Lorewalking and Timewalking and Delves, oh my!

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[Music]
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hello and welcome to the Blizzard Watch podcast i am your host today Elizabeth
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Harper i am filling in for Mr matthew Rossy who is not with us today he is
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under the weather uh but with me as always uh forever co-host Joe hello Joe
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hi hey I like the idea of being a forever co-host means I'm immortal yeah we're we're all stuck here we're all
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stuck here they don't let us out of the podcast wagon we're We just have to keep podcasting that's
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uh But joining us today we have we have drugged several people along with us here uh Bill hello hi uh I'm here and
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now I'm in the podcast wagon and how do I get out oh no there's no door handle on the inside
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it's it's it's the podcasting hotel California over here and Nick has also
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joined us as well i have and we all float down here yes we do uh so the big
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uh Blizzard news of the week is definitely World of Warcraft patch 117
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has launched today the legacy of Arathor and uh we did talk a lot about this last
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week but there are some things we didn't go into so of course if you have not been following that means today we have
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lore walking for players 10 and up with three quests with Zalat are the
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etherealss and the Lich King i said and that's also an ore going through big
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lore moments now has anyone here had a chance to play through any of the lore walking yet because I have not
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not yet uh I've done the Zalat one um
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and I did I did the ethereal one on the PTR um I have not touched the Arthus one
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because I I think I know Arthus' story pretty well and and this isn't this isn't like playing blueprints it's not
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that every little thing H no you you can you can try to read a lot
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into Arthus and I honestly thought that you know with the upcoming expansion Midnight focusing on Quinonas and Arthus
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having kind of a big impact to that region I thought maybe there'd be some kind of like you know oh we could show that their ground is permanently messed
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up outside thanks to you know Arthus blazing a trail through it but no it's uh it's literally kind of like greatest
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hits of Arthus' life uh concluding with a sequence be very familiar to Yeah
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again uh a sequence that will be very familiar to people who put up with Zera's quests back in Legion uh you may
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remember the end of it culminated with a fight where you played as Illan and fought 25 raiders uh many of whom you
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would recognize such as Johnny Awesome uh it's back and now you're Arthus uh it
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I' I've heard them say in interviews that that really they they claim Blizzard developers claim and I see no
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reason not to take them at their word because I'm not a Redditor um that they really just kind of wanted three stories
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to round this out um I can think of a few others that probably would have been more appropriate uh especially going
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into the um you know going into 112 and where we think that's going to go and
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then into a uh uh a an elf focused patch
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blizzard if you're listening Sunwell lore walking so much of the Sunwell
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story is trapped behind stuff people can't do or get but um yeah it's a fascinating little
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feature and each uh each branch of it has a new toy which is kind of cool is the toy also uh the toy Yes the toy for
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Arthus is in fact Arthus um if you're familiar with the Halloween costume that turns you into Arthus um it's that
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Yo I was joking i didn't realize yeah it's literally Arthus yeah it's it's literally it's literally uh it's
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literally that uh kind of like that for everybody the Zalatath line yields a toy that lets everybody not just shadow
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priests um hear Zalat uh whisper in your ear when you kill things for an hour which is cool and the ethereal one is
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kind of spoilery for the ethereal one so go do that first i'll just say it turns you into a native of Caresh
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interesting yeah I think that's one that everyone's been looking forward to seeing getting a chance to go back and
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see these horror moments that are hard to see and as you say the Sunwell that's
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there's so much story to the Sunwell but it's like uh you know it's it's been a
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while since I did all of those one-time quests i'm not going to uh like the
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blood elf heritage armor how long ago was that that had some Sunwell stuff in it which was really interesting and does
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directly tie into the Yria stuff that's happening right now but you do that once
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I'm pretty sure once per account yep there's also the bit that's at the end of Sunwell Plateau there's parts of that
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that never made it in game so it's just really it's like why is there a girl made of light here why does Cal why does
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Calik know who she is you know cuz Khos makes bad decisions but well yeah yeah
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that's just a given another big another big part of this patch is the
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Rise of the Red Dawn story campaign where you will be joining Fyen Danith
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and uh wait which Yep over
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yeah that's the only one that's just not ringing any bells with me but I am not the lore nerd in this group you just
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haven't been You just haven't been hoarded long enough that's the Magmar uh yeah and I've been muted apparently so
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that was no making fun of Liz yeah overlord Graara the the totally totally
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not not thr but kind of his sister but really not sort of like the alternate
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reality thr but girl like it's a weird weird weird a a gender bent thr yeah but
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not oh but not Yeah they they can't they're very different
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uh so yes thath we're going to be heading to the Arai Highlands to guess
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what to quell tensions between the Alliance and the Horde because it's just that time in the expansion guys it's
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time in the expansion that we got to calm everyone down and tell them we need to work together because there's a
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bigger threat than fighting each other which every expansion has to have that moment and it's here it's apparently
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here it's almost like Chris Medson is back in controlling the story again
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h that sounds that can't that can't be right there are some rewards to earn here
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alliance players can get a Storm Guard tabard and title horde players can earn
