Up next in 10
This week patch 11.2 finally released, and we have the rundown of all the features for you, including the new World Boss, which was up this week -- surprise! We have a lot of opinions on the new Delve and dungeon and raid their collective lack of smooth Goblin jazz. We especially have thoughts on the new Cooldown Manager, which is slightly less "as seen on Temu." Plus, as the servers came up, some people got to see the perks for the different pre-orders for Midnight, some of which include Player Housing access, and some really cool items that Liz plans on using to showcase her mood.
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0:00
[Music]
0:10
Hello and welcome to the Blizzard Watch podcast. I'm Matt. I have three magnificent co-hosts with me. We have guest co-host Phil Urick. I see Eric,
0:17
but is it? Hi, Phil. Hello. Also with me Liz Harper and Joe Perez.
0:24
Hi. Hello. And now patch 11.2 2 went live today as we are recording. Uh who wants to talk
0:31
about it first? I mean there's just so much that is that is the problem. This is
0:36
it's 11.2. This is a major patch. It is packed with content. I remember last
0:41
week uh last week we were talking and Matt slipped and said a new WoW expansion coming out. And it's it's not
0:47
a new WoW expansion, but it is a whole lot of content. It's so much. Like I I I honestly feel like a little
0:55
bit like it is. It's an almost like an expansion at this point. Some of the major patches are like mini expansions
1:01
within an expansion. Yeah, they're I mean to be fair. I wouldn't be mad if
1:06
that's the way that these start start going and we start like I' I've talked about this for years where I think if
1:12
they were to fall into a cadence of releasing meteor updates and doing like an expansion and I'm air quoting this
1:18
which you can't see at home uh for s for major system changes but instead just
1:25
continue to release big content patches like this instead I think it would work
1:30
a lot better at least in my opinion. I mean, it's the same thing that a lot of other games do that are in the
1:37
competitor space for WoW, and it works well for them. And WoW, I mean, honestly, they probably could get away
1:43
with doing it a lot easier than those other companies. So, I I guess let's just start going through the checklist
1:49
because there's a lot here. So, first of all, we've got a new zone, right? We're going to the shattered world of Caresh.
1:54
Um, yeah. So, we get we get to hook up with the uh the brokers and we wind up making
2:00
our way over there. I'm not going to spoil all the stuff that you get there with because it's literally day one. Go
2:07
watch the videos or experience it yourself. And we'll talk about it in more detail next week. But you get there
2:13
and the whole purpose of you trying to get there is to do two things. One, you want to beat up uh whatever you want to
2:18
stop the the appearance of the void lord Dementius because apparently we can't kill him. Uh or at least we didn't
2:24
really do a good job of it the first time. So there we go. Uh, and then the
2:30
other thing is to stop the phase thief Azir who stole the dark heart in the
2:35
last content. Uh, so yeah, there's a whole lot of rolling around that. The
2:40
fact is we get a huge new zone with a huge new uh staging city because again
2:46
our base of operations now is going to be Tazesh the veiled market instead of just sitting in Dornagal which is
2:54
usually a good indicator of the size of an expansion or in this case a content
2:59
update and likely why Matt kept going it's an expansion because whenever you get a new staging city it feels like an
3:05
expansion. I mean objectively it's expanded the thing. I mean, you can't really argue
3:11
technically technically correct the best kind of correct. Yes, that's true. That's true.
3:17
But I mean, there's also like in addition to that and there's a ton more content. We're getting a new raid next
3:22
week, I think. Or is it already? Next week. It's uh it always at least
3:27
recently they've been raid a week after the patch launches. The new seasonal start and the raid launches and the new
3:34
mythic plus rotation launches. And uh this tier again they're launching
3:41
normal heroic mythic and the first wing of LFR all on the same day and then
3:47
following out with subsequent wings of LFR one week after that and one week after that. So there are three LFR
3:53
wings. They are rolling out week at a time but pretty fast. So pretty much everything will be
3:59
available next week except for the last two wings of LFR which will be available by the third week which makes sense. I am pretty sure that
4:06
is correct. I believe that is correct. And I believe that makes perfect sense because this is an eight boss uh raid where I'm sure the
4:14
first two wings will be three bosses each and the last one will be two bosses which seems to be a good even split for
4:19
how this go. Yeah. I mean that's how the last few have worked, right? Mhm. Mhm. Yep. So, uh in addition to all that, however,
4:27
um we've got the new trading post. This is technically not really the patch.
4:32
It's just August, but you know, we can mention it. Um, it's the chess one. I'm honestly
4:40
I'm not real big on the chess one, but you know, hey, any new transmog is always good in my opinion.
4:45
Yes, I think a lot of people are not big on this. You have chest pieces for heads
4:51
and shoulders, which are it it feels like a little over the top, but then
4:56
again, World of Warcraft is kind of known for like comically ridiculous shoulders on characters.
5:03
I don't know what you're talking about. Ow, my It's really the weird helmets more than anything. Like, these have some bizarre
5:09
helmets. It's like It's like if the gists from the gist from Rattle Lich King could wear a plate is what it
5:15
reminds me of. Uh, I I kind of feel like the helmets do feel a little bit brokery.
5:23
You know, you could kind of get that broker look because you basically you kind of have a glowing ten can on your
5:28
head. So, I could I could maybe you could make some kind of broker cosplay
5:34
look with them, but I I'm I'm just a little
5:41
But yeah, I'm never going to say no to transmog. It is available right now through the end of the month and with a
5:47
bunch of chess themed outfits because why not? Why not?
5:53
I mean, there's there's actually some of this stuff's really cool. Um, there's an axe called the Grandmaster's Royal Axe
5:58
and I think I've seen this model before. Uh, but it's got a cool like three axe blades thing happening. Um, so instead
6:05
of having just the two that come off the either the side, it's more like it's like a kind of flanged mace type deal.
6:11
Um, and it's it's it's pretty it's pretty wild looking.
6:16
There are some neat looks. And uh there is a a mount with a with chest pieces on
6:22
it with a couple of rooks on it, which is again, it's weird. I don't know if it's my vibe exactly, but that is your
6:29
bonus reward for the month. Yep. Uh, and there's a fishing murloc pet.
6:34
Uh, yeah. So, Wargle War the Wargly the apprehensive, I think it's called. As usual, there's a
6:41
ton of stuff. There are options. There are pets, there are mounts, there's transmug, and including chess board. If
6:47
you want to wear a chessboard, this is your chance. Your time has come.
6:53
It It feels like a side, you know, a side piece to a lot of the There's a lot of stuff in this patch.
6:59
I mean, you just today you can get your uh you can get your fancy new cloak and
7:04
unlock a whole new feature, face diving, which is fun. Well, you also need to get your cloak, too. And we and I I I think this is a
7:12
good time. We we should circle back like transmog and the trading post is important and I encourage people to look that up, but we barely scratched the
7:18
surface of what's available today. So, Phil, please. Yeah. So, uh first three chapters of the Caresh campaign, which
7:25
is very cool. Has a lot of faces you probably haven't seen in a while. Uh fan favorites from the Shadowlands. Venari
7:31
is back. Why is that? You'll find out. Uh you get your cloak. You can unlock
7:36
stuff to do with your cloak. There's new mounts you can get this week. There's a new renown to grind. Tazesh itself. I
7:44
want to spend some time on Tazesh. Jo Joe Jo. He knows how much I like the etherealss, I think. Oh yeah.
