Up next in 10
This week's episode covers a lot of ground, because we're answering your burning listener questions (but you should still see a doctor). One involves modding and romance options in games like Fallout 4 or Cyberpunk 2077. The next question is all about class fantasy in WoW, and which our hosts think is defined the best. The final question is about the upcoming Legion Remix: what are our hosts looking forward to the most on the revisit? And what do they think might change, or be added. After all, we've done this all before.
And, as per usual on Lore Watch, the questions are really just the beginning.
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0:00
[Music]
0:09
hello and welcome to Lore Watch a round table free form discussion about lore in your favorite media i'm your host Joe
0:14
Perez one of several lore focused folks from Blizzard Watch and I've got my marvelous co-host with me today Matt Rossy how you doing today Matt
0:22
um painkillers are amazing and properly used can make you feel like you're not
0:28
in pain it's It's really kind of something that is stupendous and also
0:34
seems like it would be logical to to most people but clearly is not to some it often does not work
0:41
you know a lot of times it just doesn't work so when it does Yeah okay well
0:47
we're not here to talk about uh that today instead we are here to answer questions from you our wonderful
0:52
listeners if you have questions for this or any of our podcasts be sure to send
0:57
those into podcastwatch.com specify the show that it is for in the subject line and any special
1:03
pronunciation of your name if you want to hit us up on Discord we have the Q and Podcast questions channel which is
1:09
open for everyone same rules apply we also have the patron Q and podcast questions channel which is set aside
1:15
specifically for our Patreon subscribers we tend to look there first as a way of saying thank you for helping us keep the lights on and if you don't want to send
1:22
us a message on Discord or email you can send us a message directly on Patreon and Liz will make sure it gets added to
1:28
the master document of things that I have to talk about well I guess we'll just go ahead and get right into it the
1:35
first one comes from Tetsi uh thoughts on game mods that restrict or allow romance options that aren't available as
1:41
the game shipped is this just a form of fanfic and let people enjoy what they want to enjoy or does it take away from
1:48
who that character is being presented as i have mixed feelings on this and was curious as to your thoughts
1:55
shipping uh character stuff and romance is always a very personal thing in games
2:01
as far as I'm concerned and unless it is a core feature of the game any add-on
2:07
that lets you do that is between the add-on and the person that decided to
2:13
install it i generally don't have a problem with it because it doesn't necessarily affect me so I'm fine with
2:21
them existing and I'm fine with it being something that people can use to tell their own story because let's let's be
2:26
honest since RP has been around in World of Warcraft people have shipped
2:32
themselves with NPCs or shipped other NPCs with each other like it's just a thing that happens it's a reality of
2:39
this type of game when people feel strongly about certain characters there's always going to be an element of
2:44
that and that's fine now if it was demanded that everybody install the mod and some one person's choices were
2:52
canonical uh because of that which again is absurd and would never happen then I would have
2:58
an issue with it but it's it's fine i think it's absolutely fine as long as it
3:04
doesn't affect anybody else and it remains a personal choice matt I don't know if you feel strongly about it one
3:09
way or another i have strong feelings that might seem somewhat contradictory to people so I'm going to break them up
3:15
into sections uh section one I've written four novels uh one of which was
3:22
published by by Monkey Brain Books and the other three have not um
3:28
if anyone cared enough about my stuff to write fanfic about it I'd be thrilled
3:36
yay someone cares enough about this to write fanfic boo in my head i don't like
3:41
the pairing they made but that's not my problem because I still have my books that I can write and the characters will
3:48
be as I say i have the official you know my canon is mine um if if if they made a
3:54
video game of my books and someone wrote a mod to make two characters romance that I find personally icky I'd still be
4:01
pleased that someone cared enough if that makes sense like as the author I
4:08
feel like there's a certain amount of inherent just you know yay that they
4:13
even care to this kind of discussion um so and I've seen that with a lot of game
4:19
companies and mods they're like you know we just love that people care enough to do this that doesn't mean we're going to enshrine your weird uh you know Judy
4:27
Claire Malev threesome uh into our stories but you know good on you for
4:33
liking it uh so that's my first feeling i think that these kind of things are
4:38
fine because you know it's it's a sign of people's investment uh more than it is anything else it shows that they
4:44
actually care so much about this that they're willing to go through a lot of time and effort whether it's fanfic
4:50
whether it's a mod what have you that being said there's there's two things that people do that irritate me to no
4:57
end one is I'm just going to straight up call it whitewashing
5:02
mhm one of my favorite games is Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous it is a game that I go back to again and again
5:10
and again um one of the main characters is Sila who is a paladin and I'll just She's black
5:18
she's a black woman i've seen hundreds of mods making her
5:23
white why
5:29
she doesn't there's no like her race has absolutely nothing to do with anything
5:34
in the game she's just a character in the game she's not even romancible
5:41
so if you've got some kind of weird fetish she's not even that so I don't I don't understand this at all like I
5:48
don't get what they're what you're doing when you do that and I've also seen it with like people who don't like certain
5:55
kinds of relationships to just take them out of the game entirely and I'm not saying I should have the
6:02
right to stop you or anybody should have the right to stop you i'm just saying it's icky like you know okay oh no male
6:09
male romance here's an idea don't get into one if if there's male male romance options
6:16
in a game and you don't like that don't play it you're you're in charge of that guy you know that right your your your
6:23
male character if you don't want him to romance another male character don't
6:30
but but regardless I'm not trying to stop anyone from making a mod i just
6:36
think that that is icky i feel like if you're going to do this kind of thing mods should always heir on the side of
6:43
facilitating things that aren't in the game not pruning things that are in the game out especially when it comes to
6:50
stuff like romance and relationships yeah and like in going a little bit
6:56
further right like there's a lot of games where relationships and and romance options are integral part of the
7:02
game and there are certain things like you pointed out that uh you can't change that are uh or you can change with mods
7:11
but are not part of the base game and Judy is an example of that right like and this was a big topic of debate when
7:17
Cyberpunk 2077 came out and uh people are like "Well why can't my male V romance Judy?" Because Judy doesn't like
