Giving the side eye to WoW 11.0.7’s Siren Isle

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[Music]
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hello everyone and welcome to the Blizzard watch podcast uh I'll be your
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host Tonight Joe Perez you may recognize me from other podcasts such as Tavern watch Lura watch and many of my other
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projects where I get to be an idiot on the internet uh joining me today as always is editorinchief of our lovely
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online Endeavor Liz Harper how are you doing today Liz howdy good night good evening something wow I don't know where
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that came from it's it's a it sure is a week it is indeed a week um Matt
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unfortunately could not join us today so uh if you're listening to this we decided to record it and we we skipped
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the pre-show cuz there's a lot going on this week we figur it might be going a little bit long but we also asked some friends to join us along the way joining
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us again you may recognize uh her from some of our other uh times that she's on here uh is going to be Liz Pat how you
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doing today Liz hello I exist and there's nothing going on while we record indeed for those of you at home because
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we have two lizes there's a running joke in our Guild where both of us exist or both lizes also exist where we call one
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Liz Prime and the other one Liz 2 so if you hear me say that on the podcast don't be alarmed this is
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normal and then joining us as well is Phil ol who uh yeah you you've heard
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Phil he's he's done some stuff with us before maybe maybe a little uh role playing how you doing Phil I've been
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around a time or two I'm good and I mean it just makes sense you have to separately address both heads of the
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lizra or you don't know uh who's going to talk back indeed well I think we're gonna get
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right into it folks and we're just going to start cracking on so well I guess warcraft's got a lot of stuff going on
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still uh let's talk about well let's talk about the PTR first cuz I think this is probably going to be one of the
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most interesting things so so patch 11.0.2 is on the PTR and it is the siren
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Isle uh a new Zone in which you're going to have lots of fun new stuff to do uh
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with some caveats like you're not going to be able to fly at first possibly ever question mark who wants to talk about
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that we'll go with knows blizzard knows how much we hate flying so another Zone
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in which we do not get to fly is a little well it's a little disappointing because we did get to to uh uh Castlegar
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and we got to fly immediately and now we are going into patch 1107 with a new Zone with which is going
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to be it feels a lot like the Forgotten reach to me there's a lot of exploration there are Mysteries to uncover you're
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going to be want to be running around and crawling into every nook and cranny to find things and fight rares I assume
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and uh discover things and it's you're going to do it on foot so I I hope you
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enjoy that uh it does look like you will eventually be able to fly but that's
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from PTR data mining we just don't we do not know how that will work uh the
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ability to fly may be tied to a unique ring that you can get on the aisle called cersei's ciret and that's that's
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a New Concept we've never seen before uh but we don't know we don't know it's uh it looks like an interesting place it it
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does seem a little a little bit syy because it it feels so much like the
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forgot reach we we're even getting another ring that we're going to be scouring the zone to find special gems
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to put in it and it's like really we're doing this we're doing this again okay okay yeah and and I think we'll talk
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about that in a second but I'm curious to see uh Liz uh tw's thoughts on this
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do you have thoughts it helps if I unmute um I I I don't know why we're
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hitting the the go back button on fly like we've we've let the cat out of the
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box um out of the bag excuse me and it
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what what do we gain from those brief moments of running around as we uh work
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on our ring to to unlock the flying ability just just just let us fly let it
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happen Phil I mean this is one of the only occasions I'm get to get to see that Little Red Riding goat that I
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worked for in in Mists in Rems I guess but yeah I think it's a little silly but
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um um I don't know I'm just it's wild to me that this is the same exact Cadence is last time too this is the 0.007 patch
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to the first major patch of the expansion we're going to a brand new island that we haven't seen before to get a ring that you put three special
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gems in I've I've heard this song and dance before it was mediocre the first
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time I'm sorry but if you'd played a dra theer in dragonflight you had at least seen the
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Forgotten reach you knew it was there this is this is all new random Island we
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are discovering yeah this is presumably the one that there um there are two goblins standing around in Doro right
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now Ricket and ticker who are having a conversation about this island and another earn not far away who's asking
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another if they've heard about the Goblins talking about the island so they're really trying to hint at it being out there but I don't know this is
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just and and on top of this I I don't blame them for not wanting to uh throw perfectly good content away but
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apparently this the map at least was an unused map from Island Expeditions um which means which does
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mean that maybe not flying will not be a huge deal because all those were relatively welld designed to be
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traversed on land as well and they're fairly Broad and expansive so I'm not as bothered by not flying knowing that
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that's where the map came from but I don't know it I I just worry that they might get in
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I don't want them to get into a cad like certain other games where you can almost predict what content will be in what
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patch based solely on the number like I don't want to be able to go okay this is
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patch 12.07 in midnight so now it's time for our island with a ring on it like I
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I don't want yeah yeah and I mean even like if even want to think about it like even shadowlands when we went to Coria
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it was basically an island it just happened to be surrounded by void instead of water there's and I'm not I'm
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not opposed to reusing systems and we've talked about this on the podcast before reusing systems is fine borrowing
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systems and pulling them forward is fine but we've never really seen them pull something like this forward that quickly
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and I think that's really it's a it's a choice I don't want to say it's a bad choice or a good choice it's certainly a
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choice it's not an exciting choice though um and I feel like they kind of
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pen themselves in with something to make try or try to make players invest time
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in the new Zone um which again making sure that you don't fly there is just it's an old
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tried intrude method of of making sure that you spend more time there than you maybe normally would have you have to
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get from point A to point B you're on the ground doing it takes you longer to get there you're more likely to experience other things and maybe have
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to interact with other NPCs or players during the course of it but the ring is just it's not exciting and it leveling
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up gems I I already play a jeal CF I don't need to do this again and gear
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wise they sort of stuck themselves here right cuz what else are they going to give you are they going to give you a cloak are they going to give you a
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necklace are they going to give you a trinket or are they going to give you a ring they can't give you any of the other gear slots because weapons are and
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an off hands are way too important and you'd have to balance them way too hard for every class uh you then wor most
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classes are so reliant on like weapons or off hands at this point that trying to make a generic one just probably
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wouldn't cut it and then you're not really going to replace a piece of tear gear or something like that with with an
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item and cloaks like if you got the cloak from rashan on are you really going to look at something else it'd be
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a lot of effort for a 007 yeah and I feel like this is sort of like a here's a middle ground here's a
