Up next in 10
In this week's podcast we talked about the reveals from the WoW team that came out of PAX East. Legion Remix has us particularly excited, but nothing is as exciting as the wild speculation we can do about those upcoming quote-unquote "experimental modes." Plus, Clair Obscur's wild success -- and the wild? success that was Heroes of the Storm. And speaking of wild, we need to sit down and have a talk about Brann.
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0:00
[Music]
0:09
hide ho neighboros and this is the Blizzard Watch podcast thank you guys so much for being here with us uh this week
0:15
we have our two titans of always being here liz I am the in charge of
0:20
everything and you must bow down before me harper and Joe I am the glue that keeps the world going and if I leave for
0:26
even a second everything dies perez hi to both of you is it like object permanence if I'm not in the room do you
0:32
cease to exist i think it's more like Galactis where like if if something happened to
0:39
you the cosmos would just shatter and and a jerk version of you shows up i can believe that so yeah but regardless uh
0:47
yes there's Liz who's the like I guess Liz would be the one above all yeah Liz is the one above all and uh you're like
0:54
Yeah you're like Galactis and uh then we've got our recurring guest host Phil who's like Adam Adam Warlock and that he
1:00
knows everything that's going on and we're all very confused as to what he's talking about and then he leaves and we're like "What happened where did he
1:06
go?" Uh does Adam Warlock also occasionally have to remind the One Above All to eat because if so yeah that's probably
1:13
Yeah cuz the One Above All you know in Marvel is actually just Jack Kirby so yeah basically someone will have to go
1:19
in and remind him to eat go hey eat a croissant or something yeah that's cool anyway I'm hungry
1:27
slim Jim or something yeah it's uh it's it's a recurring it's not even a joke at this point on Mondays and Wednesdays 30
1:33
minutes before Raid I have to remind Liz to eat some food quite frankly if I could get your services it would be
1:38
helpful for me as well um start a reminder list yeah just
1:45
and and Liz Pat sent me in a reminder 30 minutes before the podcast to eat something so I obviously did not eat
1:52
something 30 minutes before the podcast when she reminded me but she did remind me so there is that all is in your court
1:58
Liz we got three days of the week covered and uh I'm I'm doing my best
2:04
yeah that's about all I got but uh while while we could sit and do the entire podcasting list to eat eventually we
2:12
should probably talk about Blizzard and its many games and other games as well um first up the thing I want to talk
2:17
about most uh is part of this PAX East thing uh if you missed it as we're recording this PAX East was last weekend
2:24
the one we just came through yeah the the just happened okay and so a bunch of
2:30
stuff was revealed uh one of them is that we're getting getting the thes remix treatment for Legion we're getting
2:36
Legion remix i I I think they found a way to get me to play Legion again
2:42
it took it took you some time but you've managed it um I I really like the remix
2:50
concept because it's basically takes all the croft of leveling and just kind of
2:58
goes what if we turn all that down and we turn ridiculously fast leveling all
3:03
the way up and you just go and I and I find that to be a beautiful thing um so
3:08
yeah they're doing Legion remixed uh besides myself is anyone else here interested in this oh yeah i can't I
3:14
can't wait for this this is the one I was predicting they were going to do after the phenomenal success of Remists
3:20
uh I didn't think they were going to do I was like Legion has to be next yeah it can't be they're not going to do Warlords of Dran or remix i mean come on
3:27
at least not initially i kind of thought the other one they might do was Wrath yeah I think Wrath could have been
3:33
because it's it's such a it's such a classic story you know i I everyone
3:38
wants to go back to Ice Crown and kill Arthus all over again yeah but I think that's going to be its own special event
3:44
and that might that would probably be potentially the one after this right like Yeah I could see it like I'm
3:50
excited for the Legion um not that I The Legion expansion was whatever for me but I'm excited for Legion Remix uh it's
3:57
going to give me an excuse to actually level a rogue uh so I'm super excited for that yeah i'm wondering how they're
4:03
going to deal with the the um class halls i know that they're not going to put class halls in for every class so
4:10
that's interesting i mean I mean they're still there the only thing is the evokers uh and evokers evokers actually
4:16
have their own weird solution right now like they don't get a class hall story line and you pick your assault points
4:22
from uh and run missions from a map next to Khadgar in the Silent Citadel um Oh
4:27
you're here well here's a map yeah oh hey uh here's some missions I guess are
4:35
you a dragon what's the deal anyway moving on as you're time traveling
4:41
Croby's like "Listen just just don't don't even admit it just say you're an elf." But but no look they they can't
4:49
handle it they cannot handle this take take this from Auntie Cromy they cannot take it just Just BS them they'll
4:56
they'll go along with it lots of stuff's happening all right fine whatever yeah I'm I'm anticipating to leave like some
5:02
of the you know a lot of the main quest stuff was in there for Rebs and I think it'll be the same thing i think you'll see the class hall story lines stay in
5:08
there because some of those are really cool and a lot of fun stuff happen in them um I'm guessing the artifact
5:13
weapons will replace the cloak of infinite potential this time around so that's Yeah it feels that's going to be
5:19
interesting carrying around three artifacts but you know they'll probably just have the same power level apply to any of
5:26
them but that's going to be interesting to see especially since the thing with the cloak of infinite potential was the
5:32
things you socketed in your other gear to give yourself like weird superpowers um whereas in Legion it was all about
5:38
the weapon and the things on the weapon and I wonder if maybe we'll see like those relic slots get adapted cuz I
5:44
don't know I don't know if any of our listeners are old enough to remember when the relics in Legion did things but
5:49
they actually like added to specific talent nodes in your in your artifact talent tree so maybe we'll see those
5:56
come back as where you uh where you get to pick your like cool remix powers from yeah that if you've been transmog
6:03
farming recently there was a time where those things weren't just an extra 10 gold okay I'd get them get those from a
6:09
boss in Anto i'm like uh right this expansion and throw them at a vendor
6:14
so in addition to that um the other thing I find interesting here and I I I'm kind of terrified by it but also at
6:21
the same time kind of happy about it is they're going to have more experimental modes that are kind of outside of WoW
6:28
there like the way Plundtorm was so you don't actually even have to log into the main game and one of them has a the
6:34
screenshot we've got here is Darkshshire uh I don't think we know what this is
6:39
going to be they really did not talk about this at all i mean they just basically came up and they had a
6:46
screenshot of Darkshshire like we're going to run more experimental modes you
6:52
can make an make an educated guess maybe um we did make several guess but uh all
6:59
they really said was that it's kind of it's uh darker or scarier than Plunderstorm with this Dark Shire
7:06
screenshot it's not going to be another battle royale or Fortnite clone like
7:11
Plundtorm was but that's that's all we know as Apac i'm just several several
7:18
patches ago we found data mind scripts or strings or objects or whatever that
7:24
seem to hint at a vampire survivors alike mode and I'm just saying Dark
7:30
Shire would be perfect for that kind of thing i mean you've already got your boss monster wandering out of the woods patches is now your wave 20 boss or
7:37
