Up next in 10
Hearthstone's new expansion Into the Emerald Dream was our lead story this week, as the two sides don't seem all that well balanced between good and morally gray, let's say. The team also discusses the morality of the character restores coming to OnlyFangs and other WoW Classic Hardcore players after a DDOS KOed their dreams of glory.
Plus, Slay the Princess is one of several games up for a Nebula Award -- but that's a typo, right? Should be Save the Princess... right?
Subscribe to Blizzard Watch in your podcast player
RSS: https://feeds.acast.com/public/shows/656a381dff3911001256c7bf
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/blizzard-watch/id964696892
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2mRiUSalfnFAUfKO2yh4RG
Visit us at https://blizzardwatch.com for the latest news on Blizzard games, and don't forget to subscribe on Patreon to support our efforts! https://www.patreon.com/blizzardwatch
Discord: https://discord.gg/MY9p4d7t8U
X: @BlizzardWatch
Show More Show Less View Video Transcript
0:00
[Music]
0:10
hi everybody uh welcome to the Blizzard Watch podcast uh it's the usual gang of
0:17
people uh including me this week uh last week I was out for I'll just be upfront i was sick um we've got the magnificent
0:25
uh co-host of Brigade of Liz Harper the EIC of the site and Joe Perez the guy who literally does all the wizardry to
0:31
keep this thing going uh thank you to you both you're welcome uh yeah thank you uh also amongst our
0:39
rotating guest guest stars we've got Phil Olrich back this week um Phil I am
0:45
sorry I keep insinuating that you are a reporter for the Daily Bugle that's that's not cool and I'm sorry
0:51
i mean I can think of worse uh I can think of worse things to work for than the Daily Bugle I guess but uh you and
0:58
you got it right this time so yeah well because I'm staring at your name going "There's an L make sure the L comes in
1:03
your mouth." Um well I wish I hadn't said that anyway uh let's talk about
1:08
various things uh not the World of Warcraft movie although I the Warcraft movie I could talk about for a while i
1:14
actually have a lot to say about it but we're not going to do that because this is ostensively a podcast about news and
1:20
stuff so let's talk about Hearthstone uh especially since this means that Liz or Phil or somebody else will be talking
1:29
uh yes today into the Emerald Dream expansion launched and this is another
1:35
uh this is a pretty fun expansion for I think Hearthstone's kind of on a good roll this year with uh so Emerald Dream
1:43
is uh you might assume Emerald Dream theme and it's done a mechanic where it
1:49
kind of splits the classes into groups and each group has its own mechanic so
1:55
you get imbue which is for classes who are defending the Emerald Dream where uh
2:03
when you cast a card with imbue on it it will improve your hero power and each time you cast another card with imbu on
2:10
it it just increases the numbers of that new hero power so imbuex I feel like
2:16
imbuex are going to be pretty strong this uh this expansion and then uh so
2:22
that can can you like explain something to me about this cuz I don't I don't play host a lot i'm looking at the imbu
2:27
thing and it it does it stack like every time you draw a card with an imbue
2:32
keyword it stacks onto the hero power when you play a new imbue card it's going to stack onto the hero power but
2:39
and so this will stay on it like for the whole match or just until you use the hero power again it's going to stay
2:45
there for the whole match so So you think this will be like a building ability like do you feel like people are
2:51
gonna try and stack it up before they use it uh so the hero power you can use once a
2:57
round so if you power it up I mean I think you start out with an imbue card
3:04
and then you're going to have a more powerful hero power that you can use for whatever whatever hero powery things
3:11
that you want to use it for um and then but as the game continues your hero
3:16
power is going to get more and more powerful as you play more and more imbue cards and you can bust that out once a
3:22
turn so I mean I think the goal is probably to make the best possible use
3:29
of that power you know keep playing aw cards but I it's going to stack up over the game so you'll be able it's great
3:36
because it'll be useful early in the game so you get a buff and power like right off as soon as you play one but it
3:43
because it keeps stacking that means it's going to be really good late in the game too
3:50
so I mean you're you're exactly right it's going to be something you're going to build on but because you can throw out that hero power every turn it's not
3:57
something you're going to have to hold back with you're just going to use it yeah you don't have to hold back like if it was something that just made your
4:03
hero power more powerful this turn or just made it more powerful um once and
4:10
didn't keep buffing it then you'd be like "Okay I want to draw one imbue card and then I'm done." But this you can
4:16
you're going to try and pile them together to get just an overwhelming hero power that's going to really hurt
4:24
so that is um there's so many words in front of me that's for druids hunters mages paladins priests and shaman all
4:32
have access to imbue cards now on the other side of the fence is five classes
4:38
who are aligned with the old gods trying to corrupt the dream into the nightmare
4:43
that's your death knights demon hunters rogues warlocks and warriors they get a mechanic called dark gift so there are
4:52
uh cards with dark gifts on them that give you special powers whenever you
4:57
play one you get a dark gift power and I I feel like dark gifts are a little
5:04
weaker i would rather play an imbue class I think of course I I also like to play paladins
5:11
surprise uh so I may just be naturally inclined that way
5:17
i I will say though the art for this though I'm looking at the the wild gods that each class gets Yes there's a
5:24
picture of the two the two they have pictures for us one's for demon hunters and one's for warriors and they're both
5:30
really cool redesigns of of guys we've seen before like Omen and Tortullah hearstone has such cool art so yeah as
5:37
you say each class is getting its own wild god and depending on which side you're on you're going to get a wild god
5:43
or a corrupted wild god so we're going to have Sinarius Goldrin Asena i don't
5:49
know who all of these things are i'm not I'm not the lore person here ursil Aina I'm saying all these
5:57
wrong the one after Ursol is Aviana if it Yes uh Malor Ersoch Ersoch we're
6:03
starting into the corrupted wild gods omen Ash Ashimain uh Agammanan and
6:10
Tortola her warriors yeah you can guess Tortola a turtle i'm going to say up
6:16
front I feel like for the ones that are like on the side of the old gods it's like three of them okay like death
6:22
knights demon hunters and warlocks i could see it i mean but like rogue and and warrior what did they do it's like I
6:29
can just imagine the rogue and the warrior going why did we how did we end up on this team i think we could just got the thing is they got early picks
6:36
the thing is you you had to have equal sides so someone's got to be on this side you just it's it's how it goes and
6:43
I mean these are before yeah he Hearthstone has done expansions like this a few times where it's kind of the
6:49
classes are divided and each class gets a different mechanic and I think that's really cool because it means the classes
6:56
can feel really different the gameplay is different and you get different buffs
7:01
different powers so it can make the meta really interesting and uh some of these
7:07
are really really powerful like a a how
7:12
do you say this can someone say this for me agamanon aameon
7:17
agamagon okay my mouth does not want to shape that so that is a it has a 10 mana
7:24
cost that's a warlock minion with a 10 mana cost it's an 89 beast so you can only break that out really late in the
7:32
game but it's a it's a pretty beefy minion but maybe not beefy enough to be a 10 mana minion except it has a
7:39
battlecry that says the next card you play costs your opponent's health
7:45
instead of mana up to 10 so you're getting this big beast on the board
7:51
you're doing up to 10 damage to your opponent and you're basically getting a 10 mana card for free it's doing damage
7:58
to your opponent instead of instead of damage to you which some Warlocks card cards do and you're you're busting out
8:05
