Up next in 10
Liz had the good fortune to make her way into the Midnight alpha, so this week's episode is a round of Ask A Beta Tester. Liz regaled us with discussion on the various housing plots available, some of how the talent changes and stat squish feels, plus what it looks like in a post-add on WoW (we're assuming more Friz Quadrata than we've opted for on the live servers).
Also, you can feel the warmth in the room when they talk about how Valorstones are getting the axe. Bye, Felicia, literally nobody liked you.
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Show More Show Less View Video Transcript
0:00
[Music]
0:10
Hello everybody. Midnight Alpha is here. It's Listen Podcast and we're going to talk about it because there's so much to talk about and Liz is in the alpha. So,
0:17
we basically get to just ask her questions and make her answer them. I'm super excited. I'm Matt. I'm the host.
0:23
We got Joe, Liz, and Corey. Let's talk about the Midnight Alpha. Liz, tell me
0:29
things. tell me about them. They're not doing support specs because I didn't understand why aren't they doing more support specs.
0:35
Um, so yeah, last week we the alpha launched and we also had a Q&A with the
0:40
developers and of course since all of this there's also been a lot of other interviews coming out. So we're getting
0:46
lots of little peace meal information of all sorts. But in the Q&A someone asked about support specs because we have
0:52
augmentation evoker right now and I think augmentation evokers are very
0:57
cool. They aren't perfect, but I think it's super neat and I would like to see other support specs. But uh what Ian has
1:03
a Costa said was that they are not planning any new support specs, at least
1:09
not right now. But they do plan to keep iterating on augmentation. So all is not
1:14
lost. They are not just going to turn augmentation into another DPS spec, even though it does feel like they've been
1:21
designing it more into um focusing more on its own damage dealing, but uh
1:30
augmentation isn't dead. Yeah, but we aren't going to get any more support specs anytime soon. So, that's kind of a
1:37
bummer. I'm still still waiting for my paladin support spec. I'm holding out hope. I want it. I feel like that you
1:45
could basically have rogues get a support spec that was basically just bards. Like you get a rogue, rogue picks
1:50
up a guitar and suddenly they're they're a support spec. I I I don't know why I have I I feel this very strongly that in
1:57
WoW, you know, a sports spec could just literally just be a rogue with a guitar. Um I think it's because of Dark Sun and
2:04
how bards were basically just murderous assassins in that they they weren't really they didn't do a lot of music.
2:11
They just did a lot of killing people. Dark S. That was their art form. Um, but
2:17
yeah. Okay. I want to mention this tier set thing cuz this is cool. Um, if you collect a tier set, like say you get the
2:23
normal rating difficulty tier set for a set, you get the appearance of that spec
2:30
set and the sets below it. So, you'd also get the raidfinder one. Uh, am I correct on this? This is what we're
2:36
looking at for transform. This Yes, this is correct. Um there has been a lot of uh back and forth on this
2:43
because initially this the plan here was that Blizzard was going to simplify the
2:51
upgrade system where you did not at least that was part of it where you did
2:56
not have to get multiple kinds of crests to upgrade your gear because that's kind
3:02
of an annoying pain point on it. Uh, I myself have collected enough crest to upgrade max out my weapon, but I don't
3:08
have enough valor stones right now, which we'll we'll loop back to that in a minute. Um, but they were changing.
3:16
Yeah, there they were changing it. You only need one kind of crest to do all of the
3:23
upgrades of this gear level. And when and alongside that when you collected an
3:30
item from one set, you would get so if I get the if I was collected the heroic set, I would get the appearances of the
3:36
normal set and the raidfinder set. But along with the change to upgrade and currently you can upgrade items and when
3:44
you switch crest when you switch to the next level of crests and this is far too
3:50
confusing then you also get the appearance of the next level up. So I could be doing LFR and I upgrade my
3:57
items and get the normal appearance so on and so forth. And they were going to take that away so you couldn't upgrade
4:02
your way into higher level appearances. Uh yeah, players didn't love that
4:08
and players did revolt. I meanh, yeah, it would have been a shame. So, they're now I believe the solution they've
4:15
currently landed on is that if you reach the maximum upgrade on your current tier, you'll get the next higher one, I
4:23
think. But that's that's in development. But you are definitely 100% going to get the lower levels when you collect your
4:30
current levels. Oh, it's going to make it so much easier to collect transmog variants and different colors.
4:36
Yeah. I And one of the things I hated about like the originally starting in Legion really was when they had three
4:43
different sets with wildly variant colors like from one tier like your your
4:49
tier your tier 10 recolor. Then they had the tier 10 recolor with more stuff on it. Then they had the tier the tier 10
4:56
recolor with like now your face is a giant purple fist. And yeah, I I I don't
5:02
like it when they do that thing because I have to go get I have to run this thing three times just to get all the
5:09
different pieces and the different colors. So yeah, that's that's nice that they're going to at least do that. Speaking of
5:15
things, it's nice because I I hate them. Uh Valor Stones are gone and
5:20
uh no one's crying. No one is crying. This is like this has actually turned into people were like saying in the Q
5:26
comments. Uh one of the things I was getting a lot was so what's gonna happen to Valor Stones now? Like as a joke back
5:33
to the badges, you know, the uh badges of honor, badges of valor thing. And I was like, please don't make Valor
5:39
Stones a meme. Please just let them go. Let them go. Uh but so they're going to be gone like
5:47
as of midnight, right? Are they are they going to revamp? They're not revamping anything.
5:52
It's midnight. They're not. We've still got valor stones right now, which is why I am currently stuck on my upgrade track
5:58
because I need to go farm valor stones. And I boy, I don't feel like doing that.
6:03
But uh Yep. Yep. Valor stones. So
6:08
excited. I'm so glad that they're not going to have valor stones. I mean, they'll they'll come up with some new way to make it complicated and annoying. I think I think crests are crests are
6:15
fine, right? Like any the problem anyone who played was getting valor
6:20
stones out the wazoo but that meant that like when it was time for your alt you weren't getting the same amount or you
6:25
didn't have the but you could also run out on your main too right like depend on what you were doing like there there have been several points on my main where I've had to go
6:33
farm valor stones to raise gear so like and then I I I've had the crests I have
6:39
tons of crests and I never thought I'd actually be out of Valor stones like I'd say maybe in previous expansions like I
6:46
I mean, Valor Stones and Dragonflight seem like they were just kind of falling off trees, but this one, I don't know.
6:51
Like, now we just I'm not getting them as much. So, for this good riddens,
6:57
keep keep the keep the crest like having the crest and then be necessary to to upgrade it is fine. Having to need two
7:04
currencies to upgrade your gear. No, no, that's that's never been fun. So, yeah, I think it's a great change.
7:10
And, uh, starting in midnight, so we we still have to deal with Valor Stones right now. end. Uh, since patch 11.25
7:19
went live today with turbo boost, not all of the turbo boost features are here yet, but some of them are, including
7:26
getting two more levels of upgrade on all of your gear. And so that's that's where I got stuck cuz I need more valor
7:34
stones. Ah, I'm going to stop talking about this. Let's move on.
7:39
The idea of that I just I do want to say that I think the idea of crests is good enough. um having to have a secondary.