whatever i mean you know nothing's ever gonna recreate the feeling that you had if you played vanilla the first time you
7:43
ran into Patches or heard that Patches is coming nothing's ever going to do that but I still would love how hard
7:49
could it be yeah I I tried to solo him mhm did not work my level 20 character
7:56
was not ready um although you know who there there are so many things in Darkshshire that I
8:02
don't I think would work really well for if you were trying some kind of survival mode of you know whether it's vampire
8:09
survivors or if it's something else like like Archa the there's that one kind of
8:14
elite skeleton guy who's at the end of a really long quest to just even get him
8:19
to spawn and then when he spawns he's like this deeply hard fight and when
8:26
you're done you get a green sword out of it and it was like I I've I've worked
8:31
harder for this than I have for anything else and the sword isn't even good now
8:37
classic Wow everybody yeah but it looked cool so I kept it um so yeah I I feel
8:43
like that that's an interesting idea i'm also think it might be interesting to see if this becomes a thing that they
8:50
keep doing if they eventually have multiple ones in the rotation what are they all going to be i mean are we going
8:56
to have just like every time a game mode gets kind of popular we're going to have a version of it in WoW uh will there
9:03
eventually be a Hearthstone in WoW where you're playing Hearthstone but you
9:08
logged into WoW and you're like "Wait this this isn't actually Hearthstone it's a version of Hearthstone in WoW
9:14
where my character is playing Hearthstone and occasionally fighting monsters." Like imagine if when when
9:20
you're playing Hearthstone in this version of WoW someone puts down a card the actual monster spawns up and you
9:26
have to fight it oh so Hearthstone's Battlegrounds Battlegrounds yeah now it sounds like Yu-Gi-Oh the way
9:32
you're describing it i'm into it oh god don't even Let's not even get into Yu-Gi-Oh
9:38
yu-gi-oh are you getting off on this sorry uh I will shut up now but yeah there's a lot of there's a lot of stuff
9:45
that they could do with it so I'm I think this is just even though I didn't actually like Plundtorm and I don't mean
9:51
that as a as a a neg or a disc against it I just I wasn't really feeling Pirates at the moment in time when it
9:57
came out i still love the idea of them having weird modes to the game um I do I
10:03
like the remix stuff a little more but I do like the idea of you know this time you can go and play Vampire Survivors in
10:09
WoW or whatever i I do like the idea of that i would love for them to put a
10:15
fighting game in like a straight up Capcom style beat him up with your character possibly fighting NPCs and
10:21
it's you know it's more 3D because WoW actually has that capacity so you could do ring outs like in Soulcalibur um man
10:29
Soulcalibur hey that one you could actually have Arthus show up because he's practically a character in Soulcalibur anyway um but yeah that's so
10:37
that's already so we're good yeah exactly that's true and the and the and the soul edge is just Frostorn it's
10:44
whichever one of them came first really they're both ripping off Sevelick anyway uh but so yeah that's that's what we
10:50
learned from PAX East um can someone explain Turbo Boost to me because I think I understand what it is but I want
10:57
to hear from somebody because quite frankly I've been playing a lot of Diablo and I want to possibly get back into WoW liz that's why I brought Phil
11:05
he can explain what is going on because I don't know i think I think also Blizzard possibly doesn't know so give
11:13
it give it a go Phil there has been some weird like mis mixed messaging coming out of Blizzard but the short version is
11:20
that for this period of time of uh unknown length of time I'm guessing the rest of season 2 um gear is just gear is
11:29
just more plentiful and more powerful so the things they're doing include uh the
11:34
uh upgrade crests for upgrading your gear are uncapped now so you can farm to your heart's content uh things that
11:41
dropped them before are now dropping more of them uh the highest two tiers of uh gear hero and myth now have two more
11:47
upgrade tracks so you can just add more eye levels on there you can boost crafted gear and uh last but not least
11:54
we finally have the season 2 dinar system the puzzling cartel chip which uh
12:01
was there and then it was gone and then it came back and everyone was mad about it and then it came in and people are
12:07
still a little mad about it and it I don't know it's there uh you can do it
12:12
uh you can do LFR for it honestly even though the quest doesn't say you can i can verify firsthand you can get credit
12:18
for it because I was doing it during during the pre-show um and it's just a way to over the next
12:25
few weeks uh pick out three pieces of uh raid or uh raid or mythic plus loot uh
12:32
for yourself um so it's just like the turbo boost is basically loot rains from
12:37
the sky and then you can power it up as high as you want um also if you haven't completed the Delver's journey bar for
12:43
season 2 with Bran yet um they've doubled the rate at which that gains at this point and also Bran gains more XP i
12:50
guess they want to make sure everyone has their brands up to level 80 for wherever we end up delving in season 3
12:57
this is making me feel like a genius for never finishing leveling up ran I'm doing great over here i've been I've
13:04
been doing so many more delves in season 2 since they added Gilded Crest to them um as a way to get them without needing
13:10
to run M plus uh my brain is still not max level um so I'm hoping he will be by
13:18
the time this event is over um and seriously what are you doing in between delves that you're not getting any i'm
13:23
sorry i I have to sleep a lot once a week people make me uh come lead a raid
13:28
but this also coincides really nicely yeah only twice a week uh this coincides
13:34
really nicely though with the other event that's going on right now which is the leveling event so it's way easier to
13:40
level up some alts run some delves accumulate your currencies uh pick out three pieces of raid or plus loot for
13:46
your alt you know just get get those characters up that if you like playing them you know get them up get them ready
13:51
to play get them some loot there's just because the you know transmog is uh obviously the real end game of WoW but
13:57
the loot treadmill is also there so um loot treadmill is how I get my transmog Jeremy come on exactly you got to have
14:03
the better loot so you can run the transmog the old raids for the transmog faster the thing that kind of confuses me about
14:10
we're having this big leveling gearing boost going on in WoW but also we're talking about Legion Remix on the
14:16
horizon and both of these are like the most fantastic ways to level alts in the
14:22
main game right now it's the fastest it's ever been to level an alt with the current uh mysterious mysteries
14:28
something buff that's going on winds of mysterious fortune i think winds of mysterious fortune was the last one and
14:34
I've already forgotten what this one is called that actually is this you are correct this is the serious version the
14:39
last one was turbulent timeways which is well but we're getting turbulent timeways is coming again next patch so
14:47
it will it will be back to uh because BFA time walking will be coming in so they're doing it again oh yeah yeah um
14:55
but like these are the two ways to level your alts so you can level your alts however you want i don't judge but these
15:01
are ways that have been really fast to really speed up your leveling so how how
15:07
many alts do we all have left to level i mean I I felt like I leveled a bunch of
15:12
alts during uh Rebests and then we're we've got this kind of alt leveling
15:18
extravaganza in WoW right now so I've been leveling some more alts and I'm like what am I even going to have left
15:24
to level by the time Legion comes around what am I even going to play i don't know how did Liz get this level 80 mage
15:31
bank al yeah the only thing I have she has that yes the only thing I have not
15:36
leveled yet is a rogue that's it yeah liz who who played one character for the
15:41
