Up next in 10
This week our writer Nick Marino joined the lineup to talk about WoW Classic -- several iterations of it. Joyous Journeys is coming back to Cata Classic, Mists Classic is launching soon, and Season of Discovery servers will keep on truckin', even if all the Discoveries have already been Discovered. Plus, Heroes of the Storm turns 10 and there's a whole bunch of new stuff to celebrate, including a new skin. Overwatch 2 is celebrating LGBTQIA+ Pride for Pride Month. Oh, and by the way, Hearthstone announced a whole entire new expansion, it launches next week. Plus, we run down some of the Summer Games Fest events we have our eye on, and we'll talk more about our favorite reveals next week.
Not only was this week busy, but next week will also be pretty jam packed. Bring it on.
If you have a few minutes, please fill out our survey to tell us what you think about the podcast. This will be used to help us improve the show as well as attract potential sponsors. Your answers are completely anonymous. We appreciate your help! http://bit.ly/blizzardwatchpodcast-survey
Subscribe to Blizzard Watch in your podcast player of choice:
RSS: https://feeds.acast.com/public/shows/656a381dff3911001256c7bf
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/blizzard-watch/id964696892
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2mRiUSalfnFAUfKO2yh4RG
Visit us at https://blizzardwatch.com for the latest news on Blizzard games, and don't forget to subscribe on Patreon to support our efforts! https://www.patreon.com/blizzardwatch
Discord: https://discord.gg/MY9p4d7t8U
Bluesky: @blizzardwatch.com
X: @BlizzardWatch
Show More Show Less View Video Transcript
0:00
[Music]
0:09
hello everybody and welcome to the Blizzard Watch podcast i am Matt i'm hosting with me this week are two
0:15
magnificent co-hosts and a special guest uh because the special guest is a guest he gets introduced first it's Nick hey
0:21
Nick hi Matt hi everyone nick apparently has some NDA stories about you know the
0:27
Pope and the Swiss Guard that we can't talk to about so uh Pope not the Pope
0:32
okay just the Swiss Guard um also well I should introduce Liz first hi Liz is the EIC of the site and grand overall Grand
0:40
Huba and she's also running our Dagger Hart game this weekend and I just figured out it was this weekend so sorry
0:45
matt's Matt's playing in the Dagger Hart game so in my defense in my defense I
0:50
had a character for you almost immediately you did you did though
0:56
i won't pretend that it's an original character but it exists you've also had two characters since then yeah that's
1:02
true i did so that's a thing that happened and also Joe Perez who
1:07
basically makes sure that we actually can do the podcast every week hi Joe hi so um just going to move straight into
1:14
some of these their news stories that we so we can talk about them um Dastly Duos
1:19
is running in World of Warcraft i should have mentioned this is for World of Warcraft um it's going from today to I think
1:27
that's July se 15th yes July July 15th so you got uh a month and a half a month
1:33
and a half to check it out and did it This event is so weird has anyone else
1:39
played Dastardly Duos today i haven't played today because I haven't been home today no I don't even know what it is
1:46
i'm going to be 100% perfectly honest okay so Vinnie Vinnie Sweets who is the
1:51
goblin announcer at the Cauldron of Carnage you remember that guy if you played the Cauldron of Carnage you
1:57
remember he's calling he's calling the fight the entire time well so Vinnie is
2:03
putting together like arena matches along that vein except it's you and four
2:09
of your friends fighting robotic versions of previous WoW bosses in an
2:14
arena so you go in and you like buff yourself up with different potions and food and you go in and you fight
2:21
different bosses in several waves while in an arena full of like cardboard palm
2:27
trees and little bombs walking around and spotlights and if you stand in the spotlights it improves your score on the
2:34
boss fight the whole thing has a 5minute timer and you're kind of going for the high score at the end of it you get a
2:41
chest with some veteran gear and um there's a weekly quest that gives you a
2:46
piece of champion gear and also there are some cosmetic rewards that you will earn playing the event week to week it's
2:52
just it's so weird it is very strange but it's also it's a it's a little quick
2:59
hit you know you can go in and play it and it doesn't take hours even the new
3:06
event in Hallow Fall um feels kind of like a slog you go there on the hour and
3:12
then you've got to do all of these different stages of this battle that stretches on for 10 or 15 minutes and
3:20
it's still a little buggy it still has those moments where sometimes your objectives disappeared even though the
3:26
event is still going on so this feels very fast very fun there is a timer but
3:32
you can die and it doesn't matter you just go right back into the fight and uh I've played it with if you go in alone
3:39
you're hooked up with NPCs just like if you're doing a follower dungeon i think it'd be really interesting to go in with
3:46
a full party of people you know because you'll be able to strategize a little
3:51
more in getting your high scores so isn't it it's kind of like taking the old since you mentioned you know the
3:57
Crystal of Carnage it's basically like taking the old arena type fight thing that they used to do and then putting
4:02
like two of them in instead of just one at a time so you get Oh kind of like the Brawlers Guild yeah it kind of feels
4:08
like that too like that um I'm going to read these bosses out the ones that you get to fight um because there's 10 of
4:14
them to uh and you fight two at a time in two and there's four you will be
4:20
fighting yeah or in the so there's there's a wave of trash and then you fight two bosses and you fight two more
4:26
bosses so the bosses you can fight are a robot version of Glove Talk Ben
4:32
Silverlane uh Hydromancer Thespia Faux Reaper 5000 who is already a robot so
4:39
it's not a robot version it's just another faux reaper basically uh Bragg
4:44
Lord Walden who I've not even thought about in a very long time uh watchkeeper
4:50
Garglemar a mechaneer Steamrier uh Chronol Lord Epic so you got a robot
4:57
infinite dragon showing up and Rattlegore who is just a lot of bones
5:03
and yeah a robot bone thing that That's weird but yeah so you fight the wave of
5:10
trash up front then you get your first boss duo then you get your second boss
5:15
duo then you're done and this takes five minutes total so either you time out or
5:20
you kill him basically you win or you don't even uh well and you can go outside the timer but it's you don't get
5:27
any I think it just docks your score a lot if you don't make that five minute
5:33
timer i've I've tried the event a couple times i have not made the timer going in
5:38
alone and not knowing what I'm doing and stumbling around there are also um buff
5:43
items you can pick up during the fight there are also items that will debuff
5:48
you like you can eat food in advance and some of the food helps you and some of
5:54
the food hurts you and gives you a debuff but using the food that gives you a debuff gives you a like a score
6:03
multiplier frankly I think the score is just for bragging rights there's an achievement for getting a high high
6:08
score every week but I kind of think you know this is if you don't maybe the best
6:13
thing about it is if you aren't into it you don't have to do it it's fine but it's kind of fun it's a fun thing to do
6:19
while we're waiting out for the next patch i also like that they have like actual little power up things that do
6:24
stuff like add time to the clock uh that's kind of neat uh you can also if you go in and there's a a banner toy if
6:32
you go in and you put the banner toy down it will just call all of the trash to you immediately instead of having to
6:38
run around the arena and get trash packs one at a time of course that could result in your imminent death but you
6:44
know you got good AoE just go on and do it yeah they've definitely you know save
6:49
you some time but yeah so that that's actually pretty cool um do you get this
6:55
robot this flying robot head thing is that like an actual reward you can get um the rewards are not um not quite that
7:05
exciting but uh if you go through it to week five you get the Tyrano Tort mount
7:14
which is kind of an angry turtle with spikes on it i can't I can't explain
7:20
this but everyone wants Yeah it's an evil tortoise maybe yeah it is it is a
7:26
little Bowser it has a red shell with black spikes yeah i mean looking at the model of it it's a it's a you could very
7:34
well confuse it with a Koopa yeah and uh there's the spicy
