Up next in 10
It probably isn't a huge surprise that our hottest topic this week was the World of Warcraft player housing preview. We also discussed how the Race to World First played out, and how this Race differed from past races. Plus, WoW Classic is getting its own new content in the form of the Scarlet Enclave, which seems cool -- if a little outside the scope of what you'd think for WoW Classic. And since Cory joined us this week, we got a healthy dose of copium as always with Warcraft Rumble updates and Heroes of the Storm, uh, news.
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0:00
[Music]
0:10
hello everybody and welcome to the Blizzard Watch podcast i am one of your
0:15
rotating cast of hosts Joe Perez uh with me as always is our editor-inchief Liz
0:20
Harper and joining us in place of Matt today is Corey how you doing guys hello
0:27
hello i'm definitely not just three cats in a trench coat no no that that would
0:32
never happen never in a million years well three goblins are you're very you're very well spoken for it i mean
0:39
well we got a lot to talk about today there's a lot of stuff going on uh and I guess we'll start with the big one at
0:45
least for me I feel like it's the big one world of Warcraft and new housing
0:51
first preview first look preview whatever they call they actually showed off a bunch of the mechanical elements
0:57
of how you're going to customize your space uh as well as what that interface will potentially look like and obviously
1:05
this is rough and what they showed us is early on in the process but it still looks further along than even I expected
1:11
uh what did you guys think about what you saw we'll start with Liz i love it i mean they showed off some rooms
1:18
that all of them looked really interesting they had a lot of depth they had a lot of accessorizing
1:24
they showed how to move furniture and how you could The one thing that really stood out here is that you can recolor
1:31
your furniture let's say you have a a couch that's blue and you're like "Hey
1:36
my my aesthetic is not blue my aesthetic is red and black." Take your couch and
1:41
make it red and then you can go to the metal trim and say "I don't want that to be gold i want that to be like a dark
1:48
black silver." You can do that you can do that for I don't know if it's going
1:54
to be everything but it certainly looked like most things i believe Blizzard said
2:00
new assets new assets you can switch the colors on you know like the main colors
2:05
and the trim colors so I saw this and I am like yes mhm my dreams of a perfect
2:12
matching room everything will match and coordinate it is near it is here in this
2:19
flavor housing system and then my second thought is when is this coming to transmog when
2:26
we've we've been asking for for die for transmog for a while now yeah ever since Diablo 3 started doing it yeah but this
2:33
feels like a first step in that kind of technology and I do understand if it's you know if you're making a new asset
2:40
you can say "Okay we're making this with dyes in mind we're making this to where we have sections that are meant to be
2:46
dyed and you can change the color of the woodwork change the color of the cloth change the color of the metal and you
2:51
can coordinate all of that across your whole house so I that was that was really what stood out to me that you're
2:58
really going to go in depth you can really manage the colors you can really manage the placement and you can really
3:05
nitpick you know there's a basic mode and an advanced mode and if you're in basic mode it's just like okay I'm gonna
3:11
move things around i'm gonna put them there fine and in the advanced mode you can say you know I don't like how tall
3:17
this table is i'm going to sink it a foot into the ground so it's like a short gnome sized table okay i don't
3:24
like the placement of this chair i want to shove it a little into the wall so it's kind of smaller over there perfect
3:29
you know you can Yeah I want to change the angle of this table so it's more like a drafting table yeah you can do
3:35
that you can do all these things so I think it looks really cool i think it has a lot of depth i am very eager to
3:42
make my perfectly coordinated house we're going to come back to that advance mode when when we come back around uh
3:48
Corey what did you think i think that you're never going to see Liz in another raid cuz she's too much time adjusting
3:54
the size of her tables i don't I'm I already do that with transmog i've
4:00
changed my transm like three times this week yes you did
4:05
we had to wear green for raid night so you know I had to get all that coordinated but then it was it was too
4:11
green so I had to change to something new today yeah I was going to say the the thing that struck me about this is
4:17
something that I talked about when we originally talked about the idea of player housing way long ago on the
4:23
podcast which is when they do it it needs to be Wildstar levels or better
4:29
and that's what that advanced mode really is for those of you that may not know uh Wildstar was a game that was
4:35
made by uh de former developers of World of Warcraft and other MMOs uh for NCOFT
4:41
that was futuristic sci fantasy and one of the things that happened is when you got to level 14 I believe uh characters
4:48
unlocked player housing and you got a plot in the middle of like space uh that was a platform that you could build your
4:54
your house and do whatever you wanted inside and outside of your house uh there was a maximum level of assets that
5:00
you could you could put on there but you could do things like change where they were put them in free space change the
5:06
size of those assets and it led to a lot of extremely creative uh like variations
5:14
on player housing and you could invite people over and they could participate in your your spaces uh one in particular
5:20
that stands out uh one of our our friends that used to be with the site and unfortunately is no
5:26
longer with us raids um did what we famously call the rain beer road uh and
5:33
it's where he he took a bunch of neon beer signs from the game and made a
5:38
raceourse for the hover mounts that you got in the game and the video is out
5:43
there you can actually if you search Rain Beer Road you'll you'll see it it is a phenomenal display of what you
5:50
could do with very simple things and when they first started look at the housing and before we got to the
5:56
advanced mode my first thought was this is way too simple and it's like it'll be great for some people but I'm not going
6:01
to engage with this then I found the advanced stuff and those flashbacks of
6:06
Wildstar hit immediately and I'm like I can literally control every aspect of
6:12
everything I put in here i can shove tables through walls i can change the way the couches look i can sync things
6:19
into walls i can use snap to grid features uh and I instantaneously fell
6:25
in love with it i also really enjoy the fact that and I didn't see a lot about this because they were really focusing
6:31
on the one room when they were doing like the visual display but one of the things in what they posted was
6:38