7:24
men uh or male-facing characters it's just not her thing and that is part of
7:30
her story and background and who she is as a character and a lot of mods were
7:36
released that you know took that away from the character those I feel are
7:43
Again it's questionable at best right like I don't think that neither of us is
7:49
arguing that that they shouldn't exist or that you should feel bad if you did that we're arguing that for us it feels
7:56
antithetical to the story of Judy's character right yeah yeah and I mean and
8:02
again but because it doesn't really affect anybody but you playing the game I guess that's I I mean again it comes
8:08
down to the idea of it doesn't affect anybody but you so it really doesn't matter in the long term and I guess the
8:14
answer for me is I guess it really doesn't because it doesn't really affect me i just think it's I never understood
8:21
the idea of using mods to change who a character was because if you enjoy
8:27
that character or like that character or are interested in that character if you're changing a core aspect of them
8:32
are they still the same character now again it's a deeply personal choice and
8:38
I I don't want to harp too much on it but it's just something I never quite understood personally um so yeah I mean
8:46
I don't know what else there is really to say about it i mean unless Matt's got more and I'm sure he does
8:52
i mean I do but I don't know that I would say anything else that's particularly useful um trying to think
8:58
about how to put this basically when I think about fanfic or anything
9:06
like it where like mods that alter gameplay I think it's a little different in a in a video game in that you are
9:14
actively playing that game so in a degree to a degree you're kind of making
9:19
the story as you go through it i mean that's that's just the more that the game is reliant on changes and and and
9:26
has consequences for actions the more that's true uh the more that you you're it's like
9:33
one thing to like there aren't any romance options in Doom
9:40
you could I don't know how you're going to put them in there you if you think you can write a mod to Doom that makes
9:46
someone romancible okay you're basically writing a whole new game at this point and there's
9:51
nothing wrong with writing a whole new game but just it's certain things this
9:57
doesn't work for Mhm but for things that it does work for I I I am never going to
10:02
say that I think it's bad for people to have more control over the options that
10:07
their character goes through um oddly enough I'm just going to confess
10:14
to this one i when I first my very first character playing through Cyberpunk 2077
10:20
was uh was male V and I didn't like him so I went back and started a female V
10:26
playthrough and I was much happier with it but for some reason my female V play
10:31
my female V playthrough bugged out uh cuz I had I don't I didn't have mods i
10:37
still don't have mods in Cyberpunk uh I I play it unmoded just because it doesn't feel necessary but I ended up
10:44
romancing Panam on Female V which you're not supposed to
10:49
be able to do and she's still romanced
10:57
and that's not what they intended and I if I had deliberately done it I'd feel a
11:03
little weird about it but because it it just happened and I still have the
11:10
playthrough and it's sustained through multiple patches they've put out like
11:15
they've patched the game like 12 times since I did this i did this like in two
11:20
in 2021 maybe like early 2021 late January or February and that playthrough
11:27
I still have it um I took it through Phantom Liberty she's still my girlfriend she now comes over to my
11:32
house she slaps my butt so that's pro that's in the game you know what I mean
11:38
they had to put the ability for Judy to not Judy sorry uh Panam to do all those things
11:45
in order for me to be able to have them done you know what I'm saying they they didn't take anything out that would have
11:51
broken it so I feel like to a certain degree the game
11:56
is is robust enough that if somebody wants to write a mod where a character can do something that they wouldn't do as the game is written as Joe has said
12:04
that's between the them and the fence posts in the game as long as nobody's It's when people go
12:10
out of their way to make like "Yeah I've made this mod that so you don't have to see any of that bleep." And it's like "No I'm I'm not down for that i I'm fine
12:17
with you not seeing it in your own game but the idea that you felt you needed to take it out of a game when it's not
12:24
something that you will see unless you do it that's that's bothersome to me
12:30
but again at the end of the day I think I think it basically just shows people care and I'm sorry you know when you're
12:39
out you're out here trying to get people to care about the things you you're writing or drawing or publishing or
12:45
saying and someone shows that they do I I think it's nice i that's just where I
12:50
come down on it yeah so hopefully that gives you our insight into it uh but I
12:56
think we're going to go ahead and move on uh to the next one which comes from uh Furitar uh Unholy DK here over on
13:04
Illan i have a question for lore watch spawned by the Azeroth D&D episode what class do you guys think has the best
13:11
representation in game what classes have the most well-defined class fantasy and
13:16
what class do you think best represent diverse class fantasies i'll let Matt go
13:23
first on this one this one's kind of complicated it is so let's let's break it down and do them one by one I guess
13:30
so let's start with the first one so what class do you think if from Dn D would have the best translation or
13:36
representation moving into WoW
13:42
uh that's interesting because I mean I
13:47
don't really even know how to address this because I mean how do you determine like what class from from D and D is in
13:56
WoW mhm like is a is a death knight a warlock
14:01
no death knight would be like an an anti- paladin except kind of they have like actual
14:08
death powers well I mean so does an antipaladin they summon undead and stuff like that so I guess it would be close
14:13
enough also antipaladin like that's not the same thing as it like in fifth edition i don't think we really have
14:20
anti-alins do we uh I think there's oath breakers well there's oath breakers there's there is also an anti-paladin
14:27
yeah but I I would just say that when in doubt in a question like this always go
14:34
with the the one that seems the easiest to say and I'd say it's rogues
14:40
uh D&D's rogues and W and WoW's rogues are pretty easy to model against each
14:46
other um they have a lot of similar abilities they perform a similar role
14:52
there's obviously exceptions and options to to do them in a slightly different way i I'd go with rogues i would say
14:59
that there's just it's just so ingrained
15:04
that you you can't really look at them and say that they're significantly different they have different mechanics
15:10
but they're still they're performing the same function and in a very similar
15:15
flavor uh I you know I think my pick and I
15:21
think Matt will probably yell at me here I think warriors and fighters have a decent translation too no the problem I
15:28
only have with that is that warriors are actually also barbarians yeah i And I mean and that's kind of that makes it
15:34
cludgy for me maybe but I think I think that they're decent enough and maybe
15:40