7:46
It just it's just too much. It's too many moving parts for me. Uh but let's talk about the Arcantina because this is
7:53
basically like it it kind of brings the old uh you know, you all met in a tavern aspect of D and D and puts it in wow to
8:00
a degree. Um I guess this is at the end of the Artor quest line. Um, yeah. So, this was actually kind of the only brand
8:09
new thing that came out of the midnight deep dive last week, which I do want to
8:14
say it was very overviewy. It was a long video with voiceovers. Uh, this thing
8:20
would have knocked it out of the park if it had aired during Gamescom. This is
8:26
what we all wanted during Gamescom with some really clear, specific information about what was going on all in one
8:32
place. And this was a great video for that. But happening now, it feels like,
8:38
okay, this is really pretty overview video that said a lot of things we already knew. But the Arantina was
8:45
indeed new. It's at the, as you say, it's at the end of the Aerator quest line, which you can do uh immediately in
8:52
midnight as soon as you as soon as you get started. Um, it's it's just it's
8:58
kind of it's the tavern where you meet all of the NPCs and some of them may
9:03
have chores for you because that's how video games work. Yeah, I I notic that that's that's a
9:09
lot. The World of Warcraft system is a lot of, "Hey, it's a famous guy who wants me to mow his lawn cuz he's got
9:14
monsters in it." Like, what am I the am I your teenage friend? Like, what is going on? Why do you guys like I show up
9:22
to see you and immediately you're like, "Hey, I need 10 like I need 10 Zephr hubs." That's first off, we know zephrs
9:28
don't have hubs. So, you're lying to me, Kadgar. You're lying to me. Yeah, but it looks it looks interesting.
9:36
It's it's a little it's a little new feature. We'll see how big of a role it plays. It feels a little bit like they're trying to to take the idea of a
9:42
hub and make it like some place other than, you know, you you have to go to
9:47
like Deran and go to like the you know these these seven people. It's like you can keep going back to this one place to
9:53
get your treasure your adventuring tips which I think is kind of interesting. Uh and of course it's a bar so yay at least
10:01
it's a bar and not you know yet another really glowing purple thing. Why what is this giant purple thing we're inside
10:07
now? Oh, this is a pocket of pure dimensional magic. Anyway, here are your choice. Um, okay. Uh, we're going to
10:14
ignore this thing about player housing. We're going to No, I'm kidding. Liz Liz will literally bury me. She'll hide my
10:20
corpse in the dunes. Liz, tell us about player housing because you've got a whole thing here about it. Early access is December 2nd.
10:27
Uh, yeah. So, it everyone who's pre-ordered Midnight will be able to go in and start working on their player
10:33
houses starting on December 2nd, which is that's a lot sooner than I expected.
10:38
Uh, but there we are. You'll be able to work on your house over the holiday season and uh maybe elaborately
10:46
exquisitly decorate it. I hope you will be elaborately decorating your house. Um, no, it's just the idea of player
10:54
housing. I love it. Uh, we all know that transmog is the true endgame for World
10:59
of Warcraft. And this is transmog for houses. It's your housemog.
11:05
Housemog. Well, yeah. Let's break this down for a sec. First talk is about how you buy the house. Let's go into that.
11:11
Uh, so yeah, you jump right out of the gate. You can immediately get your house
11:17
in Midnight. It is really simple. Right now in the alpha it is a thousand gold,
11:22
but Blizzard is being super ky on what the final cost will be. Except they have promised, you know, you can level a new
11:29
character and leave exiles reach and buy your house, which sounds like it would have to be less than a,000 gold. But
11:35
anyway, anyway, they do say it's going to be accessible to everyone immediately. It's just a short quest
11:42
chain that sends you into your neighborhood. You There are two neighborhoods. There's Founders Point
11:47
for Alliance. There's Razer Wind Shores for Horde. You are sent to a neighborhood based on the faction of
11:53
your character you are currently playing, but your characters can go into either neighborhood. Your characters can
12:00
both go into your house and both hang out in either neighborhood, but you can
12:05
only buy a house in the neighborhood of which your current character is a faction member of. I think that makes
12:11
sense. So you can have you can have a horde one and an alliance one on on like your
12:16
different characters. Okay. All right. Yes. You can have it you can only have two houses. You can have one horde
12:21
house, one alliance house, but any of your characters can hang out in either house.
12:26
So you'll have one character that's the owner of your house and then all your shiftless friends hanging around your
12:33
house wrecking it up and they're your character. So you're doing this to yourself. Wow, that's actually kind of cool. Uh, you can you can you can RP
12:41
that if you want. I mean, you can go either way. You can say, "Okay, you know, okay, I bought this house with my
12:46
gnome, but actually my Vulpera is living here because she really likes this alliance neighborhood." Um,
12:52
the real world founders shore Founders Point in Founders Point.
12:59
Yes. Yes. Um, yeah. Talk about decorating. Come on. We got so much to talk about. Um, I I want
13:06
to talk about the neighborhoods first because the neighborhoods are amazing. There are 55 different plots in both
13:13
neighborhoods. There are so many houses, you guys. There's so many houses. 55 per neighborhood.
13:20
Per neighborhood. And uh the way that'll work if you're doing a public neighborhood, you know, once the
13:27
neighborhood starts filling up, it will automatically roll up a new neighborhood, a new public neighborhood.
13:32
So, you're never going to run out of plots. You're never going to run out of places to put your house. Um, so when
13:39
you first do the quest and go to your neighborhood, there is a portal to get to the neighborhoods from the portal room in Stormwind and Ormar. And once
13:46
you buy the house, there is a housing dashboard that has a button you can click that will send you straight to
13:51
your house. You just And if you're like, I'm an alliance character. I want to go to my horde house. There's a drop down
13:57
where you can say, I'm going to go to my hord house. Click the button there. just a it's so low hassle to go to your
14:03
neighborhood. So, do you walk around the neighborhood or is it just pick the place? I know you can walk all over the place.
14:10
The neighborhoods are so massive that they have flight points. That is how large these neighborhoods are. I Let's
14:17
see. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven flight points in the Alliance neighborhood. That's
14:22
Dang. That's points. Uh yeah, and I I usually you can also actually just fly you can fly your
14:28
Skyight if that's what you want to do. So, it feels a tiny bit unnecessary, but that does suggest the scale of the
14:35
thing. Uh, so yes, you can walk around the neighborhood and there are also in addition to player houses, there are
14:42
lots of public spaces where you could hang out or roleplay or have guild meetups or parties or whatever you want
14:48
to do in game. Uh, the Alliance neighborhood has a big lighthouse that
14:54
you can go into. There is like a beer garden area. There's a giant theater,
15:00
which a lot has been made of this theater because the theater has a stage with curtains and if you walk up to the
15:07
curtains, they move. It's amazing. Maybe I'm making too much of this, but it's
15:14
it's an interesting little detail. So, they're all they're taking away my talents to make space for this is what I'm hearing.
15:20
It's amazing, Joe. It's incredible. Your reader, Joe.
15:26
I I mean, for my part, if it cost me a raid tier, I wouldn't care. I'm going to spend so much time decorating my house.
15:32
So, there are all of these public spaces. There's a whole kind of town center that has vendors. None of them
15:39
work right now. None of them are selling anything, but I assume they will be actual real vendors. There's like an
15:44
open air market halfway through the town. There is a huge cemetery with a couple of houses in it because some
15:51
people that's just what that's the vibe some people want. And you have all of these areas that are kind of different.
