Overwatch 2's season 15 parties like it's 2019

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[Music]
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hi everybody and welcome to the Blizzard watch podcast uh this is a podcast where we talk about Blizzard Entertainment it's many games and then some other
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games too if we feel like it and have time often it's and half time uh in addition to myself I'm Matt we have Liz
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Harper the sites uh Grand High Puba and otherwise overall editor-in Chief you
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that that's her job that's who she is hello also uh we have Joe Perez who does
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practically everything to keep this show going like record it and get it up you know all edit it all that stuff hi Joe
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hello and as our special guest we've confirmed before the podcast that he is still a guest and not actually a
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featured actor but regardless he's good it's good that he's here uh Phil Eric hi Phil hi are you in any way related to
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the comic book character Ben Eric uh no because there's an L in my name that you're missing over it's but I'm also
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I'm also not related to any famous or rcks as far as I know like Lars yes not yes I can't you're lucky there you
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dodged a bullet yeah I know anyway now that I've slagged on the drummer from Metallica for absolutely no
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reason you're catching Strays yeah I don't know what that was uh this week a
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lot of stuff happened the week that just happened uh I I hope you understand we can't tell you what's coming in the
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future if we could we would but unfortunately I I have not been strapped to a rock with my liver torn out or
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anything like that so no gift of Prophecy um but nevertheless we had a big reveal about OverWatch uh season 15
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we had a whole big deal that they were talking us about um so this is an
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interesting thing uh I have motion sickness so I can only like read OverWatch news and watch videos I have a
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I have a question for you Matt goad is the motion sickness thing based on it being a first person game yes I can't go
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to third person very effectively in it I mean there to a degree can see your character moving but it's not as much
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yeah as I need I need a wider one of the things they announced at this big
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OverWatch uh 2025 event was that there's a new mode coming starting in season 16
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called Stadium it's a new 5v5 mode but Pro probably the most interesting thing
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is that you can play it in third person yeah and believe me that's an interesting thing for me because I I
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mean I'm not going to be a great OverWatch player ever blind people tend not to be really good at competitive
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Shooters but I I do like the game enough that I would most likely play it if it didn't make me want to hurl um yeah
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unrelated to that but I was just now realizing that it's it's amazing I've gotten through cyberpunk because there's
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no way to switch it you just you have that totally first person view and it's a it's a testament to just how much I
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love it that I basically just look down a lot it's like oh no don't look around me don't look around just look down um
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but regardless what what's what what do you think other than that news I mean I guess there's loot boxes to talk about I
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mean loot boxes com back there before you even get there like do you want to talk about the Talon and perk thing that they're doing yeah but I figured we talk
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about that as a big deal like because it's very big deal isn't it yeah it definitely is all right go ahead Joe um
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okay or Liz I think you were you're starting there so otherwise I'll I'll crack in because I have feelings about
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this just not I don't know much about OverWatch yeah about the perks well I mean about the loot boxes too but that's
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a whole other thing all right here's what we'll do Liz talk and then Joe will talk there okay well I I'll I'll start
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with perks because it's first on this list I have in front of me so perks sound like something we were promised
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for the PVE version of OverWatch which never happened and they're talents that
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you're going to get while you're playing the game so you'll get a talent that might improve one thing or the other
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thing you might get um so they're completely different for hero but
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frankly it reminds me of Heroes of the Storm yep because you're going to play You're Going to level up and it's like
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oh do I want to upgrade this thing in this direction or in that direction and that's going to completely sort of
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change how you approach the game it's going to change how you approach other Heroes how other Heroes approach you and
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I think it's really cool to add more modifications to any game so this is a big thing this is now live in season 15
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now jumping ahead to season 16 when the stadium mode shows up it's going to have
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something that is a lot like perks but with a different name called mods so
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when you're playing in the stadium you can mod your character in different ways that it's it's like perks but it seems
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like there are more of them you have more options and more ways to upgrade and change your gameplay I think all of
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this is great being able to control how you play modify how you play I think that's great in absolutely every game
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I'm looking forward to seeing how it plays out Joe I think it is a horrible thing
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that ruins quickplay and competitive and should not be introducing anything outside of a standard into any of the
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standard game modes and I'm going to tell you why this ruins this ruins a skill-based competitive experience
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period because there's no like how do you get these perks how often do you get them just one team is one team possible
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able to pull ahead and get more perks in the other team therefore increasing the Gap and making it a absolutely lopsided
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experience that the other team can't come back from also there are currently 42 Heroes which means that there's what
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they they said 168 Perks at launch with each hero having two minor and two major perks to choose from this creates a
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potential for massive imbalance and combinations therein are also possible
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for massive imbalance and again in a game that is supposed to have a competitive mode that it relies around
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skill that is a problem in a game like Heroes of the Storm or League of Legends or any of the the Moa style games that's
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completely different where like I mean Heroes of storm you couldn't adjust your talents once you had them that was it you just you you wi them you went a
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build and you went there in every other game that does something similar to this everybody can dump their skills and
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rebuild it and also your experience gaps the game compensates for to try to keep
