Up next in 10
We very wisely started off the podcast this week with all the other news. There's a new Hearthstone Battlegrounds season that just started, with a fun new mechanic which is actually pretty similar to Trinkets, if we think about it, but we can play as Chromie so everything else is irrelevant. Plus, there's an upcoming Diablo 4 season, and a potential announcement for the franchise at The Game Awards, with a bizarre statue in the California desert.
And then, we finally got to talking about the most anticipated patch to hit WoW, perhaps ever. It wasn't without its foibles -- as our guest host Flan noted, some of these decor items are weirdly expensive in old mats, like arcanite bars. It's even more expensive in lumber, which had our hosts going all over the map to collect. And for each little item you want to place, you need to collect more and more of these things. It's a wonder they had time for the show this week.
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0:00
[Music]
0:10
Hello friends. Please be aware that during this podcast when we talk about Diablo II, we talk about season 11 and
0:19
its start date. At the time of the recording, uh, we were had one date to go off of. After the recording, Blizzard
0:25
did as Blizzard is often want to do and change things around a little bit. So, please note that the Diablo I season 11
0:33
begins on December 11th and disregard any other dates we mention during this podcast. Hello everybody and welcome to
0:40
the Blizzard Watch podcast where we talk about Blizzard Entertainment and its many games and then other things. We talk about other things too because we
0:47
are loquacious. That's what we do. I am loquacious of Borges a lot. Yes, we are
0:52
also ubiquitous of Borg who is here constantly. Um, I'm Matt. I'm hosting.
0:58
Uh, with me this week are my two fantastic recurring castmates. Uh, Liz Harper, Admiral of the Fleet, as it
1:05
were, and Okay. Yeah. I tried something different. I'm mixing it up. And Joe Joe Perez, who I I
1:12
guess he's like the battery of guns that we use to destroy things. And sometimes we'll actually tip the show over so Joe
1:19
can shoot further. Um, sorry. This is really not a good metaphor anymore. Um,
1:25
say I don't know where this is going. Yeah, if you know what the USS Texas, uh, you'll know what I just mentioned.
1:31
And if not, I'll explain it in a special after the show thing if I remember to, which, uh, also with us is Rob Fland
1:38
again. Hi, Flynn. Hello. So, yeah. Um, Liz, I remember what you
1:43
said about us doing different things this week, so I'm going to let you do them. like just introduce what we're
1:50
doing first. Oh yeah. Well, you know, a little stuff happened in World of Warcraft this week,
1:56
just a little. So, we're gonna kind of go through, you know, usually we lead with Warcraft because we're so excited
2:01
about Warcraft. And I know you listening are probably also very excited about Warcraft. We're going to get the other
2:08
news out of the way and then we're going to talk about Warcraft because uh then we don't have to feel like we're rushing
2:14
to cover everything. So, um I guess I should start because the big new thing
2:20
this week is uh Hearthstone Battlegrounds season 12 is now live and
2:27
Blizzard gave us exactly 24 hours notice that it was going live. That's how I'm
2:33
like, "Wow, wow, a whole day." But they spoil you.
2:38
They do. They do. But this one, I love Hearthstone Battlegrounds. It is a mode that is completely free to play, though
2:44
you can give them money for it if you want to buy the battle pass and get more rewards. And it's just it's just an auto
2:50
battler. You go in, you set up your you set up your board, you watch how it goes. It's a great it's frankly a great
2:56
game to pay like 50% of your attention to. And that's kind of why I love it cuz I can play it and not have to use my
3:04
entire brain and focus on it, which sounds that does sound like it's an insult, but no, I love it. It's a great
3:11
casual game that you can pick up and play and come and go from. Uh, and this is the best season ever because now you
3:19
can play as Chromy. That's that's it. I don't need to talk about it anymore. Best season ever. Chrommy. Um, but the
3:27
new mechanic is actually something called Time Warped Tavern. And it's it's a lot like trinkets. If you play and you
3:34
remember trinkets, just on turns six and nine, you go to the time warped tavern, which is Nazdormu's tavern, and you uh
3:41
pick up some special abilities or spells or minions, which you toss on your board, use them, and you just have this
3:48
extra powerful thing that you can pick up a couple of times per game. And it
3:53
things like this do shake up the game because they're things that impact how you play, impact how you build your
3:59
board. And so I I like the mechanics like trinkets because they they change
4:04
every match. Every match is different. It doesn't feel sy. And uh also you can
4:10
play Chrommy who can refresh the time what the cards that are available in the time warped tavern or you can play
4:18
Murzand who gets an extra visit to the time warped tavern on turn eight. So I
4:25
this is just good. Everything about it is good and I can play as Chrommy. So, I love it.
4:30
It feels a little Diablo III season in that it's very meta uh very meta
4:35
adjusting. Like it changes up the meta pretty effectively. So, it does kind of remind you that. Yeah. I mean, a lot of the Hearthstone
4:42
Battleground seasons, they'll have like one mechanic that will just make the game feel different from the base game.
