SM 7B.

I've had this micro dude the other day my I think it was Friday, I was streaming and my Oh yeah, my kids were home because of because of how the weather, snow day and my daughter comes in right before raid testing and she has.

9 dude you.

Know how she did it and it just started.

It just broke.

Yeah.

It's like, Oh yeah, 30 minutes of I was so like.

100% these things are built like paper and then they cost $1000.

I like this.

Oh, this is that's that's not is this.

Better.

OK, So what about now?

OK.

Now you're a little loud.

Crank it.

Turn it down.

Turn it down little.

Like yo, the the the quality is better, but it is loud, yeah.

While while these guys are troubleshooting, I'm actually going to swap over real quick to the to that pole.

I asked the the pole asked do the combat add on changes make Wow easier or harder to play at a high level?

We've got 41 responses.

Looks like 39% of the people said it depends on the role.

I think.

I think that's what I hear you.

Still out?

Sorry, Still out?

No.

That's good.

That's good, Flame.

What about you?

Hey, is it better now?

Is it the same as it was?

Yeah.

Your mics are your.

Marks are working leveled.

Up.

So let's stick it from the top.

Yeah, I'm just going to say that.

All right, let's restart now.

Guys, oh goodness.

So now everyone said or not everyone but the majority of people said it depends on the role which that that makes sense.

I mean, I know for me, I've been playing without comet add-ons like I've been saying, so I haven't really felt like I've been struggling.

I miss myself.

I haven't felt like I've been struggling.

All right, cool.

Thank you guys for for for checking on that.

I again, I promise you we could hear you.

It wasn't like it was bad, but it was no, we could tell.

Yeah, it was 100% the the laptop mic that that would make sense because you could hear me and flame not almost, not at all.

Then it was clear this the region here make the triangle.

But now it should be crisp, right?

Well, good.

What's it called?

We'll we'll go back and we'll just dub over everything like there's a term in the audio world.

Repeat like actors go back in and record over their lines.

You know what's funny, back back before I did a YouTube channel, I was, I was actually in like the film industry for like 5-6 years.

That's why I know how to edit and do animation, all that stuff, whatever.

And there have been times where I've had to do projects where I've had to overdub and get like an actor back in the studio.

It is a horrible experience.

Is it really it?

Oh my God, it's so bad because you have to get everything right.

It is torture.

I will never do it again.

That's why I quit.

No, I do YouTube.

So here we are you.

Have to like match everything like they don't they always make the beat right And make and you have to like match.

Oh yeah, yeah, it's.

Horrible, horrible.

I can.

Imagine.

All right, so here's the question.

I wonder we were talking about you guys were talking about, you know, about the combat add-ons and and workarounds and stuff like that.

So yeah, yes, exactly.

So here's the question.

You know, we lost Wicor is and we lost this and we lost that and blah, blah blah, blah, blah.

But if add-ons are meant to be optional, which is the intent right now, Blizzard wants things to rescan and and and whatnot instead of doing that computational stuff.

Why does high end play feel harder without them right now for some people?

Whether you're, you know, running plus 20s or plus fifteens or whatever the case is.

One thing I will say is I think for high end players, and I would, I don't know if every game is like this before World of Warcraft, those high end players, they want every advantage possible.

Any way to get a leg up, even if it's a half a percent, they're going to go through their logs, they're going to grab any add on possible any week or a pack, any UI indicator to be faster, quicker, smarter, better than the rest.

Now casual players, most the time they want to pretend like they give a shit about stuff like that when they really don't.

But high end players, man, they we want a leg up.

So there's always a way to, I guess, get more information.

And like we said before, with wild players in particular, they're always going to find that that Ave.

So when it comes to high, high, high level of play, of course I don't think Blizzard would design a boss to make it unkillable with a native like Blizzard situation.

But if it's even 152025 percent easier or like a better success rate with XYZ add on, we core pack UI indicator, whatever.

I mean the high end players going to take that road every single time no matter what.

Like that's just that's just the nature of the beast.

You want to be the best, you got to do better than the rest, if that makes sense.

Yeah, it's an advantage game for for the high end players all the time.

And yeah, Sky is absolutely right.

Like .5% game, they're all in that, you know, there's no question.

I don't, I don't necessarily believe it's unplayable or unachievable like say let's say like the last mythic boss or whatever, right?

It really depends on how they design visually and in terms of audio everything, because if that translates pretty much, you know, in a clear way, you won't need add-ons or, you know, like be dependent on that.

But we know in the past they've designed some fights and I know they said that they won't design fights.

We call us in mind.

It kind of did come on and and there were there were a lot of fights, but you could not play like you could not understand, you cannot, you could not make that mechanic.

But what was it?

Because we had that with the when they put the private Rs in.

That was aberyst, but I think we might be thinking about Smuldron.

Smuldron Yeah, yeah, that one.

But the the the communication with the the people who.

Have yeah, that's the private Rs are basically the first time that they were looking into excluding as many external combat atoms as possible.

So this is not a new thing that they just cooked.

Up, but the example was in small to run, like everything that was supposed to be translated to you as a player was orange on orange.

Yeah, that's.

It was ridiculous.

Like, OK, you're going to do this, you're going to make this these values secret and how the hell am I going to read everything when everything is fired?

The ground is orange.

The the mechanic on me is orange, the lines are orange.

It's very hard to like make a distinction on, you know, and you know, Ian talks about a lot like the cognitive load when it comes to like, you know, pushing content and stuff.

Dude, you, you, you get some some problems looking at that.

Yeah, go ahead bro.

Have you guys done raid testing at all this this year?

We wanted to.

We we missed the latest major.

We just couldn't have the time but.

I, I was able to do it this past, I'm usually not able to because I have to like, I have to go pick up my kids from school and then, you know, do you know, wind or shout, you know, get them cleaned up and get them, you know, hey, go eat your snacks and all that fun stuff.

But I was able to because again, the kids were home due to a snow day.

And I did this is a couple of days ago, the Chimeras or whatever that boss is called.

I did the big guy Brassius, I think his name is, and then the fallen king Salvadar.

And anyway, what I'm trying to say is, yeah, that cognitive overload that that having to be aware of what's going on and being able to read what's going on in any given moment.

Speaking as a hunter, as a range DPS player, it's simple.

Like it's it's.

It's so it.

It's so easy and I'm, I'm, I'm trying to choose my words carefully.

That's why I'm, that's why I'm like saying one thing, pausing saying because I don't want to give the impression that I'm dissatisfied, nor do I want to give the impression that it's going to be the easiest thing ever.

But I was, I was a little surprised at just how simple it all it all felt.

And and and it was for me, Yeah, it was, it was, it was mythic testing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And now a couple of things to keep in mind.

We're talking about stand alone boss in in the dream rift, I think is what it's called.

And then boss two and three.

So these aren't meant to be like the hardest things we've we've ever encountered, obviously.

But I'm curious, especially anyone who's listening, especially people on YouTube after this comes out and maybe someone's discovering this, heck, during, you know, a progression a couple of months from now.

What do you guys think?

Like, do you guys have that same experience, that same perspective?

And what about healers?

Because I felt like the healers were definitely being stressed more during those fights than say I was as a hunter.

Anyway.

I I just, I wanted to get that out there since we were kind of on the topic.

But yeah, if you guys haven't done, if you guys haven't done raid testing, it's it was, it was fun.

It was like, oh this is this feels a little easier than the last time I raided.

Yeah, I know a lot of people are not going to like that.

And again, remember when we talked about, you know, the vocal majorities and stuff?

I feel this is overall a good sign for the game because personally, I believe the game got overly complicated with the the raid mechanics, with the classes and specs as well.

This is a good sign.

Now, I'm sure there's a lot of things that are still going to be changed in terms of like the Mythic raid, and I'm sure that there's going to be a couple of bosses that are going to be a headache to play, which is cool.

I feel a mythic raid raid in general should have at least two bosses that will be a headache, at least two.

And usually because that's, you know, you have to have a challenge there.

You have to like bang your that's part of the tradition of raiding.

Do it again, do it again, do it again until you figure it out.

It's really cool that that's part of the fun, right.

That being said, if this is going to be an easier mythic read in the sense that OK, people will be able to understand and read the mechanics and what they have to do.

Without.

Being a again a NASA scientist, I feel this is a good entry to one of, if not the best end game World of Warcraft has to offer, which is not that participated in by the way.

Yeah, I, I just want to say one thing really quick.

Like the truth of the matter is survey says when things are easier people are happier.

Believe it or not.

That sounds crazy what I'm saying.

But if casual players and the majority player base have the potential to at least try the high end and hard content, they feel more involved and they feel better.

I don't want to sound like that guy, even though like I like pushing as much as I can too and I like pretending I'm the best guy in the world.

But the truth of the matter is the the .5%, the 1%, the top percentage, they don't make up the majority, right?

So like, there's got to be a pick and choose here.

Like, are we trying to, you know, appeal to the top percentage where they can do anything they want on their freaking screen, you know, inside a Blizzard game?

And they can push Mythic Plus to a 24 and then they can Mythic raid and have all these weak Wara packs and it's a freaking sound effect simulator going on in my head.

Or can it be a game built catered around casuals and semi casual people and give them more of an opportunity to play the game at a higher level based off things being integrated, rated natively at a good rate with class simplification being a little bit better and the pruning being better so it's easy to understand.