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people within a certain range of each other otherwise the game just ends here I think it completely Alters the
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OverWatch experience into something that's not OverWatch and it makes me not want to play the game even like I don't
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even want to pick it back up and I think that it's a cool idea for individual
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game modes but should not be part of quickplay and should not be part of competitive and I'm going to be very
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curious to hear what serious FPS Gamers or people that were still pushing
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competitive what they think about this because it's going to alter that gameplay experience because again you
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can't plan for what your opponents are going to do even though it sounds like oh there's only two minors and two
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majors for everybody that's still a lot to compensate for a mid-match and again in a competitive game that
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relies on strategy and equal and equal skill or at least making it skill-based
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it Alters that game entirely and again this is my opinion but I've seen other
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games in the past like this that have done similar things and it completely ruins that experience because you you
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can't build around it you can't plan for it you can't explain and then what happens if you like do you keep those
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those perk levels when you switch to another character if you're in quick play uh do you are you hard locked in in
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competitive uh is there you know a way to redo those if you pick the wrong
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thing uh sentiment wise again like in something like Stadium fine but the
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minute they said competitive I'm like this this just doesn't make any sense the game is not built around that and it completely Alters the experience
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especially with the other thing um I mean there's another thing where they're
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and I'm just going to segue into it just real quick cuz I think it's relative here they're adding a this a permanent
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6v6 mode for competitive and they already had a hard enough time balancing that the first time
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around and now you're introducing 168 more variables into that so it's a
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really cool concept but I think it's going to make the game unplayable for a lot of people okay I R it is a balanced
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nightmare it is like I'm I'm thinking about when World of Warcraft went and added the hero
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talents and we're all looking at these and thinking how are they going to balance this this is so many extra
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talents this is so many extra abilities and it's like that's never going to be balanced and kind of what happened in
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World of Warcraft is there's there's a best one to choose and you choose it that's kind of how it shook out but this
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is a very different kind of game you're looking at this Joe from a competitive angle and I'm looking at it from a
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player angle cuz I don't do a lot of serious competitive gameplay so that's
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that I look at it and say oh having more choices and getting to play in different ways sounds really interesting but you're exactly right this is going to be
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much more difficult to do counterplay and to just approach the game and a competitive so I mean we'll
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see 168 perks I don't I don't know is it possible to balance 168 perks Pro I mean
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maybe but I mean also the other thing about a hero shooter is you want to change your play style you switch the
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hero you're on right like if you have mercy and your
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options are okay Mercy heals more or Mercy crit heals more often you're not
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really changing the experience you're claiming you are you're just making an already annoying healer even more
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annoying to deal with right or it could do something where instead of doing healing she does an exponential more
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amount of damage I remember uh when mercy had like the highest damage cap in
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the game with her little pistol uh and you could literally head shot somebody better than black than the than
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Widowmaker could right like it it's a weird position for for them to be to be
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in here and I think they're trying to refresh it and try to get people to come back and play the game yeah but I just
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don't know if this is going to do what they wanted to do I think you guys are ignoring something though and that would be you want to know what it is I was
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curious if you wanted to know what it was um they've been doing stuff in their design that feels an awful lot like
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they're trying to backo in stuff they were talking about doing at BlizzCon
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four or five years ago like I remember biscon 2019 it's the last one the only
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one I ever got to go to I remember the OverWatch 2 trailer and I remember all
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the discussion of what OverWatch 2 was going to be and as Liz points out frequently and and rightly so you know
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that didn't happen we didn't get that but it feels like they're kind of bringing in all the nuts and bolts
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for that kind of game well yeah I think Liz mentioned that this was similar to what they they almost exactly what they
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said yeah it's almost exactly the same and so is the the mods thing that's coming in for the other the other game
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mode it's it's funny how it feels like it's there's like almost like a civil war in the OverWatch 2 team is in terms
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of what game they are making and I'm fascinated by this because I I don't
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know if it's just a simple matter of oh people are playing r what do we do or if it's if it's a
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bigger more elaborate dispute between Visions for the game I don't know that
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they know what the game vision is anymore that's my point I think there are at least two competing ones and
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these teams are like not sure which one they're supposed to be designing for because this is the kind of thing that
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would be great for for PVE if there was a or even if you just had like some kind
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of non crazy like like imagine if you were doing a PV PP thing which was where
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you each were attempting to get to a place first and you weren't fighting each other very much like imagine if you
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had alter Valley in OverWatch like something where you're trying to each get to a to a location and do something
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there before the other team can get to could to can get to another one that's a that was a very PVE focused Battleground
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still is I mean you know I haven't played it in a while but you know you're still going kill a guy in situations like that having that kind of choice
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could be interesting so is is that coming or is this just a case of they
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they had an idea and thought it would be interesting I don't know but I do think it's it's really convoluted to look at