counting them as both is is fair but plus I didn't want to say warriors because everybody expected you to do
15:47
that yet yeah everyone's going to say "Well he's going to say warriors fighters are warriors." I'm like "No I'm
15:52
not going to say that." But I don't I'm not arguing with you i mean it's not it's not wrong and I I'll go and I'll go
15:58
so far as to say that I think vanilla warriors like going back way that far
16:04
are probably the most uh akin to what I would consider a D and D fighter
16:09
especially because back then yeah they were almost one for one i would say that they were they were clearly based on
16:15
them i I think so too and I think that there's some some stuff that existed there or you can see on uh if you play
16:21
classic that no longer exists like warriors wanted to have a ranged weapon at some point like it wasn't necessarily
16:28
the primary but they had a ranged weapon slot um Oh yeah and they used it there was a lot I knew uh I knew people who
16:35
played warriors in WoW and who did all sorts of stuff to try to push the uh
16:41
utility of it yeah they wanted that they wanted to be doing stuff they wanted there to be they would propose every
16:47
time an expansion came up until I'd say up until Cataclysm every time an expansion came out they would propose
16:53
ranged warrior be a real thing like they wanted to have like a I think they call it dragoon in other classes other games
17:00
they wanted to have the dragoon type ranged fighter thing happening with with the warrior yeah well dragoon I think is
17:06
almost always exclusively associated with lances so I don't think it was Drauna but I know what you're talking
17:12
about but yeah regardless I think that they're they're the the closest analog
17:17
at least as far as what I can see for a translation of a decent D and D fighter in WoW um it's gotten a little bit more
17:26
like Matt pointed out as we've moved on in WoW I think warriors have a divergent path so I think there is a
17:33
uh there's a a weird split where half of them I think is equivalent to a battlem
17:39
fighter and half of them I think is equivalent to uh like I don't want to say an ancestors but the Avatar uh
17:46
barbarian like when you start going into like the mountain king path and all that other stuff like it really feels like
17:52
that style of barbarian that style of like towering titanic uh fighting entity
17:58
that will just sit there and they can do this all Uh yeah I think the the real birth of
18:03
that is when um I finally somehow managed to like telepathically implant
18:09
Titans Grip into someone's head uh to the point where at the time when we were writing about it someone was like "Ross
18:14
must have gone to the offices and I hadn't yet." Yeah uh but no it was just
18:21
Titans Grip changes Fury Warriors and when you have Titan Grip Fury Warrior
18:26
you are looking at some form of barbarian they're no longer They're no longer the the the spec that could play
18:35
a you know just a regular dual wielding fighter they you they had to put that back in
18:41
Mhm with uh single-minded fury single-minded Fury kind of turns you
18:47
back into a dual wielding fighter but even then the the rage mechanic is too
18:52
much a part of it uh but I think you got a good point about I'd say there's actually three archetypes
19:00
that you can see in the warrior uh from D and D the the one you already pointed out the battlem fighter um if you go
19:08
heavy heavy heavy protection if that's your that's what you're doing you know you are tanking it kind of moves into
19:15
that just straight up I want to be a meat shield type fighter um
19:21
and then there's the the barbarian which I think you you called pretty well as the you know suddenly get you know get
19:27
embedded smash everything and even if you're not doing the embicking route there's still plenty of like there's
19:32
like frenzy barbarian in there somewhere so yeah I don't I don't I'm not arguing with anything you're saying here i don't
19:38
think any of it's wrong yeah now another one that I do want to throw out there as well that I think is pretty close i mean
19:44
paladins like just in general paladins trade pretty well i don't think so and there there's a I think there's a
19:51
variety of reasons why I think that it's a lot should I be saying that cleric then do you think cleric would work
19:56
cleric is closer to paladin which is funny as far as I'm concerned i think that's more accurate
20:03
um and we could talk about that a little bit before I give my my next one so I mean the heavy armor use the stalwart
20:10
defender having access to uh healing spells and a cleric of the war domain
20:16
really plays like a WoW uh paladin as far as I'm concerned um with a WoW
20:21
retribution paladin in specific it has the ability to heal but also it has the ability to do a metric ton of damage and
20:29
anybody who tells you that a a war domain cleric can't do a metric ton of damage has never met one in game
20:36
i mean I've played one just because they are that nasty yeah i mean they're
20:42
especially nasty at low levels like the war domain waring clerk by level three
20:48
can do like twice the damage of anybody else on the field
20:53
they they don't grow as hard as some other classes do like a 10th level you know anything wizard is pretty nasty but
21:02
more domains start off strong and they don't ever drop off like just because they keep getting
21:07
those higher level paladin spells to combine with I can hit you as many times as I want with this big weapon yeah when
21:14
I get up to you uh they are they are really strong they there's no disputing
21:20
that yeah and I think I think I think that that's probably closest to the WoW Paladin representation uh especially
21:26
with like the two very distinct flavors or I don't want to say two distinct flavors but the multiple distinct
21:32
flavors we have of uh you know paladin with the whether it's a protection
21:38
paladin whether it's a rep paladin or whether it's a holy paladin a cleric in
21:43
D&D can fit all of those roles in fact in third edition fourth edition and some
21:50
of the kits from second edition actually allowed clerics to be better tank tanks
21:55
than fighters or barbarians which was pretty pretty wild honestly all things
22:02
considered yeah cuz when you can heal yourself too it's even better yeah yeah nothing can stop you essentially as long
22:09
as you've got it's not like as long as you can cast your spell and get it off um you know you're just standing right
22:15
there going boop keep going man yep so yeah no there's a lot to that i would I
22:20
would not disagree with you so go ahead with the one you were going to say next the other one that I think comes really close to D and D is uh like and it's the
22:27
ranger class is specifically marksman hunter i think a marksman hunter comes
22:33
very very close to what a traditional idea of a ranger in Dungeons and Dragons
22:39
is complete with the animal companion the range skills uh the ability to cast
22:45
or do certain things like spells uh that have an effect whether it's seeing
22:50
through your animals eyes uh whether it's you know doing the whole fain death thing all of these things are stuff that
22:57
rangers have been able to do in D and D maybe less so in the current edition uh
23:03
but that's a whole other uh topic for another day but I think that they come
23:08
really really close uh to to that sort of ranger setup that fantasy
23:16
i don't know if you agree or not i don't disagree but I do think that the ranger is not
23:25