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ring you can invest some time into it if you want and I have a feeling it's just going to be sort of generic stats
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probably yet again yeah especially if you like Mastery this is going to be nice because there's already a gem setup
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that one of our guildmates found in about 10 seconds of looking at the available gems that just maxes out your Mastery and then you never have to think
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about it again hey as a class that I could go with that as a class in Spec that already gets like 50% Mastery just
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for being in my spec not exciting but again we'll see what happens with it it's it's it's at least a thing um but
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go ahead I yeah I'll Reserve I'll Reserve judgment until I see it but I was not immediately excited by the news
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but they their red pandas on the island and that's okay I was just going to say that that that is exciting uh they don't
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they don't just look like normal pandas either they look like like digim yeah
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frankly oh my God they when when I first saw these things which are called red
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pandas I I kind of thought Care Bear because they have that kind of little puffed out tummy and they're walking on
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their hind legs it is it's it's like applied a new color way to um uh vuler
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and shrunk them down a little bit I was just going to say that they look like V in a red panda suit yes and and I'm not
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mad about it now it's kind of PR you've made it a little weird there is a uh
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there is a note further down in the data mining about a battle pet named Full Belly rolling paw from The Trading Post
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and it mentions a full belly which reads like a tribe or a group name of meekie so I wonder if these are like the
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inhabitants of the island that we going to be dealing with and if so I hope so it would make sense it also makes sense
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why it's a humanoid with a backpack too right there there is another pet which is a
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Clockwork beagle which is exactly what it sounds like it even has a a windup
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thing on its back oh my gosh I will burn something down to get this
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pet so it's like we aren't super thrilled about cile but also there are
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reasons that we're going to go there anyway we're not we're not skipping this but and I want to take a moment just to
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kind of talk about some of the other ones we don't have visuals for them but we do have some names of some of the ones and Phil already mentioned uh full
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belly with full belly roolling plaw uh but we also have uh crackle Roar cave
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crawling Cliff reach Cub Battle Board piglet my personal favorite marmaduk I
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don't know how they're going to get away with that one because I'm pretty sure marmaduk is not public domain but good
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on you um parlay which looks to be it's probably going to be a bird because it's
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got the flying School uh and it looks like it's going to be from Plunder storm which we're going to talk about cuz
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plunder storm's coming back but there's a lot of really like it looks like they actually spent some time maybe on the
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battle pets and maybe these are stuff that they wanted to put in before and just couldn't get them finish in time but either way I'm okay with it also a
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Titan orb is a battle pet cuz that's a thing that hasn't been done before so yay you can live out your Titan
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construct fantasies if you're an earn but yeah thunderstorm so that's coming back and Liz made a note here uh in 2025
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with recolor rewards I kind of got bored with plunder storm so I'm going to leave this to you guys what do you think I
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don't want to do it but I want those colors they've been reading your dream diary about these colors black black and
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purple black yeah the the whole thing is kind of like if uh yeah it's it's the
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same old plunder Lord sets except they're black with with dark blue and purple accents and silver trim so I have
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to admit they look really great and also I don't want to do that again uh I did
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it once and it was fine it was fine but it was getting old by the end the good
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news is it doesn't look like you'll have to do it the whole time like so the original this is the biggest change that
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they've already got in in place data mind previously to get the thunderstorm
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rewards you had to fill out a Renown bar and they did speed it up fairly quickly into plunder storm but you still like if
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you wanted all the rewards you had no choice but to go through all 40 levels even if you're like I don't want the
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swabby look I don't want these crappy weapons I want just a cool pirate code at the end well then you're in for gring
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what was it 40 levels of yeah it appears this time that we are accumulating a
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currency called appropriately enough plunder and you can just spend it directly on what you want so they took
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out the plunder to Renown conversion middle man basically yeah yeah and so
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the number here is if you want to farm literally everything you need 39,000 plunder it took 100,000 plunder in the
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first uh plunder storm to hit 40 I can't imagine the numbers are going to translate one to one but it also means
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that if all you want is like that black and purple um plunder Lord outfit um and
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like maybe a weapon or two like you can get in get that and get out you don't have to earn rewards you don't want you
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can just get what you want out of plunder storm and then let it go which is good because there's going to be
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probably a decent chunk of people that are going to be doing exactly that at least I would imagine so but yeah yeah
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I'm I'm one of them I'll probably get in there to get the pirate set because they it does look really nice and I found
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that the previous one with the red one actually even looks nice if you're just using other pieces of it in transmog so
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I'll probably get that in some of the weapons but I'm not sticking around to earn absolutely everything I don't need another shovel thank you yeah for sure
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and honestly this might still be easier than the path of Ascension yeah prob yeah and uh I did
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that once and that's that's enough once was enough I am going to slide this in here though because uh since you
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mentioned path of Ascension this just came out this past week um you will be
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able to buy the the path of Ascension armor type rewards now no matter your armor set so you don't have to beat it
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four times anymore which I am going to take advantage of except that means I
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need to farm so much currency just so much no you don't we'll talk about it
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later well speaking we'll talk about it later but yeah they may they may have of ension a lot more accessible at the end
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of Shadowland and this is just kind of like the final nail in having to grind that out well speaking of random
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currencies and earning things uh the anniversary is continuing uh which we talked about before the anniversary
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event which is you know going for what till January right going to into the new
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year January till January 6th I believe so we have we have a while we have time which is great news if you're uh farming
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up your uh bronze celebration tokens cuz maybe you didn't Farm enough bronze
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during uh Rems uh but you get a chance to earn all of your your armors or whatever else
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you're looking for any of the the pets or or anything else uh but apparently there's a hidden Quest or secret Quest
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that's going on for anybody want to talk about that cuz I honestly didn't know about this uh so I haven't I haven't
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done any of the hidden stuff I've done the introductory quests which are not hidden this is basic this is exactly
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like the secrets of Azeroth where you have your funny little hat that kind of points you in one direction or another
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and you wander around and you find secret things um there is if you go to
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guest relations in uh outside the Cabernet turns of time you will get a
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quest that introduces the system and kind of walks you through the beginning and after that it is a big secret
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finding Extravaganza which uh by my understanding is kind of driving the
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community insane because it's just it's it's a lot uh I believe if you do all of
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these you will get the title detective which is actually really appealing I I