multi-room layouts and so like if you look at like the layouts there there seems to be that you might be able to
6:44
get a plot that has multiple rooms which is even better because all the other
6:51
game housing that I've really encountered and I didn't get too far into Final Fantasy 14 so I can't speak
6:56
uh too much about that um but like in City of Heroes and in Wildstar you had a
7:02
room even when you did a super group in City of Heroes you had a big hall you could artificially try to create rooms
7:09
with like different assets but if what they're doing is actually giving you a multi-room experience that you have full
7:14
control over that is incredibly ambitious and I am here for it i like that a lot um I think you're going to
7:22
see a lot of people disappear you're going to see you're going to see a lot of people disappear into their neighborhoods you're going to see a lot
7:27
of people disappear into crafting their perfect experience for what they wanted for their player housing to be you're
7:34
going to see people trying to bring Mel Draxis into uh Westfall you're going to see people uh trying to bring Doeron
7:40
back i'm confident in some in some capacity and it's I'm really curious to
7:46
see what they're going to do with us obtaining the assets but from what I've seen in this little preview I am
7:53
extremely excited for it the amount of like player expression that you're going to have like they're doing exactly what
7:59
I wanted they're not they're not doing this halfway there it seems like they're going all in on it and I'm very excited
8:06
to see that and I again I was going to eat Crow cuz I never thought we were going to get this um and I'm happy that
8:13
I was wrong no it was definitely a fever div of a madman to expect housing of
8:18
this level uh one of the screenshots they do share is a house with five rooms in it there's an in uh a big entry and a
8:25
living room and a couple of bedrooms so I mean yeah this is we don't know how
8:31
much control we'll have over the layout but considering the amount of control they've showed us in design and
8:37
furniture placement and decor it feels like maybe we can decide how big our
8:42
space is maybe we can decide how many rooms do you want one giant room maybe maybe that'll be possible listen if I
8:48
can have a skeleton pit that I can yell at people to get in the skeleton pit I'll be all we're all good but yeah I'm
8:54
I'm curious to see what the layouts are going to be i'm curious if they're going to do what some of the other MMOs have done which is uh if they do offer a
9:01
multi layouts they you have a limited choice like you could have a one room a
9:07
three room or a five room and this is what it is and that's the end of it and then you can do whatever you want with the insides or if it's going to be truly
9:13
customizable or if it relies on players to make their own space like is are we
9:18
going to get walls as an asset that we can divide our own space up i mean the only thing the only thing missing from
9:24
this so far is a dance studio just going to throw that out there but you could make that probably with
9:30
multicolored floor and such at the very least you can take a square object and
9:36
think it through the floor until you have just a a tile from what I can tell from their preview anyways which looks
9:42
amazing right like the control the customization you were just talking about a skull pit and I thought well I
9:48
can finally make a skull throne using some of my favorite skulls entirely entirely possible
9:55
one thing that I saw that I did like is windows there's a bit of part of the preview shows them moving a window in a
10:03
wall so they're placing the window but as the window moves the lighting in the room changes based on the light coming
10:10
through the window i thought that was that just looked really nice the window isn't just a static thing stuck to the
10:16
wall it's also has a lighting element that's letting light in and that can be really interesting in how you're
10:22
lighting a room the shadows the light the you know where do you want the bright where do you want the dark so I
10:28
thought that was super cool and another thing was they mentioned that playing
10:35
with it you could do something like take pieces of a bush and turn it into a garland you can kind of creatively reuse
10:42
things and if you can tear apart a bush and make holiday garlands out of it I
10:48
bet you can tear apart skeletons and make your own skeleton pit i mean
10:54
finally the impossible dream but we we'll see what what happens with it as it goes forward i think there's
11:00
there's more that they're going to unveil as we move along um I'm excited
11:06
honestly and I I'm looking forward to a deeper dive into it one of the things
11:11
like I know that people joke about oh these fireside chats and these these dev talks sometimes go into like boring
11:16
directions this is one I kind of want to see the technical side of it a little bit too and I want to see if they talk
11:24
about how they're implementing in the game cuz one thing we talk about that I think is for me it's fascinating and I
11:29
don't know if anybody else out there feels this way the game is old right like we we've talked about this before
11:34
the game is is two decades old um it's built on a lot of of code that yes it's
11:40
been updated and replaced over the years but we still have jokes that you know modifying or releasing new content will
11:46
break Yog Seron and there's a reason that that joke is still relevant because it still occasionally happens and so I'm
11:52
curious the technical hurdles of putting this in and how they're going to
11:57
circumvent it part of me feels like it's going to be relying heavily on the instance stack but it could be something
12:05
completely different it could be some new technology and I'm really curious how what their plan is to get around
12:11
that but I think that's enough about Player House unless you guys have anything else to add besides gushing about how much we want it and need it
12:16
now i'd just be repeating myself i'd just be repeating Liz that's fair i
12:22
think we're going to move on though to the Race to World first because that's over and I mean Liz do you want to talk
12:28
about that a little bit um sure yes so I've been watching the race to world
12:33
first and it was a very it was a strange race would you agree Corey it's been a weird one that anything every time they
12:41
do the no heroic week it's a strange one yeah well so yes it's a no heroic week
12:47
they didn't have a week to like prepare before going into mythic which meant we spent a lot of the week watching them do
12:54
heroic splits and normal splits and more heroic splits and more normal splits and then when they finally went into the
13:00
raid it's like okay first boss second boss third boss down really fast that's what you expect when the big myth the
13:07
big raid guilds get into mythic for the first time you know the first half of the raid is dead really fast except they
13:13
hit boss four they hit Stricks Bunk Junker who is
13:20
besides having Yeah goblin names are the best and I cannot say them right i've
13:25
been working on it i've been practicing my goblin names i think I got that one correct maybe maybe and uh Stricks took