7:49
Holy crap. I love Tazesh. I don't know if people poked around this dungeon when it was in Shadowlands. It was
7:56
essentially a fully implemented city in the Shadowlands. Like you could go into the bankers and the first building
8:02
you're in where you're fighting the first boss. There's bankers. I think there was a working house in there.
8:07
Functional bankers in a functional auction house. Yeah. Vendors in there for in the dungeon for no reason. And it's just
8:12
like, wow, this is suspiciously built out for a dungeon. Well, it's back. Um, it's especially cool if you ran the
8:19
dungeon because when you enter it, you enter from where you ended the Tazesh dungeon. Like, you enter from the portal
8:25
where you fought. And so, you get to actually explore the city and see how the brokers live. And there's just lot I
8:33
want to shout out one side quest in particular because this also brings another new thing this patch brought which is the banks have all changed. Um
8:41
log in and check yeah PSA if you're listening to this live. Log in and check your banks. Make sure you didn't lose any. But also look for a bank look for
8:48
an ethereal in the uh uh no a broker in the in area because there's an inch
8:55
character reason why we don't have void storage anymore. And the gist of it is we didn't read the paperwork very closely.
9:02
There's there's a lot to love here. I I do want to say like I think one of the cool things about Taz being back is
9:08
I think this is uh if I remember correctly and I might be remembering wrong, but I I think I remember during
9:14
one of the uh pre-shadowlands interviews that they talked about Tazesh being
9:20
essentially a fully functioning city, like it being a new base of operations before we got stuck with Orbus. And I
9:29
obviously that changed at some point, but like Phil mentioned like seeing all that when you were doing the raid or the
9:35
dungeon and then realizing that they didn't really maybe have to do so much
9:40
to just make it an outdoor instance essentially for us to have a full functioning city is really cool. It's
9:48
one of those things we talk about where it's not often that developers get to go back and revisit a an idea that had to
9:55
get dropped for whatever reason, whether it was uh time constraints or budget constraints or personnel constraints,
10:02
and then get to fully realize something that they didn't get to before. And I think that's really neat. And again,
10:08
it's one of those things where I encourage everybody, go spend some time digging through Tazesh. I think you're
10:14
going to be very pleasantly surprised with how uh alive it feels.
10:20
Yeah. And uh also fair warning though, there are at least three portals in the city that will take you into an instance. If you see a loading screen,
10:26
um walk back out. Uh the old dungeon of Tazesh, which is coming back for mythic
10:31
plus season, is available from one of the docks outside the city. Uh as is the new dungeon of EcoDomalt, Ecodome
10:37
Aldani. And also our mysterious new delve nemesis makes their home inside Tazesh. So you won't have to go far to
10:44
wipe to them 100 times this time at question mark question mark difficulty like I did. That is so convenient.
10:50
As long as it's better than the underpin man. That's all I ask. Well, since you mentioned Venari, we didn't mention one of the things that
10:57
Venari brings back uh is called the ecological succession, which actually isn't bringing back. It's new. Uh but
11:03
it's essentially Venari is involved in trying to rebuild Kesh. She wants to re
11:09
restore um its original biomes as much as as it's possible to do. If you
11:15
remember what the Atherealss were doing with with like weird domes back in Burning Crusade,
11:20
they were indeed ego domes back then. Also, these are it's the same kind of thing. Uh and it's I I don't know how to
11:28
explain this. It's like it's kind of like you get to do weird
11:33
you get uh you get weekly quests. Yeah, you get weekly quests where you go and you fetch wildlife from various places
11:39
and bring it back to Kesh and in doing so help kind of restore life to this completely blown up wasteland of a
11:45
world. Um, you'll actually run into it fairly early in the story. You'll get introduced to the concept of eco.
11:51
Unfortunately, succession isn't available until next week. Uh, there was some you get that up and it'll be here next
11:57
week. So, yeah. Yeah, there was some conflicting info about this on Blizzard's uh page where one page said it was available in
12:04
week one, another said it wasn't available until after week four, chapter four of the campaign, which is next
12:09
week. Uh turns out the second the second one was correct. Yeah. Um I actually saw the second part
12:16
before I saw the first part. So, and honestly, that's probably fine because we have enough to do as soon as you log in today.
12:21
Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot. There's too much to do. But this it does seem like this is a whole quest area
12:30
designed around kidnapping adorable animals and bringing them to a ruined and destroyed world.
12:36
That feels like that's what we're doing. What they were doing in BC, too. I mean, they had crocalisks in a dome in
12:41
Nethertorm. Listen, we all play Pokémon. We are all guilty of this. This is just this is
12:47
just a natural this is just the natural evolution of that. Thank you very much. Not wrong. I I will say, however, too,
12:52
um that there's of course there's mounts with the raid, right? I'm not going to talk about them too much, but I have to
12:58
say the model for this particular mount, um I don't even know what you call this.
13:06
Uh let's fly. Yeah. Yeah. It's
13:12
the weird giant. Yeah, they're weird. I like it. I mean, I like it a lot
13:17
actually because it's like, you know, look at me riding my Lovecrafty and Nightmare Mount. Um, but it is definitely a Lovecraftian nightmare
13:23
mount. Like it's it's like if you took a spider and then you got really really creative with it and I don't think that
13:29
was necessary. I think spiders had pretty much done it. You you need to get worse. This is like a Dark Souls boss
13:34
that you ride. Um I Yeah. Yeah. Blizzard kind of has a a thing with doing that with making
13:39
horrible horrible terrifying uh raid mounts. Of course, ecological succession
13:45
has its mount, which is a perfectly normal, a slate back, which I think I
13:51
think these guys are new, but they're hoo they've got hoofs, they've got horns, they have a spiky tail. All good.
13:57
Yeah, they're like big cool caresy rams. There's a couple others you can get. There's one at uh there's one you can
14:03
get with the Caresh trust rendown who is kind of like cares version of Babe the big blue ox. Babe the big blue alien ox.
14:12
Yeah. And there's the two mythic mounts. Uh there's the unbound and the unbound heroes titles you can get. And they get
14:18
a mount called the scar the void flyer. Yeah, void flyers. There's a horrible prank mantis thing.
14:26
Just a whole lot of new rewards to earn both from your single player activities like ecological succession and like
14:33
earning your taz the new tazes renown which cares trust. Is that correct?
14:39
That's correct. So, caress trust, you've got a lot of stuff to do here.
14:44
And yeah, some of it's locked behind raid content or mythic plus, but some of it is just for anyone. You know, you'll
14:51
earn crashes trust reputation just by doing the quests, doing your world quest, doing whatever is out there in
14:59
Kesh for you to do. You'll start working on that and be able to earn cool new rewards.
15:04
Joe, Phil, you guys run mythic mythic plus dungeons a lot, right? Yeah, pretty frequently we do
15:10
dungeon pool. Yeah. Um, so some of it is it's like
15:15
every it's like every time there it's a some of them are good, some of them are bad. The wash is generally positive, but
15:20
uh the uh so let's see first the new ones. We've got Eco Alani, which is a
15:25
brand new uh brand new dungeon this patch. Uh technically canonically set
15:31
after you complete the raid, but having gone through it, nothing in it really spoils the contents of the raid. So,
15:37
it's not a big deal that it's out early. Uh, that one is cool. A lot of fun enemies we haven't seen in a while. Kind
15:42
of brings back the devourers. If you remember those weird dudes from outside space and time from Shadowlands who were just consuming energy,
15:49
that thing that Matt and I scream about regularly on lore watch. Yeah. Uh, some of them got brought in
15:54
with Tazh when it uh teleported to our uh planes. So, now they're here. Cool.