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OverWatch right now and try to work out what's going on by the choices they make I feel like it's
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maybe maybe less of an intentional design decision and more looking back on
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the game that was and all of the development time they spent trying to make single player work trying to make
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PVE work and and saying okay we've got all of these perks that we set up we've
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got these talents we were going to do can we take this work this stuff we were working on and use it I you do see game
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developers do that they you may not get the game that they were initially planning but you may get parts of it so
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I I feel I don't want to say scraping the bottom of the barrel that's not the the right term for this it might just be
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time crunch if they feel like they have to get something out get something out now you spend time to try and develop a
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whole new feature that has nothing in common with anything you ever had or do you look back and go hey what if we took
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path of the Titans and kind of did it different because we've had we've had six or seven path of the Titans in wow
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we just never got path of the Titans and but you know look the the artifact weapon borrowed Power Systems kept
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coming back and they were basically path of the Titans so yeah I mean I get what you're saying on should we talk about
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the loot boxes how how their battle pass okay so uh loot boxes they're coming
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back but they're basically on the battle pass which means they're not like the old loot boxes at all um so I do love
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the headline that I think Anna must have given this when I said OverWatch you just referred to a backup from 2019
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already I did not mean I wanted loot boxes on the battle pass and I mean I just love that headline so I was going
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to repeat it yeah I just don't feel like anyone asked for this and the thing is
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loot boxes are on the free battle pass so whereas previously the free battle
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pass had a list of rewards that you would get as you played through the battle pass now you're going to play
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through the battle pass and get loot boxes which give you random rewards that you may or may not want or be interested
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in or may not be great so it it feels like an extra uh an extra slap to PV oh
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I hate using that word to tve players oh no ah I'm I'm I'm going all the wrong
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directions tonight it just it just feels like it feels worse if you are a free player because yeah now you don't even
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know what you're gonna get yeah and it's the one good thing about a battle pass free or not is that you know what the
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next thing is you know what you're working for you know what you're heading down the road on and now they fixed
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that yeah last time I played OverWatch or with loot boxes in it I know exactly what you're gonna get a couple sprays
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have fun a lot of this a lot of this feels like they're panicking and going what when OverWatch was Top of the World
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this is what we had we got to put it back in there somehow loot boxes they loved loot boxes yeah like and I'm I'm also curious
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if they're going to be I'm assuming that they're going to have to file the drop rates for things again with the various
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gaming commissions that are not in the United States um but like yeah it's this
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is such a baffling baffling decision I don't know what they think the goal is
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here like I am not going to be surprised if this dramatically drops purchasing of
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battle passes with paid tiers because if you don't know what you're getting why
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are you going to give it money like every every other premium battle pass just shows you what you get yeah is that
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what the premium is that part of what B I misunderstood but my uh my understanding was that the premium one
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does show what you're getting it's only the free players who are getting Stu with okay yeah yeah so it's only the
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free tiers on the battle pass that get loot boxes the paid tiers you still get
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promis Anna and Chad is saying that they're on both Anna saying they're on both oh well okay okay so my point
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stands my point is just that didn't didn't we get Battle passes on like
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weren't they designed to replace things like loot boxes wasn't that goal no so not not specifically so the thing with
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battle passes is there are battle passes that exist out there rocket League was one of them before um they were bought
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by epic and and all that stuff uh even League of Legends does it uh to a certain degree uh where in your battle
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passes premium or otherwise you got loot boxes or drop crates or emotes or
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whatever the case was it was scattered among everything that you possibly had
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the only one that I I I think even for a while I think even fortnite on the premium one had uh like ones that you
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would have like essentially that were loot boxes like here you unlock a weapon skin but it's a random weapon skin so
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this is nothing new it just happens to be new since OverWatch added battle pass
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in particular M yeah I I don't know that all these decisions just make me not
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want to play OverWatch guys like I loved OverWatch I played I played a bunch of OverWatch 2 too I reinstalled it so
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excited when I got a brand new computer put that put that thing all the way to Max like everything and yeah like I
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understand that I'm in a love affair with Rivals right now but I I'm like I'm as we're sitting here I'm literally
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uninstalling OverWatch 2 I'm not even joking sorry I said a lot there I again
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sleepy sleepy giant Joe has uh has lots of opinions on today's uh various gaming
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BS that's happening no it's it's good I like opinions also uh before we move on
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to other things uh really fast you're um there's no new heroes in season 15 in
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case you were like oh this new Heroes uh we do know that we are getting more heroes in the future um yes in fact go
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ahead Liz in season 16 we're getting Freya who is a finnished search and
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rescue operative turned into a bounty hunter because that's a natural career
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progression so a lot of people seem really excited about her she has uh like
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and crossbows and uh I I feel like she looks a lot like a Diablo Demon Hunter
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personally that's my take on her but we'll see we'll see next season her
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skin already have Ash at home so I I do like that kind of point but I don't her
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skin does look like the proposed uh Diablo Demon Hunter skin for uh