13:33
over 100 pulls that's really unusual for a boss this early and then the next boss
13:41
Corey who Who is the next boss locktock lockentock and two smoking barrels or
13:46
Lockentock and every purple ball known to man sprocket munger sprocket munger
13:55
lockentock who was again over a 100 pulls and so they kept hitting these
14:01
very difficult bosses they got to Mug Z who's the second to last boss and also
14:06
the most welladjusted ogre we have ever met in the Warcraft universe and unfortunately we had to kill him
14:13
sorry and uh he took a lot of pulls i remember Ekko took like 175 on him uh
14:21
Liquid did fewer than that but Ekko like spent forever on that guy and then we
14:26
get to Giwix chrome King Gywix the last boss and there had been a lot of rumors
14:31
about a secret phase and considering how much trouble everyone had with the earlier bosses there wasn't like a
14:38
hundress here but every boss in the raid was taking after once they hit boss 4
14:44
everything was taking like a 100 pulls or more and you got to Gwix Liquid
14:49
killed it in exactly 100 pulls and when they did it felt like Liquid like the
14:54
guild itself was surprised by this they were getting closer getting closer uh wearing Giwixs down and then they got to
15:03
15% and that was as far as they'd gotten and they didn't have their timings yet for the other abilities and Max said
15:10
something along the lines of "We're out of strategy now just play the game." And then they won and that was it then then
15:17
they just won and they they played the game and they won and it's it's such a perfect quote and it's beautiful and it
15:23
was a great moment of confusion on all their faces when you know Galax goes
15:28
past 10% and nothing happens and 5% and 1% and then most of the raid dies and
15:35
then there's four mages left alive and oop the boss dies and then uh then it
15:41
was over yeah i mean everyone so the mythic version of the fight is very different than the normal heroic
15:48
versions of the fight in that it starts in the intermission with Giwix in his robot body and you know it kind of adds
15:57
mechanics adds mechanics adds mechanics it's there are lots of things to dodge that's kind of what it comes down to in
16:03
the end you're doing a lot more dodging and you were already doing a lot of dodging but dodging performing and
16:11
beating the enrage and it it was it was a titan rage he was he did get to the
16:16
enrage timer but it's more of a soft than a hard enraged so that's why there were still people left alive yeah oh so
16:23
but everyone was expecting more especially after how hard Boss had been going up to this and he just kind of
16:29
died and there was nothing there was nothing extra i think they were expecting okay maybe when we hit 10%
16:35
maybe when we hit 5% maybe when we hit 1% something else is going to happen something is going to surprise us and
16:40
throw us and we'll have to strategize some more yeah there there was like uh rumors or like at least on the forums
16:47
everybody was expecting there to be like a hidden phase on Mythic for Galley Wix because he feels like that kind of fight
16:52
and and also Yeah go ahead also his dungeon journal wasn't filled out for
16:58
mythic so a lot and with their mythic fights and
17:03
it's been a minute since we've seen a mythic only phase though like I don't remember the exact last one but Gul'dan
17:10
had one where you fought Ilan and Jana did Jana have a mythic only phase the
17:16
the ogre raid ogre raid had one as well oh yeah N'oth had one n'oth was the last
17:21
one and then on Sylvanas she died at a different health percentage in Mythic
17:27
it's like what did she die at 10% in normal or 5% yeah they gave her another
17:32
5% health which meant that you had to execute blah blah blah because you only had four platforms worth of time so I
17:41
it's it's everyone's favorite kind of like surprise gotcha moment that isn't so much a surprise gotcha moment anymore
17:47
because we're all kind of everyone's hoping for it and they never they never give it to us maybe because it's too
17:53
hard to code or because so few people in the player base are actually going to see the mythic only phase hm i I think I
18:00
think part of it though too is like and we've talked about this in the past there's a lot going on in these boss
18:05
fights to begin with and a lot of times moving from normal to heroic will add
18:10
mechanics and then moving from heroic to mythic will will add more mechanics and
18:16
there's a threshold right there's a certain threshold where it just becomes unreasonable to expect anybody whether
18:22
they're a professional raider that's doing this full-time or not to sort of adapt to that there's a cap and
18:30
sometimes just having a really well-designed encounter that has an appropriate number of mechanics is its
18:36
own difficulty and where it should be and I would argue that yeah hidden phases are cute but I don't like that i
18:44
think that I think that encounters that are really well balanced and welldesigned don't need them if you it's
18:50
too easy of a fight and you're trying to throw a gotcha in there maybe you should have re-evaluated the encounter to begin
18:56
with and again occasionally it's a fun little thing but it should be a rarity
19:03
so I'm happy that there wasn't i'm happy that this was Yes it was a harder fight yes they had to get through uh two
19:10
really big doors stops before that to get there um because let's be honest
19:16
Mugs is a sack of hit points that is just Yeah um
19:21
and then getting to GWix if there was anything extra on there I think it would have just been too much so that that's
19:27
my opinion on it though i'm I'm happy I'm happy to see that it went well um I'm happy to see that it was hard enough
19:34
that only four people were alive at the end like to me that's that's a good sign of a well- fought like raid encounter as
19:41
opposed to oh the entire raid's alive or this is feels functionally impossible it's like no it feels like they hard
19:48
fought for that and I'm like okay yeah yeah yeah I can get behind that so yeah Liquid took 100 polls on the dot it was
19:54
their 100th poll they did it about 7 hours before Ekko got second because
19:59
Ekko was asleep they didn't expect Liquid to get it that night or otherwise they might have stayed up and pulled
20:04
more and they might have won if they had because it only took Ekko 49 pulls which
20:09
is ridiculous for a last boss of the raid tier like that is Yeah i don't I don't think
20:16
we've ever had a last boss of a raid tier that's been this few polls have we certainly not Ekko's 50 polls that's No
20:25
wild and especially that's right after they spent 175 pulls on Mug Z so it's
20:31
like you have done so much work on the second to last boss and then you go to the last boss and kill him in a third of
20:37
the pulls so I it just feels like you know maybe Gi I don't know if you say
20:43
should the earlier bosses have been tuned down a little should the last boss have been tuned up a little it just it
20:49
it felt kind of uneven it got very hard very quickly and then the last boss was
20:54
a little less difficult than some of the other ones so it didn't have like that escalating difficulty but also I think
21:01
this is a better raid than we had what was the Handras raid seeer of the first
21:07
ones am I remembering that yeah where you had a lot of pretty easy fights
21:13
comparatively pretty easy for these mythic raiders and then you had Handras who took like 500 pulls took a
21:19
ridiculous amount of effort and then and then you went back and win yes
21:26
we we've watched so many and win pulls during that uh during that race so I do
21:31
think it feels better for everyone to take kind of a moderate number instead of going easy easy easy oh my god I were
21:37
never going to finish this so it did feel like a different race to world first it wrapped up in just under two
21:44
weeks and the last boss went a little faster than maybe you expected yeah
21:49
another thing is the appropriate I as much as it's fun to say like "Oh we want
21:55
the three-week boss we want to see these people." No no we don't no one does i
22:01
just I like knowing that they're spending everything they've got like to get through a really hard boss because that's that feels like the point of the
22:07
whole endeavor but at the same time yeah no once you get to that third week
22:12
everything just kind of gets it's too sy the event doesn't have the same kind of
22:17
uh pizzazz as it does anymore because now you've you've got casters who are trying to fill time on pull 200 of like
22:25
the last four bosses all getting to 200 polls kind of situation or 300 polls or
22:30
so yeah sorry no sorry go ahead you tell me what you think I felt like there was
22:36
more class stacking in this race than we usually see like in Liquid in that last fight had four fire mages and in mythic
22:44
It feels very rare to have classes stacked to that level yeah the last the
22:49
one that really stuck out to me as class stacking back in the day was fighting Mythic Blackhand in Warlers of Brainor
22:57
they brought so many boomkins it was like four or five boomkins because they needed that ondemand burst to deal with
23:03
his ads the first time he broke through the floor but this time we saw all those
23:08
mages monks were really out there a lot and crazy numbers of monks yeah not very
23:15
many death knights because death knights don't bring a rate buff and there wasn't really a lot of ads to reposition that's
23:20
kind of their only pick and I feel like you you have a lot more
23:26
class stacking a lot more minmaxing on like mythic races where there isn't that
23:31
heroic bumper in between too cuz you kind of have to ek out that little extra
23:36
because you're not necessarily doing heroic splits you're not necessarily farming gear etc but uh there was a
23:43
while that Liquid ran was running three blood death knight tanks on sticks
23:49
because as you say they wanted to bring in the ads they were trying to manage the ads on sticks and so three death
23:56
knight tanks okay they didn't wind up killing it with three death knight tanks and they were also running two or were
24:03
they running three boomkin for the burst AoE to get down the ads yeah man is so
24:10
what's interesting is that they're stacking three or four of certain powerful classes and there's some
24:15
classes that aren't in the lineup at all death Knights primarily
24:21
Yeah well usually aren't yeah but they're the
24:27
classes they're stacking are different classes on each fire mages were big throughout
24:34
windalker monks mist walker monks mistweaver monks wait do I have those mixed up okay moving on but yeah and I
24:44
guess it's a certain degree of like just the the uniqueness of this as an event
24:49
mhm uh that it's not really an event no one's no one has ever officially gone
24:55
out and said you know what this is an event because if Blizzard ever did that that they would have to change how they
25:00
approach the two weeks around the race to world first in a much different way and so class stacking to get the maximum
25:08
possible damage in the shortest amount shortest amount of time they they have so many analysts on staff who are
25:14
probably simming and reimming every possible combination of gear out of the raid with every possible class and it's
25:21
just a m it's just probably why we only ever see three real contenders because it's you have to put so much into this
25:27
race to compete at this kind of level at the at the level of liquid and echo and
25:33
method where they have organizations and analysts and chefs and they have a
25:38
dedicated shot caller they have the 21st raider who is sitting outside of raid and just watching the streams and
25:45
calling out all the mechanics so nobody in the raid has to be splitting their focus between performing and reminding
25:50
everyone else that hey you got to collapse right now there's a meteor coming in yeah just having those call outs can be so helpful i mean even
25:58
running normal and heroic call outs it can make a big difference when someone says "Okay defensive you know okay
26:05
stack." All of those things help so much to have someone paying attention and have a qualified person doing that too
26:11
like not just the guy that will say it because he happened to glance over at his DBM and said "Oh wait something's
26:17
coming let me let me announce it." Yeah I was had the pleasure of raiding with the raid leader uh from Vodka is one of
26:24
the former top I I'm sure they're still in the mythic somewhere they have the world first kill on the first bot and
26:30
where whatever mini raid Unat was in they were the first ones to get it yeah but they came to help us with our Jana
26:36
because my little heroic guild wasn't wasn't getting Jana down in Battle for Azeroth and so they came and they tanked
26:43
and they did the raid call outs and it was amazing they they were as good as I
26:49
assume the air traffic controllers at London Heathrow they were probably directing air traffic at London Heathrow
26:54
airport while also directing our raid on Jana and yeah that's I'm sure at no point their blood pressure spiked above
27:01
what it normally is you're you're not wrong though in that that comparison and I don't want to I mean I don't want to
27:06
dwell on it too much but like way back in the day before like this was super
27:11
televised that's how like server first like guilds ran their raids for stuff
27:17
right like you called out everything you even if you had timers for it you you
27:22
were like you said that air traffic controller that perfectly calm uh individual that like took control and
27:30
even in our raids like even at like the heroic level and even at like just a base level if you're raiding in World of
27:37
Warcraft everybody I'm sure has an opinion on this but I'm curious like for those of you at home that raid how much
27:45
easier or better did you feel a raid went when you had somebody casually calmly calling out what was coming that
27:52
you knew what was happening because you didn't have to watch timers you didn't have to get caught off guard by but you
27:57
had that enough time to prepare for for it it makes all the difference in the world and I and listening to some of the
28:03