7:40
uh the Mean Ball i think it's a spicy Mean Ball it's It's a rolling ball pet
7:47
because Yeah yeah like I said it's it's a deeply strange event this is also
7:55
pretty strange this is that's a chomp chain yeah that's I'm looking at this and realizing this as she as Liz is
8:02
talking i'm like "Wait a minute wait a minute we've got a chomp a chomp chomp and we've got an evil turtle mount
8:09
that's that's basically a Koopa." Yeah this is this is somehow related to Mario in some way i don't understand and there
8:16
there are some cosmetic armors um there are recolored shoulders of uh some of
8:22
the goblin style armors that you can pick up so there are some cosmetics some but it's not like an overwhelming amount
8:28
of cosmetics it's not something you have to grind out week to week but if you have fun with it yeah sure go for the
8:34
high score i think it's a good idea to have the something where you can just go in you can you could do it more if you
8:39
wanted to but if you don't want to you can just go in and get it in and out and be done with it i think that's actually
8:45
a good move because sometimes you don't have like an hour and a half to to do a lot of content you just you have half an
8:51
hour you pop it on and you you could do this you could do the uh the yesterday duos in that time and that's pretty
8:57
useful in my opinion so yeah cool um all righty then we should now talk about the
9:04
release date for patch 11.1.7 which is Legacy of Arathor uh
9:10
that's going to be now right now no I'm kidding it's two weeks from two weeks from the time of recording yes uh and uh
9:18
that's that's also the amount of time Dastardly Duos last no it's it's timed just right for this to be a nice event
9:25
to kill time until we get another patch and more story and more walking fastly D
9:31
is July 15th this is June 17th oh wait man I'm totally disconnected from time
9:38
that's Oh god it's Friday actually completely That's actually completely normal okay yeah this is this is still a
9:45
great event to kill time yeah I mean you could just do it just because it's fun but regardless uh June 17th so what are
9:51
we getting for this this little thing well for one thing we're going back to the Arai Highlands hey yes and uh but
9:58
there's a story it's not It's not as you know I just don't like going back to the
10:05
Arai Highlands it's just a personal There's lore walking is in this patch i think we're all pretty enthusiastic
10:11
about lore walking yes yeah uh there in fact was a really nice lore watch podcast uh helmed by Joe over there uh
10:17
talking about what we'd like to see in lore walking and what we might might see in the future so you should watch I
10:22
think that just went live today right yes uh that's going going live tomorrow going public tomorrow patreon got it
10:29
today yes so if you are listening to this podcast that lore is live talking
10:34
all about lore walking which I just said lore a bunch of times in a couple of
10:40
sentences yeah we're also getting the overcharged delves right that's that's this time yes uh the overcharged delves
10:48
which will also include a customizable belt reward so that will be interesting
10:54
uh we're getting the return of turbulent timeways which just means lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of time
11:00
walking but the final reward for it is an infinite pirate dragon mount so yeah
11:08
of course i how can you say no to this guy's face yeah i mean look at this guy
11:13
i just assume I just assume we're all going to be doing that he This infinite pirate dragon does have a name but it's
11:20
it's the infinite pirate dragon mount i'm sorry I can't remember your real name yeah I'm a little disappointed that
11:26
he is not going to show up and take us to the Arai Highlands as part of why we're going there but nevertheless I'm still down for it um and the greedy
11:34
emissary event is showing up in which we can chase down Diablo style treasure goblins to earn transmogs and rewards
11:42
there's a new set of recolored tier 2 transmogs so transmog that's all you got
11:47
to tell me yeah pretty much i'm The second you said recolored tier 2 I was like
11:52
done yeah sign me up shoulders axe blades yes uh but yeah so it you know
11:59
it's a it's a relatively it's not a major patch it is not like you know the big it it's but it's a you know 11.1.7
12:07
does have a fair amount of stuff happening in it so yeah that's actually pretty cool uh but we have other things
12:14
to talk about so we will now look forward to what's in WoW classic apparently we got some season of discovery stuff to talk about um it says
12:22
starting today so again as you're listening to this it's already happened um players will be getting a 5% buff to
12:28
their health or healing and damage output when they're raiding the Scarlet uh you know enclave this will increase
12:35
by 5% every other week and cap out at 25% uh in that'll be July 29th when it
12:41
caps out so if you guys remember all the way back to when the Sunwell first came out uh there was a kind of an anti-
12:48
version of this called the Sunwell Radiance that sort of nerfed everybody's dodge so that you know you couldn't just
12:54
have one bear tank everything and never die because back then in in WoW if a
12:59
druid was tanking they would just stack a ridiculous amount of dodge and be practically impossible to hit um this
13:05
version I think the first time I experienced this in a raid was in Wrath of the Lich King uh at the uh Ice Crown
13:13
Citadel raid they did a a stacking buff every a couple weeks I think pretty
13:18
almost exactly like this as far as I can remember i don't know if there was if it ever happened before that do Do you guys
13:23
remember it before Wrath like anything like this nope i mean it's kind of similar it's kind of similar to the
13:30
buffs they're giving in modern WoW lately you know in the Galagio as you
13:36
progress during the through the rep track you earn damage and healing buffs which is kind of a soft nerf to the raid
13:42
the longer it's out it's gets a little bit easier yeah you know by the time it gets up to 25% it's actually pretty
13:49
sizable so I've had some thoughts about once I read this today because
13:55
um and this kind of segus into the second point about like the ultimate plans for Season of Discovery i actually
14:03
would have liked to see something like this be applied to the openw world
14:10
Scarlet Enclave area in Season of Discovery and I only say that because uh
14:16
raiding is generally niche more so in Wild Classic because of just the nature
14:23
of the raid structure and like how squishy you are by yourself um that on
14:29
one hand like I'm not a big raider i the the most I ever raided was in a game
14:34
like Destiny where it's much smaller much easier comparatively with to wrangle six people over 40 or 20 or 10
14:41
or whatever um but I bring it up to say a change like this in the open world
14:48
probably would have benefited more I think for overall enjoyment because man
14:55
I cannot I was really stoked like the first week to play phase 8 and then
15:02
after that the the want to play went down because if you don't have a group
15:10
to go into new Avalon you are getting immediately smacked by literally 40 NPCs
15:20
that all hate you they see that you're not a that you're not part of the Scarlet Crusade they all murder you the
15:26
dog murders you the cook murders you um and you know not saying that this is the
15:34
overall or the uh the norm experience but grouping up is hard it's hard for
15:42
raids some It's hard for um some content like this because like I don't have Have
15:48
any of you ever played phase Have you ever played phase 8 at all or like watched gameplay of it of someone doing
15:54
something in New Avalon i have not i have not it is legitimately just a big street
16:01
fight so it sounds like they preserved the whole like going to tears hand back in vanilla was very similar yeah like
16:09
it's But no I get what you're saying it would make sense to to make it so that you could get stronger over time because
16:16
after a while going you're going into New Avalon to to do various things and you're just getting you know attacked by
16:21
80 people it's like um I I just wanted to to to get someplace uh did you guys
16:28
just Oh no okay fine yeah I remember it i would have just liked to see a little
16:33
bit more in I guess incentive or like you know honestly it's just kind of fun to like power power creep and obliterate
16:41
everything like and obviously that's not the name of the game in Wild Classic but like with where season of discovery is
16:47
ending or uh going like I kind of just uh I don't know I would have liked to
16:52