something else really powerful this is really powerful because it lets you put something else super strong on the board
8:12
so that's going to be a crazy one yeah and it'll do tons of damage yeah that's actually really cool but but yeah the
8:18
hard part about that the strategy behind it is going to be you need 10 mana before you can cast that card so so
8:24
you'll basically spend you'll be spending money that's a maximum yeah so you got to hang on until you can get to
8:30
the point where you have that mana and close out the game this is a game closing kind of card so I think it's
8:36
it's going to be an interesting expansion cool i am really interested to see exactly what it looks like when it's
8:42
being played um I'm actually I don't usually play Hearthstone but this one has me kind of interested so um also I
8:49
wanted to mention this uh the one thing I want to mention really fast before we talk more about that there's it says
8:55
roll over into Year of the Raptor so several expansions are going from standard to wild uh Festival of Legends
9:01
Titans and Showdown in the Badlands yes that is true we are rolling over into a
9:06
new year in Hearthstone which is uh kind of how it divides its seasons but a year
9:12
does not equal a calendar year exactly so yes when you roll into a new year
9:18
that means several expansions are going into wild and you are going to have a different set of core cards now when
9:25
there when an expansion goes into wild that means it cannot be played anymore
9:30
in standard mode it can only be played in wild mode so this kind of keeps the
9:35
game from it keeps things shaking up you still have core cards that everyone has
9:41
access to and those will rotate or shift every time there's a new year but this
9:46
keeps it keeps things from getting sta stale and it keeps things like oh there was a really powerful card in Titans
9:52
that won every game and it keeps something like that from sticking around forever yeah it keeps the meta from
9:58
being locked down yeah it keeps it keeps the meta fresh and it does encourage you to keep using new cards which uh has a
10:05
side effect of making you want to keep buying new cards but that can't have anything to do with why they did this h
10:12
no I mean but I think it's good for the game to keep the meta moving and not let it get bogged down in Hearthstone is 10
10:19
years old so not bogging it down with 10 years of cards uh Joe actually I have a
10:25
question for you does magic do something like this as far as like pruning cards
10:31
having Yeah like allowing cards in certain kinds of play yeah so Magic has
10:37
probably the uh progenitor of this even going back as far as its release i I
10:43
swear I will not take an hour to talk about this i promise you at home stay with me um but there are different what
10:49
they call ban lists and different adjustments that they make pretty regularly to all the different formats and there are different types of cards
10:56
that are allowed in each of the formats so like as an example commander is a format that can pretty much play
11:01
anything it wants from that's been printed in the history of magic aside from like a list of banned cards like
11:07
culturally insensitive cards or anti-cards things like that so that would be that would be exactly like car
11:13
wild mode there are some cards that are banned for good but mostly it's a free-for-all mostly and then there's
11:18
other ones that say you can use cards that were printed in this time frame so like Pioneer which is my one of my
11:24
personal favorite competitive formats is uh everything that was printed from Return of Ravnikica which is 2012 if it
11:31
was printed in a standard format set not an extra set uh up to current is is
11:36
legal so you can with their own ban list modern has its own stuff where it's got special cards that were printed for it
11:43
so they do all that stuff all the time this is not this is not abnormal this is pretty standard for pretty much any card
11:49
game that's a TCG so yeah I don't really have much else to add to that
11:54
I I think that's that's it for Hearstone it is a it is a big deal for Hearstone you should log in and even if you didn't
12:00
pre-order any expansion packs you can go in and buy packs gold which is uh no
12:06
purchase required and you can earn gold by playing the game by doing quests by
12:11
uh doing your weekly tavern brawl you can get a pack and uh yeah so go and
12:17
check it out there are some definitely some cool new cards in this one it's just some of it's a roll of the dice you
12:23
got to rely on that RNG to get the cards you want so if you're trying to if you have building to like 10 mana so you can
12:31
Yeah yeah it makes sense and I mean and and I mean Hearthstone does have ways to
12:36
do that if you get duplicate cards or cards you don't want you can disenchant them and turn them into dust and craft
12:42
cards that you do want so you you can work your way up there but if you aren't dumping money into it whether you're a
12:49
whale or you're just pre-ordering expansion packs then it can it can take some time to get the decks you want okay
12:55
well the WoW Classic has some things to talk about uh from what I understand Classic Hardcore had some problems
13:02
specifically uh I don't know if people remember that there was a big old DDoS attack um and I don't know how to
13:10
explain this really well because it's kind of hard for people to understand but hardcore servers um work on a
13:15
principle of that if your character dies they're dead yeah you're done you're done so yeah you there's no res spells
13:21
done forever yeah which um Go ahead Liz i'm sorry which does make PvP an
13:27
interesting pastime but it is something people still do yeah well yeah people
13:32
you know some people you know there's people who spend an awful lot of time trying to figure out the hardest way to
13:37
play King Kong I mean Donkey Kong so yeah but for specifically in this time
13:42
what happened was one one guild in particular it was a hardcore rating guild named Only Only Fangs which you
13:48
know kudos on that name that's interesting um just it was a this guild that's primarily streamers so it's Mhm
13:55
people watch their streams they see them raiding it's it's attention was being is is focused because of this and the DDoS
14:03
attacks happened during their raid which meant pretty much the guild died yeah like they they had a a complete raid
14:11
wipe in Blackwing Lair which uh just came out but uh uh Phil you wrote the post on this would you like to say a
14:18
little more yeah so there it actually was not initially obvious why these DOS attacks were happening there were
14:23
multiple ones over a couple weeks the initial assumption was that it was somebody trying to screw with the race to world first based on the timing of
14:29
the early ones which you know that was also when we saw things like RAV quality assurance uh doing things like um using
14:37
restricted GM spells to kill Giwix before killing the rest of the raid um
14:42
and then like leaving taunting messages for the GMs in their profiles um but then they kept going and it's still not
14:50
100% clear if it was actually a targeted attack against uh Only Fangs but boy the timing sure looks coincidental um and so
14:57
yeah the um as Matt said when you die in hardcore you're dead your only option at
15:02
that point is to let that character stay as a ghost or to move them to a non-h hardcore realm where you can resume
15:07
playing them um a lot of people will keep their dead alts around as kind of a a graveyard of here's how long it took
15:13
me to get to 60 but um and they they don't generally respond to requests to
15:19
res a character for pretty much anything including lag spikes or network
15:24
difficulties or things like that um in this in this instance though Blizzard actually made a blue post to say that
15:31
because this was this was essentially matters completely external to either the game or the player this was say a
15:37
malicious actor actively disrupting the game and Blizzard is going to and I don't know how they're going to
15:43
determine everyone who did the who was affected by this um resurrect characters who were killed during the DOS attacks
15:50
probably time stamps they're going to look everything's locked right so like there there's there's I assume they have like a window
15:56
of uh like a window of time that it was occurring and just you know anybody who died in that interim um resurrect them
16:02
but um it's interesting cuz this is this is the first time they stepped in to do something like this and I think it's
