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Join us as we discuss the dual spec, LFG, and gold accessibility features rolled out early on the WoW Classic Anniversary realms, the new heroes introduced with Hearthstone Battlegrounds Season 9, the upcoming PC beta of Blizzard’s Warcraft Rumble mobile game, the overwhelming number of promotions happening with WoW right now, and the launch of the much-anticipated Overwatch-clone, Marvel Rivals.
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[Music]
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hello and welcome to the Blizzard watch podcast where we sit around and talk about the latest in Blizzard
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Entertainment and its games and sometimes the occasional other game but uh I you may recognize me I'm Liz Harper
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I'm the editor and chief of Blizzard watch and uh I'm filling in for Matt Rossy he will hopefully be back with us
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next week but for now I have my glorious co-host Joe Perez say hello Joe hello
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everyone feels like we just did this we did and Deja V and H filling in format
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this week is fellow Canadian who is trying to get his top billing on the
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show working very hard uh Corey Corey say hello hello everyone it's good to be
0:57
back for I think the third week in a row so if that doesn't warrant an and Corey credit I don't know what
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doesy we we do keep dragging you in the problem is you're available a lot of the
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time while we're recording and it's like hey look there's Corey there we can have another person join us so yes it's uh we
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we have a we have a little Trio of us tonight so let's let's get into it uh
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this it feels like a busy week to me because I play a lot of hearthstone which just released a new battle batt
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grounds season and since I mentioned that I guess I have to talk about it now do either of you play any Hearthstone I
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know Joe doesn't Cory do you play any Hearthstone it's been a minute since I played a Hearthstone Battleground season
1:42
and it was really only Battleground that I did engage with uh yeah the I love the
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art but collectible card games that I can't hold in my hands just don't do it for me yeah and it's they get
1:53
Hearthstone is definitely at that point where there are so many cards it's just kind of it's boggling it's boggling even
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though I think it's better than it's ever been because there's a core set that everyone has access to to make
2:05
things and build decks so it's easier to get into than ever but there's just there's so much collecting it's endless
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um maybe not quite as endless as in Magic the Gathering but it's still it's pretty endless and you don't even get to
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hold anything so um but Battlegrounds one of the reasons I love it you don't have to
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collect any cards you don't have to build any decks you just go in and you're put in this kind of freefor
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eight player match where you're building your board as you go based on cards you draw so I Love It season 9 is out now it
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removed trinkets from the game which I think is fine they were kind of little things that you would buy at different
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points in the game they gave you different Buffs a little random some of them were great some of them were terrible and sometimes it had a big
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impact on the game sometimes it didn't so those are gone we have uh a new thing
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called hero rolls which when you start a a Battleground game you have a choice of which hero to play uh two if you don't
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pay money or four if you do pay money because that's how the world works and now you can roll them if you don't like
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your options you it's a button it costs a roll token and uh you get some of
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those from the battle pass you're going to get some of them from events or activities and games uh you get some of
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them from the paid version of the battle pass and there is now a paid version paid plus version of the battle pass
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that's that's not what it's called but that's it's a plus version that also gives you one reroll for each hero slot
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per game so if you want to pay more money you can get in there and um buy
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rolls so you can get you know the the best most meta Heroes every round there
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are also three new Heroes which I've played a little played a little today
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and I played a couple of them they are pretty fun there is far nbb words
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nobundo uh zerich Master cloner zerich is really fun because he has a hero
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power where you can summon an exact copy of one of your minions so you could get something like super buffed up and then
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just click button summon another one you do once per game and Exar Oar uh who is
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our our draai character we thought maybe Hearthstone would add drani to Battlegrounds they have not except for
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this uh this one trai hero all that really fun I have been enjoying it I'm
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the only one here who's been enjoying it that's so that's that's fine we all have our things and do you think that they're
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going to add Dr to the next season of Battlegrounds like they're just kind of testing the waters with the one hero and
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they're going to bring them in I don't know they added draai as a minion type to the core game in the latest expansion
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so I mean we we were really expecting them to show up and just be part of the next Battleground season there' be a new
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uh new war band of uh drite but maybe it did maybe it would shake things up too
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much because right now there are some pretty defined War bands you've got your beasts you've got your mechs you've got
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your uh demons you've got your Undead like these are pretty defined bands that
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have their own unique synergies and maybe you could play a board that has a
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couple of Minion types or maybe you play one that has just one minion type so maybe maybe it would have been too much
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of a shakeup to go in with that I don't know usually there's a midseason patch that adds or changes
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some things so it's possible they could add them later or add them next season I don't know it may it may just be too
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much but that's really fun pattle grounds is actually a completely free toplay mode so that is nice really
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accessible I I am very happy with it I've been enjoying it today um let me since we have Cory here let me go on to
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talk about another theoretically free to playay game which is Warcraft Rumble which we we probably we probably would
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not talk about if Cory were at here I'm I'm sorry Corey I know you enjoy it it's not everyone's thing but it's not
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everyone's thing but starting on December 10th which is just seven days away from time of recording uh you can
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play it on the PC which makes it no longer a mobile game it makes it a free-to-play game if I have my
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terminology correct anyways that's right the the long
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awaited and much asked for PC version of Warcraft Rumble is starting its beta on
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December 10th 2024 you'll be able to log in and control your little collection of
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minis from your computer if the marketing is to be believed in between your cues on Warcraft I don't know how
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well they'll run side by side but you know Rumble is not that big it is a mobile game first so it will probably