see like hey here's some fun have go crazy with it the groups don't have to be super competitive it's e you have
16:58
more incentive now to group up or be more willing to let people into a group because I mean the main thing you go
17:05
into new Avalon for is to farm the elite
17:10
enemies they drop the new they drop the new materials to make the Scarlet Crusade disguises it's you know drop
17:18
rates are low it's very competitive this that and the other i don't know that's just how I I'm glad that the Raiders are
17:26
getting um their incentive to play a little bit more i just would have liked to see it for the open world fair point
17:32
but let's now talk about the thing you were you alluding to then that they don't currently know as of right now
17:38
they have no plans to allow you to transfer out of a Season of Discovery to Realm uh and they also have no plans to
17:45
shut down Season of Discovery which I think is interesting um I think yes
17:50
they're gonna just keep running it at phase eight or are they going to like restart some servers i I don't know
17:56
where they're going to go ultimately but as of right now no plans to let you transfer off and no plans to shut down
18:03
the server so your character will basically if nothing else happens if they don't start developing new Seasons
18:09
of Discovery servers your character is basically now forever at the point where you've raided Scarlet you know the the
18:15
Scarlet um what is it scarlet Enclave i want to say envoy and that's not it um
18:21
you're forever going to be this is the highest level content you can get uh so
18:26
yeah I I don't know how I feel about that um honestly I kind of feel like to a certain degree it should be expected
18:32
when playing WoW Classic that eventually you will hit a plateau because I mean
18:38
it's WoW Classic but at the other on the other hand I mean the very fact that they have an entirely new raid that
18:43
never existed before means that they're clearly willing to put in more content are we going to see more content after
18:51
Scarlet Enclave i I don't think so like certainly they haven't said anything about it but so they they're the it's
19:01
not a release but it was just like a communication from the forums is that uh
19:06
a large major this is basically going into maintenance mode for season of discovery and reading between the lines
19:14
of what the dev team is saying is that season of discovery servers are probably just going to stay alive or stay up as
19:21
long as there are enough people worth playing to justify it like their their wording is that they hope it goes the
19:27
the way of classic era which is a consistent enough player base that you
19:34
know justifies keeping up all these realms will we see a consolidation of
19:40
the realms in the future maybe they're the only one one of the things that they they said about not doing the transfers
19:46
is because of all the wackiness that they did with the abilities all the new items like you cannot transfer that into
19:54
you know classic era you cannot transfer that into Cataclysm Classic or what's
20:00
going to become Miss of Pandaria Classic like it is a self-contained world so it's it's an easy choice for when you're
20:06
looking at it from a development perspective like no like you can't do this but then it becomes the how long do
20:12
you do it for and they've pretty much already said that they're working on
20:17
more classic style uh content and I think the bigger
20:24
question for me that pops up now is the seasons I don't want to call it an
20:29
experiment because we got season of mastery right which was what lasted
20:35
maybe almost two years 18 months somewhere around there and they kept doing little variations on
20:42
it but yeah yeah and then season discovery was heralded as limited time or marketed as limited time and that
20:47
eventually became a misnomer because it's now going to day so it's I'm I'm curious what the if they're going to
20:54
continue with shorter form uh classic style content and risk putting in a lot
21:00
of work that eventually goes away or if they contribute to yet another variation
21:06
of the WoW World of Warcraft Hydra do either Liz or Joe have anything to
21:12
say about this before we move on no I have nothing to add cataclysism classic joyous journey buff is back in the
21:18
leadup to Missandaria classic uh that's pretty much self-explanatory to a
21:24
certain degree um you know if you don't know the joyous journeys buff is basically it's an XP and faction buff if
21:31
I'm not incorrect um I believe it's just a 50% experience buff that will be
21:36
available up to level 85 yep so if you're in doing Cataclysm Classic right
21:42
now uh you will be able to get to level 85 which is max level 50% faster it won't take as much
21:50
XP it's pretty much what it is uh and you know for players who haven't been
21:56
playing Cataclysm because maybe Cataclysm isn't their favorite expansion it'll be it'll be quick to
22:03
catch up so you can play Mr pandaria which is a fantastic expansion and of
22:09
course we were just talking about Season of Discovery the Season of Discovery players have an alternate way to catch
22:14
up for Mists which is to just not do anything or well you have to kill the
22:20
first boss of the Scarlet Enclave and then Blizzard will give you a free level 85 character boost which will be live in
22:28
time for the Missipendary pre- patch on the 1st so yeah I mean I will say in in
22:35
Cataclysm's defense it brought us um transmog and and then also had some really good transmog looks but otherwise
22:42
I understand when people are just it's not the expansion a lot of people want to play it's not my favorite i'll I'll
22:48
leave it at that it's not my favorite however so yeah it's got a solid 50% XP boost if you're currently doing Kasm
22:54
Classic so if you've always wanted to play miss as if it were brand new and
23:00
you don't have a character who's level 85 you can fix that fairly quickly so
23:05
yeah I think that's a good thing to do quite frankly and one one thing about
23:11
Miss Classic one of the great things about the original classic was that you could go in and play a world that didn't
23:16
exist anymore in the live game there are parts of Mr pandaria that don't exist anymore because of how Blizzard did
23:22
phasing in the world you know the veil was destroyed and never came back so this is going to be the first time we've
23:29
had an opportunity to revisit that since it actually happened in the game so I think that's very interesting that that
23:37
this is your this is another way to go back and reexperience something that is
23:42
no longer in the game world there's no way to go through the same content anymore i'm try I'm nodding why am I
23:48
nodding no one can see me uh okay but we were going to talk about Heroes of the
23:53
Storm apparently because it's getting some stuff well let's let's not bury the
23:58
lead it's the 10-year anniversary of Heroes of the Storm i didn't get to bury
24:04
it yet i was going to not bury it geez i actually think that the real lead is that all heroes are free to play now
24:10
until June 15th they This is pretty traditional they do this I think every year for the anniversary they make
24:15
everybody free to play which is good it is a way we talked about it before it's a way to encourage people to play and uh
24:23
try new stuff and give it a give it a shot uh I also find that this brand new Thrawl skin thing is interesting like
24:29
the fact that they've made a new skin for Heroes of the Storm character well uh it's a Mad Max cell shaded look
24:36
apparently it's even it's even more interesting than just a new skin like yes it's really cool that they're
24:41
releasing a really cool new skin and I think it's absolutely fantastic it's also in a completely different art style
24:48
um it's very MadMaxy steampunky as is noted by the the text here but also like
24:54
does things like replace the uh the wolves with tires because that's a very very Mad Maxy thing to do this is an
25:01
unreleased skin or previously unreleased skin so this was in the works years ago
25:08
probably when I mean how old is Shuri Road at this point i think it's about the same 10 years give or takeish yeah
25:15
Shuri Road 10 years yeah so this would have probably been something they were working on at the same time that that
25:21
movie released and they just opted to not do it and they found the concept stuff and then went ahead and the
25:27
classic games team went and did it and not only is Thraw getting a new skin but they're also looking at other unreleased
25:33
skins from the vault that they could possibly add to the game not necessarily
25:39
just right now but further down the line as well so it's not like a oneandone and
25:44