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would I would run with that um uh but yes it's it's running around collecting
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secret things and completing secret unknown
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quests I don't know I don't know I'm gonna get through I did not do I did not do all of Secrets of azra did some but
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not all of it so is it actually like complete or is it still like unfolding as we go along because uh I I think I
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accidentally did part of this because I saw a quest line from a tusar and I was like I must do this it is a tusar yes
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that's those are the in quests so I believe it is still rolling out it's
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it's been rolling out day to day and I believe we are day six day seven we're
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about a week in yeah and that's all I can tell you just go looking and uh go
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follow the secret finding community on Discord yeah the tricky part for this is that there's two separate parts just
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like the last uh time we did secrets and they're not really related um there's
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except this time they're actually appear to before there's the main storyline which is what starts at Alex the guest
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relations stranii um and that's rolling out day by day um and that's rewards a
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detective title and some tokens but then there are also Side Stories That unlock as you go along um that were hidden up
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to a certain point I believe um there are also these things called celebration crates that you have to find using Clues
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and then return them uh back uh and then there is a part no one has found yet but
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which seems to award and I'm going to look this up on wad because the name is absolutely wild um there is an
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achievement called rat's Revenge which refers to a character named Ratz who shows up a few times during the guest
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relations and the achievement shares an icon with Incognito the indecipherable
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fell cycle whose source is listed as wow 20th
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anniversary question mark so wild okay yeah so there's just like so if you
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remember the original secrets of R there was the main quest line which is like what Liz was talking about where you were following the following things
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around with your torch and your idol of onara and your thinking cap and finding Clues and walking X Paces West and Five
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Paces North to find something and so on and so forth um but then there was also that separate side quest where they just
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added things out in the world to go to and those gave you uh the pieces that led to the memons jump Jets mount it was
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added at the same time but seemingly completely separate this is kind of the same thing with this they added a lot of
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little side things along with this but um yeah there's a detective model or detective title there's cosmetic
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thinking caps and there may eventually be an indecipherable fell cycle so worth following along as it goes along um
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we've posted a little bit about it and Wowhead has a guide that they're adding to as people find more things the good
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news is if this is anything like the previous Secrets this will stick around and you can keep doing it well at least
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as long as the celebration is going right because that it looks like some of the stuff is keyed like around the
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celebration grounds itself uh so it seems like this one might be dependent on that or at least you want to try to
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get it done before January that's my guess I'd suggest finishing it before the event is over but you don't have to
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like rush to keep up with it day by day I don't think there's going to be that much tied to it fair enough I I mean
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don't I like when they do stuff like this but I also think that there might be a small level of uh I think they do
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make it somewhat complicated just to mess with the secret finding uh community in
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like hey we going you to ha take that there was a throwaway line in a fix Pat
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not patch note from last week that said made several changes to make Secrets harder for secret harders to secret
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finders to find yeah okay that that confirms it then they know they know
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they know what they're doing yeah this is the kind of thing where the stories the stories they have in these are always kind of cool like there was like
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a big mystery at the end of the last secrets of uh Azeroth event for like Lord nerds um and I'm really hoping this
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will lead to something like that but also I'm very bad at the logic jumps you have to go through to these secrets this
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is the kind of thing where I'm just gonna kind of come along as it gets done and do it oh that's cool yeah and I I
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think I'm in the same boat and I I do like where some of this like I'm reading through some of it where like it takes you through the world it's taking you to
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some very interesting places uh it's making you do some interesting things um
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I mean you're going to Old parts of the the world where maybe you haven't gone like thousand needles when's the last
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time anybody really spent any time there um probably before it flooded probably
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or you know talking with NPCs that maybe people haven't talked to in a while like rexar uh I mean when's the last time
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rexar has been really involved since what we went to to you know War dads
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yeah he shows up in the orc uh Heritage armor line yeah but other than that yeah
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but I mean so it's it's there uh if you you're interested in that type of stuff I would highly recommend checking out
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the website or any of the various guides that are out there uh and you know maybe you can go do your thing follow along
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and like Phil said you're not going to have to worry about rushing but hey there you go um speaking of Phil Phil
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would you like to talk about bugs I hear you like bugs oh my god there have been
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so many recently it's amazing uh starting so last week uh
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there was one so this this has been I will say on the whole and I don't think this is a contentious statement that the
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war within has been up one of the buggiest expansions uh to come out for
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World of Warcraft in a long time and I don't just mean like class bugs like um
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I you know i' keep fairly in touch with the monk Community I know for a while in shadowlands uh wind walker monks had a
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had a separate bug tracker where they tracked just wind walker bug monks um I'm talking things like and we figured
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this out uh if you had a guild in a r and anyone in the entire guild
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transferred a currency in their War band it would briefly disconnect the entire guild from Guild Services reconnect them
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causing a huge lag Spike this week we got some more extremely showy ones um
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this one's been actually going on since for a couple weeks of the anniversary and it's making it a pain in the butt for Alliance characters uh the portals
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from Stormwind to the places that you need to go for the anniversary event are instead dumping you in the middle of the
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ocean um in some cases killing people because they are Landing Way outside fatigue line and unable to make it back
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to land in time um at one point this week uh you could log in and find that
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you were unable to see anyone else but you could see their spells uh this led to things like the mount uh Mount Mania
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was just you just you could hear other people talking you could hear because everyone everyone loves the mount Mania
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event out at the anniversary there's a lot of you know uh like good-natured ribbing and joking when the NPC pulls
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out her Swift spectral tiger and everyone complains hey we're not made of money but if you went out there this
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week it was just you you and a bunch of talking ghosts um we even I even know a couple people who ran dungeons during
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this time where you couldn't see your guild mates um which um as someone who's
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been healing this expansion makes me Twitchy to even think about how phenomenal um yeah um at one point
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warband currency transfers were turned off to fix quote a problem unquote um no
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word what that was um for a a while there has been there have been issues
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inside the raid too where the graphical effects for two of the fights were not matching uh when they were actually
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hitting you and we're talking the last two fights so some of the hardest ones in which case one of the abilities actually is an instant kill for myth the