entirety of season one like has I think four or five characters at cap now four
15:47
um I I'm not an alt player i'm just really not i pick one character and like I figure out how to play that character
15:54
and I just play that character so So yes these alt leveling events are usually
15:59
kind of lost on me and uh Yeah yeah uh here here I am here I am i'm on my I'm
16:06
on my second main of this expansion that is extremely unusual for me but here we
16:12
are and what am I supposed to level next when does it end i don't know i don't
16:19
think it ends it just you hit the time that you're playing something else for a while like for me it's mostly Diablo 4
16:26
uh but I am I have been thinking about going back to WoW almost continuously so I'll just jump in here maybe depending
16:34
on how I feel about the the next uh Diablo 4 season cuz right now season the bile deal is not I like it fine as D4
16:43
but the season stuff is not interesting enough to me to level another character through seasons uh I just I'm sorry I'm
16:48
just not that interested in leveling yet again um that's true i've also hit that point in Diablo I like Diablo I is
16:54
really fun but it just feels like I'm doing the same thing over and over and over again and it sounds cool but it's
17:01
I've done this so many times and this doesn't Yeah I'm not enthusiastic about
17:07
this season of Diablo I yeah I feel like they need to do something different with seasons quite frankly they need to start
17:14
thinking about how to do this differently uh not that you know reoquaries isn't this great earth
17:19
shaking system that makes everything better um Please please don't come for me in the night Battle Night uh but
17:26
regardless uh yeah it wasn't working and the thing is in the Diablo 4 road map it looks like no this is a season this is
17:33
what we're doing for seasons now and this is what we're going to keep doing for seasons because we had that one popular season and now we're going to
17:39
duplicate it every season and I'm just it really kind of took my enthusiasm out of the out of the thing so I haven't
17:45
played much Diablo I which of course leaves me more time to finish up my WoW alts so that I can get to Legion Remix
17:51
and not have any more alts to level and be really confused during a character creation screen well good thing is as uh
17:57
Fland points out in chat thank you uh wins of Mysterious Fortune ends next Tuesday so you'll have a little breather
18:03
before it's time to level in i have so many things to finish before next Tuesday then yep do you do you should I
18:12
Yeah I guess I've got a mage to finish leveling i've got this Vulpera warrior and uh I also I have not finished
18:20
leveling my paladin even though it would take like two delves to finish that off probably so I should just go and do
18:25
those two delves and then I'd be done you should especially since I know you can play holy paladin so you can level in the easiest mode making Bran do all
18:31
the work i don't trust Bran for that man yeah I don't know that I do either brand
18:37
and I are not friends right now that's a whole story bran and I are not
18:43
friends right now this is like summing up Ron's entire existence i've been trying to finish uh the double question
18:50
mark solo uh difficulty of the underpin and the biggest problem in that fight is
18:55
Bran Bronzebeard um because the underpin can
19:00
decide to target him for his abilities including moving to him with his stomp and that is when everything goes to heck
19:08
in a handbag um like the fight is about tightly controlling positioning and ads
19:13
and if he decides to jump to Bran who's halfway across the arena firing his gun um and then spawn his ads they could be
19:20
anywhere also uh shout out to Bran where one point there was a slow period in the animations and I was able to focus to
19:25
realize Bran was channeling his DPS cool down on me like
19:32
Yeah you you know that thing where you know that thing in DPS mode where he hops on a griffin and throws hammers at
19:37
the enemy over and over and over i'm trying to break the underpinn shield and he's throwing hammers at me they weren't
19:44
doing damage but what happened i think he's just went out of this del i
19:50
think he's taking one too many blows to the head and those delves maybe I shouldn't be making him tank he has been
19:55
running a lot of delves he has he's been all over the place this expansion so
20:02
yeah that's that's enough about my rivalry with a uh imaginary dwarf
20:07
yeah I just I still have negative feelings for Braun for remembering all the way back in again Wrath the Lich
20:12
King Gang where he got me in trouble with a bunch of of trolls who did not want me wandering around so I was like
20:19
"Oh god Dan what are you doing?" Anyway though I do think we should move on to talking about actual Hearthstone after
20:25
we talked about oh you know fictionalized possible Hearthstone um next week as we're recording this uh
20:31
we're going to get the mini set which is a small set of cards for house next week
20:37
that is that is this week that is today the new Hearthstone mini set embers of the world tree is now live it says May
20:44
13th right here why did you do this to me is that May 13th isn't it that's
20:50
today Matt today it's May 13th oh my god i thought it was like May 6th my brain
20:55
oh oh dear yeah my brain does not like me okay yeah that's today may 13th is
21:01
today i was a week ago i'm back now oh god
21:06
you're just doing some really rapid fire i'm trying here okay it's like I wasn't
21:11
elastic and it's been released and now I'm like twanging okay uh but yeah mini set little cards embers of the world
21:18
tree uh I think you can kind of tell it's about fire in the world tree um if you remember end of the you know dragon
21:24
flight where the world tree was on fire like that um so yeah you guys will play Hearthstone it is fyrak is a new
21:32
legendary card in this and he is in instead of setting world trees on fire he probably also wants to do that but
21:37
he's he's here to set your Hearthstone cards on fire and uh they smolder in
21:42
your hand the longer you hold on to them increasing their effects and then but if you don't play them they can you know
21:51
burn to ash and you discard them so that's that's kind of the new mechanic in this mini set but it feels like we've
21:57
been talking about this one every week because it's been a very short release schedule for this mini set like they
22:04
announced it and we talked about it when they announced it and then it was a week before it was going to be released so we talked about it because it was happening
22:11
next week and now it's released and now we're talking about it again and it feels like next week we'll be talking about it because I will have forgotten
22:17
that that happened last week i think next week we'll be talking about it for some reason i'm sure because it feels
22:22
like every week uh more Hearthstone but it's actually the same Hearthstone new mini set emerson of World Tree now
22:29
available 2,000 gold or you can pay real money for it if you want but if you if
22:34
you save up your quest earnings you can you can manage to hit that 2,000 gold and buy it without submitting cash which
22:40
I think is kind of the best part okay let's mention really fast this Overwatch
22:45
news although we don't have to take that much time with it um Overwatch 2 team has been the second team at Blizzard to
22:52
unionize so on the one hand yay good more unions is good uh on the other hand
22:59
uh no yay good unions are good i got nothing else just it's good that they unionized it's good that you did that
23:05
Overwatch 2 team good job Overwatch 2 team yeah I do however good to see them get a win i do however I think Liz
23:13
pointed this out the last time we were talking about unionization in gaming so
23:18
when I butcher it she'll come in and actually explain what she really said but I feel like we have to be aware that
23:25
just because they get their union unionized doesn't mean they've actually gotten the company to agree to anything
23:32
yet aside from the fact that they're going to have a union so this is the beginning of an uphill fight but it's
23:39