16:00
Um, this is totally fine. This is perfectly normal. Tazes brought to you by Whan Utani.
16:06
Yeah, since Tazesh is back as a city, we also got both halves of Tazesh the veiled market as a uh as mythic plus
16:14
dungeons. Um side note, you can also do if you zone into the mythic zero, which
16:19
you won't be able to do until next week, it is automatically the hard mode from Shadowlands and it's it gives you the
16:25
equivalent of a plus 10 dungeon uh essentially and is designed for item
16:30
levels we haven't even seen yet. So that's fun. Um, we've also got what else
16:36
coming back? Halls of Atonement. Did I say the right one from Shadow Halls of Atonement? Yep.
16:41
Yeah, I I can always I always get that and Sanguin Halls mixed up, but Sanguin is the one I don't like. Uh, Halls of
16:47
Atonement is kind of cool. It's It's uh It's going to suck if you can't dispel curses is what I'll say. Um, but it's
16:55
interesting, especially for people who like to make Mythic Plus dungeon routes. um a lot of kind of choice of where you
17:02
go in the first half before it funnels you into a straight line at the end. Um they did make one of the bosses absurdly
17:07
harder for no reason. Not sure what that was about. Um we unfortunately have a couple returning dungeons from season
17:12
one that I or from earlier that I was not happy to see. Ara City of Echo got voted back into the pool on the strength
17:18
of one trinket. Um could have lived without ever seeing that dungeon again, but it's back. I will second that sentiment.
17:25
Yeah, on the flip side and and the Dawn Breaker's back. Dawn Breaker's okay. Um,
17:30
fine. Dumbber's fine. Yeah, if they they seem to have, from what I've seen, I was watching people test and they seem to
17:35
have fixed some of the bugs with the boats that you could just fall through at the beginning of the dungeon, which is good. And they nerfed some of the
17:43
some of the worst trash in the So, good job, Blizzard. Um, we also have
17:48
returning from the last patch, uh, Priy of the Sacred Flame, which has seen some
17:54
significant changes that may completely change how the first half of that dungeon gets run. Uh, and um, uh,
18:01
Operation Floodgate, which was brand new in patch 111. And honestly, I really enjoy Operation Floodgate. It's a very
18:07
fun dungeon. I do, too. I I would agree with you. I think it's one of the best dungeons that they've created in recent memory.
18:12
Yes. And, uh, they also cleared up again a couple of the big pain points in there, like there was an especially hard
18:18
trash mob near the end called Bubbles. Um, the third boss now when he emerges
18:24
from the muck, he's a giant muck elemental. He emerges with bubbles in his hand and throws him onto the ground
18:29
where he dies. Rest in peace, Bubbles. Um, let's see. Paul's tas
18:37
mention secret flame already. Um, yeah, prior to sacred flame them
18:42
all. I don't know. Why don't I just look at the dungeon journal? I'm in I'm looking at it right now. You gota the dawn breaker
18:49
all Yeah, you got them all. I think what's I think what's throwing me off is Tavish is two dungeons one. Yeah, it's it's it's the usual mega
18:55
dungeon double wings thing. Yeah, I'd say all in all a fairly positive set. A lot of people are not going to be happy to see Halls of Atom
19:01
or Ara. Uh Priary can be rough sometimes, but it'll be interesting to see it now that they've kind of changed
19:07
how you run the first half of it. So, uh some of the old trash is gone, some of the new trash is whatever. Um yeah,
19:15
successful dungeon pool. Looking forward to running it next week when it opens up. Uh you can run them in Mythic Zero
19:20
this week to get gear that is um the equivalent of the best stuff you could craft in the last patch. So pretty good
19:27
stuff if you want to poke your nose into dungeons this week and do a little early gearing. Yeah, that's talked about one of the
19:32
delves, right? Um you didn't talk about We didn't talk about the new one.
19:38
Yeah, Archival Assault. Our brand new delve back in the Azure vault. back in the Azure vaults in the Dragon Isles.
19:44
So, uh, apparently the Athereals once again exercising their grudge against the Blue Dragons to uh to raid a to raid
19:52
the uh blue dragon's stuff for cool magic stuff. Uh, we have to go back there and I guess protect it. And this
19:59
one is neat because it interacts with your cloak. Uh, the Rashi wraps will allow you to see different phases, uh,
20:05
find different secret rooms. And apparently like I don't know how this is going to work, but in the one of the
20:10
previews where they mentioned that you could like see like ghosts of your friends also running it at a different
20:16
time or watch them die if they are bad at delves I guess. Um so I don't know how that's going to
20:22
work, but that's going to be kind of cool to see. Uh Tazesh also as a point of convenience has portals to the
20:28
bountiful delves each day. So if you like doing delves, um you might want to set your hearth to Tazh cuz it's just
20:34
around the corner from the uh Hearthstone point there. Yeah. Oh, and there's Oh, go ahead, Liz.
20:40
One thing that I think is interesting and uh maybe some of you will have your own thoughts is the new tier sets, which
20:47
are uh last tier we had tier sets and the set bonuses were based on your class
20:53
role. You just kind of had this is this is the set bonus. This set bonus for healers, DPS, etc. And now each tier
21:01
bonus is unique for each spec, which I think we this is a big shift from how
21:08
we've just done it. Yeah, it's based on your hero talents. So like if you're playing No, yes, I'm
21:13
Yeah. So like Liz is playing Windalker Monk um and is technically going to have the choice of two whether she is playing
21:19
Celestial Conduit, Shadow Pen. Uh yes, I I am playing Celestial Conduit, which
21:24
means my uh my set bonus is completely dependent on me taking a certain talent,
21:31
which I currently do not have. So, we're going to have to I guess I got to change that.
21:37
Time to investigate Shadow Pan. Take it from me. That one is almost completely passive.
21:42
It is almost completely passive, but there's so much cool glowy stuff to click here, Phil. It's great. It's I
21:51
will say I when I read that they were doing this uh my first thought was why didn't they do this in 11.0 because like
21:58
as big a feature as hero talents were this really seems like the kind of thing that they probably should have done
22:03
right off the bat in this expansion. I really I'm glad they got around to it.
22:09
I am so excited for the these set bonuses as a restoration shaman. It's
22:14
not funny. I haven't been this excited in multiple expansions. Like, it has
22:20
been literal years since I've been like, "This feels right." And whoever made the
22:26
whoever designed this for Tote Toemic, God bless you. I want to buy you a cookie cuz this is this is this is
22:33
exactly what I've been looking for for literal expansions, like years at this
22:40
point. Oh, the Totemic Designer has a new fan. Good job. Yes. Seriously. Yeah. I I I enjoy I like I like both of
22:48
the ones for Brew Master as well, which I'm looking forward to playing around. Also, I do like the fact that my tier
22:53
set looks like I belong in like a uh a manga. Like I'm I'm a okay with that.