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graders um and then blizzard hot fixed it and made it worse
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so um it's just been it it's been non-stop bugs it's been one thing after
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another since the beginning of the expansion it's a little disheartening at this point yeah I think part of it is
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like we we talk about this a lot this game is old uh I mean we're having the 20th celebration of it uh you know right
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now we literally just talked about that that's a lot of code to change and fix and and try to work with and stuff like
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this is inevitably going to happen and unfortunately um how you deal with it or
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or how it gets dealt with uh you know varies depending on what actually is
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broken the war band one was wild I mean and I'm sure everybody has experienced
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this at least once or twice Guild Services kick them off uh and then next thing you know you're wiping to a raid
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boss or a dungeon boss or or something like that because of the huge lag Spike like for us I I remember rashan or
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rashan was uh for that first set of plls we did on it
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unplayable for for a lot of people it was rough but at least they are working
25:24
on it and they are trying to to resolve uh as many bugs as possible but who know knows how long that's going to take uh
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and I wish them luck with it because man it has been it has been bad this
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expansion and it started right off the bat I mean heck you're talking about class bugs uh just from my end my one of
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my core abilities in my class for healing just wasn't wasn't working just
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didn't exist like yep I I've got one right now that I would be excited to put a talent Point into but previously it
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was bugged in a good way and then an attempt to hot fix it uh it now no longer works at
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all um cool thanks yep seems fine but if
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you've experienced this or any other bugs uh they're probably working on it so hold out hope uh hopefully we'll get
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something uh that you know for those folks that are experiencing it and maybe
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it'll make your game less uh chaotic oh boy uh from there we got I
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guess we have a little bit of classic news and I just want to talk about that real quick uh classic Firelands raid
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releases this week as of this recording it will be Thursday uh so two days from when we're recording if you're listening
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to this live or listening to this recording uh it should be today that's usually what happens when we end up
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releasing these uh and the wild classic season of Discovery phase six on carage
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Launches on 1112 uh with encourage itself opening up
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on December 8th uh and it will have basically different difficulty levels
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who wants to talk about this because this is wild the difficulty levels we knew phase six was coming but we didn't
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know about these difficulty levels um it's a system they call descent into
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madness and it's uh you opt into it when you first start the raid and it's
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increased difficulty with extra rewards sounds simple right so you kill the first boss you have a limited number of
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attempts we don't know how many but the PTR goes up this week so we should know more next week uh you kill a boss you
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get all of the normal loot you would get but you also get a bonus chest you can open that bonus chest or you cannot open
27:41
that bonus chest and go on to the next boss where if you defeat it within the number of kills you have uh then you get
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a bigger bonus chest and so it's kind of it sounds like this crazy gambling game
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where you're like do we want to push our luck or like a like it almost sounds like a game show right are we going to
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push our luck and try for a bigger reward on the next boss can we get this boss down it sounds really neat to me I
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season of Discovery has been just really fun to follow yeah I got to say season
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Discovery definitely sounds like a lot of fun and uh I don't know that we would ever do this but I know dang well that
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if uh they ever implemented something like this in uh retail our Guild would probably gamble let's be honest
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oh we would absolutely be using the push our luck mechanic are you kidding me that's
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amazing uh but I go ahead we don't know many of the details about this uh like
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how many tries do you get uh what kind of loot do you get how many more pieces of loot do you get if you push your luck
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so but we we will find out I hope so I I just think this sounds so cool and then
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this is hitting the PTR this weekend right on uh November 8th so Friday
28:56
Friday it'll be live when you're hearing this very likely wonderful uh then
29:02
there's another note here that uh I'm not going to use the colorful language but uh there's apparently a promotion
29:08
going on uh not just with Mountain Dew but all of PepsiCo uh so who wants to
29:14
talk about this cuz uh we were talking about it in Guild and it feels like do you remember the last time they did this
29:21
like I don't know if you guys remember but they they did the same thing and it was with Pepsi products where you earned
29:26
points and you traded in those points specifically for like rewards but most
29:32
of them were like just tabards wasn't that the one where we get like the red and blue Battle Bots that you could like fill with red and blue
29:39
fuel yeah yeah so who want who wants to talk
29:44
about this then and the details of it Liz Liz too you haven't talked much go
29:50
forth I am the uh the voice that gets to opt in on this one uh so basically it's
29:57
exactly the the way it sounds and is exactly as we've seen with some of these other promotions where uh with the
30:04
caveat that there's no purchase necessary you can you can uh of course
30:10
put in through their website but if you if you buy uh what is it uh Doritos
30:17
Mountain Dew and Rockstar there will be codes on the bag under your cap I'm not
30:25
sure how Rockstar will work because it's in a can and you put those codes in at
30:31
their website for points that you can then redeem for goodies in game and
30:37
these include what appear to be aprons which are probably going to uh MOG over
30:44
tabards battle pets including little ragnaros and the hate forged Blaze cycle
30:53
Mount I'm not going to lie actually looks kind of cool to me as a Diablo
31:00
player but the point values are varied based on the participating product that
31:07
you're entering the code for so these can range anywhere from 100 points to a
31:12
th000 points for what you are uh where you earned the code and I'm you know we
31:21
had the uh the gummy candy PR what was it trol the trolly PR we just had trolly
31:28
promotion to mixed results or mixed feedback from the community and I feel
31:35
like we're just just fast forwarding directly into another one the Bots are
31:40
cute uh that that you can uh get as a battle pet and of course Lil ragnaros is
31:46
is something that I think everybody loves it is worth noting that Lil ragnaros was in the cash shop I mean he
31:54
is a pet you can buy for cash so it is interesting that now you can buy him for 400 points whereas I think I think he's
32:01
still in the shop for 10 bucks which is funny because with the cost of soda it's GNA be about
32:07
$10 depending on what you buy yeah you can go out and buy yourself two 20 ounce Mountain Dew Maui bursts and spend the
32:13
points there on a single low ragnaros as well as far as point to uh dollar to point conversions go it's not bad it's
32:21
mostly it's mostly them trying to push their newer flavors so you'll find that the limited The Limited Time stuff like
32:26
the new game Fuel uh flavors Etc um give more points than standard but um I I
32:33
admit I had some points left over from a previous promotion um where and this is the weirdest thing they had a digital
32:40
item that would sell out each day um um so I had 600 points remaining when this
32:47
opened from a previous promotion for a different game entirely and I bought myself the motorcycle right off the bat
32:53
nice now I will say the uh the the one the part that's most interesting to me
32:58
and kind of speaks to we'll say the the rate of adoption of the current
33:04
expansion is that you can also use a boggling 4,000 points which would be
33:11
four 24 packs of Mountain Dew to purchase the war within epic edition of
33:20
the expansion I can't think of an expansion where you've been able to to
33:27
purchase like this before can you did do either of you three or one of you three remember one no I do not this is this is
33:36
definitely a first yeah that that really surprises me at the same time how many
33:42
people are out there who want to play the expansion and have not already bought it it's kind of one of those
33:47
things if you're buying it with Mountain Dew yeah this you you weren't super
33:53
invested in the first place it feel it feels like an interesting throwback that ties in the anniversary so kind of
33:59
hearing me out here uh while I'm not super keen on it it seems to fit right
34:04
in with that theme because some of the NPCs we go and we see at the celebration are like Mr teas night Al Mohawk he's
34:12
there um and a lot of NPCs that were really important during pop culture
34:18
mainstream phenomena that was wow early on when they ran this promotion the first time uh so it feels kind of
34:25
fitting in a way that they're sort of doing it again uh but it is wild that
34:31
they're adding the expansion on there because you don't see advertisements for wow like you used to and it's I think
34:38
the people who know about it already know about it I don't know that it's going to capture any new markets uh I
34:44
don't think any Call of Duty Bros are going to be like yo I got the case am out and do I can just go buy this
34:49