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OverWatch that we saw a while ago so I Liz may be on to something here and also
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since we're talking about season 16 and Liz already mentioned stadium that is a mode that is coming uh and addition to
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hopefully making it so I can go third person uh and play the game uh it's it's
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a 5v5 experience so it's not 6v6 it's still 5v5 uh but then it's going to have
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the coins that you spend while you're playing kind of kind of like perks but it's also kind of like you know plunder
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storm or you know Tor Gast in a way and that you get these things and spend
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points on them and then you get more of them and so forth as you go I again it
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it feels like a PVE mechanic getting brought into a PVP game so I'm not sure of how that's going to play out but I'm
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I'm excited just for the ability to at least play OverWatch quite frankly uh thing go ahead the thing is you know
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OverWatch ditched the the PVE mode the story mode because they couldn't get it
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to work basically they couldn't get it to feel feel like a good gameplay experience but now it does feel like
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they're taking some of that some of those features they promised in this mode and uh clamping them onto the base
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game so can the question is can you merge these two gameplay ideas because
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in fact they've already told us we tried to do this and it didn't work but now they're adding it back you know I think
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talking with you through this Joe is i' I've kind of changed my mind my my thinking on this is flipped and it's
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more like can they make this work how's it going to play we're going to have to see it just launched so we're going to
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have to see how it goes yeah I mean and and that's the thing like it's an unknown and we don't
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know how it's going to be received and maybe it does you know renew interest in the game maybe it does create an
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interesting play experience for players maybe it creates an experience that completely kills competitive play
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because you people don't like perks or uh the perks are always going to be
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exactly the same because there is only one mathematical thing you can pick for each hero that makes it the best in
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competitive mode period who knows we'll find out but well I won't find out because I'm gonna I literally I will I
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literally have uninstalled the game I will wait to see what people report on it but yeah though that it's it does it
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feels like a lot like they're bolting on stuff from the single player game that would have been like you or a PVE
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experience you tell me that this stuff is available in a PVE experience I'd be all over it right you and you and your
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makes me wonder go ahead Phil it makes me wonder if maybe like this was part of the PVE experience that did work
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and they kind of filed it away to go let's save this for later and we can make use of it and scrap whatever didn't
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like maybe the actual like PVE story structure of gameplay wasn't working for them but like we had this cool perk
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system and we can bring that back in the future maybe cuz I mean it does it does feel like something that you could lift
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entirely out of its original context which I would I would guess like you guys are saying they probably have and
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just found a new mode for it also I want to put this in here I am surprised in a game that puts as much effort and art
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value especially in creating prettyy looking skins that this is the first time I can remember being able to play the game in third person like I I I
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don't know about you guys I I didn't really worried about skins and OverWatch because I I wanted to look at them they're not there for you to look at
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they're there for me it's kind of weird that you know you only get to see them at set times like I want to I want to
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see my skin while I'm actually playing the game so they were there for play the game buddy yeah like I'm ever gonna get
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that yeah the the interesting thing though is if this is lifted from the the PVE side that they were working on and
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they claim that they didn't get PVE out there because they couldn't get it to work which I remain skeptical about I'm
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I'm not going to lie um makes me wonder what didn't work in PVE then they say
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that it wasn't a satisfying go ahead it might be something as simple as the fact that they did not have any kind of
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method by which the narrative could exist like they don't really have an open world OverWatch yeah but okay so
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but here's the thing in OverWatch one and we've talked about this a lot they had had PVE player experiences yeah but
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those were curated experiences in a single location not a why can't you why can't you do the same thing well I mean
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I don't know because that's what Titanfall 2 had and Titanfall 2 had the best PVE experience I've ever played
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with that kind of structure um it was a shooter and you drove around in a big
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robot and shot people and it was great it was you know it was a single player experience where you went from place to
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place and then you get to a point where it would move on to the next chapter why couldn't they do that here I don't know
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but that might have been it might have been a time thing yeah but really idea and that's what I'm curious about because like it makes me wonder why they
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couldn't just do what they did with the other PV experiences which is okay here's the we're going to lay out the story in these segments here's six parts
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and I'm just going to pick an arbitrary number you cue for part one with friends or randos or by yourself with robots uh
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and you go through and you play The Experience just like you did in the in OverWatch one uh with like the omnic
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crisis and all the other stuff that they released uh or junkenstein's Revenge where it's a scenario it's an arena
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shooter to begin with lean into it uh and that it doesn't have to be this massive open World experience it just
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has to deliver story and again and we've talked about this before with OverWatch
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even and on lat and and even when an an was with us we had all these ways that
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they delivered story outside of game and all they need need to do is put cutcenes inside of the game and the game engine
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can the game engine not handle cutcenes does I mean it doesn't seem like that's really a problem it seems like they can
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intersperse like the animated stuff that they do elsewhere and put it into the game as it is so you have those story
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moments of like video or animation or whatever then gameplay and Arena where
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you like fight through an encounter or go chasing across a city with you know against a specific villain or whatever