it's harder for me to say that the ranger is a good marksman hunter um I think that a marksman hunter if if we
23:32
had something like I mean I did a D and D uh game that fifth edition game that
23:37
was a WoW setting it was set in in Azeroth and the Ranger I played like I
23:45
was like no I had to put in levels of barbarian to get even close and that's just not it doesn't it doesn't work for
23:52
me just because of Marx is just better let me put it to you that way that the marksmanship uh hunter is just better
23:59
than a D&D ranger yeah and I mean definitely better you know I will agree with that
24:05
and uh but al I also now that you've brought this into me I also want to say that I think to a certain degree um
24:12
there are certain hunter probably subasses that would make a good
24:18
beast mastery hunter yeah in fact I think beast mastery hunter and those those kits
24:25
come together better um if you want a survival hunter uh you have to go
24:30
gloomstalker yeah yeah even you have to go gloomstalker ranger and it's it's not even close mechanically it's not close
24:38
um I will say the gloomstalker hunter however if you want to play D and D and you want to play a ranger give
24:43
gloomstalker a shot it is it's a kind of limited play style but it's it's very
24:49
effective um I like gloomstalkers but I can see why other people wouldn't it kind of
24:55
takes you away from the whole fantasy in in a lot of directions well and I guess let's let's use that as
25:01
a transition for the next one there so one of the other questions that we were asked here is what classes have the most
25:07
well- definfined class fantasy and what do what classes do we think represent that to the best and are we talking
25:15
about in D and D or in WoW and we're going to go in WoW here because I think that's the intent
25:21
i'll let you go first okay um it isn't warrior
25:27
i'm going to let's let's go back to Legion for a second here cuz I think Legion is a good example of demonstrating this and topical since
25:34
we're looking at Legion Legion remix and all that stuff coming yeah death Knights
25:40
top tier class fantasy for days oh yeah very focused you know who you are
25:46
paladins near the top mhm uh they have all these these NPCs different
25:52
lifestyles yet they all still work as paladins the paladin class halls got
25:58
blood elves and torin and dwarves and humans and Dranai and they're all there
26:04
they're all palleting it up and now you'd even get more cuz there's several uh allied races that are also paladins
26:11
so now you can have some Xandelord trolls in there or what have you paladins top tier uh priests did real
26:17
well i think that their class order halls just below the two I just mentioned hunter's pretty pretty solid
26:25
class hall um I actually liked it when I played my Hunter i was like "No this is way better than I thought it was going
26:30
to be." Still not up there with those ones I just mentioned um the the the mage order another pretty solid order um
26:41
Warlocks and Demon Hunters uh Demon Hunter one is weird but it's it's got a lot going on a lot
26:48
of there's a lot of people to talk to it it's it feels very cohesive warlocks is
26:53
really good um I don't think the Warlocks did bad at all i think you'd expect Warlocks to do well in this expansion where demons are attacking and
27:01
yeah story-wise they did people who didn't get anything as good rogues
27:06
rogues tried the rogue order tries but it never really pulls off what it
27:11
looks like it's trying for go ahead Joe no no i was going to agree with you i think I think rogues as far as like a
27:17
class identity has is been struggling and I think it's in part to the first part of our conversation i think since
27:24
they were put in game they've been so close to a D and D rogue and I think
27:30
that there's been an attempt ever since and I'll go as far as saying Burning Crusade to try to find a unique identity
27:39
for them and this is where you get things like the outlaw rogue and stuff like that that uh come in and
27:45
unfortunately I don't know that it has done anything to really bring about a a
27:52
solid class fantasy for the rogues because I think the rogues still don't know who they are and I don't know that
27:59
that's going to change anytime soon like going back to Legion like you said oh we're spies okay well let's lean into
28:05
that what what how does that class fantasy work or no no we're hired assassins okay well let's lean in that
28:11
fantasy how does that and they it's like these fragments of all these different tropes that fall under sort of like the
28:17
rogue banner without really committing to a very distinct identity and then
28:22
there may be somebody out there who loves rogues that is going to come for us but I I do think that they're one of
28:28
the weaker ones in terms of representing the class fantasy because they don't know who they are yeah I'm going to go further and actually even explain why I
28:34
think that is because I think Joe's hit the nail on the head here um the problem with rogues is they are too useful mhm
28:42
you need to have them for all sorts of things you need a spy archetype rogues
28:48
you need an assassin archetype the guys who sneak around with knives that sounds like a pretty good assassin archetype
28:53
you need like a stealthy tracker um in a city you're going to want a rogue i mean
28:58
outside you're probably going to want a hunter but in a city rogue looked like the way to go obviously if you want to
29:03
have a criminal organization the guys who steal things you go there
29:09
mhm as a result basically everything that you just call
29:14
shady stuff ends up in the rogue group and as a result it's not like you would
29:19
actually ever have an organization that did all this stuff cuz cuz the city you
29:24
know the the people who are like bounty hunters and trackers in a city and the people who sneak around murdering people
29:30
for money aren't going to get along even though they do it the same way
29:36
and I feel like that's the problem rogues have then combine it with the fact that in every faction
29:43
they're going to have their own rogues right and it's not like those rogues have an organization like like it makes
29:49
sense that warlocks would all go to a warlocky place and talk about warlocking
29:54
you know demon summoning and dominating sure I'm yeah I I was born in in
29:59
Stormwind and you know Mukon here uh he he's you know he's obviously from from
30:05
Dren originally he's an orc but you know we have the whole demon thing in common we we can talk about that it's not like
30:12
groups of people who are sneaky professionally necessarily want to hang out and be friendly you know especially
30:18
when it's not like it's not like international spies who have a you know a camaraderie even as they're trying to
30:24
kill each other they they both have lived this life if they were in a neutral location they could sit and have
30:31
a drink and talk about it but if you have Merkar the the the slayer of a
30:36
hundred helpless souls who sneaks in like without thought and and dispatches his opponents and then leaves that guy
30:43
isn't going to have anything to do to talk to about with Jimmy who's a fence
30:49
they might run into each other when working at some points but they don't have a common thing to talk about rogues
30:56
have been made so universal and so usefully universal that it it's less
31:02
like a identity and more like a job it it's it's almost like it's a it's a
31:08
skill set that they have for performing various different tasks and they don't
