Up next in 10
Cory is our guest host for the Blizzard Watch Podcast this week and, spoilers, that means there's Heroes of the Storm news again. The PTR opened up for people to test Player Housing again this week, but it was already down again by the time they recorded the podcast. Liz was thrilled with this chance to collect more data though, because her house in the alpha is currently haunted. In other WoW news, the trading post means a ton of new goodies -- perhaps literally, if carrots fit your definition of goodies. Also, getting some of the Artifact appearances in Legion is busted.
Beyond WoW, there was a new Hearthstone expansion this week to discuss, plus a new cinematic for Overwatch, which got us feeling a little nostalgic and sentimental. And yes, Heroes of the Storm. We couldn't have Cory on without a little dose of hopium.
Plus, we have a contest running on Bluesky and Mastodon where you can enter to win a free key for an Epic edition of Midnight. All you have to do is tell us which housing plot where you'd recommend our realtor take her well-earned vacation (and also, please follow us because that will let us DM you if you win). We'll draw the winners on Monday.
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Show More Show Less View Video Transcript
0:10
Hello everybody and welcome to the Watch Podcast where we talk about Blizzard Entertainment and its many games and
0:15
sometimes strange films where pegs fall from the sky and hit battleships. Who
0:21
knows what's going to happen? Anything could happen. Uh, with me of course are
0:26
my two fantastic and you know omniresent collaborators. Uh, Liz Harper, the
0:33
editor-inchief and overall Grand High Puba of the site. I'm never going to stop saying that. And Joe Perez, who
0:40
just loves every dual thing. Every time you say Grand Huba, I just
0:45
think of Liz having the great Hi Puba water buffalo hat from the Flintstones.
0:50
Every time. I don't think I could pull that off. I think you could pull it off.
0:55
Anyone can pull that off. And also with us is Corey, who is like again yet again our special guest. Um,
1:01
when last we saw Corey, he was in a windmill being spun around by a bunch of
1:07
angry goblins and we've freed him and we didn't shoot him up into the space cuz that's cruel. Like seriously, that's
1:14
cruel. Boulders Gate 3, you can be very, very cruel if you um but anyway, World of Warcraft stuff is happening. And not
1:20
just World of Warcraft, this potentially with Corey here, there could be Heroes of the Storm news. Could be. Spoiler alert, there is.
1:27
Uh, so anyway, midnight beta, November 11th. Didn't we kind of call that? It
1:32
felt It feels like we somewhat called that. Or am I completely Yeah, this is this is actually a week earlier. Um, I Yeah, I did not expect it
1:40
to be this early. The uh alpha just rolled out its final phase last week and they're just they're giving that exactly
1:47
a week to s like uh you know they're giving it a week a week and a half I think to sit and yeah straight into beta
1:54
and of course everyone who has uh ordered the epic edition of Midnight is going to get into the beta. Everyone
2:00
else can sign up on the Midnight website. Just go to World of Warcraft.com and it will send you in
2:06
that direction. But h you know Blizzard really wants you to pre-order Midnight.
2:13
So so much so that even even that's the even with me buying the Epic Edition. They still emailed me trying to get me
2:19
to buy the Epic Edition. Well, you know, they wouldn't mind you buying it twice. I mean, I I don't think I need to buy it
2:24
twice. Once once is good enough. Once should be good enough. I'm not saying you have to. I'm just saying they wouldn't mind.
2:30
Listen, I've got Microsoft definitely definitely would not mind. I've got too many too many card games to
2:36
spend more money on. And I I I'm only doing this once. Thank you very much. That makes sense. But um this says here
2:42
we're having a giveaway list. We are having a giveaway. Um we have two
2:48
keys for the midnight uh epic edition provided kindly by Blizzard.
2:53
These are for the North America region, correct? We should probably specify that. Yes. Yeah. Yes. I I was just saying bad things
3:01
about them, but they did kindly provide us with two keys to give away. We have a
3:06
contest on our uh Mastadon and Blue Sky pages where you can go and uh you know
3:14
tell us where the best vacation spot would be in either of the new player
3:20
housing neighborhoods. And uh I'm going to draw randomly on Monday the 10th and
3:27
uh get you your epic edition key so you can be ready to hit the beta on the
3:32
11th. Uh, if you are not following us on social media, you can follow us on Blue
3:39
Sky at blizzard.wait, no, I've got that wrong. I can't even
3:44
remember my stuff. You can follow us on Blue Sky. We are blizzardwatch.com. And you can follow us on Masttodon as
3:52
blizzardwatch atgamepad.com. So either of those just uh send us send
3:59
us an answer to this question and I will draw a winner on Monday. Yay. People who don't have it could get
4:05
it. And that's really So yeah, we're going to have the drawing Monday, you said. Yeah.
4:10
So we're recording an episode on Monday. I misread I misread this line. That's my
4:15
bad. I apologize. I You meant this episode right now that we are currently recording. I understand now. Made got it
4:23
eventually. Sorry, Liz. mean to say uh well I meant to say it but I didn't really mean to say a wrong thing. I apologize.
4:29
Recapping because I've been confused and Matt has been confused. Follow us on Blue Sky or Mastadon if you prefer. And
4:37
uh enter our contest by responding to our contest message telling us where the best vacation spot in either of these
4:43
neighborhoods is. And random drawing on Monday, November the 10th.
4:48
Gotcha. So the day before the beta, which is Exactly. Yes. Yes. So, it's next.
4:54
That was the plan. Okay. Gotcha. Because because the the midnight epic edition comes with beta access, so they
5:00
want you to be able to get in on the beta. Correct. Gotcha. Um, player housing back on the PTR. Uh,
5:07
it's going to be a 24-hour test. So, it's gone now. I I I want to I want to clarify. It was
5:14
back on the PTR. They announced it on Thursday and said it was going to end on Friday. And then they wound up extending
5:20
it over the weekend, but it was still kind of a a blink and you miss it and oh, if you don't have time today, you're
5:26
just I uh cuz it it started and it's already over between the last podcast
5:32
and this podcast. Yep. That is definitely Blink if you miss it. Uh did they would they add
5:37
anything to player housing or was it just hey test this more? Uh it was it was test this more. They really wanted players to test guild
5:44
housing. which uh I I eventually got it to work. So, I mean, guild housing is a
5:50
different kind of private neighborhood and it it seems to work as expected. They also fixed a bug that has been
5:57
lingering since the beginning of the alpha in which you could not move your house. You're supposed to be able to
6:03
say, "I'm tired of this neighborhood or I'm tired of this housing plot. I want to go over there instead." And that has
6:09
been bugged since the alpha initially launched. So, that got fixed and so people could play around moving their
6:14
house, checking out guild neighborhoods. But, I mean, there are still a lot of bugs. I love this feature. It's still a
6:21
little buggy. And also, my house in the alpha, it's haunted. I mean, it's just haunted. That's the only thing I can say
6:27
because if I go in and I put down a piece of furniture, it immediately deletes all the other furniture in my
6:33
house, including lights, windows, and the door you use to exit the house.
6:43
So, I've been having that problem. I I You have to hearth. You have to hear
6:48
to get out of the house. Uh, so I have not personally been doing a lot of
6:53
player housing testing in the past week because my house is definitely how seasonal.
6:58
Yeah. I mean, at least it does fit it does fit the thing. Yeah. And maybe maybe that was just the goal.
7:04
It's just here have a haunted house. I hope you have an extra we call that immersion. I
7:11
uh Yes. It's like wow all of the lights went out and also the door's gone. You know, that's a horror movie all by
7:17
itself. It writes itself. Are we sure that they're not secretly playing the Sims with us and just deleting the door
7:23
on purpose and to see if you drowned? Like throwing you in the swimming pool and removing the ladder.