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a Hammerfall tabard and title and everyone can earn some cosmetic shoulders that are inspired by favors
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and this is a uh a multiple quests a twochapter story that you can play
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through i I don't think it's that long of a story so shouldn't be a huge time commitment to to play it out and get
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your get your shiny new tabards and uh yeah that's kind of that's our
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big story moment going on here and and perhaps most importantly for people who've just uh played through uh through
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1115 it's it's all available now you can just go do all of it yes yes that is
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definitely that's definitely a big one when 11.5 rolled out it rolled out in
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phases but all of this is available now there is one thing in the patch that is not available yet but most of this is
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here right now today you can log on and play it very exciting uh the next big
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thing coming up is combat assistant now live with uh both the assisted highlight
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mode which will uh highlight the next ability you should cast in your idealiz
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like the add-on heli yeah um and then there is a single button assistant which
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instead of just highlighting the right button it will just turn that right button into a single button and you just
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press that button and it will go through the rotation with a penalty to your GCD
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that will prevent you from being ah the most perfectest Warcraft player ever but
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you know it could still be a really good way to play alts to learn about new classes yeah it's the thing I'm most
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excited about and we I think we talked about it before but just so everybody knows it's a like I think when they were
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simming it on uh the PTR it was like a 20% below optimal which is nothing that
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is that is really good especially if you're like just kind of want to hit things with a rock or a hammer or
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whatever the case is and you don't really have the wherewithal or the the desire to learn everything all of the
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time so yeah I know I it it's not it's not going to turn you into a super sweaty effortlessly running plus 19s
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kind of player that's not really what it's here for um it's it there are some limitations to it it doesn't it doesn't
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use any of your offensive cooldowns any of your defensive abilities any heals and uh perhaps most of that last one
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might be very important for tanks and uh healers it does not use any heals or defensive abilities but like I like I
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actually like the added GCD because it gives you time to actually look at the button and go "Oh what does the game think I should be pressing next?" Uh I
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think that's honestly part of the reason that that GCD is there besides them not just wanting to trivialize content is
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that it lets you know it gives you time to process what the game is showing you um I think it's cool especially for
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people who you know maybe want to play a character without necessarily learning the ins and outs of how it worked um I
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think I would have appreciated this i'm going to uh throw a anecdote in here recently when I was learning to play a
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mage um I leveled one up and hadn't done it in a while and I played frost and frost was pretty easy to grasp and I was
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like cool okay let me try some of these other specs and I swapped over to fire and I looked at all the buttons on my bars and I looked at my talents and I
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don't know how this interacts i'm going to go to Wowhead and then I read the guide on how to play fire mage and went
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I don't have enough time in my day to process all this so I swapped Arcane thinking Arcane puts up big numbers
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surely that's a little easier and then I looked at how to play Arcane and there are uh I watched I even watched a little
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video guide where someone was attempting to teach a player from zero how to play Arcane Mage optimally and there are a list of 18 conditions you have to
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memorize under which you hit Arcane Barrage a spec so complicated that most players admittedly use a weak aura
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created by the guide rider that just says barrage now like that's not an ideal situation for
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anything and all of this does seem to be part of Blizzard's plan to kind of downplay add-ons a little bit they
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aren't removing add-ons from the game but they do want players to be doing more of the acting and add-ons to be
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doing less which is to say you know you are question that right now though i'm
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sorry like come on they're they're literally adding an add-on that does the thing that they say they want people to
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move away for into the base game so to me it just feels like they just kind of
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don't want third party add-ons doing that anymore and they're just going to take ownership of it i mean maybe which
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is which is something they've done before but this was a specifically this is a this is an interesting case in that
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it's a it's a tool that didn't really have an analog like sometimes when they
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you know incorporate add-ons into the game it's just cuz it's better than something that they already have but
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this is like well I guess this technically was better than any in-game capability for learning how to play a
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class or spec so um it's not going it's not perfect uh but you know what first draft of things are so it's true i mean
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the thing is that you get a lot of like very high-end raiders
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who can trivialize content through the use of add-ons or weak or that means
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Blizzard has to make encounters increasingly increasingly complicated which hurts kind of the average player
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who maybe doesn't have a weak aura coordinated with their entire raid team to tell people oh you need to move left
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and you need to move right and so it's just chaos when you hit these complicated mechanics so
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from what Blizzard has said that this is this feels like part of a larger plan to
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change how things were designed and I feel like we saw maybe the first edge of that on Giwix
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the Giwix fight in Liberation of Undermine which was it's not a fight
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defined by specific timers and or percentages it's it kind of it flexes
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around a little sort of depending on how much DPS you're doing and it's not the same fight every time you go into it so
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that means it's not a fight that an add-on can just do a timer and tell you exactly when something's going to happen
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but that also means that this is a change in a concert of changes and we haven't seen all of those changes some