the race for world first stuff they're they're on a a whole other level with that I think but I think we should Oh go
28:10
ahead it's just always so impressive to watch these people to watch these people play on that high level and I'm like I'm
28:17
not going to play I'm never going to do this i just that's not going to be fun for me to go and conquer these super
28:23
high up challenges but I I really Yeah
28:28
uh-huh it's so fun to watch and I do want to before we call it call out the
28:34
MVP of the entire team of Liquid which is of course Chef Heidi who is feeding a
28:39
a team full of voracious raiders for like 3 weeks because they get there and
28:44
start prepping before the race starts so yeah Chef Heidi A+ the real MVP i know I
28:51
would play better just in general if I had a personal food buffs are important
28:56
for rating that's how this works yeah i mean and that's another thing you can see how much it takes to get this
29:02
together because they do they can totally think about Warcraft they can totally think about this raid all day
29:07
they have a professional making them delicious food like a baked potato bar
29:13
they have people telling them "Don't drink an energy drink past this time because guess what bedtime is 900 PM or
29:20
bedtime is midnight and you have to be up at 8 am and raid starts at 10 am so like the it's such a impossible no one
29:30
else can play at that level because it's such a different way of playing to make
29:35
sure that you can handle raiding for 14 hours a day for 12 days straight kind of thing absolutely and I kind of like as
29:43
fun as the grassroots race to world first is that this is just a community thing and the community is having fun
29:48
and all that for their body's sake i kind of wish that Blizzard would find a way to step in and regulate this a bit
29:56
just so that we could I don't know a tournament realm or something so that we could skip all of the the stuff around
30:02
it that isn't just race to world first and I don't know if that's that would make it better if it was just like
30:07
here's a week on a tournament realm where you all have the same gear level bosses are tuned for this gear level
30:12
everything starts at the same time and we're not going to release a hot fix that benefits EU or NA depending on what
30:19
time of day we release it because that has happened before where Ekko has gotten a kill over Liquid or Liquid has
30:24
gotten a kill over Echko when they hot fix the boss at the wrong time for them
30:29
at the right time for the others mhm but I could talk about this forever uh the race first is super fun blizzard maybe
30:37
step in and save some guys livers and uh we'll see you in the next race for sure because I'm always going to watch it
30:44
indeed well the race to World First was definitely a big bit of news but it's not the only stuff happening in World of
30:49
Warcraft the WoW Classic Anniversary or WoW Classic Classic Phase 3 part one
30:55
will be going live at the time of this recording uh it'll be two days from now so it'll be on March 20th uh and there's
31:01
a couple things coming with it first of all Blackwing Layer tier 2 sets in the Dark Moon Fair part one will be going
31:06
live with it which I think is great back Blackwing Layer was one of my all-time favorite raids in classic i really
31:12
really enjoyed that um so it's really exciting to see that and uh Arathy Basin
31:18
uh Battleground coming with the PvP rank increase to 14 in part two which will
31:24
drop on April 3rd arthy Bas another absolute staple of Vanilla WoW um yeah
31:31
that's pretty exciting i I haven't really been playing classic at all it's not something I ne necessarily want to
31:37
dive into but I I one of my employees is into classic and listening to to him get
31:44
really excited about this reminds me of when we were excited about it back in the day uh makes me feel old but it also
31:51
makes me feel good arthy Basin is probably my favorite ever
31:57
battleground so that they're finally getting back into it is of course the best news i've never been the classic
32:03
guy i played classic i played classic when it was vanilla i moved on we moved on from that i'm happy living in the in
32:09
the future but at the same time every once in a while you know you get exposed to just just enough classic news or you
32:15
see some people talking about like hardcore characters and you see all their little fun last words and you say "Wait a second I could do that." And
32:22
then you have to remember that you have responsibilities and you don't have time to level a hardcore classic character
32:28
anymore i mean the one thing that does really get me right now is Season of Discovery because they exploring whole
32:36
new realms here yeah and I think that's one of the the interesting we talked about it before it's sort of like that divergent development path that makes it
32:44
so much more than just being a rehash of Vanilla WoW so it's exciting to see what things get tweaked and and things that
32:50
happen there like in this case we have uh what WoW it's this Season of Discovery phase 8 is going live on what
32:57
april 8th I believe it is with the Scarlet Enclave raid going live uh shortly thereafter which that's a whole
33:04
new thing isn't it that is a entirely new raid all from the ground up i mean I'm sure they'll be reused assets but to
33:11
a degree it's it's exciting because this is this whole new place we don't know anything about and I'm like I want to go
33:18
and explore this place and find out what's going on and what's in this raid and what kind of challenges there are
33:23
but it's on Season of Discovery servers and I only have so many hours in the day in which to do things and it's like okay
33:30
I can I'm just barely hanging on and keeping up with my retail WoW character
33:35
so I probably can't I can't do that twice yeah yeah the interesting thing about it too is like it's it's a hearken
33:41
back to the old raids so Matt Matt and I gush about this a lot and and you guys
33:46
do as well when you when you chime in but like Upper Black Rock Spire was a raid stratholme was a raid at one point
33:52
skolamance was a raid at one point um they weren't necessarily 40man raids uh
33:58
but they were definitely you know larger than a dungeon five stack uh and here the Scarlet Enclave looks like it's
34:05
going to be somewhere between uh it's tuned for 20 players but you can bring up to 40 is what it says uh with no
34:13
scaling difficulty it's not going to be like flexible rating uh but it's interesting to see that and what it will
34:19
entail and the idea is that it's somewhere located in the Eastern Plague
34:24
lands which makes sense uh and what it's going to entail we don't know quite yet
34:31
i think it'll be exciting to see what happens when it goes live because I think it's going to be an exciting I
34:37
don't want to say a new blip but it's going to be something exciting and unexpected uh for all those players to
34:43
to experience fresh so you're saying that you're going to be excited to discover it
34:50
yes yes Corey that's probably only the millionth time
34:56
anyone has made that joke i I am sure that there's a sign big sign up in Blizzard headquarters saying no one may
35:02