expansion now let's go um but it is an interesting precedent to to see them
34:55
make that type of arrangement with uh pepsic Co again and offer that product
35:00
like that uh in the year of our the year of our our our L 2024 where crossovers
35:06
are still absolutely prevalent everywhere because everybody wants to cross promote because they think it's going to make them more money you know
35:13
you mentioned Crossovers and uh there is uh one coming up very soon uh in our
35:21
notes between Diablo Immortal and World of Warcraft do you want to touch on that
35:27
one you why don't you go ahead uh since you brought it up and then we'll finish out the the last of the warcraft news
35:35
excellent I'm I'm rather surprised by it to be honest and not necessarily in a
35:40
bad way because uh Warriors of sanctuary are going to be able to defeat the Lich
35:49
King in the new mobile title or excuse me in the mobile title so excuse me
35:56
you'll be able to to battle him at The Frozen Throne which is going to fall in
36:02
the Cutthroat Basin region and he will drop a new legendary gem called mour
36:08
skull but other than other than uh Heroes of the Storm where you know the
36:15
basis is the entire blizzard Universe uh again I'm I'm quite surprised by this
36:21
crossover for the 20th anniversary where you can actually kill the Lich King in
36:29
in sanctuary um so if you've ever you know daydreamed about being a Demon Hunter or a barbarian and you know
36:37
cleaving arthus skull you're going to have the opportunity and that's
36:43
fascinating be in part because this is the first uh Diablo X World of Warcraft
36:50
where they're not asking for our money at least not directly because we're not touching on the monetization of Immortal
36:58
fair I this is a weird one like I it one hand it's cool on the other hand like
37:05
WTF yeah so yeah they had um shadow of the Frozen throne but that was just for
37:11
transmogs you weren't you know you weren't actually killing a different property character the more I read of
37:18
this this is a weird crossover like you've got the arst thing sure and
37:23
there's weapon skins from all over the game's history that you can also earn from and including one I'm looking at
37:29
and as a person who played a blood KN blood day at the time I'm kind of mad about it you can get roria as a weapon
37:34
skin for blood night um but then if you go further down there's also a murloc
37:40
mini pet and if you go even further down you can apparently earn something from I don't I admit I don't know what the
37:46
Phantom Market is but this looks like transmog based on illin including and I'm cracking up here the distant longing
37:54
Emoji oh boy oh my yeah wow this is this
38:00
is a lot the murloc pet is really cute and this is not the first time they've had a murloc pet crossed over into a
38:08
Diablo property they were you know famously rewards for various expansion purchases for Di said that carried into
38:16
Diablo I but I'm just I I I can't claim that I've ever fantasized about uh
38:23
killing arthus outside of the warcraft Universe nope definitely not on my bucket list I can tell you that much but
38:30
I mean again doing weird crossovers with their own IPS not unheard of and we'll probably see more of it in the the time
38:37
to come but all right if you play Diablo Immortal there you go uh and apparently that cosmetic treasure Goblin backpack
38:43
that you can get in uh and all you have to do is level the 10 that's nice uh and the fact that they're recognizing
38:49
pre-existing 10 is nice yeah nov 13th that's also that is in World of Warcraft
38:56
you can get a treasure Goblin backpack but you have to play a little bit of Diablo Immortal Immortal is of course
39:02
free just have to download it play up to level 10 or log on to a already existing
39:08
level 10 character so uh you you may already have the bag though this is the same bag from the last expansion ah ah I
39:17
don't know if I got that one uh it was from the same Diablo crossover event that get let you get like W's Third Leg
39:23
as a cosmetic mace oh I definitely I definitely have that one yeah that was
39:29
that was right at the launch I believe where the treasure cins were spawning in
39:36
yeah in valren there we go all well we're not quite done with Warcraft speaking of of other things that are are
39:43
interesting and don't make sense uh apparently there's a new battle for Azeroth meta achievement that's being
39:49
added uh yeah where the reward is J Yan's trash pile Mount uh and no this is
39:56
not fake this is not a ail uh or or weird joke this is a real thing that is
40:01
happening that you can get what like that's going to be the title this episode just what
40:08
what hour and a half of they did that and the fact that it's a retroactively
40:14
added meta achievement uh for for uh you know an expansion that was two
40:21
expansions ago at this point right like I'm we because it was shadowlands and then no three cuz it was three
40:29
expansions yeah yeah three expansions ago uh wow yeah it's called so the the
40:36
uh achievements called feral to Arms uh you put an end to the battle for azoth by completing a bunch of achievements
40:42
which uh look like they're all over the place from mechadon Maximum effort azero
40:47
and Diplomat I'm on Island Time stuff like that battle for desar lore so basically in theory uh most of the stuff
40:55
should be completed if you played through the expansion although all the squirrels I set sail to see is going to be a bane for some folks uh but yeah you
41:03
get you can get a Johnny go go ahead there there are going to be a few pain points in this like I know some people
41:08
will not have the um the PVP Centric uh item or um heart of Azeroth uh
41:16
Essences um for the full heart can't lose meta achievement um and I still
41:22
don't know how you have meca done Joe because it's just a huge RNG Fest
41:28
um unlike the nitar one where you can just kind of chip away at it and get it done the mechagon requires an absurd
41:33
amount of luck yeah but it it's an it's interesting because they like they
41:39
started with this in shadowlands um they added one for um uh with back from the
41:44
Beyond they added one near the end of dragon flight um and then I guess they
41:51
decided they're going to move backwards and add them to the other expansions now um I can't say that I'm arguing with it
41:58
especially if we get more remix expansions you're going to have more
42:03
opportunities to kind of go back to these places and complete the activities that you haven't done and still like
42:09
benefit and reward you know experience rewards from it uh I want to see them do
42:14
this with uh R lichking honestly and Miss Pandaria I think they would both
42:21
have an opport can you imagine if uh not that this would ever happen because love
42:27
RNG is their bread and butter and gamer tiar are what they drink can you imagine
42:33
if they implemented a meta achievement for wrath that gave you a reskin of
42:39
invincible everybody would lose their mind oh man yeah I'm gonna have to try this one
42:47
though because it's got my favorite got my favorite low of trash heaps Johnny I yeah this is this is something
42:55
that would actually get me back into BFA fair enough and maybe maybe this could
43:00
be an idea that they're looking at maybe more remixes in the in the future because we talked about it I think we
43:06
all agree that uh the remiss was a really great event uh especially for
43:11
leveling uh characters and just having fun and doing something that is you know was probably one of the best expansions
43:18
that MMO has ever had uh you know but wrath is considered that for a lot of people as well wrath wrath brought
43:25
people into the game I could see uh wrath remix uh having meta achievements like this and stuff like that for you to
43:31
do to help encourage you I think that'd be pretty cool but another Warcraft
43:36
thing that may be happening uh at least there's an alpha that's been added to
43:41
the catalog and I don't think anybody had this on their bingo card either uh Warcraft 2 remastered has an internal
43:48
Alpha uh apparently at blizzard and uh boy has the internet been mixed on this
43:54
one some folks are very excited and some folks are like I remember what you did to Warcraft 3 reforged what's going on
44:01
here blizzard what's going on uh good the good thing for blizzard is that
44:07
making a Warcraft 2 remaster better than their Warcraft 3 remaster is such a low
44:14
bar there is such a low bar to clear here to be more impressive than Warcraft 3 so maybe because they've set
44:22
everyone's expectations so low this will not it out of the park I will say that
44:27
they do have access to a lot uh a lot of stuff that they didn't before um like
44:33
especially like they they have like carious Visions now right that's that's now one of their their campuses that
44:38
handles a lot of remasters they have access to whatever Microsoft decides to
44:44
do with them as far as uh you know making other developers available for them so they're not necessarily going to
44:50
be caught in the same trap as they were with Warcraft 3 so maybe it'll be good
44:55
cuz I mean the Diablo I remaster was fantastic oh it's spectacular yeah I
45:01
mean not without its flaws but I mean as as far as resurrecting a you know 20 some OD year old game was it was pretty
45:08
good so maybe they've also managed to keep it keep the interest in it too where there you know the they were
45:15
throwing out various activities with the ladders as they as they refreshed so
45:21
yeah it's kind of kind of interesting to go wait a minute you you you knocked it out of the park over here and over here
45:27
you you didn't even trip at the Finish Line you tripped halfway down the the the racetrack mhm well hopefully uh this
45:35
will be good and not bad uh I have very fond memories of playing Warcraft 2 with
45:41
uh with my friends and uh you know maybe spending more time doing that than I did my homework so maybe it'll be good
45:49
because I wouldn't mind diving into it uh and then there's one last thing for Warcraft news that I am particularly
45:55
interested in uh CU I I am absolutely a goblin uh there is a new set of World of
46:03
Warcraft 20th anniversary dice are you a dice Goblin do you want a polyhedral set
46:08
of uh resin dice poly resin dice well you can you can go ahead and do it and it's got Reds and Golds and blues and uh
46:17
Warcraft symbols on the D20 uh and you can go ahead and get it I don't know if I agree with the price on it being a
46:24
regular set of dice uh set at $30 uh but yeah it's it's kind of cool
46:33
to see that they're just branching out I still have the Diablo dice do you remember those when they gave that out of BlizzCon no I don't remember those so
46:41
it it's still in my bag actually it's it's my emergency set of dice that I carry in my work bag um but it was a set
46:47
of dice that they gave out during uh I want to say it was the bcon where they announced Diablo I uh it was one of the
46:53
it was in the goodie bag and it was a leather a leather bag stamped with the Diablo logo and like all the crackles
47:00
and stuff that you would expect uh but it was a nice set of just regular polyhedral dice nothing special except
47:06
it was done in the Diablo font uh so all the numbers were the Diablo font it was really really cool I like stuff like
47:13
that um I wouldn't pay $30 for it maybe but uh this this is a a distinct maybe
47:19
for me how about you this this entice any of you other dice goblins because I know I have at least one of you
47:25
here um I the problem is I think I'd have to see them in person because or
47:30
see a video of them because some of these like they're half half red half
47:36
blue and some of them some of the photos make them look really neat and in some