I can hear Corey screaming from where he is
25:50
uh because I have the same reaction it's like this is exactly what we're talking about they're making new content new
25:57
cosmetic content for the game that's supposed to be dead like I the other day
26:03
my my wife was watching shorts on on YouTube and the Blizzard watch shorts
26:10
that you guys have been putting up came up and I didn't know I was in any of them you're in a lot of them because
26:16
you're here and you I did not know this so to hear my voice suddenly going "Okay
26:21
Corey uh here go ahead and talk about Heroes of the Storm for a while and and justify your delusions." And I'm like
26:27
"Oh wow i mean ouch." Well that's not nice so anyway
26:32
Corey if you're hearing me here I hope that this makes you happy i speaking of happy I want to hear what Nick was going
26:38
to say because I think Nick was starting to say something about it as well oh yeah no I I I too was going to make a
26:44
joke at Cory's expense which was that I'm convinced that they're feeding off of his and only his desire to bring this
26:51
game back and it is specifically to get his hopes up for what other Ultimate
26:58
Endgame I don't know but like I have seen how hard he cares about this game and honestly it's ad it's admirable i
27:05
you know I love it when people love the stuff that like to play right cory Cory
27:10
and I have spent a lot of hours playing this game together trust me but I honestly feel like Cory is
27:18
ultimately getting his stripped from him like a Reverend Dra character maybe kind
27:23
of scary listen and no offense Cy but if that means we get Heroes of the Storm back in a regular dev cycle I'm sorry sorry that's a sacrifice I'm willing to
27:29
make um but anyway push him into the machine uh but this is this is not even just
27:36
like a cheap skin either i just want to point this out this isn't like one of the five or $8 skins uh it's an $18
27:42
Canadian dollar or 1,500 gems uh worth of currency uh to get so that's like
27:49
15ish 14ish dollars American something like that um but it's really cool and
27:55
honestly I think it's really neat that we starting to see this and there's a note here that I think is absolutely
28:02
accurate this is the first time that we have actually heard the classic game
28:08
team is working on Heroes and so Cory's not just in Opium Land like little stuff
28:14
like this is just further proving that there's something there that they're taking a look at it and maybe maybe
28:21
they're realizing that they had something that people wanted and they're going to go ahead and do the thing i'm
28:28
also on team Corey here with my hope high uh hoping that we get constant or
28:34
regular dev cycle for uh Heroes of the Storm again and it comes off the maintenance mode list uh and if it's
28:41
just the classic game that gets constant classic game updates new heroes maybe might be next or something like that
28:47
maybe hopefully i I want it give it to me Blizzard please please i'll give you a dollar i'll give you I'll give you $20
28:54
as quite a few people including you have pointed out there have been multiple game releases since the last time we got
29:00
any significant heroes development uh including Diablo I mhm it's like the
29:06
fact that there isn't a playable Lilith character in Heroes of the Storm is it's an outrage is what it is i mean that
29:12
that there's a character who's made to just make people unhappy in in a MOA style game like my my word put Laur in
29:20
there laurath could be a playable character yeah yeah i I feel like his real power is the ability to make you
29:26
feel sad for his life choices lorath Queen not a good decision maker
29:32
but I mean there's a lot of a lot of games and a lot of content that's released since we've had new heroes and there's plenty of opportunity to add
29:38
those types of things back in uh there's a plethora of characters there's a plethora of classes cuz that's the other
29:46
thing don't forget like while we had classic heroes uh that were representations of classes inside of
29:53
Heroes of the Storm like you had the demon hunter you had Joanna you uh as the the crusader uh you had I think
29:59
Cassiopia was her name as the uh the uh the v the Valkyrie yeah not a Valkyrie
30:05
um Amazon yeah she's an Amazon but she was I think they referred to as like a Vulyrie style play cuz she was like very
30:10
much a Sword and Board like you could put Zalot in there you could put uh the
30:17
updated you could update G uh Glo for it you could put Gywix in there uh Cassia
30:24
thank you Red um you have so many opportunities of games that have just released since then you could put the
30:30
the the new class the Spirit uh why can't I remember the name of it spirit born spearorn spearorn would be a
30:37
perfect perfect class to add in here uh and for those of you that play League of Legends you could very much clearly make
30:44
it something like the their equivalent of the Niti where like you have different aspects that you activate and
30:49
it gives you different sets of powers available at the time and that's the whole stickick like they have so many things that they could add that would
30:56
make the game so much fun and we see that they're constantly constantly
31:01
balancing this game still so yeah I mean let's just call it what it is please
31:06
start developing the game again Blizzard if you very clearly want to and we very clearly want it a lot of us do help me
31:13
help you you make it I give you money that's how this works i can't really argue against that Liz no I I have
31:19
nothing to add okay um then we're going to start talking about Hearthstone so we're going to be leaning heavy on you
31:25
now um the 29th expansion which is um for constructed gameplay um Lost City of
31:33
Angoro which is releasing like in five days on June 8th yeah it's right around
31:39
the corner uh so yes this is a big new expansion that has it's see I I talk
31:46
about Hearthstone expansions they're kind of Hearthstone is a bit on rails it's every expansion is a lot a lot like
31:53
the last expansion we know there are going to be a bunch of new cards there's going to be a new theme i think Hearthstone this year has been really
32:00
doing a great job on theming this uh calls back to the journey to Enoro
32:05
expansion that we got way back in 2017 which is that's a that's a history
32:10
lesson years ago yeah cuz it's like it's like they say "Oh we're going to the lost city of Angoro." And I think "Oh
32:16
didn't you just do an Angoro expansion come on Hearstone." It's like "Yeah they just did an Angoro expansion eight years
32:22
ago." So tell instead of making us all you know age like the guy in Indiana Jones in the last crusade could could
32:29
you maybe tell us about quests because quests are back so tell me about that um yes quests are all So quests are a
32:38
returning feature bliss has been doing a lot of this looking back at some of the old mechanics that were added in the
32:44
past and bringing them back with a more refined design so quests are one cause
32:50
spells and if you add them to your deck you'll always find them in your starting hand you could mulligan them away but
32:56
usually if it's in your deck you want to have it you play the spell and you'll need to perform a certain action that
33:04
will trigger the spell so it's a fun little extra usually you do something
33:10
like you might play so many of a certain type of cards or play so many spells
33:15
once you meet that condition you get something that is very powerful in the past we've seen it really dominate
33:21
gameplay in some ways that weren't always fun like if you saw your opponent
33:26
play a quest the first turn maybe you're just like "Oh no that's too powerful i'm just going to concede cuz I don't want
33:32
to deal with this." So we'll see how that design plays out when the actual expansion launches next week but it is a
33:40
cool mechanic that changes the way the game plays beyond just tossing new cards
33:45
at it there are also new a new kindred keyword which uh rewards you if you play
33:53
a card of the same type so if you play a card this turn and you played a card of
33:59
the same type last turn you get an additional bonus so like if you play a
34:04
beast minion and the next turn you play another beast minion that has a Kindred keyword on it it will trigger an extra
34:11
special effect on the second card so it rewards synergy and thinking out your
34:17
turns a little more than you might not than you might otherwise i think it is a great expansion it has a cool theme it
34:24
takes us back to uh it's reminiscent of Journey of of Journey to Angoro which I
34:30
think was a very popular expansion that also had a really great theme it's just fun to go to Angoro and you know you