16:09
probably the correct idea because this isn't like you know if you have a if you if you have a lag spike that's the kind
16:14
of thing you want to plan around at hardcore you make sure your network environment is good before you venture out into silver pine and get ruined by a
16:19
son of artle um but like this is nothing that Blizzard or the players could have accounted for
16:25
and so I I agree with this stuff i think it's a positive one i I agree with it as well well I was actually talking with
16:31
this uh with a couple guys at work is uh they play hardcore and um the community
16:37
is actually pretty split on this actually like some folks are are like I literally I heard the term today
16:44
streamer privilege uh where the person that I was talking with at my office said that had this not happened with
16:50
such a high-profile guild and the high-profile guild making such a public
16:55
announcement because let's let's also like add in that only fangs said that they were disbanding as a result of this
17:01
we're not going to reroll characters they were not going to keep going they were going to call the guild quits and
17:06
it was a pretty highprofile guild build in terms of hardcore so like uh some
17:12
folks are are saying that they that Blizzard would not have done this if it hadn't been such a vocal and very
17:20
prominent group of folks that made a stink about it that said I do agree that
17:27
it's an external source and again the counterargument is yes a DOS is an external source so is a lag spike so it
17:34
was somebody's network going down because their ISP decided that they needed to turn that transformer off at
17:40
that exact time or that junction relay um or the you know they lost power and it was an act of God you know like
17:47
there's there's all number of things that like can now start falling into this category so do I think it was the
17:52
right call yes because I think it feels kind of crappy when you lose what you've
17:58
been working on in such a hardcore environment but I can also understand where a lot of other people are coming from because they're like "Had this
18:04
happened to me I probably wouldn't have had my stuff restored." And others that
18:09
are like "This is the point of hardcore you take this risk you sign on to it and if you didn't want to continue going on
18:15
after that that's on them." So I do think however I I want to respond to that at least a little bit because the
18:21
difference here between an act of God type thing and this is that somebody else is deliberately doing it to you
18:28
hoping that you'll have something happen and yeah that to me feels a little different than whilst I certainly
18:35
understand what you're saying like you know the idea that they wouldn't have done this for me they're not just going
18:40
to res the people from this guild because my word that would be that would be ugly that would that would be that
18:47
would be Yeah yeah so in a way this the streamers do get privilege you you can't
18:54
argue that there's not streamer privilege here but that privilege is actually extending out to other people
18:59
and you if you think if you're a hardcore player and you think well I don't want to be resed i want to you
19:05
know do it that you keep doing it the hardcore way even if that means that something I think might be unfair happened i don't think you have to
19:11
accept it you don't have to pick that character back up you can leave him dead so while I do think that you you always
19:19
have to be careful and edge cases sometimes might have to be allowed to be edge cases and not not you know resolved
19:27
i think in this case it makes much more sense to to resolve it um but I also
19:32
feel like it's kind of like I don't know how to put this it feels strange to me
19:39
that it feels like they're doing this entirely because effectively free
19:44
advertising was going to disband you know that's only only thanks was free advertising so that is something to
19:51
think about yeah I was going to say because maybe maybe it's the the skeptic in me or maybe it's the fact that I have
19:56
existed in endstage capitalism long enough that I can understand seeing that as possibly a reason right your your
20:02
Only Fangs was basically the poster child for WoW classic hardcore it drew a lot of people in to play the game so I
20:08
could I can see the argument i'm not saying it's right or wrong i'm just saying I can see it i don't know if it's accurate either i'm just saying we're
20:14
all going Only Fangs is not a small thing i mean Only Fangs was made Rolling
20:23
Stone for being like this entertainment source being able to watch all of these streamers i believe Rolling Stone
20:29
compared it to a soap opera of drama watching everyone play WoW so it's this
20:36
is this is not like a tiny little guild of little streamers so I I can see where
20:42
people are coming from saying it's oh streamer privilege but at the same time I think it's just it just makes sense
20:47
when there's a malicious attack like this to do something about it and we'll see who gets resurrected out of this but
20:55
I would certainly hope that it's everybody who died during the DOS windows as long as it you is even like
21:03
remotely a chance that you were killed by that and not by you know I'm going to do something dumb then yeah i mean come
21:09
on if you just res the streamers though I mean yeah that would be that's that
21:16
would be taking any goodwill they accumulated from this and shooting themselves directly in the foot literally using the goodwill to hurt
21:22
themselves yeah I have to assume based on the way it's worded that it's going to be you know anybody who died in that window because they could have been
21:29
affected yeah that that does make more sense than the idea that they would it it kind of feels like you know they
21:35
would go out and say "Look at this shiny this shining shield that we will now use to disembowel ourselves." Like what what
21:42
are you doing oh god but yeah that's I also got to feel like you know kudos to
21:47
Sodapoppin the guild leader just for that name uh I like your name Sodapoppin i think it's cool uh also DDoS attacks
21:55
man you it it it feels like I've been seeing these things since 2004 because I've been seeing these things since 2004
22:02
they've existed in time and memoriam yeah i'm really tired of them the other thing is Sodapoppin does have 9 million
22:11
followers on Twitch so and he's got a cool name so yay yeah i mean you can also you can also see though yeah you
22:17
can also see why people would be more likely to notice what he says than somebody like say me so yeah it's it's a
22:25
big it's a big presence in WoW and it's interesting that this has managed to
22:31
kind of get out into broader pop culture in some way the stream yeah so yeah I
22:37
did not know about the Rolling Stone thing that is wild i just went and looked at it and it's it is very it's
22:43
over the top in its writing style and it definitely makes it sound more like Wild Chaos and and Feveros than it is but not
22:52
by much that is my belief yeah i don't know it It's I don't I don't think we
22:57
need to spend more time on it i think we should move on but yeah it's it's definitely something to pay attention to and something to keep in mind when I'm
23:04
going to say this it will inevitably happen again right there's if it they
23:09
got whoever was doing the DOS attack got a successful response essentially it
23:14
caused a big enough stir and that usually means it's going to happen again yeah if if nothing else at least it's
23:21
not swatting don't give them any ideas they don't need me to give them ideas i know but let's let's now talk about
23:28
something a little bit more nice now for something completely different yeah um a few years back uh Mike Moore started uh
23:36
Dream Haven it's kind of a umbrella co company that will be publishing and supporting bunch smaller you know
23:42
companies um and they had one game that they had announced already that I was
23:48
pretty excited about uh which was Thunderfolk but now they've announced a new one uh Wildgate which is a
23:53
team-based FPS with spaceships i want to ask Joe this because Joe said he had he
23:58
was going to explain it to me do you like play in the spaceship and then you get out of your spaceship and go down
24:04
and play as like just people like how does this game work the answer is yes um
24:09
and to go more specific uh so when we were s looking at the the trailer when