47:41
of the photos the colors look muddy because shoving red and blue together can make just kind of a dark muddy
47:47
purple in the middle mhm so I I would want to I would want before I spend $30
47:54
on an ordinary set of resin dice I would want to know what they look like more than these pictures show me the other
48:01
problem that I think I have with it is at that price point these are tumbled dice um so for those of you at home
48:08
again I'm a dice Goblin so I apologize for the explanation I'm about to give
48:14
you um when dice are made at mass volume like your chessex dice your your cheap
48:20
polyhedral dice they're Polished by tumbling so they're done exactly like a rock tumbler and this is essentially a
48:28
way to even out the dice or at least take the sharp edges off uh put them up to a high Shine by just dumping them
48:34
from one uh tumbler of aggregate to another until they're nice and shiny and then you put them in their respective uh
48:41
containers and you ship them out the problem with those is that's what creates unbalanced dice if you ever had
48:49
a D20 that always seemed to roll a 13 you probably weren't going crazy it was
48:54
probably a cheaper Dy that was done through that process more expensive dice
49:00
sets ones particularly at the $30 range and above are generally sharp edged dice
49:06
these are either hand polished or taken out of a very specific molding process
49:12
that leaves them with very crisp edges and also means that they are perfectly balanced so for like this for less than
49:19
this price I can go buy a set of science dice which are absolutely perfectly balanced dice I think they're like 20
49:24
bucks for a polyhedral set uh so it's a little bit of a heart sell on the price but it is cool and I will say that I I
49:31
the box that they come in is you know possibly pretty nice uh depending on what the inside look like but the
49:36
outside is got the World of Warcraft 20-y year anniversary logo uh stamped with the the map and it is kind of a
49:43
cool little piece of nostalgia but this might be something that I wind up uh waiting to see if it goes on fire sale
49:49
when nobody buys it the packaging seems fancier than the dice themselves I I think that is accurate personally yeah
49:57
I also personally find the red the gold on red sides to be a little bit hard to read I'm probably going to wait just
50:04
like I did with the Diablo tarot and pick these up later which by the way I just got that for $19 that's a beautiful
50:09
branded product indeed all right well I think that does it for Warcraft let's move along because
50:15
we got a bunch of other stuff to cover here uh Diablo there are some bits of Diablo news uh and I'm actually going to
50:22
throw this to the double-headed Hydra that is Liz um so what's going on because there was a a
50:29
confusing Fireside or campfire chat uh and then there's a whole bunch of gear being released that uh I know Liz too
50:37
has feelings about I do and the fireside chat is or the campfire chat is actually
50:43
supposed to just be the standard midseason campfire chat where they discuss balance changes and class
50:50
changes and hopefully um as much as I love listening to these things we're not
50:55
sitting there for 2 plus hours yeah they have been really bad at making these
51:01
super long twitch streams where they're like showing us a PowerPoint
51:07
presentation and reading it and it's it's a little it's a little painful and I start zoning out after like the first
51:14
45 minutes so it's just is very difficult for me to follow personally it it feels like being in a meeting at work
51:20
when they do that right and like I we all we all pay attention to the PowerPoint presentations at work right right
51:27
legally come they do they come in with a lot of enthusiasm
51:32
and you can tell that they love the game but I usually feel like okay I'm sitting
51:37
through this because I know you're going to make a blog post of this after you're done and then I can read that and then
51:44
it's it's it's almost easier to consume because they have you know it's it's framed out the same way but you can look
51:52
at it and process it and come back to it whereas when they're reading off of the PowerPoint and you're sitting there
51:58
still trying to do the math for what does this mean for me and they Advance forward to the next class and the next
52:04
class like that that's how you have to do those things but at the same time it you get stuck it feels it feels like
52:13
it's not always the kind of information that's best presented in this format like sometimes they'll show you gameplay
52:20
sometimes they've done like live plays of new things didn't they have when they were first announcing first talking
52:26
about the pit they had someone actually on stream playing the pit and showing us what it was like and talking about it
52:32
that's the sort of thing where video is a great format but when you're doing
52:37
this and you're talking about class changes and you're saying okay necromancers get 5% more of this and
52:43
this ability now has a 3second coold down instead of a 2.5 second cool down
52:49
and like going through that kind of minutia it's it it's it can be very hard
52:54
to absorb and they they do like to do 2hour campfire chats going over this
53:00
stuff and it's yeah get excited about it the blog post keep getting bigger and bigger the
53:06
streams keep getting longer and longer and I I will say I don't think this is a fault necessarily because it means they
53:14
are working constantly and consistently in improving the game but at the same
53:20
time not everybody can sit you know for two hours in the middle of the day and
53:25
catch this l and have the opportunity to ask questions and you know it's yeah because they they do a live Q&A during
53:34
the thing but it's at 11:00 a.m. Pacific on a weekday so it's just it's it's a
53:39
diff it's a hard cell yes agreed and part this is also it's on November 12th
53:45
which is the day before uh Warcraft direct next week so it we're just we're gonna have a bucket of news for you yeah
53:52
and I I was going to say going back to the the video thing some of that feels like it might be a little bit bit of a leftover mentality uh back when video
53:58
was King uh we talk about this on the site too where you know sometimes people want to just listen to a video they
54:04
don't want to read uh and sometimes I feel like they still think that where most video consumption is is short form
54:11
these days not necessarily a two-hour a two-hour slog and I mean Rod Ferguson in
54:17
one of these very early campfire chats talked about how he would prefer to do a live stream instead of a blog post that
54:24
was just that was his preferred format for news and at that time they would do live streams and not do blog posts so I
54:31
am grateful that they have at least started doing live streams and also making blog posts so you don't have to
54:36
like go back frame by frame and read the slides to find out what's happening but
54:42
uh we have done yeah we have done that because you used to have to to know what
54:48
was going on so we've we've progressed somewhat but man these things are
54:54
they're kind of slogs it's really obvious from watching these and reading the notes that like the D4 team is in
55:00
there and they're productive and they're doing their thing and they love the game and they like making it better but man sometimes it feels like they put the
55:06
Diablo 4 team in a hole and don't allow them to look at what the other teams at blizzards do I'm just I just compar
55:12
these campfire chats to things like when blizzard was announcing highlights for Dragon flight specifically the moment
55:18
they announced the dra the evoker like they didn't give you a list of every talent that the class was going to have
55:24
they hit the highlights it's like hey you're a cool drag Dragon person you're going to have dragon abilities if you want specifics there's a blog post later
55:31
like exactly you don't need to go through every Necromancer ability and tell us that it's got a 3 second shorter
55:36
cool down and 5% more damage to nearby enemies now like just say we've made improvements and changes to Necromancer
55:44
abilities hit a couple of the big highlights because they know they know what the community wants they respond to community feedback well but like hit
55:51
some of the highlights and leave the minutia for your patch notes like and if
55:57
they were allowed to look at what any other team at blizzard is doing they
56:02
might do this but I think sometimes they just put the Diablo 4 team in isolation and don't let them see what everyone
56:08
else does yeah I don't know they have them locked feel like it feels like we've
56:15
spent a year with Diablo I learning about the existence of Diablo I and that
56:20
Diablo II actually did some things right that Diablo I is now doing it's it's
56:25
been a weird journey and a lot of those lessons were learned through pain I
56:31
think because there was I would say an equal amount of frustration at the Diablo III launch as uh some folks have
56:39
experienced with Diablo I so you know I I realized we beat this drum you know
56:44
pretty regularly of at least in our Discord which if you were a member of our patreon you could join and see new
56:51
and interesting things but um we we harp on this pretty regular L that they don't
56:57
seem to have learned a lot of the lessons from Diablo I you know there's the argument that the pit progression is
57:05
is Nightmare Rift or nightmare Pardon Me Greater Rifts and that that nightmare
57:11
dungeons are are not kind of the the subsequent inheritor of that title but
57:18
why why are we I'm I'm don't get me wrong I'm glad that they're improving I'm I'm enjoying a lot of what they done
57:26
with some caveats but why are we having these conversations a year after the
57:32
title came out Diablo 4 right now is the best the game has ever been Diablo 4
57:38
playing Diablo 4 is great it feels good it feels good to play casually there's a
57:44
lot of variety in the activities you can do everything feels rewarding it feels
57:50
like there's a much better gear progression where you always have something to do you have satisfying
57:55
Rewards this feels like a great game this feels like how it maybe could have launched
58:01
because I mean a lot of it it had rough edges when it launched I thought it was a good game but it had some rough edges
58:07
and a lot of those rough edges a lot of those rough edges were things that Diablo II had learned through pain and
58:15
improved on and that Diablo 4 didn't do part of that I think is also um not to
58:22
kind of make a pun out of it but I don't really know else way to say it diabl 4 had a little bit of development hell
58:28
right like and when it released it was frankly a miracle that it released at
58:33
all uh from the announcement of Diablo Immortal uh you know and everybody sort
58:39
of backlashing of why is in this Diablo 4 to maybe a rushed announcement of Diablo 4 to going through multiple
58:46
directors and team changes and everything else uh the fact that the game came out and was as good as it was
58:52
when it came out was a miracle it wasn't perfect um and like I said it was an enjoyable game uh but the there was just
58:59
stuff that needed to be improved and like you said there were lessons that were learned in Diablo II but again it's
59:05
mostly a new team so like they had to learn those lessons again and you can feel that um and I do agree with Liz
59:12
Prime's uh statement of like this is the best the game's ever been but now they need to start learning some other lessons and I think the problem is is
59:19
things like this need a spokesman or a spokesperson you need somebody who's not
59:25
a just just a Dev you need somebody who's good at public speaking but also