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of those changes will be about encounter design and we don't know what Blizzard is doing for encounter design for the
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next raid tier so I think it will be interesting to see this as a piece of a
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larger puzzle but we haven't we haven't seen the rest of the puzzle we just have to see where they're going with this
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yeah i just wanted to I sorry like it was a random aside but like it's it's a weird that they say one thing and then
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do the other i mean not that they haven't been known to do that for years but I'm I'm happy to see this and I want
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to make sure that that's perfectly clear like I think this is something that the game should have done years ago at this
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point uh because it just makes accessibility so much easier for players
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and at the end of the day like you want people playing your your ding-dang game
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especially since Dragonfly where we got our changes to the talent trees and honestly complexity for every class kind of exploded again mhm um after years of
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purposely pairing it back so uh yeah cool feature uh and there has been some
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speculation that this may be part of a plan to bring WoW to consoles that's
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I've just that's that's kind of everyone everyone I don't know if people want
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this to happen or it's just like oh one button rotation this is how wow will get on consoles well because you couldn't do
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you couldn't do an arcane mage rotation playing on your Xbox that would not work
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I couldn't do my warlock rotation playing on an Xbox everyone loves to talk about uh WoW on consoles but I've
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even just trying to play with the WoW has controller support it's actually pretty robust at this point um And it's
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near impossible to play pretty much anything at a like decent level i like I couldn't fathom uh doing what
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Joe does in healing on a uh controller no thank you um no I can barely do that
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with a keyboard and mouse thank you but I mean it's not outside of the question of real possibilities and I think a lot of this is also spurned by uh recent
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comments that like CD Project Red have made about their development right so like a lot of game companies and larger
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ones at that are making statements like CD Project Red said that the new Witcher game Witcher 4 is being designed with
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consoles in mind consoles forward is what they said um not that they're going to ignore PCs but they understand that
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developing a game and you can see it sort of the transition in there from Witcher 1 to Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk
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2077 like try playing Witcher 1 on the console version is absolutely impossible
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and then try to play Cyberpunk 2077 on the console and it's perfectly fine and buttery smooth and with the propensity
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of people in particular and I'm not just going to say just consoles but we're going to move to handhelds and I think
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this is where this becomes really relevant yeah I think the handheld space is very important here yeah because
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because when people are saying developing for consoles what they really mean is developing for controller and
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handhelds that market is booming right now the Switch 2 just released and proved that that you can put Cyberpunk
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2077 on it and it runs fantastic it's very good yeah I mean it's a lock 30 fps
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but like you can't tell really there's not really any dips and it's absolutely
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gorgeous on the handheld and now you have we just talked about this last week
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you have the ROG Alli Xbox coming out right these are all handheld devices
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with controller support so developing your game or moving your game to be on
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that platform or a platform that utilizes a small screen and a controller is just smart how many people would log
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in and check their auction house or do a delve uh or you know do player housing
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cuz that's coming too in the future on a handheld when they're waiting in the doctor's office or they're on a road
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trip or they're on a train or an airplane with you know whatever the case is like people will do this and I think
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developing a system or or keeping that in mind and like making your UI and your
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your game playable in that state is just smart at this point i think it just makes sense and I heard Nick and Phil
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also wanted to say something so I'm going to stop nick what do you you had something to throw in there no you I was
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actually just clearing my throat i was agreeing mostly just because you uh just re rehashing your point of the pivot to
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console or like handheld console connected devices has b every single
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platform has landed one now playstation launched theirs like what last year maybe the year before that uh two years
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ago so the PlayStation Portal you're talking about yes the portal we bought
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the Yeah that's a little bit different but we're we're they say they're working on a PS Vita like experience so they're
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working on releasing a handheld a new handheld soonish right uh I guess it
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more serves as like a pro proof of concept one that people will buy it and two as I'm sitting here right next to me
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yep it'll run your games at you know without losing you know performance
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without losing visuals and then you switch two obviously like you know some
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missteps aside here is I haven't really heard most people say anything terrible
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but yeah it's I was just say you're correct that the the the the
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setup for everyone having their own handheld or handheld compatible type of device now is like not necessarily the
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new thing but it is that optionality for people to have is oh yeah becoming
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necessary do do you know what one of the best selling accessories for a mobile
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device was over the last couple years uh HDMI adapter the I'm guessing Backbone
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style controllers you got it no but and specifically it was the uh the PlayStation Backbone um it sold gang
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busters to the point where that's what like oh there's a market for mobile which is why they even invested in the
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portal as much as they did in the first place and continue to invest in the development of it slightly while working on their other handheld like mobile
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controllers that people snap onto their phones are a thing imagine that you could load up an app I don't know Game
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Pass uh play one of the streaming game services maybe it's an instance of WoW