24:14
it dropped I got a decent look at it and my first reaction was oh this is like
24:22
Overwatch meets Sea of Thieves meets uh and then I I I forgot what else I said
24:28
wildstar for the aesthetic wildstar yeah yeah and then I also as on my second watch through because I definitely
24:33
watched it more than once was like "Oh this has big The Division vibes which is an extraction shooter." Um and so all
24:41
that to say that this seems to be like a combination of a bunch of uh ostensively popular formats in a new candy coding
24:49
and I'm not necessarily upset about it so if for those of you that are home that may not have played Sea of Thieves
24:55
Sea of Thieves is a game where you basically go around and either join with random folks or your friends and play as
25:02
pirates and you can go and complete missions or you can go be a pirate and steal other people's completed missions
25:08
and treasures um there's more to it than that but it involves personal combat
25:13
ship combat setting up traps things like that and in that type of game everybody in the crew tends to fall into a role uh
25:20
you have people that naturally gravitate towards you know steering the ship you have people that natur naturally
25:26
gravitate towards uh doing the um navigation words are hard um and that
25:33
seems to be like something that's going to happen here as well because the ship is as much part of the crew as the crew
25:39
itself and so watching some of the people that apparently a bunch of content creators got invited to look at
25:45
a very early closed beta version of this and they all said the same thing you go into the Wild Rift um you have your your
25:52
group of people and everybody tends to fall into roles right whether they want to be a gunner on the ship which is
25:59
something that this is you know pretty part and parcel with this type of game whether they want to be an engineer that
26:05
does nothing but go around and repair the ship from damage from other ships attacking it whether somebody wants to be the ace pilot uh that goes and and
26:13
you know does the combat maneuvers to get around or you know somebody maybe wants to be the gunslinger who shoots
26:19
themselves out of the torpedo at the other person's ship so that they can go wage combat on that ship uh so you can
26:25
kind of fall into all those roles and it's a very heavy PvP aspect of it they haven't necessarily mentioned anything
26:31
about PvE um but the extraction point or extraction shooter aspect of it is your
26:37
squad needs to be the last man standing or the last men or women or people standing or space goo i don't know all
26:43
the races you can play as things yeah bunnies um and your job is to get whatever the mcguffin is and keep the
26:50
mcguffin and have the most mcguffins at the end of it uh and then lather rinse repeat there is character progression in
26:56
it from what we've seen from some of the content creators where you can have special loadouts uh they didn't mention
27:02
anything about skill points or leveling up but most extraction shooters have some rudimentary level of that don't
27:07
they and Lizzie you're saying so there is a a little bit about game modes you can play a standard match which is 20
27:14
players five teams of four players each you can play against the AI mhm in which
27:20
you will be matched with a team of players to battle AI crews there's a firing range for a practice mode and a
27:26
tutorial mode to kind of teach you how to play the game there it does also
27:31
mention an adventure track to progress through it says you unlock new loadout
27:38
items by progressing adventure tracks and chapters so there's going to be some
27:44
some sort of pro progression but that's all the info there is about it right now
27:50
it does kind of feel a little bit like uh Eve Online yeah there's an element of that too i think I think I mentioned
27:55
that when we first when I first saw it yeah or anime Eve Online considering what the the the style of the game is
28:02
it's It's very pretty if you haven't seen any of the trailers or anything you should go look at it it's very pretty it
28:07
looks like it's very It has a big Overwatch aesthetic to me it has that kind of bright colors kind of cartoony
28:15
characters it feels very Overwatch to me at least aesthetically yeah i mean there's certainly certain elements I
28:21
could see that on i I don't got no idea what it feels like to play it yet um if Joe's Sea of Thieves references I've
28:27
actually played a little Sea of Thieves uh what's going to end up happening is some I'm going to end up almost always
28:33
piloting the thing and then like I'm going to end up screwing that up but that's usually what happens when I play
28:38
Sea of Thieves so we'll see what happens here i mean I'm not going to lie straight up I'm super excited for this
28:45
like at first blush their their promo stuff did the job it got my hype factor
28:51
up um like and and like I remember like as soon as I heard the announcer voice I
28:57
immediately thought of Wild Star and and like the only thing was missing was him going oy um if you know you know like
29:06
it's right there on like hitting all those buttons and I do like squadbased
29:12
games like this partially because I'm I'm a social gamer at heart um as much
29:18
as I hate the outside world sometimes I love playing video games with my friends and some of my happiest memories and
29:24
I've talked about this with Overwatch is playing with my local gaming group uh
29:29
shout out to Good job i miss you guys um and like doing stuff like League of Legends together or Overwatch together
29:36
and just being goofy and having fun or Rocket League and like seeing how much we can blow each other's cars up while
29:42
still trying to score goals like it was always fun and filled with laughter and mirth and like these types of games to
29:49
me kind of equate that uh Sea of Thieves was the same thing for the local gaming
29:54
group as well where a bunch of us would just go around and be stupid pirates and when we weren't being stupid pirates we
30:00
were playing music on the ship while the uh while we weren't paying attention and Bubble ran us into a storm because
30:05
that's the thing that he would do like this strikes me as very similar to that and I kind of really I really like that
30:12
i I like when games do that and it takes a lot of those boxes for me i'm hoping that I get selected i did sign up for
30:19
the because you can sign up for the play test right now the preview play test on their website uh so if it's something
30:26
you're potentially interested in you can go ahead and do so i'm hoping I get selected so I can actually like play it and then report back uh because I would
30:32
absolutely love to get in there with some folks uh maybe if you're listening to this and you signed up as well and
30:38
you get in let us know maybe we can get together and be a crew um and the only thing I hope for is I can be a weird
30:44
catboy because a catboy in space is definitely what I was in Wildstar and that would just be the final tick box for me so I'm here I'm here for it and
30:52
you can go ahead sorry you can sign up for the beta now on play Wildgateall oneword.com so the play test is set to
31:00
run from April 10th to April 14th so it's a pretty short one but the game is also scheduled to be out sometime this
31:06
year so even if you don't make it into this play test it's not going to be waiting for too long yeah and uh since
31:14
we're talking about Dream Haven there's a another game that's coming out within
31:20
a month or so uh it's April 23rd we're going to be getting Sunderfoke which was the first game they announced and
31:26
there's a a first look demo currently free on Nvidia GeForce Now um which is I
31:32
think their Nvidia like like network or something it's their cloud it's their cloud gaming thing yeah it's their cloud
31:38
gaming uh I will not be doing that because I I don't want to do that but I will probably be getting this game when
31:43
it comes out cuz it's it seems like a fun little like I don't know how to describe it it's kind of like like a
31:50
JRPG meets the older SC like an older school D&D style um CRPG meets Red Wall
31:58
um where you play a bunch of like cool animals as your class really like
32:04
there's a there's a polar bear and he's kind of the barbarian of the group and he's essentially one of your frontline
32:09
tanks and there's a I don't know what that is but it looks like some kind of deer uh and it it is the archer of the
32:15