And then combine that with the fact that bosses and design isn't so overwhelming because man, the last few years of retail it is out of control some of the boss design.

And don't get me wrong, I do love it.

I think it's really cool.

But if we're trying to appeal to more people, it's way too much for people to understand.

Like you try to go show your friend who's never played Wow dementias on even heroic, he'll be like, and excuse my language, he'll be like, what the fuck am I looking at?

Like this is ridiculous.

I think you definitely hit the nail on the head.

There is, is, is Blizzard and I think it's evident and maybe they've even said as much.

I don't remember.

They are trying to appeal to a broader audience and pull more people in and, and you know, get more people back.

And I'll even use myself as an example.

I started, I took a big break during shadow lanes.

I stopped after Castanathria came back a little bit.

Dragonflight came back a little bit in The War Within, and then I really started dialing back in around September of last year.

So I've been back for 6:00-ish months and I want to get back into mythic grading because I've always done mythic grading.

Or, you know, back in the day, it was called heroic before mythic even existed.

But I do agree, I think that it only benefits it benefits us to have more people involved and more people invested and more people interested in Pve, whether it's mythic plus normal, heroic, mythic grading, whatever.

So I don't think that mythic Raiders on average want the game to be stupidly simple.

But I do think that by especially starting this first tier at midnight, maybe lower that difficulty a little bit, help people ease and transition back into rating at whatever level.

And then maybe we'll see them crank up that difficulty in the second, third tier, whatever it is, because yeah, it's you're right.

There's a reason why weak oars was nipped in the bud and there's a reason why a lot of people shy away from high level rating is because it has become complicated.

It has become demanding and maybe not so much in the best of ways.

What do you guys think?

Yeah, for sure.

I think, I don't want to really want to call it a necessary evil, but I think Midnight had to happen because the game was going into a direction where whether or not we wanted the game to be a complex and a mind teaser all of the time.

There was only so much they could keep adding before brain started to explode because the interactions just became a little bit way too much.

And I feel like we really will know, let's say at midway or at the end of the patch.

We're really at the end of the expansion.

But my feeling is that Midnight is kind of like a test run, or at least the beginning.

The 1st is going to be a test run where they, where they, you know how they say it, you're going to feel a lot bad before you're going to feel good again.

So I feel like they're just pruning everything down.

They're just simplifying everything as much as they can so they can add things to it in a way that the game won't turn into a spreadsheet simulator, into a whack A mole health bars for healers and raids.

At least that's been my experience and I wasn't particularly enjoyable.

We might have to go through a season that maybe a little bit less less than ideal for for people.

Maybe it's a little bit too simple.

Maybe it's a little bit too cumbersome to try to track everything.

But I feel like as much as it's not really our fault and we're not really supposed to have to go through it, we have to go through like a a testing period of what minute is going to be until they cannot.

I've my my mind is that the last time is going to be an explosive expansion.

She doesn't really say much for hyping up midnight.

No, no, you're right.

Now Midnight's gonna be a great expansion.

I can.

Like, I haven't had that feeling about Dragonfly.

I haven't had that feeling about War Within.

I definitely have the feeling about Midnight.

This is gonna be.

I agree with that, Right?

There's something moving in.

Yeah, I, I think it definitely has when it comes to that trilogy feel, it's like that Empire Strikes Back feel.

It's gonna hit like it feels like it's like it.

There's a lot of changes happening and I, I do see a positive, you know, output happening with this now when it comes to last Titan, and I don't want to obviously get too far ahead of myself years in advance.

It's it's going to be the most difficult to pull off.

You know, finalizing a, a, a trilogy is the hardest thing you can do in in making a, a little mini saga, you know?

What I mean?

Yeah, how they cap it off is going to be very, very interesting.

I, I don't, I don't even want to think about that yet because that's stressful.

But I do agree with Flaming Marcelian.

I, I think there is, there's a lot of potential with midnight with the pruning.

The simplification in a way doesn't mean classes are boring because apparently everyone has that idea.

Oh, they prune.

That means everything's boring, which is not true.

But it's it's going to have a lot of opportunity to bring a lot of players back to the game and try out retail Wow again and give it a shot.

Yeah, you know, it's you kind of you kind of bring up an interesting point because again, only speaking for myself, obviously I love, I loved weak horse.

I loved being stressed out during mythic grades with really difficult mechanics, so on and so forth.

Right.

But I do find that like you said, even though things have been toned down, dialed down, pruned, I, I don't find myself bored or just, oh God, let's just get through this pressing MY2 buttons even in mythic Plus, I think this first season, this first dungeon pool in midnight is phenomenal, by the way.

Yeah, pit of, Pit of.

Saren coming back.

Love Pit of Saren the the the four midnight dungeons and I've been hyper critical about dungeons for the past few expansions.

I haven't loved them.

I'm really digging the midnight specific the midnight dungeons in in this first season.

Yeah I I agree.

Like even though things have been simplified, things don't feel dumb, which I guess is a good sign.

Yeah, no, I agree absolutely.

And by the way, I think you're right.

This, this mythic plus pool is freaking amazing in midnight.

Like you like, don't get me wrong, I I love Mythic plus.

I I enjoy it for what it is.

There are times where I want to sweat, I want to push, I want to do my thing, but I I can only play it every so often.

You give me a couple hours, 2-3 hours here, there and then I'm I'm good.

Give me a few days off.

I'm not that guy who's I know a lot of people who do that like mythic plus 24/7.

I prefer high end rating.

That's where I love World of Warcraft to death.

But man, I'll tell you, I was on that beta and I can play 6-7 hours, go hard as hell, get my thought process down, test any class and roll type in the game and have a blast.

I can't believe it.

It really surprised the crap out of me.

And that's what happened.

You know, I did that and then I went back to retail and I actually didn't want to play season 3 of the War Within anymore.

I was just, I was like, damn, I I want to play beta.

Like I want to play.

I want to play the.

Same exact way now Marcellini flame.

You guys just launched a video in in in conjunction with Blizzard right about the the midnight dungeons.

The dungeons, yeah, well, that was more of like a brief presentation of all the midnight Dunes, right?

Like to to get get people.

Up.

Up to par with them.

They did a great job man.

They basically like all of the design, both like in mechanics and hopefully I haven't seen as many casts as prior dungeon seasons would say.

There's still a couple over there but overall the their their their picks for season 1 is definitely great.

Now, I mean, I have to say I actually got emotional the first time I stepped into my Sara caverns because it felt it was for the first time in years I was in a Warcraft.

Warcraft.

Man, it failed.

Warcraft.

Warcraft.

I hear that.

I, I, I, I, I did not know how tired I, this is mostly personal thing, but I did not know how tired I was of a lot of, of all of this cosmic technology and all of this tech.

And I just, I, I forgot that I was actually playing a fantasy game and seeing savage trolls doing ritual voodoo stuff and then trapping others things and having a beast mastery hunter for a boss that's also cosplaying as a level hunter.

By the way, it was a readable, I'm just saying.

And, and it was really good and I and I missed that as a as a Warcraft fan for 2526 years, I needed that.

Yeah, yeah, I, I absolutely, man, I think you'd say less, right?

I I, I totally agree with you.

We're going to we're going to switch gears here a minute.

This next topic, forgive me, both those of you listening, watching and the three of you on the show with me right now.

I have to be super specific with what with what I say and it'll make sense as I say it.

I joined a Guild called an unbalanced a couple of weeks ago.

I'm going to be trialling with him.

Didn't know this, but the restoration shaman Wowhead guide rider Herrick is on that raid team.

Nice guy, had never really met him before.

Well, Herrick.

And here I'm going to bring up some stuff on the screen real quick.

Eric, actually, where's my button?

There it is.

Eric wrote some stuff in relation to what's going on with healers and raid frames and tracking buffs and so on and so forth.

There is a Wowhead post about it.

He has an awesome video about it here.

All of this is going to be linked to live Here in a moment and of course, it'll also be in the YouTube description below.

I highly recommend those of you who a heal and B care about the PBE scene, read it, watch it, listen to it, be receptive to it because it is a concern for a lot of healers.

I have a few things that I specifically typed up and again, I want to be careful for what I say because not because I'm worried about what I'm conveying, but I want to make sure Herrick's words and Herrick's concerns are communicated appropriately.

He also posted a really a really big article, I'm sorry, not article forum post of heck back in October raising these concerns.

So healers are not being heard.

That's the whole discussion point here.

OK, and we'll get to the poll question in a minute.

The workaround that's being presented in the video and the Wildhead article, it is an escalation after months of ignored feedback.

Healers raise this issue early, as you saw with the foreign post, through proper channels.

Being comfortable with the current UI does not invalidate those who are not, and there's more about that here in a minute.

This is about baseline information.

It's not automation.

This is about this is also an accessibility issue.

And this is not healers asking for power.

This is asking for information to help them do their jobs better.

So again, all of this stuff will be linked below.

I have here Adm that I had with Herrick outlining all of his concerns, so you can pause the video here if you want to.

That way you can read the DM and whatnot.

Really nice guy, had a lot of really great points and whatnot.

So essentially the the crux of the issue is that there's no way to whitelist and blacklist stuff on the raid frames, right?