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run pretty well on your computer and yeah you'll be able to hop in and play
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your game and they're adding um for the month of December not the whole month but starting soon uh probably the week
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following this podcast release uh malurian at Uber and orgrim are being
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added to the game as split family Heroes split faction Heroes where uh they will
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count for multiple in-game families at once or malurian is both an alliance
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unit and a tharian unit and anuak is both a beast unit and Undead and orgrim
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is of course Black Rock Orcs And horde so you'll be able to play them and have
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some synergies between those two Army factions which is great because it will make your army A Little Bit Stronger and
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it will also let you complete your heroic missions just a little bit faster which uh it's funny that so often the
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best way to play games and the most optimal way of playing games is to play the least amount of that game as
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possible yet here we are and they're they're giving us an option to do that so but those will all be like there'll
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be events through throughout the rest of December so if you are traveling for the holidays and you're looking to play a
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little Warcraft on your phone while you know you're stuck in a airport somewhere or you're in a in a house without your
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main computer guess what there'll be new content and Rumble to keep you a little bit occupied at least for a couple hours
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a day it may drain your phone battery but you know that's what Chargers are for oh yeah definitely bring your
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charger and maybe keep that plugged in and if you have a cooler for your phone that wouldn't hurt
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either they're also the thing about Rumble is I love it I think it's really fun and it's just slow to load on my
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phone and it's it's a little it's a tiny bit grindy so I I find I don't play it
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very much I might play it more on PC except it's a Windows only not I'm
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sitting here with my Mac so well okay okay
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I would say that it's a medium bit grindy if not very bit grindy but um
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they are trying to work on the slow to load thing in the next update for it now currently every mini you complete you
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collect has three talents for it and to to use an option uh that's really easy
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and obvious you have your murloc tide Hunters base unit base mini is that there is two murlocs with Spears and
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they throw those Spears and uh they do damage to things but they're murlock they're pretty squishy their three
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talents are to give them a little bubble so they like they're encased in the safety water bubble and that will take
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one hit or they'll spawn with a third murloc buddy or they'll throw their Spears further so they can attack from
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farther away and right now if you have one of those talents it will change the
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way your mini is displayed so in your army before you start your match you'll look at your Army list and you'll see
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that your merlocks have little blue bubbles around them or they'll be a third murloc or they're really good at
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throwing their Spears and telegraphed in their art however starting in the next update they are taking away the unique
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art for the talents for Minis and so rather than your mini in the game
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showing that they're just going to make the icon for that Talent bigger and more prominent because if they don't have to
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have four copies of each individual mini that will save up that will save some of
10:22
your computer spa or your phone's space and it should allow the game to load faster so hopefully it means that your
10:29
you're it won't take you 30 seconds to get into the game and then you'll actually be more interested playing the game that's true because sometimes if I
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click to load a match and it's you know I get a progress meter I get a progress meter I turn my head to my computer and
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then I'm then I'm gone then I'm gone by the time it loads I'm doing something else because uh that's that's the short
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attention span World in which I exist it's true and that's the short attention span that everyone exists in but it also
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read it kind of feels like oh we've lost and they have been layoffs at blizzard
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and specifically in Rumble and it also like in their explanation for it that it
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allows them to have increased capacity to develop more new Minis but the part in Brackets or the part that said under
11:15
their breath is because they don't have the artist to keep the 3D artist to keep producing that 3D art for these Minis
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and that feels bad like I you know it you can you can push forward all the
11:28
development reasons and the phone storage and op optimization reasons but at the end of the day it just feels like
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we have lost out on a on a small and tangible thing that has no real monetary
11:39
value but at the same time makes our game just a little bit better and that's a little sad because
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yeah at the end of the day if my murlocs are just murlocs and they don't have a bubble or there isn't a third one
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hanging out in a little murlock pyramid my my in-game experience doesn't
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diminish but it also slightly kind of diminishes in a
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non-quantifiable way that shows that like blizzard is taking it's one of those intangible things that like adds
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value without being able to be measured and that's you know yeah I it's hard to
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say am I happy about this am I sad about this I kind of both which is a complicated feeling I don't know what to
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do with this in my head these are video games they're not supposed to give us complicated feelings or maybe they are
12:29
but not because of the loss of a third murloc or that your Sylvanas won't have
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the special ultimate badass pose that she sometimes has it's they're supposed to give us comple feelings because you
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know we've just spent our kids college fund on making sure that our Sylvanas is fully maxed out and that's a different
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story that's true that's true well that's that's the latest in Warcraft
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Rumble let's go back to actual Warcraft okay I said that and that kind of belittles Warcraft Rumble which I not
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intend to do that didn't mean that Warcraft Rumble is great it's just different it's different I play more
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World of Warcraft um but wow classic we have talked about the classic anniversary Realms which just launched
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last week and uh I think last podcast we talked about how it had an lfg tool
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which is awesome you can play these like Baseline classic uh classic servers with
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uh more tools than we had back in the day but they also have dual spec you can
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do dual spec on these classic vanilla era Realms that everyone is playing on
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right now which is also I mean that's a great quality of life Improvement I wonder what do what do you two think of
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this I mean what do you think about the game adding these quality of life improvements earlier than they were