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that happens to be on a server that you can log into uh with a controller that you can just you know throw like into
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your bag like it collapses down and then when you're ready to play just snap it onto your phone and open that app and go
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to town like it it just We're living in the future we're living in a place where we never thought we would be at this
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point right like we've come a long way from 25 pound gaming laptops
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i'd love to sit down and just like run delves on my Steam Deck right so yeah uh
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I actually saw uh Oh no real quick plug away from this uh Mr gm posted a a
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recently a complete guide to installing WoW on your Steam Deck so I think between that and the one button uh the
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one button rotation thing I'm gonna have to give that a shot yeah accessibility and it's not just it's not just for for
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people that need it it's for us that crave it like we crave I don't know the sun I guess i don't know like it's just
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I want it like I think this is I think this is cool this is rad no this is this is a great feature for so many people i
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mean for for some of us it's going to help us you know play classes that are
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difficult for us to play or play classes we don't play enough to get good at but for some people this is going to
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literally let them play the game a game that has become too challenging or too complicated for them to play you know
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especially for something like player housing if you just want to log on and engage with player housing thing and the
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game part of it is secondary this will let you log on and be successful and
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play through story and explore and do all the things you might want to do but
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you can focus on what you love you can focus on your player housing or your transmog or your whatever and combat is
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secondary which is that's that's kind of crazy to think about a World of Warcraft combat secondary so this is a great
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change it's a great change it's a little weird still not sure where exactly Blizzard is taking us here but it's
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great it's great and uh we're going to see how it works out as uh as we get a little farther away from the patch uh
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another thing now live live today turbulent timeways has returned starting
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in Battle for Azeroth with a new time walking event every week for six weeks
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starting and ending in BFA oh that means we got to we got to get started on that don't we i know i know you got to do if
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you if you want the reward you need to hit five out of the six weeks this time yes so five weeks of time walking if you
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do the five weeks you get an infinite dragon pirate mount as a reward i need
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it which is great i love it we all need it so uh Phil you'd mentioned that time
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walking is getting some rebalancing that that we're going to see this time yeah I mentioned the change some of the changes
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in combat assistant around trying to make things easier to learn your class because that also kind of leads into the
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rebalancing of time walking it's easy to look at this and go "Oh Blizzard detected fun they made time walking hard
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again blah blah blah um they specifically have changed time walking since they realize a lot of people are
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using it the level and why wouldn't they it's fast it's not that hard and the experience is frankly great yeah um well
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now they also want you to be able to learn your class so uh enemies have their health increased uh bosses
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significantly increased so they don't just fall over in three hits uh lower level players uh and lesser gear players
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were made slightly more damage resistant uh heavier uh as you get better geared
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you actually start to feel damage more appropriate to what you should feel at your gear level um and in return for
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this it is dropping slightly better gear at the higher end uh I think it's explorer tier instead of adventure so
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the second lowest level of gear instead of the lowest but like still great for fresh characters uh and is now 25 badges
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for completing a dungeon instead of 15 uh which I think that improvement alone is frankly long past due with the amount
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of stuff they keep adding to the time walking vendors um yeah so there's
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there's some rebalancing in there your your time walking dungeons will take longer but it you know especially if
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you're leveling something like a warlock or a shadow priest you might not just queue up for time walking and go "Well I'm useless because my dots will get one
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tick and then everything dies." Like you know you might actually get to feel out what it feels like to play something
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you're leveling and time walking now and that's cool crazy talk i know right so
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yeah the the extra the extra badges actually seem just so good because it
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could take a while it could take a long long long while to collect rewards there
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and you know you'd kind of go in and do the weekly quest and it's like okay there's my there's my big reward
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you're getting such a a kind of a pity reward for doing more so yeah all good
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it's all good it it'll be interesting to see how it plays out because I I do myself enjoy kind of lazily doing time
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walking and not having to think or work too hard because sometimes you just don't you don't want to work too hard
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but maybe this maybe this combines to be a good a good thing i don't I I don't think they've exactly I mean obviously I
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haven't dipped my toe in there's always scaling issues looking at you black uh but you know I don't think Blizzard has
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made this like a you know white knuckle life or death situation with the changes it's It's just not going to be you know
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the 5minute sprint where you've got the level 11 fury warrior who queued up as a tank and is 16 miles ahead of you
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pulling like a squirrel on meth like I I don't think I you might just not have that situation anymore
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it's I I I'm feeling a little attacked there because I do have a Vulpera fury
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warrior that I need to finish leveling but uh do we need to have an intervention
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what are you supposed to do if you're playing a fury warrior that's just that's the play style yeah this is this
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is specifically a thing that happened though with in the last like large changes that time walking in because of
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the scaling is characters would queue up as either a level 10 brew master or a level 11 fury warrior and they're