22:59
The shaman sets have just gotten progressively more like that every every patch so far. A a okay with that. Aokay. Yeah, these
23:06
uh these are also I think across the board with the exception of sorry warriors um with the exception of the
23:12
warrior set these are also pretty strong and depending on your um your appeal for
23:18
chain mail ponytails you might like the warrior set too appearances no the warrior set is is hoting swollen garbage
23:25
you heard it from Matt he's got like 40 warriors on his account yeah I'm looking at it right now and thinking to myself why why did you do
23:32
this why does he look like that is the most Warhammer set of armor I have ever seen. It really is.
23:37
It doesn't look cool like a Warhammer set. Warhammer set. This is like dangerous and violent.
23:43
No, this is this is 1990s chaos fantasy warrior armor. Like straight up,
23:49
dude. This looks like something you'd get at a Spencer's Gifts or crystal. You know, you go to a
23:55
crystal shop and they just give you this hunk of crystal. It would look like this armor. Uh it looks like a geode to have
24:01
gone wrong. Um, anyway, I do want to mention something that that
24:06
I like. Uh, who is Renor the Untethered? First off, because his name is Rashinor
24:11
the Untethered. I mean, come on. Secondly, because it's a void dragon. Yeah.
24:17
Uh, and it's it's a crazy looking model with like missing teeth and it's just
24:22
it's very dragony, but at the same time, it's very not doing well dragony. Um, so
24:27
yeah, I I I I'm I'm always down for a nice world boss. uh you know, good
24:33
chance to get a little bit better loot that week. And also, he's just cool looking. He's a big purple dragon. Wants
24:39
to kill everybody. Uh I I support this in my my world bosses. Um yeah, he's got
24:46
a lot of mechanics, but but yeah, well, we always do. Yeah, we always do.
24:51
He's a world boss. His primary mechanic is that he's going to drop you to 10 FPS while you fight him.
24:57
Well, that's that's been every world boss. Yeah. Uh he is available right now
25:03
immediately. Uh drops champion level gear. The problem is he has the same gimmick as the underpin where you're
25:08
going to get a completely random piece of warb band armor. Yep. Whether you can use it or not.
25:13
That is how they they changed world bosses to be that way in 11.1 where
25:19
they're just dropping warbound gear which is great if you're gearing up alts, not great if you're trying to gear
25:27
up a main. So it kind of does make them less good and bad something but you know
25:33
the good and bad. Fair. Do we want to talk about the cool down manager next?
25:39
I think we need to talk about the cool down manager. Let's talk real fast about what happened with the cooldown manager because the
25:45
cool down manager originally started off as 11 like five thing. No, it was part of 11. It was part of it
25:51
was part of 11 11.15 115. Yeah. Sorry. because of the time gating
25:57
when that patch went live. It was one of the only things in it at launch as Liz kept reminding me when I kept saying there's nothing to do when this patch
26:04
drops cool down managers in there which I mean yeah that's not
26:09
you got content at home there was something there was you don't need weak or we have weak or
26:16
at home the weak or we had this uh this no I the
26:23
problem with cooldown manager at launch was it was like weak auras if you could
26:28
not customize weak orasuras in any way. Yeah, weak oras from sheen.com. We
26:33
understand these teamu weak orasuras. Yeah, exactly. So, it was just uh it would let you
26:41
track cooldowns and it's just let's track every cool down. They're all right
26:47
here in whatever order we decided to put them in. Possibly the order in which you
26:52
acquired them while leveling, which Okay. Okay. That's That's one way to do
26:58
it. Fine. And you could not do it. You could not change the ones you saw.
27:03
You could not rearrange them. You could not prioritize them. You could not resize them.
27:09
Yes, I know. I can use shield wall now. I don't need to use it now. And it's like if you have a cooldown
27:15
manager like this, why not just use an action bar with buttons on it, you know? Which is actually that is actually what
27:22
I do with alts that I don't play a lot. I'll just put my cooldowns on. and I just have an extra action bar kind of in
27:27
the center of my screen and my cool downs are there and they light up when they're available. It's pretty great and very straightforward and also more
27:34
customizable than the cooldown manager itself. Uh but now we're getting in the future
27:41
undetermined date and time. We are getting a new improved cooldown manager which may be in fact usable as a
27:47
cooldown manager. If you want that kind of thing, then fine, I suppose, but
27:55
first off, it it let you, as as Liz basically kind of pointed out by talking about how you couldn't customize the
28:00
original one. This one is going to have more customization options. We don't know all of them, but we know that
28:06
that's what they're trying to do, to let you organize the information you want to see. Um, as opposed to having every
28:13
cooldown you have just randomly telling you that they're up. Um, which again is
28:18
like, you know, again, I know that shield wall is currently available. I I don't need it now. Tell me, you know,
28:25
let let's tell me when it's ready. Let me let me I'll handle that one. Please let do other things. Um, whatever you
28:32
want to do. Uh, they're going to try and help people track. And also, they're
28:37
they're adding in the tracking buffs. Uh, that's actually huge for that's huge for that is that is enormous for so many
28:44
classes. the ability to track buffs and also debuffs which uh I discovered.
28:51
Yeah, which I discovered it could not do in the base version. And there are so many classes that rely on having debuffs
28:56
up or rely on tracking their own buffs. This is it couldn't do either one. God
29:01
bless. The base UE is just terrible at surfacing that kind of information. It's like, okay, are we going to watch for a
29:07
tiny icon over a over a target? You know, it's just to track these things
29:14
which are really essential for certain classes and specs, you needed weak orasuras or something of that ilk to
29:23
just to be able to do basic gameplay because some gameplay is very heavily based on the debuffs you apply and
29:29
interacting with those and reapplying them at certain ways at certain times. Yeah. And I think uh I was going to say
29:35
one of the things that I know um I was looking forward to before they gave us the talent that made
29:40
uh Earth Shield forever uh was tracking Earth Shield uh buffs on whoever I cast
29:46
it on and knowing when it fell off to try to maximize the the the uptime of it. Um, and now that means that if this
29:54
new cooldown tracker allows me to do that in such a manner that is easier to
30:00
figure out than than weak auras, cuz man, I can program, but I couldn't
30:05
figure out that how to get weak oras to do exactly that. And it was very frustrating. If you can do that, that
30:11
means it might free me up to pick other talents. And I'm very excited. Get a talent point back. Yeah. Yeah. Because when you have to take a
30:17
talent to keep something working like that, then now it's like I only have
30:23
this talent because I have to have this talent. It's not it's not a it's not a choice. It's not a choice. It's not a choice.
30:29
So, it's also it's also interesting to me because they're surfacing information that is not immediately obvious to
30:36
players. The one that I want to call out in particular is there is so you have the ability they're adding the ability
30:41
along with tracking debuffs as let's say a bar uh tracking them on an icon. So like you might track the duration of a
30:50
uh a disease uh that you can apply on the you know the icon of the button that
30:55
applies it. That's cool. It's finally going to have a different appearance when you are in your pandemic window
31:01
which is uh below that last 30%. if you reapply it, you won't lose any potency because it just adds, you know, adds the
31:08
uh uh adds adds the ticks onto the new one. Um, this is information that almost
31:13
every dotbased class needs to know and there is no indication in the base UI that it even exists for most classes.