4:49
And that's what I love most about switching between seasons is there's something cuz after a while any kind of
4:57
card game is you fall into a meta and things start to feel the same the same
5:03
the same. And so you start a new season here, you have something that shakes it up and makes it makes it feel a little
5:10
different. And usually about halfway through the season they'll come in and make some other big change which uh
5:16
that'll kind of mix it up again. so it doesn't get too stale. And did I mention
5:22
I can play as Chrommy? Best season ever. If you don't know who Chromy is, Chromy
5:27
is a cute dragon that appears mostly is Chromy is the best dragon. Mhm. Mhm. Are are there people who are
5:35
listening to us who do not know who Chrommy is? I'm you know I you think
5:40
that that it's impossible and then I've had people straight up ask me you know what storm I've had people ask me what's
5:47
Stormwind people who are playing the game like level 45 character is asking me
5:53
he's alliance by the way is asking me what's stormwind it was all our first day in the game once
5:59
I'm just I'm just saying straight up you think it's impossible not to know and then they don't know
6:06
and I've been there I took a very long time to figure out that Iron Forge is a real place. Just kept not believing it
6:12
and then no, it really is. You can go there. Wow. How is this magical place? You go get down on the train. What train
6:19
in Stormwind? What train? There's no train in Stormwind. Come over here. Look at this hole. See, you can go down in
6:25
there and there's a train down there. I did not know that. Well, you should have looked. Anyway, uh that's I'm actually
6:32
excited about this just because it's it's got both Nos Dormu and Murzand in
6:37
one thing. And then you've got Chrommy, which is just was one of the better story lines in in Dragon Flight in my
6:43
opinion was Chromy trying to save No Dormo. Yeah. Cool. Should we talk about Diablo I now? Because we we got
6:49
Probably should. Um well, we got the new Diablo I season. It starts on December 9th, so it's going to
6:57
have angels and stuff. Um and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Angels and stuff. Yeah. That's
7:02
it's the store they have in Azeroth. Not Azeroth. Uh Sanctuary. Angels Stuff and Beyond or Angels.
7:09
Something like that. Angels and and Angels and Demons and stuff. Uh but yeah, that's that's I
7:15
think that's pretty cool actually. We've got like, you know, the lesser evils are going to get their butt kicked by by
7:20
angels essentially. This is what we're doing apparently. Well, you know, they're they're going to get their butt kicked by us because we
7:26
do everything here. We do all the heavy lifting in Sanctuary. Yes, you're basically the the the unpaid
7:32
interns trying to save Azeroth yet again. We're paid in loot. Um but Diablo I has
7:40
really fallen into a pattern where every season you get some new powers and you
7:45
advance through a track, you equip different powers as you go. And this is really this is the same vein except
7:52
you're getting these angelic powers and we're getting a lot of the lesser evils
7:57
are involved. Each lesser evil is kind of involved in a different aspect of the game. We're getting Asthodan in Diablo I
8:05
for the first time. And uh we're also getting a feature called sanctification
8:10
which has been reworked a little since it was first announced. It's kind of a way to supercharge your your top tier
8:18
items and hopefully hopefully not brick them anymore because that was that was a
8:23
very big concern in uh in the PTR. You go through all the trouble to get the the weapon as good as you could get
8:29
it, then you sanctified it, now it was worthless. And yeah, if you sanctified it and the wrong thing happened, uh yeah, that
8:36
could go very badly, but should be good. We should be fine. should be able to have superpower sanctified gear if you
8:43
put in all of the time and effort to get up to that level. Uh, which I mean I like we were just
8:50
talking about Diablo II and how it used to have a system more like what they have in Hearthstone where it changes the meta up. I feel like we've gotten a
8:57
little too far away from that. Like uh the problem with even when I like them and I and I actually like this one and
9:02
I'm I'm interested to see it, but it's it is fundamentally it's just the vampire season again with a different
9:08
coat of paint. Yeah, they've been doing that. Yeah, they haven't been doing that a lot. It's It's fine. But there is kind of a
9:14
new meta because there are new powers and they're different, but it does feel a little bit sy.
9:20
Yeah, it's basically just now you relearn everything, but it's not going to actually change things you already have in a way that isn't based on the
9:27
powers. But it does change them. You are right. Uh but we should also mention um
9:32
Asodon's going to be showing up. So now we're gonna have all four of the lesser evils. um even ones like Asthodon who
9:39
didn't have any presence in the story of Diablo uh 4, which might lead into stuff
9:45
for the upcoming expansion, uh which we kind of think we might have gotten the
9:51
teaser on. Um basically Jeff Jeff Keley who and I looked it up. I I swear to to
9:59
all that's unholy or holy or whatever that it's pronounced Keely whenever he's on the Game Awards or whatever. Like
10:05
they always say Jeff Keley, but I looked it up and they're telling me it's Jeff Ke Jeff Keithley.
10:10
I don't think so. I I don't think it's Keith Lee. That doesn't I've always heard it as Keelley. Yeah. So, I'm going to go with Jeff
10:16
Keelley. And if I'm wrong, I'm sorry. I would not want to mispronounce your name on purpose. I'm just straight up telling
10:23
you why I'm confused. Anyway, he posted a teaser of this giant statue. Um,
10:29
apparently it's been discovered in the California desert and it looks like Diablo and we're like, wait, what? Not
10:36
Diablo specifically Diablo generally, the art style of the frankly it looks like a portal to hell
10:41
with possibly Meisto or something messes like coming out of it, which I mean that kind of already happened
10:47
kind of already happened. It's It has not been specified which game this is about and so there's a lot of a lot of
10:54
speculation out there from people who hope it is anything except Diablo, but I this is very much Diablo style.