still good that we've begun the uphill fight is that close at all to what you were saying last time that's that is
23:44
extremely close i mean Microsoft has recognized the union but that doesn't mean that all of a sudden things are
23:49
sunshine and puppies you know uh they still have to negotiate a contract and
23:55
they have to they have to make a deal and Microsoft is under no obligation to make that easy for them so this is this
24:03
is step one uh not this is not the home stretch yet yeah you're exactly right
24:09
it's great that they have done this it is a wall-to-wall union for the Overwatch team which means it's everyone
24:15
in it together so that gives them more bargaining power and the Overwatch team
24:20
has been kind of they've they've really gotten a short stick i feel like we maybe make we maybe make a few
24:28
occasional jokes about Overwatch 2 because maybe it is not our favorite version of Overwatch and maybe we really
24:35
wanted to play a PvE Overwatch maybe we really wanted to see more stories and
24:40
cinematics which the team has cancelled and that's very disappointing and uh but
24:46
yeah but how much of that how much of that is the team versus Yeah exactly situation the team is put in yeah that's
24:52
not the fault of the team and that's the fault of management it's the fault of you know a vision of the game that
24:57
didn't match expectations that's the fault of being telling players "This is what we're doing we're making this big
25:04
PvE mode that you'll be able to see all these stories and then you couldn't deliver on that." You know that's not
25:10
the fault of the developers but because of that Overwatch 2 has not been hitting
25:15
its uh kind of financial goals in the company because you know it's kind of had to backslide on features it promised
25:22
and it's done a lot of things that have disappointed players and one of the changes that Bobby Kodic made on his way
25:29
out the door was to change the way Blizzard did profit sharing it used to
25:35
be that teams got a bonus twice a year based on the success of the company
25:40
overall if the company met its financial goals everyone would get a bonus but
25:46
Kodak changed this on his way out shortly before he left and to where the
25:52
bonuses were tied to how well your team was doing your specific development project not the whole company but your
25:59
team that means the Overwatch team has not been getting
26:04
bonuses any of them so they have been pretty rushed mistreated here and it's
26:12
not it's not the development team's fault you know no it it isn't i mean it
26:18
it is rumors that he also threw an orphan in front of a train have not been
26:23
substantiated those are merely allegations but I mean he was seen you know waxing his mustache from maximum
26:29
twirling whilst tackling uh I'm sorry that has nothing to do with anything but my god he's he's literally not even
26:36
there anymore he's getting his hat fight on his way out the door putting his hat
26:41
putting his coat on and by the way orphan into the into the furnace his point was that you would be more
26:48
encouraged to make a better game if you had financial stake in it like this was
26:54
kind of like your financial stake should be tied to your success as a team but the Overwatch team success is not is not
27:02
a reflection of the talent of development staff you know no and let's be honest the reason that he made that
27:08
change is because it means a smaller payout overall when certain teams that
27:13
are in a nonasily monetized position like Overwatch which yes you can sit
27:20
there and I can hear people argue that oh this has plenty of monetization possibilities and it does but also if
27:28
nobody's playing your game because development has been shifted or the not as many people are playing it as they
27:35
did the first one and you're probably going to have you know a hard time uh
27:40
making whatever your goal numbers are it's intentional it's intentional to reduce the amount of money that's paid
27:45
out and uh so that he had a bigger uh bigger little golden parachute on his way out the door mhm which is not not
27:52
indicative of the work that's being done on the game this is at least one of the driving forces behind the union because
27:59
Blizzard does tend to pay lower than you might see at other companies in the area you know we've heard a lot of things
28:05
about how people going to Riot games have gotten big payraises and part of that is because Blizzard has always done
28:11
profit sharing that gives you these reliable twice a year bonuses which kind of bring up that pay package and cutting
28:20
that out that you know you remove money people are relying on as part of their salary that's suddenly just not there
28:26
and it's not like they can just work harder and suddenly make Overwatch 2 a huge financial success so uh these these
28:35
guys were really really in a bad situation i hope that having this union will let them push forward and get a
28:43
fair compensation package get uh and just get a good deal here but the truth
28:48
is that Microsoft is they don't have to immediately say "Oh we're we'll fix this
28:53
right now." They don't have to do that you know it could be years before anything but it's a first step yeah yes
28:59
um I am trying to get my computer to do things and it doesn't want a surprise
29:05
um however whilst I am trying to get this thing to flip over to the thing I'm talking about which is namely Yes here
29:12
we are site news thank god I finally get this thing to open liz um please tell us i'm just done all this
29:20
talking and now I have to do more talking i can I can read this if you want and it's right here
29:25
um uh no I I got it i can do it it's uh the Blizzard Watch is made possible by
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news Anna and I being increasingly unhinged in the modern world and for colorful clips of our podcast thank you
32:03
so much for listening and for your support okay uh before we move on to
32:08
questions I actually we we usually do some outside game talks there's nothing in here this week because I didn't get a
32:13
chance to look at the the uh document until just before we went on but I do want to talk really briefly about Claire
32:19
Obscura Expedition 33 because it's kind of a massive hit um it sold 2 million
32:28
copies in 12 days and one of those like half of those sales were the first three
32:34
days at launch this was a game like about 33 odd people made this isn't a a
32:41
giant AAA company this is a relatively small group um the the lead writer they
32:48
they hired him off Reddit the they they the the person who made the score for
32:55
the game was a Soundcloud guy they they basically went and you know you know he he was gigging and they just hired him
33:02
from that it's kind of crazy how successful this game is i have not
33:07
played it yet i have downloaded it because it's free on on Game Pass uh so
33:13
yeah that's that's also think about the fact that it's it's sold 2 million copies in less than two weeks while it's
33:21
on Game Pass which means other people are playing it without even spending money on it that's kind of wild we've
33:27
got a guild mate uh who was heavily into it and has been on me to play it because he does I'm really into RPGs but I just
33:33
came off of another 90 plus hour RPG so I'm kind of holding off before I get it right away yeah I I'm not holding off
33:40
but I'm going to use this to say that part of the reason that they were able to put together their team in such an eclectic manner is because this game
33:46
which is very very French in its aesthetics was partially subsidized by the government of France because art
33:52
funding is important and good yeah and France actually has a they also have a great union culture over there too by
33:58
the way if you want to look at games with unions but the real thing about Expedition 33 33 that gets me is um one
34:05
of the main characters is very obviously voiced by Jennifer English the voice of
34:12
Shadow Hart from Bowlers Gate 3 and it's real hard not to mistake them
34:18
like she does a different thing with the voice but every so often I'm like "Oh oh
34:24
right you're not the the half- elvin shadow cleric that I have to make moral
34:29