31:20
Uh, mostly mostly even known about as a mechanic because warlocks used to have to talent into it in affliction. Um, and
31:27
it explained how it worked. that talent is gone and a lot of classes with dots rely on it to work effectively. Um, not
31:34
visible in the interface until this, which is cool because the cool down manager will finally show you, hey,
31:40
you're below 30%. You're, you know, at or below 30% of the max duration is dot. Reapply it safely. Now, that's cool.
31:46
That's something that helps just like the stuff they did with the one button assistant. The stuff they did with the one that, you know, um, I forget the
31:52
other one. It shows you the highlight the, uh, the highlighting thing that shows you the next optimal button to hit. Um, like this is just another way
32:00
to uh make that skill floor more accessible for everybody. Um, and then
32:06
on the accessibility front, they are also adding the ability to set custom skill or custom sound alerts when things
32:11
come off cool down. Oh yes, I I rely on a lot with withas because I
32:17
can react to sounds faster than I can necessarily to an icon appear. Yeah, same. I do the same thing. Like I'm I'm much more of an audio
32:23
player, which is why I know I get a lot of flack for this. I play with the sound off most of the time um in game sound
32:30
because I need to listen for cues because that's how I just tell we just we just tell Joe to turn the music on if something's really
32:36
good. Yeah. Well, I mean for all of under mine I definitely left it on you know. Oh yeah. Unfortunately, we
32:41
have left behind uh the sounds of smooth goblin jazz for uh strings and ominous chanting again. But on the other hand,
32:48
that also sounds really good. We got a preview of the Demensius music a few weeks ago and uh it's got at least five
32:54
movements which is ridiculous. Also, we should probably mention really fast, I think Liz, you were just kind of
33:00
talking about this. I want to make sure it gets referenced fully. Uh you will now be able to take skills or talents
33:08
that you don't unlearn spells that you don't have for whatever reason and you can put them in the setups and tell it
33:14
tell me about this even though I'm not using it. Or you can tell it, don't tell me this. I'm not I don't have soul
33:21
reaper talented, which is the example here. So don't tell me about it cuz I don't have it.
33:27
Yeah. But if I do have it, you do tell it's there. You don't have it. Yeah. Yeah. And that's that's a big deal
33:33
having it not, you know, not waste your time if you don't have it. But absolutely do tell me about it if I did
33:40
talent into it. Uh that's that's actually really great. That's one of the better things here in my opinion because
33:46
it it gives you more flexibility on your you know when you are if you are respspecing between fights you don't
33:53
want to have to also redo this thing every time you you know you're going through it seems like
33:59
sorry go ahead that was something that was relatively easy to do in a weak ora you could set up a weakaura for a certain talent or
34:06
spec and say only pop this up if I am in this talents so yeah you kind of need
34:12
that if you want to be something that's going to help people do things that people with weak or can do without
34:19
having to download additional add-ons. If this works as well as I hope it does,
34:25
I want to make sure that like I call them out and say good job because it means that they went back and went and
34:31
did the care and TLC that is necessary for a feature like this. uh and you know
34:38
listened to feedback because I think one thing players do a lot is and I've heard
34:45
this complaint with all the stuff that they've been putting into the game like oh they just want to kill external add-ons and Blizzard has made no qualms
34:51
about killing external add-ons before Phil and I have both both experienced this in real time uh for multiple things
34:59
but instead like there is a lot of effort that goes into taking something that is seen as an external like so So
35:06
many people rely on this and whenever we do an update it breaks and we see players complain about it or we see
35:12
players not able to play the game until it's fixed and take that in-house and make it not only usable but broadly
35:19
usable right like I talked about weak oras sometimes being a bear and I'm again I'm
35:25
a person who knows how to program like I know multiple programming languages and I still struggle with certain weak ora
35:30
like effects and things and making something that is much more accessible means that people who have less
35:37
knowledge than I do will have an easier time using it, which is fantastic. Yeah. The problem with uh the problem
35:43
with weoras really emphasizes uh that sometimes engineers shouldn't make things because we only make things that
35:48
are for other engineers. Um this like their the interface that they've showed
35:53
off for just even just for deciding, you know, what you want to see in your main cool down bar versus your utility bar
36:00
versus don't show me this at all cuz I don't care. like looks like it's had some actual thought and care put into it
36:06
and that is really exciting. I I was very excited for the first edition of
36:12
it. Um you know and I thought maybe you know I could dump some of my weak oras quickly found it wasn't even usable for
36:19
some of the most uh for some of the simplest specs out. Um, so the fact that
36:24
they're going back and doing not just like a little refresh, but like this is almost like the first one was early
36:30
access and then this is the fun. Yeah, this is such a huge overhaul. Yeah, I'm very excited for what they're
36:35
doing here. And um like I'm looking at it going I could drop n I could drop
36:40
fully 90% of my week or if I if I had this in the state that they showed in the preview article and it works like I
36:46
think it will. I'm not exaggerating. So and I and I can't excited about that. I cannot overstate how how doing stuff
36:52
like this for things that are just ubiquitous as far as add-ons or add-ons that people use and putting it into the
36:58
base game not only reduces and add-ons don't generally take up a whole lot of
37:03
of bandwidth or memory. Not all of them, some of them do, but taking that off of
37:08
that that need to have you updated or having to wait for an update in order to use something cuz I mean how many times
37:14
have we had a patch and then like how many of our our guild members are just like I can't play this game. I have to
37:20
wait a week, right? And take that away and then now you're reducing that
37:25
barrier for people, too. So, like I'm I'm really excited for this. I really
37:30
am. Yeah. Um I think we've probably covered the cool down major enough at this point. Um I don't do Do we How much
37:38
we we should How much do we say about uh people seeing the details for the midnight pre-order? People say people
37:43
are seeing the details but not what they are. I think this is massive news and we need to talk about it.
37:49
Okay. Uh do you mind talking about it then Liz? Uh well yes. Uh in the latest patch we
37:57
Wowhead has pulled some data out that includes purchase information for
38:02
pre-orders for uh midnight. And uh some
38:08
people may not be entirely happy. All pre-orders will include early access to player housing. So,
38:16
we're not making my money. He's already throwing dollar bills at his screen like, why isn't it working?
38:25
Where is my player housing? Um, so the base version is going to cost $50 US. It
38:32
includes a copy of The War Within. So, even if you've been out of the game for a while, you want to get into this
38:38
exciting void expansion thing happening, uh you can jump into War Within
38:43
immediately. It'll include a copy of Midnight. It includes a level 80 character boost with enhanced gear,
38:50
reputation progress, and more. 500 trader 500 traders tender and housing
38:57
early access. So we I mean again we are just uh we just have these purchase
39:04
information data mind uh so we don't have perfect details about what any of
39:10
this means. Uh heroic edition $70 includes war within midnight character boost a thousand trader tender housing
39:17
early access and a transmog set and skywriting mount the light strider
39:22
reignment transmog set and lightwing dragonhawk skyriting mount. We're this
39:29
was not data mine. Some people were actually able to see this in the client in the You see this in the client? Yeah, it was during a long visible.