11:01
I mean it could be souls or souls like of some sort, but it does look very Yeah, this is also very much Diablo PR's
11:08
style to do these really weird
11:13
real life things. Yeah, I mean looking at it, it's got tentacles coming out of it. It's got a big pointy head. It It does look very
11:20
much like something you'd see on the It's like the the It's like that old joke about No, he's playing off rims in game of the box art from Warcraft uh 3.
11:28
This looks like the box art from an upcoming Diablo. I would not be surprised. The bears, wolves, and snakes are rather
11:34
interesting, especially the big snake that appears to be going around the entire uh statue. I want I I now
11:41
immediately have to to to look at Joe and say, should we mention lore watch here because we just got done talking
11:46
about that big snake a week or two ago, didn't we? Why yes. Yes, we should. So, you should watch L watch if you want
11:52
to know why the big snake is relative to Diablo because we talked about um and and I pitch myself like I am going out
11:59
of style because I am actually no one wears me anymore. Um, but yeah, so the
12:05
Game Awards are in like a week because it's December. December 11th. They're December 11th.
12:11
And we also have had Diablo developers in interviews not directly say that they're announcing
12:19
the next expansion at the Game Awards, but really like you should watch the Game Awards wink wink kind of a kind of
12:27
comments. So this in my mind this really feels like a near certainty that
12:33
certainty that we're going to have significant Diablo news coming soon. Yeah. I mean significant your mileage
12:40
may vary because we don't know what it's going to be but we if if it's not an expansion it would be pretty surprised
12:45
that that they go through all this effort for nonexpansion news. I mean of course
12:50
expansion was supposed to be this year. Yeah. And they did push it back until early next year, but and this would be
12:56
this would be the time to announce it or even a little late to announce it if it's early next year. Yeah, absolutely.
13:02
But the Diablo team has overhyped things before. It is not impossible, but I
13:09
strongly suspect an expansion launch announcement, not launch. Yeah,
13:14
Ed nuts. Yeah. Imagine like announcing something and then launching it the very
13:20
next day or or even the same day. Like wow, that's that's crazy.
13:26
That is something game developers love to do is that and it's ready now. Yeah, they're doing that lately. It's
13:33
But I mean, let's be upfront. Uh Bethesda and Blizzard are still separate companies. So hopefully hopefully we're
13:40
not going to be like, "Oh no, why is he here? what, you know, so whatever. I
13:46
don't think they're going to do that. I think it's going to be like, yes, and coming in 2026, Diablo I, you know,
13:53
whatever the new one is called, you know, stuff that's unpleasant. Uh cuz, you know, pretty for people who live
13:59
there. Uh yeah. Um I I think at this point we could probably talk about Are
14:04
we going to do WoW or we going to do other games here? Because you got the Wilson snack showcase before you've
14:09
gone. Whichever whichever whichever you want. Um, I want to talk about the the Wholesome Snack Showcase because its
14:15
name is the Wholesome Snack Showcase. Yeah, it's Wholesome Games and this is just what they call their like sort of
14:23
mini showcases, like their shorter showcases. And it's just it's another thing that's very wholesome about it.
14:30
It's going to be December 9th, um, 11 I mean 12:00 p.m. uh, Pacific, so 3:00
14:36
p.m. Eastern. And apparently there's going to be 20 or so exclusive and world
14:41
premiere announcements. Uh, which I think is pretty cool. And I want to know what they are. And quite frankly, I want
14:47
Haunted Chocolier to be one of them, but it's not going to be and I'm sad. I'm still sad. I would like
14:53
I would like to hear more about Haunted Chocolier because obviously one thing I
15:00
have heard is that we may hear more about Mand Drake at this which is a new game from Fail Better Games who
15:08
you may know better from Fall in London. Uh it's it's not the same as Fall in
15:14
London which I admit was a little disappointing to me personally. It's like kind of a cozy sort of farming life
15:24
sim sort of thing except sort of set in slightly spooky fairy tale world. So,
15:32
it's going to be different. And I I saw in their newsletter they're they're suggesting they're going to have something at Wholesome Snack. So, but I
15:40
always look forward to Wholesome Snack. So, yeah. Um, anybody have anything else to say about this? Cuz so far mostly Liz
15:46
and I talked Joe. I'm not up to date on Wholesome Snack, but there was an
15:51
independent uh video game announcements earlier today, which this is one of my favorite things about the video game
15:57
awards or the summer gamefest is all the smaller guys jumping in saying, "Hey,
16:02
we've got stuff." And since everyone's paying attention, please look at us. Now, uh earlier today, I saw a video
16:08
game announced where they are using actual 3D printed house models like you would have on a train set, and it's a
16:14
city builder based off of that. Oo. So, that got my attention right away. