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Join us as we look back at the high lows of 2024 of Blizzard and its many titles. We cover everything from the games to the business moves as well as what to look forward to in 2025.
Go to https://www.blizzardwatch.com for the latest news on all Blizzard games and don't forget to check out our Patreon if you like what you see and want to support our efforts! https://www.patreon.com/blizzardwatch
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0:00
[Music]
0:09
hello everybody and welcome to the Blizzard watch podcast uh it's me Joe and Liz with you for the final podcast
0:15
of 20124 yeah let that sink in um I'm gonna
0:21
turn this over to Liz because Liz has quite a few things about to site to talk about and then we're going to move on to
0:26
doing kind of a a Roundup of 2024 as best we can remember it which I mean
0:31
guys come on no one knows what the heck happened this year it's been a year it's been a year so yes site news for
0:39
2025 the site is under new ownership as of the beginning of the year the site
0:44
will now be officially owned by myself Elizabeth Harper and my Ur while partner
0:50
in crime Dan o' howerin we we've been working on the site uh pretty much since it launched and we worked together on
0:57
Wow Insider before that and uh you know Adam holisky has been owner
1:03
of the site back since the beginning Adam is great but you know he has a life
1:08
that's that's that's a problem that happen since he started at wow Insider as a weekend only writer you know he's
1:16
gotten married he's had a kid he's gone through several full-time jobs which take him away from blizzard watch and so
1:24
he is stepping down and we are taking over ownership of the site uh which is
1:29
very exciting for me but it probably shouldn't result in any changes for you our readers and listeners we're still
1:37
kind of working on expanding we're working on getting out more podcasts we're working on broadening some site
1:43
coverage with more tabletop stuff while still of course for those of you who don't care about tabletop continuing to
1:49
cover blizzard games expanding a little into some other games we are all huge
1:55
huge fans of so hopefully 2025 is going to be bigger and better we're working on
2:01
a redesign version of the site which I hope will fix some of the technical issues we sometimes have I know there
2:07
are occasional login issues for supporters uh we're hoping to squash all of those bugs with a new site that runs
2:14
on the latest version of Wordpress and uh just uh just make things a little
2:19
better for everyone speaking of podcast Tavern watch you guys probably have
2:25
heard of Tavern watch that's our tabletop gaming podcast we talk about the latest news sometimes and uh
2:30
sometimes we do uh live plays of games uh we're trying to do a variety of games
2:37
and we're working on getting some planned for the new year but we have quite a few lined up right now to
2:43
publish over the next couple of months uh and I know some people have not been totally happy because these have been
2:49
going out on the main blizzard watch podcast stream they now have their own podcast Stream So if you are interested
2:56
in that kind of content you can subscribe to Tavern watch which you should now be able to find on all of
3:02
your podcast networks of choice including Spotify and apple podcast we just got set up on Apple today so please
3:10
if you are interested in tabletop subscribe last week we started a new series called cintai and Sensibility
3:18
it's exactly what it sounds like it's super weird but I hope super fun and
3:23
we've got three episodes of that lined up please go subscribe listen leave us give us a like
3:30
uh send us a send us an email leave a comment on the site tell us if you like it or you don't hopefully you like it I
3:37
would I would like that um so thank you everybody and I appreciate your support
3:43
I have two new subscribers on our patreon blizzardwatch why do I always get this
3:49
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3:55
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4:00
at $5 and Fred at $5 $5 gives you early access to all of these podcasts you get
4:07
hear our blizzard watch podcast pre-show in which we talk about whatever nerdy
4:12
stuff has our eye this we actually went from um we talked about how the Amazon
4:18
packages books and ended at anime like seriously The Arc of that conversation
4:23
is worth you should you should subscribe just to hear that conversation I gota say uh so thank you thank you both very
4:29
much for your support thank you everyone who has been a subscriber for all of these years you help keep this site
4:36
going we do try to keep patreon up above $4,000 we have been hovering a little under that so if you are able to support
4:43
us and I understand if you can't please toss in a dollar or whatever you can it helps keep us going thank you thank you
4:50
so much and here is to a brigher future moving forward into 2025 of course we we
4:57
hope that every year we always want every year to be a brighter future but uh we're really hoping this year yeah
5:04
hoping to make some things happen so that's that's all I got okay we're gonna
5:09
start talking about all the things that happened in 2024 um Liz wrote up the document so as is always the case I'm on
5:16
the lookout for things that she wrote that I think need to be heard out loud but until I find something uh it's been
5:23
kind of a year um I will talk about the the first thing that's listed here is in January we lost the titled Survival game
5:30
that blizzard was making go ahead Liz you know well this is our this is our first year of blizzard and Microsoft
5:37
together and I there have definitely been some changes from that though I think we I don't think we've seen the
5:43
whole impact of what could be happening in the future yeah we got to keep watching this one but um we first thing
5:49
we were going to talk about is the fact that they started off basically with 1900 layoffs that wasn't at that wasn't
5:56
just blizzard um they they laid people off every everywhere uh but as a result
6:01
of that one of the things that happened was we lost the UNT Untitled Survival game um I didn't get to see much about
6:09
that game until after it died there wasn't much yeah I remember seeing a couple of people who got laid off
6:15
showing off a little bit of the work they did since it was never going to get used did either of you see that yeah no
6:20
I mean it sounded all I kind of got was the vibe that it was a very troubled development cycle and maybe maybe this
6:28
needed to happen it either needed to be rebooted or reimagined because it sounded like yeah yeah I felt like a lot
6:34
of yeah a lot of stuff that happened in in the previous years like let's just be upfront since 2020 blizzard was not
6:41
having great times um there was a lot of stuff that that happened behind the scenes their response to work from home
6:49
wasn't great uh the whole crisis when California effectively sued them for
6:55
their horribly sexist working conditions uh and the fall out of that um there
7:01
there was a ton of stuff I remember go ahead Len sorry there's been a lot of turnover in management yes absolutely um
7:10
so yeah that's that happened um however I guess we could talk about the fact that game pass got some good games uh
7:16
Starcraft and Starcraft 2 have joined up in November but going back to March we got Diablo 4 uh to G Xbox game pass and
7:25
I can tell you front only go ahead but that was only the base game I should point if you want to get the expansion
7:31
you still you still got to buy that but it was it was great for me because that way I don't have to I didn't have to buy
7:36
the base game for my console and could still play it you know I I I I it cost
7:42
me a lot less than it would have so I was H I was happy about um the Bigg one of the biggest stories I think is one
7:47
that almost completely slipped under most people's radar uh the fact that that Activision Blizzard made the
7:54
through Microsoft made a deal to get their games back to China uh nety and Microsoft effect ly renewed the
8:00
licensing agreements so we've got wow Diablo and other stuff back in China I think they were out of China for like a
8:06
year maybe two it was a year it was a year okay it was it started in January
8:14
2023 so nearly two years or a year and a half I guess they came back over the summer yeah um and then I remember you
8:22
mentioning this Liz that it seems like as a result of them returning getting World of Warcraft back in China uh nety
8:28
started pushing really hard to get people to like start taking world first ratings seriously over in China um
8:35
there's a lot of people getting they were making cash prize offers and such they were making cash prize officer
8:41
offers if a chinese Guild got world first did not get world first in this
8:47
latest world first race for narbar Palace but they got closer than I would
8:52
have expected Chinese guilds are two days behind North American guilds and
8:58
one day behind European guilds starting up the race and they were doing really
9:04
well for a while they were really up there with the the big European guilds and North American guilds but they
9:12
didn't make it off the quite up to the finish line and I if all of these raids
9:17
started in all regions at the same time I think we'd see A different race particularly now because they've been
9:24
out of the game for over a year and you can tell they're eager to get play again
9:29
and they were really very competitive in this last race but uh one of the things is the cash prize because no one has no
9:37
one got it it's still up for grabs next world first race so we'll see um so
9:44
that's I think it's interesting to see that that got nego that got hammered out once Microsoft was involved because
9:49
effectively Microsoft is much more capable of leveraging itself against uh
9:55
Chinese companies than Activision was by itself um I don't think that's a surprise I am however surprised that
10:01
we're getting this is one this is one that I had not heard of actually I work at the site so it's my bad um but that
10:07
Microsoft has been making new teams within blizzard to work on a quote AA games which is their way of saying okay
10:15
we're not going to spend the ridiculous amounts of money and throw hundreds and hundreds of people at these games uh
10:21
that that we have been allowed to do under triaa which I think is interesting um it's an interesting downscaling of
10:28
development to make smaller games one thing I've noticed over the past past year I I mean I'm playing those big AAA
10:34
games when they catch my interest but I've been playing more small games because sometimes you want a game that
10:40
you can just play and enjoy and maybe not spend a hundred hours in like I I
10:46
really love Warcraft I play a lot of Warcraft but I haven't been playing it lately and I've been doing some smaller
10:52
games instead because you know Warcraft is a lot of work work MMOs they can
10:59
labor intensive so sometimes sometimes smaller is better uh but we don't it
11:04
just reminds me though do you guys remember a couple years back uh Riot sort of tried to do something similar
11:10
Riot Forge and they yeah Riot Forge and they put out some really good games uh I will flat out say um I own the jrpg
11:18
style game they made the difference was there there's a difference though the difference is that they opened up to
11:24
external developers yeah absolutely it is different I just feel like it's it was a similar focus on games that were
11:31
not trying to be huge um and it was Airship Syndicate quite frankly if you get Airship Syndicate to work on
11:37
anything I'll look at it um I I've I own three of their games and you know I like
11:42
all three of them Dark Side Genesis is one of my favorite game it's just and I liked the battle Chasers game which is
11:48
interesting because I didn't like the battle Chasers comic I didn't expect to like that game and then I was good and I'm like oh okay this should have been a
11:54
game the whole time that's the problem it made a crap comic it was a good game uh so yeah I I do think that it's
11:59
interesting to see them coming at it from the more I I don't want to say more corporate but I don't know what else to say like it's it's very much in-house
12:06
it's not it's not doing what R Forge did which was to license yeah it's just internal development which is a good and
12:14
bad thing all at once the benefit of being an independent uh working on it is that you're not necessarily uh held to
12:21
the same restrictions we don't know what if anything the the I don't want to say
12:27
design motives uh but we don't know what the requirements on those teams are going to be or what if they're going to
12:34
be giving certain timelines to finish XYZ cuz even though it's a smaller team
12:39
it's still at a AAA development studio will it be required to follow the same
12:45
you know guidelines rules and Etc that a AAA Studio expects and if that's the case how is that going to succeed those
12:53
are all things that I think are are we're going to have to wait and see how it works but I think those questions are
12:58
at the four almost the least of my so let's uh quickly before we move on to something else let's speculate what do you think they might be working on I
13:05
know we have nothing so speculate make something up I don't care I mean the problem is I don't know it could be
13:11
literally anything it could be uh you know a small first person shooter could be a small platform or it could be a
13:17
Revival of old IPS it could be uh none of the above it I I don't know what
13:24
Blizzard or in this case Activision under the guide of micros roft would
13:29
want them to do so that's the part that I don't know so I I I don't even have a speculation at this point Liz do you
13:35
have anything before I say the thing I I don't have anything but I can only say
13:40
uh it does specify you know making new things with blizzard IPS which I think could be very interesting because if
13:46
blizzard is making a new game it can take many many years maybe focusing on making a smaller game means we get to
13:53
see more things in the Warcraft or Starcraft or OverWatch universes that are really fun and we get to play
14:01
instead of just hear about and speculate about okay for me first one up is The Heroes of the Storm is and this is how they're do um second is they're gonna
14:08
make like like Starcraft survive remember middle gear survive that
14:14
incredibly bad Survival game like that but hopefully good and using Starcraft I
14:19
these are the two I've got one of them is a joke the one of them is serious you figure out which one I meant uh I I
14:26
honestly do think that it would be kind of fun to see them like to see them take games in directions they would not
14:32
otherwise go I would really like to see that um to a certain degree that's kind of what their mobile development house
14:37
was doing and it feels kind of weird that so far they've developed two games for mobile and both are really popular
14:44
on computers and not so much in Mobile like I mean I'm not saying that that you
14:49
know war cry Rumble isn't popular in Mobile uh I think it is well I think you have to qualify that statement of
14:54
popularity in uh Western audiences yes that is absolutely true um but at the
15:01
same time it does feel like almost a reverse batro where batro came out and everyone was like this is cool and
15:07
interesting then it went to mobile and everyone was like ah my life my life has been given up on the alter to batro I
15:14
need more Jokers um little vatro guys I'm sorry um I haven't wanted to talk
15:19
about it because quite frankly it's like admitting that you've joined a cult uh but yeah okay so that we we I think
15:26
we've talked about that enough I do honestly really think it would be great to see her as the Storm come back I straight up I just think it would I was
15:32
the only mobile that I liked um and I I really liked playing of all things I
15:37
liked playing a Healer or or a support I don't know what you call them in this but I liked playing all the characters
15:43
who healed like that was my fun thing that was what I did I would run around behind people and just throw heels at my
15:48
people and not pay attention to anything else it's like my guy looks like he's gonna die heal heal please don't die I'm
15:54
gonna if you die I'm dead there's like 13 guys coming at heal heal heal so yeah mobas I I that was the one I liked I
16:01
want other things on though uh I I I feel like at this point it's weird to
16:06
complain about this because it's it's the last day of December but BlizzCon 2024 didn't happen um and we don't know
16:14
if BlizzCon 2025 is going to happen we don't know if there's ever gonna be another one and yeah I wonder if there
16:21
will be another one it's kind of sad yeah it's one of those things that I kind of I thought it might happen when I
16:29
heard that Microsoft was going to buy them just because I mean Microsoft has their big Xbox game show like they do
16:35
they do like a release of all their Xbox stuff and they usually do it like as a standalone thing but usually attached to
16:40
something else like yeah it's always it's always been attached to E3 but with
16:45
E3 canceled it's kind of the same time as E3 but just it's not E3 yeah it's
16:51
still still there or it's game it's on the game awards or the European one that
16:56
I can't remember at the moment uh Summer Games Fest is always in the summer and it can be around that it can be Gamescom
17:03
which one in Germany yes so I I think that that's possibly the future for
17:08
blizzard is that they're going to have their games announced there and the fan Community Building um just gonna say
17:17
that that was a Mike morheim thing Mike morheim liked that and I mean I certainly think it had its place I I
17:22
enjoyed it when I got to finally go to a BlizzCon I thought this is great um but I don't think that a company quite is
17:29
microsof as Microsoft is is going to necessarily see the value of it in the
17:35
same way like just just managing to justify it every year I don't know I mean what do you guys think you think
17:40
we're gonna get another one Liz was talking I don't know if we're going to get I don't know if we're going to get another one but I have wondered if you
17:47
know Microsoft could take advantage of this big fan event and add more Microsoft stuff to it because while
17:54
Microsoft has these big events they're largely press events pan are largely listening on live streams not at a big
18:05
event themselves and blizzcon's value is bringing a community together bringing
18:11
fans of the game together in one place to have an opportunity to hang out and see their latest games there's a lot of
18:18
a lot of hype at BlizzCon that doesn't carry over in the same way in a big
18:25
press event like these big gaming events are so I think there's some value in that in building that Community element
18:32
but at the same time I don't know if it would be the same thing if it had a bunch of Microsoft stuff so I I don't
18:39
know I don't know what's gonna happen Joe the time of BlizzCon is done we are
18:44
never going to see BlizzCon like that again it's just not how it's going to work anymore because of everybody
18:50
involved and the way that the world is it's a sad statement but I think it's true that said the idea that Microsoft
18:58
may take a look at this and say hey we own a lot of stuff maybe we should just
19:05
have a giant 3-day gaming event that showcases all of our stuff instead of
19:10
like these press releases and maybe we can have fans buy tickets and show up
19:16
and sit on panels and ask questions and do demos and participate and feel like
19:21
they're part of the stuff that we've been buying and that they're passionate about uh for all these years uh and that
19:27
is something that might happen uh especially because they own so much they
19:33
can do an entire day of nothing but indie games uh I mean hard to call them Indie Games with their Indie stuff the
19:38
Indie companies that they own uh they could have an entire day or two of just Activision Blizzard stuff they could
19:45
have an entire day of I mean Bethesda there are so many things that they own
19:51
that they could literally just do a multi-day gaming event uh and basically
19:58
by the themselves and people would show up people would flock to it and you wouldn't have to necessarily go for
20:03
every day treat it like a Pax event just have it be all Microsoft and if they're smart I think they would consider it and
20:10
it's one of those things where we know that it cost money it didn't make money uh for BlizzCon right we know that it
20:17
was a thing that that was viewed as a c Center but in the long run it made money
20:23
because one player Goodwill two it generated excitement and Buzz for new products that were coming out
20:29
uh and it basically made it so that you got super excited about what they were working on and in a lot of cases uh
20:36
especially when they made announcements like hey you could get this and it's available for order today how many
20:42
people went ahead and just uh immediately did the order like I remember OverWatch hey if you have a
20:47
year subscription to wow you get it for free how many people at BlizzCon literally went back to their hotel rooms
20:53
and up their subscription quite a bit right like it's you can't deny the power
21:00
of BlizzCon and what it brought to the table more than a lot of other gaming conventions for the company but I don't
21:07
think Microsoft lets it happen anymore without it being completely different from what it was it needs to grow and
21:14
evolve uh and I think that's the only way we see something like that in the future this is all reminding me of a
21:19
statement Liz has made quite a few times about how it's hard to get excited when they announce that an announcement is
21:25
coming yeah bcon was basically just a bunch of announcements and they would
21:31
announce BlizzCon was coming and people would get excited it did that it got
21:37
people excited in an announcement about an announcement because it was it
21:43
announcement yes it was an announcement about a bunch of announcements was also an announcement of you can book your time off now you can get tickets now you
21:50
can get a hotel now people would get to do and this is all like think about that's even more work that there that
21:57
your fan base is doing to to go get an announcement but it did work people went
22:04
I went you know I had to like basically leave through every hoop imaginable but we you know we all got to see it at
22:09
least once I I definitely do think that that that's something that you can make you could exploit I just don't know that
22:16
that Microsoft is the company to do that I I don't I don't know that they are
22:22
that there's anyone there that understands that kind of grass rotin that gaming is not lost
22:29
the way to this day the things that get you excited about games are when other people tell you this game is really good
22:35
you and that is the kind of thing that BlizzCon got you I mean how many
22:40
articles did I write about Diablo 4 just from having played it for like one like a one hour at BlizzCon like just how
22:48
many you're gonna love this game this game's amazing I have to go give my children to it I don't have any children oh well I guess I better have some
22:54
children so I can give them to Diablo like seriously just it is not something that is free uh but I let see what else
23:01
we got here oh yeah defitely we should mention this before we move on to all the warcraft stuff they're hiring
23:06
blizard is hiring for another unannounced game so after we got rid of the you know unannounced survival horror
23:13
game we now have something and we don't even know why yeah it's a little confusing it's like we've had yeah it's
23:19
typical big Corporation things it's like we start the year with layoffs and then it's we we say we're doing new games and
23:25
then we're hiring for new games and yeah it's going to be years before we see
23:31
kind of the final results do we get games from this is Blizzard's headcount going up or are they continuing to lay
23:37
people off we don't know yeah it's just interesting because with like the stuff they're hiring for could work in a lot
23:42
of different fields they're not they're not hiring like a narrative person with you know expertise in specific thing
23:48
it's a lot of other it's a lot of things there programmers there a lot of things involved in this that they're hiring um
23:54
and the positions are basically just straight up looking like a high they're look looking for like a handful of
23:59
people like they're not looking for a ton of people here um I I don't know this is interesting to me but I don't
24:05
know there this they actually listed a narrative director and a creative director that's very you you don't
24:12
there's not a lot of narrative directors out there you know what I mean like it's very hard to like go and just pick one
24:19
up usually they're either working or they're working somewhere else um I
24:24
don't know who knows maybe they could get they you there are people who are doing it um I I'm pretty sure uh yeah no
24:31
there's uh I can't remember his name now this say Ken Ron but he's dead that's said yeah I was going to say I I don't
24:37
think we need to to dwell on it too much but take a look at the open the the open positions and you can make your own
24:43
inferences but we'll see how it it plays out because yeah again like Liz said
24:48
it's it's interesting to see the the EB and the flow of it the up and the down of yeah it's just weird to me that they
24:54
they actually laid people off when they ended the um Untitled Survival game and now they're hiring new people it's like
25:00
they just they didn't just lay people off from that they also moved ones that they could to other teams there's a lot
25:07
of nuance that we're not talking about with the the survival game why it was canceled and stuff like that
25:12
too interesting that they didn't immed they didn't know they were going to be doing this June
25:18
when don't know that a lot of this stuff is decisions that are coming years down the pipeline right and we only hear
25:25
about them when they've got announced since they're making they didn't announce this this was literally just people saw that they were hiring lizard
25:31
didn't put out a press release this isn't hey guys we're working on a new game this is we're trying to hire some
25:37
people and somebody you know like us me saw this and mentioned it so that is
25:42
something else to get also we unionized they unionized this year I forg oh my God I forgot that wow we gotta talk
25:48
about that but we also gota move um this one someone named Liz Harper wrote this one so I think that she probably could
25:54
talk about it the best so I'm try to get her on the show um Liz unionizing in
26:01
June of this year talk about it where do you think that has ended up it's well we
26:06
this is another thing we do not know we know they formed a union under the
26:11
communication workers of America it's called the wow game makers Guild and it is a wall-to-wall union for the World of
26:20
Warcraft team which means everyone on the World of Warcraft team is in this
26:25
Union it covers QA art s design engineering and production teams uh
26:32
there's also another a second Union of about 60 Activision Blizzard QA workers
26:37
based in Austin which is uh their Union is Texas blizzard QA also under the CWA
26:45
and both have been recognized officially by Microsoft Microsoft has not always had a great relationship with unions but
26:52
um they' they've pledged to support these so we do not know exactly what's
26:58
going to happen from here we don't know how their negotiations have come out
27:04
what benefits if any blizzard employees have gotten uh but this is definitely part of a trend we've seen throughout
27:10
the year Bethesda also formed a wall to--all Union this year and uh I mean I
27:16
think it's it's good for game workers which can be uh a tough industry and we've seen a ton of layoffs and now I
27:23
think we're seeing a little uh blowback to years of huge layoffs in the video game industry with workers trying to
27:30
fight for better working conditions and some protections I think it's all good news but we don't it's this is another
27:38
thing as with any kind of corporate relations you don't know immediately how it's going to pan out and for that
27:45
matter you don't even know like even if it doesn't pan if it's panning out immediately it doesn't mean it will be panning out in five years or whatever
27:51
it's just it is as you pointed out this isn't just a blizzard or Activision Blizzard I mean Bethesda another company
27:57
owned by Microsoft also unionized I think some like other companies are certainly looking at um I just yeah I
28:04
would it would be nice to see this become something that is just part of the industry because man it it it
28:11
sometimes feels like working in gaming is like just jumping into a a Giant Food Processor and hoping you don't get
28:17
shredded on your way down like just wow the turnover on some things it's like
28:22
you don't work at a company you work on a specific game and then you're gone and you just have to hope you hold on so
28:28
that definitely it is good to see some unionization happening that's all I will say on that because we do have a lot
28:33
more to talk about G um we've got a bunch of stuff about Warcraft we should mention I want to try to get through it quickly because it's mostly just stuff
28:39
like anniversaries but then we will actually have individual stories as well it's been it has been a year guys well
28:45
it's a 12 12 months is a very long time well plus 2024 was basically a big
28:51
series of anniversaries for like the warcraft franchise uh because the first one was in 1994 so yeah we got Warcraft
28:58
30 years with M multiple remasters remasters of wcra Warcraft one and two
29:04
those remasters are not available on Apple is that correct Liz that's correct yes that is bad guys you need do those
29:11
games were out on those games were always out on on for Mac Pro platforms they should definitely still be the case
29:18
especially since your your remaster of Warcraft 3 is available yeah but the
29:24
original remaster of Warcraft 3 was released prior to this at a when blizzard was doing more active Mac
29:31
development and in the recent years though we've seen blizzard severely drop off in Mac support so this is kind of an
29:39
ongoing part of that Trend to see fewer new releases that support Mac even
29:44
though the original games did support Mac I'm still gonna say they should do it but Orcs World of Warcraft 20 years
29:50
old I don't know if you guys noticed that big anniversary event that's going to be ending next week soon soon okay so
29:56
does it end this week uh no it ends on uh the 6th I believe so oh in about
30:03
seven days yes from this recording I think for most people who are listening to this it's probably Friday or the
30:09
weekend you've only got a couple days left to do these events yeah if you haven't done anything in the anniversary
30:14
now would be your time to do it because you don't have much time to do it um but
30:19
that's the case you Warcraft as a as a franchise 30 years old World of Warcraft 20 years old and Warcraft rumbles a year
30:27
old which know in the list of things hearthstone's 10 years old I should have mentioned that too sorry Hearthstone uh
30:33
Hearthstone always feels like he never mentions us it's like sorry guys sorry but War Hearst 10 and Warcraft rumbles a
30:39
year old and hearthstone's anniversary was early 2024 so it's it's easy to
30:46
forget it's been a while yeah but I do also think we should point out briefly uh not only did we get a PC beta for
30:53
rumble uh but they also got Rapid Release monthly Seasons like throughout the year
30:58
am I assuming to catch people who are playing on PC up uh no no I just uh so
31:04
the the rumble beta just came out in the last month it's pretty new the beta for PC the rest of the game it's kind of
31:11
fing a traditional mobile game pattern which has lots of fast content releases
31:17
so it's had pretty much a season every month throughout the last year with new
31:22
Heroes new things to buy of course so it's it's just it has a rapid pace of
31:28
content as do most blizzard games this this year though Warcraft rable is
31:33
certainly speedier than others I think it's only I think Diablo Immortal is kind of in the same boat putting out a
31:40
new batt does yeah Diablo Immortal does a lot it's constant content constant
31:46
content all right but that covers just the basics for the franchise and the anniversaries so now we're gonna be
31:51
talking about World of Warcraft which we got a lot to talk about so I don't know how if we'll get through all this the
31:57
the world of team has really been knocking it out of the park lately they've been putting out very ambitious
32:03
road maps and they have been sticking to them so you know uh at the beginning of
32:09
2024 we got patch 10.2.4 which was late in Dragon flight
32:15
and at the end of 2024 we just got patch 1107 that's a lot of content between
32:21
those month month yeah um we've got like as Jim as Liz just mentioned 10.2.4 gave
32:27
us the Reclamation of gilas the foundation of bth which is the the kind
32:32
of night Elfie but really all Elfie city that you got at the end of the uh dragonflight expansion and follower
32:39
dungeons then in March we got plunder storm uh that ended in April you guys remember plunder storm do either of you
32:45
have anything to say about plunder storm other than hey plunder storm happened no it happened it was fine then there was
32:52
The Meta achievements which let people get the the tyon mount if you don't remember tyon he was a very good dog off
32:58
but yeah the The Meta achievements have been rough they are a lot and blizzard
33:03
has continued to roll out new ones including a meta achievement for battle for azoth that rolled out this year yes
33:11
it it hurt um but he is a good boy so I say get him um in may we got the wow
33:18
remix mist of Pandaria or what were you guys calling it REM REM remist these
33:24
guys are like all over it I I sat there and watched them talk about it and kept
33:30
thinking you know I really should try this I really really should try this um
33:36
but I didn't because it just I just didn't have time and yeah man I really kind of regret it to be honest because
33:41
it looked like honestly it looked like the most fun way to do content like that
33:47
like the just the the way you didn't have to worry about you know necessarily gearing up as much and you could just
33:53
like run through and almost Diablo your way through it was really interesting um so yeah I I it's one of those things I
34:00
want to see them do again with something else but I don't know if they ever will um I think they will Jo R you want to
34:07
say before we move on nope you basically covered it it was very good and they should do it more often okay uh there
34:13
was dragonflight season 4 which which gave us the awakened raids that was our their
34:19
big okay we got no more content here's the awaken raids um and they've been doing a lot better with the end of
34:25
expansion LS so at the end of Dragon flight we got season 4 but we also got
34:30
wow remix mhm and that's basically when we got we got remist in May so it was
34:37
just like a month after this all started so yeah it was actually really good idea because I I one of the things that used
34:43
to make wow just a mind killer for me was when you get to the final raid and then 18 months would go by yeah that was
34:51
a lot of months guys but we have a lot more content at the end of expansions now so uh there aren't really any low
34:58
keep too they did that in April then in may they had remiss and in June the beta dropped and the beta essentially moved
35:06
very quickly because the game itself War within launched in August so June July
35:12
you got beta pre patches in July and then you get the war within in August
35:18
it's l I think it was late August but still that's that's a remarkably quick beta they they've kind of almost they've
35:24
sped up betas and kind of focused them a little bit more like it's less on you know find every bug and more on like hey
35:30
we've got this more or less etched out show us how it won't play kind of I think I think blizzard has been maybe a
35:38
little more accepting of releasing content that is maybe not completely
35:44
finished or completely perfect and I don't mean to say that in a bad terrible way I mean that you know instead of
35:53
delaying an entire patch or an entire expansion say they're doing class over halls and instead of delaying an entire
36:00
expansion or major patch they might say okay we can get these done and we'll in
36:05
the next patch will roll out revamps for this class or this class so you see them
36:10
breaking content up a little more and spreading it out instead of saying okay we're going to have this one Mega patch
36:16
and we're going to have everything in it and it's going to take forever to make we're seeing more small content releases
36:23
I think yeah and definitely more sustained one rather than just a a a
36:28
Content release every six months it's two months you get this and this then
36:33
another month you get this then another month you get this now we're back to the big one and they they do this over and over they've been doing it since Dragon
36:40
flight and I do think it work pretty well yeah um but in September um in addition to you know the war within had
36:45
been out for a bit we got narbar Palace as the raid um that was on September 10th and the race to world first we then
36:52
had got to watch uh I actually feel like the wow anniversary start and the new dra the classes article we got here um
37:00
the new dra the classes I just think are great yeah that was in patch 1105 yeah which uh it was packed with
37:08
content mostly anniversary content but also these little things that are like oh wow that's great like dra can out
37:15
play other classes yeah I mean there's it's weird to me seeing some classes dra