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basically indestructible and also topping the DPS meter in your group so like they don't stop to wait for the
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rest of the group they just they load in they go so yeah it's uh maybe a little less of that
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but on the other hand they're more damage resistant now so I don't know maybe not we We're going to see we're
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going to see how it plays out six weeks of time walking coming up uh we are also
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getting new overcharged delves in which six delves will be overcharged with more
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traps and new enemies and every day two of these delves will be overcharged so you can tackle it for more challenges
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and loot the six that can be overcharged are Fungal Folly Creek Falls Rest
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Nightfall Sanctum Skittering Breach Spiral Weave Side Street Sleuth and uh
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did I just list six of them i think that's six of them we're just going to say it as uh there's a new delve
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specific talent tree that you can unlock through currency that drops in these overcharged delves and you know it feels
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it feels a little like tour a little bit like tour guest a little bit like horrific visions this is I I'm seeing a
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theme here uh have any of y'all given the overcharged elves a try yet i I
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haven't yet it's on my list though yeah just enough to get my belt um I'm uh I
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was actually kind of running one during the pre-show um it's interesting they So
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you don't actually have to be like running at the highest level of challenge for these if you're overcharged you can run these like if
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you strictly want the rewards or if you're not up to running 11s or whatever you can run these on like a you know 345
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get your rewards etc um but yeah it does
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actually make it a little harder like I've been I've been playing a prop paladin for the last uh month or so and
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I was basically invincible in delves and I got a little overconfident in overcharged and pulled you know an
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entire room and got uh got obliterated for the first time in a while so um if
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you're playing to the highest level it is kind of an appreciable challenge at least when you don't have that talent tree activated so yeah it'll be
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interesting to see this is this is the first week of the patch so it's going to be we are going to see how some of these
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features play out over time as you unlock more features and uh power your
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way through this stuff now there is one big thing in this patch that is not live
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today as opposed to patch 115 where there was one big thing that was live
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when it went live that is uh treasure goblins which we don't see a lot of
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treasure goblins in World of Warcraft but this is a new greedy emissary event where treasure goblins will spawn and
28:23
drop a mount new tier 2 recolors
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including a truly hideous judgment recolor but also it's it's judgment it's
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just judgments i And I Yeah it doesn't make it that ugly uh a little to clarify
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on this they are appearing in Stormwind Orammar Undermine and Dornagle and they will drop a currency that you can take
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to a vendor in Dornagle whose name escapes me but it has hell in the name of course also also to add on that too
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is that in the last so the last time this event showed up was for the Diablo I launch um as like a little mini
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crossover and the uh goblins were on a 30 minute spawn
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timer where they'd show up on the half hour in your expansion zones but in your
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like standard capital cities is when they would show up on the hour so you're looking at when the clock strikes zero
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when the clock strikes 30 um it remains to be seen if that's going to be the
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same type of rotation but I have to imagine that with two expansion zones
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identified and then the two capital cities that's probably going to stay the same which at least gives people a if
29:36
this is something that they want to farm for if you somehow missed out on a tier 2 set from the um anniversary event at
29:45
the beginning of the year or that the end of last year then there's your chance to farm
29:51
and I I just need them in every color i It doesn't matter how hideous they are i need them that's Liz needs trans
30:00
it's a problem it's a problem for me specifically i do like some of these because a lot of these are a lot of
30:06
these colors specifically are red recolors of transmog that didn't have it before there is a red recolor of the
30:12
Warlock set that is calling my name well there you go guess but that is coming July 1st so we still have a couple of
30:18
weeks to wait that's still that's not as long as we had to wait for some of the patch 115 stuff so this is this is
30:24
pretty good we're getting a lot of content with 11.7 this week but now I'm
30:30
going to I I'm going to move on from World of Warcraft i think you know we kind of we kind of hit the patch
30:36
overwatch 2 also has a new season starting on June 24th so that's uh
30:42
coming up pretty soon pretty soon instead of being like a huge overhaul that is uh adding new game modes that
30:50
we've seen lately this is just kind of more quality of life adjustments sort of season with some small fixes and
30:56
additions uh stadium mode is getting a few new heroes added Zenyatta Junkrat
31:02
and Sigma the there are a couple of new maps coming to the stadium and uh a rank
31:07
reset uh there's going to be new map bands available in quickplay and competitive and some new AU skin sets
31:15
for season 17 an 8-bit group and an Overwatch academy group so new rewards
31:21
to earn and there's a there's a quiet little bit of confirmation that a new crossover event is coming possibly with
31:29
GI Joe oh not possibly they can they can not Okay okay so coming coming soon more
31:37
of those crossovers that we love to hate and hate to love they're they're always there at least GI Joe makes more sense
31:44
than some of the other ones it's got to be It's got to be better than the Diablo I/ Berserk crossover
31:51
anything's better than that no anything but you know the armor sets were just so on point for Sanctuary
31:57
it stylistically it worked i mean you don't want to I mean Genji's going to have a snake eye skin i'm calling it now
32:04
like it has to happen so yes coming up in Overwatch new season
32:10
starting soon new battle pass new rewards all the things all the things
32:15
and we are also having some new comingings in WoW Classic uh Nick I just
32:21
asked you to write up the phase five coming to the anniversary realms with uh
32:26
Ann Karage yes and we if it feels like this is
32:32
familiar it's because we were just here in the season of Discovery Realms in November but in the WoW Classic
32:39
Anniversary Realms uh Encourage is starting with phase 5 July 10th rolling
32:47
out uh 300 p.m pacific time and once the clock hits three that will actually mark
32:54
the beginning of the AQ War effort so players who are familiar with this will
33:01
begin using their profession uh gathering cooking and first aid skills
33:08
to create items to turn in bounties if you haven't if you haven't done any
33:14
onage anything before get ready for the get ready to contribute to this insane
33:21
grind uh that is realmwide and once
33:26
the it's keeping the old uh like the original spirit of the event in intact
33:33
whereas in season of discovery because I think at that point they were still trying to keep to a condensed timeline
33:38
they kind of made it more uniform for everybody uh even though there are only like a handful of well classic
33:45