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originally added and um how does having dual spec this early change the game
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what do you think Joe uh dual spec changes the game quite a bit because I mean especially when we're going about
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classic anniversary Realms with uh being clean Realms or or fresh restarts we
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didn't have the option respecing cost a ton of gold if you wanted to change what your spec and specialization was uh
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Talent points you weren't able to refund them without uh you know spending a ton of gold on it and I remember spending a
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lot of gold uh and this is not me saying get all get off my lawn or whatever um
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it's just noting that it it's it's doing exact kind of what we said it was going to do which was it has strayed away from the
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classic wow experience For Better or Worse depending on what your view is uh
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it's clearly successful enough or popular enough that people are enjoying playing it uh so much so that they're
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doing the anniversary Realms there's a lot of people that are enjoying it and I'm fine with it like ultimately I'm
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okay with it essentially being its own game because that's what it is at this point it has its own development crew it
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has its own Dev cycle it has its own release schedule it has its own events like it is essentially and and people
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are going to scream when I say this it's wow too again like it's it it's it's the
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second MMO that they have produced if you want to uh talk about retail being the primary this is 2.0 um not to say
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that it's you know one's better than the other it's just again concurrent development Cycles it's still an MMO you
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still pay to play um so it's it's interesting to see how it's evolved so
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yeah and again I'm okay with it I think it's cool but I don't know what do you what do you what do you guys feel about
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it Corey I'm all for giving the the player a little bit more freedom I know last week or maybe the week before I
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made the joke about hashtag no changes but honestly like we're we're getting into classic if you're if you're truly
15:50
invested in classic you know give them a couple changes it's it's going to make them have a better experience and it's
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going to make their classic character last long than just like a weekend of like oh remember how bad classic was and
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then you move on with your life it's going to keep you playing and enjoying classic and that's going to make a
16:08
better experience for everyone around you in Siri as long as you're not a huge troll of course but who would do that
16:14
who would just go on the internet and troll people in a video game no one ever clearly no no I don't even know why I
16:20
brought it up but I'm I'm happy for them like the the you know everyone who wants
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to play the protection Warrior or the guardian Druid and in class like if you're playing a guardian Druid I
16:31
applaud you because that is not as easy as it should be but like giving yourself an option to play something that will
16:37
make your life a little easier around your raid times that week or around running dungeons with your friends is
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definitely a good thing and will probably only be help helpful and healthy for the game in the long term
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yeah and of course back in the day back in original vanilla wow I was uh I
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played a holy priest for a while I leveled as holy because it was just too
17:01
expensive to resp to Shadow whenever you were you know whenever you wanted to run
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a dungeon it's like oh I'm not just going to resp a holy that's a lot of work and of course leveling is Holy in
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the world also a lot of work and you know then in uh TBC I made a paladin and
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that was the same thing it's like I leveled as holy because I I wanted to do the healing thing and specking back and
17:26
forth you just you didn't do that back back in the day so yeah it's interesting
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to see these little conveniences added to Classic and of course there's still
17:37
The Original Classic Realms if you want to just play classic pretty close to the way it was you could do that but you
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know you have these options uh before they launched classic Jay alen BR very famously said that you think you want
17:50
this but you don't which I honestly think it there was some truth in that he took a lot of flak for it but there's
17:56
some truth in that because vanilla wow was very difficult it lacked a lot of
18:02
modern quality of life things that we expect in a modern game and so now we're
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seeing they're kind of slowly adding some of those back I think it's great I think the game needs some of these
18:14
things but also it's it's interesting it's been interesting to uh watch classic evolve over the last few years
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and all the crazy permutations of it um but that's that's what's going on in
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classic right now if you want to jump on those anniversary Realms it's definitely not too late they're going to be advancing through all of the phases of
18:34
vanilla over 2025 and in 2026 it's going to go on to the burning Crusade so you
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can experience the game start and just keep going on Fresh Realms they're only
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a couple weeks old they're still pretty fresh Realms so you got time yes so get
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into that if you want to get into that uh over on Modern wow we just had the December Trading Post launch and I'm
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kind of lukewarm on this month the past few months I've been a little lukewarm on what's In The Trading Post um Corey
19:05
what do you think is there anything you've rushed out to get in the trading post this month it's fine I it's one of
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those things that La you know I love the the Christmas present weapons the the
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Christmas present Mace of course is amazing but the uh having a murlock
19:23
onesie as your completion bonus doesn't completely sell it for me I don't know I
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feel like that should be the the the fun little side thing and they should just give everyone like the the amazing
19:35
flying purple Fox but you know that's me and but at least they're giving us more tender that month to buy more things
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because that is always helpful uh yes you can earn an extra 500 Traders tender
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this month um yeah I don't know I looked at it and I'm like you know maybe I'll
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get some of this stuff it does have a a recolor of the witchy costume the kind
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of Sailor Moon looking thing um that is black and purple if I remembered that
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correctly uh black and purple black and purple is one of the ones you could have gotten before too yeah I think you could
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have gotten it in the shop before mhm I believe that yes now you can now you can
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pick it up on the trading post very cute I probably will pick that up I don't know if I'll wear it but I'll in case I
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want to wear it yeah that's that's half of the thing with the Trading Post you're going to you're going to get it just in case
20:29
so many things that are that way anything you're rushing to get there's there's nothing that really
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screams to me um which is fine not everything has to be for me every month
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and that's perfectly fine a lot of this I already have like the the gothic Longbow and the the Aries stav and the
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uh the gothic stav like I I got that combination um the two things that I would consider are the cheer bringer uh
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XL and the uh uh the uh Whatchamacallit
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uh tree topper and possibly the Aegis U tide um but other than that like nothing