34:36
were just talking about new heroes in Heroes of the Storm hearthstone has a
34:42
lot of them you could add Elise Star Singer who is the explorer first
34:48
introduced in Journey to Enoro back in this expansion uh Reno was introduced in
34:55
Journey to Angoro so you have all of these Hearthstone has a lot of big
35:00
characters that don't get a lot of like stage time in Hearthstone because it's a card game there's there's not a lot of
35:07
stage to give but these are also characters you could take and toss into Heroes of the
35:14
Storm and that could be really fun that could add a lot of a lot of uh variety
35:20
this is a game that I don't think it has anything in Heroes of the Storm because of course Hearthstone itself is a spin-off of Warcraft so and you have
35:28
seen things in Hearthstone go to Warcraft like uh the League of uh it's
35:33
not the League of Explorers there's something else uh but Elise and Rio are currently sitting in Del's HQ and
35:40
Dornagal so they've they've spread out from Hearthstone and gone into Warcraft
35:47
why not go into Heroes of the Storm too it's all possible yep i mean the
35:52
Totolins I don't I don't think they were created for Hearthstone but they were really first featured in Angoro weren't
35:58
they yes uh they made it to Angoro in Hearthstone before they made it into
36:04
Worlds of Warcraft they might yeah i don't I also don't think they were created for Hearthstone and then added
36:10
to Warcraft but I think Hearthstone Hearstone got there first so that's you know there was actually a lot of Angoro
36:17
i mean a lot of Tortolan law lore not law gez it's like a law show law and
36:22
turtles um but there's a lot of Tortolan lore in that original journey to Angoro
36:28
so yeah maybe we'll get to see more of that in this time around uh as well as Elise Starseker and possibly other
36:34
characters what about arena because you you were going to tell us about arena I think because you wrote down yes uh so
36:40
arena a big revamp to Hearthstone's arena mode just went live and it sort of
36:46
turns so arena is the game's drafting mode where instead of constructing a
36:51
deck you go in and you pay an entrance fee and you draft a certain number of
36:57
cards you build your deck as you go drafting cards and then you fight fight
37:02
opponents now the big problem with this of course is that you can draft really
37:08
bad cards you could draft cards that had no synergy with each other so you might
37:13
draft a card that requires you to play a lot of dragons and you get like one dragon through the rest of your drafting
37:19
and it's like this is terrible i think arena has always been fun but it's also
37:25
it's it's a bit of a niche mode you know some people play it some people love it but it's it's very frustrating it's all
37:31
based on RNG and you could just get a bunch of bad cards and since it has an
37:36
entrance fee the entrance fee is in gold which you can earn through gameplay so it's not it's not like you're dumping
37:42
cash into it unless you want to but since there's an entrance fee it can feel kind of bad to go in and play arena
37:49
and just get really bad cards and have nothing you can do about it so there are a couple of really great things that are
37:56
coming to arena that will help you with that first is that you will get um like a
38:03
pack of cards like you can get a not not your whole deck you'll still be drafting
38:09
but you'll also get a pack of cards that have some synergy like a legendary with a few support cards so you can pick up
38:16
that and you start building your deck around that and it's uh it's all going
38:22
to be MMR which it is that's how it is now you're you're pitted up against
38:27
people who have won the same or more or less as you are and you will also be
38:34
able to um let's see runs are going to be faster and you're going to be able to
38:39
like earn enough in a run that you could pay for your next run so you could just keep going when before it was really
38:47
difficult to do that without just being way way way on a winning streak so uh but then
38:54
there's also unadvanced mode of arena which is the underground that is pretty
39:02
hardcore it's more like the current game mode there's uh no MMR you just get set
39:08
up against anybody and uh I don't know if I'm going to play that
39:14
one uh but uh it's they're going to be longer runs it's going to be 12 wins or
39:23
I'm not sure how many losses off the top of my head but if you go into the underground you will unlock a special
39:30
spectral Nirzul skin that you can use for future matches because that's what
39:35
we all want is to become Nirzul maybe i can hear stopackling as I can hear stop
39:41
cackling as he's uh taking on Nirzul's form to kill the raid i hear you i hear
39:46
you Phil good doesn't everybody want to be Nirzul things you didn't expect i
39:52
didn't any sentence today so it it is a I think it's a big
39:58
improvement all around hear one thing is Hearthstone is also adding arena back to the main menu of the game it had been
40:04
taken out as sort of the uh kind of an unwanted stepchild of the game it had
40:10
been removed from the main menu but now it is going back and uh I believe Tavern Brawls have been removed from the main
40:17
menu which is another somewhat neglected game mode uh but yeah I think Arena's
40:23
going to be a lot of fun go in and check it out it does have an entrance fee of
40:29
150 gold but you can if you're playing Hearthstone you can earn that in game and it's not too bad also the battle
40:35
pass will have some tavern passes on it and a tavern pass ticket that may be the wrong term because there are so many
40:42
things you've got your battle pass and you have your tavern battle oh yeah uh you can use that to enter you can earn
40:48
those on the battle pass and then use that to enter the arena and uh that's all live you can go check it out yay i
40:56
meant that i know it didn't sound all that enthusiastic uh but I I do sincerely mean that however uh I have to
41:03
now talk about Diablo II and I'm I just want to say it's possibly Diablo II
41:08
season 35 it's got the pandemonium theme it's the eternal conflict deal again
41:13
pandemonium is one of the most fun season themes because it's just you keep
41:19
killing stuff and if you can push the amount of things you kill high enough really strange things start to happen so
41:27
um yes I know Diablo II is a game that's technically in maintenance mode yes I'm aware of this but nevertheless I just
41:34
want to read this to you real fast guys 15 kills exploding chickens seek and destroy 30 kills a wide frost nova
41:41
freezes enemies 50 kills corpses rain from the sky 100 kills five massive
41:47
energy twisters are unleashed 150 kills dark geysers form
41:53
beneath enemies 200 kills treasure chests fall from the sky 300 kills a
42:00
ring of fire engulfs everything johnny Cash then begins singing uh 400 kills
42:05
meteors hail from above 500 kills angels descend upon the battlefield to fight
42:11
for your cause 1,000 kills a lot of question marks i don't remember what happens at 1,000 kill i'm sure it's
42:17
great i just But just this this was one of those season themes that just it really felt like they were either
42:25
completely playing it straight or they were trolling us and I don't know which
42:30
I read this too fast and at 300 kills I thought it said a ring of fire seagulls
42:36
uh that would be great and I was like a flock of fire seagulls i was like "Oh
42:42
this this is this is a game I should play." Sad that they're not seagulls now but
42:48
they're not unfortunately but still season 35 um you get a weird little cat
42:53
i'm not sure what that deal is it's some kind of horrible cat that you can get congratulations you've made you've taken
43:00
a perfectly good cat and you've given it anxiety uh but but yeah I'm I am down
43:05
for Diablo II season 35 because I'm hoping it will start and then end
43:10
normally because we've had a couple of seasons now we've had a couple seasons now where that has not been the case but
43:17
regardless uh I still to this day play Diablo II it's one of my favorite games uh so yeah I'm happy to see that they've
43:24
got stuff going on there um should also mention the Diablo Immortal third anniversary event they're going to be
43:30
running an event through June 19th so it's probably happening as you're here listening to this if you're listening yes it is live yep uh you got some boss
43:38
brawls a free legendary gem legendary crests legendary set items and a Butchie's familiar trans familiar
43:45
transmog i I don't know i don't know what that is i don't know what that is
43:50
but uh in the description they say
43:56
uh remember to feed him fresh meat often which just it concerns me i'm a little