7:29
Exactly. Cruel. That's very cruel. Yep. That's cruel. That that I think
7:37
cruelty is pretty much the entire point of the Sims. I digress slightly. Um but player player housing still looking
7:43
great. I've seen a lot of really cool things that players got to create over the weekend. I myself tried to make a
7:51
hobbit house out of my house, but it I I got bored
7:56
because it requires The doors were hard to do. Well, it requires Yeah, you only have You couldn't make a perfect Hobbit house,
8:03
but to make the house look like it was underground, like it was in an earth mound of some kind, you had to, at least
8:10
how I was doing it, just build up a ton of plants all over the house. And you
8:17
know, with the number of plants and resizing the plants and positioning them properly to make this thing, I I just
8:25
got I think it could be a possibility, but you're you're going to have to commit. You're really going to have to
8:30
commit if you want to commit to the bit, people. Make your hobbit houses. I I got nothing else. I
8:35
just think they should do it. Um, I did see I did see last week uh Soul So Breezy uh used a bunch of boxes to make
8:44
a QR code inside his house which looked
8:49
extremely painstaking. Like each box was a pixel. And oh my gosh, I I don't have
8:57
the patience to do something like that. But it is possible. Now, did the QR code work?
9:03
Yes, that was the goal. He wanted to see if he could make a working QR code, and
9:09
he could using crates that he attached to the wall. And with enough crates,
9:16
perfectly positioned pixel by pixel, it worked. Huh.
9:22
This is one of the best things I've ever heard in this darkest of timelines that we live in.
9:28
Possibly we're going to have basilisks just triggered by player housing in World of Warcraft. I am so there for
9:33
this trading post. You can get a big fork. You can also a big spoon or a big knife. It's It's a
9:40
You're burying the lead. You can ride an armored turkey. I'm feeling like I'm burying the lead at
9:46
all. I feel like the gigantic knife is absolutely what I'm going for. I have I
9:51
have pyramid head cosplays to do in game. The corn weapon wasn't the the the
9:56
leader there. No, not even close. Wow. But you can literally have a flail of peppers
10:02
or or a baguette. I mean, yeah. Uh, but I I honestly now looking at the armored
10:08
turkey, I Well, hold on a second. I mean, let's go back to the baguette. If anybody's ever been hit with like a
10:13
stale baguette, you understand the damage that that can do. Like, I remember working in a bakery as a
10:18
teenager. We could destroy walls with those things. I've never been hit with a bagette.
10:25
Sorry. Feel like I've let the team down of all the other weird things I've done, but I haven't done that.
10:30
The more you know. But yeah, there's a lot of weird stuff. Um, there's a rib roast of some kind.
10:36
So, yeah, there there's a lot of weird stuff you can get this time. It's it's a it's a I don't want to say Thanksgiving
10:41
themed because it's more what do you call it? A harvest festival or whatever. Harvest Festival or something. Yeah, I
10:47
don't remember what it's called in WoW. Uh, but Pilgrim's Bounty. Food themed. Pilgrim's Bounty. Thank you. You are
10:53
correct, Joe. Um, the the rack of ribs is an because
10:58
obviously Yeah, of course it is. Why wouldn't it? Um, but yeah, there's also a fair amount of armor that's kind of interesting. I
11:05
mean, there's some that is just like there's an ensemble that's essentially just the dark ranger general's kit. Uh,
11:10
that's cool. Not going to read all of these things obviously, but I do think that the uh the armored turkey is pretty
11:18
cool. Uh, it's called the prize turkey. Um, it's a recolor of the Highlands gobbler. Um, so
11:26
go ahead, Liz. One thing to know about this turkey is that, you know, it kind of has sort of saddle bags on each side.
11:32
One side is a basket of bread and the other side is like a a a cauldron full
11:39
of soup or maybe the perfect mount. The perfect amount.
11:44
Listen, soup. Soup and bread while riding. Yes, please. Comes with snags.
11:50
Uh here's the thing, though. If that's gravy in the one side, it's a little it's a little concerning.
11:56
It's it's a liquid of some kind, some indeterminate kind of and on the other side you have bread.
12:03
What they often do with bread and it just that's how you make stuffing. And I
12:08
don't want my mom to die just so I can make stuffing to use with that gravy. Just then just imagine it's soup.
12:14
Yeah, I guess. I don't know. Soup snack snacks while you go. But yeah, the only thing
12:20
the only thing wrong with turkey mounts, they are only ground mounts. I think they should be flying mounts because
12:26
that would be hilarious. No. Have you ever Have you ever Have you ever seen wild
12:33
turkeys? We don't need them flying. They are evil incarnate. They make geese look
12:41
downright pleasant. H that is that is a little worrying because there are some wild turkeys that wander around my
12:47
neighborhood. Actually, they can fly already. They can they can and they fly high speeds and they often they often wind up in
12:53
trees. Um they don't fly long distances. They just they use it to go up in trees or to
12:59
escape from wolves. Yeah, they're sprinters. They're they're sprinters of the air. But yeah, no, I I've seen I've seen a turkey
13:06
unfortunately fallen uh because it got hit by a car and then the rest of the turkeys circle it and gobble at
13:14
incredible decibb to the point where it is the d most like earpiercing thing I
13:21
have ever heard. It is wild. I don't That is terrifying. Turkeys are terrifying.
13:26
Remember, they're all dinosaurs, guys. There's a reason these things are scary. They're dinosaurs. Mhm. Um but yeah. Um, I I don't know. I don't
13:34
want to talk anymore about like No, I mean we can we can move on. I mean to like we got other stuff to talk about like Legion.
13:39
Legion. Yes. Legion remix phase 3 Legionfall. It's live as we're recording. So if you hear this, it's
13:44
live. It's live. If you're listening to us live, it's live. If you're listening to us recorded, it's live. You can go do
13:50
phase three Legion Fall. Go do it. It's available. You go to the Broken Shore.
13:55
You do the Tumor Sargeras stuff. It's there. It's right there. Yeah. The the problem is though with it I think is the big the big one is and I
14:02
think we already knew this but you can't get the hidden artifact appearances X.
14:08
We okay we did not know this. Uh we kind of founded this out in the last week or
14:14
so because Blizzard initially said that yes, you could get hidden artifacts again and
14:21
now they've kind of retconed that. The post where they said you could get hidden artifacts is apparently gone.
14:28
Yeah. And I think I think I think there was some there was some speculation when they uh fixed the glitch for the bear
14:36
that this is what was going to happen. So, well, it's a disappointment. Um, but you
14:43
know, once you get your remix characters into the live game, you should be able to get those artifact. Of course, some
14:49
of them are not easy to get, but some of them shouldn't be too bad. Yeah, I think the the article which was uh written by
14:57
Christian uh specifically calls out like the warrior hidden artifact appearance as being one of the ones that is
15:02
relatively available uh but apparently is now not going to be. It's it's just a
15:08
weird choice. Warrior one was never particularly hard to get if we're talking the prop warrior one. I got that one accidentally.
15:16
Yeah, that was to find the the shield from the Deathwing scale. Yeah, the the mage one
15:22
was something about polymorphing people and the druid one was just you had to pay attention when you went through the dream way. So there's no reason why they
15:29
shouldn't be available. Well, the speculation at least is and I and I think I can kind of agree with this is that it has to do with maybe the
15:35
truncated drop tables cuz a lot of the uh hidden appearances were like ultra
15:41
rare drops from certain bosses that weren't guaranteed. Um, and if you're
15:47
eliminating things from the drop table, it seems like removing the secondary or
15:54
tertiary drop tables that are linked to it makes a little bit more sense because
15:59
if I remember correctly and and and this is like one of those weird like we I
16:04
remember like a technical panel at like a Blizzcon ages ago when they started
16:09
adding uh like particularly like special drops like this like the hidden
16:15
appearances is they were a completely separate thing that was like an addendum to the the actual drop tables. And so if
16:24
you're truncating it, you're changing how the drop table works. They might have had to cut it for technical reasons. And especially because you have
16:31
a limited amount of time with Legion Remix. So how much time are you going to try to fix it versus just say, "Okay,
16:38
well, we just can't make this work, so nobody gets it now." Right? So, I I'm maybe they intended for us to be able to
16:43
get them and then realized how much work and how many things would get broken as
16:49
a result of enabling them that you couldn't do it. I do think it's that's perfectly that
16:55
makes sense what you're saying. But for me, the weird part is that they deleted the original post.