group and I I've I've looked at it a few times and I keep forgetting it like but there's like a little cute little
32:22
amphibian lizard type thing and there's a there's a bunny who's playing a loot
32:27
and there's a really really frazzled looking bird who's just trying to get this magic book to stop shooting sparks
32:33
at him and it just feels like it's going to be a pretty like if you play if you play the the TRPG Wander home uh it's
32:40
kind of like that in a way uh it kind of has that feeling of of I want I don't want want to say whimsy but I don't know
32:45
what else to say i heard you about to talk Liz so I'm gonna let you talk i mean this is a turnbased tactical RPG
32:51
adventure and it's designed for anywhere from one to four players with couch
32:56
co-op so it's an interesting It's an interesting genre to see couch co-op it
33:01
feels a little like a table it feels a lot like a tabletop i was about to say a little but it's a lot like a tabletop
33:08
game and it does it has a really cute aesthetic i'm I'm I'm not sure it's I'm not sure either of these games are games
33:15
for me though but they do look really cool i do want to ask Phil what you
33:20
think about these games are you going to play either of them do you have any thoughts cuz we've been we've been talking we've been talking over here um
33:27
I I I don't know about Wildgate um it's going to depend on how many people I know that are playing
33:33
Wildgate um like aspects of it yeah I know one i've got one so far um there's
33:39
aspects of it that sound really cool to me like the running around and having a different role on a ship like somebody mentioned an engineer role and my ears
33:46
per you got you got to repair you got to repair that ship you got to you got to get in there and I was like um you know
33:51
the PvP elements don't necessarily excite me but like I like the aesthetic i loved Wildstar and I get huge Wildstar
33:57
vibes from this um I like some of the ideas of working as a team that's kind of cool so I mean like I said it'll
34:02
it'll depend on how many people I know besides Loader who are checking it out we'll see um but Sunderfolk has
34:09
definitely been on my radar because I have been um so my wife and I have an interesting relationship with video
34:16
games where she doesn't play a lot of them but she enjoys watching them and she enjoys the story in them um uh Liz I
34:23
think is probably well familiar with getting just as many reports on what my wife thought about my playthrough of the
34:28
entire Mass Effect trilogy as my actual reactions to it um so but I've been
34:34
trying to pick up on more couch co-op stuff like we've been playing a little bit of split fiction recently um and we
34:40
also play tabletop role playing games together um we're in a uh Traveler second edition group right now we played
34:46
in a D and D campaign um that I ran for 2 years or so um so Thunderfolk is
34:52
definitely also on our radar as having that kind of cozy animal meets tactical RPG aesthetic um it it seems really cool
34:59
and we'll I'll probably end up picking up Sunfolk when it comes out you mentioned I'm sorry i was just staring at a polar bear with a hammer and and
35:07
I mean reasonable golden Compass what uh I I got to say I
35:13
didn't like The Golden Compass as books but I kind of like the the movies i like the movies yeah yeah
35:19
uh new EU regulations are basically aimed at microtransactions where you
35:24
have to require I believe it's requiring actual real money prices for products you can't just use coins or whatever um
35:32
which I honestly the I I feel like the entire invention of the weird coins was
35:40
to prevent them from ever having to worry about being taxed no I think I
35:45
feel like it was there it's it's partially a really crappy obscuring mechanism because it partially about
35:51
gambling too but go ahead it really prevents it from from being able to easily look at something and go "Oh this
35:56
is the dollar value of this thing." Especially since the amounts you can buy a currency in are almost never the
36:02
amounts that you spend on that currency like it'll be like $9.99 for a,000 uh whatever coins you're like "Okay I'll
36:08
get the whatever." Everything costs at least 25 like Yeah or or everything cost like 600 so it's like "Oh if I want two
36:14
then I have to buy two of these packs but I got 400 sitting there." But then what if I want I may as well buy another one so I'm getting 30 it's there there
36:21
was actually a whole there's a whole thing done about this actually where yes it is an obscuring tactic um but not
36:28
what you would think it was originally designed as a way to keep parents from understanding how much they were
36:34
actually spending on their kids yeah no like no joke like uh Robux V-Bucks stuff
36:40
like that like this existed before then league of Legends was doing this with Riot Points and uh Dota had something
36:45
similar this is not a new concept but a lot of it was aimed at obscuring how
36:50
much money parents were spending on younger kids playing the video games when they were like "Oh I want to get
36:56
this and it costs this many v like this many V-Bucks." And parents would be "Okay." And they just go and they buy
37:01
the package and just never look at it again um the other part of it was exactly what Phil was talking about
37:08
which is it allows them to not do a onetoone uh Nintendo actually got in
37:13
trouble for this when the Switch launched with the eShop which is why it's uh pure money it's not it's a
37:20
onetoone you don't buy Nintendo points anymore you just buy the games with real
37:25
currency because it was I think it might have been Europe went after them hard as well for this stuff because constantly
37:34
companies would make it so that it was always an uneven balance there was no way to zero it out because if you have a
37:40
little bit left psychologically you'd always be like "Oh but I can spend $5
37:45
and go get this skin I want or whatever the case is." There's a whole there's a whole psychological paper written about
37:52
like the monetization of video games and the predatory nature of it that people often ignore in term in in lie of
37:59
screaming about loot boxes which I support you still scream about loot boxes but you can be mad about more than
38:05
one thing you could be Exactly you can be mad about more than one thing so like there it's it's fascinating absolutely
38:12
fascinating one the one the one company I'm really familiar with in terms of how they did this and why they did this is Ubisoft which is a European company so
38:19
that's Ubisoft does the things you're talking about but they also do it for a third reason they want to make it so
38:25
that you can play the game and get the currency without spending real money but
38:31
it's it's ownorous well they have they they're required to in the EU aren't they i think they they are yes but the
38:37
they decided to make that a whole thing because now the amount of those coins you can get through doing the things
38:44
that you can do is enough to almost buy one thing and I just this specifically I remember from the Assassin Creed games
38:51
uh or Odyssey and Valhalla both had this kind of thing and the price the amount you would get like it was always like if
38:59
you did the whole thing then next week you come back and did the whole thing again you'd have enough for one purchase
39:04
and then you'd have leftover stuff and it would just it would just keep getting to the point where you're like I really
39:10
want that skin and I don't want to wait three weeks for it ah and you'd buy it
39:15
um and it it just it's fascinating the ways that companies use these things
39:21
that are imposed upon them to try and like ease up on the predatory they actually use them to be more predatory
39:27
it's kind of fascinating ubisoft has a long tradition of this i'm sure nobody who knows about Ubisoft is ever going to
39:33
be surprised by me saying Ubisoft is doing something predatory with it with it some of microtransactions it's never
39:40
going to be a shock so So part of this is yes cash values on everything in the
39:45
shop so like skins that might cost an in-game currency they should also show a cash cost but also that you can buy
39:52
currency in blocks that match up with purchases which is something that as you
39:58
have said a lot of games do diablo IV is pretty bad at this because if you play
40:04
the battle pass that's your uh if you play the paid battle pass you get currency but you don't get enough
40:10
currency to buy anything so you would have to buy additional currency so you could cover the cost of purchasing anything in the shop and the bundles in
40:18
which you can purchase currency don't match the price of anything in the shop you know that 2,800 gold that uh 2,800
40:25
platinum that all of the transmug sets cost that's about $25 but the actual
40:30
value cost depends on what bundle you buy do you buy $100 worth platinum do you buy 2 yeah so and that's one of the
40:39
really egregious ones too because it's the they they're like you know if you really want to save money buy our 10,000
40:46
you know it's like that's that's like that's like that's like a like $150 man
40:51
yeah it's it's still really ch me that you can't get enough money from the premium battle pass to pay for the next battle battle pass like at a minimum I
40:58
feel like that should be how much you earn you can't i feel like I feel like at a minimum the battle pass should give
41:04
you enough currency that you can buy some cool skin in the store as part of
41:09
your reward for the battle pass but it does not nowhere even close right like they they used to like back and I'm not
41:15
trying to get in like the the back in my day type thing but like even Fortnite
41:20
does that like I mean Diablo I has never done that so yeah Diablo forest
41:27
monetization is better than Diablo Immortal but that's kind of like saying way to swing for the infield
41:34
it's much better than that that Viper bite I had on my my leg yeah it's still
41:39
it's still going to kill you man the good thing about the Diablo for microtransactions is none of them are
41:45
power they're all cool cosmetics but it's like they really they really tempt you into buying currency because they're
41:51
releasing new cool cosmetics every week and you're never going to have enough platinum to purchase them unless you buy
41:57
more platinum than you need to purchase them or you buy the paid battle pass but then you also buy a bunch of platinum and then you're going to have platinum
42:03
left over so you're tempted to buy more platinum that's what these new EU guidelines are trying to get in the way
42:10
of and saying you know you got to make the prices clear and you got to make it easy for people to buy something without
42:16
just constantly giving you money they don't have to shouldn't have to buy the money to buy the item because end up
42:23
making it so that we end up having to buy twice as much money than we're going to ever use this does this does not go
42:29
that far it does not say that there needs to be a you need to be able to buy it for cash but it needs to have a clear
42:35
a clear cash price and you need to be able to buy the currency in quantities that match what you're selling things
42:41
for one thing that Hearthstone does right with its cash currency is it's and
42:48
Hearthstone added cash currency later there was a big that was you know
42:53
slightly controversial to launch game without a cash currency and then add a cash currency but one thing it did was
42:59
say okay the cash currency is going to be sold in blocks that match the prices
43:05
of things you want to buy which makes me wonder why why do you even need a currency in that case but at least it's
43:12
you know it's fair there's a clear pricing and you can buy as much as you need and no more but that's not common
43:20
no not at all but um yeah I think we're I think we're all on the same page that
43:26
we think it's at least a good step and you know we would say we want to see in North America but who knows i mean
43:32
sometimes when you get regulations in the EU you'll see companies follow them
43:38
more broadly but just because you don't want to have the expense of doing you know something different yeah of doing of doing it two different ways but this
43:44
is actually one that would be pretty easy I think to do just have a different pricing page in different companies so
43:50
we may never see these improvements here but now we should mention that the s the science fiction and fantasy writers
43:56
association has announced their finalists for the 60th Nebula Awards this year and they've added in they're
44:04
basically now including writing for not just textbased stuff uh dramatic
44:09
presentation for movie and TV there's the broad games category which has gamew writing for both video games and TTRPGs
44:16
which I think is a great move um so I didn't get to see this list at the time so I'm gonna go to you Liz and have you
44:23
talk if you don't mind uh they Well they've been doing this for a few years but yeah they've just announced this year's nominations and it can be these
44:31
can be quite varied lists so this year's list is a death in hyperspace which is a
44:38
based web game that you can play for free on the internet and it's just it's
44:45
a game about you are I believe you are playing the ship and your captain dies
44:51
and it's it you've got a timer to work against it sounds really cool i haven't played it i've looked at it i haven't
44:57
played it elden Ring Shadow of the Erd Tree which of course I imagine if you're
45:02
listening to this you probably heard of that one but that's the only massive game on here the Ghost in the Gollum
45:10
which I believe is another textbased game uh you can find that one on Steam 1000x Resist which we have heard Phil
45:17
talk about before i believe I I believe I have raved about a thous
45:28
sorry Joe you remember Strikeforce Moratory right very vaguely okay i
45:34
really liked it it was a It was Mark Bagley's first real comic um so yeah
45:39
okay never mind but it's basically aliens show up on Earth and they're doing catastrophes and stuff and then
45:45
you know humanity gets really devastated although they don't lose they don't go down to one person so yeah it's
45:50
different uh Pacific Drive which is a survival game in which you were driving around the Pacific Northwest in a
45:56
station wagon i have been hearing about this game for like two years now yeah I
46:01
don't know if it's been out for two years but they keep talking about it i've I've heard it talked about that time anna anna our own Annabelle is very
46:09
big on this one and I said in the pre-show I picked this one up on sale on Steam over the weekend so I think it's
46:16
on my list to play next even though one I am very bad at driving games and I am
46:22
also very bad at survival games but the kinds of games I love are games with a
46:29
great story so I'm I'm into it maybe there's like a super easy idiot who
46:35
can't drive mode that's what I'm hoping for is that But I'll find out you're gonna treat You're gonna treat this like
46:41
you're gonna treat this like under the un under city it's like it's usually usually when I am playing a
46:49
driving game yeah i just I run into things and when I play a survival game I usually get stuck at trying to start a
46:55
fire in the beginning which is kind of your basic survival thing and I'm like how do I what what do I do now why
47:01
doesn't this log catch fire it's because you have the wrong size log it's It's always stuff like that for me very bad
47:07
at it so Pacific Drive and uh Restore Reflect Retry that is another purely
47:14
textbased adventure which you can get on Steam slay the Princess the pristine cut
47:21
that's a remastered edition that just came out this past year it is a a visual
47:26
novel style with art and voice acting i have played I've played some of this i
47:32
would put it definitely in the horror category you know nice princess that you
47:39
were totally totally fine totally fine game you were just a nice ordinary normal princess that you're assigned to
47:45
slay yeah yeah i mean it's it's probably a topo you're probably there to save the princess right that's that's how these
47:51
games yeah okay that's that's also on the
47:57
dragon who knows that's a factory
48:03
the last game on the list is Yaza's Bed and Breakfast which is a tabletop role
48:08
playing game which we talked about in this past week's Tavern Watch you should listen when it goes live on the feed yes
48:14
that's going to be up on Monday for everybody so by the time you listen to this Monday pretty soon okay i think
48:22
this is cool and it's a good discussion before I let Joe and uh Phil go on about
48:27
Monster Hunter Wild I do briefly want to mention a cool game that's that's coming out soon Adam Fall and the reason I want
48:34
to mention Adam Fall is I've seen a lot of people report on it and the one thing I really liked about it is this is the
48:40
British take on the Fallout style genre of games i also really enjoy that one of
48:45
its one of its images for the game is a reduh telephone booth instead of the uh
48:51
blue police box just in the middle of nowhere and I'm just like you know your audience and I am that audience
48:57
yeah and it is it's interesting because this is very I've I've gotten to look at a little bit this is very much I don't
49:04
know how to explain it it's got a little bit of that Fallout 4 construction stuff cuz it's a survivalbased version there's
49:10
a lot more of like you know try not to die up front and also like I think my
49:15
favorite line of this review that I was reading the other day I'm trying to remember it exactly but it's something along the lines of people just vanishing
49:21
is so polite it's a polite apocalypse and and I liked that idea that it's just
49:27
it's more rooted in British culture than American culture like America like Fallout is so intrinsically American
49:34
it's very hard to imagine Fallout not set in America one of the great things about Fallout is you know you're playing
49:41
through the story but the story is the place you are fallout New Vegas is all
49:46
about Las Vegas fallout 4 is all about the capital wasteland and the
49:53
environment tells so much of the story it's one of those games where the place
49:59
is the story it's a character the story yeah I would absolutely agree so I just wanted to throw people out there if
50:05
you're looking for that kind of experience but with a British twist adam Fall is coming soon it's really cool um
50:11
but now I will step aside and let you guys talk go ahead i do want to add one thing about Adam Fall it is in early
50:18
access right now so I believe if you want to pay them a little extra money you can jump in and play it or you can
50:24
watch some streamers play it because it is it's out there i I am looking forward to it one of my best friends is a Brit
50:32
uh so I'm looking forward to it my only gripe is there is no co-op and I'm very sad about that because there's nothing
50:38
quite like surviving a polite apocalypse like surviving a polite apocalypse with your friend not arguing uh but in
50:45
addition in addition to you know the fact that it's going to be early access it's just it's coming fairly soon it's
50:51
going to be fun so there you go now we will talk about Monster Hunter Wild since I don't play it and Liz you're not
50:57
playing it either right nope so Joe Phil go i'll let I'll let Phil take lead i've
51:03
talked a lot so Sure uh okay so Monster Hunter Wilds came out probably about a
51:08
month ago on PC and PS5 um and as is standard for Monster Hunter we have
51:14
gotten word of the first of a series of free updates to the game they're they typically update it every few months
51:19
with new monsters new quests new all kinds of stuff once usually right yeah
51:25
leading up to an expansion pack eventually um but we've now heard details about the first one um there is
51:32
a lot more in it than we knew was going to be in it we knew we were going to be getting one new monster um that was
51:38
actually all I think all we knew going up to this um like we knew that Miz Mizut kind of a
51:44
big water fox looking thing was going to be back um but now we also know they're adding a new hub to the game for uh
51:52
players to play together in with new side events that aren't just hunting monsters um there's uh other monsters
51:58
are confirmed refight harder refights of existing monsters including the current story mode end boss uh with new armor
52:05
associated with them there's um a even a uh a uh more more cosmetics more
52:12
customization this game is you can give all my new costumes even for a Monster Hunter game this game
52:18
is wild with the customization levels like I'm going to I'm going to pull out the one that kind of blew my mind um you
52:25
have in each region in the game a base camp and that's just kind of where all your quest NPCs are where the NPC setup
52:31
is it's pretty straightforward it's it's set it's done it's there in each region you can set up anywhere from two to four
52:37
pop-up camps which are just like they give you a fast travel area they give you a respawn point if you uh if you
52:44
lose to a monster um and in general you don't think a whole lot about them except you can literally customize the
52:51
inside outside and every piece of furniture at every pop-up tent individually in every one that you can
52:57
put up in the game yeah it's so cool and and they are adding more cosmetics for your pop-up camp um they're adding new
53:05
clothing for the handler who gives you assignments to fight monsters they are adding even just a side quest that lets
53:11
you change your glasses for fun um they are adding what looks like a hint at cosmetic weapons um we already have the
53:19
Monster Hunter equivalent of transmog in the game which is layered armor where you can like it sounds you layer the
53:24
appearance of another piece of armor over the one you're wearing now um they're looking at layered weapons as
53:29
well there is rumors of a collaboration with another part of Capcom the company
53:34
that makes Monster Hunter which they did that before in the past too right so they did they didn't hint at what this
53:39
one is going to be though i have a guess i do too what's yours devil May Cry
53:44
because the anime is coming out yeah I figured it's either Devil May Cry or Street Fighter 6 because I could
53:50
absolutely I could absolutely see them adding uh Rebellion as a charge charge blade oh that'd be good yeah and then
53:55
like some Dante layered armor maybe something else too yeah and didn't they do didn't they do a Street Fighter
54:01
crossover with one of the earlier ones too i wanted uh Monster Hunter World had a Street Fighter crossover with a
54:07
complete set of layered armor that turned you into Ryu from Street Fighter and I think there was also one with Mega
54:13
Man where your Palico could be like running around in the Buster helmet yep it gave him a It turned him into almost
54:20
like a little 3D uh Mega Man complete with Buster Buster cannons so wouldn't
54:25
um I would be surprised to see a Mega Man one on this release but I wouldn't be surprised to see one um before Wild's
54:32
you know winds down in several years listen Capcom knows their audience at least somewhat and like this game has
54:38
been wild and off the hook drawing in players that have never even considered a Monster Hunter game before uh and just
54:45
adding stuff like that peppered in even the rumors of it make me excited i am I love this game i love this game so much
54:51
and it's doing the perfect thing that games are supposed to do why do you go hunt monsters so I can get prettier things for my hut like that's that
54:58
that's the perfect loop yeah it's so I it's so I can also have cool armor to wear and then they showed the armor from
55:04
the that you can build with the pieces from the refight of the final boss and holy crap it's so cool it is so good and
55:11
they did confirm that there's going to be more DLC that we're going to get another road map ahead um and I do want
55:16
to talk about that real quick is the free title update road map um it's what thursday April 3rd Friday April 4th in
55:24
that that time frame depending on what area you're in where you're going to get that then you have the April 22nd which
55:29
is the Festival of Accord um then you get the Archeteered Raido uh which comes
55:35
out April 29th and then at the end of May is when that Capcom collimation happens with other additional
55:43
unspecified features which I love when they do that because it means it's going to be really really awesome
55:51
yeah there's and like they're bringing they're bringing back all kinds of stuff arena quests with time trial fights they
55:57
have these time trial fights where you haven't basically set equipment to go in so it's it's purely a test of your your
56:03
skill not just how much cool stuff you've built uh those are coming back with a global leaderboard this time um
56:08
previously in world I believe it was regional so you can only compare your time against if you're in the US for example other US players this time we
56:15
have global leaderboards so that is going to be interesting too i I lose a lot of time to those when they're around
56:21
did you also see the teaser at the end for uh Lagrikus lagas yeah the
56:26
underwater Leviathan who hasn't been seen since what monster Hunter 3 it has been a good long while
56:33
sorry if you can't tell we might like this game a little bit