15:57
You have lots of different public spaces. You can just walk around the neighborhood. Right now, there isn't any
16:03
exterior housing customization in the alpha, but there will be exterior housing customization eventually, so
16:10
you'll be able to wander around, check out your neighbors houses. You can set the privacy of your house to where uh I
16:17
don't want anyone to walk up to my house. And if that's the case and someone walks up to your house, they'll
16:23
just be teleported back to the edge of your property. So if you don't want people messing with your stuff or
16:28
walking in, you can say, "No, I don't I don't want to deal with this." But if you do, you can let people wander around
16:34
your house, wander around your garden. You can let people come into your house even without your permission. You can
16:40
set your permissions any way you want to allow access or not allow access. Actually, when I was playing on the
16:45
alpha this afternoon, someone sent me a whisper and said, "I've set up a parkour
16:52
course in my house. Would you like to come test it out?" So, there are all of these possibilities
16:59
of things you could do in your house, and it is incredible. the interior of
17:05
the house. Uh, I'm gonna say it's maybe a little rough in the alpha because I have broken my house into where it will
17:11
no longer let me add or remove things. Um, it's fine. It's an alpha. It's an
17:17
alpha. This this is the sort of stuff you're testing for. But there is tons of
17:22
different decor items. You can arrange them in any way you want. You can dye them. You can resize them. You can move
17:27
them in ways totally not intended. I made a stairwell with a garden in the
17:33
middle of it and a skylight that I made out of a window. So, it's just it's arrange things however you want. You can
17:40
add platforms and create your own jumping puzzles. Um, the house is very
17:45
accessible as far as cost and just being able to get it. It's really easy. I
17:51
think what is truly going to bankrupt me will be collecting furniture.
17:57
I just I think that's going to be well let's actually briefly let's mention the fact that you they're going to have a different system for
18:03
collecting multiples of decor depending on items. Uh some things you'll just be able to get a bunch of others you'll
18:10
have to do like you know kill bosses and so forth like they haven't really determined for
18:15
real quick before we move on to that uh inquiry of mine wants to know Liz did you even test the parkour? I did not go test the parkour. I'm
18:21
trying to get screenshots of every house in the neighborhood and if I let myself get distracted from that, I'm not going
18:27
to finish. You could have taken screenshots of the parkour. Yeah, that's true. I'm I'm up to about 150
18:34
neighborhood screenshots so far and uh it's this is so much.
18:40
What I'm hearing is that the only thing that stops Liz from basically designing the the you know the Winchester mystery house in her own house is the fact that
18:47
the laws of physics present. I want to um No, I think you could if you wanted to do the Winchester
18:53
Mr. I mean the literal house you live in, Liz. Oh. Oh, that you live in.
19:00
That's that's that's that is so much work. It is so much work to build a Winchester mystery house, but making an
19:06
in-game Winchester mystery house, I think that's totally on the cards. Uh
19:11
like the rooms in the house can are very large, but you can add walls to those rooms and add spaces. You could build
19:17
your own stairwells and that go nowhere. You can build it out inside however you
19:22
want. Limited only by your sanity and creativity. I just I I I I feel really bad that I
19:29
I'm just going to build like a man cave. I just want to be like there'll be a chair with some dirty clothes on it.
19:36
If that's what you want, that's what you can get. And if you want to do crazy stuff, you can do that, too. I mean,
19:42
this is if you don't want to engage in it, it's a really simple system. You just get a house and you're like, "Okay,
19:48
I want to put a chair here. I want to put Onexia's head here. We're gonna have a fireplace here. I'm done." You can do
19:54
that. Easy. Done. Well, if I'm going to have his head, I'm definitely going to put it above the fireplace. I mean, I'm not a
20:00
Right. Obviously, but Okay. So, we know that we know that we're going to have that starting place
20:07
getting to start around with it December 2nd. We don't get the full functionality though, right? Uh, no. One of the big things about
20:13
neighborhoods is endeavors. And uh endeavors are not going to be live. Endeavors are just events in the
20:19
neighborhood. They're kind of a neighborhood takeover. You may have uh different kinds of NPCs, different
20:25
factions that are going to come and hang out in your neighborhood and offer quests and offer different decor. I will
20:31
also say there is in the center of town, in the center of both neighborhoods, is an ethereal who gives a quest every day,
20:38
a daily quest that uh gives you a riddle that you must solve to find a piece of
20:45
decor in your neighborhood. So, every day this ethereal wanders around the
20:51
neighborhood and buries a chest with a decor item and comes up with a riddle for you about where to find it. That's
20:58
that's um this whole job. Totally normal. That happens in my neighborhood.
21:05
I I one of the problems I am having is I need some chairs. I really I really need
21:11
some chairs. It's because you do have to have if you want to have 10 chairs in
21:17
your house, you need to own 10 chairs. I do not own 10 chairs. So, uh I did find
21:23
he he buried a chair in the neighborhood for me the other day. So, I got got another chair. I still need more chairs
21:29
just like in real life. Um, yeah. I often often I find that I have to go out into the neighborhood and, you
21:34
know, dig up a chest with a chair in it or I can't have guests over. I It's just It's just what happens.
21:41
Um, and you That's the excuse I use anyway. Go on, Corey. It's my my big question is have you been
21:48
to the Argent Tournament yet? And does the Argent Tournament have decor now as
21:53
it? I have not I have not been to the Argent Tournament. I did visit the Quartermaster and Timber hold though and
22:00
they did not have any decor for me. I was very disappointed. I tricked all the way out there and they didn't even have
22:06
any cool Timberm stuff for me to buy. But uh I have not been everywhere
22:11
looking for decor and Legion. You know, some people I imagine are out testing in the alpha and like they're going to
22:18
Silver Moon and doing the new quests and checking out the new dungeons. And I'm like, but what if I went to the Broken
22:26
Isles and checked the reputation vendors? What if I go to Oraos and see
22:32
if there were any new crafting recipes? So, this is how I have been beta testing. There's got to be chairs at the Tuscar
22:38
thing, right, though? have that cuz the Tuscar thing they used to do with the like the big bake off or whatever it was called that felt a lot like the
22:45
Endeavor, right? Like the Endeavors feel like they're that like the descendant of that to Could be. There aren't there aren't
22:51
Endeavors in testing yet. So, we haven't seen them in person, but so so far no test chairs.
22:57
I haven't been there. There is so much world to go to. Um there are all
23:04
professions will have crafting recipes. They have at least two per expansion that I found so far on trainers.
23:12
Inscription has way more crafting recipes. Inscription has way more decor crafting recipes, like five or six or
23:19
seven per expansion. So, if you want to make furniture, inscription is the way
23:24
to go. Um, all of the crafting recipes require lumber. Even the ones that do
23:32
not seem like they would have lumber. There is a plushy that tailor can make
23:37
and it's like it requires an amount of lumber. Yeah. You know, it's made out of a block
23:43
of wood. They carve in the shape of the toy. Well, you know, you know, in all reality, I I've got a sty bear
23:49
uh that's got obvious wood supports inside it. I mean, that's not even a joke. So, what else do you stuff your plush with
23:55
except sawdust? Sawdust. Oh, maybe. Maybe. So, maybe that's Maybe that's just a Canadian thing. We
24:00
just like to stuff things with chopped up wood. You know, we're weird like beavers. beavers. Yeah.
24:06
So, so far crafting recipes appear like they take uh materials from that
24:12
expansion and they are not a small number of materials. Uh the material costs for all of these seem pretty
24:18
significant. And if you want more than one of a crafted recipe, like if I wanted to fill
24:24
my entire house with tailor made plushies, I am going to have to collect a lot of materials to send to my local
24:31
tailor to make me one of these. Um, and uh, buying decor from specific
24:38
vendors. I found most of the reputations in Legion have decor, at least a couple
24:45
of pieces. Uh, Suramar reputation had a whole bunch of pieces and uh, all of
24:52
them cost some amount of gold, which that's fine. Uh, but also war resources,
24:58
which I I have fewer of those than I might like to because there's that's
25:04
there's some nice Suramar themed bookcases and I have only been able to afford three of them. And this is going
25:11
to be this is going to be me from here on out. I'm like, okay, I want to line this whole room with bookcases. Could I
25:18
stack two bookcases on top of them to reach the ceiling? I bet I could if I bought more bookcases.
25:25
But that's uh yeah, I'm going to be insufferable about this. This all makes a lot of sense from a
25:31
gameplay perspoint of like how do we keep people engaged with the system? Oh, make grind out extra
25:37
instances of this uh stuff which I'm just imagining all the people in like you know various dungeons who are
25:43
dying and going why won't this person stop screaming about bookcases? Ah he's
25:48
murdering us for bookcases. We don't even have any bookcases. I need the resources for bookcases.
25:55
So, I I get this, but oh man, that doesn't feel great just hearing about it. Like, maybe once I have my hands on
26:02
it and it it feels a little better, but I just kind of wanted to be able to say, "Okay, I've unlocked a bookcase. Let me
26:07
drop 17 bookcases here and make a library." Yeah. Yeah. So, I wish I wish it was
26:14
more flexible about, "Okay, I've unlocked this piece. You just have these pieces." So, I was talking about
26:20
Enixia's head earlier. If you do the achievement to kill Enixia in 25 man,
26:26
then you get a copy of Enixia's head, but you only get one copy. Well, what if
26:31
I what if I've killed Enixia like a 100 times and I want a 100 Enixia's heads in
26:37
my house? You can do that because the goblin inkeeper in Mudprocket, I think
26:44
that's the name of the town, sells a perfect completely legitimate replica of
26:49
Anixia's head. It's totally it's definitely Inexia's head. The black dragon flight
26:56
and you can you can buy them uh if you have the achievement, you can buy other copies. So, if you wanted to line every
27:02
single wall of your house with Anixia's head, you could do that. You could do
27:07
that. I brought I brought Lady Katrina Fester home to my house for for a date and she
27:14
didn't like it. I don't know what the problem was. Um, yeah, things were very tiny wimy in
27:20
World of Warcraft. So, I have I have talked so much. Does anyone have any specific player housing
27:27
questions they have? You already said I was actually going to ask you about the dying. I have not been to the Archon
27:32
tournament. I'm sorry, Cy. I I was going to ask about the dying thing because you have dying furniture here. So, you can
27:37
change the color of your various furniture. You can change the color of everything and I think this may also turn out to be
27:44
very expensive depending on where Blizzard lands on this. Uh dyes are
27:50
crafted. There are tons of different dyes. There are tons of different colors. Most furniture items have a two
27:56
or even three colors you can change. So, if you have a chair, you could change the color of the cushion. Maybe change
28:01
the color of the back of the chair individually. Maybe change the color of the supports. And they can all be
28:07
different colors. They can be different types of wood. They can be like a neon green if that's what you want. So, all
28:12
sorts of colors. They're all crafted by either alchemists or inscriptionists, scribes, and um
28:20
this they are consumable items. So, if I want to if I have 10 chairs and I want
28:26
to dye all of the cushions white, then I have to acquire 10 white dyes from the
28:33
auction house because I am not I am not an alchemist or a scribe. So, uh right
28:39
now in the alpha and I think this will change. I am almost certain of it. Uh
28:44
all dyes only take vanilla level uh crafting materials to make. I'm I feel
28:50
like that's going to change, but that's how it is right now. And you don't need any specific skill in alchemy or
28:56
inscription to make them. You can just have the profession. You can go and make them. It's uh you make them at a special
29:02
die crafting station in your neighborhood. So, they are pretty easy to make, but they do all require
29:08
materials. My guess is that the materials are going to start to become harder to get, and they are all going to
29:13
cost you gold individually per Yeah. per every single thing you want to die,
29:20
which I I I feel like that could add up to a lot a lot of gold. Uh, one thing I
29:27
will say is that it is at least very easy to preview the die colors because in your house you can say, "Okay, I want
29:34
to dye this." And you can preview every color. Doesn't matter if you have it or not. You can look at every possible
29:39
color and then you can decide, "Okay, these are the dyes I need to buy to dye
29:45
these things." But I I think that's going to add up. I think all of the furniture I'm gonna want to buy, copies
29:51
of the furniture that I want and dying them different colors. It's This is
29:57
We've talked about how transmog is getting cheaper, but I think I feel like housing is actually going to be quite
30:03
expensive if you really want to invest in customizing it. It's going to take a lot of gold, probably a lot of expansion
30:11
specific resources, and just a lot of time to grind up reputations to collect
30:16
things that you may want. This is a system that is massive. It touches every
30:22
aspect of the game. I am like I am staggered by how significant this system is and how far it reaches into every
30:30
little part of the game. Uh, but if you want to make the perfect most beautiful,
30:35
most wonderful house, most weird house, it's it's going to take time. It's going
30:40
to take resources. And that is that is what I am worried about right now. You tried to get very experimental with
30:46
the housing that you have been doing. Have you tried to like make a skull throne out of skulls you have or you
30:51
just don't have the amount of skulls necessary? I I do not have any skulls yet, which is
30:57
really disappointing. That is very disappointing. I'm very sad for you. I I did transfer a character
31:03
over to the test servers, but it did not properly copy my achievements. So, it
31:09
says I've done achievements. Like, it says I've done the Enixia's head achievement, but I don't have Enixia's
31:15
head and I cannot buy a copy of Enixia's head. So, there's some wonkiness here.
31:21
Possibly Blizzard didn't intend to have character copies going yet, but the button was there. I did it. And it's the
31:29
alpha. It's the alpha. So, not everything is working perfectly. That's it's just where we are in life.
31:35
Okay. Um I I'm going to try to move us on because we do still have other things. Yeah, there's so much.
31:40
Yeah, I I do get that we could keep talking about housing for a while and I actually do have questions, but I do wanted to ask you about the stat squish
31:46
because you've written you wrote in your uh note for this that it is it is a very big stat squish.
31:53
It's it's there's a lot of squishing going on here. It's it's like you're you're it's it's after the holidays and
31:58
you're trying to get into your skinny clothes, but you've eaten a lot and it's just a very Tell us how this went. How
32:06
does it feel? Does it play normally? Like, do you still feel like the same power-wise? I still feel okay power-wise, but uh
32:15
there there's definitely some sticker shock to the way numbers have changed. Like right now in live, my monk has
32:22
88,000 agility, which is just okay. Okay, I have a lot of agility. In the
32:29
alpha, this same character in the same gear has 484
32:34
agility. That's a big change. So, yes, number go down. Number go down.
32:41
This is the third time we've done basically exactly this, right? Yeah. So, they usually What is it like three
32:47
season or three expansions? they're good for. And then squish. Well, I'm actually curious what happens
32:52
like I I know you won't probably won't know this yet, but what happens when they do a stat squish? One of the things
32:58
that happens is everything below the stat squish tends to be extremely homogenized. Like the difference between
33:03
a level 40 and a level 60 and a level whatever raid, there's no not a much difference until you get up to the
33:09
current content and then it starts graduating again. Uh
33:14
are they doing that again? Are they going to be doing taking steps to make sure you can still farm old stuff like they've done in the past. So,
33:22
do we know anything about that yet? You're particularly going to want because of housing, you're going to want
33:27
to go back and farm old stuff and collect new things that are in old stuff. And so, I have done a little old
33:34
raid soloing, just a tiny bit. And I did not have any problems, which I'm I'm very happy to report I was able to kill
33:41
Anixia. I still do not have an Anixia's head in alpha to hang over the
33:46
fireplace, but I gave it a try and I did not have I did not struggle killing her.
33:52
So, right now, current content does not feel harder. The level 80 stuff does not
33:57
feel harder. Going back and soloing things does not feel harder. But, I have not extensively gone and tried to solo
34:04
every old raid, though, you know, I I might I could do that. Uh, that's a
34:11
really good use of my time. Um, but it does feel okay to play. The
34:18
thing that feels not awesome is, you know, in midnight we're getting 10 more
34:23
talent points. So exciting. More talent points to spend. Okay, that sounds
34:30
great. But the current in uh implementation in alpha, if you go into
34:35
alpha, I'm playing a monk right now, so I can only speak to them. But what it is
34:42
like as this monk is that the higher levels of talents require more points to
34:49
unlock. So, when I collect 10 more talent points in Midnight, I'll be able
34:54
to unlock more kind of optional things on the lower tier, but I won't be able to unlock more higher talent points,
35:00
which when you're talking about being at level 90, being max level in Midnight, that makes a lot of sense. You're not
35:06
letting players all of a sudden unlock everything on the top tier of talents. But it does mean when you go in at level
35:13
80, suddenly you cannot access some of the talents you used to have, even
35:18
though you have the same number of points you did pre- midnight, you're losing some of those top tier points
35:23
because you need to spend more points at the bottom of the tier to get there. So that's a little annoying, but I know
35:30
that's also something that will iron out by the time you get to max level. And also with hero talents, there's a
35:37
new row of hero talents for everybody. They appear to kind of mimic our current set bonuses. So, they're going to look
35:44
like your set bonuses, but at the same time, we're going to be getting three more talent points in Midnight. And if
35:51
you are going to want to keep your set bonus, you're going to have to drop some of those other talents until you level
35:57
up more. So, I I think the system's good. It feels a little lame when you
36:03
first log in, but it'll be fine at max level, but right now it feels a little
36:08
I'm not I'm not super super thrilled about this. Okay. Uh we've made Liz talk for approximately 75%.
36:15
Someone else someone else say things. Joe, uh this thing literally says let's talk about healing changes with Joe. And
36:22
Joe, I know you're here, so do you have anything you want to say about I think I think Liz wanted to hit me with a stick and let me loose is what it
36:28
I think it boils down to. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I I know there are healing changes, but you were going to be much more familiar with them than I
36:34
am. And also, I want to drink some water. Yes. Let's let Liz get some water and you can talk about healing changes.
36:41
Uh, so healing is getting a massive overhaul, at least as far as the healing classes are concerned. Um, although it
36:48
seems like it's mostly about deleting restoration shaman uh more than it is balancing healing. We're going to get
36:53
into that in a second. Um, they're going through and trying to prune uh spells and talents from various healing classes
37:01
to, and I'm going to air quote here with as much sarcasm as I can, streamline
37:06
healing. Um, I personally am not a fan
37:12
of what I'm seeing so far. Um, at least in mo not least of all because looking
37:17
at my class, the list of things that are being removed from my talent trees and
37:23
spells is so enormous that you can take all of the other healing classes
37:29
changes, combine them, and my list is still longer. It feels bad, man. Um,
37:37
part of it also ties in with something we're going to talk into in a minute, which is that uh add-ons are going to be getting in overhauls, too. But they made
37:44
a comment that has me worried about the state of healing. They said, and I quote, "Choosing who to heal is your
37:52
dynamic and fun choice for gameplay." That's not necessarily why people play
37:57
healers. Um, but the pairing on the spell is fine. I can understand getting rid of some of that. But do you guys
38:03
remember when they homogenized classes the first time and just everything I hated it.
38:09
Everything felt exactly the same as everything else. Are you a healer? Congratulations. You have the same three
38:14
spells that everybody else does. You have a hot, you have a fast spell, you have a slow spell, and you have an AoE
38:20
spell. Congratulations. Everybody's the same. Uh balancing classes may have become easier for them. Uh but it made
38:27
things less fun. As a matter of fact, and maybe they don't remember this, certain roles like tanks and healers
38:34
were exceptionally hard to fill because nobody wanted to play those classes. They still existed. Uh and those of us
38:41
that stuck with it did so despite, you know, everything being kind of awful. Uh but I'm seeing the same thing
38:49
potentially here. um you're seeing a lot of the talents, a lot of the fun choices getting removed because they're like,
38:55
"Oh, we wanted them to be more meaningful choices," which they keep saying over and over again. Looking at
39:02
some of the stuff they're putting into, at least from the restoration shaman standpoint, all of their new talents are
39:07
stuff you're just going to take because they're stat boosts. Here's a new talent that they're adding. Uh crashing waves,
39:14
sounds cool, right? Neat name. Healing waves, critical strike is increased by 12%. Why are you not ever going to take that talent? Here's another new talent
39:20
name. Calm Waters reduces the mana cost of chain heal by 15%. Why will you not take that talent? Right? Most of what
39:27
they're taking out, which I feel I understand that they they feel the trees are too complex. But part of the fun
39:34
that I'm having right now is that I have different specs that I use for different boss fights or different raid
39:40
compositions to help us compensate for what our loadout is. I'm not going to be
39:45
able to do that with a lot of the stuff they're pulling away. um they are looking at ruing some of the
39:52
changes into the base things of the spells, but it's I I don't know how else
39:57
to describe it. It just it feels bad on paper right now. Now, I would say that with a caveat, I do not have access to
40:04
the alpha. I cannot test this right now. I cannot go into healing content and tell you how it feels or how the changes
40:10
are right now. But everything I'm seeing seeing is they're taking at least from restoration shaman a lot of the player
40:17
choices being removed in place of choices that ultimately don't matter
40:23
because there is no choice, right? Like there's a lot of of talents that you're just you're going to take. You need to
40:29
take them because if you don't take them, you're losing out on 12% crit or 15% mana reduction or uh you know having
40:37
your healing stream totem heal 15% more often. Like these are all throughput
40:42
things you're going to have to take. Where's the player choice? Where's the fun? I can't choose to, hey, this is a
40:49
fight that stone ball work totem is really good for, you know, or this would be something that I need to effectively
40:54
place. There's my skill shot. There's my engagement. Um, that's gone. Like a lot
40:59
of that. So, like it's just uh um yeah, I highly recommend that people look
41:06
through their their proposed changes at least on the the as it's written in the dev diaries and I'm hoping that they
41:13
listen. But I will say that in all of the years that I have been playing this game, uh two things have occurred that I
41:19
never thought I would actually see. one full-on restoration meltdown on both Earth Shrine and Ancestral Guidance
41:26
Discord servers of people that are just not going to play the class anymore. They're not going to play Restoration
41:31
Shaman if these changes go live. Uh, and there's no sense of hope. In the past, when big changes occurred, most of the
41:39
those groups would be like, "Okay, let's see what happens. Let's give feedback. Let's go with it." It it's immediately a
41:45
lot of players are in the doom and gloom. There are some players that are waiting to see what happens, but I've never seen people jump to to this much
41:51
Doom immediately. And on a personal level, if if I get into the alpha or the
41:57
beta and I play with this and it feels as boring as elemental was, which is I
42:02
cast three spells and that's all I do for the entire duration of this encounter, for the first time in 20
42:08
years, I may stop healing in this game. And I don't say that lightly. I am not excited about the healing changes, at
42:14
least on paper. And maybe people who are in the alpha can tell me I'm wrong. Maybe people in the alpha can tell me that I'm overreacting. But I'm hopeful
42:21
or at least hoping that they will listen to player feedback that players will get the option to give feedback that is
42:27
actually meaningful to help shape the class and maybe take some of this homogenization of healing away because I
42:36
don't know like we had such a big deal about giving like class identity and class fantasy and spec fantasy and this
42:43
feels to be going completely the opposite direction. like I figured you'd want more of that to drive player
42:49
engagement. And again, I'm not against taking stuff away like taking talents that nobody takes or
42:55
looking at how encounters are designed uh and saying, "Listen, we're relying too heavily on XYZ." But just saying
43:03
that we're going to make healing more streamlined is dangerous. There have been MMOs in the past where your healing
43:09
has been one button and that's all you push for hours on end, a single button.
43:15
And if we get closer to that, man, I'm out. So, that's my two cents on it. I again, I I I'm speculating. This is not
43:24
me having hands on. Hopefully, I'll be able to get hands- on and give you a more accurate accounting of how it feels, but I'm not hopeful right now.
43:31
I'm not hopeful in player choice in the talent trees. I'm not I'm not hopeful in talents mattering anymore. At least from
43:38
a healing perspective, they've said that they want to move away from the talents uh that are just like
43:44
straight stat boost, but that just sounds like what they've created there. They did most almost every single new talent that has been added to the at
43:51
least restoration shaman is a static stat boost of some type. Almost every
43:57
single one of them. Like to give you an idea, the following talents have been removed. I'm just going to go through
44:02
these real quick for for me. And if you've ever played a restoration shaman or know somebody who has, you'll understand why this has got me all kind
44:09
of like, what the heck is going on? Ancestral protection totem gone. Cloud burst totem gone. Earth wall totem gone.
44:16
Healing surge gone. High tide gone. Mana tide gone. Master of the elements is now
44:22
a PvP talent. Spirit walker's tidal totem gone. Tidal waves gone. Tidebrer
44:27
gone. Tide Turner gone. Undulation gone. Unleash life gone. Wellspring gone.
44:33
bunch of talents, bunch of spells just yanked out and almost everything that's replacing it gives raw stat boost or
44:40
cooldown reduction and that's it. And but like I I understand I'm not saying that I fully understand what
44:46
they're going for, but I know that shamans have always had that issue where they have had a lot of extra buttons that other classes might not have that
44:52
have been something that works into their Yeah. My argument though is I don't
44:58
think that was the case anymore. I don't think that's been the case for a while, right? Like we've we've talked about this in my guild with like elemental.
45:04
Elemental was in a spot where at least to me and I'm not a hardcore elemental
45:10
player, but when I played it, it was boring. I pushed four buttons. That was my rotation. Maybe a fifth button if we
45:17
were in an AoE pack. There wasn't a whole lot of like if I'm playing the class and I'm going to air quote right,
45:23
I'm playing it one specific way and I have three buttons or four buttons. And enhancement has been in a weird place
45:30
for a while where it's always been like that where it's always felt like there's hasn't been a whole lot of buttons. Uh,
45:37
and you can add more and a lot of those were in the talents, but it let you choose your load out. Like one of the
45:43
things that I enjoyed about the way that talents currently were is it was a little bit of a choose your own adventure style where again you can
45:49
tailor it whether to your gameplay or whether to, you know, your current situation that you're in. Um, it it made
45:56
it at least interesting enough to me dynamic choices and how I engage with that aspect of the game. But like these
46:03
current changes, they're just passive. They they just they're they're passives that there's no reason you wouldn't take
46:09
them. So unless they're making it again, and we've had this in the past where like, okay, your choices are you can put
46:15
this talent point here and get, you know, 15% more healing out of your healing stream totem, or you can take
46:21
this talent over here and get 15% more crit strike in on your one spell. These are your two choices. Here's your fun.
46:27
That's not fun, right? Because at that point, one will mathematically win. One
46:32
will always mathematically win when you deal with pure stats. And yeah, it was always the right choice in
46:37
the and then everybody's going to flock to that and then at that point talents don't matter. We've seen it happen in
46:43
the past. We will see it happen again if they if they stick true with that. And other healers definitely fared more
46:49
better. Like they have way less uh things being pulled out of their spells or treat. Uh some have stuff added
46:56
actually. So, like I understand that they're trying to balance stuff out, but man, I am I am not optimistic right this
47:02
second, which I'm not going to harp on it too long because I don't want to segue into the the add-ons, which I'm
47:08
just going to roll with it unless you guys have anything to add with with uh No, go into the add-ons cuz I was going to ask about them anyway.
47:14
Yeah. So, uh anything to do with combat is currently being black holed. Uh they've said that they're they're making
47:20
massive add-on changes in Midnight where they will no longer have access to combat information. So this means things
47:25
that you are used to using like DBM, weak auras, uh any sort of unit frames
47:32
currently are completely and utterly bricked as soon as you go into an instance. Uh we were talking about this
47:38
last last night and all that information goes into what's called essentially a uh
47:43
a secret zone, right? Once you're into the the the dungeon or once you're into
47:48
uh the raid uh or in combat in general, that stuff just gets put into a little black box and you don't have access to
47:55
it in real time. What this means is like certain content creators, certain add-on creators right now are just out. Weak or
48:03
gone. There will be no 12.0 version of weak oras because the overhaul that it would require is way too massive. Um,
48:12
and then some of the add-ons damage meters do anything. Damage meters are gone. You're gonna you're gonna use Blizzard's in-game one.
48:19
Maybe it'll work, maybe it won't. Um, but it's gone. Like, it will not work.
48:24
You are not going to be able to parse combat data in real time. Uh, like does that also kill sites or is this
48:30
information you can get? Oh, no. We're we're going to get into this. Hold on a sec. Um, these changes
48:35
are also right now killing accessibility mods that are used in combat because you
48:42
no longer have access to certain things. Um, such as right now GTFO won't work.