17:01
Well, and then it got brought back when people they they've been making where'd it go? Yeah, they've been making questionable
17:07
PR choices with a lot of that stuff. Uh, and as Toa and Chad has pointed out, uh, certain hidden appearances like the
17:13
corrupted Ashbrer required you to take steps in Western Plague Lands, which obviously you can't do in Read.
17:19
Yes, true. So, there there's probably an element of that as well, right? Like these are things that you just can't uh cuz I I
17:25
think the shaman one as well, you had to go outside of uh Legion uh areas in
17:32
order to get uh the some of the hidden appearances. So, yeah. I mean I mean can't we just put somebody from
17:38
the you know bronze dragon flate there and boom I I know that that's not that easy. I don't know. I feel bad for people. I Yeah, I'm gonna do this and
17:45
then they can't. But I I get it. It's there's lots of reasons why it might be the case. Yeah.
17:50
I I do want Speaking of technical issues, I want to bring up something that I neglected to put on the topics
17:56
list which is maintenance. Recently we have had a lot of extremely long
18:02
maintenances. This Tuesday's maintenance was eight hours for The War Within, for
18:08
Miss of Pandaria Classic, and for WoW Classic. Eight hours for everybody. So
18:14
that's that's a little nuts. Yeah, I don't know that it is. But but also last week, Mr. Panderia had
18:22
an 8 hour maintenance, and the week before, Wild Classic had an 8-h hour
18:27
maintenance, and The War Within had an 8-h hour maintenance. We're getting a lot of eighth hour maintenances.
18:34
Yeah. And there's there's I sorry I was going to say there I know that we there were people chatting about it in Discord where you know they think
18:41
that some of it might be due to people leaving or or like there might be less people working on it. I don't know that
18:47
that's maybe necessarily the case because yeah, I don't know. When The War Within was getting ready to
18:53
release, um, we had a similar slew of very long
18:59
maintenances. Um, and we see that with like major like really big like updates,
19:06
sometimes they take longer. And I'm guessing they're working on stability
19:12
and let's like they have it on the PTR right now, but player housing is going to break this game. Let us let us be we
19:20
have no clue what it's going to do on live. We have no clue what it's going to do on live when like every player goes
19:26
to get into it. We don't know what the cascading failure effect is going to be. So, part of me
19:31
thinks that they're they're making sure that, you know, it doesn't take out retail world servers and then cascade
19:37
into somehow taking out classic world servers. Like, I could see there being some weird cascade effect that they're
19:45
trying to avoid. So, not surprising, but it is definitely notable. You are correct. Um, so yeah, it's one of those Well,
19:52
it's one of those things that you have questions about because usually they don't take all of the all everything
19:58
down for eight hours at the same time. So it feels like it must be something structural in the background.
20:05
I mean it's also possible that the fact that they're also pushing the alpha to beta within a week of today. I mean, not
20:13
a week, but you know, pretty close to act week next Tuesday. That might also be affecting it because
20:18
they may need to try and shore up things before they take the eye off of it for a little bit to focus on keeping the the
20:26
midnight alpha up and running cuz that's going to when that goes to a beta, people are it's going to be like the
20:32
original myths of beta all over again. Yeah. And don't forget that the the beta does use portions of retail, right? like
20:39
when you install the game, it uses a lot of the assets that you already have and I would not be surprised if it's leveraging live
20:46
services from servers that are already active, right? I like one of these days, I wish I could sit down and just talk to
20:52
the current architect of of the systems. I'd love to just poke their brain with some of their their their thought
20:58
processes on this and not just because I do this for a living outside of like this. Uh but I'm
21:04
really I would just love to see what their their current philosophy is on it. I mean, they changed the way it stores a
21:10
few years back, but it's still like ultimately this is a kind of a game that's been running for over 20 years
21:16
now. Well, don't forget even I was going to say don't forget there was a time where like they
21:21
completely overhauled all of the server infrastructure, like completely replacing blades, completely replacing equipment. They've
21:28
uh over the course of that the 20 plus years, they've completely changed how uh
21:34
the data center interactions work. like there's a the real server of thesiius kind of thing. Yeah. And I remember I remember having
21:40
late night conversations with a former employee and friend of the of us of ours about some of those changes and like
21:47
having some really deep philosophical like discussions about the zen of uh
21:52
server architecture. So uh you know who you are. I see you. I appreciate you. I miss those conversations.
21:58
First name start with a K. I can I'm not going to say anything. Yeah. If it's the guy I think it is, then yeah, he would know. Um, but so
22:06
yeah, it's it is one of those things that's it's very hard when you a game is this big and this complex and has this
22:11
many expansions, it's been going this long and has had so many changes, stuff can break real easy. So, it is not even
22:20
remotely surprising that the the dawn of player housing could absolutely be
22:28
causing fits in terms of like what is this going to do? But we've talked about this for a bit. So, let's move on to
22:34
Hearthstone. Uh because then Liz can talk, maybe Corey can talk. I can drink.
22:40
You're gonna make me talk about things. This is Yes. Um so, the latest Hearthstone expansion, Across the Time Way, is released on
22:46
November 4th. And as with every as with all of the coolest Hearthstone
22:52
expansions, I look at it and I'm like, I would love to see this in WoW. I would love to see some of this crazy stuff in
22:58
WoW or this crazy stuff expanded into more story content because it does such
23:03
cool stories with its themes and its cards, but they aren't they used to
23:10
expand them into story more. Yeah, they really don't. And that's that's kind of always a bummer when But uh this is all
23:17
about uh Chrommy exploring through the timeline. There's a new keyword called
23:24
fabled which takes iconic characters from WoW and Hearthstone's and gives
23:29
them interesting interactions. They may be alternate universe versions that she's brought forward for us to play
23:35
with like Ranger General Sylvanas. And when you play Ranger General Sylvanas,
23:41
she summons her sisters and buffs and uh each sister buffs the other sister. So,
23:49
there are all sorts of cool cards like this that bring in these different characters, these alternate characters
23:55
that are very fun and should be fun to play. And they have interesting lore stuff because Hearthstone is all totally
24:02
non-cononical. They can do crazy stuff like this. But I would love to see more crazy stories brought out of
24:09
Hearthstone. I don't think I'm going to, but I would love it and I love thinking
24:14
about it. Can you explain the new keyword, the rewind keyword? I'm really curious about this. So, the rewind keyword, you there are
24:21
lots of cards in the game that have a random effect. Like you play this card, you get a random card. Uh, you know,
24:27
mages have a lot of spells like that. You play this, you get a random something. Um, now with rewind, when you
24:34
play a card like this and it gives you a random something, you can say, you know, I don't like this random something. I
24:40
want a different random something. So, liter thematically, you can rewind and
24:46
do it again. and maybe get something better or maybe get something worse. You don't know cuz it's it's RNG always
24:53
messing with you. But this is a really cool one. I think this is a fun expansion and it is out right now for
25:00
you to play with. Uh what's also there's certain classes like um one I've know about is the
25:06
Warlock one. Uh where you say you have like a an eight, you know, an eight on a like tank card, you could split it into
25:13
two fours. Am I am I correct on this? like half the cost. I I don't know. I know each each class
25:21
has its own fabled character, its own fabled card, which is one of these
25:26
iconic characters, and each of them have their own unique effects. Uh so off off
25:32
the top of my head, I'm only remembering Ranger General Sylvanas, which is the one that, you know, she summons her
25:37
sisters. The one I know, the one I'm reading the article here for says that the warlocks get divergence, which
25:44
allows them to split a minion in your hand into two halves. Each half gets half the cost rounded, half the mana
25:49
cost rounded, but the full effect. So for legendaries with powerful stuff, you
25:54
could use that. So that's interesting. I Yeah, I think these are just, you know, a collection of different cards
26:00
that are in the game. I This is a really fun I think Hearthstone's best expansions have really strong themes
26:07
that they play around and this is definitely one of them. I agree. I mean it sounds cool to me. I
26:12
might even try and play it just because it's like like here's here's a fun um Demon
26:18
Hunter card, the Timeway Warden. Battlecry, imprison an enemy minion. It
26:25
goes dormant. And dormant in this case means you can't do anything with it. It's sitting on the board, taking up a
26:31
slot on the board, but it cannot do anything. It cannot act. It's kind of frozen there. It goes dormant for 10,000
26:39
turns. Uh, but if you, this card also has a
26:44
death rattle, so when it dies, the car the dormant card awakens again, basically comes back and you can use it
26:51
again. But, uh, you know, you you can't play a game that lasts for 10,000 turns.