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then back to another an animation thing and then you cue for the next one like I would love more details on what didn't
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work in PVE and why they think this stuff will work in PVP like I just I
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want more information and I feel like this is just very sparse I think some of the problem might
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come down to the very simple fact that they were promising us a game in 2019 sure then 2020 happened followed by the
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2021 Blitz apocalypse when the state of California brought their um employee
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action against them and then the massive massive amount of people just leaving or
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being fired or Vanishing in a puff of smoke I'm looking at you Jeff Kaplan um
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who knows I don't I don't think we'll we it's gonna take us a long time to get answers to those kind of if we ever have
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them personally I feel like Jeff left because because the game he wanted to
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make was not getting made you know one of he was the one who got up on the BlizzCon stage and said yeah we're
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making this game I press events he really insisted this is not just OverWatch this is OverWatch 2 it's a
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real sequel it has this new game mode it's going to tell all these stories it's going to be a separate installation
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it's going to be its own new game engine yeah he seemed really invested in this
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and really interested in building this game and he's the one up there promising these things that blizzard couldn't do
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so that's that's the explanation I've come to in my head that they weren't
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making the game game he was after and he you know he bailed and since then the game has kind of it's been a little iffy
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on its identity it hasn't picked a direction to go plus we we you keep talking about them not doing the PVE
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mode but we don't really mention that that Michael Chu who was their headwriter also left if you if you're
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gonna make a PVE game and your head riter takes off that's that's a pretty big thing to have lost when that's what
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you're trying to do so there's there's a lot of possibilities here we've however we've been talking a lot about this and
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we probably we have so uh gonna g to bring us to this
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cataclysm classic news for a uh dragon souls now out it's live right now uh so
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if you are playing cataclysm you are now on the last phase of cataclysm classic there isn't anything else coming guys
27:45
dragon souls out uh you are in the last content you're getting until Miss
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Pandaria classic yeah you got a few months yeah whatever however long that takes and we don't actually have any
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idea when that is but whenever that happens probably summary summary summary summary summary
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judg we really we really don't have any Warcraft news this week that's kind of
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shocking that there is it's it's a week where kind of nothing happened in
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Warcraft but of course next week the game's rolling but there's no news let us breathe after the onslaught of
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housing news that had everybody uh excited undermines going you know getting the raids you know it's just
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there's not much to talk about yeah next week next week I'm sure we will have no next week is the patch 11.1 so we should
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something's going to happen next week we'll see how the launch goes we'll see what's in there that we didn't expect
28:42
we'll see what's in there that we didn't know about so it lots of excitement next week depending on how long maintenance
28:49
is and whether whether we get to play before we get on to this podcast yes uh
28:55
some Diablo news uh if you've been playing if you haven't been playing Dia before and you want to try and catch up
29:00
not only is the mother's blessing out but it also doubles the CES you can get from the Tree of Whispers which since
29:07
the season is all involving the Witchcraft and the tree Whispers and so forth it's just a nice overall buff to a
29:12
thing that is already pretty useful to getting your if you're playing a season character getting your season character up to max level as fast as possible so
29:19
yes this is a 35% bonus experience for the week and
29:25
50% extra gold but gold is kind of just falling from the sky right now so that's
29:31
a little less interesting and XP bonuses in Diablo 4 are
29:36
multiplicative so you take this 35% you add it to the bonus uh it gets put on
29:42
top of the bonus for the difficulty level you're playing in for the Elixir
29:48
you're using for the incenses you're using every little experience buff is a multiplicative buff so another 35% that
29:57
can get that can get kind of wild really help you get that last bit through
30:02
through your paragon levels finish the season Journey maybe I haven't done that
30:07
yet but it's on my to-do list should probably work on that this week yeah I that's the other problem when we're
30:12
talking about you know games you do and you don't play uh playing Diablo at all
30:17
much less playing both Diablo 4 and Diablo I to some extent uh it's already like like 35 to 55% of my brain is
30:25
already playing Diablo at any given moment and then I Tred to play other games and I'm playing it it it gets kind
30:30
of like the point where I almost feel like OverWatch is going to have to really go out of its way to rock me
30:36
before I can go play it because it's just like how do I justify this it's like I can't really justify Diablo I as
30:41
it is but I still play it um I can't really even help myself it's two o'clock in the morning and I'm I'm tired I'll
30:48
like what's happening I'm playing oh I'm playing at Diablo which one is it oh it's diablo I this time okay cool or the
30:54
week where I kept logging into Diablo I uh Resurrected Without Really knowing why I was doing it um Diablo games are
31:02
just they're like candy to me I cannot stop playing them so yeah uh this is nice it's a nice bonus but what's really
31:09
nice about it in my opinion is the fact that it shows that they are willing to adapt to Mother's blessing to depending
31:14
on the season and that's interesting yeah this is this is such a great fit for the season because you are
31:20
constantly doing Whispers out in the world to complete your head hunts and collect to the seasonal currency and
31:26
while this is available on seasonal Realms and the Eternal Realms you can use it for any characters anywhere I
31:33
think that getting the extra cash from the Tree of Whispers really is a really big buff for seasonal players you're
31:40
going to get twice the gear there's also a season blessing that can increase your
31:45
chance of getting another cash from the Tree of Whispers yeah so it is possible you could go to the tree turn in your
31:52
Whispers and get three three cashes full of gear and gold
31:58
and everything so I I think that's pretty fun I'm going to have to make some time to play this week I don't know
32:04
where I'm going to find that time but that's pretty exciting for me I love going to I ever since they upped the
32:10
amount of stuff you get in the caches I love opening it it's like uh the ultimate dopamine hit of stuff falling
32:15
out in Diablo except so much so fast so yeah they kind of yeah yeah it's like a
32:23
slot machine going off if they want to give me two to three caches I'm not going to object maybe I'll play some Diablo 4 this weekend uh also patch
32:30
2.1.2 is going to be live next week we're going to get NOP right now right now oh it say I thought it said next
32:36
week oh it says live on Tuesday so yeah today today is Tuesday I I did I knew
32:41
that I really did um we are we are speaking to you from the past if you
32:46
were listening to this on Friday or after Friday but uh yes the the newest
32:52
Diablo patch we got the the new nightmare dungeon aics which spawns the hardto find Forgotten Alters
32:58
and you can pet Dorian Dorian forgotten Al I don't remember Dorian have I missed
33:04
Dorian so you have Miss Dorian Dorian is the new Raven companion that you can get
33:10
by finishing The Season's Journey so he is a he is a he's a raven and he's
33:16
pretty cool but you couldn't pet him until now now you can pet him which I do
33:23