31:14
really have anything in common besides the skill set so there's no common ground like you see with paladins or
31:21
death knights or even hunters who have the whole we like the outside world thing um but that's just me that's
31:29
that's my feeling on roads it doesn't mean it's not a good class and it doesn't mean it doesn't have good lore it means that the lore is broken up into
31:36
individual groups like is SI7 the same as you know Ravenhold no
31:42
no they're not the same group but you know obviously the both of them have cool lore um the Horde had like three
31:49
different like rogue organizations at one point i don't know how many they have now but the lore is there it just
31:55
isn't unified yeah and I there's another one that I'm going to throw out here that I think is going to surprise people for for me to
32:01
say and I'm going to throw Shaman under the bus here um I would say that that class order was less than exciting it's
32:08
not that the order hall was less than exciting cuz I think the order hall was fine oh no but the order hall was fine
32:14
the order is less than exciting yeah so and and there's another reason the reason for it is very similar as far as
32:20
I'm concerned to rogues everybody who has a shaman or has shaman as part of
32:27
their society has a different interpretation of what that shaman is and while they do a bunch of the same
32:33
you know base functionality it's not the same for everybody a torren
32:40
shaman may look at its ancestors and they may have common ground with the broken but it's not the same thing um
32:48
dwarf shaman may have common ground to talk with a troll shaman but it's not
32:53
going to be the same thing cuz they come from different places and that's fine but I also think that there's just
33:01
there's too much going on and then mechanically over the years and I will say this as far as like specs and things
33:09
go and especially with the hero uh talents and I said this when the hero talents were there I would love for
33:16
these to bring back the class fantasy i don't think they really did because looking at toemic if totems are supposed
33:22
to be the class fantasy why did I really only get one new totem and everything I
33:28
do revolves around that single totem not saying it's a bad thing that totem is actually pretty baller but it's one
33:35
totem so why is it called toemic and it's like oh everything revolves around your totems like it really doesn't
33:40
though like it's it's not quite all about that instead it's more about oh
33:46
you have some cool downs and things that affect your totems but you still only have three totems that you really wind up using and the
33:53
same thing with Farseer uh Farseer doesn't do enough to really as far as
33:59
I'm concerned bring that sort of feeling of wisdom i summon ghostly ancestors when I heal under Farier and that that's
34:07
okay I guess but like that generally isn't part of what the the the previous
34:14
lore or or of every single one of these is they may revere their ancestors but
34:21
generally speaking they don't call them the battle like it's it's a weird mix and I'm again I'm not saying this is is
34:27
you know that it's bad i love playing shaman i think shaman healing mechanically is some of the best that
34:33
it's been in a very very long time but that also is not I can say sit here and
34:39
say that I don't feel that it has a strong fantasy identity um and even
34:44
elemental I think lacks a little bit on that because while you are summoning stuff and like doing some damage it's
34:51
not quite the same so that's my two cents at least as far as that goes i
34:56
don't know if Matt wants to add anything to that i'm not going to add to that so much as I'm going to use it to jump off to
35:02
something else take everything he just said about shamans and warriors are that
35:08
five times harder like every warrior you meet they're not going to think that
35:13
they're they're members of a brotherhood with other people who do the same stuff because it is the most universal thing
35:19
you can do in WoW like picking up anything and hitting somebody else with
35:26
it is the baseline for every war we've ever seen even the most powerful magical
35:33
um civilizations that have ever existed on Azeroth still used shock troops still
35:39
used bodies they still threw numbers of people at fights and the warrior is just
35:46
the ones who survive long enough to get so good at it that they can do crazy things that they shouldn't be able to do
35:54
because the the real tr the real true secret of the warrior class is that they have no magic
36:01
everything they do is not magical even rogues use a little weird shadow magic
36:07
at times to like go invisible or whatever canonically they have magical stuff
36:13
warriors don't that's just they're just angry enough to do that uh and then you
36:20
at first that's like okay sure then you start looking at the stuff they can do they can grow to be three times their
36:25
normal size how i'm just that mad they can insult a
36:31
dragon so effectively that the dragon turns to punch them in the face how i just knew this would piss the dragon off
36:39
like it's crazy to even try and justify it the class order hall brought in Odin and
36:47
and you being so good at fighting that after you got killed by the Legion he
36:52
brought you back to keep fighting but notice that that doesn't give you any
36:58
magical powers you're just a guy or a girl or I don't
37:04
know you know if if there's even I don't think there's any current non-binary race but there should be uh point being
37:12
it it's just that it's it's its heart and its soul it's just being real mad
37:20
and that doesn't give you a class flavor like think about how you would describe
37:26
the unified class flavor of a warrior
37:32
like what does your torin warrior have to talk about with even an orc warrior
37:37
like yeah I like that that's that sword you got it's pretty nice yeah it is pretty nice
37:44
it's not like that's unique to warriors a paladin has a sword death knights have swords you're probably not going to go up to a death knight and compliment the
37:50
sword cuz you're afraid he'll kill you and turn you into a walking zombie to follow him around into battle but you'd
37:56
still like the sword it still looks cool uh so yeah in a weird sort of way some
38:02
of the classes that are fun to play and have great lore their lore isn't such
38:07
that implies any kind of class fantasy like I could sit here and list a whole bunch of great warriors that I love to
38:14
talk about dennith Troll Bane uh you know uh you know Grom Hellscream
38:21
Garage Hellscream Varian Ren yep yeah lots of great warriors and you know Andy
38:27
and Lothar but at no point do I could I imagine can you imagine like like like
38:35
um Karen you know Karen Blood Huff shows up at a tavern and uh like one of one of
38:42
the many many dwarven heroes i can't remember his name but I really should because I wrote up no Yolure about the
38:48
guy uh the one who's like the last living member of the original Bronzebeard dynasty mhm well whatever
38:55
he's alive he's a dwarf um they would what would they talk about hitting things with axes
39:01
you know they probably could talk about that for a while but then then what how great it is to get drunk is this a class
39:08
thing or is it just a living thing to a certain degree warrior is even more than
39:14
anything else it's just a skill set it's like I'm good at these things
39:21
yeah and it doesn't really like to a certain degree maybe it shouldn't have a class fantasy yeah and and that's not to
39:27
say that they're not looking at some of that stuff and trying to figure out the identity for things because we do see that in like the coming the coming
39:34
expansions there there is probably at least a little bit of a look at it um
39:39
but Oh yeah and they've done that for every class i'm I'm not disputing it but it doesn't mean that currently that they
39:45
have a a strong class fantasy and like yeah I'm never going to look at at a
39:50
warrior or a shaman although a shaman at least have some stuff I could see how to build it um and I was really kind of sad
39:58
that Legion didn't especially with that that campaign's actually really good it's a very good campaign like when
40:04
you're going around talking to dealing with all the unlimits talking to them you could really build something out of
40:09
this you could build like you know if you're a shaman on Azeroth you are part of a group that is always going to be
40:17
like the intercessors between the spirit world and the material world that's your
40:22
job that's what you do you know you you go to the elements and say "What's going on here why is there a volcano in the
40:29
middle of of the of this desert here i mean of the forest here why did that happen could you guys stop with the with
40:35
the lava?" Um and they they didn't grab the the opportunity i really thought we
40:42
were going to get it in Dragon Heart dragon Flight hm dragon Flight dragon
40:48
Flight yeah i really thought we'd get it in Dragon Flight because the uh the you know the Drakes were all empowered by elemental beings yeah so that that and I
40:56
think maybe and and this is an aside that's kind of where I felt that when I
41:02
started to feel that the shaman lacked a a real distinct class identity as far as
41:08
that goes because it was something that I expected you can go back and listen to uh this podcast prior to Dragonflight
41:16
releasing and you can go listen to the main show and that was one of the things that I was hopeful for was we're going
41:23
to be dealing with elemental infused uh dragons at this point or or proto
41:29
dragons whatever they want to call them at the time and that seems like something that the farseer would be
41:36
uniquely suited for and we never got anything we never got any payoff of that
41:42
we didn't go and talk to our old elemental contacts we didn't say "Hey what's going on with this hey remember
41:47
that thing we decided that we were going to do where you know we wouldn't BS each other and we'd kind of like you know you
41:52
understand that I put you in a position you're in you need to tell me what's going on." None of that none of that
41:58
there was no payoff for it and a lot of it was like "Well that's just forgotten stuff at this point." Um yeah and it
42:04
felt it felt bad um but it was at that point that I really started feeling like okay well we
42:10
spent what little time we had figuring out that we were going to be these like weird arbiters and and and gobetweens
42:17
between the elementals and and the living uh rest of the world and we just
42:22
don't do that anymore and all three specs could do that so it wouldn't even have to be a specific fantasy but no you
42:30
could absolutely do that with like an enhancement shaman uh heck you know there's actually stuff that was put in
42:36
the lore in other in other expansions that never really got picked up on like the way that that goblins approach the
42:44
whole shamanism thing and then dark shamans you you you there's a whole other side of shaman where you don't go
42:50
in and ask them nicely will you go in and you beat them up until they do what you want yeah yeah and I mean to that
42:56
effect we had we used to have a spell and I and I again I'm always a I don't
43:01
like when things get taken away for for weird reasons we used to have a chain
43:07
elemental where we could take and essentially polymorph or stun
43:12
specifically elementals and it was really really cool and very flavorful
43:18
because it's like okay we understand dark shamanism is a thing we understand that like we have the ability to make
43:25
real distinct impact on elementals and by the way you're chained here think
43:31
about what you've done uh and instead and instead that gets taken away and it's like okay that that doesn't I can
43:37
hex somebody and make them a a little tiny raptor but I can't I can't chain an elemental in place when dark shaman
43:44
absolutely exists and it's like yeah and we had chain elemental before then we did yeah it was I remember using it in
43:51
in BC didn't we no or was it No was it Was it Wrath kata kata wow kata i
43:58
thought it was It's still though that's before you know that's before anything to do with like you know Dark Shaman and [ __ ]
44:05
mhm so sorry for that um yeah no it's
44:10
it's weird it is weird that shaman who have all the tools like all the tools for a cool class fantasy are there it's
44:17
just nobody wants to put them together i I don't I don't get it i mean and this
44:24
is like we haven't talked about mages really um we haven't talked about warlocks here or even demon hunters i
44:29
feel like all those guys still have a pretty good class fantasy i would agree like Yeah um it's just that you know I
44:35
almost feel like it's too obvious like you know we know what mages are they they do that you know you you point
44:42
you know you can just point at Medivh go those guys um so yeah I I don't know and
44:48
even then like and we know that mages are getting a redefinition of what the the mage class fantasy is that's one of
44:54
the themes here that's a whole big Yeah it's a whole big thing with the Kieran tour and rediscovering who they are it's
45:00
a it's a theme and like they're paying attention to it which is why I'm saying I'm hopeful that they'll look at others
45:05
as well and you know I don't want I almost don't want them to do it with
45:10
Warriors i almost feel like the class fantasy of warriors is like the you know the Glen
45:16
Cook Black Company books it's just I I show up and I do my job
45:22
i you know whether I'm a soldier for one of the factions of Azeroth or one of the nations of Azeroth whether I'm a
45:29
mercenary whether whatever I am the only brotherhood we have is the only
45:34
brotherhood we need uh you know we we are the the people who who get our
45:40
fingers down there and there and get dirty and that's it and that's all it has to be please don't have Odin come
45:46
back i mean have him come back we should definitely beat Odin up but don't please don't like the order hall felt almost
45:54
and I think you felt it with the NPCs that showed up like when uh
46:01
when when you Danath first showed up and said "Oh I'm glad you're okay." or when
46:06
uh I keep wanting to call him by a different name but Sarfang i don't know
46:11
why that was really having a hard time i kept trying to call him Brockagar um I guess technically Broxagar was Brockagar
46:18
Sarfang um but nevertheless when Sorfang shows up and you duel him briefly he
46:23
doesn't it doesn't feel like a place he belongs and if you have a a warrior class hall
46:30
and Sorfang doesn't feel like he belongs there it isn't right
46:35
i think even people who played Alliance who played Heavy Alliance know that Sorfang is one of us if you're a warrior
46:43
that guy is like you would look up to him like when Varian gives him his son's
46:50
body if you play Alliance on on the top of the Ice Crown Citadel that is a
46:56
moment that makes sense that Vyian would respect him that much that Varian would
47:02
go to him and say you know I I have I don't want to make you feel worse i as a both a father and a you know so as
47:09
someone who's faced war as as a father I I don't want to make this worse for you
47:16
and Sarang just thanks him and takes his son that's that's what I want for
47:21
warrior class fantasy and wow I I don't necessarily want us to have a big order hall and us to have like a secret a
47:28
special secret handshake i feel like just being a warrior is enough
47:34
so to a certain degree I feel like they don't really need it but everybody else like I feel like it should be there
47:39
especially when in a class like you bringing up shaman is completely messed with my head here because you know you
47:46
know that I love shaman mhm uh we've talked about it for a long time uh bring back Sentry Totem
47:53
but yeah the the fact that they they have missed multiple chances at this
47:59
point to really come up with a with like a a true blue class fantasy for Shaman
48:05
is kind of crazy it like everything is there and they haven't and they haven't done it yeah we could have done it in
48:10
Shadowlands we could have done it in in you know Dragonflight many opportunities but I think we can go ahead and move on
48:17
i don't think people want to hear me complain about that for another 20 minutes
48:23
and if they don't well you know I'm sorry but you know you you push the button you you take your chances yeah
48:30
all right so this next one comes from Cara Anna Felheart uh with the
48:35
announcement of Legion Remix I'm curious what are you looking forwards to the most i've been going through the
48:41
different class halls to get the mounts I missed and it makes me wonder will we be getting mount recolors if so does
48:47
that mean priests will find more seekers the seekers are said to be the last three but are also said to help speed
48:53
the watchers to sites of corruption which I feel would be helpful going forward into Midnight do you think they
48:59
might make alternate colors of the class mount for everyone to use if at at a
49:05
base level with the mount question if remiss is anything to uh judge yes we're
49:14
going to get recolors um so yeah I'll just throw that out there i think that's very very likely that we're going to get
49:19
recallers of of class mounts i would be surprised if we did not but Matt what
49:24
are you looking forward to the most with the Legion remix
49:30
hanging out with Odin again
49:37
i said this at the time guys being the head being the battlem being the most
49:43
amazing warrior on all of Azeroth just makes you the better Pokemon yeah you are it turns you into freaking Pikachu
49:50
the guy literally has me proving my worth every other time I see him to the
49:58
point where at one point I'm in a raid and he has my entire raid prove their worth and I'm like "You make me do this
50:03
every day." Like I I honestly the fact that Pikachu
50:09
hasn't just electro slapped Ash in the face more than he did because you know let's be upfront pikachu and Ash started
50:16
off rocky i I just
50:23
I don't I'm not looking forward to seeing Odin again let me put it that way that being said there is a lot to like
50:29
about Legion i had a lot of fun playing it um I liked being a warrior in it i'm hoping that they'll do something there's
50:36
an armor set that you used to be able to get for doing like hard mode or what I forget what they called it because it
50:42
was in Pandaria um there was like a hard mode you know extreme dungeon thing you could
50:48
get a really cool armor set challenge modes there was challenge modes challenge modes it was before It was Mythic Plus before Mythic Plus was a
50:54
thing they took it out when they went into uh Warlords of Dranor
51:00
because they didn't want people to just go through with one character and blow them all up and get the sets
51:06
but I feel like recolors the thing is those sets did come back in Legion as
51:12
versions of we got versions of those sets as our order hall set like when you
51:17
got your your complete battlem set it was a scaled down version of that
51:23
challenge mode armor i think they should bring that back as
51:28
the as the as the you know whatever your the class name is for I don't remember
51:34
for warriors it was battlemaster i don't I think the shaman one was like farier
51:39
farsier they should get that set again in a different color so it doesn't invalidate
51:45
the people that actually got it but bring that look back because that that look was really cool even if it was a
51:51
different color it would be really cool i'd I'd love for to see them do that i do think they're going to bring back recolors of the various class sets
52:00
again if they don't bring back those looks the ones that they do have they're going to recolor um
52:07
the weird thing about Legion is that you didn't get you got your artifact and that was it for weapons for the entire
52:13
expansion and then what you got were looks some of those looks are not possible to
52:19
get anymore mhm i think that those that's that's going to be something I would look forward to
52:25
getting uh there were a few of them I didn't pick up i never did I never did
52:30
much of anything pro in Legion i I just didn't it was I was it was the one time
52:35
I really just didn't do anything prop so I would there's stuff I would like to do
52:40
the mage I want to see what they do with the mage tower like how are they they've already did like they did an extended
52:47
remix of the mage tower recently so I feel like they've got a fairly good idea of how to make it fit into the remix
52:53
formula um so I want to see how that works and and what they do with it uh I
53:00
did like Legion quite a bit i just don't have anything I can sit here and think about as like this is a big story moment
53:05
that you're gonna go want to see because I feel like everybody knows what the story moments are you know um and if you don't I don't
53:13
want to ruin them for you there's some cool stuff that happens in this g in this expansion that if you didn't see it and you don't know what it was I don't
53:21
want to take that from you oh and Argus argus i am so looking forward to Argus
53:27
yeah especially now that we know like we have the the hindsight going back to Argus is pretty cool
53:33
well plus for me I think Argus was the best of of Blizzard's here's a new endgame zone full of stuff to do that
53:39
they ever did uh I don't think that the stuff they did after Argus was as good and I don't
53:46
think the stuff they did before Argus was meant to even exist like um Warlords of Drraanor when you ended up stuck in
53:53
Hellfire Peninsula for like a year i don't think that was intentional
54:01
uh I definitely think it was inspiration for Argus but I don't think they meant to do that i think they just couldn't
54:07
get the next they couldn't get the expansion out fast enough so Argus felt
54:12
just long enough and then you you went into the new expansion and Yeah you know
54:18
I think I think that Legion and and spec specifically Argus did the one of the
54:24
better endgame zones and I'm really looking forward to going back and and hunting for some weapon looks I didn't get so yeah so one of the things that
54:32
I'm looking forward to and I didn't think I would when Remist was first
54:37
available was I enjoyed the idea of
54:42
uh getting to experience the expansion from a different class and while it's
54:48
not exactly the same thing it's usually a
54:53
it's an excuse right uh everybody's doing it everybody in my guild does it