26:56
This is just for being hilarious. Uh, so it it the expansion has a lot of a lot
27:02
of color to it. I'm just imagining someone trying like someone out there is going to try to do the 10,000 turns just to see what
27:07
happens. Absolutely. I I think this is literally impossible.
27:13
I know because uh they do lots of things that are impos that are probably impossible. There's there's always someone out there who's
27:19
going to try it because the problem is you have your deck has 30 cards in it and you can play
27:25
with that a little bit. But after you run out of cards, yeah, I guess you could do something that
27:31
keeps duplicating cards, but after you run out of cards, you take damage every turn. I guess you take an increasing
27:36
amount of damage every turn. I guess you could make a card something that keeps duplicating or cloning cards. Yeah, but
27:45
you'd still like you'd have to do everything, right? Because if you did it against the computer, the computer is
27:51
not necessarily going to do what you need to do. Yeah. You'd have you'd also have to have a player who would uh cooperate with you. So, two players would have to build sets
27:58
where certain things make make cards show up and they have to keep doing how you
28:03
would How are you going to talk somebody to do 10,000? Yeah. No, it's I think you'd get bored, frankly.
28:09
Oh, yeah. I I know I would, but some people really like to see if they can mess with the system. So, I don't know.
28:15
That's true. That's true. But yeah, that's what 10,000 turns take. Ah, cuz a turn lasts until you're done
28:21
playing, you know, your your No, it does. It does eventually go to a timer and it will not let you wait
28:28
forever. But I mean, could do a turn like really like that's
28:34
the other thing is they'd want to do as many as they could, you know, like seconds. You could just click end turn. You could, if you know
28:41
what you're going to do in particular, you can throw it on a card and just click turn immediately. You don't have to wait for anything. You can just say,
28:48
"Okay, I'm done. Someone's going to try and do this." I can't wait to find out some weird ways someone can do this. But, uh, while
28:55
we're talking about that, let's actually do the thing where we look at Corey and and see if we can get out the right
29:00
yarn. Cory, let's go. Let's go, buddy. They got your Oh, man. Isn't it Isn't it amazing on
29:07
the day that I was like, "Oh, man. I can totally make the podcast that they are so kind to release Heroes of the Storm
29:12
updates for me. It's unbelievable. Those guys, they don't just buy one. Nobody else. I'm sure other people can take advantage
29:19
of it, too. But yes, just for me. Uh yeah, there's here's a Storm PTR patch
29:24
uh going on right now again live as we speak, as we record or as you're listening to this later on. And it's the
29:32
standard kind of thing with a a slightly large with two slightly large changes
29:38
and some little balance things. Um, for a dead game, Heroes of the Storm is being very lively again. It's the the
29:45
patches are coming pretty consistently every two months or so. And they're
29:51
adding stuff. They're changing the way maps work. They're changing the way hero talents, some heroes talents have
29:56
worked. They they've just debuted a new system called pinnacle talents that are
30:01
uh if if you take a talent in for like forad that increases the damage done by
30:07
his W ability which zaps people with lightning when they get near him. If you can hit pe if you can hit enemy heroes
30:13
with that talent so many times eventually it will hit the pinnacle and you will have succeeded and you will get
30:19
a even better stronger benefit. These are brand new. They're they're coming out for a handful of heroes right now.
30:27
And oh boy, it's it's fun. It's it's a good idea. It's it's a very high
30:34
riskreward in a lot of the cases because they will have some of them have when you die, these get reset reset back to
30:41
the zero or to a milestone number on them. Falstat is getting them all for
30:47
his level ones. They're moving talents around. Guldan gets one. Carrian gets
30:52
one. Sylvanas, Thraws. So, like that's five heroes right there
30:58
that are all getting this new pinnacle talent and it's very possible we'll see more down the line because now they're
31:03
in there and something that exists. So, that's a big balance change. That's you
31:09
now have to look at five of these pretty damaging, pretty meta heroes and say,
31:15
"Oh, okay. They're danger. they were dangerous before and if we don't uh
31:21
address them, if we don't attack them early on in the game, they're going to be even more dangerous if we let them get away with this kind of thing. Or if
31:28
if you ignore them, maybe they don't get your maybe they don't get as dangerous if you stay away from them entirely. So,
31:33
it's a it's a good kind of messes with the established way the game works. And
31:39
the other big change is they have made it harder to dive on people in the early
31:44
game uh on the on most of the maps by adding in an extra tower that list that
31:50
lives between Good. Yeah. It lives between the fort and the keep. So that now there's something that
31:57
if you're that little squishy hero and you're trying to run away, but you're pretty sure someone's going to like come at you from the side or from above or
32:03
below, now there's a tower there to help protect you and make them really think twice about like, yeah, maybe they'll
32:08
kill you, but they could die in the process. Mhm. I just hope that when they do this that someone has recorded Joe's voice saying
32:15
good like that and that's what if when someone dies trying to gank someone there, that that's what will play in the
32:21
background. Listen, good. Good. Listen. No, I'm serious, dude. That was I loved that. I am totally in
32:27
in, you know, and I'm for it. And I want to explain why cuz I am a person who did nothing
32:33
but tower dive in that game. Like I would take Cassia and if there was a tower, I didn't care. I would go for the
32:40
kill. So like that's good that they're putting pressure on it. I wish that that's a change that I thought they should have made years ago at this
32:48
point, you know? I I don't know. I I miss this game. I still love this game. I love Mobus. Uh, and I loved this
32:54
flavor of it. I want it back so badly. Like, I want it to be main. Going on. It's It's going They're adding
33:00
They're adding the new mounts. They're They've added the new hero skin for Thraw. I There's got to be There has to
33:06
be a reason they're doing this. It can't just be like a handful of people saying, "Boy, wasn't Heroes of the Storm
33:12
great?" They've got to have the numbers that say it's worth it to spend time and money on this game. So, I have a theory.
33:19
Um, and this ties in with our pre-show stuff, so listen to our pre-show a little bit if you want more context. Um,
33:26
MOBAs are swinging back into favor a little bit more now, uh, or at least
33:33
more attention. Um, League of Legends isn't going anywhere, right? As a matter of fact, we were just talking about
33:38
League of Legends just expanding its market share by releasing a TCG uh,
33:43
based off of the MOA, right? Um, Smite 2
33:49
is in beta right now or early access, whatever you want to call it, and it's doing good numbers as well. And it's a
33:57
genre that at one point in time, League of Legends and Heroes of the Storm were
34:02
what I called the industry cooldown games. So many people that was their like relax on Discord or Mumble or Vent
34:11
or whatever with a bunch of friends after working on whatever games they were already working on to blow off
34:17
Steam and they were super super popular and then they fell out of favor because then Fortnite and Battle Royals became
34:24
the new dominant thing and now battle royale just sort of taper tapering off
34:30
and I think there's a renewed interest in games that are like mobile and mobile like Uh, and especially now that
34:37
Microsoft is in control of, you know, well, owns Blizzard at this point. You
34:42
don't look at that trend that's going on elsewhere, uh, and say, "Yeah, we're
34:48
going to leave this money on the table." No, you you start building up and you start looking at what your competitors
34:53
are doing like Riot, uh, and you look at the gold that you have sitting here that
34:59
you've been letting lay dormant for so long. Like it's such a great gateway
35:04
too, right? How many characters and how many universes did it introduce players to, right?