think is a notable Point l in the patch notes it's very important
33:28
yeah I thought maybe this was about another Dorian that I know about I was like fromard did he just like mad he
33:36
went to Diablo um so that's good the only problem is you have to finish the
33:42
complete season journey to get Dorian and they've really upped the difficulty
33:47
of the last couple of levels of the Season Journey so it's a tough one it's a tough one and of course part of the
33:54
Season journey is doing your witchcraft powers which means getting to finding forgotten
34:00
altars that um that are they spawn in Dungeons and they give you like extra
34:06
hidden secret witchcraft powers that you can't just buy or earn through the season so and those are some great
34:13
powers like the piran which is not as I understand like the best meta power but I'm if I get it
34:21
I am using it I'm going to have a cloud of piranha around me it's going to be great but I don't have that because the
34:27
Forgotten altars spawn really rarely I am up to like Paragon 168 I think and I
34:35
have seen one forgotten altar in all of that time one so now there will be
34:42
nightmare dungeon uh affixes that will just say forgotten altars will be in
34:47
here so I am really looking forward to that that's really going to help advance and get those last witchcraft Towers
34:54
basically according to Jason sh Rod Ferguson said at dice that they're not going to get the next Diablo 4 expansion until 2026 that doesn't tell us when in
35:01
2026 no but it it does tell us that they're rethinking the Cadence of
35:07
content or at least how long it's going to take to develop an expansion because initially they were like yeah there's
35:13
going to be annual expansions we've got teams working on multiple expansions right now and you know we got our first
35:19
expansion about a year after the after the game launch yeah late 202 and yeah
35:25
so you would have assumed that keep up this annual thing that we would have gotten the next expansion late 2025 now
35:32
that is a no it's coming up in 2026 yeah at some point now it doesn't mean that it could
35:39
be it could be like January of 2026 maybe they pushed it back a few months or maybe still pushing it back that's
35:45
still pushing it back like a quarter so yeah four months so yeah um it's still a pretty big deal but it could also be
35:52
much later it could be like end of 2026 we have no idea at the moment I do think
35:58
however that they put out so much content for Diablo 4 over the past you know two years of its existence that it
36:05
it is I mean not even two years year and a half yeah year and a half at this point right yeah it's it's not been out
36:10
very long and so all a lot of content a lot of revamping a lot of patches some
36:16
of it I mean we we could discuss what we thought of seasonal content like you know until we're blew in the face but
36:22
regardless A lot's come out for it I feel like at least to some degree it's not the into the world that we don't
36:28
immediately have whatever's coming in the next expansion um I mean CU you know I also I also think more development
36:35
time is good I felt like the current Diablo expansion was a little a little
36:41
Half Baked it felt like we got you know kind of half of a story and it left off right when it was going to get
36:46
interesting so I wasn't really Satisfied by the last expansion it was like okay
36:53
this is fine but where's felt like like they knew that too cuz we got you know that extra half a plot line kind of
36:59
shoved in that didn't really have anything to do with the main story it was uh if if it means they'll give it us
37:05
a less half-baked experience than vessel of hatred I'm all for it so I actually still don't think vessel of hatred was
37:11
Half Baked I think that they did that on purpose um and I think they did it on purpose because they're they're sliding
37:16
further and further into the MMO mindset but to a degree I I don't think it works
37:21
because you can't there's not going to be a big patch for vessel of hatred with the other half of the story and since
37:28
that's not going to be the cas you can't just release half of the story and and
37:33
call it a day I mean and then wait well and then wait for a year and a half yeah
37:39
wait yeah absolutely so yeah it is weird I do feel like this would make more
37:45
sense if as you say Matt we had kind of an MMO sort of patch Cadence where we
37:50
got a little more story a little more story a little more story and I feel like that was kind of the game we were
37:58
looking forward to when they first launched Diablo that we would have seasons that each one would have a
38:05
little bit of story in it and instead the amount of story the amount of new
38:10
content we've gotten every Seas has been extremely sparse it's like okay I can
38:15
play this through in an hour and a half and it does have a little B story it's just also entirely self-contained and
38:21
has no bearing on the greater world of Diablo at no point in vessel of hatred
38:26
did someone to hat do you guys remember a couple months ago when a bunch of vampires attacked all over the continent was that weird that doesn't really
38:34
happen yeah yeah pravo was never like hey thanks for going in that giant pit that appeared out of nowhere with your
38:39
weird robot buddy Hey where's that guy at yeah it was weird it was really weird
38:45
what's she talking about I don't know I don't remember but yeah so that's that's something to keep in mind as we talk
38:51
about that but we're going to move on because I'm trying desperately to get to the point where Joe gets to talk about
38:56
nety um Hearthstone next expansion journey into the emerald dream release
39:02
date is March 25th so in a little more than a month you will be going to the emerald dream and Hearthstone and you
39:09
can log in right now and get a freebie version of yera brand new version to celebrate the coming of this expansion
39:16
and now Liz is gonna have to talk a lot I'm really sorry Liz uh know take breaks
39:22
I I don't know uh so this is another really interesting expansion I feel like this year har Stone has kind of gone
39:28
back to its roots and started making expansions that are really heavily themed and really dig into the Warcraft
39:34
lore in interesting ways that are noncanonical unfortunately so you've got
39:40
two kind of opposing factions represented here the emerald dream and the emerald nightmare uh Emerald dream
39:46
classes are Druid Hunter Mage Paladin priest and Shaman they use a the new uh
39:52
imbu keyword which changes their hero power uh we haven't seen all of them yet
39:57
but you know like a hunter might give an extra plus one attack to a beast in their hand and gets better after each
40:04
use so these do sound very cool they will beef up your hero power which most
40:09
classes use that a lot already on the emerald nightmare side the classes are death knight Demon Hunter Rogue Warlock
40:15
and Warrior and they have a new Dark Gift mechanic which is a discover like
40:21
mechanic am I the only one who feels like the Rogue and the warrior are like looking at each other going are these
40:26
guys evil I think these guyses yeah are we are we the baddies buddy like well I mean I I
40:33
can sneak in and stab people in the back when they're not looking that's kind of evil right well yeah but is it is it
40:40
that in the cuts to the death light you know raising someone from the dead and from the Demon Hunter bursting into fell
40:46
and the Warlock Conjuring a demon and they're like I yell and hit people I
40:52
guess I could yell some curse words yeah ring cry yeah know taunt is you know
40:57
your mother is a hamster in draconic the dragon's like what did you say but regardless yeah that's that's
41:03
interesting Keen balance go ahead Liz yeah so again it's it's kind of digging into the Warcraft lore it's playing
41:08
different ways with different classes which I think is always a fun thing we've seen this in a few expansions
41:14
before not obviously Emerald dream themed but yeah you know different ways
41:20
different classes play a little differently each class will either get a wild god dream or a corrup Ed wild God
41:28
nightmare as a legendary so it's just we're going for the emerald dream theme
41:34
one thing that's interesting about this is that we actually knew this was coming in advance for the first time this year
41:41
hearstone released a road map so so we knew that there was an emerald dream
41:46
expansion coming and this is just today we got the details on it so that is very
41:51
cool the other thing we got today is new Hearthstone Battlegrounds content that's the only thing I really excited about I
41:58
know I just talked all about the emerald dream but actually actually Battlegrounds is what I am here for this
42:05
is we got the Battlegrounds midseason patch has just gone live it adds anomalies to the game one of the
42:11
complaints we've had about hearstone Battlegrounds this season is that it feels kind of it's a little Bland
42:18
because usually Battlegrounds add a new mechanic a new something a new something
42:24
that happens during the season so this season didn't have that but now middle
42:30
of the Season they're adding anomalies which is something we first saw back in season five I think and basically at the
42:37
beginning of each match an anomaly occurs and the anomaly can be any of a
42:43
bunch of different things we have a bunch of new ones this time so it could be like the tavern offers an extra
