Up next in 10
Ghosts of K'aresh, the upcoming content update for World of Warcraft, is the lead news for the show this week, because it was announced with a ton of detail the day after the podcast was recorded last week. Led by this week's host Joe, our crew discussed all things patch 11.2, from Tazavesh to Manaforge Omega, and where the story might lead us next. Speaking of the story, Overwatch 2 season 17 just began, and we have some thoughts, mostly related to story content and how there really isn't any.
Plus, if you have $158, or even more Canadian dollarydoos, you could totally buy the most adorable, most infuriatingly monetized lil guy we've ever seen in Hearthstone. Blizzard literally told us the first gatcha is free.
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Show More Show Less View Video Transcript
0:00
[Music]
0:10
hello everyone and welcome to the Blizzard Watch podcast i'm your host Joe Perez one of several folks from the site
0:17
that happens to do this show weekly hi welcome back i am joined by my boss uh
0:24
Liz Harper how you doing Liz hello and don't think I don't notice when you tell people to bother me in the podcast in
0:32
lore watch i I see you over there Joe oh I know but you can't stop me
0:41
laughing with me in the background joining us again is our friend Corey hello Corey hello i am confused i
0:48
thought I was your boss am I not no you can never be my boss Cy
0:54
this has just been a day of full of disappointments and also joining us is another sort of
0:59
boss uh Phil how you doing Phil i'm only your boss twice a week for a couple hours at a time is Corey my boss
1:06
well friends regardless of boss we're going to go ahead and get into some wonderful news around the game sphere
1:13
here starting with World of Warcraft because we all currently play that here uh
1:21
we mostly all currently play that here uh so we got news of uh the next patch
1:28
uh 11.2 which is Ghost of Caresh uh surprising literally no one uh as I
1:33
believe everybody has called this for probably since before this current
1:38
expansion was released uh there's a bunch of stuff that uh that's coming with it and figure we'll talk about it a
1:45
little bit uh obviously we're going to be going to Caresh it's the Ethereal home world uh so again I don't think
1:51
anybody was surprised by that right no everything I saw pointed right to it yeah I can only think of one person
1:57
who's surprised i think I would have to go back and find it but I think uh Christian said that Kesh was quote just
2:03
a big fake out and did not think we would be going there so uh jokes on him if so sometimes the duck
2:11
is actually a duck uh yep so we're going to get to go see the the voidtor torn
2:17
world of Caresh which a lot of folks are excited about we've been waiting for that for a while uh and what I think is
2:23
the most interesting part of it or at least one of the most interesting parts of this is we know that we're going to have a new city or hub to mess around
2:29
with uh except it's an old new city uh Tazesh the Veil Market will be our base
2:34
of operations because uh the brokers have just decided like hey let's just uh let's just move this thing that seems
2:41
fine so I'm kind of excited about that i want to know if it'll have an entrance to the mega dungeon or if you still have
2:47
to go back through Shadowlands to go get your ethereal farming on phasing tells me you'll probably have a teleport back
2:53
to the old one or something yeah oh that'd be so weird though all right we need to go to Tazesh but not this Tazesh
2:58
the other one is that really the weirdest thing we would have been done have done in WoW at this point surely
3:05
not really you're I mean just think of how many dollars exist or don't exist anymore uh zero ha got him unless you're
3:13
doing time walking and then but I I am very interested to see this because they
3:18
definitely already had some of this like groundwork in work for this because if
3:23
you've ever done the mega dungeon and you clicked in the wrong place during the first boss fight you've discovered that has working bankers even as a
3:31
dungeon uh and and gone "Oh god get this bank out of my place this robot with four
3:36
arms is trying to turn me into confetti." I may be misremembering but I
3:42
thought during one of the interviews way back when I thought they said that they originally had considered having Tazesh
3:47
as like the hub city instead of Orbos so I wouldn't have minded that although it
3:54
it'd be a little more interesting than just that other big circle which Sorry Orbos you were not that interesting yeah
3:59
Circle Town was kind of boring yeah and and just a lot of wasted space like they tried to send you to places for quests
4:06
but whereas Orabos even as a dungeon was just chalk full of like places to go people to see little secrets and vendors
4:12
tucked in here and there so uh eager to see what they can do with it uh as a city that we'll be experiencing on two
4:18
different planes of reality now yeah because it does straddle two different planes of reality uh if not more we'll
4:24
see because well if you've listened to our lore watches you'll understand the etherealss and the brokers yeah there's
4:31
there's history there and we're about to find out more of it speaking of which uh we did get information that we're going
4:36
to have a new raid coming which is the ManForge Omega uh where we get a new cloak upgrade uh the Rushi Wraps or
4:44
Rishi Wraps i I forgot how they pronounced it uh it'll have a renown
4:49
track with buffs and rewards uh and then we can do our our cloak will save us so
4:56
one one of the one of the things on the renown track is unlocking an auction
5:01
house in the raid so you know when you get to the raid and you're like "Oh no I
5:08
forgot to buy mana oil." Run to the auction house i believe that's currently at renown 18 though so that's a little
5:15
it's a little up there yeah but let's be honest wouldn't put the fun fun things like the the fun utility things so far
5:22
back yeah but let's be honest yeah the raid's going to be using the auction mount more than they're going to be using that renown track well I guess it
5:30
I guess it depends on how outdoor uh Omega is like it's worked here cuz uh
5:35
you know Undermine's almost entirely outside at least half of it
5:40
no the first half so you know when you've forgotten important consumables you can just go right go right there and
5:47
grab them mhm uh it is if it's currently at 18 in the uh rep for the new raid
5:53