59:33
like understands how development works so they can do what exactly what Phil's saying which is condense it down hit the
59:38
highlights get people excited about it and talk about it not in a technical sense because that's what these feel
59:44
like to me they're going into the minutia like they would in a board meeting or in a meeting with their team
59:49
of well this is the change we're making to this ability and it's going to be this we're balancing it against this which is great information uh but the
59:56
average consumer doesn't really care is is my button pushing going to make me happier is is is gold going to go up is
1:00:03
is our legendaries going to rain from the sky like exciting stuff right
1:00:08
there's kind of that adage in Tech of don't let the engineers talk to the CEO right because the engineers are excited
1:00:17
they're really into what they're doing they're passionate about it and they're going to tell you about all 65,000 lines
1:00:22
of code that went into it and the CEO wants 10 PowerPoint slides condensing 6
1:00:28
months of work into how is this going to be so that we can launch it so you you
1:00:33
need that go between and you have folks like Community director Adam Fletcher very very good at his job kind of the
1:00:40
face of a lot of what's been going on with Diablo but like it if it's going to
1:00:46
all fall on Adam then it should be you know Adam kind of going into this stuff
1:00:52
or uh Joe pyora or Joe Shelly you know going into this stuff it you know it's
1:00:58
cool when you feature the people that are in the trenches working on it but they are also in the trenches working on
1:01:04
it and they're not necessarily you know in the brain space of let me condense
1:01:10
down literally six months of my life of work into 5 Seconds of blurb yeah and
1:01:17
that's not the only thing I don't want to harp on this I want to move I want to move forward a little bit um this isn't the only weird thing uh so do you want
1:01:24
to talk about jewelry uh because that's that that's a thing I know you have opinions on and I would
1:01:29
love to hear those opinions so um this is this is part of a broader launch of I I believe themed
1:01:38
merch which they do for the blizzard gear store but Liz uh Prime managed to
1:01:47
find some very interesting new additions into the blizzard gear shop including
1:01:52
Diablo themed jewelry as part of a I guess this is another collaboration
1:01:58
with uh rocklove and it's really cool rocklove makes nerdy jewelry for other
1:02:06
game companies they've done I've seen stuff from BioWare they own stuff they've made for BioWare which is no one
1:02:13
one at all uh so yeah I I saw this and I was really interested I'm like oh I know
1:02:18
they make cool stuff let me go look at this and then I saw the price tag which
1:02:24
I knew I was expecting a high price and this still was about twice what I was expecting so I'm a little I'm slightly
1:02:30
less excited than I was to start with well what were those prices don't let don't let the folks at home hang in
1:02:36
there um so the most expensive thing is a silver collar necklace with a dangling
1:02:44
kind of Lilith horn shape at the bottom um it's pretty cool it's uh it was what
1:02:50
first caught my eye it's $220 it is silverplated art
1:02:56
Artis brass and it just it's it's it's
1:03:02
neat it's also not actually silver and that you know even if it was half
1:03:10
that price it would be kind of hard sell because it looks it looks neat it does not look like a a nice piece of jewelry
1:03:18
that's not the right word but I can't think of the right word what would you call it Liz it's it's it's very like
1:03:27
simplistic and almost elegant it's designed off of uh the the sort of chain
1:03:33
and tail that Lilith has in her in her Diablo 4 design and again it's very very
1:03:42
cool looking I you know the way this came about was uh you had linked it in
1:03:48
our staff chat and I looked at it and I said wow that's really oh my God it's 2
1:03:56
$20 um I mean the the little links look kind of like like like a vertebrae
1:04:04
vertebra going down to Lilith's kind of little tail Spike yeah that's the design
1:04:10
super neat but uh it is it is very cool but I'm I'm sorry you know if I'm
1:04:16
blizzard I understand that uh you have you have fans who have followed these
1:04:22
franchises for 20 to 30 years and now that you know we now that we've been
1:04:27
following it that long some of us have adult money and want to spend it on adult things and uh silverplated
1:04:34
nickel-free Artisan brass is not it there's actually go ahead one one maybe
1:04:42
maybe good maybe bad thing depending on how you look at it like if you were going to tell that this is like little
1:04:48
tiny vertebrae in a chain yeah someone would really have to be like have their eyes right in your cleavage I mean
1:04:54
that's the only way that would happen it looks very much like an ordinary chain from from even close distance yes and
1:05:03
the you know what's interesting is I would say this is not even the it's it's
1:05:08
a really cool piece if you get the chance you know at least go on the website look at it say wow that is pretty cool and then close the tab but
1:05:17
um to me the cooler one is actually the earrings the Lilith earrings oh yes
1:05:23
those are cool um so they're they're bottled after Lilith's wings and they
1:05:29
look kind of like those you you see them on YouTube occasionally where someone
1:05:35
pours a molten silver or molten alloy into a bucket of sand and then pulls out
1:05:41
this like amazing you know sculptural piece that's from from the cooled metal
1:05:47
that's kind of how they look where they're not you know they're not mirrored but they're they have this you
1:05:52
know molded sort of appearance to them and the earrings themselves are in fact
1:05:59
sterling silver so you know the the kind of thing that you inherited from your grandparents potentially and have to
1:06:05
polish to keep it looking nice and not tarnished black but you know that you
1:06:12
did it you did it for now don't get me wrong the earrings um for being you know very cool and sterling silver are still
1:06:20
$85 but um you know the they also to to credit our uh editor Anna you know this
1:06:28
this is something that uh 20-year-old Liz would have picked up some years ago
1:06:34
and um bought from Hot Topic to be frank yeah they do they do have that Vibe
1:06:40
which is it's not necessarily a bad thing but it definitely does seem like it's it's asking for more than than what
1:06:46
people are going to be willing to pay thing it's like with the dice I would want to for spending this amount of money for a product that looks okay in
1:06:54
photos I would want to see it in person so this especially for that much money so yeah for that much money like is this
1:07:02
like a heavy piece that feels nice or does this feel like I bought it at Hot Topic you be sure from these photos I
1:07:08
was just complaining about spending $30 on dice right so like this is and I and I own video game jewelry like I have an
1:07:15
actual like silver uh uh wolf's head pendant from uh The Witcher right like
1:07:21
and that was it was less than this uh y but I saw it in person before I bought
1:07:27
it and I think that's a kind of a big thing um but I think that's a significant difference yeah but if this
1:07:33
is your thing you know obviously you can go ahead and take a look at it um but yeah I think I think that for most of us
1:07:41
that price might be a little bit too high but if it's not and you enjoy it I really hope that you are happy because
1:07:46
this is definitely for you then yeah more power to you and then I want to move on from here unless there's
1:07:52
anything else we want to add about that but Diablo monetization remains questionable we'll leave it at
1:07:58
that um and Liz I do want to Liz Prime harstone you're gonna talk now because I
1:08:05
don't play hearstone anymore I am gonna talk because today Hearthstone the Great Dark Beyond rolled out uh and we have
1:08:13
talked about this one before but it is now live it sends you into outer space
1:08:19
where a new starship keyword lets you build your own spaceship as you play
1:08:25
which you can summon at any time to crush your enemies I I love I love the
1:08:31
new starship because you're essentially you play cards with a Starship keyword
1:08:36
and as they get destroyed they sort of conglomerate into your Starship one adds
1:08:42
to the other adds to the other adds to the other and then you can decide when you want to summon your Starship anytime
1:08:48
in the game it cost five Mana so do you want to keep building your Starship to
1:08:53
something more horrible and Powerful or do you want to play it early and get like a an early rush so I think it's
1:09:01
such a cool thing that could potentially really change the game Dynamics uh but I
1:09:06
have not gotten a chance to jump into constructed today there is a new Tavern braw today which is the standard uh
1:09:13
early expansion brawl where you play with uh some expansion decks and so I'm
1:09:19
looking forward to checking that out and seeing what's out there and just I think this is a great expansion the last one
1:09:25
was just kind of generic beach themed it didn't have a big kind of selling point
1:09:31
on cards there was one car there were every class had a legendary that let you
1:09:36
use certain cards from another class but it was so limited that it felt really
1:09:43
unimpactful this expansion it feels like the whole theme of it is going to be really impactful and have a big play on
1:09:51
how the game plays there's also new drani minions which are also kind of build into something
1:09:58
because you have Prophet ven who when you play him he plays all of the
1:10:04
battlecries of all the draai you have played all game so he's kind of like the
1:10:09
new shudder walk except gr I themed H so I these are these are great things that
1:10:14
I think are going to have a big shake up to the meta which the last expansion just didn't feel like it had so I I'm
1:10:23
looking forward to getting some more time with this one all right and I look forward to hearing about it because well
1:10:28
again I live vicariously through you in this regard um I don't we don't have a whole lot of time left but I think we
1:10:34
want to cover a little bit of extra stuff here uh we do have some other games that uh we have been playing and
1:10:41
or are going to talk about here um you know maybe this little thing called Dragon Age The Veil guard uh which is a
1:10:48
game that absolutely nobody saw coming or was excited about or or anything of that nature uh and not all of us are
1:10:54
playing no not at all um yeah I mean again I guess just first impression like
1:11:00
what do you guys think about it I know I really I really like the opening sequence I've only played about less
1:11:06
than two hours um mostly because I'm in the PC group so I'm having some performance issues which I'm trying to
1:11:12
resolve um but everything I've seen so far the voice acting has been great the
1:11:17
combat takes a little getting used to from my end um that seems to be the the the biggest thing for me but overall I'm
1:11:25
I'm pretty excited to start digging into the story of it because it definitely starts with it starts with a punch um no
1:11:31
spoilers or anything like that uh but definitely has me wanting more and wants me to to go through the story and it
1:11:37
already feels like it's setting up in the first couple hours of gameplay a ton of side quests that are going to start
1:11:44
like creeping in later Side Stories um I think I talked about this on this podcast I have a a 30 a 32 rule 30
1:11:53
minutes 2 hours you have 30 minutes to make me want to play your game you have two hours to hook me and this definitely