56:39
it's really good and I would really encourage anybody who's looking who's thinking about this so or even maybe if
56:44
you haven't thought about it before and we're just being very enthusiastic rubbing off on you Monster Hunter games at this point kind of come in two
56:50
flavors and they alternate releases of them there's the ones that are what I would call the traditional ones they
56:55
have a lot of friction that makes them maybe not the easiest game to get into um they're kind of you know they'll have
57:02
the worlds that are divided up into different areas the travel's a little more honorous there's a lot more preparation you have to do to go on a
57:07
hunt and then there's the ones like Monster Hunter World Monster Hunter Wilds um you get the larger more open
57:13
areas you get kind of the low friction get right out there and start hunting monsters and build cool stuff you get
57:18
into that loop very quickly yeah um especially in wilds which literally throws you off a ship with a weapon and
57:24
says go fight a monster like you you go from cut scene into first hunt seamlessly which is really cool and uh
57:32
with PC and PS5 crossplay which is and I guess Xbox i think it's on Xbox
57:37
so um like no matter what platform if you've probably got a platform that can play this although if it's PC um I hope
57:43
your PC is very beefy um mine doesn't like it but I have it on my PS5 and I
57:49
actually took a cue from Joe here i wanted to be able to play this while I was quote unquote working stop now i
57:56
bought a PlayStation Portal so I don't have to go downstairs to play Monster it streams so well it's insane so good it
58:04
is there is no noticeable input lag compared to sitting in front of my my TV my PS5 which is now also an
58:10
advertisement for the PlayStation Portal which is wild to me because like again this is a game that cares about like
58:16
somewhat not it's it's less necessary in this game but Twitch reflexes make
58:21
fights go better uh and like being able to stream it to the PlayStation Portable i literally if I'm sitting at the shop
58:29
and like there's like no nothing for me to do and there's everybody's playing games or whatever i've been playing
58:35
constantly on the Portal and it has been absolutely phenomenal but it's it is a very easy game to get into there's a lot
58:41
of really good aspects to it the the crossplay features are really good and you get to see some really cool things
58:48
um I think we mentioned it last time but like all the player hubs and it there is a multiplayer aspect to it because the
58:54
you get put you can play it solo but some of the most fun is when you're playing in a world with other players uh
58:59
and they can come to your aid or you can go to their aid uh some of the costumes and layered armor effects that people
59:05
come up with is absolutely insane i think we mentioned last time like I legitimately saw a Frieza in the wild
59:12
like somebody who figured out how to make Frieza arm it is insane like it's a very creative community and it's a lot
59:18
of fun and highly recommend that you give it a try if you even tangentially interested in it and if you really just
59:25
like beating up monsters from transmog boy is this the game for you it's pretty
59:30
much the loop like you you build your weapons then you go "Okay well now I'm going to have to build transmog armor to
59:35
look pretty." I I gave I gave my I'm not letting you guys get me i'm not listen my palico's
59:42
running around in in in uh uh cockatric scale mail with a giant pole running
59:49
around like Don Kiote it is it is perfect it is a serotonin hit I need I
59:54
will tell you right now that if this one rumor that's been going around in various places comes true then I will
1:00:00
probably end up getting it but not until that rumor is that for the 70th anniversary of Godzilla which was last
1:00:06
year Tohjo hit up some people to put Godzilla in their games oh Matt I would not be surprised if Monster Hunter is
1:00:12
one of them yeah that's one of the ones they talked about because apparently there's there's Devil in uh Monster
1:00:18
Hunter Y or Devil Joe i can't I can't pronounce this Japanese word i we just call it the pickle apparently the pickle
1:00:25
is the kind of an homage to Godzilla well also I should also point out that I believe that Atari and Capcom worked
1:00:31
together on Godzilla destroy all monsters way back in the day but so yeah there's that that if that happens then I
1:00:37
will I think I will actually be forced by my brain my brain will literally go serotonin and I'll be over there uh but
1:00:43
in the meantime Liz I feel like we are getting near the end so I have to turn it over to you uh yes I want to remind
1:00:50
you all that Blizzard Watch is made possible by listeners like you i did
1:00:55
want to thank some of our new supporters this week actually only one Snake of Voldem who appears to be a a fan of what
1:01:05
snack of Voldem did I not say that right snck of Vulune which is a great name uh listened
1:01:13
to our Lorewatch episode on Sethre and uh jumped in and subscribed on our
1:01:19
Patreon for $2 i want to tell you all that you can also support us on Patreon
1:01:25
at patreon.com/b Blizzardwatch for $3 you get early access to all of our podcast
1:01:32
and free and you get our bonus podcast pre-show for Blizzard in which we talk
1:01:37
about all sorts of things this week it was video games in Godzilla so if that
1:01:43
sounds good to you you can for $3 a month that extra content yeah yeah it's
1:01:48
probably going to happen again it's you know why would that happen again i don't I don't see why that would
1:01:54
happen again hold on the chip in my head that's telling me to talk about Godzilla is back on
1:02:00
and I also want to remind you that we have a new feed for our watch podcast i know I've been harping on this but it is
1:02:07
it's so great i want to make sure everyone who's interested in tabletop subscribes because we have been doing so
1:02:14
many cool live plays our game of Triangle Agency is just wrapping up so
1:02:20
if you subscribe now you can listen to our whole Triangle Agency game along with a lot of other cool games that
1:02:25
we've published throughout the year we also have a new uh talk show episode of Tavern Watch which is coming out this
1:02:32
week so you can hear us talking about all the latest tabletop news including the demise of Sigil for D&D it uh it it
1:02:41
came and went very quickly so and after that we're doing a game called Pigeons 11 which I think was very fun and I hope
1:02:49
you enjoy i hope you enjoy all of our exciting games but if you want that content search for Tavern Watch in your
1:02:56
podcast player of choice or in Spotify and subscribe so you can get them as
1:03:02
soon as they're out or support us on Patreon at $3 a month you will get them early and adree so uh I also want to
1:03:10
remind you that we are trying to be more active on social media and that you can find us as Blizzard on Blue Sky Threads
1:03:18
Twitter Facebook Instagram and on Masttodon at gamepad.club also Blizzard
1:03:25
and if you like doing podcasts on YouTube we are Blizzard podcast we also
1:03:31
post podcast clips if you want to see uh little little show previews on Instagram
1:03:37
and YouTube so thank you so much for listening thank you so much for your support and remember you can subscribe
1:03:43
on patreon.com/bizzardwatch we appreciate it if you can if you can't thanks for
1:03:48
listening and uh give us a like or subscribe share the episodes or check out the website at blizzardwatch.com
1:03:55
thanks guys uh thank you Liz uh at this point I think I'm going to do the outro because I feel like we've we've hit that
1:04:01
point uh thanks again to Phil for being our our special guest star this week um
1:04:07
I'm not sure like at this point if we should try to come up with an arc for you but you know we'll we'll look at it
1:04:13
we we'll we'll we'll workshop that i I'll cut a promo before the next one we'll get into it me and Joe can start
1:04:18
feuding or something you know you see Joe the problem is is you don't
1:04:24
have what it takes to stop the fillinator okay yeah I'm really sad that
1:04:29
I did that uh also of course thank you to Liz and Joe for being the backbone of the site and this podcast in particular
1:04:37
uh thank you both all right uh talk to take it easy everybody thanks uh this
1:04:42
has been the watch podcast and we'll be back next week [Music]
#Online Media
#Computer & Video Games