39:37
Yeah, it was it was visible in the shop. And so, okay. Wowhead was able to confirm
39:43
both of these and see it themselves. But there is the epic edition which they have not personally confirmed but is a
39:51
$90 purchase. Includes the war within midnight level 80 character boost 2,000 trader tender. I hope that's a good
39:58
trader trading post month housing early access. The light strider reignment trading uh transmog set the lightwing
40:05
dragon hawk sky ring mount. Also the void strider reignment transmog set which I don't I have no idea what this
40:11
is but it sounds really cool. Voidwing dragonhawk mount. Void light serger skyriting mount. Hope flutter pet. Doom
40:20
feathers pet. That all kind of there's a theme there. Uh, beta access to midnight
40:27
and Oh, wow. They're making they're making buying something tied into a beta again. Yeah, I mean I
40:33
at least it is the game that the beta is for. Shout out to the time I bought Diablo II to get into the Mist of Panderia beta,
40:39
right? Yep. At least this time I'd be buying World of Warcraft to get into the World of
40:44
Warcraft beta. You know, I personally don't think beta access is that crucial. Like, you can
40:50
read about what's going on. and you don't necessarily have to commit the time to playing yourself if you don't want to. But the next thing on this list
40:58
I do think is important which is 3 days early access to the Midnight expansion which we first saw in the War Within.
41:04
And the thing after that is even more important quite frankly. The thing Okay, but I'm going to talk
41:10
about this one first. I'm gonna talk about this one which um is so you can
41:15
jump in a little early and get a head start on the game. you can start your leveling early. But I also think that
41:23
some people really felt left out by this because, okay, it's 3 days before the
41:28
expansion launched and all of your friends are jumping into the game and playing and talking about all the cool stuff they're doing and you're just
41:34
sitting there waiting. You're 3 days behind everyone else. So,
41:41
it's it's kind of it's exclusionary. It is exclusionary. It does not give anyone any extras, or
41:49
at least it didn't in the war within. I don't expect it will now. You know, it's going to let you start questing earlier.
41:55
You weren't going to have early access to like your mythic pluses. Again, I am assuming this, but this is how it worked
42:00
in the War Within. You did not have a head start on loot other than just the normal stuff you can get while questing
42:07
and doing just sort of your everyday content. You weren't getting a jump start on the Great Vault. you're not
42:14
none of that. You just have 3 days to get started on leveling and so on and so
42:20
forth. But I I do think there were players who felt really left out that their friends were playing and talking
42:26
about all this cool stuff and they were still having to wait because they didn't have $90. That is that's a price point
42:31
that's up there. I mean, last week we were just talking about Microsoft trying to push higher price point games, which
42:39
uh $80, $80 for The Outer Worlds 2 and some other games, which they dropped
42:45
back down because that wasn't was not working out.
42:50
Uh, but now we have a $90 purchase, which will include this early access and all of these little bonuses. I have to
42:57
say, I'm very tempted. I'm very tempted. But the most tempting part is the thing
43:03
I have left for last, which is the midnight housing bundle. Again, we have
43:09
no details on this. This was just seen in the store. uh midnight housing bundle
43:16
which includes a light infused rotunda, a light gazebo, a void corrupted
43:22
rotunda, a void gazebo, a light infused fountain, a void corrupted fountain, an
43:28
yria portrait, a terion portrait, an aerator portrait, I'm seeing a theme here, and the theme is book tie-ins, and
43:36
a Zalatath portrait, all of which are listed as decor. Um,
43:41
glad to see they're finally acknowledging that Zalat and Yria are are in a family together.
43:48
Nice. Yep. There is some energy there. There is more there's there's more romantic tension
43:55
between them than there is between Ayaria and Terellion. But that's that's just my opinion from watching the actual
44:02
cinematics in the game. I have eyes, people. I have eyes. That's all I can say. Plus to be fair, have you seen
44:08
Terellion and Valyrian together much in all this experience? Yeah, they're very tight.
44:14
Kind of hard to have romantic, you know, the only time you're together is when you go crazy and she tries to stop you.
44:20
Um, but you know, uh, so yes. So, the most expensive
44:26
pre-order bundle does look like it contains some player housing things, and we don't know what any of these look
44:32
like, but they sound really cool because I definitely want a light infused gazebo
44:39
out in front of my house. Yeah, just a few. Of course, you're going to want a gazebo. I mean, come on.
44:44
And here, I can have a light gazebo or a void gazebo, or I can change it out depending on how I'm feeling that day.
44:52
Some days you just want to Yeah. Some night maybe some days you want to burn it all down. Maybe you put out your void corrupted gazebo. Some
44:59
days you're feeling more generous. You put out your light your light infused gazebo and you can then, you know, fix it. You
45:06
can then mix and match with the fountains. So you could have your void gazebo but a light mountain. Or you could have the void gazebo and the void
45:12
fountain. Or you could have the light and light. You know, you can do what you want. And you can walk into my house. It'll literally just be a chair and a portrait
45:18
of Zealot. Yeah. I mean, let's be honest. Let's be honest. All we're going to be doing when we get into the beta for this is
45:25
figuring out what our player housing is going to be. Yep. I'm going to spend those three days of early access dealing with housing.
45:30
Yep. Yep. Oh, we should probably one last thing is the 30 days of game time. Oh, yeah. That's actually kind of huge.
45:35
Uh I did. So, so of course the heroic version is $70. The epic version is $90,
45:44
but uh $15 of difference there is 30 days of game time. So, you're paying $5 extra dollars. If you were already
45:50
getting the heroic version, which has all these extras, the epic version isn't that much more considering that you were
45:57
getting 30 days of game time, which is worth about 15 bucks. So, plus the tax,
46:03
you know, nec region is this is not confirmed, but after the patch rolled out, this was showing up in
46:09
the store for some people. I also personally feel like this being seen in
46:14
the game, this popping up at all, us having this conversation, means we're going to get a midnight release date and
46:20
pre-orders extremely soon. That has to be right around the corner. And uh we do
46:25
know they're having a big midnight reveal at Gamescom on uh in later this month. That's runs
46:33
from the 20th to the 24th. And I'm I'm I'm feeling like we're going
46:38
to be getting our midnight pre-orders right there along with any other juicy
46:44
details they want to give us. I would guess some kind of cinematic maybe some stuff
46:50
play with. Probably housing. It's not very exciting. It's worth thinking about the fact that well by the time the
46:56
Gamescom rolls around, pretty much all the content for this patch will be um maybe you'll have LFR
47:02
to go, but otherwise everything will be in game and accessible by then, which is a good time to start hyping
47:08
people up for the next thing, the next big thing. Um, so yes,
47:14
specifically the Gamescom announcement, we're going to be looking for opening
47:20
night live, which uh in North America is August 19th. Let's see. Do I have a Do
47:25
we have a time for this? I should have been more prepared. That's how I always feel about podcasts. I should have been
47:32
more prepared. Um, unfortunately, I don't know about Gamescom until it's right up on me most
47:37
of the time. Uh but so August 19th after opening like live we will be seeing more
47:45
details on midnight and I I think this strongly suggests that pre-orders pricing all of those details. What does
47:53
a light infused gazebo look like? What does a void corrupted gazebo look like? Because now I really want to know. I had
47:59
not thought about this before I saw this but now I want to know. I you must tell
48:04
me probably probably later this month. So anyway, yes, be be aware that Liz is
48:11
gonna put up a evil gazebo or a good gazebo depending on our movie. It just depends on the day.
48:17
We should also mention the uh Shade for Brew Thief uh panda pet, which is a purple panda pet. Uh you try saying that
48:24
five times fast. Yeah, I know. Um now through September 2nd, uh so if
48:31
you want to get yourself a purple panda pet, uh and I don't know why you wouldn't, but hey, you know, you be you.