44:01
worried yeah it's not the kind of thing you usually want to hear about something you're getting for an anniversary but you know hey you know it's Yeah but
44:07
there it's it is Diablo this is Diablo so and it seems to be like actually a
44:12
lot more and a lot better butcher representation than Diablo I managed with its event that it had the butcher
44:19
in it if you all remember that weird thing where you would go into a dungeon and some the butcher might be there and
44:25
might be more aggressive than normal and that was kind of it you didn't even know like there was no real way to understand
44:31
that whether or not he was just there or if it was for the event so yeah uh yeah it sounds like a bunch of really cool
44:37
events where you're going to every couple of days there's a new boss fight to tackle where it could be the butcher
44:42
or veil or scarn who is I believe a Diablo Immortal specific boss or Diablo
44:48
himself that you can go in kill and murder also you know I think one really
44:54
cool thing about this anniversary event is that you just log on and you get the
44:59
rewards i also It's kind of neat it's kind of neat yeah the four you get is
45:05
the butcher ball scarn and diablo did you already mention that you mentioned that sorry i was just reading it and
45:12
thinking I should mention this and I'm like "Wait a minute liz just did." But regardless that's cool um we're
45:17
apparently looking at it for up to the 14th according to this so that's when the third boss comes in or something I
45:24
think so yeah yeah so yeah it will be going right up till the 19th and that's really cool uh so yeah Diablo don't say
45:30
we never mentioned Diablo Immortal quite frankly if not for its monetization I'd be playing it right now um it's you know
45:37
Diablo Immortal plays amazingly well on my phone it plays better than uh
45:42
Warcraft Rumble does it That's not saying much but yeah that Well it's it's
45:48
weird that Warcraft Rumble is kind of It's a simpler game you know you're using these cartoonish minis to fight on
45:56
a battle map and but Diablo Immortal is really feels like Diablo 3 on your phone
46:03
or tablet and it plays really smoothly and really well i hesitate to say this because I think Joe would will probably
46:10
like rip my my head off if I'm wrong but I feel like Ned knows how to optimize
46:16
mobile games a lot better than Blizzard does why would I rip your head off that's accurate okay cool i I sometimes
46:22
I'm talking out of my butt here when I say things about the industry uh because I don't know anything with Net Easy exist and they make a lot of mobile
46:28
games it No that's that's really it though like they make a lot of mobile games and they're really good at optimizing for current generation
46:35
hardware uh so anything in the last like few years is probably going to run
46:40
whatever games they're working on pretty okay so that's not too you you are absolutely corrected it is not a
46:46
surprise yeah whereas uh you know Warcraft Rumble is an entirely in-house Blizzard production and this isn't me
46:52
saying that they're not good at their jobs or don't know what they're doing but this is a new space for them uh so
46:58
I'm not necessarily surprised that Warcraft Rumble is having more trouble i do think it's regrettable because it's a
47:03
game where it I mean getting people to play it is what you need to keep it going so the fact that it doesn't
47:10
necessarily play as well i I have a I have a a phone that's a few years old and it Warcraft Rumble is just really
47:17
sluggish like by the time the load time finishes i I've lost interest so
47:24
that's maybe works better on newest newer devices and of course Warcraft Rumble does have a PC client now it may
47:30
still be in beta but it is there yeah that's I I think it's interesting that Blizzard is doing that again i start
47:38
find myself start wondering if they're going to just start aiming for releasing everything uh both on mobile devices and
47:45
live or at least as many things as they can get away with and it's it's odd that this is how Blizzard is coming back to
47:51
Mac in most ways because now they're making iOS well yeah yeah but Diablo Immortal is on
47:57
iOS but not on Mac and uh Warcraft Rumble is on iOS but not
48:03
on Mac it's a PC client only yeah anyway um oh re brief mentioned Cyberpunk is
48:10
coming out on Mac devices uh anyway Diablo II uh is having its second
48:16
anniversary like I think nowish right yeah it's right now yeah it's it's live now i I wanted to mention there's
48:22
another new reoquary yay i don't I already don't understand what these things do um but
48:29
the good thing is the return of mother's blessing which is plus 35% XP and 50%
48:35
gold um and there's also extra cashes for your Tree of Whisper turnins right
48:40
yeah that's what you Okay so that's cool um
48:47
I It's an anniversary rewards reoquary and it does feature some It features I
48:53
believe I'm not sure if it's a new mount or new mount armor uh a bunch of things that are red and gold and they look cool
49:02
uh I wish that I could get them without actually having to go through a reoquaryy but that's just me that's
49:09
that's just me it's not just you it's not just you uh but yeah that's all you've got you've
49:16
got uh Mother's Blessing for two weeks which is actually usually Mother's Blessing is around for like a week and
49:22
it's kind of a blink and you'll miss it event this is around for a little over two weeks it wraps up on June 17th so
49:31
yeah that's cool i'm happy for the anniversary getting celebrated i I honestly cannot tell i'm looking at it
49:38
says Mount Trophy the Burning Dawn banner Mount Trophy uh I'm not seeing anything else about there's a Sunfam
49:45
lantern mount trophy as well it's not saying mount is available no it's Mount
49:50
so it may just be Yeah yeah so the Burning Dawn mount armor after you
49:55
collect all the items from the reoquary so it's pretty much any horse that
50:02
you've got that can take armor you can stick this on it it is It is a cool looking armor it's red and gold with
50:09
white draping on it it's honestly Yeah it's very but you It's very blood elfy it is a little blood elfy yeah it's just
50:17
it's just you have to go and you have to play the game and work your way through this particular relicquaryy in order to
50:24
unlock the anniversary rewards and I I was you might have noticed I was
50:30
contrasting that a little bit with Diablo Immortal which does just have login rewards kind of nice it's kind of
50:37
nice to you know hey we're celebrating have some stuff but it's hey we're celebrating and play the game a whole
50:43
bunch to get some stuff yeah it is it is something that you know it's a little weird um see Overwatch 2 has their Pride
50:53
Celebration event returning which is good um log in from May 30th to June 30th so going on right now you can get
51:00
the Soldier 76 Resilient Pride skin and a Pride themed uh smoke bomb emote that's the smoke bomb emotes throwing me
51:08
i I was not expecting that uh Midtown map is redecorated as a pride parade for
51:13
the celebration will be available when it's random draw in other mode and will be on its own option in the arcade and
51:20
new soldier 76 centric short story futures past so yeah that's that's all
51:27
happening new event live now uh running through the end of the month so yeah uh
51:32
pride's good we are happy to see that now we come to the part where I turn to
51:38
Liz and get her to do her sight news before we talk about the the last stuff that we might be talking about which is other games i think we're going to talk
51:45
about some of the gamefest at least so go ahead blizzard watch is made possible
51:50
by listeners like you you make all of our podcasts and the site possible i want to give a big thank you to our new
51:57
supporter Nick who I do not think is the same Nick who is joining us on this podcast uh but a different Nick joined
52:05
our Patreon at $5 a month thank you so much Nick if anyone else is out there
52:10
thinking about supporting us $5 a month gives you early access to these podcasts adree and also uh you can read the site
52:18
ad free which is pretty nice i mean ads do support the site but they're they're kind of a necessary evil out there so if
52:24
you support us at $5 a month you get adsree everything and if you support us
52:29
at $3 a month you get ads free access to all of these podcasts so if you enjoy the podcast that's a way to help us out
52:36
and support us you can subscribe on patreon.com/bizzardwatch and check out
52:41
the website at blizzardwatch.com if you can't support us financially I totally understand you
52:47
listening reading sharing liking any of our stuff really helps you can also