37:21
play as some classes like it it doesn't it's confusing yeah it some classes just don't feel like they should be like a
37:27
dra theier but I do still think it's cool um I honestly I I kind of Joe you
37:33
play a hunter did they dra theier got Hunters right I wasn't paying attention to anything that dra theier has because
37:38
I have no desire to play one okay I'm sorry to hear that because I really want to know if dra theier can be because if dra theier can be Hunters oh wow am I
37:45
gonna get I'm gonna get like a dragony pet and a dragony battle pet I'm just gonna run around being a dragon Squad
37:52
drag the can be Hunters Rogues priests Mages Warriors and warlocks as well as
37:58
of course evokers yeah I'm I'm totally down from my hunter fantasy there uh but yeah we've also got the I just want to
38:06
mention this the the wow anniversary had new WoW skins to both OverWatch and Diablo I don't know much about the
38:11
OverWatch skins at all I I remember seeing them and thinking oh that's cool and then Moving on but the Diablo ones have been messing with my head since
38:17
they came out um every month I look at the Varian Ren one and think I just want
38:23
the sword I just want the sword I don't even want the armor well okay that's a lie I want the armor but I really just
38:30
want the sword but I just can't justify $25 for this you know it's just I I
38:36
can't I can't do it and I'm really sad about it I'm hoping they don't pull it completely once this is all over but I
38:42
think they probably will so that's sad um $90 brosaurus that's still right
38:49
that's you can still buy that right for the next for now for the next few days yeah if you haven't bought your $90
38:55
brutosaur yet and you think you want to you heard Joe and Liz you got your talk clock is ticking I almost said talk is
39:00
clicking um but the narbar palace raid buff went live that's that's actually cool I didn't know what go on live I
39:06
think I must have because I know we talked about the time but yeah that was uh that was in October so you know it's
39:14
the raid is hard we're getting closer and closer to the next raid tier and so blizzard has added this thing where you
39:20
can do you get like a 3% buff every time you collect X number of things and turn
39:26
in the quest things that you get as you are killing bosses in the raid and that's kind of a little stealth Nerf as
39:33
the raid progresses so if you're having trouble you know you can just wait a couple of weeks and pick up this next
39:39
Buff wait a couple more weeks pick up the buff after that and this is something they're going to be continuing
39:45
in the next raid tier there will be another series of Buffs you can collect so the raid will get a little bit easier
39:51
over time if you keep doing it yeah and and anyone's about to go oh my God I can't believe they're dumbing down like
39:56
that I'm going to remind you they did this going back as far as the sunwell yeah this isn't this isn't a brand new
40:03
thing but blizzard has been kind of inconsistent on which raids have had it which raids haven't and it feels like
40:09
they're kind of standardizing right now it's like here's your system and we're gonna have it in every raid Yeah by it's
40:16
also go ahead it also didn't launch until like a month or more after the raid first launch so it's not like you
40:22
can get people going in day one and it is initially only a 3% buff and it just
40:27
Stacks over time and it adds it gives you that little bit of edge that maybe you need to finish out the raid yeah
40:33
especially as you're getting closer to the next raid you you don't want this raid to like become a like a a hard
40:39
block on people so I think that's pretty cool November a lot of stuff um obviously the anniversary was in full
40:45
swing already 11.0.1 went live um which means we got the siren aisle um we've
40:52
got then keep this all released in December right the post was in November yeah it was it was announced in November
40:58
I wrote that down wrong no I got you but the the the thing happened in November but all the stuff came in December which
41:03
meant that basically during like the Christmas season thing that you know people that go home for the holidays
41:10
this thing went live and didn't destroy the game uh which is pretty fascinating
41:15
I I don't blizzard rolled this out a couple weeks before the Christmas holidays and it felt like is that a good
41:21
idea with technology to roll out right before everyone's going to be out of the office yeah some things were a little
41:27
bumpy some of the bosses and rares on the siren aisle were bugging out it was
41:34
a little hard to get your gyms for the new cersi circulate ring so it wasn't
41:39
perfect but uh there you go we have a lot of content to play while we're all off for the holidays yeah and also days
41:46
then we also got the previously mentioned BFA meta achievement which is
41:51
it is certainly a meta achievement I I will say that for it it's it's a lot of work if you did not if you we not
41:57
actively playing in battle for azoth it's it's a lot of work like all these other big expansion achievements so uh
42:03
you need to put in some time this one um all Liz wrote here is a year of weird promotions so trolley Mountain Dew
42:11
Discord streaming and others uh go ahead talk about trolley blizzard I blizzard
42:17
seems to have been doing some kind of odd cross promotion events I mean one of them with trolley which is like I know
42:24
them for making gummy candies and it's like okay you go and buy X number of these and you can get something in game
42:32
there was also a big one with Mountain Dew including an event where you could go in game and meet the mountain dude
42:40
which you know I would prefer I would prefer not to but also it was an event
42:45
that was only on a specific server at a specific time and you could not log on
42:50
because there were too many people logging on to go and participate in this promotion and meet the mountain dude and
42:57
get any giveaways or stuff that was being that was part of this promotion it's it's been kind of a weird year
43:03
where blizzard is teaming up with other companies to be like hey this is our game yeah I will say this is it I will
43:10
also say that after that we've also got a bunch of changes on soing to make soloing a little easier or even possible
43:15
for some people um shadowland's got a legacy loot deal um cataclysm raids got some improvements BFA and shadowlands
43:21
raids got Nerfs and changes however as someone just pointed out we're like just
43:27
now getting through wow and haven't even got to wow classic much less all the other stuff and yeah there's a lot of
43:35
other stuff guys I yeah I mean it's a it's a year it's a whole year I don't know that we're gonna be able to cover
43:41
all this uh so gonna try and go super fast for a little bit here um let's look at Wild CL wild classic has actually had
43:48
one of the most monumentally fast content Paces over the year with uh
43:54
they're running classic they're running SE of Discovery they're doing cataclysm classic they have added hard we've got
44:02
hardcore Realms we have self-found mode we now have classic anniversary Realms
44:08
or classic classic Realms as I prefer to call them and it's just that just means
44:14
if you like to play classic there's something new all the time it does not stop yeah they added in the self-found
44:21
mode for hardcore players they added I mean hardcore players came out in 2023 but they provided support for it uh ton
44:29
of stuff for Discovery I mean we could literally list all this we will season of Discovery phase two phase three phase
44:36
four phase five and phase six just went
44:41
out so we've had five phases for season of Discovery we've managed to go through
44:46
almost all wow uh cataclysm classic content the last phase of cataclysm
44:51
classic is going to be uh probably in January actually yes in January I
44:56
believe it's January 9th now that I'm thinking about it and we're going to get Miss a pandere classic next year so it's
45:03
we're we're zooming we're also gonna get the burning Crusade classic again so
45:10
yeah that's gonna be anniversary reals yeah the anniversary Realms are zooming through phases mirroring The Original
45:17
Classic phases and they are going to progress into burning Crusade classic and Wrath of the Lich King Classic it
45:23
looks like but it looks like they're probably going to finish every everything in you know the next 12
45:29
months and get on to burning Crusade it's it's going to be fast so now I'm moving on to Diablo 4 and again we're
45:35
probably gonna have to go fast but Diablo 4 season 3 brought us ZL and cool stuff it wasn't actually Z and cool so I
45:41
was depressed uh but still get to do the robots Zan cool zultan cool adjacent uh
45:47
but kind of after that was season three after season three I think Diablo kind
45:53
of realized that maybe we need to work on the base game because that when we started getting Seasons with no notable
45:59
themes but big changes to itemization and core game systems uh frankly I feel
46:05
like the Diablo team spent a year bringing the game up to speed to where it maybe should have been at launch yeah
46:12
let's let's try to do this as fast as possible leaderboards in March uh itemization they started talking about
46:18
fixing it right after that we got the patch I think in May was when the real
46:23
big automization changes came uh yeah that was with season 4 we started getting itemization and that was
46:30