ever make the Discover joke don't make me tap the sign again uh I mean yeah and if if you are playing
35:09
on classic and you in season of discovery I'm interested to hear what your thoughts are on it let us know
35:15
absolutely hit us up on Discord or or engage in the comments here down below and let us know what your thoughts are
35:20
on the uh Scarlet Enclave raid if you get to play it by the come back and and
35:25
tell us what you thought of it uh let us know i'd love to hear from it uh speaking of loving to hear things one
35:32
thing we definitely talked about we all gushed about every single one of us gushed about uh was the jazz music of
35:38
Undermind uh which now Blizzard has just released on YouTube Spotify and Apple Music if you go ahead and search for
35:44
Undermin you get the soundtrack it's really really cool and I'm glad that they did this i remember the uh
35:52
collector's editions releasing with the soundtrack CDs and that being one of my favorite pieces of this of the
35:58
collector's edition i love the OSTs and now in the day of digital content releasing stuff like this is is
36:05
fantastic cuz man the undermining music just slaps it's so divergent from the
36:10
standard like fantasy music you get in Warcraft that it stands out so well and
36:15
standing out would be fine but it stands out and it's done well which means it stands out in a good way which fantastic
36:22
more of that please absolutely phenomenal but I think that does it for our WoW
36:28
news and now we're going to move on to something a little more sinister because there's a few things happening with
36:34
Diablo uh the official end date of Diablo I season 7 has both been officially announced and simultaneously
36:42
pushed back to April 29th uh yeah that's uh that's interesting that has to do
36:48
with them uh kind of still needing to work on the next season right yes uh
36:53
specifically the change to the torment difficulty scaling is what's tripping
36:59
them up right now it seems like quoted from Rod Ferguson director of Diablo uh
37:05
just they they want to make Torment 4 feel like it's a very like it's a big
37:11
milestone that you've gotten into the hardest difficulty and oh boy are you unprepared for the vicious soul
37:18
rendering that Diablo and the minions of Diablo and Lolith and Mefesto and all
37:23
the others are prepared to lay down on you and whether or not you like the idea of an ultra hard Torment 4 or not it's
37:32
happening and it's taking more time to get just right and of course they had a oneweek PTR which just wrapped up so
37:38
it's like they don't spend a lot of time doing open player testing and I I think
37:44
it makes sense if it needs more time to bake it needs more time to bake take the time to make it feel right instead of
37:49
releasing it rushed because the Diablo 4 team does have a little bit of a history
37:55
of kind of messy launches that don't go quite as well as they might that have
38:00
require a lot of hot fixes along the way so yes I'm glad to see them taking time
38:06
where they need time and we're just going to have to see how the new difficulty taring comes out but I know
38:12
from PTR testing they are saying that tier 4 torment 4 is not as super
38:19
impossible as maybe the Diablo devs made it sound when they were explaining but
38:25
that there's just more of a a variance of difficulty it scales better instead of being just super fast from beginning
38:31
to end yeah they also and with combining that with the quote longer leveling time
38:38
it's they want they want you to spend more time in Diablo before getting to that just farming the hardest content
38:44
and then giving and then finishing it in two weeks and not playing again yeah and I I understand the mentality behind it
38:50
but like part of me hates that a little bit um so like I I this is going to
38:57
sound weird but like one of the the the things that I liked about Diablo II wasn't necessarily the leveling
39:04
experience it was farming the harder content for specific things and drops
39:10
and I feel like that might be something that's been missing from Diablo II and Diablo I in the play pattern like
39:17
farming specific uniques I think was always was always an important part of Diablo or something specific for the
39:23
character class or that you were playing or whatever the case was or in Diablo II's case farming specific rune words uh
39:30
and running through that content and we spent hundreds of hours doing that and it wasn't because we again it wasn't
39:36
because we enjoyed the leveling experience we enjoyed the loot grind the the loot piñata grind at the end of it
39:42
at doing that max level stuff and them sounding in like through Diablo II and
39:48
now Diablo I sort of taking the opposite approach of that which is we want you to
39:53
take longer to get there so that you have more time in game not less time
39:58
that you're out of this game playing something else whereas maybe this makes me in the minority but I would like to
40:05
see Diablo I develop a play pattern if even if it's se with the seasonal stuff
40:11
or just the base game that really encourages people to jump in and play
40:16
the game even if it's periodically between content releases uh more so than
40:22
trying to I don't want to say hold you hostage but I like we we talked about this a
40:28
little bit on the pre-show instead of feeling like you're obligated to play it for a longer period of time make it feel
40:34
more like a choice less like a job I guess would be the best way that I can say it and I don't know how I feel about that yet they they've been trying
40:40
because all of their events only last for maybe a week and a half at most there's another mother's blessing but
40:47
doesn't that do the opposite though like like no like think think about it if you have a week to do something and you
40:53
don't you feel more obligated to do it in that week versus if this event takes 3 weeks okay well I have time i can jump
40:59
in and do it when I have availability and Liz you were saying something yeah i mean that's exactly what I was going to
41:05
say i think having really short events does make you feel like "Oh my god I have to play this now i have to play
41:10
this today." And as Corey was just saying Mother's Blessing is back it is
41:17
back for exactly one week 18th to 25th right um yes so it's going
41:24
to you know it's a boost to XP it's a boost to gold earnings though right now gold earnings do not seem super
41:31
important and it's a you're also going to get that extra cash from turning in
41:36
whispers at the tree of whispers so this is great this is awesome it's going to help you level faster if you like me
41:42
started the season and then got distracted to buy something shiny and haven't gone back to finish it yet this is a great time to go and do that but
41:50
also it's like I well now I have to play this week but I really I really feel like playing
41:56
Warcraft i mean I got a raid night i need to make sure I'm geared up i need to go and practice my rotation and I
42:01
need to do all this stuff but oh this week is Mother's Blessing and Diablo I have to I have to play Diablo because
42:08
this is going to end and be gone and then I'm not going to have a chance for faster leveling so yeah I hate that