48:36
Maybe you just don't like pandas. I can't tell you what to do. Uh but regardless, yeah, they're available. I think they're I think they're a little
48:43
off-putting. I don't know. They're little kind of panda raccoon things that walk on two legs and they I think their
48:51
eyes are a little angry. I think they have angry eyes. See,
48:56
he looks like Beware. If you if you know the Pokemon Beware, he looks like Beware.
49:01
He does look a little like a Beware. And as you know, Beware kills trainers. Oh, that's awesome. Described, I think it's Sun and Moon
49:08
where they have the text that he's crushed his train. He's crushed many Pokemon trainers to death with his
49:14
mighty hugs. So, this pet might kill you, but if he does, it's in my opinion,
49:20
it's very cute. It's got a neck chief. It's killing. So, he's like a skittermander.
49:25
That's okay. That was That was I didn't talk about starf.
49:30
I know. I know. This is a This is a little I'm I'm roaming away because I am very excited to play another
49:36
Skittermander when we play Starfinder uh later this year, which you can listen to on Tavern Watch when we get around to
49:43
it. We haven't recorded it yet in the future because we got so many great games to play. Okay. Uh going to really fast mention
49:49
that in WoW Classic, Mogos Vault is open. I believe it's open right now. Uh
49:55
both normal and heroic. Mythic would be next week then cuz it's that's we're doing it the old way.
50:00
I don't know. Um I don't know if there is a mythic because mythic Yeah, I don't know if there in that tier.
50:05
I don't know to be honest. Did mythic start in Siege of Orbar? Was
50:12
that I think so. Yeah, actually I remember because they changed it. They changed the difficulties in myth in Siege. Yeah,
50:19
they because originally it didn't have mythic and then they put mythic in.
50:24
Yeah. Uh but yeah, that's happening. And we've got the Hearthstone Battlegrounds. Uh
50:30
the seasons is released now, right? It's this week. Yes, it is. It is live right now.
50:35
Battlegrounds season 11 with uh exciting. I'm very excited. Haven't
50:41
gotten a chance to play around with it much. We are getting quests back in Battlegrounds. Anomalies are gone.
50:46
Quests are back. So, you can at the beginning of every match, you choose a quest to play. And by completing that
50:53
quest, by doing things like play eight of this kind of minion or play 10
50:58
battlecries, something like that, you will get a really powerful bonus effect that'll shape how you continue to play.
51:05
So, that's going to be cool. But, we've lost anomalies and trinkets, which were the way the game kind of shook itself up
51:12
previous uh last season. So, I am excited. As always, we also get a new uh
51:20
battle pass, which is always always fun. This is kind of a dinosaur themed. So,
51:28
there is a uh a paleontologist, Professor Putride, which I the only way
51:35
you can tell he is a paleontologist is that a there are some dinosaur jaws
51:41
coming in from out of frame to devour him. So, there are some neat skins, but
51:47
I feel so bad for that dinosaur. The guy's name is Putri. This is not going to be good. Don't don't devour this guy. It's a bad
51:54
idea. But the Hearthstone is also doing something that I am not a fan of in the
52:00
battle pass this season, which is about half of the things on the battle pass do
52:08
not have any information. It just has a a icon with a question mark and it says
52:13
unlocks October 2025. You can't even see what is happening there. And I find that
52:20
when you are buying a battle pass potentially now to collect all these rewards and you just look at the battle
52:26
pass and it's like the last half of them are just question mark. It's it's
52:33
something it's something that you will get maybe in the future and you don't know if it's cool.
52:39
You don't know if you hate it. You don't you don't know. So that's that's disappointing. I wish they could just
52:45
just just tell me tell me what you're going to reward me because I can't get excited over the rewards. I can't decide
52:50
whether I want to buy this battle pass without when I'm looking at this and half of it is a question mark. So I'm a
52:57
little I'm a little less thrilled about that. But here we are. This is the life. This is the world we live in. We must
53:03
accept it as it is. Take a deep breath. It's fine. It's fine. I just I'm not
53:09
buying this right now. Cut to dog sitting in burning room. Um
53:14
uh but yeah, Liz, at this point, I'm going to ask you to do our site news so that we can possibly catch some great
53:19
game news after that. You're going to ask me to talk even more after I talked so much.
53:26
Yep. I When do I have a chance to get a drink of water, Matt? When am I? If you want, I can I can do it. I just
53:32
figured it's your thing and I don't want to steal it from you. But hey, I'm
53:38
I want to remind all of you out there listening at home that Blizzard Watch is made possible by listeners like you. It
53:45
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Watch, about video game lore and sometimes other lore. This week uh this week we have some Jurassic Park
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listening helps it out so much. Thank you all for being here and I appreciate you.
56:04
Thank you, Liz. Uh, I think we still have like about 10 minutes cuz we started fairly late. Yeah, let's um go for it. So, we'll we'll try for this um game
56:12
news thing. First up is that as Liz mentioned, Starfinder uh the game is actually out. Starfinder 2 is out. We'll
56:18
be playing it later this year. Um, it's also got a video game adaptation coming out. Uh, it's a CRPG um, called Star
56:27
Starfinder Afterlife. I I went and looked it up on Steam and I looked at their website. Uh, the company is not
56:33
one I know. Um, and I don't it's it is pretty obviously a company made of
56:39
people who who left other companies and it's an interesting company. It's called um, Epic Tellers Entertainment. Um, feel
56:47
free to go look at them. Uh, I did, like I said, there's they don't have if they've never done anything else. This is their first game. Um, they're talking
56:54
about it like it's going to be kind of like a mix of XCOM and Balders's Gate. Like, obviously, it won't be as big as
57:01
B. Like, let's just be up front. Nothing impossible. It would be.
57:06
Yeah, but they're talking about up to six playable up to six companions that you can recruit and, you know, branching
57:13
storylines uh and tactical role playing combat. We'll find out what that means
57:18
when it's actually here. But I still think it's interesting because Starfinder didn't get any games for it
57:24
1E. Um Pathfinder got two pretty big ones. Um Pathfinder 2E has got two games
57:31
currently in development, one of which is going to be out relatively soon. Um, I believe that's the dragon's demand.
57:37
Um, but yeah, this would be the first Starfinder game and since start it's it's using the 2E rules and the
57:44
Starfinder 2E rules are a pretty significant improvement over the 1E rules. Uh, I've been reading it and I can just
57:50
say that much. I'm not going to try and give you spoilers or nothing, but regardless, I'm pretty interested in the fact that this is happening. So, uh, you
57:57
were saying something and, uh, Starfinder is basically based on the Pathfinder rules now, correct?
58:03
Absolutely. It's almost exactly the same. If you So, if you played Pathfinder, Wrath of the Righteous or games like
58:08
that, do you think you'll find this uh Starfinder game familiar? Maybe. Uh not as much because it's based on the
58:14
2E uh this is the rules. Um but I will say this, Starfinder, just from reading the book
58:21
has streamlined explaining how the movection stuff works. There's the three
58:27
actions economy. I think for people who played Pathfinder games before like Wrath of the Righteous, this is a lot
58:33
simpler of a system. It's it's as much as people might say, well, saying it's a
58:39
simpler system than original Pathfinder isn't saying much. Uh, it is simpler. I
58:44
think this will be easier for people to break to come in and play because the biggest problem with with Wrath of the Righteous or Kingmaker was that they
58:51
were not new player friendly. Mhm. Uh, and they Liz was talking about how
58:56
Balders's gate can be pretty complex, but it starts off pretty simple because it's 5e and you're you're first level.