54:59
when when it's time uh we all do it together and it's it's a great way to
55:04
kill time between expansions but in this particular case I use it as a way to level a character to max that I haven't
55:12
don't currently have at max which leaves right now four classes for me to choose
55:18
from uh so I will either be doing the monk the warlock the death knight or the
55:25
demon hunter those are the only four classes I currently do not have at max level and dude dude do demon hunter
55:33
that's what everybody keeps saying you don't have a death knight right you don't have a death knight i have a death
55:38
knight that got uh to level like 50 or 60 whatever the cap was at back then and have not touched since
55:45
uh they have a really great order hole too but yeah the demon hunter yeah yeah so
55:53
and again this is something that I think is going to be for me an excuse to sort of experience that and yes I understand
55:59
that uh the Legion remix is going to uh you know speed you through the leveling
56:05
and have different things that you you wind up doing and not quite be the same experience but it is an excuse that I
56:12
want to use and Oh yeah cuz it's just something to get you to do it yeah and it might be a thing where I do multiple
56:18
depending on how long uh we have between uh this releasing and the next expansion
56:24
where you know it might be that I do Demon Hunter and Death Knight it might be that I do demon hunter and warlock it
56:30
might be that I do demon hunter and monk um but I'm looking forward to seeing
56:35
these places because at the time when legion was around I did not get to see
56:40
these order halls and I haven't really done a leveling experience cuz I haven't really had a reason to with those
56:46
classes to take me back there to do them because I've always had something else that I've been working on whether it's
56:53
getting my shaman uh caught up on gear whether it's doing Mythic Plus content
56:58
uh whether it's leveling my paladin and gearing up my paladin uh which I will admit has been a ton of fun uh which
57:05
we'll probably talk about on the main podcast as a topic um
57:10
but getting to experience those stories getting to experience those characters and particularly how those characters
57:17
view the events of Legion I think is really kind of interesting to me and I'm looking forward to that in particular
57:25
i don't if there's anything else you want to add to that Matt no I mean I hadn't thought of it that way i
57:31
definitely know I'm not going to do a warrior again because like I said I don't want to see Odin again uh I might
57:36
do my paladin because I haven't quite finished the paladin order hall i got really close but I didn't quite finish
57:42
it so my pal and the paladin order hall is so cool yeah absolutely just the the
57:47
history of it is just amazing um so yeah like you know I remember seeing
57:53
Lady Mara for dragon statue and I'm like you still didn't explain if she's related to VA
58:01
um but yeah just the whole thing is is really and the thing is is that the
58:07
Paladin one and the de and the death knight one kind of connect
58:12
like if you're a death knight you do something that the paladins
58:18
don't like oh there's you as a death knight you do a bunch of stuff that a lot of the classes don't like yeah but
58:24
this one's a very specific thing well think about it now which I'm not talking about it well think about it now though too on top of that evokers are in the
58:31
mix now as well and how do they feel about a certain thing yeah I I hope they get their own order hole they don't
58:37
they're not going to um so you're going to I know right now if you play an Evoker and you do do that uh you go to
58:43
Legion they just kind of stick up a a pal a painting you Well you work you work with Kaggar yeah you work with
58:50
Kaggar so I I mean I think that's going to do
58:55
it for us today i don't know if there's anything else that we can really add um but I do want to thank you for joining us as always Blizzard is made possible
59:02
due to your generous support at patreon.com/blizzardwatch your continued support means that this podcast signing community is able to
59:09
thrive and grow blizzard watch supporters enjoy exclusive benefits like early access to the podcast better chance of having your question answered
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on our podcast or the queue and adset experience uh if you have questions for this or any of our podcast be sure to
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send those in to podcastardwatch.com uh we do have three shows we have this the lore watch feed we also have the
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main show which is live every Tuesday at 8:00 p.m eastern and you can catch it later on in the week as a recording uh
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and we also have a monthly podcast talk show for tabletop called Tavern Watch uh
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and we do a monthly live play where we release about three episodes uh as well
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through the Tavern Watch imprint where we cover various TTRPGs uh if you've listened to some of them in the past
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we've done uh Pigeons 11 which is exactly what it sounds like uh at the time of this recording we have just
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finished recording uh a wonderful session of Masks a superhero teenage
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role playing game uh and there's many more to come we have a lot of stuff planned and we're excited for it but
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again if there's something you want us to play or something that you are interested in us doing let us know we're
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open to it and we'd love to hear from you um if you want to let us know on Discord we have two channels set aside
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we have the Q and podcast questions channel same rules apply letting us know what show it's for and any pronunciation
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of your name you can do the same thing there if you want us to cover specific topics on certain things uh and if you are a Patreon supporter as a way of
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saying thank you we have the Patreon Q and podcast question channel set aside specifically for you where we will look there first uh as a matter of fact there
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was a month uh last a couple years ago at this point where one of our wonderful Patreon subscribers uh floated an entire
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month of TTRPG play because they wanted us to play different games um not saying
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that you have to do that but it's something that you can do and we were more than happy to take their their
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suggestion and run with it uh and then if you want to hit us up directly on Patreon you can as well uh Liz will get
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us those messages uh and we'll be more than happy to take those into consideration i will add them to the master document
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but that folks we'll see you next week [Music]
#Video Game Mods & Add-Ons