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really screams to me this month I'm sort of sort of lukewarm on it which again
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not to say that any of these items are bad it's just there's nothing that I feel like oh I have to get this month
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done uh in order to you know Feel Complete in life and it's got ear muffs
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which are a cute a cute little silly thing that you can give your character if you it's true there's uh horde and
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Alliance ear Mups this month there are also a ton of ridiculous uh holiday themed weapons Joe
21:39
was just talking about the cheer Brer XL which is a giant two-handed mace except the head of the mace is a wrapped
21:45
package in green and white with a festive red ribbon on it with better to
21:51
which to smash your enemies hopefully that present is Not Fragile because uh and there are
22:01
several there are several new Candy Cane weapons uh I I know the candy cane sword
22:09
has already been in the game because I have it already uh but there is a candy cane dagger and I believe a candy cane
22:17
two-handed sword and a I think Joe also mentioned the tree topper which is
22:22
literally like a Christmas tree on a stick to hit people with listen we have a fine tradition of things on sticks in
22:29
World of Warcraft whether it's a Zergling on a stick a moon on a stick a stick on a stick uh an angel on a stick
22:38
like this is a Time honor tradition uh we're just bringing it into the the holiday Shear I I am not saying it's a
22:46
bad thing I'm just saying H you do you do have some unique holiday themed
22:52
Cosmetics to get at the trading post this month you know perfect for the guild Christmas party it's true we a
22:58
guild Christmas party anyone's listening to me and wants to host a guild Christmas party I'm
23:04
sounds sounds like Liz is volunteering I'm just saying oh yeah
23:10
but where you gonna find the DJ in World of Warcraft and the 360 camera Booth uh you just can't pull it off too hard
23:17
man okay well well now that I've maybe volunteered myself for something well
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there's another there's another non uh Trading Post transmog thing as well this month isn't there there there is there
23:32
is there uh just went live today as we're recording this there's a transmog
23:38
Crown you can get by streaming on Discord and this is a silvery Crown do I
23:46
have that right no it's a okay I had that completely wrong it's a Black Crown
23:51
with purple flowers on it silver black maybe it's pretty cool that you can get
23:56
from streaming on Discord uh this is the second time blizzard has done this where you just need to go in
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there's a quest in Discord that you can pick up and uh then you have to stream
24:09
for 15 minutes with someone watching you you can do it in a direct message you can open a call there or you can do it
24:16
in a channel you can jump on blizzard watch Discord and do that if you want to uh there are plenty of people who will
24:22
watch you play Warcraft for 15 minutes to help out that's we're helpers uh so
24:28
it's a neat little promo but this is another kind of weird one it is one us
24:33
only it is also PC only it is Windows PC only you cannot do it on a Mac you can't
24:40
do it on mobile Discord you can't do it on web based Discord you have to have the Discord app on windows so that's a
24:46
it's a little limiting yeah work on Mac it's got to be an API integration I'm sorry not not to get like technical
24:53
weirdly into it but like it it's one of those things where there has to be like a very specific function or call that
24:59
that only the windows uh Discord will do so I'm I mean I'm fascinated by the back
25:05
end of that um but yeah but you can I mean I'm wondering because it it goes to your shared Twitch account right or your
25:11
Discord account uh does it go or does it give you a code that you can redeem like the Mountain Dew stuff it gives you it's
25:17
like the Mountain Dew stuff you get a code to redeem so so I wonder is it region locked then can you can because
25:23
we were able to give the sorry go ahead okay you can only you can only do it in
25:29
the US by my understanding but you can give the code away to someone who may not be in the US CU we doing that thing
25:37
here yeah because we were doing that with the Mountain Dew stuff because uh I mean if blizzard hits me with it I don't care because whatever um but I gave uh a
25:44
code for the cycle of hatred to one of our hunters in the guild um because they live in Canada and they couldn't get it
25:52
um so if we can do this for people that want it then you know community that this is what we do community we can help
25:58
each other help each other transmog each other get Crown that's that's what we're
26:03
here for though you know it's a crown I've been playing in aoker lately and I've been really struggling with the
26:10
transmog limitations that's one of the things I'm interested in a lot of these Ensemble pieces from The Trading Post
26:17
because you can uh get things that have interesting looks that do not restrict you to male armor which is a little
26:26
um fine to totally fine it's totally fine you just got to slap a Naga head on your head
26:32
every once in a while and call it good yeah but the thing is you've got this Crown but if you are in Dragon form you
26:39
do not see helmets so that's the problem with the crown from this new Discord promotion and it's also the problem with
26:47
wearing a Naga head on your head because as Corey pointed out to me earlier this
26:52
week you uh there is a helmet from Mythic and Taurus which is literally a
26:58
Naga head that you stick on your head and it of course it's it's male because
27:03
Hunter Hunters we're we're all about I maybe Shaman Shaman have some wolf
27:08
helmets so kind of like yeah you chop off something's head and you put it on
27:14
your head which seems a little unsanitary but again it's a time-honored Warcraft tradition warriors did it first
27:21
then Rogue started doing it because it was all the Vogue and shamans are just like I felt left out Hunters got to do
27:27
this lit we take like Hunters take a humanoid head from the Firelands and it's a helmet and I don't mean like the
27:34
helmet of the humanoid uh I mean uh why can't I remember his name the hunter that you summon in in fire lands that
27:40
comes with the two dogs you literally take his head hollow out his skull and wear it as a helmet ey patch still on
27:47
him like we do weird stuff in this game oh there here's a weird six-eyed fish
27:53
that's made of smoke and old God bits guess I'm going to shove it in my forehead now like
27:58
we make weird decision with you I was with you before with the fire Lance guy but the fish thing makes
28:05
sense we we found it we found them mo we found Nas
28:11
Mo look he gave me a gift it would be rude of me to you know turn it away well Corey's not wrong I'm just
28:20
just saying um but you know if I could be a dragon and wear a Naga head on my
28:26
head as a dragon that's pretty awesome right but if I'm just a person wearing a Naga head on my head it's just gonna
28:34
mess up my hair I mean you know I have a very fancy hair thing evokers can dra
28:41
theier can have like multicolor omra thing going on in their hair they can have jewelry in their hair they have
28:48
they have some fancy stuff going on I don't want to wear a Naga head on top of that that's just a terrible idea but if
28:53
I could as a dragon you know maybe that' look pretty awesome maybe that be really
28:59
threatening I don't know see you're you're you're living you're living part of the problem right there I am and and of course the other
29:07
part of the problem is if I transmogged it in one form it is in both forms so you have to that's the big tragedy of
29:14
the evoker you have to have a transmog that matches if you are a dragon or matches if you are a human so I struggle
29:23
I struggle I struggle terribly with this I feel for you it's a hard life it's a hard life
29:29
ah so yes that's that's our transmog conundrums for the month as it is
29:35
December now hit up the Trading Post where has the year gone go do this I don't know go to this Discord promo it
29:42
is available through December Nights so you do have to do it pretty quickly but it is a very low time commitment it is
29:48
not uh watch eight hours of twitch no you just 15 minutes in done easy easy
29:56
great um so Diablo this week not uh not a ton happening we do have as a reminder
30:03
Diablo 2 resurrected season 9 starts at the end of the week on December 6th at
30:08
probably live now as you're listening to this so if you're into Diablo 2 time to
30:14
get in there race to the top of the leaderboards all over again very exciting Diablo 4 just kicked off its
30:20
PTR patch 2.1 season 7 it's already
30:25
broken yeah yes I appreciate everyone's reaction to
30:31
that that was that was how I felt too um the first day of the PCR PTR has been
30:37
sort of plagued by disconnects and crashes they had to disable the Boost in
30:42
PC because he was crashing the game uh so if you're playing on the PTR you have
30:49
to the only way to test is by leveling a character from scratch and that's uh
30:54
that's a lot that's a lot and uh the biggest thing to get to 60 but it is a
31:00
thing and if you only got a week to do it you know you kind of want your people playing the Diablo yeah Diablo 4 has had
31:08
this thing going on where they do one week ptrs that's one week to test a
31:14
Seasons worth of content and changes so that's not that's just not a ton of time
31:19
and getting to 60 in Diablo maybe not super timec consuming but collecting Paragon points if you're testing end
31:26
game yeah yeah it's to timec consuming for a week supposedly they're working to get this fixed soon so hopefully it may
31:34
it may already be fixed by the time you're listening to this yeah it may be it may be but this the first day was
31:41
rough um Corey what do you think about uh the stuff coming in season 7even are
31:47
you excited about the new season look I'll throw piranhas at people especially if they're in a tornado you know we're
31:53
here we're there let's let's do it let's have that fun with the the diabl
31:58
really they're they're slowing down our ability to be a piranha tornado anyone
32:06
down for you did we already talk about the new systems that are coming in season 7 we we did talk about it last
32:13
week we did talk about it last week but yeah we can go back into that um I
32:18
season s is a big season and I keep every time they roll out the PTR I keep thinking you really need more time to
32:25
test this because Gojo I was going to say that's kind of what I was getting at like I'm I'm
32:31
looking at just the laundry list of it like I know we laughed earlier about the PTR already having issues but it kind of makes it kind of makes sense right
32:37
because you have uh new Ultimate skill bonuses for rank five you have two new
32:44
systems being introduced with the Witchcraft system and the head hunt system uh and then you have a whole new
32:51
Rune uh new runes and uh Rune balances done for what's in there as well so like
32:58
they are adding quite a bit and and this to go back and agree with Liz feels like
33:03
it would require more than a week and feels like it should be maybe pushed
33:09
back for a later release and give it a little more time especially if they can't get things up and running uh quick
33:17
enough which I don't know if they have or haven't at the time of this recording um so I'm really I'm really interesting
33:23
or really interested to see what they choose to do with it yeah also coming out with the season 7 will be a new
33:29
Armory system which will let you swap specs and gear uh you can have it all
33:35
set up your talents your Paragon points and your gear Loadout you can set them
33:41
up swap between them at the press button and at no cost which is really nice because respecing your Paragon points uh
33:48
can be very expensive and require a whole lot of clicking so much so much
33:54
clicking oh yeah and there's tree of whisper updates as well man there so much going into this they're building a
34:00
little town around it or more of a town around it which is nice every every
34:05
patch we've seen a little more happening at the tree of Whispers as blizzard realizes hey we're sending everyone to
34:13
this tree constantly at endgame maybe there should be a jeweler there maybe
34:19
there should be an occultist there maybe you know so they've just kept adding and adding and now it's just going to be a
34:25
little town which I yeah yeah I mean maybe narratively it doesn't necessarily
34:32
make sense for there to be a town around the tree of Whispers but practically
34:37
you're you're sending your players here all the time yeah we just want to we we want to be able to sell stuff we want to be able to disenchant stuff we want to
34:43
be able to when we grab New Gear we want to be able to to switch our affixes
34:49
around and often that new gear that we grab has come from three of Whisperers caches so it makes sense to be exactly
34:56
so yes yeah I there's a lot of great stuff coming in this season the season will start on January 21st so this uh
35:03
this PTR is actually kind of early for Diablo Diablo usually does them it feels like a little later they're kind of
35:09
trying to squeeze this in between holidays so they have some time to test they have some time to work on it before
35:16
everyone goes off for the Christmas holidays and the New Year's holiday and
35:21
then you still have some time to do that final polish and roll out but yeah this is it this is another big patch
35:28
every time we're getting a pretty big patch with Diablo so we'll we'll see how it goes Diablo 4 has had some rocky
35:36
launches and I I just feel like they you could help yourself with with a little
35:41
little extra testing which they aren't planning on doing they're planning for just a typical 7-Day test period well
35:48
we'll see how it goes so I think we really go wild to me that there there's
35:55
so many things about Diablo that should be no-brainers or that have should work a little bit better than what they've
36:01
given us and we're still kind of stuck in this like we only need a week to test things and then you see the season
36:08
launch and everyone's like oh well hey it turns out Spirit born are amazing Superman and women who will blink and
36:16
obliterate entire screens full of demons who could have seen this coming and well it turns out if you maybe maybe I mean I
36:23
know that the you can't run a PTR forever you're never going to get the kind of volume and data that you need to
36:29
properly tune everything 100% but maybe more than a week of testing is kind of
36:34
what's necessary we could go wild and give it two weeks so that people who have full-time jobs and families and
36:41
stuff might have more than one or two opportunities to play the game and like try out things before they go live I I
36:47
am really eager to test out to to jump into the new season but uh we we got
36:52
nearly two months so we'll see we'll see how it goes we'll see how it goes testing how it goes when it goes live
37:00
next month next month is 2025 you guys it's happening I don't believe you that
37:06
can't be right well I check your calendar that's that's what my calendar tells me so in in the immortal words of
37:13
the Internet thanks I hate it like no no joke and and and we're going
37:19
to probably get into this as the year end starts coming up and we're to start doing our our end of year reviews and
37:24
our end of year um like round up Podcast because we always tend to do one of
37:30
those uh so one look forward to those in the future for the blizzard watch as well as the uh lore watch and hopefully
37:36
we can get a a Tavern watch end of year sort of consolidation in there as well
37:42
um but you it's hard to believe that this year flew by already and I don't
37:47
know like normally I sit there and say you know oh the year moved by quickly like nothing like this and we've had so
37:55
many games released this year we've had so many things to do this year we've had so much content and I'm not saying this
38:01
is a bad thing I think this is actually a pretty good thing where we've had enough distractions consistent
38:07
distractions uh to sort of just be entertained and have fun throughout the course of the year uh you know the
38:14
release of the WoW expansion and US diving into it and all the time that we've spent in it uh Diablo 4's
38:20
expansion uh like it's it's been a good year for games and it's been a good year
38:26
if you are a gamer no complaints about that whatsoever so but it is it is crazy to look back and think man it's already
38:33
December it's already like we're three short weeks from just it being
38:41
done I don't I don't still to this day well in a few weeks we're all gonna
38:49
be there we're gonna be living in the future very exciting well uh let's I
38:55
think we've kind of covered the big blizzard news for the week of course now that I've said that as soon as we're done recording I'm going to think of
39:01
something I forgot to mention and sure that's how it always works that's how it goes yeah the the latest Hero has had
39:08
his has his free weekend in OverWatch the the guy that thought it was great to Jem untested uh techno dad goo into
39:17
himself so that one techno goo a technical term yeah and it he looks fun
39:25
I I'm sure we'll see some some tweaks to before OverWatch brings them out and I
39:30
we're just as always really hoping that OverWatch continues to create some fun
39:36
uh content for us to talk about because every time they put out a little video it's always you know it looks pretty
39:42
good and we're all super happy speak speaking of fun things can I can can I can I can I use the segue to talk about
39:48
the thing that I've been really excited about I I think you should I think you should all right so I loved OverWatch
39:55
one I played the back out of OverWatch one uh and like my local gaming group we
40:01
poured hundreds of hours into the game and then when OverWatch 2 came out we tried and it just didn't catch the same
40:08
the change to the uh to a 5v5 format uh the balancing on some of them the the
40:14
elimination of the story mode which I will never stop complaining about blizzard I am sorry this is a hill I
40:20
will die on and it's not to say that OverWatch 2 is a bad game but it doesn't grab me the same way that OverWatch one
40:26
did and maybe it's just just time and or maybe it's just me getting older or whatever the whatever the case is but
40:33
there is another game coming out this week uh December 6th I want to say I
40:39
might be fifth um Marvel Rivals and we talked about this a little bit but why
40:44
are we talking about this in conjunction with OverWatch because it's basically OverWatch with Marvel
40:50
heroes but with more um so I'll give you
40:55
a brief overview of the game it is a team based tactical shooter you have various different roles that people can
41:01
play um there are various heroes and villains uh and their abilities mimic
41:06
what they are in the comics or the movies in TV shows if you've seen them the cool things that it adds is teamup
41:14
abilities which is something that OverWatch doesn't have we often talk about Wombo Combos and stuff like that
41:20
in OverWatch where like you can layer stuff and get kind of cool effects but these are direct interactions where like
41:26
let's say you have venom and Peter and Peter Parker Spider-Man on the same team Venom gives a little bit of the Symbiote
41:32
to Spider-Man to power him up let's say you have uh Wolverine on your team and
41:39
somebody who can throw him like the Hulk you can fastball special as a
41:44
PowerUp I love it so they're really leaning into the Absurd nature of comic books into the action platform shooter
41:52
genre and that's something that I think OverWatch 2 sort of abandon for a more tactical approach maybe with a more of
42:00
an Esports design in mind but this Marvel Rivals when we played the closed beta is just wickedly fun uh at release
42:09
and this is going to be a freeo playay game too by the way folks free to play uh skins obviously and cosmetics will cost you money uh but there will be 33
42:16
heroes and villains at launch which is a lot that is a lot for a launch it took a
42:22
minute for OverWatch to get to 33 characters yeah and some of the some of them are are like you know you can make
42:29
analog like Magneto is a lot like our Gravity Guy in in OverWatch which I can never remember his name because I hate
42:35
playing him Sig Sigma thank you but then you get other things like you have Peter
42:40
Parker Spider-Man you have venom you have Penny Parker uh you have Squirrel
42:46
Girl Black Widow Iron Fist Wolverine Hawkeye clo and Dagger just got
42:51
announced uh like they're going through a bunch of moonnight you can play moonnight just be a crazy guy and just
42:58
go moonnight crazy on somebody like they're but they're really leaning into it and the the other thing
43:03
that I think is really interesting is like as you're playing they will make comments like there are audio things
43:10
that they will say uh like in the Squirrel Girl trailer that I I put into our Discord when talking about it and
43:17
their notes here you can hear her making really really lame dad jokes like she
43:22
does in the comics while she's throwing giant acorns or summoning hordes of srls at people uh like really neat stuff like
43:30
that it's really kind of exciting and it's really interesting to see somebody kind of step into that space to try to
43:37
capture what OverWatch 2 has sort of lost and what valerent failed to claim
43:43
and there really hasn't been another over-the-top hero shooter that I know of
43:49
that has had this much attention on it so there was the Gundam one or the Transformers I can't remember which
43:55
giant robot that was but there was one of those franchises had it that came out and people kind of vibed with it but
44:02
then it didn't do well enough to I think it was Gundam yeah like it didn't it didn't catch on in the west but like I
44:07
think it's still like a thing in like on on the Eastern Eastern part of the world but yeah it's it's wild to me uh but I'm
44:16
excited for it like this is the the first time in a long time that I've been excited for a a game that's a shooter
44:22
and it's going to be on all platforms so be able to play it on Xbox PC
44:27
uh it has native Mac support I want to throw that out there um yeah I know uh
44:34
and PlayStation and there's some extra bonuses like um some free skins like if you are a PlayStation plus member uh I
44:40
believe at the ultimate PlayStation ultimate in the one right below it uh you get an exclusive Penny Parker Venom
44:46
skin as well as the Scarlet Spider uh the Scarlet Spider skin uh and I believe
44:52
there's also an exclusive like PS4 Spider-Man the video game skin for Peter
44:58
Parker Spider-Man as well like I'm I'm in love with what I've played so far I'm
45:04
in love with what I see and as long as pricing is not predatory which it will
45:09
there's going to be some element of because they're going to sell Cosmetics to keep the game afloat and obviously make Disney happy since Disney owns
45:16
Marvel um but for what they're the the heroes they're putting into it the PowerUp system the feel of it the
45:23
Aesthetics of it it's got a very like it it's somewhere between OverWatch and
45:28
Borderlands which I think is really cool because it it works with comic book characters it's perfect for that so yeah
45:37
I'm super excited about it and I'm going to stop gushing and you guys can talk
45:42
and ask questions if you want uh but I mean was this even on any of your radar before we really said anything I
45:49
definitely remember when the first trailer for it came out and everyone was like oh but this is just OverWatch but
45:54
with Marvel heroes and they and maybe a little bit slower because it did feel a little bit slow in the first trailer so
45:59
I haven't paid that much attention to it yet but I do know that in all those Heroes he mentioned Joe you missed
46:05
obviously the best hero total above and beyond even squirrel girl and that is
46:10
Jeff the shark Jeff Jeff the land shark who is who doesn't want to play as
46:17
a tiny cute shark in your video games I mean I I know I do yeah he is uh and to
46:22
be perfectly clear he is a puppy shark named Jeff and he is
46:29
amazing uh and if you believe everybody on Reddit he is absolutely overpowered because he's a planed shark named
46:37
Jeff yeah like I don't know like is this something that you might try or is I
46:42
know Liz you're not really into first person shooters right yeah I'm not I'm
46:47
not into the you know just PVP Shooters I I like games with a little bit of
46:53
story though you it does grab me that all of these guys have you know you've
46:58
got the comic book characters and they have the unique interactions and dialogue that looked neat I think some
47:04
of that was in the original trailer um yeah I I want a little something a
47:09
little crunchier a little a little delicious story to chew on in my games
47:15
and that might be something that they look at later but I think maybe having a
47:21
there's nothing wrong with starting with the PVP side of things uh and seeing where it goes because also this is a
47:27
tricky one right because if you were to release a story it has to go through Marvel comic writers and Disney for
47:34
approval and like this could just be something as simple as they're on Battle world and that's the story and you go
47:40
with you go with classic comic book everybody's on Battle world and you're split into teams one person's fighting
47:45
for the beyonder and the other one is fighting for uh I don't know the anti-monitor um like you you have all of
47:52
these things rat would be yelling at me if he was here right now um like you could do something simple like that
47:58
because but I think that's okay formulating the thought live here
48:03
folks I think for a comic book I'm more willing to forgive just ludicrous
48:09
gameplay because comic books are just ludicrous to begin with so like you would expect random BS fights to happen
48:17
between heroes and villains and whatever it happens so frequently OverWatch was
48:23
presented as yes an action shooter but had a heavy story behind it right like
48:29
it was supposed to anyways yeah and I mean between like the idea of the comics coming out the motion Comics The Deep
48:36
character backgrounds them carefully crafting each of these brand new characters right they don't have to do
48:43
this here these are Marvel characters they can walk off the assumption that most people know who these folks are and
48:49
if they don't they can put a little blurb in there or a little something like I think galactus's daughter is in
48:54
the game uh and that's a deep from the comics that nobody ever remembers so
48:59
like but I'm a little more willing to forgive it here and say they can just throw a random story in later and I'd be
49:05
fine but they're also not pitching it as being story heavy does that make sense it's not a promise they're
49:11
making yeah and of course that was the downfall of OverWatch where they promised story and then delay delay
49:17
delay cancel yeah yeah and and and totally fair things happen in development cycles and and I get that
49:24
but it was a huge blow because I think it was one of the things things that a lot of us were were most excited for um
49:29
exactly especially when you get things like we can talk about arcan and how much Arcane did for League of Legends uh
49:36
introducing people to the story and and universe of run Tera and to the point
49:43
where they even redid some of the maps to match the show right like there's
49:48
their aam map was not so affectionately called Murder bridge I think the devs uh
49:53
hated it even though they know everybody in the community calls it that but it was in the Hallen sh so it was this
49:58
Iceland based bridge in the middle of nowhere that was crumbling with runes all around it where players fought for
50:04
years they replace it to the bridge between piltover and the lower the lower part of the city so like it's got that
50:12
aesthetic it's got the announcers voice packs from people that were in the show uh it's got a lot of that aesthetic
50:19
built into it because they're like this story is really rad let's mold ourselves to it
50:25
and we kind of expect to have something like that for OverWatch and we just never got it right like we expected the
50:30
comic books that got cancelled we expected maybe a TV show that just never happened um and maybe that's on us for
50:38
expecting it because it was the big well to a degree it was the biggest thing in
50:43
gaming for a minute and like there was yeah OverWatch ads in front of movies at the movie theater yeah Mery like ready
50:51
to Res people and and that Boulders I don't remember what the rest of the ad around it looked like but I remember Mercy
50:57
in the rubble being like hey I'll get you up and let's keep going and get back into the fight yeah I mean it's it's