35:09
So many. And that was the the big selling point for it was that, hey, you know that hero that you saw in Warcraft
35:16
for a second and maybe you're maybe you played Horde back in Worlds of Draanor and you were like, whoa, this Paladivan
35:22
Draani lady is kind of cool. I'd like to know more about her. I'd like to like see more of her. And then you play her
35:27
in Heroes of the Storm and you're like, wow, that's actually she's a lot of fun. I kind of like her. Yeah. hope that nothing bad happens to
35:33
Urel or how many how many people that was their first introduction to the the Lost
35:38
Vikings. Like it's it's an interesting thing and I think that with the renewed
35:45
interest in MOBAs, this might be a slow march towards this coming out of
35:50
maintenance mode and actually getting some development time. We might get a Heroes of the Storm 2.0, right? Like
35:57
where or 3.0, whatever. Like we might we might get we might get a rebirth essentially.
36:03
Yeah, I it would I mean they could put Master Chief in it now. Obviously he's
36:08
gone to play he's going to PlayStation so he could finally fit into Heroes of the Storm like everyone was assuming. Yeah. Well, that's the other thing. They
36:15
could introduce the Microsoft like the the plethora of things that are under there. You could put uh why can't I
36:21
think of his name? Uh Crash Bandicoot in here for all I care. Like you could put a Crash Bandicoot skin on
36:26
Hoger because 100% he is Exactly. Give Hoger a Crash Bandicoot. Change to the change the meat to the
36:33
fruit. Make the boxes have little like question marks and exclamation points on them like the Crash Bandicoot boxes.
36:40
Doesn't Microsoft own both Doom and Quake? Yep. Y Wait, yes. Yes, they do. Yeah.
36:46
Yeah. Don't they own say you know everything they did software ever did?
36:53
Yeah. like Wolfenstein. I'm just saying you guys are talking about Master Chief, but imagine Doom Guy and
37:00
they Doom Guy Doom Guy is a skin for uh for Rainer. Go for it. Let's go. It would fit the They all write
37:06
themselves. They all make super good sense. When Heroes of the Storm was at its height, in its heyday, it was
37:13
showing that Blizzard was healthy. It was showing that Blizzard was a healthy company because it could do
37:20
fun things. Yeah. It was risk. It was really Yeah. Uh, you could you could do
37:25
the crossover skins with the different universes. You could do the everyone's a
37:31
Mexican wrestler now fun stuff. Those are called luchadors Mega Tokyo type thing. Yeah, I remember
37:36
that one. The anime stuff. And they were releasing full trailers for this, too. Like full anime trailers. They they were able to
37:44
tap into like the memes from the community. Like Jana is a dreadlord, so they gave her a Dreadlord skin.
37:49
Yeah. Liz Liz brought this up a while ago and every so often brings it up and and it's a a very appropriate point
37:58
here. You can tell when decisions are made because they feel that they're safe
38:05
and when decisions are made when they feel that they have to claw things back to be even safer. And so like
38:12
it when HOS was at its height, they felt safe. They could experiment. They could do whatever. And then when things got
38:19
towards the end there, of course you're going to start clawing it back. But we also now know in hindsight that a lot of
38:24
that was probably leading up to selling the company, right? So you claw back the stuff that isn't making as much money
38:31
and is basically a money sink. And now that sale is done, I don't know. Like I
38:36
I know it's opium. I know. But I want this I want this to to come back
38:41
swinging hard. I want I want it to be a thing again. We need to take the the biggest release of
38:47
the characters from the la from the 10pole games of the last little bit. So you get a you get a zealot and you get
38:54
your Lilith and you get insert Diablo other uh insert Starcraft character here
39:00
or insert Overwatch character here. I I don't know who the big Overwatch release has been recently. Stojurn.
39:06
Oh, we're going to talk about that in a second here, buddy. Yeah. Or Kirao. Like but you you you tie
39:12
that all up. You put it out as a welcome back. Here's who you missed. And then you just have fun with it again. It
39:18
shows it shows that you're a strong, healthy company because you can have fun with all of your toys at the same time.
39:25
And you can you can show that you are taking care of all your toys at the same time.
39:30
And I'm looking around and I've got Carbot like animated posters on my walls. And I've got a Deathwing Funko
39:37
Pop upstairs that I didn't have that I wouldn't have gotten before playing Deathwing in Heroes of the Storm because
39:44
turns out when you get a chance to interact with the character more than just riding on his back, he turns into a
39:49
fun kind of touchstone. Yeah. And I they with Warcraft Rumble, they had
39:55
all these amazing little miniatures that they could have been selling. And I get it, they're not a toy company. They don't want to sell toys. And they they
40:02
made him free for 3D printers, but I don't have a 3D printer. I don't have the painting skills to make it look
40:08
really good. But the these things exist. I want to buy merchandise of the characters I liked playing in Heroes of
40:13
the Storm. I have a pair of Hero here the Storm shorts that I bought off the Blizzard gear store and paid a butt ton
40:20
of shipping for because it boxer shorts. It's boxer. No, no, they're they're gym
40:26
shorts. But your butt's still in them. Yeah, my butt is still in them. we we we as
40:32
people who enjoy products and and IPs consume it and we consume it beyond it.
40:38
Um I'm going to use this as a really awful segue into the next thing because we got to move on. Um and I'm going to
40:43
steal Matt's job here a little bit because you did mention Overwatch and we I did mention Overwatch.
40:49
Overwatch is a game that seems to still be struggling to find its place and for a myriad of reasons and I will bring
40:56
this up because it is relevant here. Uh we've known for a while that the story
41:01
mode has been cancelled. Uh they were going to try it. There was originally going to be part of the core release of
41:06
of Overwatch 2. Then there was going to maybe be a campaign mode for a couple things and then it's canled completely
41:14
or at least we we've believe that they're holding true to that fact. But apparently Blizzard is doing a thing
41:20
with it where they're still trying to move the story forward by doing the thing that they did with Overwatch one and releasing story outside of the game.
41:27
you know, the thing that everybody said they wanted to move into the game. Um, which happened with a new lore video
41:33
with Sojurnn today, uh, which takes place after the Omnic Uprising, uh, in
41:40
happens to the one from the trailer. If you remember the trailer, it's the thing that was going to be the major part of
41:45
the game has now gotten a six-minute audio play where they hold a press
41:50
conference and say, "Yeah, we we won." And which is just okay.
41:55
Yeah. Yeah. And it's it's a shame. And the reason I bring this up is is I'm really curious, and this is a question
42:01
mainly for our listeners, cuz I know I've stopped playing Overwatch 2. I'm not going to lie. I've given up
42:07
completely on the game for now. Uh because it it doesn't do anything
42:13
better than the the first game did. In fact, it does a lot of things worse. um to a point where a lot of players or
42:20
people that I interact with uh and I will I'm going to quote this with I'm going to clean it up a little bit
42:26
because we're not going to swear on this show. Uh but this this little post that I saw uh I'm still waiting for someone
42:32
at Blizzcon to ask can we have Overwatch one again and then some arrogant blank will say you think you want it but you
42:38
don't a few few years later they give it to us and make a ton of money. It's another thing where it's like I
42:45
really hope Microsoft or whoever gives them the okay to just say go back and
42:50
make the game good again because Overwatch 2 has had so many missteps, so
42:55
many failed starts. I mean, the game released and it was not doing itself any
43:01
any favors because we went from Overwatch one's going to still be here, but Overwatch 2 will be a new game, too.
43:07
Sorry, that changed. Overwatch one is now gone and Overwatch 2 is all that's existing. And we've seen them creep in
43:15
Overwatch one game modes. We've seen them edge back towards that and then be wildly popular. And it's like just
43:24
and again how much money did they make off that game on merch alone? How many people bought Tracer hoodies? How many
43:30
people bought the Nerf gun tieins like the Reaper backpack?
43:36
The Reaper backpack. The Soldier 71. uh complete cosplay. Like you have all of
43:41
these things that like made them a ton of money and I know made a ton of money because I've gone to those Blizzcons
43:46
where the first thing to sell out was the Overwatch merch wildly. So, and now
43:52
I don't know that it really is making that big of an impact. And maybe things are moving away from being that
43:58
crossover merch and making that money like that. But I feel like if they were just to do that Overwatch one stuff and
44:05
then have the products available, people would be so happy. They'd be repping their favorite heroes again. Here's the thing. I remember Liz Con
44:14
2019. I remember when I was sitting in that auditorium full of people and they played the trailer for Overwatch 2.
44:21
People went bananas for it. Oh, the minute the music the minute the music hit. Yeah.
44:26
Yeah. The loudest pop I've ever like the only thing that I'd ever heard that had a louder pop was the immediately
44:33
following Diablo I trailer. People went just as nuts for that. It was just like my god, they know what they have. Um,
44:39
but I remember people were super excited about the idea of a different Overwatch
44:45
of a a new Overwatch that wasn't like Overwatch, the original one. People wanted different stuff. It is amazing to
44:53
see how in the six years since then, how thoroughly they have wasted the ocean of
44:59
goodwill that they had for this. Just an ocean of goodwill. I think Liz said it best when she was talking about how
45:05
literally everybody was talking about the the story campaign. Even the people
45:12
that didn't like it were talking about played trailers for Overwatch in front
45:17
of movies and Yeah. Yeah. like they it was everywhere.
45:22
Blizzard somehow managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Like I mean there was a period of like
45:27
four or five years where Overwatch was literally killing other games left and right. It was like a a demon trampling
45:34
on the hopes of pal of the guys who made Paladins. Um and they now it's this
45:42
and I don't even Law Breakers and I don't think Overwatch 2 is bad. I honestly don't I don't think it's bad. I
45:47
just think they they really managed to hit something wrong. I hear you trying to talk, Liz, and I want you to. So,
45:53
I think the thing here is Blizzard used to put a lot of work into the story. You know, they wrote novels. They did these
46:00
amazing amazing cinematics that you got into even if you didn't care about
46:07
playing an FPS or even if you didn't play shooters. That was me. I don't
46:12
really team-based shooters is not my thing. But you could watch these cinematics and you know there was talk
46:19
of an animated series. They were doing comic books all of this stuff and they've stopped
46:24
they've stopped doing any of that. And I mean this is how we got to this topic is that they've stopped obvious story
46:30
development and that big burst of excitement for Overwatch 2. It was going to have a story mode. All of us wanted
46:37
more story. All of us wanted more cinematics. And then they now none of that's happening. I played the story
46:44
mode of what they had available at Blizzcon. I played that. I physically got to test out some of those hero
46:49
talents that existed that you got as you went through that little story campaign mission. It ex It existed. It was fun. I
46:56
don't know the kind of replayability was going to be there that they wanted, but at the same time, it existed.
47:02
Yeah, this is like it's one of those cases where uh I feel like going to the
47:07
new lore mo lore section they're going to have in the game. Okay. Um, that's that's not what people
47:15
asked for, but cool. Uh, you know, it I feel like if if just binning the story
47:21
that they had helps them get on track, not just in gameplay terms, but in story
47:26
terms, like if they now can figure out how they want to tell the story of the world moving forward, then more power to
47:32
them. Yeah. But and I think that's one of the the weird problems with Overwatch is that the story is so tied up in the
47:37
game, right? Like Absolutely. Liz brought this up and I I and I I I want to restate it because I think it's important.
47:44
Overwatch one, the story of the game drew people into it. A lot of people who
47:50
hated FPS, hated hero shooters at the time tried it because they liked the
47:56
story and they liked the character and abandoning that is was a choice. And
48:02
yes, they're going to maybe look at moving the story along with like the audio dramas and maybe they'll release
48:08
other stuff, but again, part of me wonders if the damage is already done and like where do you go from here?
48:13
Yeah, I I don't know where you go from here. You have to you have to rebuild trust and you have to show people that you're willing to invest in the game.
48:20
And just like Heroes of the Storm was an indicator of a strong healthy company because it expanded on those universes,
48:27
so too are the cinematics that came out for the new hero releases. Uh we're a
48:34
strong an indicator of a strong healthy company and fully invested in the game and it's going to stick around for a
48:39
while. Mhm. And just like the cinematics in uh World of Warcraft when we had the old
48:45
soldiers stuff with Sarfang and Zappy Boy and Andwin and Solylvanus, like that was those were fully rendered cinematics
48:53
and those cost money and time and effort and intention. And that was the that was
48:59
a good sign that you know what, Blizzard is doing okay. World of Warcraft might not be the cultural juggernaut that it
49:04
was back in Wrath of the Lich King, but it's still strong and alive and kicking, and Overwatch might not be the cultural
49:11
juggernaut that it was back in the the heyday of its first release when everyone played it non-stop, but at
49:17
least if they were releasing Cassidy sitting on the in in Gulch uh eating
49:23
some pie, you understood that, yeah, okay, this is a this is a game that they're going to spend money on and I if
49:30
I invest my time into it, it will continue and that I will be rewarded for
49:36
investing my time into it. Yeah, with the recent releases with the recent like they announced the untitled survival
49:42
game and then they cancel it after a year of development and you know we see
49:48
things get pulled back and shrunk and they cancel the story mode and Warcraft Rumble gets cancelled after barely a
49:55
year of official release and you see that and it's like why are we why why
50:01
should I buy that was a question I had near the end of Warcraft Rumble when they they refused they didn't refuse,
50:07
but when they weren't releasing any kind of road map of content coming for it was why would I spend any of my money on
50:13
this game? I I'll give it my time. It was a fun way to spend some time, but at
50:19
the end of the day, I can't justify giving it the 5, 10, 15, 20, $75
50:25
for a bundle because who knows if it's going to be around next month.
50:31
And unfortunately, that is also what kills games because people don't spend money on them. in today's live service
50:37
uh gaming environment, you kind of have to to keep the company interested and make sure that they understand that this
50:42
is profitable and they can spend resources on it because things are expensive. I mean, look at Warcraft Rumble. How
50:48
long how long did we have that? And it had some it had it was microtransaction
50:53
city over there. I believe it's just hit its two-year release point as of either
51:00
the last week kind of thing and slightly longer if you lived in one of the countries that got it a slightly
51:06
earlier. I'm so glad Guns and Roses didn't release the album with with Microtransaction City on it because I
51:11
don't think that song would be worth you have to keep buying it and new this new you know Chrome one and
51:19
this here's a new version with somebody other than Axel singing. Anyway, I'm sorry, but Microtransaction City just
51:24
made my entire hackles come up. I do not want to go to Microtransaction City.
51:30
Yikes. No one does. But we've talked about Overwatch 2, I think, to the point where now we can
51:36
talk about other uh but first, we going to turn and look at Liz again with our sad puppy dog eyes and make her talk
51:41
some more. Man, talking. You brought me here to talk. Okay. I want to talk a big
51:49
big thank you to all of our supporters, particularly those of you who support us on Patreon. You guys are what keeps the
51:57
site going and growing. We rely on your support. And right now, support has
52:03
dipped a little at the beginning of the month. That's actually pretty normal to have a dip at the beginning of the month, the end of the month, because
52:09
people realize, "Oh, what's this? Oh, this thing on my credit card bill. I don't I don't need that anymore." or the
52:15
budget's tight this month, which a lot of people feeling that right now. And uh
52:20
you know, so we usually have some subscription cancellations kind of around the start into the month. Uh we're down to about $3,300 a month. We
52:28
like to be up over four. We're happier at four. Um so if you are able, and I
52:35
totally understand if you aren't, and you can throw us a few dollars on Patreon, that's patreon.com/bizzardwatch.