anniversary realm servers you will go as fast as your realm dictates that you will go so uh when you do the the war
33:53
effort quests and you turn in these items there's a number of items that you have to hit it's numbers in the
33:59
thousands so that promotes you know player engagement and everyone's got to
34:05
contribute so once that number is hit then that will hit the 5-day timer where
34:12
all your supplies that you just donated quote get moved to Silus at that time
34:17
once the five-day moratorum for the lack of a better word is up then players who
34:24
have completed the shifting sands quest line will be able to bang the gong and start the 10-hour war um and that is the
34:33
window where if you have completed the shifting sands quest line you can turn in and get your block karaji uh
34:40
resonating crystal mount and that is the only time the mount will be available
34:46
once that 10-hour timer is up if you have not turned completed the shifting sands quest line you will not be able to
34:54
turn it in and get this mount which is a mobile silithid mount for the players
35:00
who haven't done this before you start and finish all of your gathering quests
35:05
in your respect in one of your uh capital cities so for alliance you will go to Iron Forge and go to Field
35:13
Marshall Snowfall in the military ward horde players will go to warlord Gorchuk in the valley of spirits in Orrammar and
35:21
that's how you will turn in that's where you will turn in all of these quests uh
35:26
that you will also get commenation signets for to once again turn in for
35:32
gear for yourself and then once the that leads into the 10-hour war like I said and once that
35:38
finishes then the raids will officially open uh the quickest time that Blizzard
35:44
has identified for players to jump into both raids if you are on a super active
35:50
server is just over a week so you're looking on or about July 17th for
35:57
Encourage uh to open up that is the rune the 20 player raid runes of Ankarrage
36:04
and the 40 player raid Temple of Encourage this is this is such a weird event that WoW has never done anything
36:11
quite like this one since but you know it's it's been a few years and I'm still
36:16
kind of scarred by picking that many peace bloom but here we are here we are all I heard was the horde needs more
36:22
room bandages and I'm here okay
36:28
so yes coming back again next month and uh let's see Hearthstone also has an
36:35
expansion coming out next month but I have to I have to stop and call out the
36:41
promo event that the Hearthstone team has run which is a stream the new
36:48
expansion is uh the Lost City of Angoro and so they did a big event that was
36:54
turtles versus lizards it's just it's just turtles and lizards
37:01
keeping with the dinos versus theme uh there was also there was also an eating portion so the turtles actually have a
37:08
an option to you know be in the competition there was racing and climbing and you
37:14
know one of the turtles did surprisingly well in the climbing section of the race
37:19
but uh I am going to declare for all of us that Blizzard Watch is on team Valentina because Valentina is
37:27
magnificent and glorious and I see no one else has opinions i I can't argue you're my boss
37:35
there there are in fact notes in the show notes that we're not allowed to argue with you so uh yeah go team
37:41
Valentina this is this is the benefit of being the
37:46
boss folks you get to tell your underlings not to argue with you about what team we're on
37:51
anyway anyway turtle turtles versus lizards it was a fun little event that
37:59
uh no no actual Hearthstone cards were involved in this event but you can watch it on uh the Play Hearthstone channel on
38:06
Twitch go back and watch the VOD because it is fun it is fun you just get to see
38:12
turtles and lizards racing climbing eating and sometimes just looking magnificent
38:19
like Valentina okay moving on we'll move on and talk about some real news uh in other games
38:27
there's so much other game news but not as much as there was you know with this
38:32
Next Fest and Summer GameFest but you know it's inescapable we are in We are
38:38
in an era of beautiful games it is uh this week is the Steam Fishing Fest
38:44
which is where you go to get all of your fishing games which it's a fun little
38:49
it's a fun little sales event because it's there's a lot of games in this category have any of y'all looked at the
38:57
fishing fest no I didn't realize how deep lit itself
39:02
on fire there's a lot in this yeah uh there is uh there there's a lot i mean
39:08
you can go from games like Dredge which is creepy horrors from beyond the depths but also with fishing or you can do Dave
39:15
the Diver which is 89 games in a trench coat that involve fishing
39:21
uh there's also there's a game I saw called Chill and Cast I think where the first one the first one that pops up i I
39:30
thought at first that the the cover art for this game was a watercolor painting until I zoomed in it is worth looking at
39:37
for the phenomenal pixel art alone on that game and also it's just you go out
39:42
and you fish and your dog is with you and you just you just stare at pixel art
39:49
and sit with your dog and it's like this is kind of the perfect game i am
39:55
legitimately astonished at how many fishing games there are yes it is this
40:01
is It is a huge genre which I did not realize until there was an entire Ste
40:08
matches uh-huh uh-huh yeah i mean in in the grand scheme of things not a ton but
40:15
way more than you would think of if someone asked me to name fishing games I think I would have probably named like uh Legend of the River King and and then
40:22
like that one that one bass fishing game Sega second did for the Dreamcast uh I
40:27
would probably put Seman in there for the Dreamcast oh does Sean count
40:34
it's a game about fish it is a game about fish i'll give you that one
40:39
a weird fish man manfish voiced by Leonard Nemoy anyway um yeah I got
40:45
nothing else like I'm I'm just flabbergasted i'm legitimately flabbergasted
40:50
go fish and man cast and chill just this is not a game I would have looked at but
40:57
it just looks this just looks it looks so it looks so relaxing which is the point not there's a rhythm game called
41:04
fish and groove i just Oh man I'm done the fishing games fall into one of three
41:10
categories from just my brief scrolling you've got cozy right you've got
41:15
competitive like Bassmaster Fishing and then you've got some for some reason survival horror yeah creepy hold on
41:23
don't Don't for There's There's others in here don't forget the uh the dating sim fishing girl fantasy let's not
41:29
downell that one either i'm going to downell that one i'm going to downell that one i'm downelling that
41:36
one if only because a better dating sim came out today exactly oh that's true
41:41
that's true the greatest dating simile it It was very well done that was
41:48
masterful uh date everything is now live it is a game in which you can date
41:54
everything in your house from the cabinets in the kitchen to the front door to the back door which is not
42:00
inuendo there's they're all characters there are a debatable characters each
42:05
lovingly voice acted by a famed voice actor that you have definitely heard of because everyone everyone is in this
42:12
game this is a game of It gets even weirder than that you can date you can date the concept of being rejected mhm
42:20
you can date your own existential dread that's just called Yeah that's just my
42:26
20s i was just saying uh Yep and then there's day one there's
42:33
day one DLC including the ability to date microtransaction embodied microtransaction
42:41
it's it's just so good i mean it's on one hand there's just a there's a
42:46
tremendous amount of voice acting talent in this game and behind this game it was
42:51
and uh each of the 100 characters or 102 if you buy the DLC uh is voice acted
42:59
fully voice acted they have multiple endings multiple relation types which could be romance could be friendship
43:06
could be you really hate each other you know it can be you can go any direction with any of these characters and that
43:14
just makes for a big sprawling weird story and this is this is the kind of
43:20
weird you just don't get every day so I have picked this up i have not I have
43:25
not played it yet because I am extremely busy this week but date everything now
43:31
available in case you want to date literally everything not everyone
43:36
everything yep okay we're going to move on move on from our fishing and dating and dating
43:42
and fishing uh now there is something going on with Nexus Mods right now the big mod uh
43:51
video game mod site which we've certainly leaned on for games like Fallout uh Nick do you have a story on
43:59
that uh so the creator of Nexus Mods um who goes by
44:05
the username Dark One but uh also in their goodbye note uh is referred to as
44:14
Robin so is taking a step back from running the site to focus on their
44:19
mental health and they have transferred ownership of the site to
44:24
uh a group of new individuals uh on well
44:31
right on I'm trying to keep it balanced because on one hand like as an American uh I have been there where it's like I