actually season really good change I'm just GNA like I me there there tons of
46:35
great changes to loot drops and core systems we got even more itemization
46:40
changes and core gameplay updates in season 5 and uh season 6 coincided with
46:47
the vessel of hatred launch that happened in October which was even more changes to the uh core game systems I
46:55
think all of them for the better but if you played Diablo 4 on day one and if
47:00
you played it today the game is the way the game plays is unrecognizable I think it's all good but it's a lot has changed
47:08
over the last year and they also they add the spirit born class and the spirit borne class is pretty much just
47:14
acknowledged even by blizzard to be ridiculously powerful yes and they have
47:19
not really tried to reain it in they've even said yeah we're not really trying to fix it yet um so that's something to
47:24
keep in mind uh they did also add run words uh which which are interesting but
47:30
they're definitely not the same as they were in Diablo I uh mercenaries again not the same as Diablo I they're actually kind of more like followers
47:36
from Diablo I yeah they have a bit of a story going on party finder tool I have not bothered to use it even a little but
47:43
I do know that it exists and go ahead Liz I'm sorry it's I mean party finder is one of those things that feels like
47:50
you really should have had on day one with a game that is so MMO like because
47:56
Diablo is all about multiplayer it's a shared persistent world and it's yeah
48:03
it's it's just now that we're getting a party finder I should note that most of these systems are only available if you
48:09
buy the expansion so Spirit porn Rune wordss mercenaries that is all expansion only party finder tool has been added to
48:16
the base game everyone can enjoy easy party finding yeah and also the content
48:22
that came in with uh vessel hatred the The Zone um is hu yes H is also purely
48:29
for people who have the and a continued uh game story I was kind of disappointed
48:34
in that one but uh it's there it's there expansion only I am GNA say now because I want to mention this before we move on
48:40
uh Joe had already talked about it last week but I think we should talk about it more both last epic launched uh this
48:46
year and it was a kind of rival to Diablo 4 and Path of Exile 2 is gone into Early Access this month it's also
48:54
going to be a pretty big rival to Diablo 4 going forward just like Path of Exile was to Diablo II
49:00
um if you like Diablo I but feel like it isn't doing certain things the way you
49:06
want it to do them either of these games is worth looking at uh in my opinion I like last epic better than Grim than uh
49:12
Path of Exile but it doesn't matter you can look at one of you can look at one or both of them and see if they're doing
49:18
things you want to see uh Path of Exile however has the added bonus of being free like you can just download and play
49:25
it well the original Path of Exile is free Path of Exile 2 will be free when it releases but yeah beta in order to
49:31
get early access to it right now you will have to uh purchase in if you want to do yeah but I honestly feel like Path
49:38
of Exile in in Early Access isn't the threat it's a completed Path of Exile 2
49:43
that's going to be the real rival um it'll be interesting it'll be interesting to see how these games
49:50
impact Diablo 4 if they do it all I felt like when last epic first released it was it was a big thing the were playing
49:58
last epic yeah but I feel like I feel like that's fallen off but I think Path
50:03
of Exile is a much bigger bigger Contender last epic also kind of had the disadvantage of coming out in February
50:10
and then April May June October Diablo 4 just kept launching new stuff and
50:17
changing the game so yeah I will also say though one rival to Diablo 4 that we didn't really talk about at the moment
50:22
is Diablo II which is still going um their seasons now basically just
50:28
remember this season you liked we took that and then we added this to it so they're still doing that but season 30
50:34
launched in January of this year that was the first maintenance mode season which had the remix theme um and they
50:41
keep doing it they've had season 31 in April season 32 in July and season 33 in
50:46
October and I'm sorry Liz I think you were trying yeah they're rolling out Seasons as fast as Diablo 4 is rolling
50:51
out Seasons so if you prefer that faster more action really action game game play
50:57
that Diablo I had it's still there and there's still a lot of content even though it's kind of remixes of older
51:03
Seasons it's still good and I still see a lot of people playing it there's certainly a lot of interest whenever we
51:09
post something about Diablo I on the site yeah it is it's interesting to me too because I think in a lot of ways I
51:16
like Diablo 4 better than any other Diablo game but I'm very comfortable with Diablo in a weird sort of way I can
51:23
play Diablo I on complete autopilot and that doesn't sound great like that doesn't sound like a recommendation but
51:28
it is because it means I don't have to be thinking about what I'm doing with buttons anymore I just kind of like look
51:34
at the field and go I'm gonna need to like kill all these demons right now because if I don't they're gonna turn me
51:39
into into into puree and then do it and yeah I I I do still love Diablo I it's
51:45
got a place in my heart um for me Diablo II is the game that got me to really love Diablo again like Diablo I I lik I
51:53
loved it when it first came out but then after a while I just I moved away from it and I wasn't playing it and a lot of
51:59
people Diablo 2 is the game it is always been the game it is the it is the action
52:05
RPG game that is what it is for me it's Diablo 3 it is it is absolutely my my
52:10
go-to I I everything I love about the Diablo franchise is in that game to the
52:16
point where Diablo 4 got better when it started stealing stuff from Diablo I you know in my opinion okay um Hearthstone
52:23
ton of stuff in Hearthstone Hearthstone Hearthstone is kind of you kind of know
52:28
what Hearthstone is going to do every year which is they roll out their three expansions in March we had the
52:33
Hearthstone anniversary which also launched whizbangs Workshop which was really Nostalgia fueled it had a lot of
52:40
cards that were based on cards from classic older Hearthstone and I think it
52:46
got a really good response in June we got perils in Paradise which I think got
52:51
less of a good response because the things the features it added were a little
52:57
blah I mean they didn't feel like big game changers and the expansion itself had kind of a generic summer theme which
53:04
I'm gonna have to stop you for a second just so I can read what you wrote about November November Hearthstone the Great
53:10
Dark Beyond expansion a fun return to form after a blandly themed expansion so
53:15
yeah Liz Liz didn't necessarily like perils in Paradise is what I'm saying I
53:20
but I think it was you know a dip in quality there where I'm not argu you I just love how you phrased it
53:27
it's true at least that's what I personally believe and because I'm the one talking about it I'm I'm going to
53:33
keep saying it's true that paral in Paradise was a weaker expansion then they came out with the Great Dark Beyond which is a big drainy themed expansion
53:40
it added new drainy cards it added Starships so you can build your Starship
53:45
to travel across the Great Dark Beyond you can combine multiple Cards into a Starship which you then launch and
53:52
destroy your enemies I think this has been a great expansion so far and we can
53:57
expect another one in the spring and we'll see is it going to be another really solid expansion is it going to be
54:03
another perils in Paradise we'll find out okay OverWatch stuff um oh I I do
54:08
want to mention one more hearstone thing uh this spring hearstone killed the
54:13
duels game mode but they launched the Battlegrounds Duos game mode so
54:19
hearstone continues to be you know 27 games in a trench coat but maybe they're like they're like trading off mod they
54:27
closed one that wasn't popular and then they launch another one that is maybe also not popular because frankly I kind
54:34
of forgot duels uh Duos existed yeah well I mean I'd like to think of it as
54:39
like a bunch of cockroaches animating a costume and then coming in and going out
54:45
but that's you know that's a horrible way to imagine it but I don't care OverWatch 2 we got venturer Juno and
54:50
Hazard this year um those are the heroes that came in um Venture I don't remember
54:56
well like I think he was like the very pretty healer guy um he was he was the guy with big dude with
55:02
drill okay he's he wasn't a very big dude he was just a guy with a drill a very big guy I I think I keep we keep
55:09
calling him a he I think Venture is a they oh M you're probably right yes I
55:14
apologize Venture um I've been doing dealing with this in in other games so I really should have been better about
55:19
that uh I just remember Hazard because there's a really fun book like they did a comic and they had the voice actor for
55:26
hazard read the entire comic uh and I just I watched that video like a hundred times just because his accent's
55:33
impeccable um he is from Scotland it is his native accent so yeah but I like that um OverWatch 2 decided to make a
55:40
lot of changes uh they got rid of the battle pass thing where you kind to like do the entire battle pass you can now
55:47
just unlock your immediately which I think is good the the thing they had before was that if you paid for the