52:43
really helps keep the site going. For $3 a month, you get early access to all of
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these podcasts ads free with the bonus Blizzard Watch pre-show, which you never
52:57
know. Today we talked about Battleship for better or worse. Not for Halloween and Halloween. A lot
53:04
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thanks. So, thank you to everyone who's listening. I appreciate you. But also a
55:11
little little extra thank you to our Patreon supporters because that's that keeps the site spinning. Thank you so
55:16
much. Thank you, Liz. I'm probably going to at least mention them to some of the other games. Try to do it really quick because
55:22
we are kind of running out of time. First up, Dispatch, which Joe and I have both raved about. It hit the 1 million
55:29
sold mark uh basically in 10 days and it's still releasing chapters. So, if
55:34
you're like I think tomorrow is the uh episodes five and six release, Joe. Five, five and six will release on uh
55:40
November 5th and then exactly one week later uh the I believe the final two episodes seven and eight will release.
55:47
And there's going to be a second season or do we know that for sure or? Uh, with the wild success of this one, it is all but certain.
55:54
Okay. Um, so far guys, this this is an amazing game. Um, it's finally one of
56:00
the few times I've seen a Telltaleesque game where some of the decisions you
56:05
make are actually compelling. Um, quite frankly, it's been a long time since one
56:10
of those had one. Like the, you know, the Big Be the Wolf games did, but I I wasn't as impressed with the Batman one.
56:15
This is amazingly good. Uh Paul's good since we since we lost Telltale. You know, it's
56:23
been it's been a really dry season for games of that style. And this is one of the best ones ever
56:29
made. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's great to see something like this uh coming back. And there's also I mean there's a lot of
56:36
weight behind this one, too, including the likes of Critical Role behind it as well. I mean, and it is a very
56:42
universally light game. Uh critics are have it in the high eight or the mid
56:47
80s. Uh users almost have it at a perfect 10. Like it is What really gets me is how well Aaron
56:54
Paul integrates his character as the main character. Yeah. 100%. Aaron Paul who you did not necessarily
56:59
expect to see here and he works so well with people I've heard for years. Like when he's sitting there talking to uh
57:06
Laura Bailey or um you know it's just like wild to realize that you're hearing
57:12
that. Don't forget that Aaron Paul is also any winning Aaron Paul for his work on Breaking Bad. So, he is a fantastic
57:18
actor and Oh, yeah. Absolutely. But it's not always an easy translation to to voice act. But he's he is absolutely nailing
57:24
it. He's doing an amazing job. You guys are raving about this game. But could you give us for people who haven't
57:30
heard of it, could you give us give us the elevator pitch? What is this game about? I got this. Do it. I got this.
57:36
Okay. All right. So, you are a uh former superhero who has just recently gone
57:42
through one of the worst tragedies of your life. Not only has your father died, uh but you have lost the suit that
57:47
your father built for you in which to be a superhero. Think of a large Iron Man plus Hulk combined. Uh you then make a
57:55
deal with a company that works as far as dispatching heroes. It's literally a
58:00
professional company that sends heroes to various uh you know, emergencies. Uh,
58:07
their deal is if you help them with what they call their Z team, which is rehabilitated bad guys turning into
58:13
heroes as their dispatcher, they will rebuild your suit for you. Now, it
58:19
sounds maybe not quite attractive there because it is a a resource game. Um, but
58:25
the game is divided into just it's not just visual novel. It's not just a a resource game. It's both. and it
58:33
explores what it is to make decisions on the fly. Has RPG elements where you can,
58:39
you know, increase stats so you can cultivate the team of of who you're sending where. And then the visual novel
58:46
side of it is so well done, so incredibly voice acted, so incredibly
58:52
animated that at several points it is very easy to forget you are even
58:58
playing. Um, and all this to unravel the mystery of how your suit got destroyed,
59:04
what happened, the mystery of your relationship with your father, the mystery of the relationship with the technology that's been used, who you are
59:11
as a person and a hero, and what it means to be a hero, it is. And if you
59:19
like superheroes, you like visual novels, you like like deep interpersonal
59:24
stories, if you like any of those elements, I highly recommend you give this game a try. Yeah, I don't I like I said, I'm not a
59:30
big visual novel fan and I think this thing um just I've I've tried, you know, I haven't gotten to play as much as I
59:36
wanted to, but I've tried playthroughs for both uh the Invisagal Focus and for the
59:42
Blonde Bomber Focus, and they're both really much amazing stories. I'm just saying they're amazing stories. There are other there are other branching
59:48
paths you can take with it. But I will give one last selling point. There is a corgi whose name is beef.
59:54
Yep. And he's he's also he is the bestest boy. I will die for that dog.
1:00:00
Uh but since I can't I don't want to spoil anything. I'm going to now move on to the Outer Worlds 2. Uh because the
1:00:07
question here is anyone playing first thoughts. I love it and I'm afraid of it.
1:00:12
That's that's my thoughts. Liz, you why are you afraid of it? That's my question. I don't want to get attached to any of
1:00:19
these people. Um, oh, without spoiling why I feel like that's a problem, the opening of the game is
1:00:27
dramatic. Let me just say that. And there's some really great just setting
1:00:32
stuff here. You know, it's the opening is actually extremely extremely reminiscent of one
1:00:40
of my favorite medieval time, which is Mass Effect 2. It has elements of that. Yeah,
1:00:45
it has and it also it also has some strong echoes of the first Outerorlds game which I mean it feels pretty good.
1:00:51
Yeah, I I just like I said, I don't I don't like I don't want to get attached to these people because of but I don't
1:00:57
again trying really hard not to spoil anything. I will say that they've definitely made it more like flaws and
1:01:04
and perks like the systems of the game are more they have more of an a consequence thing to it.
1:01:10
When you make a choice with the with the game system, it can affect your gameplay in a significant ways. And it is
1:01:15
hilarious to take brilliant and and dumb at the same time. I wanted one of the best things I've
1:01:22
ever experienced. Next week, I I want to talk more about it because I just did an interesting deep dive article read about
1:01:29
some of the systems that didn't actually make it into the game, but influence how the game was developed. Particularly,
1:01:35
like what you're talking about, the interesting interactions between perks and flaws. And like I I think this game
1:01:44
is going to wind up being very important for development of games like this moving forward. So, your Fallouts, your
1:01:52
Skyrims, your uh basically all of that stuff. I think this is going to change
1:01:57
how those games look at this stuff. So, I'm I'm I want to talk about that next week, I think. Okay.
1:02:02
Yeah, I I have not made a ton of time to play this one, but I have gotten started and I have enjoyed it. And the best
1:02:09
thing I can say about it is that it feels as an Outerworlds one player, this
1:02:14
feels like a very comfortable, familiar world. It's going to be a bigger world. I think the character building is better
1:02:21
and more interesting and but it also it also feels familiar which you know
1:02:27
sometimes you want something to feel familiar especially it should feel like this part yeah it should feel like it's it makes sense to
1:02:34
be called the outer exactly exactly feel like it'd be like if you got Mass Effect 2 and instead of
1:02:40
Shepherd it was suddenly a Canari or something you know you'd be like what why is this you know what's going on
1:02:47
guys this feels like out you you don't you're not like surprised by it or like going, "Oh, this is wrong." But at the
1:02:54
same time, however, it does have surprises. I will never stop laughing at that opening cinematic. Never.
1:02:59
Really good. It's just I'm just going to tell you now, it's online. If you can't buy the
1:03:04
game for some reason, you want to go look at it, fine. But really, it's it's it is worth experiencing when you start
1:03:10
the game. It's just Yeah, it is it is worth it. It's worth going in cold and not knowing what's
1:03:16
happening. But, you know, it's it's The Outer Worlds, so you know, it's going to have a particular vibe.