decisions for you're somebody else I have to make moral decisions for." Uh but yeah I I wanted to mention it just
34:35
because it is kind of wild to see this game just kind of explode out of nowhere i mean people knew it was coming people
34:41
were talking about it it it didn't like literally show up on the doorstep saying you know hi I've got a big sign that
34:46
says purchase but it it still I I I find it kind of wild that this game just just
34:54
boom 2 million copies in like two weeks that's that's wild for for a company
35:00
like even with French funding um and also we also have to thank France for
35:05
Greedfall while we're at it because without France spiders would never have been able to make any games much less
35:10
Greedfall or the upcoming Greedfall 2 so yeah it turns out the French are very
35:16
very gradually making it so we have nice things so we don't go crazy while the world burns thank you French people
35:24
um I think one of the interesting things about this is that we are looking at
35:29
some games right now that are extremely successful extremely fun that were not
35:35
made by massive AAA development teams that are technically smaller games these
35:42
aren't the big tentpole games that everyone knows are coming out i mean these certainly Clare of Scar hit me out
35:50
of the blue didn't know i'd heard the name before it came out but now it's now
35:55
it's everywhere a lot of people are talking about it and so it's interesting to see these smaller games these smaller
36:02
studios create things that are just extremely successful and it makes me wonder where is what's the role of big
36:11
companies in gaming right now because we are seeing it feels like we're seeing a
36:16
lot of indie games that are very high quality and are reaching a large audience out there
36:21
whereas the big companies it feels like their games are increasingly sy because
36:26
they're maybe spending 6 7 8 9 10 years developing them millions of dollars and
36:33
you know they have to have a sure bet when you're putting that kind of investment up but smaller hit the nail
36:39
on the head there like when you're spending that much money you have to you have to do the safe thing well and the thing is it's not that they have to
36:45
they're choosing to because they don't This is people that are not necessarily
36:51
involved in development or don't necessarily have their pulse on what a gaming community is really into or
36:57
looking for that you know is making a decision we need this game to be this plus this and make this much money end
37:03
of story and then when it doesn't do that they get into whatever their you know mood is and you know then you have
37:09
the downsizing of various uh you know company personnel when if they would have just
37:16
made the game that was originally pitched they would have made money handover fist so it's people that run it
37:22
like a business and forget that it's still a game and you want people to have fun in it because when people have fun in your game they tell other people and
37:29
other people play your game so they buy it and you just make money and I'm not like trying to oversimplify it but like
37:36
it really does come to that somewhere along the line they forgot about that and that's the problem i'm going to do it again because I've used the podcast
37:43
repeatedly to plug 10,00 Resist after I finished playing it they just won a Peabody award for writing so go play
37:50
that game i really need this game to get a Mac somebody so Liz can play it it's so good
37:57
well plus I mean let's not kid ourselves in the fact that uh one person I saw
38:03
somewhere i forget which one I was reading there's a lot of them and I I watch all of them and then disagree i
38:08
guess it's kind of my job um but he was talking about how he thought Oblivion was going to crush this game when they
38:15
surprise Oblivion announcement happened that it was just going to just utterly
38:20
destroy this game instead they both did well um you know ClariS Obscura has sold
38:25
the the aforementioned games uh Oblivion downloads and sales are ridiculous for a
38:31
game that's literally a a re it's a remaster of a game from 2006 I want to say maybe 2008 but it's an old game and
38:39
it's it also did ridiculously well we are here largely talking about a game
38:45
released in 2004 that we all continue to play so I'm Yeah I'm not saying that it's bad that people like that but it's
38:52
a single player game it's not a continuing People have not been working on Oblivion for 20 years uh or 21 years
38:59
now hold on a second i have to look at the holy grail but it's a false grail and melt anyway I just think it's
39:07
interesting that this happened and there's no downside here you put
39:13
Oblivion out people who wanted Oblivion got Oblivion you put Clare Obscura out people who wanted Clare Obscura got
39:18
Clare Obscura some of those people were the same people there's at least like there is some overlap between these two
39:25
games if you liked one you're probably willing to at least try the other and it didn't hurt them i I feel like a lot of
39:32
times people think these games have to be competitions you know it has to be a fight um Doom of the Dark Ages is coming
39:39
out tomorrow two days unless you already pre-ordered it but you know people will be able to get it tomorrow who are not
39:46
even paying it that's just on Game Pass i I am going to get that game on Game Pass i I I don't think we're People have
39:53
for years now have been making this this is always continuously fighting between big games it doesn't have to be we don't
39:59
have to have Skyrim dominates and every other game that comes out at the same time just meekly walks to its death um
40:06
if certain companies I'm looking directly at you Electronic Arts had actually backed games that they put out
40:14
you know those games would have done better than they did uh and there's just a lot of that like when you see
40:20
companies just putting out their own games and supporting their own games they can do well and they don't have to
40:26
be in competition with anybody else even if they're similar in in the appeal i I just there's something I really want to
40:33
see more of and I hope to everything that's good that we get more but that's probably all we need to talk about on
40:39
that one so now it's time to go to our emails um I'm going to skip this first one because while I would like to talk
40:45
about it uh I would I was about to throw on the gauntlet i was literally about to delete it out of the document yeah I I I
40:52
knew Joe was going to say that so we're actually going to head down to Tatmi
40:57
first um I don't know if we've talked about this kind of stuff in general before but I am curious about it um what
41:03
are the current strengths and weaknesses of Blizzard's current offerings uh what game or game types would you add to
41:09
their portfolio and what game if any would you remove or replace um I'm going to throw this one to Phil first because
41:15
he's the guest and so he should get them hardest questions first oh god yeah I don't have I don't have a prepared
41:22
answer for that one um I don't I'd say the weakness or this is going to sound just like me harping on the same thing I
41:27
complain about all the time but I feel like a lot of their more recent game offerings have kind of had the same
41:33
weakness in that they have pushed monetization first and gameplay second which I know is more of an executive
41:39
thing than a development team thing obviously um but like I mean when we talk about Overwatch 2 it's about how
41:46
weak some of the additions have been minus arcade mode which is cool versus you know selling more skins and like one
41:52
of the biggest things about the relic queries in Diablo I yeah choose your own rewards that's cool they also made you
41:58
get a lot less the premium currency and now you have to pay the premium currency to get the premium currency it actually costs more money now for the premium
42:05
battle pass than it used to and I don't really have a good solution to that i don't know what else they should add to their lineup um at the speed of
42:12
development of AAA games i don't know maybe we need that World of Warcraft fighting game Matt was talking about but
42:18