And I do want to be cautious.

We're recording this on January 25th.

The early access is still a month away, rating is still like 7 weeks away.

So a lot can potentially change.

I do think that Blizzard, I'm pretty sure they're hearing the concerns.

So I'd like to say that this issue will be a non issue by the time rating comes around.

But right now there's no way to whitelist, there's no way to blacklist, there's no way to organize, etcetera, etcetera.

And for a lot of healers, it's difficult to discern what's going on on your raid frames at any given moment.

So the first point here, telling healers they don't need to to buff, they don't need buff tracking.

It's like telling a dot spec they don't need a way to make their Dots, a way to track their Dots.

Do you think this?

So getting back into the conversation with you guys, like, does that make sense?

Do you think that people understand what that really means?

I kind of wish we had a healer, like a real healer on the podcast for this question.

But what do you guys think this?

What do you what do you think about Herrick's concerns and about the healer's concerns as a whole?

No, I said, I said at the beginning, it's absolutely valid.

And there's there's a there's a couple of speaks that can definitely relate to this.

And I know the wrestlers are, are one of them, but not not only limited to I think the biggest problem is, and I think you mentioned this and I also found this design in our player profile.

You cannot blacklist or whitelist stuff there.

There is stuff I want to track and there is stuff I really don't care about, but it's all there.

There is no way for me to like actually arrange this.

And this should not be the case.

This does not give an advantage or disadvantage.

This is basically the information that my class is able to put out and I want to be able to filter that.

And that becomes, I believe I haven't did this in in a raid, but I can imagine in a raid it becomes a huge problem when you have like 20 people and you have like a trillion different dots, some of them which are passive, just go there.

You don't have any control on them and you want to be able to track what's most important for you, right?

And blacklist stuff that isn't that important, that is more passive or that it doesn't really make or break your healing rotation or the, the prep time you are getting into.

If something really bad is going to happen, like, you know, think about the ramp up for, for a discipline priest.

Think about the, the ramp up for and again, resto druid, you know, they, they prep to get to that moment.

And if they're not able, if they're like, first of all, if they're flooded with information that is not useful to them, that's going to be a problem, specially in in a red environment and especially when you're pushing or want to do some progress.

And it can be the same thing in a dungeon as well, don't get me wrong.

But this is an issue and they have to do something about it.

Because I don't feel that you're going to get an advantage or disadvantage just given the option to whitelist or blacklist stuff.

That's that would be huge.

So my $0.02 in it.

Yeah, I mean, I've got the video playing right now and it's one of those things to where as as somebody who recently got into healing on my I, I played all, what is it 6 healers including holding disc.

I played all of them leading up to midnight's pre patch and I can't, I can't even imagine how frustrating it must be for people who've been healing long term for years who are not dependent.

I mean, maybe depending is the right word, but they have no way to quickly verify or validate what's going on without, you know, relearning what, you know, various icons and specific positions mean and whatnot.

It's just, it's, it's about being able to, to look at your UI and know what's going on at a moment's notice.

And I don't think anyone's going to sit here and say that people can't adapt over time.

But is that healthy?

Is that necessary?

I, I don't know.

I just, I don't know if I even really have a point beyond that flame.

Were you about to say something?

I've I've, well personally the world hasn't actually pushed me away from healing for a very long time because I enjoyed healing as well.

Healing for me had a bunch of other issues outside of this.

Although I do recognize that these are also problems that people are struggling with.

And I mean, if it's coming from the top, then who am I to disagree?

I this is actually great that it's happening because I think more information and more feedback should be put out in any kind of form where they, when it can be made public so that whatever design choices Blizzard makes can be shaped around what the community actually wants.

I know that a lot of the devs probably like, I don't know directly, but they're probably hanging around in class discords.

So I would be surprised if they're not aware of these issues.

I think they're definitely aware of more things than than they are publicly stating.

I just, it's just a matter of question of how quickly they're able to implement all of these changes.

I'm pretty sure no dev at at Blizzard saying was like, yeah, I don't care if they don't like it or not, they're gonna take it and they're gonna use it.

That's.

All that's all Blizzard that.

That's yeah, there's definitely so I'm, I'm, I'm very convinced that they're aware of it and they will take action.

It's just a matter of when that actually happens.

And obviously we at the end of the day, we're, you know, paying customers.

We're we're paying for the game, we're we're not late on our subscription payments.

So why is, you know, all of the fixes sometimes coming a little bit late and whenever you have a beta, a beta basically event, because this is kind of like an event, the amount of advertising that they did, they've been doing beta trailers also from the world within.

Whenever you have something this advertising put this much emphasis on, you kind of expect to as a player, you kind of expect to, you know, either see the results of your testing and your feedback a little bit quicker with the closer we get to the release of the expansion, these things be a little bit more worrisome.

This last rate testing, I don't even know if it was initially planned because we've been like what like a month or and a half without any rate testing whatsoever and they just threw this in.

We don't know if there's gonna be more.

So I can imagine high end Rangers are like, well, OK, but these are still not fixed and we're so close and the expansion launches and that's probably a communication thing that they they still need to work on.

But I do hope that all of this is being changed because as the healers that I played definitely require a lot more tracking than than other healers, and it doesn't feel like the pruning essentially touched everybody equally.

I don't it's it's a matter of just allowing us to blacklist and whitelist stuff.

That's it.

It's not.

I agree.

It's, it's really as simple as I need more customization to do what I want.

It's not a leg up in the competition.

It's not trying to get better than everyone and sweat.

It's just simply preference.

And I just, I just need to see what's on these bars, man.

Like, I don't know, Like I, I feel like they've done a really good job integrating some stuff like in the very short amount of time they've decided to do all this.

And I, I do think it's a start, but it, and listen, I, I love what Blizzard's doing.

I think they're doing a lot of right, but I'm definitely not scared to say if something ain't right.

Like healing is not great right now.

A lot of people have said to me, I've gotten tons of DMS, tons of comments on YouTube.

Like sure, the simplification, I'll deal with it, but like I got to be able to customize my UI how I really want it if I'm going to go this route.

Like it's, it's just not right yet.

I, I do think it's on its way.

I do think it's a start.

And I've said before on, you know, my show with Lance that I, I do think season 1, it's going to be decent, but it is also going to be a struggle.

So it's going to be a struggle in the sense that if we don't have everything that, you know, makes us feel comfortable playing the video game at the level that we've been used to with using add-ons the last 10 years or whatever, people are going to complain and and they're going to doom and they're going to gloom.

So I, I, I, I think that like complaining, of course, absolutely.

But like, who do you think is going to get left behind when customization like this is, is removed and, and it's no longer possible?

Assuming, again, Blizzard does not fix it tomorrow.

For all we know, you know.

Well, obviously, like the the, the the complaint or the feedback, not the complaint comes from a person who is like highly experienced and probably much more well versed in high end content, right?

We talked about this earlier in the show.

It's like like for for people that are doing their plus 10's and heroic rating, they're probably not going to feel as much pressure because it's, it's we, we discussed that the rate overall is going to be probably easier than previous rates.

So I wouldn't see a big, big problem for, you know, casual people to like semi dedicated people right now.

Hardcore, I won't say hardcore.

Let's say people who are trying to to push like ambitious people.

I'm not talking necessarily about 1%.

We can get us included here as Bill.

We like to do mythic rating.

We like to like get that C or whatever.

So in that sense, that could be problematic.

Like if you want to like heal and you have just joined the mythic Guild and you know, they're not hardcore.

They're like they're doing, I don't know, two nights per week for rating, right?

Chill mode, but they want to progress.

That's the whole point of it, right?

And you are playing a healer in that team at some point, depending on the spake you play, of course, But at some point it's going to become a problem for you if you're going to be the one who's causing people dying in some sort of like a situation of progress.

So it's not, it's not only like the high end players who will be affected by this.

It's also your, you know, your joke.

Who wants to get into mythic rating?

And that requires a little bit more of a filtering, I would say when it comes to like what you do, what your spec does.

And again, we're talking about healing purely here.

There's specs that you know, so you play this.

If people play discipline, the most important thing for discipline is the attunement buff, right?

You need to make sure that attunement sticks there and you can track that.

That's fine.

But when data attunement is being shown with everything else that comes on that party frame, it's going to be very hard to track that now.

We chorus used to have a fix for that.

You can like make it bigger, can make it glow.

You had a million options for that that that's gone.

OK, there's probably add-ons that do that.

And I know you're going to bring this up the solution, some of the solutions that being are being brought in, but that's that's the main issue, right?

And it goes back to to that like giving people the option to whitelist and blacklist stuff so you can focus on what's important for your spec.

And again, it's not necessarily only the one percenters here.

I have plenty of friends who like want to get into Mythic.

They're not hardcore, they're not like sweaty and everything like that, but they can play a good game, they can deliver on their mechanics, and they can deliver on pumping that DPS or whatever.

And they're kind of excited to do Mythic rating, right?

But if you're a healer, again, it becomes a problem when that that rate frame is filled with a million different buffs which you don't care.

About.

And that one that you care, care about is really hard to like locate and and track, especially on 20 frames.

OK.

That's the biggest.

Yeah.