42:13
feeling of obligation and at the same time I'm trapped in it i am trapped in
42:19
it it is It is working i hate it i'll say the la the last thing before I think we move on is like it honestly makes me
42:26
feel the opposite and makes me not want to play the game and so so like it's like why would I feel like I want to do
42:32
something that I'm obligated to versus something I want to when there's a million other things that I could be doing with my time and in a a time of a
42:40
ton of games and a ton of things that I could be spending my time with make me want to play your game don't make me
42:45
have to play your game generally that's my motto so but we'll see that's a good motto maybe they'll learn their lesson
42:50
maybe they'll figure it out and you know especially because the last event was one month uh prior to this they had time
42:56
they could have done more than a week so just throwing it out there uh but now I think we're going to move on real quick
43:02
because we got we only have a limited amount of time we have so much more left to go uh and this one is the next two
43:09
are probably going to be up Cory's alley uh Warcraft Rumble anything going on in that uh there's a new season dropping
43:15
right away last time I was on I mentioned that Arthus was coming and there's always got to be a Lich King and he's really close uh but they've they've
43:23
frozen the whole Warcraft Rumble map and so there's ice everywhere he's right on
43:28
the horizon but we know nothing about it as of this time recording this they we
43:34
know that his event is coming and that there's going to be a demon skin for him uh they've they've just added the leader
43:41
skins as an option but there's none available until the Arthus event happens uh so they're still working on stuff
43:47
people have been asking like why can't we get skins for accurate units forever and uh it sounds like it's finally
43:53
happening as well as increasing the there's increased difficulty options and probably increased rewards coming for
44:00
their not quite a siege co-op event called siege or not quite a raid co-op
44:05
events called sieges where you and a partner play against three different fights of moderate difficulty rather
44:12
than nine fights of trying to kill Ragnaros and so you can play that on heroic or you can play it on mythic and they'll throw a whole bunch of unfair
44:18
mechanics at you and maybe you'll get better rewards but Arth is coming soon Blizzard soon hopefully information by
44:26
the next time I'm on the podcast and we'll make sure that we drag you on for that uh with whether you like it or not
44:32
i think you're going to like it speaking of screaming speaking of things you like and I theopium is real definitely in
44:38
Cory's heart and I'm sure in mine as well heroes of the Storm got another patch yeah the the patch I talked about
44:44
again the last time I was on uh has gone live it's now live and active on Realm
44:49
on the live game servers as of the 12th of March and you know a couple more
44:56
tweaks from the PTR things got nerfed a little bit less things got buffed a little bit more it's still happening
45:01
like they're still coming out and they're getting we're getting more patches more frequently uh in the last
45:08
year than when they first announced maintenance mode so unfortunately that just means of course we have to be uh
45:14
what's the word I'm looking for here annoying about it and being like yeah of course they're keeping the game
45:19
alive like it's got to be happening otherwise why are they spending so much time on it how is this one develop is I
45:26
really hope that the development team that's still doing patches isn't working themselves to death over it because that
45:32
would make me feel sad but hopefully they're getting enough uh time and
45:38
compensation from Blizzard to keep working on this game and maybe at Blizzcon 2026 they'll have a big fun
45:44
announcement of Heroes 3.0 i think we're on 3.0 it could be 4.0 honestly who listen all I know is I need this game to
45:52
not be in a maintenance mode anymore in the near future blizzard please please stop toying with my heart i need I will
45:58
I Go ahead giwix just got a big cool mech put that in Heroes of the Storm lilith exists put her in Heroes of the
46:04
Storm there's there's new heroes popping up in Overwatch they deserve a spot there's so many things that we can we
46:11
can do with this blizzard please anyway moving on to other exist that's fair
46:17
that's fair the the the Microsoft uh family of characters could be ported into this game at this point i mean I
46:24
would roll my eyes a little bit about whenever Call of Duty operator gets added but Master Chief is pretty cool
46:29
crash Bandicoot i mean on that on that note when on the Bandicoot note we're going to move on uh
46:37
uh Hearthstone there's some stuff going on in there and I'm going to turn to Liz for for some explanation uh yes the next
46:42
Hearthstone expansion Into the Emerald Dream is coming out next week on Tuesday March 25th it is as you might have as
46:50
you might have guessed uh Emerald Dream themed and expansions are really on
46:56
rails at Hearstone which I don't mean in an insulting way it's just you always know what you're going to get with an
47:02
expansion and it's the theme and the exact style of the cards that are always the the uh that's the surprise not the
47:10
fact that there's an expansion withund and something new cards and uh we're
47:15
going to get to play all of that next week except you may be able to get to play it a little bit early because the
47:21
pre-release Tavern Brawl is live this week and during the pre-release Tavern
47:26
Brawl you can open packs you've purchased and use them in brawl decks it is unfortunately a brol brallesium style
47:35
brawl which means I hate it sorry I just Blesium style brawls mean that instead
47:41
of going in and just playing the tavern brawl it has an entrance fee and
47:47
sometimes that can sometimes sometimes that can work out and you pay the entrance fee and then as you play you
47:54
will earn packs and rewards that are worth what you paid to enter it but I'm not very good at Hearthstone i mean I
47:59
enjoy playing Hearthstone i'm not good at Hearthstone uh but the thing is you
48:05
pay either in gold which is the in-game currency or you pay in runstones which
48:11
is the cash currency so you're paying something to enter this and then the
48:17
more you win the more prizes you get packs cards etc but if you lose it's
48:23
three losses and you're out and if you just do the three losses and you're out then you've paid more to get in than
48:28
you're getting back in rewards so I find these brawls extremely frustrating but it is it's nice that you can jump in and
48:35
open packs blizzard used to do this thing called uh
48:40
fireside something that were in-person events and if you went to one of these in-person events with your computer or
48:48
your iPad or whatever you could open all of your packs early at these special
48:53
inerson events but of course CO came along that died off but now you can do
48:59
it during these pre-release weeks so open your packs have fun the first entry