55:52
battle pass you got new Heroes immediately and if you didn't pay for the battle pass you had to progress all
55:58
the way to the end of the free battle pass to unlock the hero which is a lot when a lot of seasons are like hey new
56:05
hero this is our big thing this season and then after that you'd have to pay money to buy the currency to unlock the hero can't forget that part yeah I mean
56:12
I can forget that part because I wasn't playing it but yeah uh so Joe tell us if you think this was a good change or not
56:17
since you know you're the one who played more than us a good change but I don't think it's enough uh just my personal
56:23
opinion I think that the biggest misstep OverWatch watch ever made was cost
56:28
gating the heroes and when you look at games like Marvel Rivals who are not
56:34
cost gating the heroes at all and will make all new Heroes free as soon as they release and the only thing you have to
56:40
spend money on is Cosmetics that's a much more agreeable price Model than
56:47
than what it is so in this particular case it was good but it just felt like it was it was not enough like it should
56:54
have always been hey we really soon new hero here you go you can go get it now versus the old system which was hey
57:01
here's this hero you can unlock it uh do all these challenges which require you to spend a lot of time in game or pay
57:07
currency or complete a battle pass because even when something moved off of battle pass like you still you still had
57:13
to unlock the hero and that's just kind of MH like just just give me the hero let me have fun let me play with it like
57:20
those are those are when games like OverWatch are at its best it's just when you have fun Heroes that people want to
57:26
play and you encourage players to spend time in your game by letting them play the fun Heroes so I'm going to just
57:32
since since Joe's got finally talking the last thing on this thing I'm going to go to next because I want Joe to get
57:37
to talk about it Marvel Rivals announced March launched December can it did it uh recapture the joy of original OverWatch
57:44
yep Joe sure did absolutely 100% a little bit more uh it it it is that same
57:51
Joy uh of like when OverWatch first released OverWatch was a hero shooter before hero shooters were popular
57:56
uh combining the elements of teamwork and you know layering abilities and having ultimates and things like that
58:03
and Marvel Rivals is doing that and I will say that I think that it is doing it to a degree better than OverWatch 2
58:10
is uh and the game Marvel Rivals just released um the heroes feel better they
58:18
feel more balanced uh the fact that the stages are destructible and also some of
58:24
them change and morph while you're in in the middle of it uh they feel more Dynamic uh there is still more balancing
58:30
to be done I'm not going to sit here and say that it's perfect because some of them uh you know like if you're a Healer
58:36
and you see an iron fist coming at you well just you know pray for death quickly so you can respawn um but like
58:42
it it it understands what it is it understands what it's supposed to be
58:47
which is fun and I think that it really does capture that Joy it captures that
58:52
sort of same feeling of excitement that OverWatch had when it first released I think the worst thing that ever happened
58:59
to OverWatch was it became a serious esport and the minut it became a serious esort it sort of lost the idea that it
59:06
was fun if that makes sense and everything came across came about of
59:12
like competitive tuning and well if we introduce a new hero it's got to be balanced and stages have to be set up a
59:17
very specific way because if they're not viable we can't use it for competitive play uh and it just kind of got a little
59:24
bit too much and then like OverWatch too probably my largest complaint is it's too dang serious it takes itself too
59:32
serious it forgot that it's supposed to be fun and like I Matt and I have talked
59:37
about this you and I have talked about this Liz like we've all talked about it like those are the Marvel movies I like the ones that remember that they're
59:43
supposed to be comic books and that they're supposed to be fun right like those are the ones that I enjoy the things that forget that they're supp
59:48
that they're games that they're supposed to be fun I tend to not have as much joy with them and OverWatch 2 just
59:54
unfortunately is in that that sort of ladder camp where it hasn't remembered what it was and then Marvel Rivals comes
1:00:01
along and it's like hey you want to punch things with Spider-Man cool here you go hey you you want to be Venom and
1:00:06
just like throw tendrils everywhere sweet you want to be Squirrel Girl and just throw nuts at folks here you go you
1:00:12
want to summon an army of squirrels go no stop talking Jeff yeah you want to be Jeff the L shark Jeff the L shark like
1:00:20
in in the fact that they're already laying down their road map of other Heroes that are coming out and what they want to do and how they want them to
1:00:26
play and and things that they want to introduce and then having really cool like skins like Penny Parker is a
1:00:32
playable character Penny Parker who a lot of people only know of because of the spiderverse movies and it has one of
1:00:40
because there's always a Venom skin there's always a Venom version of every hero that exists in the Spider-Man
1:00:46
mythology this is how this works and but there's a Venom Penny Parker skin and it
1:00:51
is absolutely amazing and it is such a deep cut and they put it in the game like they're doing fun things they're
1:00:58
having fun with it and it makes it a much more enjoyable experience I'm good okay so trying to get through the rest
1:01:04
of it really quickly we had the testing six 6v6 modes um that's one one second
1:01:10
on 6v6 over uh Marvel Rivals is 6v6 isn't it yep sure is which is of course
1:01:16
what OverWatch started with 6v6 and then it moved to 5v5 and that was better for
1:01:21
competitive play legitimately that's why they did it yeah but it moved yeah it moved to 5v5
1:01:27
and then kind of Blizzard killed off competitive OverWatch and now it's still 5v5 which I do get the vibe a lot of
1:01:34
players don't like but now they're testing bringing six 6v6 back and also
1:01:40
in November they ran OverWatch classic which was the old original version of
1:01:45
the game which I think a lot of players enjoyed but it was only available for
1:01:51
about a month and then you can't play it anymore so I I hope you liked that
1:01:57
because it's gone again yeah I'm hoping you liked it enough that it comes back but regardless if it doesn't if it
1:02:02
doesn't hey I got this game that you can play called Marvel Rivals is completely free they're not paying him they're not
1:02:08
paying him um however we should also mention the weird crossovers they did for OverWatch uh Cowboy bbop OverWatch 2
1:02:14
crossover um then they did the Porsche one which I thought was really weird and
1:02:20
then they did the Transformers one which I'm sorry the Transformers skins look like scary they're terrifyingly good
1:02:27
yeah they're very good and it was in that was in response to the movie Transformers one coming out which was
1:02:33
not marketed at all properly by Hasbro because of course it wasn't it was very good though you should see it absolutely
1:02:40
amazing movie yeah I I I'm sorry we've never talked about it on a pre-show there's always year should have yeah
1:02:46
literally we don't get any more this year this is it we covered all that okay
1:02:52
we got yeah blizzard keeps doing blizzard keeps doing these C skins which
1:02:57
I don't know if it's a good thing or bad thing they used to do kind of original skins and each season had kind of a cool
1:03:04
theme and story and now they seem much more likely to say okay this is Cowboy bbop
1:03:09
season Bop skins they did do my hero Academia here's the thing those skins
1:03:14
like stuff like that is very successful on other games and I'll call out fortnite here and the reason they're
1:03:20
good in those games is because people play the games you have to have people playing the game for those collabs to
1:03:27
matter and I would love to know the current player numbers for OverWatch 2
1:03:32
on average because the Transformer skin is absolutely baller but nobody I know is playing so I don't play OverWatch 2
1:03:40
CU we talked about this in the pre-show I loved OverWatch for jumping in with my group of friends and just having a blast
1:03:46
and I would absolutely just burn money on skins if I wanted to like just you
1:03:51
know because I was playing the game so much and I wanted to support it I'm not playing it now dude you and Transformers
1:03:57
and cowboy bbop are two of my favorite IPS of all time do you know how much money I spent on those zero effn dollars
1:04:04
yeah if you're not playing the game why would you spend money on exact absolutely but uh moving on to stuff like we got a lot of stuff to talk about
1:04:10
that's just happening in 2025 and we're already kind of running out of time so I think we're actually out of time but player housing coming in Midnight that's
1:04:16
2025 so that's if you were a World of Warcraft player midnight you could even get it as a pre patch thing we don't know yeah midnight is looks like it's
1:04:24
going to be 2026 but I based on the road map I think player housing is probably
1:04:30
pre patch maybe by the end of 2025 oh player housing if you never thought we'd
1:04:35