I mean, it's just, it's just about at a glance, especially in your mythic rating, whatever the case is, at a glance, knowing what's going on based on how your UI is laid out and the default UI objectively is better than it was, you know, five years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago.

That whitelisting and blacklisting, man.

Fingers crossed that Blizzard not just hears us, but implements something in the weeks ahead.

Oh, by the way, go ahead, go ahead.

I was just going to edit, you know, I'm designing a player profile for ourselves.

Like sometimes I get into chat with like player devils and stuff like that.

And what I can say is that that add on devs are in constant communication with Blizzard devs, like they have like a discord dedicated to add on creators and stuff.

And they they talk over there.

And this whitelist blacklisting is being asked for for since forever.

And with the, with the, with what we discussed here, basically like arguments that it's not an advantage or anything like that.

It's basically let me see what I want to see and what is important for me.

So they know and you know, you said fingers crossed, yeah, fingers crossed.

But they do know.

And a lot of these add on creators are asking for for for a long time for for this feature to to happen right.

It's so it's there.

The communication is there at least between these guys who are making add-ons and and the devs.

When will happen?

I don't know but.

Blame.

Did you have anything you wanted to add to the conversation before we move on?

No no I'm I'm I'm good.

I haven't healed in a long time so I haven't encountered these issues.

I don't.

I'm not going to voice any any opinions so far, but I trust the more experienced ones.

Yeah, I mean, that's the thing if if healers by and large not everyone, because if for instance, Jerry Garcia and Chad says they're healer just got back into the into into retail, stoked with how things feel right now.

I think that the feeling is pretty good.

Again, whether you're playing DPS, healer, tanking, whatever, it's just that information or lack thereof, or the customization aspect.

Anyway, beating a dead horse.

The poll by the way, for this section of the podcast was should healers have more UI information than DPS by default?

69% of people in in almost 50 responses said yes.

So huge majority say the healers deserve need more UI information at a glance.

Hey, man, any way to please a healer?

I'm all for it.

They, you know.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Listen, I got to make my healers.

Yeah, Please, please.

Thank you, guys.

Thank you, Herrick, if you wind up listening to this for communicating that with me and giving me an opportunity to amplify your concerns and not just your concerns, but concerns from a lot of healers out there.

So we're going to go ahead and and move on to the next section here, the next discussion about wow, look at that more add-ons.

Wow.

I don't know if you guys have heard quasi quit.

Wow.

And some of you guys may be out there saying who's quasi, who cares, etcetera, etcetera.

But we're not going to sit here and talk about, you know, right and wrong, good and bad, so on and so forth.

We're going to take things in a slightly different direction.

Quasi was somebody out there that definitely helped a lot of people, whether it be with, you know, how to set up their UI or how to understand dungeons or even how to, you know, fix a lot of not fix, but how to set a lot of your settings in game and whatnot.

I want to talk about like what happens because right now there's a lot of debate with nephew UI quasi UI, so on and so forth.

When enforcement by Blizzard is as vague or as non existent as it has been and that social pressure from people like fills that gap.

What what?

How do you how do you guys read the situation or any situation similar to it?

Oh boy.

Yeah, so that's a big can of worms to dive into.

Now.

OK, so starting from the the Blizzard policy right?

Like I, I, I don't know where in their terms of services, but it's clear that you shouldn't make add-ons locked behind pay walls.

Everything should be free of charge and the code should be public.

Very important to our conversation here, right?

They haven't.

I don't think they ever enforced anything on add on creators, especially the ones who are behind pay walls.

And I don't know many.

All I know is they're paid add-ons over out there which also have free versions of those add-ons, right.

Linking it up with Quasi, I know he, he worked a lot on on that UI and he decided to put it behind Patreon.

Now it's his decision and it's his.

I would say he takes full responsibility for that.

That is 100% against terms of service.

And I would say I would even go as far far to say that you shouldn't do that.

You shouldn't ask money for that.

It's hard work but it is a passion project.

It is something you are willing to do for the community and I would say like the best option is hey man if people really love it they will support you nonetheless.

Link that Patreon there.

It's fine.

They will support you if the work is good, but Blizzard has not done anything yet regarding this.

I don't I don't know if they're aware of the drama with with the with the UI stuff, but I think it's a it's a nice byproduct of the add on situation overall with midnight.

Just just people like creating their their own UIS or yeah.

I think Kwazii was like full on with plates and and and looking like records and everything was in there right.

So that's just.

A solution to a generated problem from Blizzard, unfortunately, because they didn't have the proper tools to begin with to offer us to, like, make everything we want to.

Right.

Go ahead, Liz.

Yeah.

You know what I was going to say, I was just going to say that like, sadly Blizzard caused the problem.

And like normally and, and listen, there's things I don't like about this situation, but there's things that I like as an entrepreneur and someone trying to make money.

You're solving a problem and you got to make an investment of time, energy, mental effort.

I, I guess some can go as far as in quasi situation, emotional efforts, thousands of dollars and he's trying to solve that sub problem to turn it and not only help the community, but make a profit.

Now, if you want to ask my personal opinion, and I don't want to beat a dead horse, I'm not going to dive too deep into it.

I don't think it's a great idea selling something behind a paywall.

Don't get me wrong, I'm I'm a money guy.

I'm I work, I bust my butt.

I work 810 hours a day.

I'm sure just like everyone in this room, I you know, I think of things in different perspectives as well, but at the end of the day, I'm a creator.

I have a community.

You got to respect your community.

You got to respect to you know, everyone that's around you.

Sometimes there are things you just got to do for free.

You bite the bullet.

It betterments the community.

It betterments your social status.

Sometimes there are things you, you know, try to figure out in other ways.

But I like Marceline was saying, Blizzard did cause a problem.

He's trying to solve that said problem while making a little bit of money.

The truth of the matter is though, if it's against terms of service, that's it.

That's the end all be all.

You should not be doing it.

I mean, do do you think that?

I think, I think you said this a moment ago, Marceline.

Do you think that because Blizzard has kind of been tight lipped and hasn't really made this big public announcement, and not specifically about this one situation, but kind of the overarching thing, like, do do you think that kind of makes conflicts like this inevitable?

Like people calling each other out on Twitter and, and, you know, people just getting upset and either saying the wrong thing, doing the wrong thing, whatever.

It's, it's a, it's a, it's a weird space ban because I, I've never, I've never seen Blizzard act on add-ons whatsoever.

And again, I don't know, I don't know many, many add-ons that are 100% behind a pay wall.

I, I, I don't know, I, what I can say is that if, if Blizzard were to like actually, I don't know, offer some sort of solution for like devs, right, to like listen, like we have curse for, I know, add on creators get some sort of like ad revenue from from the ads on curse forge and stuff like that.

They have a program like that.

So they get some money off of that.

OK, OK.

If Blizzard offers some sort of solution for that like I don't know, a portal or something for add on creators where they like, they could offer the option to pay or not or get premium features.

That would be a totally different thing.

But it's clear in the terms of service that listen, the code is to be public, OK?

You do not own code or anything like that unless you pay for, I don't know, some specific license.

I don't know how that works.

And the add on and the add-ons will be free of charge.

That's clear.

Enforcing that wasn't the case because again, I do not remember any 100% locked out add on.

I know popular big guilds have some weak or specs or whatever locked behind but pay well up until they finish that boss or something like that.

That's but dude, it's at the end of the day, there's two things and I think sky like nailed it.

Respect for your community.

That's one thing.

And 2nd gap.

You know, you want to hustle, go hustle, you know, do do your thing.

But how did you get to the point where you can afford to create this and try to make money off of it?

It's because of that same community you helped out.

And I, I got to give, I got to give, you know, you know, Quasi's video on, on, you know, making Wow play better like, you know, and I think the FPS that was dude, come on, right.

And I learned a lot from him, from his player videos.

I learned a lot how to customize player and do a lot of stuff with it.

So he helped a lot of us, a lot of the a lot of the community.

The reaction, though, is very SUS.

OK, It's very SUS.

Like like he quit.

Wow.

Not only he could do, he unlisted all his videos, He closed all these.

That's the thing that really like it.

Like by the way, for the most part, I wasn't really skeptical or anything.

I thought he was just doing his thing.

OK, there's backlash.

There's always backlash with anything you do, by the way.

But my biggest thing was the reaction by him.

And I once again, I'm not dogging nobody on this is not what this is about at all.

It's just open discussion for the community.

Because if you try to ignore it, then you know, that just makes it look weird.

But truth of the matter is, is his reaction of straight up within 24 hours completely quitting World of Warcraft, taking down everything on the channels and no more responses, I'm gone.

Peace out.

It doesn't look good.

It's a bad look.

It makes him look more guilty than probably he actually is.

Makes him look a lot worse than he actually is.

So I don't know in that regard.

I, I agree with you guys there.

It's flame.

I didn't get to hear your point.

What?

What would what were you going to say?

Flame?

I think you were about to say something too.

Well, in terms of in terms of quasi situation directly, I pretty much see the same the same way as Marcel and it did feel a little bit over the top.

But then again, everybody takes these things differently.

Everybody's putting different levels of passion and it can affect people in different ways.

I feel like content creation and overall working in any kind of entertainment business, you kind of have to have a little bit of a thick skin if you want to be in the in the long run.

But then again, I don't know the guy personally, so I don't know exactly what he thought.