52:54
subscribe to our other podcast Tavern Watch about tabletop gaming and lore watch we got a lot of exciting stuff
53:00
coming up for Tavern Watch so if you're interested in tabletop gaming news and live plays that's where you want to go
53:08
if you want to follow us on social media we are Blizzard on Instagram threads Twitter Facebook and Mastadon
53:15
atpad.comclub and we are blizzardwatch.com on Blue Sky and Blizzardwatch podcasts on YouTube
53:22
earlier earlier tonight uh Matt mentioned our podcast clips which I make
53:28
them no one else knows what they are until I publish them so you'll find those on YouTube Twitter and Blue Sky
53:36
and Instagram if you are interested in little previews of the show there's one where Joe talks about something for like
53:44
it's just I can't remember what it was he was talking about just the raw energy of his his denunciation was just like
53:51
"Wow okay I want to hear this podcast wait I'm on this podcast." I do try I
53:57
try to find moments of energy and enthusiasm or just humor so I I don't
54:02
know what I'm going to get out of this podcast i'm going to find out later um you can also help out the podcast we
54:08
have a survey going on if you give us your feedback it'll help us improve the podcast and it's also some information
54:14
for advertisers and sponsors to attract them to the podcast and just help us out so if you have time go to
54:23
bit.ly/ Blizzardwatch podcast all one word dash survey and it will also be
54:29
linked in the podcast description below so if you can do that thanks so much if you can support us on Patreon thank you
54:36
so much if you just like listening thank you so much so again thank you new supporter Nick and uh back to you Matt
54:43
all righty uh we got like about 5 minutes at least uh cuz we're a little bit late i want to talk a little bit
54:48
about Summer Games Fest uh we can't talk a lot about it because it hasn't actually happened yet it's happening on June 6th go ahead Liz we'll talk more
54:56
about it next week but yeah the event is coming up this is this is the big game event of the summer season since uh we
55:01
don't have an E3 anymore it's kind of been replaced by Summer GameFest and all of the events around Summer GameFest yep
55:08
um basically there's a lot of other stuff than just the GameFest itself
55:14
which is fine but I mean ultimately the Summer GameFest is look at a bunch of trailers that's what it almost always is
55:20
and that's nothing wrong with that still that's what it is uh there's I'm going to read these really fast um there's Day
55:26
of the Devs which is June 6th at 7 at 7 p.m that's they're going to have the more unusual stuff uh basically there's
55:34
Wholesome Direct which is sort of like cozy and kid-friendly games uh there's Woman le games also on June 7th uh that
55:41
one's at 1 p.m yeah this is a whole pile of things you could probably start watching in the afternoon and just just
55:47
keep going and then um there's the Latam games which is you know that's a lot of
55:53
small games Latin uh that's Latin American developers so that one you know
55:59
in previous years it's been a lot of horror games in that showcase and they've been really interesting
56:04
different games i love these little game showcases because they highlight just so
56:09
many indie games and so many diverse games you know in the big summer gamefest event you get all of these huge
56:17
blockbuster AAA games and after a while of watching 2 hours of video game
56:22
trailers they kind of start to blur together and look the same mhm so I love
56:28
all of these little events because they have games that are so different and so oddball okay and then do we have one in
56:35
black here that I'm I'm told this one is for this is excitement specifically xbox
56:40
showcase followed immediately by Outer Worlds Direct June 8th at 1 p.m et go
56:46
ahead and have your Outer Worlds moment if you want to have one liz I mean Outer Worlds is the game that I am probably
56:52
most looking forward to this year i mean there are lots of other games coming out but Outer Worlds I'm going to be buying
56:58
that and playing it just immediately i love The Outer Worlds outer Worlds 2 is due out sometime this year maybe at the
57:05
event we'll get a release date and I can talk more about it next week i should
57:10
also mention before we move on that Alcat Games has been doing teasers this week hinting at them releasing another
57:16
game announcement and they keep in mind they already just did a bunch of announcements uh on Friday June 6th for
57:22
their independent IP that they themselves own um so right now we don't
57:28
know what it is it's like a weird little video clip on an asteroid and Osiris but it it's the kind of thing they've been
57:34
doing a lot lately they just they confuse you with their announcements and then you don't know what's going on till the actual announcement at least it's
57:40
it's something um but now Dune Awakening is coming out on the 5th and
57:46
apparently early access on the 5th and launches on the 10th which is interesting because if you watch their
57:52
their videos about you know how the game's going to roll after launch they say it's not launching in early access
57:58
and then they do an early access it's a head start yeah it's not like it it's
58:03
not like it's in Steam early access it's just uh some players who I assume pay
58:09
for the you know extra edition will get a little bit of early access will get a
58:14
head start on playing the game so um Joe and I talked a little bit about it in the pre-show uh so I'm going to turn to
58:21
Joe first what do you want to talk about it or you know so I share what we
58:26
discussed i'm this is going to be maybe a controversial opinion but I think them calling it an MMO is pretty generous um
58:34
because it's really not it's Ark it's Arc Survival with another skin on it just like Conan Exiles is which is fine
58:41
that's not a it's I'm not saying that's a negative or anything like that it's just the truth of it you do play with
58:47
multiple people but it's also launching with private servers the same way that Ark does and Conan does and it's a
58:54
survival multiplayer building game where you are going to be building bases and
59:00
working on survival and uh and it's done with the Dune IP it's essentially the
59:06
same blueprint that Funcom goes to with these type of games with just that specific skin on it uh and again not
59:13
saying it's a bad thing uh it's just it is what it is uh it looks
59:20
uh pretty much like you would expect the Dune game to and I don't really know what else to say about it besides that
59:27
like it looks pretty it looks very updated and modern and sleek um it looks
59:33
very Doom uh like like it's supposed to be but yeah I don't it's it's
59:41
interesting there's a lot more sci-fi elements to it obviously um there's a little more emphasis on uh skills and uh
59:47
schools of combat so things like being a swordsmaster is a thing that you can focus on but it's very similar or at
59:55
least the way it reads to me and what they've shown uh and what they've done online is very similar to how you
1:00:01
distinguish yourself in like Conan exiles and how you specialize your character um the interesting thing to me
1:00:08
is it seems like they're going to be giving you the ability to fly or build flying mechanisms which is unique to
1:00:16
this type of of game so far uh the other ones that are available don't really have that uh so that's kind of cool um
1:00:25
and there does seem to be an emphasis on story dungeons which is something that
1:00:33
other games while they have dungeons or they have specific content don't really
1:00:38
focus on story they're more about the survival so in that aspect they are
1:00:43
leaning a little bit more into sort of like the story of Dune and what's happening here so I'll be interested to
1:00:51
see what happens after it releases and uh what their road map is going to be
1:00:56
because it's going to follow that same model it's going to be uh essentially I think you buy and then it's free after
1:01:02
that you don't have to pay a monthly subscription um you just Yes I can confirm that they that's one of the
1:01:08
things they mentioned in their post-launch stuff yeah and then every time they release something new you just go and buy it and add it to the mix um
1:01:16
and for those of you that if you like Dune this is something to look at and if you like survival this is something to look at if you maybe want to try to tame
1:01:23
a worm and ride it through around a rockus maybe this is the game for you uh
1:01:30
but it's it's interesting and Matt well I don't know like go you go ahead and
1:01:35