just like I think that's kind of the biggest weakness right now is a lot of gameplay seems to be taking a backseat
42:23
to monetization diablo I is definitely um a big thing of this where they've
42:29
latched on to the one thing that's worked and I guess they're just going to do it for eternity as long as they can
42:34
sell you $25 skins i'd stop doing I'd stop doing that but you know I'm not in the process of
42:40
having to please state uh shareholders so I would point at you and disagree Phil if I hadn't just dropped money that
42:46
I don't have on the Berserk skins and I'm feeling really bad about my options and my choices in life but the sword is
42:53
so cool i don't Don't get me started on that set Matt i'm so mad about this Berserk i
43:00
hate the way they did this Berserker collaboration dude I had to have the sword i don't care i I get it i get it
43:05
it's Gus's sword do you know how much it took me to resist purchasing all of the
43:11
stuff for the Cowboy BBOP crossover like even though I'm barely playing Overwatch
43:16
that's how bad I wanted it but also I agree with Phil um I agree with Phil but
43:22
I was weak and broke i just I was looking at Gut Sword and going "It's Gut's Sword." But Matthew what's
43:28
your hand doing my hand is moving this mouse there's nothing wrong spending money on a thing you like but like I
43:36
there's nothing wrong with it morally but sometimes it's self-destructive like I couldn't there's other things I couldn't get this month but that's not a
43:43
that's not a I don't think an answer to the question at hand here which I mean we we've all been in that situation but
43:48
taking it back to the question um I agree with Phil that I think that Blizzard is as a company focusing more
43:56
on monetization and less on gameplay and that makes a lot of things less fun and
44:02
enjoyable there's what made Blizzard the powerhouse that it was for so long was
44:09
that Blizzard just made games that people wanted to play the money came as a result of the fact that people wanted
44:14
to play the game somewhere along the line the executives Bobby Kodic bred a culture where it became more about the
44:21
money than everything else and now with new corporate overlords there's that fear that that's going to be a lot of
44:26
that as well and I'm sure you know it's I mean we see it right it's still there diablo I was one of the most anticipated
44:33
games that they have ever had and they managed to turn off a lot of like
44:40
longtime Diablo players because of their choices for it overwatch 2 is a great
44:45
example of a game that should have been a an easy home run it should have
44:50
bonkers numbers it should have insane engagement and it really doesn't they're
44:56
struggling or at least they're struggling from where they think they should be uh there's far less people playing it than I think would have if
45:02
they had you know actually made the game that people wanted to play like there's it's almost like Blizzard did the thing
45:09
where it thought it could do no wrong and just went all in on that right so that's that's the biggest weakness of
45:15
Blizzard's current offerings is they need to get back to the roots and that's not a condemnation on the people that are making these games there are very
45:22
passionate people that are making these games and this is one of their strengths where you have people who care very much
45:28
about the content they care about the gameplay they care about making a fun experience uh as a matter of fact some
45:34
of my favorite developers are actually going back to Blizzard and it makes me excited for some of the things that
45:39
we'll see in the future um but they need to as a company just make fun games and
45:47
watch the money that will flow in from it i will say on a positive note that uh I do think that WoW is some of the most
45:53
fun it's been in years oh yeah um we can have discussions about complications in classes or whatever and yeah there's
45:59
some nitpicks you could change but like overall I think WoW is at a peak that it probably hasn't been in a couple
46:05
expansions now and I am very pleased with that game i still continue to enjoy the time I spend in it every week same
46:12
like I'm not I'm not frustrated or or feeling like I have nothing to do and I'm enjoying my time in it for sure
46:17
right exactly and it's because they're focusing on making a fun game they're listening to the community even if
46:23
sometimes they aren't that great at communicating back that's a skill they can work on um like they're they're
46:28
they're doing the thing you said they're making a fun game they're not worrying about how do we charge more money for transmog suits in the shop uh how do we
46:36
drive people to go look at our cash stuff it's how do we make a fun game people keep coming back to play and then
46:41
the money will the money will come and that's and going into that like what we would want to add to their lineup like
46:47
and I'm going to do Corey a solid here because Cory's not here to to drop it
46:52
but honestly revisiting games like Heroes of the Storm I cannot for the life of me believe that Heroes of the
46:58
Storm was not profitable and it's one of those things where I understand that maybe at the time they pulled people to
47:04
go work on other projects because they thought that they were going to be a higher priority but look at the game of
47:10
the game genre of MOBAs right now and it's sort of grown stale smite 2 is uh
47:16
on the horizon and that's getting mixed reviews especially from people that are
47:21
like were hardcore Smite one players because their stuff's not transferring over we're pro I'm going to do something
47:28
where I want to talk about this next week um because it's been a cluster of a
47:33
development process for the second one um but like what else is out there besides League of Legends and Dota 2
47:40
what other mobile games are widely available that aren't something that is a small mobile game which I'm not saying
47:46
are not real MOBAs not getting into that debate but there hasn't been another
47:51
competitor to that field in a long time and Heroes of the Storm did something that those other games didn't do they
47:58
made MOBAs accessible bring that back my uh Go ahead no I was gonna say uh the
48:04
most surprising thing about Heroes of the Storm for me one day was I had been raiding um and you know we took our break and I went out the living room and
48:10
I heard uh some sounds coming from my wife's laptop she's not really a gamer and I said "Oh what are you doing?" She
48:15
says "Oh I got an ad for this game Heroes of the Storm i was just trying it out." I was like "You've never played a
48:20
mobile you haven't played a video game in years and you were trying Heroes of the Storm yeah let me go log in we can play this uh and it was just really cool
48:28
it was very accessible she got into it i mean that's that's the kind of like
48:33
experience you don't get for a mobile she's never going to get League of Legends because that's not really a game that's Riot doing like SCP level
48:39
containment on some of the most toxic parts of the gaming universe well you know I I will I will 100% I I've made
48:45
this argument before and I'll make it again i get way less uh random hate in League these days than I did in
48:50
Overwatch yeah maybe they all moved over there but uh yeah it's just like they they had
48:57
something on their hands and I don't know maybe it was manpower or profitability or bottom line or whatever but yeah bring bring back I I know I
49:05
know that Heroes of the Storm has fans at Microsoft bring it back come on and and I would also argue that Heroes
49:11
didn't crush its opponents before it and do what other Blizzard games have done
49:17
where they completely take over the ecosystem it was successful by other people's standards it wasn't successful
49:24
by Blizzard's standards at the time and I think we need to understand and think they need to understand that games don't
49:29
need to be like that anymore just make a game that people want to play and again cosmetics will float that game it will
49:34
make it profitable make new champions make new maps make development content on it and people will throw money at it
49:41