But I do feel like the quasi situation is a perfect example of how Blizzard handled this whole add on situation.

Because it's clear that for the longest time they've relied on add-ons for helping them design certain types of encounters because they knew that players had certain types of solutions.

So whatever problems their design could have caused, the solution was already thought of by somebody else.

Naively, I thought that whenever they started this add on war thing, they would hire the add on creators.

That would be, let's say, left without a work, I would say, But obviously that's not really how things work.

But I would have, I would have hope for some, some more lucrative collaboration between Blizzard and the add on creators that have worked for years and years and years, whether for themselves, whether for as a as a passion project, whether to actually solve problems for people to be, let's say, to have a little bit more incentive for the add-ons creators to have this collaboration.

I don't know what's going on.

I don't know what if, what, how things work between them.

And then the dev side, from what I understand, whatever discord they're in this it's just very exclusive.

But it but it's clear that the approach wasn't ideal.

And what we see with the quasi situation is kind of like a reverberation of that that situation.

So I don't think it was handled properly on a lot of sides, but just something a little bit extreme at what what happened.

I just think that most people's concerns, of course, you know, in, in in a macro sense is that you have content creators and people who, you know, put things behind a pay wall.

That's strictly that's that's the loophole.

It's it's profile based, like it's not code in most cases.

Whereas these add on authors like you guys have been saying, the people who in the blood, the sweat and the tears and whatnot, who actually build the products aren't really seeing any kind of kickback or revenue or return whatsoever.

And that's that's where like the like, why are these people able to benefit when the people actually make it receive next to nothing?

And again, it's somebody who loves add-ons.

I would love to see the people who have made our lives better in any number of ways get something for it, you know, other than just social that that, you know, like the gratitude.

And thanks, man, I appreciate you.

It's just that's got to be so frustrating, you know?

Yeah, it's it's so a lot of the add-ons do have actually it have in their description and and what about they have like Patreon links and stuff like that and donation links and that's fine.

That's how you supposed to do it.

Basically.

Hey, if you if you love it, maybe, you know, consider this.

That's totally up to you.

And that's always been the case.

And I'm sure a lot of the the add on creators have, you know, their their crowd of Patreons and supporters and stuff.

I know I do feel like like turns up for, you know, the the player stuff.

So it's it's always been this model.

He didn't do that, OK.

And it's it's it's it is true.

OK.

So like lucky 1, you know, one of the days from LVR like you know, posted the code and nephew, I also posted the code to like like show, you know, the copy pasta, you know, but that again, that sort of thing with the decoding, stealing and stuff, it happens a lot in the industry in software development and stuff like that.

Sure, no code is going to be 100% the same, you're gonna have slight variations, but the whole I feel like the whole can of worms would have been handled much more.

I would say elegantly if this was in private DMS and sort it out.

This blew.

Up it's It's really weird to go about everything publicly on Twitter.

It's very weird.

Like I if I had a problem with somebody you know stealing some something from me personally, I would DM them.

Like it's weird to go.

That's why we'll never share our DMS, right?

We got to got to keep them behind closed doors.

And I don't know what.

Was said before the show.

All right, No, I, I, I think you're absolutely right.

I, I will say, and I think I speak for all of us here, so feel free to stop me if I don't like I said, we're not here to discuss like the right and the wrong ethics and morals and, and whatnot.

We, I say we generally speaking, man, we don't want anything but the best for people, whether it's quasi or otherwise.

Like we don't want anyone to, you know, have any kind of situation that robs them of their sanity and, and, and their safety and, and all that and all that stuff.

So I, I'm not condoning anything again, that is ethically wrong, but it's so easy to get wrapped up in witch hunts and, and you know, jumping on a bandwagon and maybe you've watched this person or followed this person for X number of years.

So you're in their corner no matter what.

It's a messy situation.

And it's not just the situation, but situations like it can escalate real quick.

I think, I think at the end of the day, we have to blame Blizzard.

They're the problem.

No, I'm just kidding.

There's some seed over there Sky There's there's there is something there not at the end of the day, yeah, just to they they should have handled this privately.

And I think everybody makes mistakes.

Everybody fucks up.

Everybody steals cold.

But that can be discussed, debated and resolved in I would say in like a gentleman's matter.

I was never a fan of this, this public shaming, all of that.

Everything can be discussed.

Hey, if the person you're discussing with is not open is like refuting everything.

Sure, take it to the public court.

I'm.

I'm all for that.

But the first step would be to like have conversations.

OK.

Hey, man, listen, even if you're in the wrong, maybe you're in the wrong like this.

Yeah, I OK, I copied that code.

That's fine.

What I'm gonna do here, I'm gonna do another code straight from ground up.

And sorry about this.

I'm gonna take it down.

Yeah.

I'm gonna even gonna go publicly and make a statement, anything like that.

But dude, this has to happen in private.

Why the hell would you bring it like, like that?

Weird.

Yeah.

But it's Internet.

Yeah.

Brutal Senate people are always going to pick sides.

They're gonna be mad.

They're gonna, like, stir up, you know, different type of emotions.

And we all know how the Internet is, so we just leave it at that.

I will think I, I will say though, because you, you did say brutal that you know we're not going for right and wrong.

I will say though, it is wrong to put that shit behind a paywall for the community that helped to be in the situation where you would create that, personally speaking.

Yeah, personally speaking, I agree with you.

Like I, I used to have, OK, I used to have a, my UI, my rating UI was available for download.

And of course I never put it behind a paywall because I didn't make anything.

I just rearranged things and I, I fiddle with settings and stuff.

Like I, I never again morally, which is, you know, whether something's right or wrong to me morally, it just didn't sit well to, to charge for it.

You know, if someone wanted to support me, they could sub to my Twitch and they could donate or they could whatever because they saw a benefit, but it was never required, of course.

Yeah, that's that's the model.

Yeah, Yep.

The the by the way, the poll for this topic, this discussion was, is the current add on ecosystem sustainable long term?

And we had pretty much a 5050 split between, yeah, sure, it's, it's sustainable, no big deal.

And only with Blizzard's intervention.

So it seems like people are a bit split whether or not how these things have unfolded with, you know, combat add on changes and whatnot, whether or not in my perspective, I actually said, yes, it is sustainable because my perspective on this is the game functions, it operates.

It may not be optimized for everybody, but it does work.

But I understand what people mean by, you know, the intervention and and that kind of ties into what we were talking about with the blacklisting, the white listing and so on and so forth.

But but what do you guys think?

Do you think things are sustainable at the moment with the UI or do you think that there are bigger concerns?

I'm I'm going to interval up flame for too long.

Trust me, I've been dying to hear this guy talk for half an hour.

But I I would say overall, I they're on the right track, man.

They're like, it's, it's a really big undertaking.

They're trying to take on, you know, 20 years of add-ons and UI of, you know, being created and like trying to do this to me, it feels like out of nowhere.

It's a lot, man, it's a lot.

And I'll tell you what that games calling showcase of them trying to do that, it was an absolute disaster.

It got me really nervous and I was like, holy shit, are we in trouble anyways?

I do I'm I'm cautiously optimistic.

I, I do think it's on its way to being, to being there.

I don't think it's there yet.

Just one of those things that's going to take time trying to replicate 10/15/20 years of work and dedication and passion from the community.

So I, from that percent, you know, perspective, I, I think we'll just have to see.

I, I do think they'll do better though.

Go ahead and play.

I'm sorry about that.

Yeah, don't worry about it.

It's for sure it's going back to what I said a little bit earlier.

I think Midnight is kind of like a necessary evil.

And if you have played Wow in the last four years, we've had the edit mode come up.

What was it at the beginning of Dragonflights?

And it was bare bones to say the least.

And that was off.

I think that was also at the same time as they were probably cooking up private auras.

And if you've played alpha in any way or at the beginning stages of the beta when they enabled the damage meter, which was it was it was.

There.

PNG of occasionally showing your spec with a colored bar apparently showing casing your damage.

So what it is right now on beta, which is I think a still a little bit better than what we have on pre patch.

The the progress is definitely shown.

And I think that what they've built with the with Midnights, with the add-ons, with everything else as well is they're quite creating like like a structure, like the skeleton of what wow, 2 point O or three-point O, depending on where you want to look at it will essentially be on look at in the next.

They hope, I don't know, 1020 years.

All right, go good luck with that.

But I feel like it's definitely there.

They just have to keep at it and hopefully get good talent, hopefully cooperate or, or, or communicate well with the people that know better, like, you know, the Adam queries and so on.

And depending on what type of collapse they have.

So yeah, more overall positive as far as I'm concerned.

What?

Do you what do you guys think has to feel right from day like we've been talking about, you know, combat add-ons and we've been talking about you know, the pruning we've been talking about the pre fetch, but we're talking like a month from now the game launches like what has to feel right day one?

Your spec, your class the first thing into back with.

Do you do you say that because you think something's missing right now?

Would Apex Talents of course be the main thing that comes to mind?

I'm saying this because, well, I've been through so too many expansions over my spec felt like shit.

And this is this is I.

I have strongly believed that once you get into midnight and if your spec feels good, feels right, feels punchy, feels responsive, that's good.

Now, granted, you if you're not going to be flooded with lure errors and all of that mess, but I I do hope that that's going to be ironed out.