49:04
into this tavern brawl is free but after that you have to pay you also can pick
49:11
up some packs this week by watching on Twitch both uh the Great Dark Beyond
49:16
patch packs which are the current expansion and several Emerald Dream packs you get packs for every 2 hours
49:23
you watch up to a total of a maximum of 10 packs so if you are enjoying
49:29
Hearthstone watch some of the creators out there playing with some of these great dark playing with the some of
49:35
these into the Emerald Dream packs and see what the game is going to be like so yeah it's it's a pretty good time
49:42
despite my hatred for Brollesium fair enough say packs again Liz it hasn't quite lost
49:50
all meaning yet packs there it's a lot of packs it's a
49:56
lot of packs they're packing it in but I'm bummed
50:03
speaking of packing here to add go ahead cory is Cory's here with us to add all
50:09
of the puns we otherwise do not have that is the quality content we get with Corey well speaking of quality content
50:18
uh Overwatch 2 has some updates coming which uh take that with a with however you will
50:23
um we have a another mid-season collab crossover coming which is uh with Le
50:29
Saraphim which I think is like a French female group uh pop star type thing or
50:35
Yes are they K-pop this is actually Are they K-pop i think so it's not my scene but I'm pretty they're I'm pretty sure
50:40
they were the ones that came to BlizzCon 2023 as well yes they are that's right
50:46
this is also their second collaboration with Overwatch so yeah which more stuff
50:52
more stuff more skins more uh things like that if you are interested in that type of thing um the Freya which is the
50:59
new hero play test will be coming uh the weekend of March 21st so 21st 22nd 23rd
51:05
and 24th uh the 6v6 open Q uh which is not Overwatch classic and I'm air
51:11
quoting that uh was it includes perks that you can have a twotank maximum and
51:16
will be available uh between March 18th and to April 21st which is just one step
51:23
closer to it becoming a permanent thing in Overwatch 2 because again they realize people like 6v6 because despite
51:30
all the negativity Marvel Rivals is still doing great uh and then there's the Overwatch Classic Goats event which
51:37
I know very precious little about that will be going live uh March 25th to April 7th if that is something you're
51:43
potentially interested in that actually is a goat style event where you run with three tanks and three supports i think I
51:49
have that right and it's classic it is classic Overwatch with classic stuff
51:55
classic heroes so it's that is the classic that some of us wish was still
52:02
the game good old push piles uh and then normal watch will be available April 1st
52:07
through April 7th uh which is a full commitment to the April Fools bit of googly eyes well that's going to be
52:13
there uh absolutely ridiculous balance changes yep sure mechanics that
52:18
shouldn't exist but we're going to have them anyway yep uh normal watch is just pure utter nonsense uh and actually does
52:26
sound like a lot of fun uh so if that's something you are interested in uh it
52:32
will have rewards there will be uh different uh skins available i think uh what is it the rainy ducky ora skin is
52:38
going to be available as a reward uh and possibly some other more humorous ones as well so I mean at least they still
52:45
have a sense of humor about it which I'm happy about 100% on board with that uh more games should take themselves less
52:52
seriously agreed at least some of the time i not maybe not all the time absurdity but what was it that Liz said
52:58
on the on the pre-show games should be fun yeah that should be that should be why
53:05
we're playing games we should if we're having fun let's keep having fun and if we aren't having fun let's do something
53:10
else speaking of doing something else I'm going to move over to Liz so that
53:15
Liz can do that thing where we talk about you wonderful supporters out there so Blizzard Watch is made possible by
53:23
your support on Patreon it lets this site and community continue to thrive and grow it makes these podcasts happen
53:31
it lets us do all sorts of things and we keep trying to do more things but you know it's your support that drives that
53:37
i wanted to thank a couple of new supporters this week john who upgraded to $10 a month and Elizabeth who pledged
53:44
at $10 a month and not me but great name great name it has an S instead of a Z so
53:50
that's how you know it's not me but someone completely different from me so thank both of you for uh putting in
53:57
pledges upgrading pledges this month that really helps us that lets us pay writers that lets us were in the middle
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of working on the site to do an upgrade that will hopefully help you all find content more easily help you see the
54:09
latest podcasts more easily and fund all of our efforts here i do want to remind
54:15
you all to subscribe to our new Tavern Watch podcast feed i know I've been harping on this for a while but anyone
54:22
who doesn't listen all the time is probably used to having Tavern Watch in this podcast feed it is no longer here
54:28
if you want tabletop news if you want games those are going to be on the Tavern Watch feed go search for Tavern
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Watch in your podcast player of choice and you should be able to find it we are
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currently putting out our game of Triangle Agency which is a really fun game about it's it's hard to define it's
54:49
a a corporate worker supernatural agency thing i I It's a lot more exciting than
54:56
I think I just made it sound warehouse 13 meets Supernatural meets Twin Peaks
55:02
meets Saturday morning cartoon that just sounds like plain Control it's exactly what it is it's Yeah it's a bit of
55:09
controller and uh the game after that is going to be Pigeons 11 which was some
55:15
some wacky fun on that one i got to run that game it's uh exactly what it sounds everyone was a bird everyone was playing
55:22
a bird it was great and um I also wanted to tell us if you aren't subscri
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56:15
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hit us up on Discord we have the Q and podcast questions channel same rules apply if you are a Patreon subscriber
57:23
please be sure to send those in uh you can hit us up on the Patreon Q and podcast questions channel where we tend to look there first as a way of saying
57:30
thank you for helping us keep the lights on uh or you can send us a message on Patreon and we will get them as well we
57:35
make Liz uh dig those out and send them to us so we have them i I assure you uh and we definitely need more of them well
57:42
we didn't have time to get to them today there was just a lot happening today we skipped a whole bunch of stuff trust me
57:47
folks we had plenty to talk about but that doesn't mean we don't want to hear from you so please send those in we like
57:53
it with that folks we'll see you next week bye everybody bye
58:00
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