48:48
GTFO is a key uh add-on for a lot of players who have trouble with visualizing things or seeing things or
48:55
have certain color discrepancies that the game does not compensate for. And so if you don't know what GTFO is, it's an
49:02
add-on that literally plays an audible cue to you when you are standing in garbage. It tells you to move your feet,
49:10
and some players absolutely need that. That's an accessibility thing. The game itself doesn't do that in its base form
49:17
right now, and I don't know that they have any intention of adding that. Now, that said, I think that we're currently
49:23
in a spot where the code for the game is still kind of a mess. It's better than
49:29
it ever has been, but it's still not perfect. You have technical debt that exists on a grand scale when a game or
49:36
any program has been alive for this many years, right? I think what they're doing is just taking literally everything and
49:42
throwing it into the black hole right now. They said that they're going to keep iterating on it, but they haven't
49:48
exactly said what they're going to iterate on because this also seems at odds with some of the other things they've said, which is they want add-ons
49:54
to let you customize the game. But if you can't customize the game with
49:59
accessibility features or make things the way you want them to work, then how
50:04
are you going to like where's the the balance between the two of them? Me
50:10
personally, like right now, my big one is grid. grid is the the unit frames
50:15
that I've been using for group content since Burning Crusade and
50:21
sounds about right. It does not work now. I like people that are logging in have to use the Blizzard
50:27
unit frames and while they have gotten better, they are not good. They are still not good. Blizzard unit frames
50:35
are not customizable to the level that grid is. Go ahead. Okay. Yeah, nothing is going to be customizable as much as Grid or Voodoo,
50:41
but they h are significantly improved in the alpha right now. And Blizzard has
50:47
talked about Yeah, they they've talked about, okay, you're going to need to add the we're going to need healers need to
50:53
be able to track hots, buffs, debuffs. There are things that the default unit frames need to do in order to make this
51:01
change, I think. Or it could be a rough hurdle. If anybody from Blizzard is listening to
51:06
me, here's a wild idea. hire the people that made Grid to make your your your stuff because they they've already done
51:11
it. They've literally already done it in your code, right? Like, and I understand it's gotten better. I've watched alpha
51:18
content. I've watched people like using the uniframes. And I'm going to say this, and I don't say this lightly, they still suck. And
51:25
the level of customization like I'm talking about is like visibility, being able to make your tanks in their own
51:31
group. the the the ability to have the tank bars be larger than the other ones
51:36
or to be able to set your like focuses and things like that or changing the font or changing the
51:42
size of the font or changing resource bars cuz currently resources are not on
51:48
the Blizzard unit frames at least not in the the group the group frames. So like
51:54
right now people that use them and I'll use myself as an example here when we are in a particularly healing intensive
51:59
fight I will sometimes be needing an intervate uh and I will get it before I
52:06
call for it which is usually sometimes at least in our case uh the difference
52:12
between somebody dying at a key moment and somebody not dying because they can people can see my resources on their
52:18
unit frames and I'm not saying that we won't get there but right now I can tell you that if this doesn't let healers
52:26
customize how they see their group to even I I'll say even like half as well
52:32
as Grid does cuz it currently is not even close to it or half as good as Voodoo does. Then you're going to see a
52:39
lot of people stop healing. You're going to see a lot of people that are not going to to play the role. Not because they can't, but and I've tried using the
52:46
base Blizzard UI to heal. It's trash. Like, and I'm not saying that they're not doing work on it, and I don't want to like discount the fact that they
52:52
continue to work on it, but it doesn't do what like, at least me personally,
52:58
what I needed to do, right? Like, it's we're in a weird spot. And I'm hoping
53:03
that certain things will get pulled out of it. I'm hoping that they'll realize that there's so much technical debt on the unit frames that instead of trying
53:09
to fix their own, they'll just let you use frames again and disable things like click casting cuz that's really all they
53:14
care about. And that's fine. Get rid of click casting. healers are going to be upset about that anyway.
53:20
Don't get rid of click casting. I like click casting. But I'm just saying like if that but that's something that does something
53:25
automatically which according to them that's what they want to get rid of. Click casting is built into the default UE. Yeah, you can currently set that up
53:32
in the default UE. You it doesn't need to be a unit frame thing. It doesn't need to be an add-on frame. It is built
53:38
into the base game right now. Sure. But I'm just saying like you could they can make whatever changes they need
53:43
and still find a happy medium. And I understand some of the the idea, like, don't get me wrong, I'm happy about them
53:49
breaking damage meters and having their own and and doing whatever they're doing with that. I've been saying this for
53:54
years, damage meters ruin the game. They they make people focus on things that are not group content related and focus
54:02
too much on a number versus did we win or lose. And I've always been a fan of that. But some of this stuff needs to be
54:09
pulled out of the black hole. Go ahead, Liz. I'm sorry. I've ranted about about I I no I this is I wanted to hear your
54:15
opinion. I wouldn't have asked otherwise. I I think the problem with that is that there are still going to be
54:21
blizzard damage meters and people are still going to obsess over the numbers. I don't I don't think we're escaping that one.
54:27
Sure. But I mean but it's also going to be less real time, right? Uh it's I don't know. It's potentially less real time. It's
54:34
potentially less having details up or having Scotta up and oh than arguing
54:40
which one's more accurate, right? Cuz how many times we've been in a group that we're like, "Oh, detail shows me
54:45
this, Scott shows me this, damage meter shows me this, and every number is different uh because it tracks things
54:51
differently. Scott tracks your pet DPS, whereas uh blah blah." Uh, I'm just interested to
54:57
see like a lot of guilds use after the fact raid parsing from, you know.
55:03
Yeah. Now, combat combat log I think will be will still be around, I think. Yeah. I mean, as long as you can still do that. I think that's more important
55:09
than h having people argue about damage changes during post analysis. I would I would I would agree like that that's useful if you're
55:16
trying to progress and things like that. But guys, we have this massive deficit on DPS here. And I also kept noticing
55:22
that the DPS kept dying repeatedly in this phase. So that that might actually be something we need to work on. Um,
55:30
losing GTFO is kind of interesting. Yeah, because it parses combat. It parses combat data in real time.
55:35
Yeah. No, I know it add the add-ons did so much in the dark spots of Blizzard's
55:41
design that made the game more accessible for so many people in in a variety of ways. And you can talk about
55:48
not liking the combat add-ons, but at the same time, like that allowed top tier guilds and such to progress
55:54
more and be like, "Okay, well, we Well, I actually I wanted to talk about the whole time Joe was talking." Like,
56:00
no, there's one thing I want to point out. One of the issues here is that you're attempting to move functionality that
56:06
was developed by people that were only focused on that functionality. Yes, you the grid, the grid is an
56:13
example. All the grid developers were doing was making grid. They were not also making the entire game. Having to
56:20
design the whole game and keep the whole game running and also have some developers who are just it's a division
56:26
of forces that forces you you don't have the same kind of focus.
56:31
Mhm. For better or for worse, the people making grid were making grid and they kept making grid for over the course of
56:37
years. Um whether or not you liked Scotta or or damage, you know, any kind of damage meter, you know that Scotta
56:44
was developed over and over again to be Scotta because it was somebody focused solely on that.