But like I think we said this and at least 10 videos, right, the first interaction you have with this effing game is the class you play.

That's the one thing you select after that login screen that's, you know, hit enter world and you see, you know, the back of your spec.

Then you see the abilities and all of that.

And probably you're either going to go out of target dummy or you're going to kill for attention or go do questing, whatever that moment needs to feel right.

If that isn't right, it's going to be very hard to change the perspective.

And Blizzard did this mistake so many times.

They they threw in Gigas cinematic and Gigas city towns, absolutely gorgeous graphics and and world design and sound design and music.

And then you're sitting there like with with your, your, you know, your little buddy, your little, you know, fury warrior, but combat was like outdoor just doesn't feel right.

It feels shallow, doesn't, doesn't have the impact, doesn't have the the meat right.

This is 100% what I feel they should nail down.

After that comes the rest, you know, the quest being all OK, the lag being I'll, I'll, you know, not all that shit.

So you're saying all of that because it doesn't feel right or good right now?

Is that what you mean?

Oh.

It feels great.

No, if they keep at it, it feels it feels great.

No, no, no, no, no, I'm not going no, no, the specs are great.

No, no, most of them are great.

It's just like if you play in beta, right and you have like Max gear, they feel great right Yeah and you have all the Apex talents and you have all the hero talent 2.

Piece 4.

Piece.

All that shit, right?

Well, that's what I'm saying, OK?

They have to feel great without those, right?

So you log into midnight, you don't have anything of that.

Have to feel good about it.

It's going to be hard because even right off the bat with pre patch right now, like there are classes that feel great and then there are classes that don't feel great.

Like like it's tough because they've designed these specs and classes and even balancing them right now currently based off of them having their tears set and having all the apex talents being played at a decent level.

So like man, right now on live, like warriors of freaking mess.

There's some specs who's you know my cool down abilities like for affliction lock that new.

I forgot it was like the channeling ability that does damage the people who have afflicted.

Yeah, Dark Harvest.

Yeah, that feels amazing to press.

Everything else is like hot swamp ass to press.

So like, it's a mess right now.

I'm going to be honest, I I like when it comes to actual numbers and tuning, it's a disaster feeling wise.

Like Marcellian says, it feels pretty good.

Like I I really enjoy a lot of the ways classes are being played right now.

I I, I'd, I'd assume this is nothing more than an assumption.

Most people would prefer that like numbers can be adjusted and they will.

We know that this is the 80th year we've been playing this dad gum game right?

But if things feel good like if you're happy to log on, you're happy to jump into a dungeon, a raid, PvP, whatever and it feels good.

That's what matters.

So I, I'm, we had talked about being cautiously optimistic with midnight.

We had talked about, you know, being happy with the, the pruning and so many other things.

So as long as they can nail that feeling, that experience, then the rest is I'm, I'm good with the rest, right?

We'll they'll, they'll, they'll tune it.

They'll dial it in.

And that's why I feel like, I know there's a lot of words of feeling coming around.

I feel like there's a feel.

No, but that's why I do feel like I'm getting comments constantly from people saying things like, man, I haven't played since TBC, I haven't played since Wrath or XYZ.

And they're like trying the game again.

They go All in all, it feels pretty good, like the gameplay doesn't feel bad.

Now what I think like war within did really well, better than most expansions is they added another pillar of end game content with delves to help the casual, you know, player base, the casual and laid back guys.

And then it pushes them into things like mythic plus and rating every once in a while.

So end game retention feels pretty good.

I know I'm annoyed by saying feeling every two seconds, but it does feel pretty good.

So, you know, maybe you add Prey and then Midnight, you know, with the gameplay pruning and systems and comfortability and classes not being so complicated to dive into, hopefully the gameplay feels like a little bit of a throwback to early World of Warcraft days mixed with that spice of retail end game.

And it's like the best of both worlds, you know?

So that's what I'm hoping for.

Flame, I didn't get to hear you either.

Sorry I keep interrupted.

Yeah, for sure.

For the longest time, I think what Wow had as a leg up over I, I do, I'm I, I've played some Final Fantasy 14, but I think over a lot of other Mmos and a lot of other games is how the combat feels to play, how meaty it is, how punchy it is, the sound effects, the animation.

It's fun to press your buttons and see your guy do the thing that you wanted to do and adjacent to how your class feels.

I think it, and this is probably what what Martin said earlier and how the add-ons actually enabled the game for you.

Not having FBS issues, not having UI errors, not having overloaded information that takes you away from enjoying your moment to moment gameplay because you're you're focused somewhere else.

And this is I think how Wow has become over the years where when you go into a new class, it might play well if you could just play it perfectly.

But you, you're like, oh, homo is my rotation.

Am I using my cooldos properly?

My lining, my.

Procs walking on the other monitor.

And I think for the longest time, the player's attention went from actually going into the game.

You're on your character, your your character is basically your steering wheel as you're driving your car and you're looking at the world mechanics, you're seeing your fireball shootout, your your mortal strike hitting the enemy into that was really cool.

And a lot of that attention has been taken away and put into monitoring your procs, monitoring your UI, monitoring what's going on.

And my, my opinion is that people probably have lost their connection to the actual outside world.

I'm not saying that nobody's noticing the outside world, but I, but a lot of that attention has been stripped away and put into looking at data and stats on your screen.

And what midnight is doing well at so far, hopefully they keep at it is to offload some of that cognitive weights that you have when you go in and you're thinking of all these seven things you need to do.

And it frees up your brain to, oh, look, the boss is actually lifting the big hammer and swiping down in front of it.

I I, I can see cone there, but I also see the big damn hammer coming down.

I'm going to get out of the way.

I'm that please, please fix your thought.

I don't.

No, no, I don't want to interrupt you.

I'm going to add on after you finish go.

That part of a game felt like it has been lost over the years where, and I think this is what's what's being accomplished with the class pruning, with the mechanic pruning, let's say, and hopefully the UI issues can be fixed so that we can streamline our experience as much as possible.

And if we've seen the pre patch so far, and hopefully this maintains when the expansion launches, we don't have, I'm probably going to have some connection issues.

So what was famous for that when it launched the expansion, But we'll have I I feel like it was what was it the patch where they added night nightfall sanctum nightfall event thing in Halo fall.

That was one of the most brokiest patch that they've ever added was so laggy, people couldn't connect.

People didn't have the events work.

Like if we can get rid of all of those things so we can actually enjoy the class that we're playing, I think that that's probably the next best thing that the devs can focus on.

Dude, IA 1000% agree with you.

You know, once I as established earlier in this episode, I I've been playing with 0 add-ons on beta and live this week.

Once you once I stripped all of that away and I started actually digging into midnight and we talked about Mythic plus as well and how I'd love that for this first season, this first dungeon pool.

I found myself actually watching what was unfolding in front of me instead of watching timers, instead of watching procs and this and then the other.

And there is still some of that, of course, but they I think they've done a really good job this first season and making sure things.

What's what's the word for it?

Not scripted, but readable.

Like you, you see what's happening in the fight and you know, OK, I need to react or, you know, be pre emptive or whatever, instead of just watching your DBM timers, your bigwigs timers, just watching your weak oars.

Because that admittedly, that's where my eyes and attention have been for years now.

But it's so nice to like lift my head up and be like, oh, look, look at the, you know, look at the, the, the dungeon design, look at the artwork, look at the spell effects, look at what the boss is doing and how they're moving and like you said, how they're acting, which then prompts, you know, my actions.

I, I, I love it.

I agree, I love it.

I got to add a little bit to it and yeah, you guys are, you guys are right.

Flame hit it on the head because man, the last couple years were retail Wow.

It feels like I'm watching my rotation and weak auras rather than looking at actually what's going on around me.

And I think Blizzard has started to realize that too.

And that's why we're going down this entire route.

So simplification needed to come.

It had to happen.

Midnight's doing it.

And I I do think it's for the better now when it comes to, you know, answering your question, I think it was what midnight can't afford to go wrong class feeling.

I think it's already on its way.

I think the end game systems are on its way.

But, and this is such a tall order to ask for, but a really smooth launch can go a long way for some experienced and veteran players only because like man, like, like flame was saying that nightfall event.

Oh my God, what a disaster things like that were.

And we like that spaghetti code that Blizzard writes sometimes it, it sucks, man.

And it really hurts.

And it, it shouldn't ruin someone's launch.

If like, like as a veteran player, I'm so used to it and it's such a terrible thing.

Like I'm so used to the abuse of the bad servers and lag that I just don't give a shit anymore.

But imagine.

Condition over the years where we think.

That food.

Expansion is a tall order task.

That's what I'm saying and that's I'm I'm it's it's so crazy that I'm even saying this out loud, but I really hope things are smooth on launch like I hope they're not buggy, not disastrous yes, like.

I am that's.

What I'm looking?

For I'm confident anyone who's listening to this right now could post for me.

The, the one that sprang to mind immediately was the Warlords of drain or launch.

I don't know if any of you guys experienced the, the launch, but you, you got to the, the horde Garrison.

And I think, I think if I'm remember correctly, there's like this little spyglass or telescope or something you had to click.

Not only was it unclickable, if I'm recalling correctly, but you literally couldn't click it because 1000 people were on top of it.