get it I never thought we'd get it so I was yeah I got I got I gotta go cook a shoe apparently I'm pretty sure if I
1:04:42
went back I I said I would eat a shoe if we got it cuz I never expected it I never expected them to say yeah we're
1:04:47
going to do this happy that they're doing it just never expected it uh patch one 11.1 is coming um so we know we're
1:04:54
going to get galox and the uh liberation of undermine that's coming woot that
1:04:59
that's that's really close that's going to be early 2025 can't wait to punch gy yeah gy Wick's getting hit in the face
1:05:06
I'll roll Goblin for that we're all looking forward to it I I I straight up Will Roll and level a goblin just to
1:05:11
punch gwick in the face as a goblin uh Mr Pandaria classic next summer which is
1:05:16
you know summer 2025 that's yay uh Diablo 4 season 7 which is the Witchcraft one uh witchy powers and
1:05:24
stuff I I don't know what's going on with it but I'm totally down it's it feels a lot like the Vampire Season
1:05:30
which was season two I believe that had all your cool vampiric Powers this feels a little bit like a copy of that one
1:05:37
with you know some refinements where instead of getting vampire powers you're getting witch powers which uh wit Powers
1:05:44
those Powers Yeah uh like the piran or tornado of
1:05:50
piranhas that you can summon because that's what we all want I mean I'm not saying it's something I don't want I
1:05:57
think it's kind of funny that basically takes the witch doctor from Diablo I and turns it into powers that you can get um
1:06:03
but while we're talking about that kind of thing also got some road maps I think we can I think we can skip over the road
1:06:10
maps because them are a lot let's just mention they happened we got a 2025 road map for Wow for classic um for
1:06:18
Hearthstone yep and this is this is the first time we've gotten a road map for hearstone in the past hearstone has
1:06:24
published got cryptic teaser images for each expansion and that's been their
1:06:29
equivalent of a road map yeah and to be fair here it's not like Hearthstone really needed one because as you've
1:06:36
pointed out before Hearthstone did the same thing every year you know but regardless all those road maps happened
1:06:42
so that's nice if you want to go look up that but um briefly I want to get into this uh games we were looking forward to
1:06:47
in 2025 thing uh do either of you have a game you want to talk about on that one because I do so the outer worlds too I
1:06:56
am so excited that this game is actually happening and I get to go back and play the outer worlds I'm super looking
1:07:03
forward to it so much Joe too many not enough time okay yeah uh oddly enough
1:07:11
Liz and I have both picked obsidian firsters thir person action RPG type
1:07:17
things she's going with the outer worlds and I'm going with outter Worlds 2 for her I'm going with a vow which is
1:07:23
essentially the fantasy version of the outer worlds but I don't think it's going to have things it won't have is
1:07:30
that incredibly snarky sparkling witty critique of capitalism that's always
1:07:36
hilarious to see in a triple a game like this game the only other game I can think of that say that says anti-c
1:07:42
capitalist is cyberpunk 2077 like the outer worlds just just not only did they hate capitalism it wanted you to know it
1:07:49
it was it was very upfront that it hated capitalism one one thing about one thing about a I think of also looks very
1:07:56
interesting but we know obsidian is just they're just really good at making sequels so yeah it's just either one of
1:08:03
them well the thing is AOW is a sequel AOW is a sequel to pillars of eternities one and two yep so I okay so I'm just so
1:08:11
maybe I'm just way off and this is going to be a great sequel It's a year of obsidian sequels I think the fact that
1:08:16
it is um it is Obsidian doing a Bethesda Style game mhm means that it is going to
1:08:24
be better than whatever Bethesda would have done because that's what happens and I'm sorry I don't mean to be mean to
1:08:30
Bethesda I really liked um star Starfall starf finder whatever the Starfield I
1:08:36
like it but at the same time the outer worlds is just better objectively the
1:08:41
outer worlds was not only better than a game that was coming out several years after it it was better than all the Fallout games that it was basically them
1:08:48
in space it was very very good and very tight I want to see what they do with
1:08:54
the outer Worlds 2 because I want to see what they do when they have a broader canvas AOW I want to see what they do
1:08:59
when they take their their crpg routs and they turn it into this kind of game I want to watch what obsidian does with
1:09:06
these because I really feel like obsidian's never quite gotten the respect it deserves obsidian makes a lot
1:09:13
of sequels for other people's games yeah but they they've been they're Killer
1:09:19
games they're always Killer games but they don't get to work on their own IPS as much as they're playing with other
1:09:25
people sandboxes so it's interesting to see them come in and with two ownes yeah
1:09:32
I mean Joe we talked about it when we did the Fallout um retrospective I don't think even if it's not your favorite
1:09:37
Fallout game there's no way you can argue that Fallout New Vegas is not the best written Fallout game I would I mean
1:09:45
I agree and i' also for the simple fact that I mean he thinks it is my favorite
1:09:50
but I think the other worlds 2 is go guys the chance to be the best written you know console RPG type game ever
1:09:58
because it is these people working on it and it they had such a strong going last time and a game that literally came out
1:10:03
of nowhere last time yeah the world just showed up little announcement I didn't know it
1:10:09
was there until literally I bought it like I remember saying oh my God they actually fin Ian they they definitely they definitely advertised it a bit too
1:10:16
and I think uh I actually think they did a very good job organ uh advertising it uh but yeah it was one of those ones
1:10:22
when it when it hit it hit so yeah and a vowed for me I just I love the pillars of Eternity games it quite frankly I
1:10:28
recommend them to everybody and I'm desperately curious to see what they do with it when they've turned it into
1:10:34
Skyrim because let's be honest that's what they're doing you know they are turning it into Skyrim and then they're taking the fact that it will have a
1:10:40
story where Skyrim had a vague suggestion of a story like listen Skyrim
1:10:46
story was yell at dragons that was the entire story of of Skyrim yellow dragons but I honestly do feel like that's
1:10:51
Bethesda this thing lately is they don't want to actually tell you a story they just kind of want a hint that there might be a story and Bethesda is really
1:10:58
good at building worlds I mean both the Elder Scrolls games and the Fallout games it's like the world that they have
1:11:05
built is the main character and there's a little narrative running through it but it's an excuse for you to explore
1:11:11
this big world full of stuff yeah but I think we're at a point now where they did that with Starfield and nobody
1:11:16
wanted it I mean I think that's exactly why Fallout New Vegas came in and killed
1:11:23
it because it did use The Fallout world but it went in with a really tight story
1:11:29
that just happens to be set in that world AB it was great but uh We've now
1:11:34
gone almost 20 minutes over and we're done with everything except the questions and guys I don't think we're
1:11:40
going to get to them H yeah I thought I I put him there I thought we would try but yeah it's covering a whole year is
1:11:48
hard yeah especially when I was I was going slow up front you can tell the exact moment where I read Liz's uh we're
1:11:55
going to need to pick it up the pace and I start going like we got to go faster got to go faster got to go faster uh but it was a
1:12:01
big year a lot of stuff happened if we didn't cover something you think we should have you're right we should have covered it but there's just so much um
1:12:08
heck we didn't even talk about like like Zhao which is one of the games I really
1:12:14
wanted to talk about but we didn't even because we couldn't in no time um you you have anything you say want to say before we have Joe do his his goodbye no
1:12:22
Joe well blizzard watch is made possible due to the generous contribution of patreon.com blizzardwatch your continued
1:12:28
support means that this podcast signing Community is able to thrive and grow blizzard watch supporters enjoy s with benefits like early access to the
1:12:34
podcast better tance your questions answered on our podcast or the que and adds resite experience thank you Joe
1:12:40
thank you Liz for writing this this massive Tome of a document that we almost got through in time uh and thank
1:12:47
you to all of you for being here with us this year CU that's kind of what makes the site and this podcast happen this
1:12:53
has been the blizzard watch podcast this is the last episode of 2024 uh I'm going to point out to you guys that I think
1:12:59
we're on our 10year anniversary next year it will be our 10 year anniversary yes 10 years of this guys I'm gonna
1:13:07
start screaming now and never stop uh and however however many years before that at the previous site yeah let's
1:13:13
let's not think of that please yeah I really starting to Twitch um thank you guys so much for everything and we will
1:13:19
be back next week next year next week and next year
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