56:49
Yeah. It wasn't the problem with when you try to bring these things in like unit frames is a really good example of
56:55
this is you you you lose that mono focus and with a game as big as WoW is right
57:02
now, that's interesting to me because it is a shift. I don't know how fast we can
57:07
expect them. Like losing weak cars to me is insanity. Well, I was going to bring that up. I could be wrong. I could be completely
57:13
wrong and the new stuff coming in could absolutely take over. Well, here and I want to bring this up real quick because this is where I think part of the problem comes into and this
57:20
is to Cory's point and your point. So, uh, anecdotally, I've been raiding
57:25
Mythic on the weekends because I get bored and I find stuff to do. Um, and
57:31
one of the things that has become a requirement of it is installing liquid weak auras and method tools. Two
57:39
specific add-ons that you have absolutely seen during race for world first that take player choice and and
57:46
essentially allow somebody to dictate what to do without using vocal commands.
57:51
And like I'll use Lumenthar as an example. Lumathar and mythic has a mechanic where uh good old Princess Moff
57:57
for a butt has pylons that will shoot lightning at uh her and power her up and
58:03
cause raidwide damage. And if you don't soak them, your raid will die and you have to swap that soak at a certain
58:09
number of stacks uh between you and another partner and then another you get
58:14
a debuff and then another group has to do it. So you have to have essentially, you know, two groups of eight players
58:22
doing this in order to cycle through and finish phase one. you, they were able to
58:28
put the order that everybody was going to soak in, set what how many like ticks
58:34
of the the debuff that you were supposed to get in Method Raid tools, send it via
58:41
text in the game through the back channels to everybody else that had method raid tools installed, and then
58:47
integrate with liquid weak oras in order to display the weak orders. one telling
58:52
you when you're going to go soak, what raid uh icon you are going to go stand with, and when to move out of it. Again,
58:59
essentially taking player agency out of it. So, I can understand wanting to curb things like that because, and I will say
59:05
this, the race roll first, that's what they use this for, and that gives them a heck of an edge. I wanted to swear
59:12
there, and I I I did not. Um, thank you, Joe. You're welcome. Um, but taking those
59:19
away and making the game more difficult at a higher level. Okay, I can kind of see that. And then having less of
59:25
reliance on other players who feel that they have to emulate that because again,
59:30
this is a mechanic that I chose not to engage with these two add-ons and was able to do just fine because I was
59:36
paying attention and I'm capable of doing that. And I know not everybody is, but it also means no, maybe these tools
59:43
shouldn't exist, right? Maybe maybe there's too much of a reliance on combat add-ons. And I can I can understand
59:50
their viewpoint on that. But like all things, when a pendulum swings too far in one direction, the momentum carries
59:57
it too far in the opposite direction on the back swing. And we might see that with add-ons.
1:00:04
And the first release of Midnight, depending on what they do with add-ons, may absolutely break the game for an
1:00:10
inordinate amount of players. And I will be interested to see how many people choose not to engage with the game based
1:00:16
off of what happens with add-ons because there are other combat add-ons that exist that people don't think about. The
1:00:22
ability to play the game with one hand is an add-on. Blizzard's gotten better about it, but third party add-ons make
1:00:29
that possible. Uh the ability to use things like controllers in game for
1:00:34
people, that's an add-on. Like there are so many add-ons that just have accessibility features that allow
1:00:41
players to engage with the game where they otherwise would not be able to is not insignificant. They just also all
1:00:48
happen to be affected by this particular change. I will say Blizzard has specifically
1:00:54
commented about wanting to make accessibility add-ons an option. Just in the alpha they've kind of blocked off
1:01:00
everything. So that's Yeah, it's everything goes in the black hole and you pull stuff out as you move.
1:01:05
Yeah. So, I mean, I'm hopeful that they will start uh pairing this down and kind
1:01:11
of narrowing this into the things that, okay, this is unhealthy for the game to have and this is necessary for the game
1:01:18
to have to make it more accessible to more players. And we're just going to have to wait and see how it goes and
1:01:24
keep telling Blizzard, hey, this is the sort of thing we need. Like, one thing I use a weak ora for is I play a gnome. I
1:01:33
am very small. I get hidden in the middle of piles of things and spells
1:01:39
spell effects and I cannot see where I am or what direction I may be pointing. So, I have a weak aura that puts a
1:01:46
little triangle on top of me when I'm in combat. So, I always know where I am. Mhm. And that really helps me play the game.
1:01:54
It sounds like a stupid little add-on. It's not stupid. It's important to you. It makes it makes you able to play and
1:01:59
engage in the game in a way. It is an accessibility issue. Yes, it makes it easier for me to play
1:02:04
the game and and not like, oh, it's telling me what to do. It's just like, okay, this is where your character is
1:02:10
because spell effects are out of hand. There are so many of them. And
1:02:16
plus, I mean, there is, you know, and we do actually need to like start closing up shop here.
1:02:21
Uh, hold on. No, sorry, Cy. Uh, Liz needs to actually do the
1:02:26
fight. You're going to make me talk again. Sorry, but it has to get done. Oh my gosh. Uh, I want to remind you all
1:02:33
that Blizzard Watch is made possible by listeners exactly like you. You right there. I am talking to you listening
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1:03:25
definitely not about sheep puns. That did not happen. So, if you subscribe at $5 a month, you also get ads free access
1:03:32
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1:03:39
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going. Thank you. You one one more thing, two more things as
1:04:04
Joe is typing for me right now. Uh, if you want to follow us on social media,
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question channel as our way of saying thank you. So, please send us your
1:05:18
questions and thank you so much for your support. Uh, thank you for getting that all out for us, Liz, because it's very important
1:05:24
to get the site going. Uh, please do listen to all those things she said and do some of them. Um, we've got actually
1:05:30
there's a lot more to cover and we don't have time. So, I'm just going to throw in we we didn't ignore that Legion Remix
1:05:36
launched as of the October 7th. We just didn't get to it. I'm sorry. There was a lot of alpha stuff, guys. I'm sorry.
1:05:43
Um, but also I ranted for like a good 20 minutes. Sorry. No, I I I don't know how long I talked
1:05:51
about housing, but it felt like a long time. Legion Remix did just launch, so I have not gotten in a lot of play time on
1:05:56
it. I'm sure we'll have more to say about it next week. Uh, patch 11.2.5. Um, that was also the turbo boost partly
1:06:03
partially a little bit of that. There's there's a lot of stuff we didn't get around to, but there's more to come. We
1:06:08
will talk more about it later. Right now though, guys, this has been the Blizzard Watch podcast. I want to give uh Corey a
1:06:14
special thank you for being here and being a support for us as he always is. I'm sorry we didn't have Heroes of the
1:06:20
Storm news, but you did get a sheep or at least you're thinking about it. then you're going to probably get it and then
1:06:25
you're going to make more sheep puns and I will go mad. Uh, and I don't know how many more sheep puns there are, but I will end on a joke that
1:06:32
what do you call a herd of sheep tumbling down a hill? A landslide.
1:06:40
Yeah. Uh, also thank you to Liz and Joe for not immediately combusting and and you know burning down the site right
1:06:46
now. For those for those of you not listening live or the unedited version of this, that that's just not going to exist. I'm
1:06:52
just going to cut it right out. No. And uh thank you to me for somehow
1:06:58
surviving that. Anyway, this has been the Blizzard Witch Podcast. Thank you guys so much for being here with us and we'll be back next week.
1:07:05
[Music]
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