I mean, it was a mess.

And yeah, this game has been out a long time.

I'm sure we all have examples and stories like that.

Yeah.

You know what's funny is during that time with the Warlords of Drain or Launch, me and Lance, we were still in school.

So like, you know, we'd be like, OK, we're going to tell Mom that we're going to take off Thursday, Friday.

Because I think, I don't know when it would lease back then, but I remember it being like a couple days, then the weekend and then, you know, we'd go back to school.

So I we'd have like 4 days straight to play.

I'm like, hell yeah, we're going to kill it.

It's going to be fun.

None of that happened.

It was a horrible launch.

I didn't play.

I played for like an hour.

It was so embarrassing.

It was awful.

And then I went to school while everyone played.

It was a nightmare.

So yeah, not fun guy.

You, you got your, your three days token of appreciation extension because you know, they, they give all those three days compensation.

Like get the fuck out of here.

Man, dude, I was staring at a log in screen it was so bad.

And then like every once in a while my mom would be like, hey, did you guys even get to play yet?

I'm like, no, we haven't.

I'm like, I should have went to school.

I'm an idiot.

I'm like what if, what have I done?

Oh what if?

Well, sending.

Kids back to school, that's a good thing.

Yeah.

Horrible the.

The thing is with the the launch of expansions pretty much in recent years, they're pretty smooth, especially with the War Within and the the early access thing.

They have problems with releasing patches.

I cannot remember the last patch that was launched the the one with the event in the dorm, that's one thing.

But all the patches that were released, I don't know why.

Always buggy, messy and with a lot of problems.

I mean now.

Spaghetti code, right?

The sky said.

It's spaghetti code man.

We're talking about an expansion launch at least.

I hope I'm not mistaken.

Dragonfly was OK.

What would then was smooth.

I haven't felt nothing.

So it was.

It was pretty smooth.

Shadow lens was a little bit iffy shadow.

Lens was iffy but that was like for two hours.

And it was like half a day.

I I remember that yeah, yeah, but but midnight again with the the early access stuff and and you know, early access has this benefit of like segmenting players.

Yeah, benefit segmenting a lot of the the players already not having like everybody cramped up in in the same day more or less right so it.

Kind of like.

Puts a little bit more ease on the service and I I kind of predict the launch is going to be pretty smooth because we have the word within situation and a lot of like the big problems we have.

We are we are facing right now with the pre batch.

So you know, kudos to us.

We're testing shit for them, making it bright feedback in it's all good baby, but I feel the expansion is going to launch in in this multi matter again.

I want to reiterate they have to drop a a giga cinematic for that launch.

They would be a bunch of idiots.

If they don't, they're going to hype up the shit out of it.

Just saying and.

Then the servers will filled up and we lag at the launch.

Hell yeah.

It's the, the last question the poll was, do you trust Blizzard to get midnight right?

And I didn't specify launch.

Of course, this is an overarching thing and 50% of people were are cautiously optimistic, which I think I think is a good thing.

I, I look at that as a, as a reasonable response because I fall into that category as well.

I and we, we talked about this a dozen different times over the course of this episode.

I'm cautiously optimistic.

I I like how things feel right now.

We just got done talking about feelings.

I like how things are looking, you know, mechanically speaking, for the most part, the add-ons or the the default UI, some questionable things there.

We talked about Herrick's concerns and healers concerns and whatnot.

But I, I think that one thing that people I was about to say, people can agree on that's probably not true, but Blizzard has improved things over these past few months.

Maybe not at the rate that some people want, but things have improved and I think things will continue to improve and whatnot.

Listen, you, you get, you get a, a, a, a liquid Raider in here.

Of course, their opinion is going to be so drastically different from mine to yours to someone who never touches Mythic plus and whatnot.

I I'm cautiously optimistic.

Nonetheless, I think that we're going to have a fun expansion.

I think that it's going to feel good.

I think this first tier is going to be a lot of fun.

These first dungeons people are going to love.

What do you guys think?

I think so you you kind of nailed it a little bit because the question can be broken down.

What is what is getting the night right mean?

Does it mean the first week, the first season, the first patch?

Because if we've seen anything in the last couple of expansions, they initially get it right.

I mean even if we use shadow lands as the worst example where they actually weren't able to find out, oh we can actually RIP the cords on the covenants and we can actually let people choose the.

The expansion was really well played then.

You can say whatever you want about shadow lands.

I love Mythic Plus and Shadow.

Yeah, it's pretty.

Much people were happy about, but also when they brought back the tier sets when they released the covenant restrictions might not remember, but that was also when they put in the catalyst, which was the first time ever we could actually use way to getting tier sets.

That's interesting.

You mentioned that we were kind of like among the small crowd who didn't bail on Wow, OK, We're proud of that.

We still make content.

We were in shit with views, with money, with everything was like, it's OK man.

I lost a lot of weight.

Strongman, yeah.

That was that we both lost a lot of weight.

But.

But but that's, that's what I mean, I'm confident that by the end of midnight, the expansion is going to be rock hard.

And but I really wish we wouldn't have to in a world where it always starts rocky and then they actually end up fixing because they have the capability of fixing the problems.

We're just talking about cadence here.

And when that actually ends up happening.

So hopefully they understood, especially after the war within with all those rocky patches, that they cannot really afford to lose a lot of the hype and a lot of the goodwill that people invest, especially now that there's so much more awareness for a while when you see so many new players like, oh, I haven't played since Mop.

I haven't played since Wrath.

I'm coming back as well finally.

Like, all right, well, you better keep these people in.

And if the patch is if the release is sketchy, they're going to be like, yeah, it's the same old.

And then they're going to and after a month is never going to go away.

But you don't want to have it way too steep.

Yeah, I agree.

I, I, I, I think you're all, you all did it.

You said everything you needed to say.

I mean, the patches are been really rough lately, but the expansion releases have actually been good.

And I, I, I've, I've praised Dragonflight's release, I've praised the War Within's release.

Those are the last two that I've delve into more than any expansion for retail and you know, since Shadow Lands season 1 and then I kind of quit after that.

So I praise you guys for sticking around, but not it's it's the patches that are going to be a problem And and like flame said, if if you don't lead them with the hype leading into a successful patch launch, people, I mean, well, the Warcraft is so seasonal nowadays, you know what I mean?

It's so like easy to just play.

I get my gear, I do a ray tear, do some mythic plus, and then I'll bounce for a couple months and come back if a new season or patch comes out and then rinse and repeat.

It's such a seasonal game.

So like, you know, if you really want to keep that retention high, you, I mean, you got to have a smooth game at least that's the bare minimum.

And you know, I, I do strongly believe that they have different teams working, working on, you know, specific things like, you know, entire expansion releases and then patch releases.

That's why it seems so abrupt like the, the quality level is just next.

Like I, I can't believe it.

Like there'll be times where I'm so shocked.

I'm like yo, this plays like shit, like what happened?

And then other times I'm like yo.

Blizzard's back.

We're here, we're freaking, you know what I mean?

So I don't know, it's it's a little tough, but I.

I think you're.

Doing the right way.

Yeah, it's weird because they do have a bigger team, especially from since like Dragonfly War Within, they like that team grew and grew and grew and it's so weird that the patches are so messed up, man.

Yeah, it's it's mind boggling.

I'm not sure.

So cautiously optimistic is the word because yeah, those patches tend to be kind of kind of messy.

But one point I did not hear as much people commenting or saying, hey, man, this looks really cool.

I want to get back during War Within for example.

True, I'm.

Hearing a lot more for midnight for some reason.

I, I, I, I, I think one of you guys said this earlier.

Maybe I'm making this up, but I think it was, I'm paraphrasing the game feels much closer to how it felt in Wrath or TBC or cat or whatever it was that was stated.

And I think that's absolutely true because of the, the, the pruning and the toning things down.

It's just easier to discern, digest whatever word you want to use.

Love that.

I, I really do as somebody who loves the complication that or not the complication, but someone who loves being, like I said, pushed and stressed in PBE.

It just feels good right now.

I, I, maybe I'm, maybe I'm in the minority, but I, I like it, man.

Yeah, I think, I think what it is for me personally is like it got to the point where button bloat was so out of control that for example, playing Fire and mage in the war within season 3, like Pyroblast didn't feel like it did anything.

I'd have to get 20 Pyroblast off to make it feel like 1 Pyroblast on a hot streak back in the day.

But like, you know, So what a simple solution will be.

OK, you prune the bullshit buttons and you bring more weight to the more important buttons.

So I things just feel a little bit more weighted.

Less buttons mean more weighted buttons.

And I, I think this is going to be a super hot take, but I think for healers, like do you need 15 different healing buttons?

Like is that a thing that you guys like?

Like I like, you know, going from like, man, I was playing preservation not too long ago.

I think it was War within season 1.

And it was like there's this like 20 buttons here to heal somebody.

Like is this normal?

Like when did healing become so fucking bloated?

Like do we, do we not?

Like I remember back in the day, it was like there was healing surge, healing wave and you got like, like it's just a couple variants here or there, but like, I don't know, it got a little too bloated.

I'm sure that there are there are people there are people are going to like play styles in any number of ways, but there are probably a few people who want that one or two button rotation.

And there are probably a handful of people that want those 15 button rotations.