42:50
Tavern spell after you refresh or I played a match this afternoon where every minion was golden it's like
42:57
there's no need to make a minion golden they're just that way all of the Minions that everyone gets are just super
43:03
powerful out of the gate uh you might get the tavern only offers cards from
43:09
your tier so you'll be getting more powerful cards you won't wind up where you're up at tier five and you keep
43:15
refreshing and it's just tier one and tier two cards it's like no I want the powerful stuff so this will shake up
43:22
games this will make each game play a little differently which that's f fun I
43:27
think it's fun when you have different ways to play that change things up so I
43:33
this is great addition anomalies are not my favorite of the weird tweaks for the season but it is something new and I
43:40
think that is fun but you get any new ones returning ones and ramped ones so
43:45
some of them have actually been redesigned as well yeah so there's uh there are a lot of anomalies to play
43:51
with so I'm looking forward to seeing how this plays I frankly have not been playing a lot of battlegrounds just
43:57
because it's like uh yeah this the same this match is the same yeah so this will
44:02
this will change that up but perhaps the most exciting thing is that we're getting three new heroes from Starcraft
44:10
which all of these sound really awesome and in the match I played today I absolutely got steamrolled by carrian uh
44:20
who she can it's no surprise it's you you get that kind of Zergling Rush thing
44:26
where she can unlock more and more powerful Zerg to summon and it starts
44:32
off as a very expensive hero power for uh seven gold but each turn it costs
44:39
less so you the further you get into the game the easier it is to summon
44:45
different and more powerful Zerg so that one is really cool then we of course
44:50
have Rainer for the for representing the kin faction he has a battle Cruiser he
44:58
can summon a battle cruiser and there are different upgrades that he can add to it throughout the match he will get
45:05
unique battle cruiser cards that he can that he can uh buy when you get refresh
45:11
the tavern so you so he has a battle cruiser and he's just constantly buffing
45:16
it up again that one's going to be really fun to play with and for the
45:22
protos you get artanis he has a yay finally
45:29
where at the start of the game you can choose two protos Minions that you get after you buy 16 cards this is the one
45:37
that's going to be the most questionable of them because like so what are these
45:42
Minions going to be it sounds like they're going to be specific to artanis only things artanis can pick up and you
45:49
know how powerful are they buying 16 cards that is going to take you a bit of
45:55
time yeah that's going to take a while so it's it could be that you have a slow
46:00
early game and then you hit you're going to hit a big power boost when you buy
46:05
those 16 cards new heroes are always exciting they always Shake Up The Meta so I am looking forward to playing some
46:11
more Battlegrounds and I'm I'm GNA stop talking now whoa yay congratulations um
46:18
well we've gone through pretty much all the blizzard news and we are now at a part where we're going to talk about non- blizzard stuff and so since Joe
46:26
doesn't want to talk about n EES uh we're gonna no I'm kidding Joe uh rival Rivals layoff thing it's you're up yeah
46:33
so this goes into something we were talking about earlier where uh well today in right at the same time we were
46:39
getting news of the second portion of uh the current season of Marvel Rivals uh
46:46
and uh the the vision moving forward uh we found out that nety was laying off at
46:54
the very least uh it's us based employees uh now they were based in
46:59
Seattle we don't know a full number of those affected I don't believe uh but I
47:05
haven't heard one yeah but the interesting thing is I think people's reactions to it is is very very
47:10
interesting it is an absolute tragedy that these people are losing their job but everybody is like well this game was
47:17
wildly successful why are they laying people off it's a free-to-play game right and right now it's early enough as
47:26
a live service game that there's not a whole lot of monetization in it so going back to what
47:32
I was talking about earlier where games have like and I think this was pre-show when I was ranting about this I
47:38
apologize times a blur um but games in the last quarter and first quarter of a
47:44
year it's very difficult for them to post well because you don't know what your projection is going to be and in
47:51
this particular case we don't know how much money they've been making off of the live Services none of that's been reported yet it's about to be we're
47:58
coming up on the end of a quarter of a financial quarter and as a result like
48:03
stuff like this is not uncommon and I'm not saying this is a good thing I'm not saying this is you know I'm not trying to justify it I'm just saying it's not
48:10
surprising and again one of the easiest ways to sh up your financial reporting
48:16
is headcount because headcount is overhead and it's the easiest thing you can control when you're trying to make
48:22
your numbers look better than they are also I still think the vast majority of the Developers for the game were in
48:28
China with net ease so yeah we we don't know what percentage was laid off we
48:34
don't know the total number of people um I mean it was at least one level designer that we know of that's been
48:39
very vocal uh one of the I believe game directors the US game director was laid off as well but there's also a game
48:46
director in China there's also level designers there so it's it it's still
48:52
very early in it and it still sucks like just playing out but it's not terribly
48:57
surprising um again gang buster game everybody it's a really great game it's fun to play but it is free and if it's
49:05
if it's not making money hand over fist that's what companies do it's sad but it's true yeah I've heard a couple
49:11
comments to the effect also that uh a this might be typical Mo for netes and maybe it's just the fact the visibility
49:17
of Rivals is the first time that people are kind of aware of this kind of uh business model um I've also heard it
49:23
might actually be uh less of a business move and more of well business and also a geopolitics move yeah I brought that
49:30
up in chat earlier today I think too yeah yeah I think you might be on to something there too um it does suck for
49:36
at least the people who got cut but um I don't I don't think it's unprecedented unfortunately no and it's something that
49:43
I think people are going to be paying more attention to and probably should be paying more attention to uh we're not
49:48
here to talk about politics uh that's not what you come here to listen to but it is something that I think is relevant in the game Space especially with the
49:55
news here and as things in North America get Messier this might not be the last time
50:02
we see something like this this could be a reaction to it this could be something to do with that and trying to disentangle from that because it may
50:09
have added way more complicated layers to it uh monetarily legally than they
50:16
wanted to deal with uh and in the coming months other com other games that are based in uh China that have us support
50:23
or other parts of the world in general that have us components to it we don't know if this is going to happen to them
50:28
either so something to keep your eyes peeled for and be cognizant of in the
50:33
gaming industry I think moving forward all right uh since we have time and I wanted to talk about it uh a vow is
50:39
finally out if you're not doing Early Access uh if you were doing Early Access you've gotten to play it for like a week or
50:45
so I have thoughts and the first thought is that avow is very much like what you
50:50
would get if Obsidian made like Oblivion the Elder Scrolls Oblivion it feels very
50:58
similar in a lot of ways um both good and bad um it does not feel like the
51:04
most inventive and and strange and unique game I got to play recently was
51:10
was pentamen and that's an obsidian game that's just crazy it's it's a really
51:15
cool crazy little game I'm just gonna tell you to go play it I'm not g to try and explain it to you but it's like they
51:21
got all their weird funny original ideas out there and then they released what is
51:26
to me a very good but bog standard fantasy role playing game of this type
51:33
and if you've played anything from Bethesda you have played this now keep
51:38
in mind I'm very early in the game and starting to show signs of going off the
51:43
rails in in the best way possible that's what obsidian does really well they get you started up on something and then
51:51
they pick an exact moment to just you know oh you're riding on a train huh kick train goes off the rails now you're
51:57
like what happened where are we oh you're in the desert figure it out um that is feeling like that could happen
52:03
and I feel like that is part of the reason people love obsidian as a game developer is that they can't really be
52:10
sure what they're going to do like the game anybody who's played Fallout New Vegas knows obsidian while while holding
52:17
to the the structure of the thing you're doing like this is a Fallout game it will feel like a Fallout game it will