jump in here anytime i want to let Liz talk if she you know this was originally her idea to talk about so I don't want
1:01:40
to like talk too much and and rob her of her oh I just I just think it's it's worth pointing out if you're there's
1:01:46
this uh new quasi MMO coming out and uh I mean this is a big IP if you're
1:01:52
interested in Dune you might want to check it out yep uh my only thing about Dune Awakening is that as like we talked
1:01:57
on on the pre pre-show which you guys didn't get to hear unfortunately um we're going to have to stop doing that
1:02:03
uh is that it's Dune is very hard to adapt because it is
1:02:10
simultaneously it's very I I don't want to use the word seminal but that is the word that we use
1:02:16
so go ahead and snicker at me if you want it it's a very seinal work in science fiction uh it's the first really
1:02:24
sincerely environmental story like it's it's really about environmentalism and
1:02:30
preservation in a real way it's it's kind of a pmic for it in that it argues
1:02:36
how and why those things matter it's also about cyclical violence and how the
1:02:44
Sardukar are the Freeman's future the Freeman are going that route they're going to be an army that streaks across
1:02:51
the universe they're going to be fanatics it's you know the only way Paul can see to avoid it is to start taking
1:02:57
really weird paths that end up with him as a giant you know sandworm um I don't
1:03:03
feel like I'm spoiling the Dune novels to point that out that's like that's out there guys i mean it's been like 50 years we're good yeah um but because
1:03:12
Dune is so influential a lot of the stuff you're going to see in this game is stuff you've already seen in other
1:03:19
games and other movies and other novels because they've been influenced by Dune
1:03:25
but if you don't know that it feels like this is a Star Wars ripoff and that's a line I think that they're managing to
1:03:32
walk it in the art that I've seen like I I was watching the video of you know
1:03:37
gameplay and you know it it's got its own feel it's it's a lot more like the more recent movies in terms of its look
1:03:44
um but it there is still that danger that you are basically people are going to look at this and think it's it's
1:03:50
Tatooine and that's not their fault but it is something that you have to work on
1:03:56
you have to make sure that your adaptation tries to convey some of the actual meaning and story of Dune i don't
1:04:03
know how well they're going to pull that off uh quite frankly a survival sim type game doesn't necessarily lend itself to
1:04:11
an examination of of bad social and inherited cycles of behavior and how the
1:04:18
only way to overcome them is to completely abandon them uh that's not a theme I think we're going to get in a
1:04:24
survival game so but at the same time I am interested to see even if it isn't an
1:04:29
MMO and you know I I think it's fair to say it isn't really it's it's almost
1:04:35
less of an MMO than Diablo I and that's kind of weird to say uh but it's still
1:04:40
kind of true diablo 4 Diablo I is is an MMO you don't It just doesn't want to admit it very well yeah and it
1:04:47
definitely doesn't want to admit it but it is yeah like we had Diablo Immortal which is straight up admitting it but and is pretty good except for the whole
1:04:54
you know it's microtransactions thing it's late game monetization not great diablo I doesn't want to admit it and as
1:05:01
a result it's it's like it's like MMO light but I still feel like it's more of
1:05:06
an MMO than than this is going to be this is kind of reminding me of Metal Gear Survive quite frankly which I don't
1:05:12
know if any of you guys played that one i had the misfortune of playing it and it was it was a travesty that really
1:05:20
just shouldn't have had the word Metal Gear put anywhere near it like that this isn't a Metal Gear game this isn't nearly as insane as a Metal Gear game
1:05:27
hideok Khjima isn't making weird cameos in this uh so yeah I I I don't know how
1:05:33
I'm going to feel about this game but I I do think it's if nothing else it's good to see something different in the
1:05:40
survival genre unfortunately this isn't really all that different uh it's different because it's Dune but it's not
1:05:46
different because it is basically Ark and if you've played Ark I mean I I there's dinosaurs in Ark i couldn't not
1:05:53
play it you know they put dinosaurs in a game i'm going to at least play it once yeah and I mean don't get me wrong I've
1:05:59
enjoyed I've enjoyed games like Arc and I've enjoyed games like Pal World and stuff like that that that fall into the
1:06:04
genre so yeah so we'll see what happens but um I do want to move on to Dispatch
1:06:11
really fast before we get on get going because Joe wanted to talk about it and also because it's amazing like so go
1:06:19
ahead talk about Dispatch yeah I so I I just wanted to cover this real quick because it's we talked about it uh with
1:06:25
Phil when we did uh the Tavern Watch uh and we talked about it after we were done playing Masks um but if you liked
1:06:33
the old Telltale games like Walking Dead Wolf Among Us and Tales from the Borderlands specifically Ad Hoc Games is
1:06:41
made out of people that worked on those projects and we are getting what is
1:06:46
literally the first Telltale game that we've had in so long uh and it is a
1:06:52
superhero game called Dispatch where you are playing as a uh hero who has lost
1:07:00
their mech suit um they're basically an Iron Man style character uh and in order
1:07:05
to earn it back you have to or have basically get a new one you are working
1:07:11
through uh dispatch service called SDN uh where you take in this particular
1:07:17
case uh the role of the dispatcher for the Phoenix program uh miscreants ants or low-level thugs that used to be
1:07:24
villains and are now trying to be heroes and you are managing resources directing them where to go and it's all done very
1:07:30
cinematically with a very interesting story for all of the characters literally all of them uh and it's very
1:07:38
very well done the demo Mo is available now and completely blew me away within 5
1:07:44
minutes of booting it up um I am thoroughly impressed so if you like that style of like visual novel type
1:07:50
storytelling with branching paths uh and your decisions do change the outcome of
1:07:56
what happens cuz that is something that does happen here uh and you like sort of that that cinematic style then this is
1:08:04
absolutely something you should keep on your radar uh because I think it's going to be a smash hit and it's a day one
1:08:10
purchase for me yeah and plus it's just nice to see uh the the people who were
1:08:15
basically really messed over by the fall of uh in you know that the company
1:08:22
falling apart and Telltale being gone a lot of people were put out of work and it was really bad so it's good to see a
1:08:27
lot of them coming back and getting to do a game like this it does also look like a game I'd be really interested in i I the trailer is just amazing
1:08:36
really great and can we also just take a moment to appre and I'm not going to harp on this i know we're running out of time and people got to go but their
1:08:41
voice acting cast is absolutely stacked i mean they got Jeffrey Wright Laura Bailey Matt Mercer Aaron Paul Travis
1:08:48
Willingham like they've got a bunch of like bigname voice actors uh like and
1:08:54
people who have made a bunch of content like joining on for this project it is not an like a low no budget indie game
1:09:01
fully voiced fully voice acted fully animated like it is it is good but I
1:09:07
think at that point we're gonna wrap it up because we've we've got a lot more we could talk about but we are also running
1:09:13
out of time um which is unfortunate cuz you know the indie games are something we I think we're all pretty happy about
1:09:19
and there's a lot of that coming next week when we talk about GameFest so oh yeah keep that in mind um this is uh
1:09:27
been the Blizzard Watch podcast uh thank you to Nick for being a guest thank you for having me uh and also thank you of
1:09:34
course to Liz for compiling this this list of stuff and basically remembering
1:09:40
that the Outer Worlds Yeah you had help but you remembered that The Outer Worlds 2 is coming out soon uh and that we
1:09:47
might find out this week and that makes me happy because I like The Outer Worlds um and thank you to Joe for just for one
1:09:54
thing remembering to mention Dispatch because that game has really got me excited i am very happy about Dispatch
1:10:00
but this has been the Blizzard Watch Podcast thank you guys so much for being here and we'll be back next week
#Computer & Video Games
#Discrimination & Identity Relations
#Human Rights & Liberties