the number of like $30 skins I bought for that game is not inconsequential
49:48
you and me both i have a disturbing number of skins and I'm going to say one
49:53
other thing that and and I'll shut up and let other people answer this question but I feel very strongly about this blizzard needs to make a single
50:00
player game again it not everything has to be connected to the GD internet not
50:06
everything has to be online constantly not everything has to be an exercise in how many players can be in a space at
50:12
one point in time like don't get me wrong are you sure yeah I am absolutely positive okay looking I'm Joe on this
50:19
look at some looking at some of the hottest titles that have released over the last 5 years and them being single
50:25
player games is not a coincidence there's a market for it and Blizzard hasn't been in that market in decades at
50:32
this point make me a ghost game make me a single player game that you should have
50:39
all along even Diablo I Diablo I and and this is my hot take i don't like the
50:45
fact that it's online and MMO all the time and I'm sure some people love it but like it should have been a hot take
50:50
but it should have been a single player game that gave you the option to go into a lobby with other people i understand
50:57
the desire for it but I think people wanted a single player game like Diablo II that you could open up to public uh
51:03
public rooms and and have multiple people play and I think it would be insanely more successful if it was if
51:09
they had that development in mind and didn't focus on monetization and I'm very sorry Liz please go ahead
51:16
i think part of the problem with all of these games is expectations
51:23
not just at Blizzard industrywide we see when a company starts developing a game
51:28
is ready to release a game they have certain financial expectations of that game those expectations may be
51:35
unrealistically high maybe for the game or the market or and then if the game
51:42
does not reach these very high expectations this is what we get we get games canled we get developers laid off
51:47
or reassigned because they the company was counting on this to be a monumental success and if
51:54
it's just a pretty good success that's not successful enough so are you
51:59
thinking like the numbers EA wanted for uh Dragon Age the Veilgard yeah but also you know we've signed
52:05
Heroes of the Storm go into maintenance mode and we're just talking right here about how this could not have been an
52:12
unsuccessful game maybe it was not as successful as they wanted it to be maybe
52:17
it had a maybe they didn't have uh maybe the team size wasn't right for the
52:22
amount of game they were making i don't know but if a company sets financial
52:27
expectations on the game and the game doesn't meet them it can mean a cancelled game it can mean a downscaled
52:33
game it can mean a game that goes in the fridge and never comes out again but
52:38
that doesn't mean it's a bad game that doesn't even mean it's not a financially successful game it just means it's not
52:44
as financially successful as companies wanted as shareholders wanted and
52:50
somehow not being a massive out of the ballpark success now means failure to a
52:57
lot of companies well it's it's short-term profitability thinking right and there's we've seen this happen with
53:02
not just gaming but a whole bunch of the other industry as well i mean we talk about it on on Tavern Watch all the time
53:08
with Hasbro who is probably one of the largest offenders of this right they
53:13
they focus on this immediate quarter of release and if you did not make a
53:19
billion dollars you are unsuccessful versus how it used to be and and we're
53:24
going back like 10 years 15 years where you would release something and you would have a projection for a length of
53:31
time that it would be you know profitable or whatever the case is when WoW released like and I'm going to go
53:37
back here to ye old age of 2004 WoW was not expected to be a
53:44
success it was not expected to be something that would be continually iterated upon in fact if you go back to
53:50
some of the older interviews a lot of people were saying that they didn't expect it to last longer than a year they thought it was going to be a flash
53:56
in the pan compared to the other MMOs that had already been established and the ones that were always releasing around them and they didn't expect it to
54:03
be massively profitable immediately and what wound up happening was it was a
54:08
cultural phenomenon it was a huge success but it was a huge success over a period of time it wasn't that immediate
54:16
month of release it was over the course of 6 months 8 months a year and then all
54:22
of a sudden it was like "Oh we've got something here people are still going strong they're still willing to pay this money let's develop a let's start
54:29
working on an expansion for this." And then it just kind of took off from there because there wasn't this unrealistic
54:34
expectation that you have to make all of the money in the world in your first week of release or you're cut completely
54:41
and then every game we've seen release since like the last 10ish years like
54:48
more increase like the Veilgard is a perfect example of that you have to hit this unrealistic number of sales within
54:54
your first 30 days or we're just shuttering the business and they shuttered the business right like they
55:00
they fired moved a whole bunch of people around stopped development on it like with an unrealistic goal had they had
55:06
maybe looked at long-term or maybe even 6 months they probably would hit those numbers you know what would have also
55:11
helped that if they would have announced that yes there's going to be a DLC people probably would have bought it
55:17
more than saying "Oh this is the only game you're getting suck it up buttercup." So Blizzard falls in that
55:23
sometimes too go ahead what's really weird too is that someone made a point that Clare OBS I mean uh expedition 33
55:30
uh Clare obscur expedition 33 made less money even now had made less money than
55:35
Veilgard veilgard made a lot of money not enough money for the target which
55:41
was a ridiculous target but it did make a lot of money like AAA failures
55:48
generate a lot of money and they're considered failures because they don't hit a target that isn't realistic and
55:55
we're at a point now where we need to start understanding that there's an imaginary wall mhm that you have to be
56:03
this high to get over that has nothing to do with like sustaining a company or
56:08
keeping a publisher going or any of that it is purely about we need to do this so
56:14
we get enough profit so we can all go home and swim in our money in our money pools my personal money pool's getting
56:19
out getting low i need you needed to get me at least this much money for my pool even Scrooge and Duck eventually paid
56:24
his employees oh yeah Scrooge and we'd love to have Scrooge now uh but to go
56:30
back to something that we were talking about a little earlier the thing about I've been thinking about this a lot i
56:36
don't think it was Diablo II that people wanted because we got Diablo II back and
56:41
people are playing it to a certain degree it was Diablo II because was it
56:46
online yes you had to log in but is it still like you basically can play it
56:52
solo without ever having to worry about talking to anybody you won't run into anybody while you're doing anything and
56:59
aside from the fact that the Diablo team can no longer seem to understand how to keep their you know seasons working it's
57:05
still basically the exact same game and people are still playing it more i see a
57:10
lot of people in Diablo 3 and it's weird see more people than Diablo I yeah it's
57:17
like people don't understand that you know what you were talking about with the idea of how much like this game's
57:23
gonna be good for a year and then we're gonna you know move on it's like we we entered into that world where games can
57:29
last for a decade or more like we're I think we're in 13 years for Diablo II at
57:35
this point but that they they they think that not that they can do that but that they must do that like they want a cash
57:42