52:23
also go to the weirder places of the Fallout Universe this is based on their
52:29
pillars of Eternity uh game series it's uh the world of Aur is the IP from that
52:35
so this is their baby to mess with this isn't them making taking somebody else's game but when you realize obsidian is
52:42
the people who make the outer worlds and outer Worlds 2 is currently in development and I think it'll be out this year year yeah yes yes it will I
52:50
feel like to a certain degree they've made the decision to be more conservative with this game off out of
52:55
the gate because the outer worlds doesn't know what conservative means um and that definitely comes
53:02
through in some of the the voice acting choices I'm sorry when Brandon Keener shows up and literally does the gis
53:09
voice and it's not even it's not disguised in the slightest he's GIS that
53:14
is what Garis sounds like he's doing the gis draw and everything I've heard Brandon Keener speak when he's not doing
53:20
GIS he still sounds very similar but it's a different voice you know it's it's not the same this wasn't a oh hey
53:26
that's the same voice actor that was Shephard like seriously I I I frankly felt like I should have named my
53:32
character Shephard because of just how gsy he was being I feel like with obsidian this is one of two
53:39
possibilities one they are taking the urinary they're taking the urine or they
53:45
are gonna play it straight As long as they can and I I almost want to see what
53:50
that looks like what does an obsidian game look like when it doesn't mess with your head and the thing is at the same
53:56
time there are some ethical choices in this game already I've barely I'm like five hours in I've already had to make
54:02
some decisions that were pretty like do I leave this person to die in this horrible place or do I save them even
54:08
though it's inconvenient for me but it is inconvenient and there is
54:14
that loot over there but the person the moral so the moral choices are pretty pretty much what obsidian
54:21
usually does where like there's a choice there's like there's a there's a morally gray Choice and then there's a morally
54:28
black choice and those are the choices you get um but I like it I think it's good um the the facial Creator is
54:37
something if you played Veil guard it's the veil guard Creator straight up it's it's it's different look but it's the
54:43
same kind of massive amounts of choice but with some you know you can just pick
54:49
a a like a a template if you want and just get through it and have a character or you can do what I do and spend two
54:55
hours just making your character I like who who just takes a template who are yeah
55:01
no it's one of those things where you're like yeah okay sure I'm I'm going to use that I'll use that just as a starting
55:08
point but then I'm G to completely change this up and if for some reason you don't want to have fungus growing out of your head you can turn the fungus
55:15
off I I'm I don't feel like that's a spoiler because it's like literally the first thing you see when you make your character is that you can have fungus
55:21
growing out of your head you don't have to you can turn the fungus off and not have to see it um I did that because it
55:27
was completely ruining my my hair deal that I had going uh but overall um so
55:32
far like it uh it didn't I think one of the things it didn't do that was a pretty good choice is they didn't do
55:38
what obsidian usually does and didn't get you shot in the head or frozen or
55:44
whatever like usually with an Oban game you come out of it really fast and it's like oh go go go this one didn't do that
55:50
this one you start your character you you wake up on a beach you're like oh why are we on a beach and then you go
55:55
from there and I think that to a certain degree it's it'll be easier for people who are not used to obsidian games to play this
56:03
um however if you get really frothing at the mouth mad when a game lets you pick uh they them as your pronouns you're
56:10
gonna hate this game because it does and quite frankly good riddens to you I don't uh but regardless the game lets
56:16
you do that uh the game lets you choose between four voices but the protagonist is not voiced uh they don't say their
56:23
line after you choose it you just choose it and then the moves on on um yeah it's
56:28
it's a pretty it's an obsidian Fantasy game that's what it is uh thank God it has third person so I don't make myself
56:34
sick half the time playing it um but yeah that's it I think it's good uh I do
56:40
think that the Early Access 5ay Early Access thing we've talked about in the pre-show I I think it's a weird choice
56:46
but you know whatever I'm playing it now so there you go uh I don't think anyone else has anything else to say about it
56:52
no I haven't gotten to play it I haven't picked you it's on the list it's on the list somewhere but there are so many
56:59
things on the list the list at this point is like you know sitting in your basement going come to me come to me um
57:04
yeah but now we move on to the site news because Liz you do the site news and usually do it now so if you don't mind
57:11
uh yes and I I don't think we're going to have time for questions again this week I I was really going to answer some
57:17
questions this week and I'm sorry for those of you who have submitted questions we will get to them we will
57:23
get to them on a slow Newsweek which certainly next week will probably be a slow news week why did you say this why
57:30
why did you do that why what be done to
57:36
us so I just want to say thank you all for supporting the site I usually read a
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new supporters here but we did not have anyone new show up this week which is fine I get it it's expensive to exist in
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the world but if you can support us out there your support helps keep this site alive it lets site Thrive and grow and
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lets us produce these podcasts which I hope you are enjoying because if you aren't enjoying I'm sorry and also you
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should turn it off life is too short to listen to things you do not enjoy so if
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you subscribe at $3 month you will get early access to these podcasts you will get a better chance of us answering your
58:17
questions on the podcast which I I really promise we're going to do some questions next week we're going to find a way to answer some questions and uh so
58:26
thank you if you support us thank you everyone who supports us thank you to all of those people who have been supporting us from the beginning we
58:32
still have we have people that after all of this time supported us on day one and
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wow wow that you helped this site but every dollar helps if you can please
58:45
support us on patreon patreon.com blizzardwatch or check out
58:50
the website at blizzardwatch tocom liking sharing podcasts liking sharing YouTube videos
58:56
uh anything like that really helps the site and we appreciate it and we appreciate you I do want to give another
59:03
reminder about our Tavern watch podcast which is now on its own feed it is all
59:09
about tabletop gaming and we are going to have a new episode next week which is
59:14
uh actually the four of us all talking about tabletop news including Fallen
59:20
London which I am very excited about but I have to wait a year so if you were interested in that search for Tavern
59:27
watch in your podcast player of choice and uh thank you thank you for your support all right thank you Liz um or
59:35
used to turn to Joe here but Liz Liz handles it every week so it's great uh we can just say goodbye no this really
59:41
good very happy if you want to do the goodbye too you can I'm totally okay oh
59:46
gosh yeah you're you're throwing this at me no no I'm I'm just saying if that's what you want to do if you wanted to do
59:52
it in the future go ahead I'm gonna do it now because I'm here um okay go for it this has been the blizzard wch
59:57
podcast if you guys have a question for the show and we will get to them eventually guys promise uh you can
1:00:03
either email them to us at podcast blizzardwatch do.com or you can go to our Discord server and you can ask
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questions in the Q and podcast questions channel for everybody or if you're a supporter on patreon you can ask us the
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patreon Q and podcast questions Channel we look there first because you guys help pay the bills and stuff it would be
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nice if you told us what podcast you want your question on and if you have any usual spelling or pronunciation of
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your name that you want us to to get right uh you could totally you know tell us there because we look and we make
1:00:34
sure if we can it's it's something we we we do want to say your name correctly even if it's got three cues in it uh we
1:00:41
will find a way but just help us it would be nice um but this has been the blizzard watch podcast uh thank you guys
1:00:47
so much for being here with us and we'll be back next week

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