51:04
wild it's absolutely wild to me that they that like we had they had such momentum right and this is not me
51:10
complaining about OverWatch for the next 10 minutes I apologize um it's it's charting the the the path right because
51:18
OverWatch hit with like a truck when it released not just as a game it was ridiculously fun it was easy to pick up
51:26
it was a te based shooter that rewarded you for being goofy and weird and fun and and gave you Heroes that did wild
51:33
things just absolutely positively Wild Things um and then they had all this
51:38
momentum of all the the shorts that they were releasing and then the motion comics and like you said the advertisements and it was again almost
51:45
like a pop culture phenomenon that was almost parallel to World of Warcraft when World of Warcraft hit and was like
51:53
massively uh like ingested and pop culture right and
51:59
OverWatch Aussie Osborne and Mr T and and William
52:04
sh and then and then it was everywhere it was advertisements on TV it was advertisements on YouTube videos
52:10
advertisements uh like in like the pre-rolls for movies before like the preview started um OverWatch could have
52:18
done that and they did to a certain extent you saw OverWatch Nerf guns which are still thing uh OverWatch hoodies
52:25
OverWatch katas for like Nerf katanas and stuff like that um Funko Pops Galore
52:30
Funko Pops Galore the regular vinyl figures like we had the the non funco poop vinyl figures uh that blizzard
52:36
released for Diablo and Starcraft but really OverWatch mainly OverWatch uh the skin tie-ins and
52:45
everything else and it was just wild and cool and fun and we just expected that
52:51
sort of momentum to keep going and then the momentum stopped and then we knew then we got told that OverWatch 2 was
52:57
coming and we're like oh and then they told us that there's going to be a story mode oh okay we're getting bigger and
53:03
better and oh it's going to be a whole new game great you can still play OverWatch one if you want to but
53:08
OverWatch 2 is going to be its own thing and then that didn't happen again Dev cycle we get it uh and then story had to
53:14
be pulled out because they needed to make the game functional then they changed some of the rudimentary portions of the game and it sort of lost a bit of
53:22
its identity and it lost all that Steam and then on top of that it was the top esport for a while and I remember when
53:29
we were covering it and then ort uh support ort uh coverage from blizzard
53:37
dried up it stopped they weren't doing it anymore we we reported on it on the site we talked about it on the podcast
53:43
and that was almost like a death nail for it and I'm not saying that the game is Dead there's still plenty of people that play it uh it's available on
53:49
consoles actually works really well in the PlayStation by the way the PlayStation 5 um cuz I wanted to see
53:55
what controllers were like with it and it works absolutely fantastic just takes a little getting used to um but it's
54:02
it's just fascinating to see where it wound up because this is not where I expected it and then to see other games
54:08
and Studios looking at that and saying it's our time to step up to bring this
54:13
kind of Full Circle and that's kind of what Marvel Rivals is doing they're trying to fill that Niche and like
54:19
valerant couldn't they tried but it was too too close to csgo not close enough
54:25
to OverWatch to really be the next big thing and I'm saying this is going to be the next big thing
54:30
but this is probably going to be the next most accessible thing everybody knows Marvel heroes to some extent
54:37
they're ingrained in pop culture at this point because of the Marvel Cinematic Universe billion dollar movies those
54:43
billion dollar movies the average gamer if they're not into Comics probably knows who Magneto is or Spiderman or
54:50
Wolverine they've been around forever so this sort of lowers that barrier again
54:56
where it's like oh I know who these characters are and I have an idea of what they do cuz I've seen them in a movie right I've seen uh Spider-Man
55:04
swing through the air and punch somebody while making a smart malic comment I wanted to swear there I didn't thank you
55:10
thank you to me that was a light swear at best yeah and then that that will get
55:18
people to try it especially because it's free to play OverWatch when it released cost you know it it cost 60 what 60 70
55:24
bucks right it wasn't free yeah you got a full box cost yeah and OverWatch 2 is
55:29
a free-to-play game air quote um but they their monetization model had to be
55:35
completely changed uh recently because people weren't spending money because it was bad it was not not Diablo I levels
55:43
are bad but it was bad uh you know the the whole loot box thing is kind of bad too and people just kind of want to buy
55:49
what they want to buy and I think this has an opportunity to do that I'm going to stop talking I've talked a lot I am
55:56
really really sorry who doesn't love opening a loot box that you only get every five games to find three white
56:03
quality if you're lucky if you're lucky yeah maybe maybe eight games if you were losing yeah that was the other thing
56:11
that was really weird about it too like absolutely the loot distribution being tied to your successful wins didn't
56:16
really encourage people if they lost to play another game where's your positive reinforcement well you saw your bar go
56:23
up maybe not as much as it could have been but your bar got up and then it was closer to being a full bar and that full
56:29
bar means that you have a chance a chance at that nice shiny orange skin that just do dropped and you're like oh
56:35
maybe I get it this time that's that's the that's the only positive reinforcement you get there but no I
56:41
totally get it it's uh I'm glad that we've moved past the loot box system of rewards I just wish that we could move
56:47
past battle passes now but I don't see that happening anytime
56:52
unfortunately yeah it's the problem with battle passes at this point is that every game has one and there are only so
57:01
many hours in the day I can only do this so much yeah uh so do we do we want to try to do
57:08
a question or we out of time we're we're at we're at the time marker we can try
57:13
it if you want to okay I'm gonna I'm gonna ask one question which is related to some things
57:19
we've already talked to uh Bland asked how many promotions at the same time is
57:26
too many between Mountain Dew Discord trolly and Kroger I can't keep it
57:31
straight help me Jane get me off this cross promotion train we have had a a ton of things and
57:39
that's on top of events in the game that reward you things like the Trading Post like holidays uh it's it's killer it's
57:46
killer with the Mountain Dew that's been so much and Discord we had two Discord promotions in the past couple of months
57:53
uh trolley by trolly candy to get things was some Kroger promotion that I'm not familiar with because I'm not in the
57:59
area uh what do you guys think Corey how how much is too much when does this just
58:07
make you crazy right away it makes me crazy because it's the the whole like
58:12
fortnite ification I think is a term that people are going with where so many
58:17
cross promotions with pop culture are happening where you know we we see the Mountain Dew stuff popping up in World
58:23
of Warcraft and while it's still very much mostly World of Warcraft those little robot Companion Pets are kind of
58:29
mountain dewy and so how long until we get the Mountain Dew staff where the top
58:35
of the staff has a Mountain Dew bottle on it and that's just an advertisement in game for anyone using that transmog
58:41
and then you get the Mountain Dew armor set and the Mountain Dew Mount where
58:47
it's or the Red Bull car where your Mount is now the Red Bull car with like the fake can of Red Bull on the back of
58:52
it and I'm always of two minds about this because on the one hand it's
58:57
amazing that we're getting these promotions in World of Warcraft because it means that brands are looking at World of Warcraft as a viable place for
59:04
them to advertise and make money for their brand which is their whole purpose in life to make money for their stuff by
59:10
selling their stuff and they look at World of Warcraft and say that is a game that is popular enough and active enough
59:16
that we can make money there if we can tell people about our stuff in game which is great because you look at it
59:22
you realize that hey World of Warcraft is popular enough that people are making money in it by advertising gummy worms
59:29
and Mountain Dew on the other hand of course I hate it because I hate advertisements in general as much as I
59:35
can respect the medium sometimes the fact that we can't go five minutes in our daily life without some kind of
59:40
advertisement being pointed out to us and being like Oh just buy this brand of blank and your life will be better
59:47
doesn't feel great and it's kind of sad because if World of Warcraft was truly
59:53
doing that well then the powers that be could look around and be like you know what we have all these people playing
59:59
our game and they're playing it without any kind of benefit from you Mountain
1:00:04
Dew or you gummy worms or whomever and we will keep our world pure and
1:00:09
unsullied by your craft capitalism while we continue to charge people $15 a month again of it's a complicated gray moral
1:00:18
system and you know it's just tiring we want to be I wish we could find that
1:00:23
like little oh and that's that's the worst part is that the $15 a month should stop this from happening that is
1:00:29
our us paying into your ad free system yeah I'm of two minds one I think it's
1:00:37
too much I I do I think that that we've we've already hit critical mass I think