44:39
just can't do my job so I don't want to downplay or anything like that with
44:46
someone having not just like the awareness but the courage to say I need
44:53
to take a step away from this uh and I need to take care of myself i think that
44:58
that is incredibly important at the same time two things can be true sort of the
45:04
way that this trans owner transfer of ownership was announced immediately um a
45:10
lot of people this immediate response was well what's going to happen to the
45:15
site uh who are these new people and
45:21
basically what does the future hold because for anyone who doesn't know what Nexus Mods is Nexus Mods is essentially
45:29
a community communitydriven site where people on their own free time of their
45:35
own valition create gaming add-ons for their favorite games this is like all
45:40
the crazy pictures of anything Elder Scrolls that you have seen where you've got Darth Vader riding a dragon or in
45:48
Fallout where you've got a literal Iron Man suit this is where generally people
45:54
will use the site people will use to upload it to disperse to the wider community most of it is free most of it
46:01
is um done for the love of the game like unironically people do it because they
46:07
love the game uh sometimes they do it to fix a game sometimes they do do it to fix a game this is that's a good call
46:14
this is Sometimes you will also find patches for notoriously bugging games looking at you Skyrim um and obviously I
46:23
think it's the fear of the unknown right people don't know who the new people are that are taking control of the site and
46:29
they don't know what their plans are for it there is an extensive Q&A where uh
46:34
the new site owners address some of the community questions where they say that
46:40
you know basically the big hitters are mods will the the mods for the games will remain free nothing's going to
46:47
change people retain ownership of the mods that they create uh they do dodge
46:52
one of the questions about monetiz monetization uh from this point on which is what made
46:58
people feel a little antsy as I read their as I read these responses um it's
47:04
a very clear question well what additional monetization will be added/changed to the site and the answer
47:10
is monetization is hard and a site about no aggressive monetization community
47:16
first approach blah blah blah um I'm not I want to do more digging but some I've
47:23
seen a few news articles saying that they've identified who the new owners are and what their new company is um but
47:30
I always encourage people to just take a step back do not go hunting for information on the internet that you
47:36
cannot verify or that cannot be verified so I understand for something like this
47:42
for the Nexus mods it can be a little scary for myself I have used Nexus mods
47:47
for Skyrim i am personally worried about like what type of information associated
47:54
with my Nexus mods profile blah blah blah can be out there but that's what's
47:59
going on over there uh so that on the list of things to look out for uh
48:07
but yeah sometimes you just need to say "Okay this is this is a huge project i can't even imagine what running a site
48:13
like Nexus Mods must be as far as time commitment energy money to keep the
48:19
servers running and so on and so forth that's huge and sometimes projects like
48:24
this we kind of put on community members and we expect them to always be there
48:30
but you can't you can't do that that's so much that's so much so we will see
48:35
how this plays out in the coming weeks hopefully hopefully it's fine i'm just
48:41
going to say hopefully it's fine uh now uh marathon marathon by Bungie has
48:48
gotten been delayed from September 23rd to an undetermined new date it's uh the
48:58
latest in the step of mis of mishaps from Marathon that appear to be mostly
49:04
self-inflicted and I'm being very kind they are all self-inflicted um like I follow Bungie specifically
49:13
because I played so much Destiny for a lot of the last 10 years um I personally
49:19
noticed a huge difference when like you could tell a difference in quality of the game when they pivoted from the
49:25
Destiny team towards putting those resources towards Marathon and I know Marathon is like a class f or classic
49:31
favorite a lot of people were looking forward to it and basically since its announcement in 2023 has been hampered
49:38
by nothing but scandal essentially that generally revolves around plagiarism of
49:43
some sort um one of the most recent ones in the alpha was basic an artist was
49:51
able to confirm that a lot of their images dating back as far as 2017 appear
49:58
in the live alpha and it's not similarities it's not like uncanny likenesses it is there's there are
50:05
sideby-side comparisons of this was ripped um that's on top of the negative reviews
50:12
that the alpha got uh in terms of like gameplay fulfillment and now it seems
50:18
that in the wake of all of those com the feedback and the game is now being
50:23
delayed indefinitely well sometimes that's sometimes that's what you need to step back and fix it you know sometimes
50:31
you you just need the extra development time but sometimes it's a bad sign i don't know have Joe Phil have either of
50:39
you been following Marathon uh initially I was very excited for it but now I'm starting like after like the alpha stuff
50:47
and and hearing about like the we'll call it trouble development we'll be
50:52
generous um I'm sad about it i used to really like I enjoyed and looked forward
50:59
to like what Bungie was doing but now it's just like I'm I'm starting to to feel like I'm wondering if they've gone
51:04
the way of EA or something else where it's just like it's not not not quite
51:10
what it used to be and not quite the same priorities but we'll see yeah if I've been doing anything with uh
51:16
Marathon it's been uh I would say whatever the uh video game news equivalent of hate watching is um I
51:23
I uh am I was a huge fan of Marathon the
51:29
original game uh that Bungie came out with marathon was so good like pivotal
51:35
uh FPS and especially storytelling in the first person shooter um including
51:40
stuff that then they carried forward into Halo and some concepts into Destiny was really cool and now they're like
51:46
"Hey we're throwing all that away for an extraction shooter that's banking on the marathon name." So I No
51:54
I'm only following this game out of spite at this point
51:59
you would not be the first yeah like I don't want to I don't want to wish ill on Bungie like there's enough problems
52:05
with layoffs and shutdowns in the uh industry but this feels like just one
52:11
big calculated misstep after another it's I you hate to see it bungee Bungie
52:18
felt like for a while you know they were one of those big titans of the industry and now like they're it feels like
52:23
they're like one misstep from uh we are sad to report that Bungie has been downsized yeah well we will we I I keep
52:31
saying this but we're just going to have to see how this one plays out it does not sound positive though so I'm gonna
52:38
skip ahead a little uh Lego Godzilla set joe
52:44
yeah I put it in here just because I thought it was fun and uh uh I uh originally cuz like uh we all know that
52:51
Matt loves Godzilla and I I wanted him to see this uh but yeah so LEGO does fan
52:58
submitted review stuff so they'll um people will make builds and they'll
53:04
submit them and they'll have basically there's a community vote and then it goes to LEGO for review to check for the viability of the set um there's this
53:11
happens pretty frequently uh as a matter of fact there's still some that are waiting for review right now like uh the
53:18
Booze Door from Monster Inc uh Planet Express headquarters Clippy from
53:23
Microsoft Office like weird stuff like this being enshrined forever as a Lego set um but they do this periodically
53:31
they're called Lego ideas uh and you can actually go in and some of these have already uh made it to live like uh the
53:38
Lego Disney Tim Burton The Nightmare Before Christmas set was a Lego idea set that somebody had put together um and
53:44
then was made into a production one you can just go get a tuxedo cat because you can just go get a tuxedo cat uh you can
53:50
go get the Pixar Luxo Jr with the ball and everything um but this is Godzilla
53:56
uh or Blockzilla whatever you want to call it the fan-made one looks really really cool uh
54:04
looks like it has some extra bits in it that need to uh probably be strengthened up for for articulation but that's where
54:11
LEGO engineers come in uh LEGO who has a pretty good track record with making
54:16
some some pretty wild kits uh will are actively working on Godzilla and uh yeah
54:24
it's going to be really really cool so congratulations Matt E720 with your LEGO
54:29
Idea getting picked cuz I need this i need this in my life you you you just did the the the the Lord of Lizards work
54:36
there thank you very much on time Joe do we do we have time for
54:41
another one yeah before wrapping up uh then Nintendo it sounds like Nintendo
54:48
has already banned some Switch 2 consoles due to people possibly using
54:54
the MIG Flash third-party cartridge yeah so a lot of this is not confirmed uh so