1:12:01
ticks both of those boxes where in the first 30 minutes of gameplay I was I was already in I wanted to play more and
1:12:08
then two hours in I want to play everything and explore and feel everything that this game has to offer
1:12:14
so what do you guys what do you guys think Phil I mean I'm oh oh you want me to go okay I'm probably the weird one
1:12:20
because I have barely played any Dragon Age before and I was honestly not intending to buy the guard um until
1:12:27
everyone in our Guild was playing the veil guard and I was like okay I kind of I'll at least check this out because
1:12:33
certain reviews that I read said that um even if you hadn't really played the any Dragon Age before this was a good place
1:12:39
to jump in because it did a good job explaining the stuff you needed to know um and holy cow I love this game so much
1:12:48
I uh I I downloaded it and immediately lost 11 hours of my weekend playing it
1:12:54
um and just like excitedly sending messages to Lizz like holy crap this character is cool or I don't like this
1:12:59
Eggman or things like that um and yeah it's so I'm also and this is you
1:13:07
mentioned the combat this is an interesting perspective for me because I'm just coming off finishing for the first time contain your gasps podcast
1:13:14
listeners just finishing for the first time the Mass Effect Trilogy um because the Mass Effect legendary edition went
1:13:20
on sale for 10 bucks um not that long ago and 100 18 hours later I finished
1:13:27
that and then two weeks later the veil guard came out and this is the combat
1:13:32
system is so Massy like it's it feels like it took so it cribbed so many notes
1:13:39
from Mass Effect 3 and I can see where if you preferred the gameplay of origins
1:13:44
or the other Dragon Age games maybe you would not like that but for me rolling straight into this is this has been a
1:13:51
fantastic game um I love all the characters I love the I I I already liked this world because I've spent an
1:13:57
unconscionable amount of time on the wiki for Dragon Age for someone who's never played it um just absorbing the
1:14:03
World building and like getting to actually play in it and see some of this stuff and remember oh yeah this is this is blah blah blah like I I I am I am
1:14:12
greatly enjoying this game I don't know if I really feel the need to go back and play the others right this hot second
1:14:17
but I am looking forward to losing many more hours to the veil guard all right Liz Prime I I this is I've I've been
1:14:25
both very excited for this and very anxious about this for a long time but I it's great it's great for old school
1:14:33
players of Dragon Age the combat system is definitely the most disorienting thing about the game it is very
1:14:39
action-oriented it feels extremely modern uh whereas you know previous
1:14:45
dragon Ages did kind of hearken back to some tabletop roots and the game has
1:14:50
moved away from that a little bit each time and now it's really really
1:14:55
thoroughly dropped it it's very much an action forward RPG the story is
1:15:03
certainly appears to be vast we are exploring all of these places that we have been hearing about for years but
1:15:11
have never seen have never visited in any way or medium and now we get to go
1:15:17
there we get to go to uh Navara and see the grand necropolis which is amazing uh we get to
1:15:24
go to ran which is haven't explored there very much so far I've just seen a
1:15:30
beach and I'm kind of like okay did we go here to look at sand I don't know um
1:15:35
so we're getting to go to all of these places that old school Dragon Age uh nerds are going to be like we get to see
1:15:42
this place for the first time oh my God and also new players I think this is extremely accessible because we're all
1:15:49
going to new places for the first time together and the introduction just walks
1:15:55
you into it it really lays out everything in advance very little is
1:16:00
carried very few of your choices are carried over from Inquisition into Veil
1:16:06
guard which you can look at that as a bad thing I think it's probably a positive for the franchise as a whole
1:16:13
and it also means that new players don't have to worry about three previous games of baggage they can walk right in and
1:16:19
understand what's going on without having to say oh what did I what was that decision I made in Dragon Age orig
1:16:25
how is that going to affect this playr so I think it is super fun it is strongly character driven all of the
1:16:32
characters feel real and have really distinct personalities and wants and uh
1:16:38
it's great it's great I don't know how many hours I've lost in it so far probably a lot that's I that's all I'm
1:16:45
going for a lot and uh Liz oh go ahead Liz too I was going to say you can give
1:16:51
us your opinion if you've had a chance to crack into it that Liz is not playing
1:16:56
fail guard because there are enough games going on in my life it is a
1:17:01
problem it is a problem yeah I will say my biggest problem right now is avoiding
1:17:07
just immediately making another character to do everything but with the
1:17:12
opposite decisions that I am making right now to see exactly what the other side is and I'm like no I've got to
1:17:18
finish the game once before I start over finish it once then you can play again yeah he's not here and I he he probably
1:17:25
won't listen to this you hear it don't pull a Matt um M Matt had like I think 60 hours into
1:17:34
uh cyberpunk 2077 and barely made it past the intro uh for each of the the uh
1:17:41
starting uh origin backgrounds uh he just kept making more characters and more characters and more characters cuz
1:17:47
that's what he does uh it's very easy to do that here the Character Creator is actually really well done I think it's
1:17:53
really well designed the interface B carries over a lot of the motifs with the the tarot cards um but yeah it's
1:18:00
it's a lot of fun uh and I think as we were sitting here I think I made the decision that I'm going to uh move it
1:18:05
over to the PS5 so I'm going to do a me refund and get it over to the PS5 CU I also that's the other thing I will say
1:18:12
with the combat change this definitely wants a controller yeah it's very very controller Centric and if you've been
1:18:18
playing on a controller it's very comfortable also I'll note that Matt is not the only one who does that uh staff writer Chris chesno has restarted at
1:18:24
least twice already to my knowledge and uh due to pulling them out uh took
1:18:30
months to make it out of back to one of balers gate three so we'll see how far he gets in the veil guard well I will
1:18:36
say I will say since there are a bunch of uh games going on here uh Liz to what are you playing that isn't uh maybe
1:18:43
World of Warcraft uh so of course there's the World of Warcraft and Diablo but I have been playing a few smaller
1:18:51
games on Steam such as vampire therapist and stardew Valley um and stardew just
1:18:59
came uh the newest update 1.6 that was released this past spring just came to
1:19:05
console and mobile with some pretty adorable
1:19:11
bugs yeah I I I linked one of these in the show notes for us and one of the other ones that I read on there is
1:19:16
hilarious um right now if you are experiencing performance issues in the stardew valley please take all the hats
1:19:22
back off of your animals which has been a feature that you could use for at
1:19:27
least the current update and I think 1.5 and it it's very cute like previously
1:19:33
you could originally you could put hats on I think like the sea urchins and also
1:19:40
on your horse when you unlock it and then it it expanded to like all of your animals and pets um but apparently the S
1:19:48
crashes the game well there there was another one listed where if you created a farm in a specific place and opened
1:19:55
the Coupee on day one your chickens would disappear and if you closed your Coupe door for a full day and waited
1:20:00
they would come back uh the developer Eric Baron tweeted lore there is a
1:20:09
coyote you know I don't know if we can call I mean he's he's definitely like it's definitely a small group because he
1:20:15
is just who he is making the game but I don't know if we can call Ser valy a small game anymore I think that's that's
1:20:20
pretty well in the lexicanum of uh Gamers at this point but I'm glad to see that you're having fun and uh I don't
1:20:26
know why and I don't want to pull a mat and go off on a complete wild tangent here but I tried playing sardu Valley
1:20:33
and I used to love the Harvest Moon series I just couldn't get into sardu Valley and I don't know why I I tried it
1:20:40
um kind of early on like the like 1.1 and I had it in Steam and I had
1:20:46
played it a little bit and I kind of kind of walked away from it and I've since like switched computers and and so
1:20:51
on and so forth and so um one of our Guild members had linked some videos
1:20:58
some YouTube videos in preparation for the 1.6 update and I watched them and I
1:21:05
went oh this looks so cool I got to try it then I went back and I actually just
1:21:12
got the Perfection achievement for my playthrough a few days ago after a
1:21:18
humbling 200 plus hours so I'm not doing any speedruns anytime soon all right
1:21:25
well I think though that's going to do it for us today we have more that we could talk about but it's getting late I
1:21:32
want to eat food so I think I'm going to end it there uh and friends I do want to remind
1:21:38
you that shows like this uh and blizzardwatch in general is made possible due to your generous contributions at patreon.com
1:21:44
blizzardwatch your continued support means that this podcast sighting Community is able to thrive and grow
1:21:49
blizzard watch supporters enjoy exclusive benefits like early access to our podcast a better chance having your question answered on our podcast for the
1:21:55
Que in and ads resight experience if you have questions for this or any of our podcasts please please send them in uh
1:22:01
you can send those to podcast blizzardwatch outcom specify the show that it is for in the subject line as
1:22:08
well as provide us with any special pronunciation of your name if you want to hit us up on Discord we have the Q
1:22:14
and podcast questions Channel same rule apply if you are a patreon supporter we have the patron q and podcast questions
1:22:20
Channel where you may send those questions as well and we look there first as as a special way of saying
1:22:25
thank you to our patreon supporters for helping us keep the lights on uh you can also send us uh questions through
1:22:31
patreon and Dan will make sure that they get to us usually accompanied by some form of meme involving a cat uh so you
1:22:39
can have that as an option as well uh but I do want to thank uh Liz to and
1:22:44
Phil for joining us today thank you very much for for stepping in and letting your perspectives and allowing me time
1:22:50
to drink water uh really really appreciate that uh also I just love having you guys around it's always it's
1:22:56
always great to get new new uh blood or new voices in here and of course thanks to Liz Prime for joining as always and
1:23:03
all the hard work that she does behind the scenes uh because while I may edit this podcast uh Liz has been doing all
1:23:10
the show notes and I'm going to give her credit for that because uh life is hard and time is short and Liz finds time to
1:23:16
do everything CU she's she's a Superhero thank you Liz wow with the great power
1:23:21
comes great responsibility I don't what am I supposed to be respons responsible for over here unfortunately you are sort
1:23:27
of you are sort of like the the the website mom so I'm sorry with that no
1:23:32
but with that folks we'll see you next week [Music]

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