that's actually where it is at the renown for the old raid or the old raid i'm already referring to undermine as the old raid um it's already over so uh
6:03
yeah I would have liked to have seen it maybe show up a little earlier and I've complained about this with the incontinental hotel rewards i'd really
6:08
like those things to be at the hotel so that I have a reason to move my Hearthstone out of Dornic m um I'm
6:15
hopeful that the fact that some of these things already existed inside Tazesh means maybe they'll be present there
6:21
anyway but I guess we'll find out when we get there or when one of us logs onto the PTR yeah and then I guess with
6:28
ManForge Omega being like the big raid with all the other stuff that I think one of the other interesting bits about that we did find out that there's going
6:35
to be a very large boss uh how large is he about the size of Stormwind or at
6:43
least that's what they said i am I was really hoping for more of a joke there but yeah okay
6:48
uh I I have one that sort of sounds like one based on other places people put his model if you put him on Deran so that
6:54
his base is level with the like the ground level of Doran uh his the the
7:01
tower that the Council of Six hangs out in scratches his armpit
7:06
uh he's a big boy yeah I'm this one actually i'm excited and worried at the
7:12
same time because you remember the last boss we had that that was that big deathwing spine of Deathwing though yeah
7:17
I was thinking Deathwing well hopefully hopefully there won't be a lot of move
7:23
left move right but we'll see yeah it's you know the I've been playing a gnome
7:29
recently because you know we've added these cross faction guilds cross faction group so I've been playing a gnome monk
7:35
and as a gnome you spend a lot of time you know punching things in the ankle
7:41
mhm and this sounds like yeah I'm not even going to be able to reach his ankles that's going to be so far up
7:46
that's going to be like a building towering above me i mean the good news is he doesn't really He doesn't really have ankles he's he's kind of all ankle
7:53
okay okay that's a good point that's I'll still be able to punch him in the ankle you get you think they're going to do the thing from the throne of tides
8:01
where at a certain point you get a buff and you'll just turn everyone will be giant on his level
8:06
i'm I don't know because like if they do that it sort of defeats the purpose of making it titanic and scale at least in
8:12
my opinion and also that works a lot better for resources in a fiveman than it does in a 10 15 20 25 30 40% raid um
8:21
because the other consideration for this is you have to also understand this will eventually be an LFR and true you have
8:28
to you have to make the fight in such a way that it is compelling for your
8:33
normal raiders and compelling for the people that don't have a normal raid and will experience this through LFR and we
8:40
see that they've made adjustments to fights to suit LFR before they did as as recently as um you know undermined but I
8:48
don't know i'm really curious i'm curious if it's going to be like fighting through different zones or you
8:53
know how it's actually going to break down so it could either be really really good or it's going to be really really
8:59
bad i'm just hoping that it's not a Thunder King fight i have theory i have theories just based on reading things um
9:05
I suspect we're going to end up with something sort of the boss I would compare to more although this is sort of a primitive version of it is Alakir
9:12
where you were at different levels of the boss during different parts of the fight um additionally we know that there
9:18
is a the return of a phaser we'll be using a flying mount um all tendril from the last expansion or uh Malagos
9:26
uh not Malagos because we won't be fighting from there it's we'll be strictly travel
9:32
using sky riding mounts so okay um hopefully that says to me maybe we'll be
9:38
changing platforms and then you've also got things like the boss throwing entire chunks of dead worlds at you so maybe
9:43
we're also going to see like a shifting platform mechanic going on i'm very excited to see what they do with a boss
9:49
that's can tower over most cities in this game yeah those times of Dead Worlds had it coming
9:56
uh one thing with a giant boss is you know it's a large scale fight one thing
10:02
that has really bothered me in the Galagio is the number of spell effects
10:07
going on like I don't I don't know if it's just me or if it's just the fact that I'm using a character model that is
10:14
now extra tiny but sometimes I frankly lose myself inside all of the crazy
10:20
spell effects that are happening so one thing I'm really interested in in the patch notes are that they're making a
10:27
new spell density feature or a revamped spell density feature to increase visual
10:33
clarity of combat and encounters by reducing spell visual effects that do
10:39
not communicate important combat information to the player so it seems
10:45
like the stuff that is maybe not relevant to me I could turn off and just
10:51
see the stuff that's like important i want to get into that circle i want to stay out of that circle i need to Oh
10:57
there's a healing circle that I definitely need to stand in because I can feel Joe glaring at me from across
11:03
the state that's going to get you so I I'm looking forward to seeing how
11:08
this new feature shapes up and if it can actually let us you know more clearly
11:15
see the fight because spell effects are on one hand super cool it's so rad to
11:21
see like all of your all of your raid mates casting cool spells with big graphical effects and on the other hand
11:28
it's a lot of visual noise that is can be distracting or can prevent you from
11:33
seeing things well we should find out something about that soon because the first draft of
11:39
that actually went live today on the PTR after it updated so uh there are two
11:45
settings one is a um I don't have the wording in front of me for the exact but basically there's one that cuts down on
11:52
the noise which I think is equivalent to the one we have today and it'll only show you you know some of the spells but
11:57
like you know people's pets will be smaller and the flashier spells other characters won't see etc and then
12:02
there's a new one a newer setting that strips it down even further to what you're describing basically it's like
12:08
only show me the things that actually matter to me which could which is a a great help I'm
12:15
sure especially also as the graphical requirements for the game keep getting steeper people's people's computers keep
12:22
getting more expensive um to upgrade maybe it will you know continue extending the life of the game in
12:27
another way too yeah i mean I'm running on a pretty good system right now but when you get into a fight that has tons
12:34
of visual effects and you're in there with 20 players that can suddenly slow
12:39
things down to a crawl and uh yeah I mean anything that can
12:45
help mitigate some of that would be great yeah uh we're going to find out
12:50
some more about that I'm sure as things get closer or as things start going live uh especially with those new systems but
12:56
it's not those are not the only new things coming there's a ton of other stuff coming as well uh we are getting a new delve which I think is an
13:03
interesting choice here we're going to the it's called the archival assault and we're going back to the Azure Vaults on the Dragon Isles uh which uh Nexus K
13:11
Princess Kyvexa is going to be this season this upcoming season's new nemesis um I'm really curious that we're
13:19
going back to to Azure Revolts i know we we basically covered a very small portion of it when we were there during the the dungeon um but I'm curious what
13:28
other things are happening there yeah I'm I Anybody who completed the uh the Arcane Mage artifact or disc priest
13:35
artifact is going to wonder why exactly the Athereals seem to have a grudge against blue dragons because they're there looting them yet again mhm uh less
13:42
of a grudge than death knights and red dragons is the question alex Joa just kind of glares at me but
13:49
she still gave me all my cr quest rewards fair enough that's true it's true that's
13:55
It's one of those story threads you expected would come up sometime later and you just you just barely barely
14:02
barely did yep uh there's also going to be a new mythic dungeon rotation uh as well as a
14:08
new three boss dungeon uh the Eco Eco Dome Aldani uh and then a new addition
14:15
for the season which we were talking about a little bit before we started recording today a lever debuff for
14:20
Mythic Plus which honestly I'm happy to hear that they're listening to the community um I don't know if if Phil if
14:28
you've experienced this but I know I have and uh I know that a couple of our other guildies have we've talked about
14:34
this before there's this at certain levels of keys like when you start getting into like
14:40
tens and hires there's a subset of people that if there's anything that goes sideways like an early like wipe
14:46
that you can still recover from and still time the dungeon from or like a handful of like unavoidable deaths or or
14:52
whatever the case is they'll just leave they'll just drop the group and then go try to list themselves for another one
14:58
uh leaving you high and dry and essentially tanking somebody's key especially if it's not their key uh
15:03
people will will do this uh I've experienced it a few times where we've had one really messy pull because
15:10
somebody overpulled had a couple deaths still have plenty of time to time the dungeon uh at a good clip uh and then
15:18
somebody just bounces so them putting a debuff timer in for it finally I think
15:23
is a good thing has anybody else experienced this oh god yes uh it seems like especially bad in certain ranges
15:31
where people start to uh think they're um I don't have a good word for it people start to think they're a little
15:37
more skilled and a little higher playing level than they really are and I think
15:42
there's also some kind of like weird expectation that if you apply to a pug group someone's going to just pull up
15:48
your raider.io profile he's got a bricked key reject him boys
15:53
like I I don't know where this whole attitude comes from but yes it does it It's there and it's not just the timer
15:59
there's some uh this is also something that's kind of started to come around in uh come out in the new build it's it's
16:06
literally a badge of shame like you when you apply to groups in the uh pre-made
16:11
group finder which is the way that you can form mythic plus groups for pugs they will literally be able to see that
16:17
you leave you leave groups frequently and the only way to remove this uh uh a
16:23
mark of shame is to not leave groups frequently to start sticking around to complete uh complete keys uh but first
16:30
you have to get into them so this is they've really turned it into kind of a social stigma for the community to act
16:35
on which is probably even more effective than like a 30-minute deserted debuff like the heroic cues get i just want to
16:41
know what's going to stop someone from you rather than just dropping they'll they'll try and force the group to stop
16:47
by if they so you pull big and the group wipes and you don't recover we've all
16:53
been there and then your your shaman friend decides you know what I this
16:58
isn't going to happen your shaman pug sorry not your friend and decides this isn't going to happen and he's just
17:03
going to sit at the entrance to the dungeon or wherever you respawn and then so you're down a person but he doesn't
17:09
leave yet i want to know if there's Yep the other aspect of this is that the way
17:14
to get out without a penalty yeah there there will be some of that and I'm sure they'll have to find some way to act on this uh because the way you can leave
17:21
without the debuff is for the rest of the group to vote that that the dungeon is over so I'm sure that unfortunately
17:27
there probably will be a rise of that behavior by people trying to avoid this debuff so uh hopefully this doesn't
17:34
backfire and create a more toxic uh group of levers but I guess we'll see
17:39
something is better than nothing for sure yeah some something that like gives you some form of action ability because
17:45
like I'm still staring at the the 12 uh uh workshop we could have easily timed
17:52
that got bricked because the person decided they wanted to leave uh after like two people died on like the hallway
17:58
pole like come on come on but yeah um that rotation also we do know what
18:04
dungeons are going to be in that rotation uh not just this new feature so we're going to have the Ecodome Ecodome
18:10
uh Eldani the Dawn Breaker is coming back for better or for worse uh Ericara
18:15
City of Echoes i can hear a bunch of groans happening across the everywhere for that one prior Sacred Flame uh
18:22
Operation Floodgate Halls of Atonement from the Shadowlands will be coming into this rotation and then both sides of
18:29
Tazesh uh will be here which I think is actually pretty dope it makes so much
18:34
sense considering expansion theme yeah i 100% agree uh so we'll get to see what
18:40
that season looks like very very soon uh and then not just for mythic dungeons but we are going to be doing stuff with
18:46
domes with our good friend Venari uh because we're going to have ecological succession uh where we are trying to
18:53
essentially bring Kesh back to life by remember if you've been playing long enough you've gone to Outlands you've
19:01
seen the eco domes that the etherealss have put up in um Nethertorm I almost
19:07
forgot the name of the zone yeah look at me um it has been close to 20 years it has been close to 20 years uh so if
19:16
you've ever wondered how they do that well we're going to do that and it's not the ethereals that are doing it it's
19:22
Venari that's doing it which go back and listen to our uh podcast about lore walking cuz that will make a whole lot
19:29
more sense to you if it doesn't make sense to you now uh but the etherealss and the brokers are very much tied up
19:34
together uh so it's cool i think that's a really neat little idea for a system you're basically making uh your own
19:41
little ecological domes and saving wildlife and trying from other well there's a vague air of criminality to it
19:48
which I think you would kind of expect with Venari because you're going to be stealing wildlife from other places to bring to these eco yeah I believe I've
19:56
seen a screenshot of someone stealing a bee from Culturas
20:01
you're just borrowing them with no intention of bringing them back it's probably fine mhm the secret ingredient
20:08
is crime [Laughter] look at least you know you're only going to have to steal two rabbits and they'll
20:14
do the rest for you i mean we're I I'm actually really
20:19
interested in how this in particular shakes up am I going to be going on a
20:25
quest to find you know bunnies and cappy baras and everything else i think this
20:35
sounds like a lot of fun maybe a little stupid but a lot of fun especially if it
20:40
does turn into like a a heisting game where you're stealing
20:47
stealing things from the zoo or stealing people's livestock or I'm sure it's fine
20:54
totally no because I I didn't even consider that what if she sends you to like ice the T-Rex from the Surar Zoo i
21:01
would not I would not doubt that something like that is going to absolutely be called upon that sounds so cool i hadn't even thought about that
21:07
till and I and I'm here for it because if if weird Yankovich taught me anything in 1985 it was that I should dare to be
21:13
stupid i thought it was how to spell Albuquerque that's later that was uh
21:19
running with scissors anyway um I just watched a whole weird al uh uh
21:27
which I'm gonna call it biopic so you're Yeah it's fresh in my brain anyway but yeah no I'm excited for it i'm excited
21:33
i'm excited for something like this too because while it may be stupid it also feels like your character potentially is
21:38
doing something worthwhile like how often can you say our characters have done something to leave a place better
21:43
than we've left that we found it right that's true pretty rarely which to be
21:49
fair question what Venari's motive is in all this 100% well cuz we're stocking an
21:55
eco full of rare animals that will probably make more of those rare animals and you could probably sell those yeah
22:02
well no venari seemed pretty on the up and up i'm sure we can trust her yes if that's one thing if that's one thing I
22:08
thought about Venari it was Yes this this this lady's completely trustworthy truly truly trustworthy
22:16
uh well I think that does it for the patch notes and we have some other stuff happening down the pipeline here too uh
22:21
Midnight is coming to Gamescom which is happening from August 20th to August 24th uh which is going to have news
22:29
updates and air quote surprises from the dev team with lots of eyeballs and air
22:35
quotes here uh with follow-up social media posts by devs including an stikny
22:42
you might recognize them yeah you know an Ann said we can't handle this on on
22:48
blue sky and I'm like no no I I think we can handle this we're we're ready we're
22:53
ready for this one we're excited In fact Ann if you're listening probably
22:59
the best way to test whether we can or can't handle this is perhaps to let your friendly Blizzard watch authors in on a
23:04
little bit of what's going on you know just But that's not the game the game is we have to figure it out
23:12
uh but it's not just going to be that there's going to be some other stuff happening as well there too so there's going to be a mythic dungeon and arena
23:18
showcase uh a cosplay showcase and then the developer and creator meet and greet
23:24
uh and apparently much much more which I think is really really cool so if you happen to be going to Gamescom they'll
23:29
be in uh Hall 8 there'll be a booth there and this is happening in Cologne Germany uh and if you're not just see if
23:36
you can scope it online liz I think you said wanted to say something there and of course Gamescom is one of the biggest
23:43
game events of the year i think we all tend to think more about Summer GameFest
23:49
and the Game Awards but Gamescom is massive so I'm sure we're going to see a
23:55
lot of other really cool gaming stuff beyond Warcraft yeah oh absolutely and
24:01
we will be talking about it here because Yes we will there if only you sent me to it i'm
24:10
pretty sure right i think it's a bit of a commute for all of us i'm willing to
24:15
take that uh commute on just you know for money we we run on a budget that
24:20
allows commuting to your desk is kind of that's kind of it
24:27
well also I would like to say that the last bit of woow news we have here uh is
24:32
for the Midsummer Fire Festival uh which is back through July 5th so if you're
24:37
listening to this when this goes live you got a little over a week uh so go
24:44
and and do those new cosmetic drops faction achievements for Kazalgar uh basically new stuff because we were in
24:49
dwarf town or stone dwarf town but there are a few new cosmetic drops from frost
24:55
lord of hoon so you can go back and start start killing him for things you may or may not ever get
25:03
yep he's got some he's got a new icy weapon he's got a new fiery weapon he's got lots of stuff that I probably won't
25:08
get cuz I'm still trying to get the frost scythe i think I finally managed to get the death frost illusion a few
25:13
years ago and that's the only thing that big snowball's ever dropped for me he's got a new crown yes there's uh there's
25:18
new there's new high-res versions of the old cosmetics you used to be able to get from the from just from the achievements
25:24
uh or for flowers i think the I think the hat was achievement only for stealing from the other capital city but
25:30
yeah there's uh new new hot looks for summer
25:38
i'm here for it i'm here for the transmog of course because that's what's most important it is can't win without it
25:46
and now we're going to move away from Warcraft to something Warcraft adjacent and I'm going to stop talking for a
25:51
while and shake up Liz and let her go and talk about Hearthstone go yeah we're
25:56
going to spend the next half hour talking about the injustice of this new Hearthstone cosmetic no maybe if you
26:05
we'll talk a little while but uh so Hearthstone is adding pets to the game now pets are going to be little cosmetic
26:12
items they'll show up in the bottom left corner of your screen while you're playing matches that's constructed arena
26:18
wild uh and battlegrounds so any kind of match you're playing you'll have your
26:23
cute little guy show up in the corner he will cheer for you he will mirror your
26:28
emotes in funny ways after a match he'll show up and commiserate with you if
26:34
you've lost or hype you up if you've won you can pet them you can play with them
26:41
they have toys that you can like play tugofwar with they are so incredibly
26:47
cute the first one they're releasing is King Crush he is the most adorable baby
26:53
dinosaur I have ever seen in my life he is so cute it is It is impossible to
26:59
tell you how much I love this baby dinosaur but but I don't actually love
27:04
him enough to acquire him because to get this cute baby dinosaur Hearstone
27:10
is adding a gotcha style random loot thing that you the the first attempt is
27:20
free you go in and you it gives you a random piece of loot the first one is free the first one you will have a 0.1%
27:30
of getting the cutest baby dinosaur you have ever seen in your life the second one will cost you the decimal point
27:36
there Liz oh did I did I miss a decimal point surely you did hopefully 0.1% no
27:44
see yeah okay well I was wondering if it was Oh do you mean did I say 0.1 and it's supposed to be 0.01
27:51
i I was really hoping that you meant 1% and not 0.1% cuz one in a 100 is more
27:57
than one in a thousand no no but you got to you got 0.1% chance of getting him on
28:03
your first try which is the one try everyone gets for free after that every
28:09
attempt will cost you runstones runstones can only be purchased with real cash and on your 10th try you are
28:17
guaranteed to collect this adorable baby dinosaur uh and all the other rewards
28:22
there are other rewards you can get card packs you can get hero skins you can get
28:28
uh card backs and signature cards all of those are really cool things and I do
28:33
not care about any of them except this baby dinosaur so I don't know 10 polls that doesn't
28:39
sound so bad how bad No no it's not 10 pulls it's more than 10 pulls because if
28:45
I'm reading what we wrote here correctly by your ninth poll on your ninth poll
28:50
you have a 6.67% chance but also the thing is there are 10 items 10 items you will randomly get
28:57
on each attempt and they guarantee you by the sixth by the 10th item you will
29:03
not collect any duplicates you're always going to get something new so by the 10th you're going to get the baby dino
29:09
ah yeah so and how much and how much will that cost be in real money um so
29:16
each each attempt costs after the first you pay runestones each additional
29:21
attempt costs more runstones up to a total of $158
29:28
worth of runstones to guarantee that you get this adorable adorable so adorable
29:36
baby dinosaur and I I've Wow wow that's just
29:42
Can we Firstly it sounds wildly annoying and secondly $158
29:49
what can Can we pause for a moment to to comment how and and this is where my criticism of Blizzard is going to come
29:54
in and if they don't like this sorry uh not really how are they managing to try
30:00
to mimic Watsi Wizards of the Coast and Magic the Gathering Arena which has been
30:07
doing pets and cosmetics exactly like this longer than Hearthstone but do it
30:13
worse somehow than Wizards of the Coast you are literally functionally doing
30:19
this worse than Hasbro who is run by a man whose last name is literally Cox
30:25
come on do better i I was flabbergasted at the concept of a gacha pond that gets
30:31
more expensive every time you pull from it that's That's not how any of this works that's obscene
30:40
that is $216 Canadian dollars at the current exchange rate today for a pet
30:45
that's too many too many dollars it's for a pet but it is the most adorable
30:52
you don't understand this is the most adorable baby dinosaur you have ever seen in entire life and you I don't know
30:59
i've dressed my dog up in a dinosaur costume and that's pretty damn adorable i don't know i
31:05
He's got a point oh yeah both of those are fair points okay okay it's still
31:12
It's still really really adorable and I love it and unless I am in that 0.1%
31:22
I'm not going to get it because I don't have $158 to throw away on a digital pet
31:28
this is This is like This is one of those things where I just want to like bust down the door and scream "Can you
31:34
not read the room?" Like this seems like such a weird time to do exactly this
31:39
thing it and it also feels like you could have made Now I do get this is a a
31:46
an addition that costs resources and dev time it is super neat and super fun but
31:53
you could have made a massive amount of money by getting it a straight up cash price mhm you could have made a massive
32:00
amount of money even keeping the gutach game but every entry cost a fixed amount
32:05
uh you know remember when World of Warcraft first came out with the Celestial Steed which cost what $25 $25
32:15
like so many people bought it it's like you know you could price this at $25 you
32:21
could price this at $35 you could maybe go higher than that and people just buy
32:27
it but this the way to get this just feels terrible and your chances to get
32:35
it with each pull are so low it starts at 0.1% but it only goes up to 6.67% as
32:43
Joe was saying earlier based on math the community has done based on odds Blizzard it's posted it's only that very
32:49
last pull where you have a really good chance to get it so you're going to be doing you're going to keep doing these
32:56
things and think "Okay next next pull I'm going to get this guy next pull."
33:01
and you're going to keep doing it until you spend $158 which it just feels bad it this feels
33:07
terrible it It just It's It's such a weird monetization idea too like I
33:12
understand and we we've often talked about this and and we understand that games need to make money in order to
33:19
continue to be developed there's a level of that we always understand especially when the game is free to play but then I
33:24
look at other companies like and I'll throw Riot in here as well they haven't always been the best about it but even
33:30
their monetization is better than this right like yes it still uses riot points
33:36
and and and that that scummy give us money to give you uh fake currency that
33:42
will never be zero um type thing but at this point everybody does that and it's
33:48
not I don't want to say that like it's right but I'm kind of numb to that portion of it but even then like a super
33:54
high quality like cosmetic skin or pet or whatever the case is is like 2030
33:59
bucks maybe maybe 50 for an epic skin uh and at least you you're paying the money
34:05
and you're getting a onetoone transaction right guild Wars 2 is free to play and they have microtransactions
34:12
inside of the game for things like uh you know you can do gear drop crafting
34:17
items uh you can do each expansion costs x number of dollars uh and then like you
34:23
can do things like expand your inventory expand your bank and like a bunch of other stuff like that and it's not perfect but at least it's a onetoone
34:30
correlation most of the time i think they also use gems in that one uh but like you at least are are in some
34:37
capacity saying I give you this you give me that and in this it's I give you this
34:44
you give me a chance at that and that chance at that cost me more every single time just seems so weird especially when
34:51
people are cutting back on luxury right yeah and and even in games that explicitly have a gotchaon mechanic
34:58
which is what this is like I've I've played my share of Gotcha games over the years yeah uh Genchin I lost a lot I
35:05
lost a lot of time and money to a game called Epic 7 um but like even in that
35:11
case if I drew for something in you know I pull the arm of the slot machine I don't get what I want they don't go
35:16
"Okay cool now it cost you twice as much like that's they've invented a worse
35:23
version of the gotacha pond mechanic it's it's it's amazing how bad this is
35:28
it feels like they were just like it feels like they're pushing it like can we get away with this now will people
35:34
let us you know make make the worst gotcha and if so what's going to stop us
35:40
from doing it again well Hearthstone clearly had to compete with Warcraft's $90 Brutusaur so they
35:47
needed to But you know what you gave him $90 and you gave him a and you got a brutaur was
35:53
it wasn't like you gave them $1 and maybe you got a brutaur on a point one chance and then eventually you got the
35:59
$90 like you give them $158 you get a dinosaur yeah I gladly bought it because I gave them $90 and I got dinosaur and
36:06
it's extremely useful and functional and I mean I'm at least pulling it out every raid night cuz somebody needs potions or
36:11
something like it's it's useful and it's cool and it didn't cost me a varying
36:18
amount of money that's completely excessive for a cosmetic one thing
36:23
Hearthstone has had I think extreme difficulty is monetization
36:28
they have gone through a lot of attempts to monetize the game in different ways the only one that has really stuck has
36:35
been selling card packs which makes a lot of sense this is a collectible card game you buy card packs when there are
36:42
new card packs you can buy some of them with an in-game currency that you earn by playing and you can of course buy
36:48
them with cash either in big pre-orders before the expansion comes out or just after it comes out buy as many packs as
36:55
you want but you know Hearthstone has a lot of different game modes and the
37:02
Blizzard has had trouble monetizing them and I completely understand that developers need to be paid too you can't
37:08
have a game to that is completely free early on in the game they used to have adventure modes where you would pay
37:15
maybe $20 and get a pack of singleplayer
37:20
uh single player missions that you could go through that had I thought they had really interesting stories what they
37:27
didn't have was a lot of replayability or a lot of like ongoing monetization
37:34
options you know each one you would buy as a standalone pack and I'm sure they took plenty of development effort they
37:41
tried mercenaries which mercenaries was very heavily monetized game mode where
37:49
you would collect different mercenaries and go through a huge slow process of
37:56
upgrading them and it was fairly punishing you would go through each uh
38:01
each mission of mercenaries and if you failed at any point you got kicked back to the beginning and had to start over
38:07
because you needed to have leveled this other mercenary which you have not been getting the right cards to advance and
38:16
[Music] so Hearthstone eventually kind of let that one die it wasn't as successful as
38:22
they wanted they moved to a battle pass system both for the main constructed version of the game and for
38:28
battlegrounds so they have two battle passes the battle uh the battlegrounds
38:33
battle pass has two different levels of battle pass and it's they just haven't figured out a solution that helps them
38:40
support the game and is also not just repulsive to players because this is
38:46
just this is this is just gross this is so annoying if I want the thing let me
38:53
give you money and I will get the thing and be happy instead of I will give you money and then I'm going to be
39:00
disappointed because I didn't get my baby dinosaur and then I give you more money and I'm going to be disappointed
39:05
because I didn't get my baby dinosaur and I give you more money because I've committed to getting this baby dinosaur
39:11
i now I have to give you more money and I'm disappointed because I don't get my baby you know I Yeah I think it doesn't
39:18
it doesn't feel good no it's a whole system designed to make you feel shitty
39:24
and some cost like Well I don't think it's I don't think it's designed to make you feel bad i think it's designed to
39:29
try to squeeze as much money out of you as you can as you can and and but this is I mean this is a side effect of that
39:36
you know each attempt is going to make you feel kind of bad but each attempt is also going to make you feel like okay
39:42
I've got to keep doing this until I win i I'm going to be very curious to see at
39:48
the end of this how many people actually spend that money on it uh yeah because I
39:54
cannot think that in our current financial climate that people are going
39:59
to be dumping $158 in Hearthstone for a pet i'm sure there are people that will
40:04
do it but I'm sure that number is not as high as they think it's going to be but are there um is there anything else new
40:10
and unique to the rest of the rewards like is there someone who's like "Oh I'd really like the pet but I'm actually really wanting the the new signature
40:16
card or the new hero skin or are these going to be repacks or like you could
40:21
get?" Um so the hero skins are new i believe the signature cards are new i'm not 100%
40:28
sure the packs are just packs so they have a value and to be completely fair
40:36
to Hearthstone if you were buying all of these things each and every one of these
40:41
things with realworld money you would get close to this you would get around
40:47
the same cost so yeah but the problem is the lack of choice right you're not Yeah
40:53
the lack of choice you may not want any of that stuff you may just want dinosaurs yeah and I can't help but feel
40:58
that if they just put it up as a giant cosmetic pack and said "Here get this cool dinosaur and all this other stuff or $158 like we might bulk at it but it
41:06
doesn't feel like they're actively pumping you for cash." It just feels like they've created a price inflated cosmetic mhm which like it doesn't feel
41:14
gross at the end of the day like it's like okay that's an expensive cosmetic games have those look at Star Citizen
41:20
it's literally nothing but an expensive cosmetic generator um and people still would love that quote unquote game so I
41:27
remember when it was going to come out during Pandaria i remember when Yep i
41:33
remember I remember Star Citizen in the mountains um yeah so it's like like
41:39
there there is a market for expensive cosmetics for people who like your game there really shouldn't be a market for
41:47
ruthlessly pumping money from people who like your game in a system that is just
41:52
designed to do only that like this is I if they wanted to create a premium cosmetic congrats they found just the
41:59
crappiest way to do it yeah so I think I remember there's I I
42:06
it's un sourced but it's Pirate Software a streamer who's worked for Blizzard has
42:12
a clip where he talks about how the sparkle pony first Twilight horse
42:18
cosmetic or horse that you could buy on the show on the store made more money than Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty yep
42:26
that's the the flying celestial horse made an more money than entire Well to
42:33
me sequel to a video game yeah the part I thought it was sequel to a video game that's also the whole the whole other part of that is uh the monetization for
42:41
Wings of Liberty was they gave away more copies than they sold because if you went to Blizzcon had a year subscription
42:48
or any number of other things you just got it for free so yes it did make more
42:54
the Sparkle Pony made more money they didn't give free Sparkle Ponies away that that's that's a whole other topic
43:00
and and and stuff like that but this is just I think we can leave it at least not till next week
43:06
i think we can leave this as this is gross monetization and I think we move on from here um because I think we've
43:12
talked about it just enough yep i was thinking I was thinking I
43:18
could talk about this for a half hour i got halfway there yeah i don't think I don't I Yeah we're going to move on to
43:24
other topics uh speaking of other things that did not live up to expectations Overwatch 2 um
43:32
yeah sorry uh the new season's going to be it starts on June 24th uh as of the
43:37
recording that is today it's live uh they've got a dev update video no Dino
43:43
Flask sighting yet uh and a very lengthy developer update live stream where they showcased a lot of the little tweaks to
43:50
maps and showing off uh the new Atlas map
43:55
uh so like yeah it's still going strong there's still or going however um there
44:02
there's a bunch of quality of life adjustments happening small fixes uh and then we have the new heroes getting
44:08
added to the stadium which is Inatta Junkrunk and Sigma a new maps with Samoa and Espanka which we did talk about a
44:14
little bit last week uh ranks are going to be reset and map bands for quickplay and competitive will will be uh getting
44:21
updated as well so yay um you know more
44:27
than anything I really miss th miss those stupid Dino Flask videos
44:33
every time they made me laugh it's
44:38
gone forever yeah it's in the the the thing that I think I'm not going to harp on this because I I don't want to be
44:44
super negative after what we just did um Overwatch is was Overwatch one was
44:50
beloved and it it did something that you know games of that genre were failing to do for a while right it had been however
44:58
many years since a first person shooter type game of any type had really captured an audience quite like that
45:04
like we're talking like Counterstrike GO uh maybe right um and this one they keep
45:11
trying to find what the secret to success is for Overwatch 2 and what that means and I think they're still trying
45:17
to figure it out and honestly at this point I'm going to say it just copy Marvel Rivals at this point right like
45:24
Marvel Rivals is still Isn't that what Stadium kind of is they're trying you can do the third yeah
45:30
right like they're trying like just just lean into it at this point just have the cosmetics go back to be one to one purchases uh have the battle pass being
45:37
nothing but like just generic stuff that you can earn and uh you know make it
45:42
make it a little more accessible and go back to releasing content but also the thing that I want them to do which they
45:49
prom part of my biggest disappointment with Overwatch 2 that they seem like
45:54
they're on the cusp of maybe like embracing
46:00
embrace the damn story and put it into the game that was the thing that I think most people were like really excited
46:05
about because don't get me wrong watching videos reading comic books uh watching animated shorts all that's fine
46:13
but at the end of the day when you make us love your characters and you're telling me that the only way I can get
46:18
the character development is by not playing your game I don't have to play your game put it in the game make it
46:25
playable put that story in draw those characters in like it's I just want them
46:32
to do that i don't know that they ever will they seem like they're on the edge of maybe considering it maybe they will
46:37
but yeah it's it's still going it's still a polished game that that is when
46:42
you're playing with friends it's still very fun to play with friends they just got to they got to find that that they
46:47
got to go back to what made them great is really what it was so do you have any strong feelings about this my friends
46:54
and it's that like those first three months of Overwatch where it was basically all I played and it was super
47:00
fun and you know a lot of that is the the shiny newness of it all but and the
47:05
the infinite possibilities that were stretching out in front of us cuz they talked about like oh yeah well we didn't think PvE was going to be so popular but
47:12
then hey wait a second you guys really want that maybe we'll look into it so we were all getting super excited for some
47:18
story content and yeah we got some but not not what we were hoping for in the long run and so Overwatch 2 could keep
47:27
doing stuff in that direction but it has such a long road to get me to come back and like invest that kind of time in it
47:34
again that it's I don't know that it's possible that it can get up that hill unless it debuts a new mode called
47:41
Heroes of the Storm Verwatch and then it just launches Heroes of the Storm for me
47:49
uh yeah I mean I'm I'm still hopeful that they'll understand that they still have a good chunk of potential for this
47:56
game and hopefully they'll listen to community feedback more and more and actually take the pulse of what what
48:03
that sort of market is and you know I
48:08
will say this their character designs are you know top-notch right their hero
48:14
designs are absolutely phenomenal uh I don't think they've made a hero that I haven't wanted to play in in Overwatch
48:22
at some point uh which says a lot because there's plenty of of heroes and characters in League of Legends that I
48:28
will never bloody touch uh and there's ones in uh Marvel Rivals that I think
48:33
they're neat and they can stay over there and I will never touch them um but I think every single one of Overwatch's
48:40
uh heroes is something that I've wanted to play or experience at some point and I appreciate the level of effort that
48:45
goes into design and the character balancing that goes on there but they
48:50
need to find another way to make me want to play the game and I hope that they do someday and man I'm just looking at the next news item and I really don't even
48:57
want to finish with this man i Yeah this is not uh this is not a
49:03
great one let's I guess we'll just we'll just rip the band-aid off here uh so the last news item here is we've
49:09
gotten uh reports widely reported that Microsoft is laying off a lot of staff at its Xbox gaming division sometime in
49:17
the coming week uh it looks like many of the layoffs will hit the business sector
49:22
uh maybe not the developers per se but uh and I will say please excuse the pun
49:28
here uh it is a developing story so we don't know a lot of the details about it but it is widely rumored uh that they're
49:35
going to be getting rid of a lot of the business sector stuff which doesn't surprise me because Microsoft as a
49:42
company has been pushing AI business tools uh to all of their subscribers and
49:47
if you are in a corporate space that uses them you have likely had conversations revolving around this and
49:53
Microsoft I will give them at least a little bit of credit for this uh they drink their own Kool-Aid when it comes
50:00
to their tools and for that unfortunately for this one means that things like business analytics is
50:06
probably getting put into AI buckets uh so I would not be surprised if that was
50:12
the root cause of it probably going to be uh some folks looking for some new gigs in the very
50:18
near future so I don't know if anybody has anything to add to that uh no it's just
50:24
it it just sucks yeah yeah and I mean it just seems it seems the way the like a lot of the
50:30
industry is going we're in a we're in a weird tech downturn uh as things are in flux so we'll see hopefully the Xbox
50:37
gaming division doesn't get hit too hard and I know that sounds selfish to say um but a lot of the gaming stuff that
50:44
they've been doing has been really good lately like just announcing their collaboration with the uh Asus uh the RX
50:53
the Ally right the Liix um that is a really cool thing and it's right in that
50:59
market of handhelds and there looks like they're actually paying attention to what the gaming market is shifting towards and they have a bunch of game
51:06
developers under them that are doing fantastic stuff making great games uh
51:11
whether you know you like them individually or not a lot of these games are just objectively good uh and the
51:17
more of them we get the better off it is so hopefully they they don't hit the
51:23
game side too hard but I think that's especially since they just gave them a layoff in the last six months already
51:28
they did yeah well if it makes you if you want a positive story about AI not creeping in
51:35
further it was announced today that the Jurassic World Evolution 3 or the where
51:41
you have the park sim it got announced a couple weeks ago with the with the Summer Games Fest stuff and then there
51:48
was a little line that they were using generative AI to create scientist avatars in the game and then everyone
51:53
jumped up and down rightly and said we don't want that in our game and today they announced that they are pulling
51:59
that out so there will not be generative AI content in the next Jurassic World theme park creator yeah and I mean I
52:06
guess we could talk about this a little bit i think that's that's good to hear uh because let's be honest generative AI
52:13
and all that stuff is theft anyway uh so seeing a game company that says "Oh
52:18
we're going to make this choice and use generative AI." Get backlash and go "Okay maybe we shouldn't do that." Even if it's only for self-preservation I'll
52:25
take that as a win all right well I guess unless is there any uplifting news that we've had this
52:31
week that we can end on i mean not to bang the Heroes of the Storm drum too
52:36
much but with the 10th anniversary that was at the beginning of the month and I talked about that at length so I'm not
52:42
going to go into it too much um but there was a little Heroes of the Storm developer get together on Blizzard campus uh Lana Bachinsky one of the
52:49
animators who did most of the animation on Deathwing and has since gone on to become really important at Riot uh
52:55
posted pictures of the meetup and there was about 200 give or take former Heroes
53:01
of the Storm devs who many of whom no longer lived in California or worked for Blizzard all came together to celebrate
53:07
the 10th anniversary of the game that they all loved and took a bunch of pictures around the campus and had a little party so that was that was fun to
53:14
see it's not just me who's holding a torch for the game there's hundreds of people there are dozens of us Cory
53:21
dozens of us the the real question is have we found out who's hiding in the
53:27
server room and continuing to update this game there's someone there's someone hiding out and just hacking in
53:34
new code once a month looking at the picture nobody looks especially sickly
53:40
or pale or covered in wires so maybe they didn't get let out they were too busy that just means they have cable
53:47
management in the server room is all that means true true i don't know they can find their way out
53:54
a little rabbit warren well not not a bunch of rabbits but I will kick it over to Liz for sight news
54:02
hello blizzard watch is made possible by listeners like you and uh if you are
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with any questions and I will pass it along i would like it noted that I
57:26
didn't have to do that liz did this voluntarily today i am winning
57:32
i I you know I I may as well just I may as well just give into it it's no there's no point in arguing because
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