55:02
this is the like there's speculation in this and and I just rumor some of it's
55:07
rumor mill but some of it these are these people their switches are legitimately they're they're banned
55:12
they're locked they're they're shut off from Nintendo services that part we know is true from at least the you know
55:20
screenshots and and verification of that um but what caused it is what's up in the air so these people are claiming
55:26
that they were using a MIG flash cartridge which uh is a cartridge that slots into the game slot uses an SD card
55:33
that is compatible with the Switch uh and people have been using it to well
55:39
play games that maybe they do or don't own a legal backup of uh this was a
55:44
problem with Switch One uh which they never really were able to crack down on and they flat out said that they were
55:51
going to be looking at this in particular uh so there the thought is that they may have found a way to
55:58
determine if somebody is using a third-party device inside of the the Switch game cartridge slot specifically
56:05
um that is allowing them to like you know emulate games and they're shutting that down and after recent lawsuits that
56:12
Nintendo's had with a whole bunch of ROM sites because we all know that Nintendo loves to sue and shut down ROM sites
56:18
it's not terribly surprising so whether or not this is true and actually caused
56:23
by that don't know but we do know that people have been cut off from Nintendo services on their Switch and if you plan
56:31
on trying to use like a a third party cartridge in your Switch 2 slot maybe
56:37
give it a second thought maybe maybe think about that before you do it just in case nintendo seem possibly to be
56:43
making good on a promise that they made well before the console ever released yeah it would not surprise me if they'd
56:50
have somehow done this capability just from stuff early testers were finding with uh test consoles where even just
56:56
doing things like running a uh you know running running various voltages to try
57:01
to identify uh weaknesses in the hardware that could potentially be used for installing uh third party firmware
57:08
those kind of things were usually just very innocuous things you could do without a console really having an issue
57:14
um it was bricking the Switch 2 and calling home so they knew exactly which testers were trying to crack the device
57:20
yeah and there's also there's also an element too where they've uh I've been watching tear downs of the cartridges themselves like the Switch 2 carts um
57:27
and the Switch 2 carts are not actually really cartridges in most cases they're
57:32
security chips that essentially call back and authorize the play of the game like they'll have code on them uh some
57:39
of them are actual game cards but some of them have additional components in them that validate the the game to like
57:45
essentially call back home to base station it's interesting what they're doing with the DRM yeah it's uh that
57:51
would make sense yeah so I'd say there's an above average chance that this story is true so maybe don't go online with it
57:58
if you are using a flash card maybe maybe just don't sign into your Nintendo account yeah uh and also only
58:06
only play uh legal backups of cartridges you actually own blizzard watch does not condone piracy but this is part of kind
58:13
of a worrying trend in the gaming industry where what do you own do you
58:19
own this console or are you just essentially renting it from Nintendo and only doing Nintendo authorized things uh
58:27
we've seen game ownership heading in this direction for a while it's like you own a game but you can't necessarily
58:34
play it well uh it's an interesting question that I think is going to come to a head soon and and I don't want to
58:39
be leaguer this but the reason I put this in here is because it brings up an interesting point in this particular debate especially like here in the
58:46
States a lot of the uh states here force
58:51
electronics providers especially things like uh cell phone uh makers uh laptop
58:57
makers car like like car manufacturers and this also extends down to game
59:02
consoles and game companies where if you are in a right to repair state doing
59:08
something like this is technically directly at odds with that so you're not
59:13
just potentially going to get a legal challenge you know person versus Nintendo you might wind up seeing state
59:20
versus Nintendo where it's like actively bricking it and not giving them a way to
59:26
repair it is or or an out or something like that violates that right to repair
59:33
and therefore even if it is in the ULA they have to give them an out so I'm really curious to see what happens with
59:40
that because if this is actually happening if people are actually getting hit from this the legal section of it is
59:46
very soon to follow like almost assuredly so we'll we'll see cuz I'm
59:53
really curious how that's going to shake out well hopefully hopefully there's something we can do with these
59:59
you know it could just be bugs sometimes you see this stuff with early hardware bricking itself or additional problems
1:00:07
but here we are here we are and with Nintendo they they do have a history so
1:00:15
but we are short we're we're short on time at this point so I'm going to I'm going to wrap us up i want to say thank
1:00:22
you very much to Jeffrey this week for sending us a message on Patreon to let me know that The Expanse is still on
1:00:28
Amazon Prime because we were talking about The Expanse last week uh during the show I think because there's a new
1:00:34
game coming out so uh that's it's on my list but you know there are so many
1:00:41
things on the list there are so many things on the list that's the problem but if anyone else is like me haven't
1:00:46
watched The Expanse in the US it should still be on Amazon Prime not sure about other places so thank you Jeffrey for
1:00:53
letting us know about that now our support on Patreon is a little lower than we'd like at $3,700
1:00:59
we try to keep it above $4,000 to kind of keep the site happy and healthy so if you are able to toss us a dollar or two
1:01:07
that does really help out it's a small group of supporters giving us just a little bit uh that's what makes it all
1:01:13
possible so if you can support us financially $3 a month gives you early
1:01:19
access to these podcasts ad free and uh and $5 a month gives you ads free uh on
1:01:27
the site at blizzardwatch.com if you can throw us a dollar here or there it really helps out so I want to
1:01:34
say thank you to all of our supporters we appreciate you and if you can throw us some support thank you very much but
1:01:41
if you can't then you know listening to the podcast is great share the podcast with people who might like it read the
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site and uh all of that really helps us out so if you can support us on Patreon
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we're at uh patreon.com/blizzardwatch or you can read the site at blizzardwatch.com
1:02:00
don't forget to subscribe to our other podcast Tavernwatch and Roller Watch just search for them in your podcast
1:02:06
player of choice we are getting to the end of a great game of masks on Tavern
1:02:12
Watch which was really really fun to record and I hope you're all enjoying it
1:02:17
and on social media good place to find our latest articles and podcasts and to
1:02:22
share things that you enjoy we are Blizzard on Instagram threads Twitter
1:02:28
Facebook and Mastadon at gamepad.club we're blizzardwatch.com on Blue Sky and
1:02:33
Blizzardwatch podcasts on YouTube so follow us for the latest news to share to like we appreciate your moral support
1:02:40
and uh thank you all so much for being here and listening and thank you to Joe
1:02:47
thank you to Nick and thank you to Phil for being here because otherwise I'd just be talking to myself and that's
1:02:52
that'd be that'd be really sad i do it all the time but this time at least I have you know people that you know make
1:02:58
me feel normalish is an interesting podcast though the list
1:03:04
talks to herself hour i mean the problem with a talks to yourself hour is that when do you stop to drink water so that
1:03:10
you talk to yourself you you we would just build in random
1:03:17
pauses so it's like you're having a conversation and other people think that they can't hear who you're talking to
1:03:23
but it really is just you talking to yourself h yeah I mean Matt usually hosts the
1:03:31
episodes but and and does a lot of the talking and you don't appreciate how
1:03:36
much talking it is to host and to go through all the topics until you are hosting it's like well I I need a break
1:03:42
i need to drink some water someone else say something
1:03:48
h but here we are hopefully Matt will be back next week and we can try to provide him plenty plenty of water breaks
1:03:56
because you need them you can't just you can't just talk for an hour it doesn't work but thank you everyone for being
1:04:02
here thank you everyone for listening and we will see you here next week on the Blizzard Watch podcast bye bye
1:04:10
[Music]

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