But I think they found a sweet spot for a lot of specs right now to where it's three to five buttons.

You're tracking, you know, a couple of procs.

And I know there are outliers.

I know.

But yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm very happy with where things have have landed for a lot of classes right now.

Yeah, listen, like both of those people that you just mentioned, I heard both of those people hop on the train of Missus Banderia Classic.

And the largest feedback or the largest criticism that I heard is like, oh, I love it that my buns do something when I press them again because of how over designed game has become.

And you have all of these little trickles of damage events and healing events from all of these in incidental procs of all of this stuff.

It has taken away, like Sky just said, really, really well.

It's taken away the weight from the individual buttons bro.

When I press my blaze storm, I want to see my character shoot up in the meters as I'm blaze storming along, which was actually funny enough, the opposite thing that was happening.

I think in the second patch of the war within when I was playing Slayer fury, I went into a dungeon.

I pressed blaze storm and I was seeing myself deep down on the meter as how is this possible?

How is the most medius warrior a we ability doing that?

And I'm, I'm sure that they have heard this, this feedback from, from up classic players and hopefully, if just from live players as well.

And it definitely seems like they're swapping a a lot of that weight that, that focus that meeting us into fewer abilities.

Hopefully that still keeps going because there's a couple of ones that kind of slip between the cracks.

There's still, yeah, there's still work to be done in that department.

It's good, but there's still need to.

Work on I know Flanim was damming me the other day.

He said he's maiming, you know, fire mage.

He's super hyped.

They did perfect on the pruning he was.

Deeming me saying he's playing Beast Mastery, You got to get your facts straight, yeah?

That's another one.

I'm getting gaslets here.

I'm not.

I don't know.

I don't know what to do.

You guys are an awesome we're oh good go good.

I was just saying a fair mage is an awesome spec and he loves.

You've played every other mage in Fire, what do you?

Nah, it's definitely the memes aside, they've definitely done better by simply adding Scorch back, which just goes to show like what one ability can do.

But.

My one of my, one of my audience members says this is Slababoos.

I love you Slab.

He's from Australia.

He says they changed the bladestorm to blunt bladestorm.

Didn't you know?

Bloodstorm.

Bloodstorm, you guys have been awesome.

It's been 2 hours.

I'm going to get you out of here.

You guys have been so, so generous and gracious with your time.

Thank you.

I do want to ask one final question real quick, if you don't mind just going around the table.

A month from now, Early access launch launches, Midnight's, Midnight's like 5 weeks from from now.

A month from now, what should feel different if Midnight is doing its job correctly?

I want to walk through Silver Moon and bump into players every corner of the way.

Yes, good take.

That's a good take.

I like that.

Who else?

I have one honestly, I don't know about you guys, but because of the button bloat situation of retail and you know everything just being so overcomplicated and convoluted for no reason, it's actually led me to not PvP anymore.

Now I I'm someone who used to PvP a lot I love PvP like I remember back in Mr.

Pandaria man, I might have been 12 or 13 and I hate to make you guys feel a bit older, but I was maybe 12 or 13 and I was carrying people in twos on a frost mage and like 12 or 13 and getting gold from it.

I don't know how I'm a loser.

I don't know.

But anyways, my point is, is, is that I want to do PvP again.

And I think the pruning with all this happening and things feeling a bit more weighted and easier to understand what's going on with other classes visually, I think PvP is going to make a pretty good resurgence.

I, I think things are going to be a little bit more simplified and I think people are going to be interested in at least checking it out because it's going to be a little bit easier.

So I I hope in a month from now PvP feels pretty good and people are playing it and the community feedback is better.

Listen, I turned 40 in 2 1/2 weeks, so I'm not that much older than you, am I?

Right, Right.

Make me.

Feel better 2626.

When I was 13, a little game, no and I got to listen to every you.

Guys were this.

Close.

You were this close to escaping the EverQuest talk this episode, But when I was 13, little game called EverQuest came out.

Huh.

I was playing a little EQ back when I was 13.

Anyway, I don't know.

Marceline Diaz.

Dial up, man.

All right.

Dial up, baby.

What do you think, man?

No.

What?

What should feel different to you?

I vibe with with with what Sky said.

I really want to get back into arenas, really watch so bad, so bad.

But I guess for one thing, I would like to like walk into Ogremar or Stormwind or get get a quest and not be called the champion anymore.

I don't want to be.

The Savior I.

Don't want to be the goddamn centerpiece of everything.

I just want to be like regular Joe who helps people or whatever and all that.

Yeah, that's what I want.

No more the savior of everything.

No, that's not us.

Too bad man, you've saved the world like a dozen times over.

It is.

What it is Let's.

Find.

Let's put that on top of, like, I don't know, Arator.

Arator.

Yeah, sure.

There's a couple of characters out there who can, who can make that.

I don't know.

I'm just so tired of that whole champion hero.

Sevilla, Dora.

It feels like you're too important for this world anyways.

But next season, you need to like, gear up again.

How does that feel?

Some bored Yeah how does no just.

Stop it.

Just stop.

I want to feel, you know, less important in the game in in in that context, right.

But again, if the story makes sense.

Dude, I think a lot of people would definitely agree with that take.

I mean, I'm sure it doesn't bother everyone, but I'm, I'm, I fall into that category as well towards like, I just, I just want to play the game.

I'm not, I'm not a hero.

I'm just, I'm just one of 20 people killing a boss, you know, whatever.

Yeah, I think, I think from just a raw story point before we go at like I think we need to go back to making the lead story characters like feel super like important again and powerful.

Like I remember playing like these older expansions when I was super young though.

I was like probably a kid, but I remember it's like, Oh my God, Jana or Thrall, I'm like, all these guys are badasses or like.

We had the same.

Reactions, dude, we had the same reactions.

We we were a little bit older, but it was the same impact.

Yeah, I.

Guess you're right now.

Now I see thrall are Dana, I'm just like OK, I guess like or CAD I'll.

Use it again.

Oh yeah, yeah.

You don't like the you.

You don't like CAD guard just hanging out in the wheelchair all expansion?

Dude, what are we doing?

I was young in that special and hoping to be Thrall when I grew up and now Thrall is like hoping to be me when he grows up.

It's like we got to go back to making these story characters feel like absolute bad asses.

Like I think that would be cool, but go ahead.

Bro, I'm sorry to interrupt.

No, you guys, you guys are phenomenal.

Great, great show today, Great, great guests today.

Go around the table one time real quick and let people know where they can find you and why they should watch you right now.

Which not that you guys need introduction or any help in that regard, but sell yourselves.

Tell people what's going on.

Hello everybody, Marcel Dion.

I'm Flame.

Make sure to check us out on youtube.com/marceline Online Name pending changing.

Notwithstanding, there's not TV slash Marceline in flame.

See you there.

I mean, you watch us because you love us.

That's it.

We don't need any other reason.

Come on.

That's crazy.

Yeah, my name is Sky.

But you know, the brand name is the Comeback Kids.

We do YouTube content guides on all things World of Warcraft.

We also have a second channel, the Comeback Kids TV, where we use short form contents and just more casual laid back stuff.

So if you guys are interested, check us out.

And yeah, there you go.

Man and also make sure to drop a Buffalo like sub on on brutal static kills who makes.

It cool.

Thanks man, I appreciate it.

I try not to shine too much of A light because it's on, you know, we're doing this on my channel, so I really don't like the you follow me.

Kind of a thing.

But subscribe while YouTube people the hips that like comment help the algorithm gods pump it up.

Come on, boy.

You guys are too kind, too kind.

Listen, anyone who's been watching or listening, if you have anything in relation to what we've been talking about, please leave it in the comments below.

Share the video like they just said you guys are fantastic give yourselves a round of applause absolutely great job today episode 12 that's a that's a rapid episode 12.

You guys can get out of here.

My name is brutal.

Make sure like they've been saying, follow these guys, subscribe to these guys listen, midnight's a month away, man, I, I'm, I am I'm genuinely more excited now than I was two hours ago after talking to you guys so.

Great job, I was hoping.

'Cause I I got a little bit more depressed.

All right, guys.

I'll see you later.

You guys have a great day.

Thank you guys for watching my name is brutal.

That's Marcellian in flame.

That's sky from the comeback kids.

We'll see you next time.

And there you have it, episode 12 in the books.

Again, what a phenomenal, fantastic conversation with these guys.

Please go follow them on Twitch, go sub to them on YouTube, just go interact with them though the fact that people continue to sit down and they devote their time to these conversations, it means the world to me.

So please do me a favor and of course them by extension and go hang out with them next week.

We have Whisper a Wowhead rogue guide rider, phenomenal player.

We have Obli DK dude, phenomenal player and we have Shaw, extraordinary tank.

We are going to have a great episode next week talking to those guys.

That'll be of course after the pre patch event goes live.

A lot to discuss with three new people, 3 new perspectives.

I'm excited for it.

My name is brutal.

You can follow me here on Twitch on you.

You can follow me over on twitch.

I should say because you're probably watching this on YouTube, obviously.

So follow me on twitch, submit me here on YouTube, hang out.

I would love your company.

I would love to know what you thought about this episode.

Like I've been saying and asking a few different times, I'm going to get out of here.

I'll see you next time.

See you for episode 13 next week.

Bye.