59:03
So, you just, you know, you do the things you do to get a a first level 5e character. Um, Wrath of the Righteous has so many
59:10
choices. So many choices right away. So, so many of them. It It gets to the point
59:15
where a new player is like, "Please help me. Please write a guide." Pathfinder Pathfinder can be very
59:21
overwhelming. Yeah. So, that game's coming out. I'm interested. I like the the the stuff I
59:28
like the most about Starfinder is actually the way it's kind of it's kind of like a complete alternate version of
59:34
how to do a space fantasy game, whereas, you know, D&D has has uh Spell Jammer,
59:42
but Spell Jammer completely ditches technology for magic used to do stuff that would normally be science. Uh
59:49
whereas Starfinder is like what if um Shadowrun but it's in space and has
59:56
everything we have like everything in our previous rule book is in this too. Uh do you have the beastiary? Feel free
1:00:02
to use anything in it. Uh just call it an alien. Just say it's an alien now or don't. Um you can have them be space
1:00:10
orcs. That's fine. Uh, so yeah, there's there's a lot of that to this that is
1:00:15
it's feeling looking at what it's going to be like. If they hit it properly, this will feel really cool to play and
1:00:21
that's that's what I'm looking for. So, I'm pretty happy. Um, anybody else have anything to say before we move on to another thing here because we've got
1:00:27
time. All right. Uh, did you play Shredder's Revenge? I did and I'm very excited about this
1:00:32
particular piece of news. Yep. Yeah. Um, now that that that game came out and was surprisingly good, like it
1:00:39
it it managed to be a 90s retrospective game without feeling ripped off or short
1:00:46
or, you know, just a cheap nostalgia grime. It was actually a good game. Well, it wasn't a it wasn't done in the
1:00:52
'9s style. It was done with modern sensibilities. Yeah, but it looks it it visually it
1:00:58
looks 90s, but at the same time, it's much better. Uh I just I really liked uh Shredders Revenge and now they've
1:01:06
basically Marvel said hey we like to throw money at games unlike say DC that
1:01:12
cancels Wonder Woman. Uh, so how about we give you a bunch of money and you make a game? And they have made this
1:01:18
game and this game is called Cosmic Invasion and it is practically like it's
1:01:24
kind of like it's it's it's not really like any other game I've seen while it still kind of feels like them. If you
1:01:30
remember the old Capcom Marvel game, the the one with like Iron Man, Captain
1:01:36
America, and they were fighting Magneto at one point. Um, it's like that one. It
1:01:42
it's just it's really fun, but it doesn't it's just I I don't know how to explain it other than saying it looks
1:01:47
really cool and fun. Uh Joe, do you have anything you you can think to say that's more coherent? Several. Uh so modern art style still
1:01:54
doing a pixel like not necessarily a pixel art. It's not 16 bit or 8 bit. It is modern art done with that style.
1:02:01
It just it looks a little edged to it. Yeah, it's made in the same style as a lot of
1:02:06
the comic books. A lot of the backgrounds are are will be very familiar to you if you've ever read a Marvel comic. Uh the interesting thing
1:02:12
about it though is it is more focusing on uh heroes that have experienced
1:02:19
cosmic space travel or multi-dimensional uh combat. So there are 15 heroes that
1:02:25
are going to be right off the bat. Uh, and you're going to be fighting across not just New York City, but other zone
1:02:32
like areas and and dimensions like uh the negative zone, uh, different space
1:02:37
bases. Look like you're going to be on Mars at some point, which is where one of the settlements of like the X-Men in
1:02:42
the comics are. Uh, and it definitely heralds back to a lot of the the '90s aesthetics as far as like the costumes
1:02:49
go. It has the She-Hulk costume from the the '9s. It has the uh Captain Marvel
1:02:55
costume from the '9s. Uh, it is the brown costume for Wolverine. Uh, you get
1:03:00
to play as Venom and Spider-Man, but instead of Thor, and I thought this was really, really fun and interesting and
1:03:06
immediately made this a I will purchase this on day one game for me. Uh, is the fact that you can play as Beta Ray Bill.
1:03:13
Uh yeah, I was gonna say somebody who has not gotten a whole lot of love in a lot of
1:03:18
uh recent adaptations of stuff and also the Silver Surfer which they are literally the poster children for this
1:03:25
which looks like Annihilus is going to be one of the main villains if you were to believe the art.
1:03:30
However, you me you didn't mention the one character that had me super excited besides Filel, you know, yay to file.
1:03:37
Um, but Nova, Richard Ryder, who was the, if you read the Marvel Invasion comic from a few
1:03:44
years back, Annihilus came in and invaded and Nova was the guy that stopped him. And they're bringing both
1:03:51
Annihilus and Nova back. I'm not sure how close to the storyline that's going to be. Probably not close at all, but
1:03:57
I'm still excited to see Richard Ryder Nova come back because they have done
1:04:02
nothing with this guy. And they really should have by now cuz they've stolen
1:04:08
half his stuff. Guardians of the Galaxy was all stuff stolen from the Nova comic. Nowhere that that was a Nova
1:04:16
thing. Xandar, that was a Nova thing. Um it it got to the point where I was like,
1:04:22
my god, they everything except Ron and Day. Ronin Day is in this, but no Nova.
1:04:28
It was just it's it it Nova's cool. He should have been in that movie. Um but
1:04:34
yeah, so Cosmic Invasion looks really fun. Looks like it's light-hearted and
1:04:39
doesn't take itself too seriously. And you know, it does have characters that don't get a lot of love like Better Bill
1:04:45
and uh Silver Surfer. The Silver Surfer, man. Like why why is the Silver Surfer
1:04:51
not been in more games? I I don't understand this. Uh but yeah, also there's a simulator. There's a superhero
1:04:57
simulator game, but it's basically just a sandbox where you get to pretend to be like a superhero. It's kind of like if you took game, you know, uh City of
1:05:02
Heroes. It's Ghost Simulator, but a superhero. Yeah, pretty much. Uh I I think it looks
1:05:08
fun, but I'd really much rather get City Heroes back, quite frankly. There's also Ship of Heroes, which is kind of City
1:05:13
Heroes, but yeah. No, if you want to find that, go ahead. Um but I think yeah, we're pretty much we've run up on
1:05:19
time at this point. So, um, yeah, thank you guys so much for being here. Thank you to Phil for being here because that
1:05:26
meant we, you know, each of us could talk less. Although, we made Liz talk a lot. And I'm sorry about that, Liz.
1:05:32
As we all know, Liz does not enjoy talking and really doesn't like really doesn't talk. She's so quiet.
1:05:38
Well, sometimes Joe and I kind of like run over people, so quite frankly that Liz got to talk this week. Uh, but also
1:05:46
thank you to Joe. Um, because he was here to talk about Cosmic Invasion, which meant that I had someone else to
1:05:52
talk about with it because I'm so excited about that one. Uh, yeah. And thank you everyone out there listening
1:05:57
to us do this this show. It's because of you we can do it. Uh, thank you guys so much for being here and we'll be back
1:06:03
next week. [Music]
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