1:03:23
Yeah. Finally, uh, this isn't a game, but, you know, somebody put it here. Possibly Joe, possibly Cory.
1:03:29
Definitely me. Yeah. Um, apparently Rachel Weiss and
1:03:34
Brendan Frasier are going to make another Mummy movie supposedly. This is a rumor. Nothing's
1:03:39
confirmed yet. I honestly, part of me is like, "No, no, please don't go back to the well." But
1:03:45
then I'm like, they made that Tom. Yeah, they made that Tom Cruz one in 2017. I need something to cleanse that
1:03:52
movie out of my brain. That was supposed to be part of the the Dark Universe, too. Like that was the whole kickoff.
1:03:58
The Dark Universe. Yes. Yes. And it flopped so hard. Yeah. And and and I think this is also
1:04:04
important because it's coming at a time where Brennan Frasier's career is getting a second wind and like it is
1:04:09
perfect timing. So, like I want this to be something that gets announced so
1:04:14
badly. I need it. We talked about this literally on this podcast and literally
1:04:20
on Tavern Watch because we need it. This movie for many of you that are listening, The Mummy Returns, The Mummy,
1:04:27
the entire Brandon Frasier franchise with that was probably a formative movie
1:04:32
for you in some capacity. Not the third one. The third one,
1:04:37
we don't talk about that one. They they they didn't make it with racial wise. It's like no, you can't not have racial.
1:04:42
But the fact that they're going to just basically make it if this rumor is true that they're talking about making it as
1:04:48
like a direct sequel. Um I I'm interested and again anything that will
1:04:53
cleanse the pallet of the Tom. Uh that that was really bad. But I think that'll that's good enough for this week. Guys, what do you think? We we can stop now.
1:05:00
Yeah. Uh, I mean, we could just briefly address Ted Semi's question from the Q&A
1:05:05
section here because it's so quick for my answer would be so quick on it. I don't know if you guys want to keep
1:05:11
going for a minute. I I I'd be down to keep going for a minute. All right. Then you have to do it. You
1:05:17
have to read it or you you have been volunttoled.
1:05:22
I volunteered pretty much. You don't have to tell me anything. So Q&A, just
1:05:27
one quick one this week from Patreon supporter Tetsi, big friend of the site. Thank you very much, Tetsi. Which are
1:05:33
you more interested in from an entertainment point of view, the deep dive or the Q&A? And that's the
1:05:40
question, and it's so obvious that it should be the deep dive. I don't I I
1:05:45
don't need audience Q&A because half the time you get the person walking up to the stage and saying, "Oh, this is
1:05:50
really more of a comment than a question." And the other half the time they they ask something that either you
1:05:56
for sure 100% know that they cannot answer or they answer something that if
1:06:02
you just watched the deep dive that was an hour earlier, you'd already know. But they couldn't watch that because they were sitting in the back of the room
1:06:08
waiting for their chance to get a Q&A up. So I think from a from a reporting
1:06:14
standpoint, the deep dive will by far and away be the better format always.
1:06:19
and Q&A is just too full of softball questions and questions that cannot be
1:06:24
possibly answered because they would either be spoilers or there's something that the developers just can't answer.
1:06:30
Can I answer neither? Joe, either you. Joe's saying neither. Yeah, just real quick. Like deep dives
1:06:36
can be very boring because they they are selecting the path they're going down
1:06:43
which is fine and that's a lot of information and I'm okay with that but it's not very entertaining to me because
1:06:49
it might not be what I'm interested in. It might not be what I care about. They might spend I don't know 30 minutes
1:06:55
talking about the Path of Titans and then it never makes it to the game. Um, the Q&A for the same reason the Corey is
1:07:01
like it used to be fun and it used to be a really good thing, but then after red shirt guy, everybody wanted to be red
1:07:07
shirt guy and so like you got these gotcha questions or these people that think they're slick and like not every
1:07:14
question is bad but a lot of them are just boring. I would prefer a guided
1:07:21
campfire chat. Something where for weeks in advance, questions are submitted and
1:07:29
you're allowed to basically like you get a list and the list goes up for voting or polls or whatever to see what people
1:07:36
are mostly interested in. And it's not perfect, but to me that at least gives
1:07:41
it a little more direction for a deep dive to answer things that maybe people actually want to know about versus
1:07:48
whatever the developer thinks is the most interesting thing. I've developed stuff before. What I think is the most
1:07:54
interesting thing might be you watching paint dry with me talking. The two things are not necessarily always
1:08:00
aligned. So something that would be a little more guided than a a traditional deep dive would be what I would want to
1:08:06
see. See, sorry to jump back in real quick. No, no, no, man. You had your whole thing. Let Liz talk. Come on. Come on, Liz. Please.
1:08:13
Go on, Corey. But I've had the opportunity to ask developers a question. And I find that
1:08:20
at the end of their their Q&A at Blizzcon, what got the best kind of response from them was asking a
1:08:26
developer what they were most excited about, what they were from what they were working on. And I I find that that answer like whatever. Yeah, of course
1:08:33
they they have their talking points, but you can see some passion come through in somebody's voice there. I I still would
1:08:39
prefer a deep dive over a Q&A, but but that's not the qu but that's not the question. The question is what do we find them or what are we more interested
1:08:44
in? So that was my opinion. Cy, you don't get to tell me my opinions wrong. Now I want to know what Liz has to say.
1:08:51
Frankly, frankly, I agree with Corey completely because I feel like one of
1:08:56
the problems with Q&A is that it can be wildly unstructured and it can go wildly
1:09:02
off topic because, you know, if if I were here asking a question at the Q&A,
1:09:07
if I waited in line and got to the beginning, I would be like, "When do we get to go to Loramar and Theaser's
1:09:13
wedding?" And that's a stupid question that has nothing to do with the current game. probably, but if you if you let us
1:09:21
go to the wedding, I would not I would cheer you on. But, you know, you can get
1:09:26
people going in and it's like they're asking about their, you know, that
1:09:31
little thing that they love and are super interested about and that's maybe not as interesting to you personally or
1:09:38
to everyone else in the audience when you have this kind of brief window where you can ask the developers directly
1:09:44
questions. So, I do like Joe's thought here is that you could structure it a little. You could take questions. You
1:09:50
could vote on questions. Make sure you're answering things that the general community really cares about, which may
1:09:56
not be weddings. I don't know. And so, yes, Q&A are hard because sometimes
1:10:03
they can be very good. Sometimes there can be some really interesting questions. Sometimes it can just be very
1:10:09
random and off topic and you don't get answers to anything you would have wanted. I don't care which as long as
1:10:14
they write it down. I want them that too. Everything Everything needs to be written down. Please post it. Not
1:10:20
just a video. Give me a transcript. Yeah. Official transcript. Official transcripts.
1:10:26
I don't I don't care if it's deep dive. Can you tell we work for a site? Write it down. Yeah. I need something I
1:10:32
can go back to and quote instantly quickly without having to scrub through 35 minutes of video.
1:10:38
Please and thank you. Yeah. That that So that's my answer. Is it is it written down somewhere? Is it
1:10:44
can I go look at a page and just read it on that we all agree. So say we all.
1:10:50
Now uh that's it for this week watch uh podcast. So if you are out there
1:10:56
listening to us, thank you so very very much for this. Whenever you're listening to us recorded or not, we appreciate you
1:11:02
doing that for us. Thank you guys so much. Thank you to Joe and Liz for
1:11:07
keeping this, you know, this podcast existing week in week out with their
1:11:12
hard work. Uh, thank you to Corey for your your coming in and clutch guest starring and, you know, once again
1:11:20
almost quicksotic love for Heroes of the Storm that keeps everybody alive. What a dead man ever.
1:11:26
And, you know, take care everybody and we'll be back next week.
#Computer & Video Games