1:00:42
it's too much to keep track of um and I'm not going to say it feels desperate because I don't think it does this feels
1:00:49
Microsoft um this feels like let's try to get the
1:00:55
mass heal back to these games that we feel that we've lost over the years because of the bad press and all the
1:01:02
controversies and everything that happened when uh you know when Bobby kodic and and and crew were still in
1:01:09
charge of everything and all the bad stuff that happened on the watch we need to draw eyes back into some form of
1:01:14
positive light and so think about the timing of all this too because it's not just these they also just released uh
1:01:21
the eelin uh documentary and as absolutely great documentary absolutely
1:01:27
heartbreaking and heartwarming at the same time and it's a story that absolutely should have been told but
1:01:33
it's still promotion it's on Netflix it's being promoted on Netflix very heavily where like if you log in and
1:01:41
you've watched anything even remotely related to a video game or to something
1:01:46
that is in that genre it's being recommended to you um it's being
1:01:52
recommended on YouTube If you in the algorithm very heavily and Facebook and all the other social media places except
1:01:59
for Blue Sky cuz Thank You Blue Sky um but Warcraft is on Blue Sky they are but
1:02:06
it's not the same you can't pay the algorithm to put your stuff up um right like that's that's the thing like it
1:02:13
feels like they're really paying into the algorithm with a lot of this stuff to try to earn back attention from
1:02:20
people that they may have lost it from and think about like the Mountain Dew promotion seems weird at first but then
1:02:26
you realize one of the biggest tie-ins that they ever did in Cross promotions
1:02:32
was the original Mountain Dew promotion where you got points and you traded them in for tabberts or you traded them in
1:02:37
for whatever the case was um the warot the warbots with the and the fuel for
1:02:42
the war Bots which I still have that in my bank um but like that was huge that was massive uh and it was one of those
1:02:50
things where like you had Mountain Dew commercials that were like Mountain Dew now partnering with World of Warcraft and people like what what's this okay
1:02:57
and it feels like they're trying to earn some of that attention back and I'm not saying it's good or bad it's just it is what it is the other side of the co is
1:03:04
we technically don't have to pay attention to it if we don't want to nothing nothing requires us to interact
1:03:10
with it and I think I I am capable of walking away from a lot of this stuff and not really caring about it like I
1:03:16
didn't know trolley or Kroger were doing something until we talked about it uh the Mountain Dew stuff I had no idea it
1:03:21
existed until we talked about it right um and that's how I live my life uh but
1:03:29
it was just kind of one of those things where it's like I just don't pay attention to that stuff anymore and if I do see it it's like oh neat I just move
1:03:35
on with my life but I also understand that some people can't unsee it and I totally get that and I'm going to stop
1:03:41
now I've talked a lot in this last half hour no and it's it's not that we should be forced to unsee it and it is pretty
1:03:50
like that's another thing there not there's not a lot of like big announcement on some of this stuff I
1:03:55
feel until the we're in the fan site sphere we have to like we see things
1:04:02
like this coming out like okay yeah there's a a new promotion coming but for a casual World of Warcraft player in the
1:04:08
year 2024 are they going to be checking Wowhead every day or are they just going to log in and play with their three
1:04:15
buddies who play the game and have some fun and then never ever find out about this until one of them happens to see a
1:04:22
the orange motorcycle from the Mountain Dew promotion then Dives down a little bit deeper so like it's very possible to
1:04:28
never ever engage with this content which is good yeah I'm I'm with all of y'all the
1:04:34
problem is I don't mind the promotions but I can't keep up with them this is too much I'm not going to go out and buy
1:04:41
12 packs of Mountain Dew to get a motorcycle even though it's a Cool Motorcycle so I drink Mountain Dew but I
1:04:47
can't even get the points for it because guess what I'm not in the United States of America which is the only place where
1:04:53
the are being released do do you need me to a motorcycle Cory I had a buddy give
1:04:58
me a motorcycle I'm on motorcyc but in general like and with the with the Discord promotions I don't get those
1:05:04
either because again it's a us-based promotion and I'm not in the US which is
1:05:10
not um a an uncommon Pro problem there are a lot of players of World of Warcraft that aren't in the US huh who
1:05:19
knew uh yeah so it it's too much it's like the battle passes we were talking about earlier it's with every game
1:05:26
having them it's it's a lot I can't keep up so I wind up kind of ignoring them
1:05:31
this is not making me buy Mountain Dew or trolley gummies or anything else because like I only I only have so much
1:05:38
time and brain space even me here a per a supposed professional talking about World of Warcraft it's I can't keep up
1:05:45
with all this stuff so here we are it feels it feels
1:05:50
very busy and it feels a little pointless because this isn't this is not
1:05:55
making me buy anything it's just making me overwhelmed I appreciate that you put emphasis on the AG thank
1:06:02
you are you telling me that you weren't excited to go meet the mountain dude in
1:06:07
tenis on that one realm for that one afternoon you could not have paid me to
1:06:12
go and meet the mountain dude ineris on a single realm on a specific
1:06:18
day here's the dumbest part about that and the whole thing is so so dumb but I
1:06:25
un ironically Love That Mountain Dew put a guy made somebody play the game for a
1:06:30
couple hours and made the gave them a character called the mountain dude because it's just it's so dumb and it's
1:06:39
so dumbly Charming in its own stupid way and I'm never going to it it didn't influence my decision to drink or not
1:06:45
drink Mountain Dew or play or not play World of Warcraft it just some that was someone's afternoon you know what let's
1:06:51
let's hang out and say some catchphrases and give people a 100 points the the Mountain Dew promotion because that's
1:06:58
that's all it was I'm sure and it didn't even work that well because it was so small and it obviously didn't have like
1:07:05
higher up Blizzard support but at the same time it's stupidly charming and I I hate that I like it that at
1:07:13
all yeah we're kind of we're kind of stuck aren't we we are it it's damned if
1:07:18
you do damned if you don't and I guess damned yeah probably I mean we're we're
1:07:23
Gamers we're playing video games that's that's what we got and not that I not that I mean to
1:07:31
end the podcast on a downer which this is kind of turned into but
1:07:37
okay Plenty game out there plenty of game out there to enjoy even if we don't go meet the mountain Tu lots of Warcraft
1:07:44
to play lots of work lots of world to explore in Warcraft plenty of aoth to
1:07:50
wander around I do want here at the end to thank you a new subscriber this past
1:07:56
week lunarland subscribed at $3 supporting us on blizzardwatch
1:08:03
docomond wait I did that wrong patreon.com
1:08:08
blizzardwatch it's it's too late we've we've gone too long it's been too long um supporting us at $3 that gets you
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subscribe to that too early access you get to listen to our pre-show which is
1:08:34
very fun we had a great conversation about games and uh television and everything we talked about everything
1:08:40
earlier so thank you very much for supporting us we are trying to get our patreon up to over $4,000 a month that's
1:08:47
kind of our happy spot we are still a little below that and since it's the beginning of December it's actually down
1:08:53
a little from last week cuz you get to the beginning of the month maybe people's credit cards changed uh Pro payments in process we usually have a
1:09:01
little bit of a backslide at the beginning of the month and that's why I am here reminding you that blizzard
1:09:07
watch is supported by listeners like you you let us do these things and uh
1:09:13
staying it $4,000 a month on patreon helps keep the site happy and whole so
1:09:19
if you can help us out we greatly appreciate it so thank you all of our
1:09:24
support we love you so much thank you if you can support us financially and if you can't
1:09:30
I love you anyway I love you anyway and just uh yeah just to chime in here since Liz already covered half of my outro uh
1:09:37
just as a little bit of a reminder uh sharing our content also helps as well
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um so sharing it on our platform Spotify and and leaving any sort of likes or
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favoring or comments that you can uh do actually make a difference uh and if you have questions for this or any of our
1:09:55
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uh you can also hit us on Discord we have uh the Q and podcast questions Channel same rules apply if you are a
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first as a way of saying thank you for helping us keep the lights on uh and then you can also send us direct
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accompanied by a cat meme uh so you can do that as well help Dan send more cat bees support us on
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patreon but I think that's going to do it for us friends we'll see you next week
1:10:43
[Music]