cow they that's what battle passes are all about it's like how do we keep milking this game so that we make money
57:49
off of it forever so to justify the fact that we have to do work on it to keep
57:55
people interested in it how do we get money out of it and now I'm not saying that you know publicly traded
58:01
corporations should feel bad about wanting to make money that's what they do it's like asking cancer to stop being
58:07
cancer it's it's not going to uh but and yeah okay that was a little mean to
58:13
cancer i'm sorry uh but but it really is this point where it's like you can't
58:18
make the game assuming that it will be your next 10-year cash cow and if you do
58:24
it's not going to be because that's not something you can control that's something that happens organically from
58:31
a fan community that wants this thing in terms of what games I would like to see Blizzard make I'm going to be upfront
58:38
right now starcraft is the most criminally underused franchise it's the
58:44
most criminally underused game that I I can't I cannot imagine looking you know
58:49
let's be upfront blizzard stole a lot from Warhammer and and Warhammer 40k
58:55
warhammer 40k is practically like it's the mailman that Starcraft looks at
59:01
instead of Warcraft 3 in terms of who its daddy actually is that's just a fact
59:09
but my god Warhammer you know at least they're making
59:15
games a lot of games and some of them are really good like say Rogue Trader or
59:22
Dark Tide there are some really great Warhammer games out there and you know
59:28
why they're so great because you know Games Workshop for all of its weird quirks wants you it doesn't say "Okay
59:36
tell me how it's going to be Arkham Asylum but with Warhammer characters." No here's your here's your license make
59:41
a game if it stinks we'll pull the license have a nice day yeah it's like you know Bat comes in and goes "We don't
59:48
want to make this weird game with romance options." Like yeah um okay sure but in in the romance options
59:54
everybody's afraid of you know the horrors of existence right yeah absolutely good can I go now i want to
1:00:00
go get some coffee tea sorry i want to get some tea i'm English uh just just ah
1:00:06
I I I want to see them actually make the single player ghost you know ARPG type
1:00:13
thing the the kind of looter shooter aspect of it i want to see them make a a Rogue trader style Starcraft RPG i would
1:00:22
love to see that no multiplayer no always online maybe you could just you
1:00:28
can just have your always online for piracy sake all right I will accept that you for no reason i have to log into the
1:00:35
server to do this i will accept it you can you can you go already had yours um I will accept that but I don't want to
1:00:42
play i accept I accept it from Larry i'll take it for this yeah if I mean but but I mean I accept it from like
1:00:48
Cyberpunk i have to do it with Cyberpunk so I can take it from this but nevertheless don't give me monetization
1:00:55
to the ridiculous levels don't just make a good game and people will be playing
1:01:00
it for years and make it moddable for leap's sake blizzard seriously could you
1:01:06
imagine could you imagine if they released a ghost game in the style of like Cyberpunk 2077 and allowed for
1:01:11
modding i can imagine it um unfortunately I don't believe that reality is up with my imagination but I
1:01:18
can definitely imagine it and it would be amazing because you'd be like it'd be like night instead of having Night City
1:01:24
as your city that you live in you'd have multiple options it could be like Starfield if it was good sorry I
1:01:31
actually like Starfield but I'm going to make that joke anyway um but yeah I I really feel like there's a lot of room
1:01:37
blizzard doesn't isn't doing enough it's doing a lot to try and make money off of the things it has it is not doing enough
1:01:44
to make me want to play the things it has and unfortunately I love Diablo I i
1:01:51
really do and I really feel like monetization is hurting it in a way that it you guys need to back up on this uh I
1:01:58
really think it's the relicquaries and battle passes that are getting me just cuz I'm confused at this point i don't
1:02:03
know how to tell people about them i don't know what they're doing like I how how do I Oh couldn't I just No I can't
1:02:09
just do that i can't just I I didn't I just wouldn't Didn't I get like a couple hundred platinum every month or
1:02:15
something like every every new No not anymore okay this is awkward and
1:02:20
confusing that's great you do get a couple of hundred platinum if you complete the the uh free relicquary but
1:02:26
you used to get like 6 or 700 platinum per battle pass yeah because you got it over and over again you get like 60 here
1:02:32
and 60 there and Yeah it's just crazy yeah now you get now you get 200 in like
1:02:38
two chunks so but yeah just just less less of like worrying how to squeeze
1:02:43
more money out of an individual games and more making games is where I think that we'd be better off and I really do
1:02:50
think we need to see Starcraft games like the fact that there is no currently in production Starcraft game of any kind
1:02:56
as far as we know is a problem we we should know we should there should be at least one and we should know about it uh
1:03:05
also bring back Titan what the heck why not i mean Titan is Overwatch and we've
1:03:11
seen what's happening bring back the actual Titan that they were trying to do uh but regardless that's that's mine for
1:03:18
this i uh Liz do you have anything i I think y'all have knocked it out of the park so no no i think we got this one
1:03:26
all right then so I feel we're at time to end this uh yeah we actually we're a little bit over um we've already had Liz
1:03:33
do our really amazing site news so I'm just going to refer back to that that you know please check us out on Patreon
1:03:39
patreon.com/b blizzardwatch we've got a ton of podcasts out there we've got Tavern Watch we've got Lurwatch you
1:03:45
There's pretty much we we're doing stuff for pretty much anybody who likes to be nerds cuz cuz we we're nerds in case you
1:03:52
hadn't i will add one thing and for those of you who like tabletop role playing games
1:03:59
we did just release our first episode of Legend in the Mist a uh rustic fantasy
1:04:06
tabletop game and it's uh it's pretty fun one it's uh we're going to be publishing episodes of that for the next
1:04:12
couple weeks so if you are interested in that uh kind of lowkey fantasy setting I
1:04:19
don't know if that's a good description it's hard to describe uh tune in it's a fun game and then and also I would also
1:04:26
like to add that again as a reminder because we do this on the other podcast and I want to remind everybody here if
1:04:32
you have questions or topics that you want us to cover please be sure to send those in you can send your questions
1:04:37
into podcast at blizzardwatch.com we ask that you specify the show that it is for in the subject line as well as any
1:04:43
special pronunciation of your name uh and then if you want to hit us up on Discord we have the Q and podcast questions channel open to everybody same
1:04:49
rules apply if you are a Patreon subscriber you can send those in to the patron Q and podcast questions channel
1:04:56
in Discord we tend to look there first as a way of saying thank you for helping us keep the lights on and you can also
1:05:01
send those messages directly to us on Patreon and we'll make Liz send them to
1:05:06
us oh okay yeah I can do that i can do that see see also he really what he
1:05:13
means is we can make Dan send them to Liz to send them to us and also probably some cat memes if we get some cat memes
1:05:20
out of it I think I'll be happy but regardless of how much you like cat memes and although why don't you like
1:05:25
cat memes that's insane cat memes are great this has been the Blizzard Watch podcast thank you to special guest Phil
1:05:32
for being here with us always happy to be back and thank you to Liz and Joe for
1:05:38
basically being twothirds of the triumvirate of power that makes this universe work thank you guys so much for
1:05:44
being here with us as well this has been the Blizzard podcast and we will be back next week
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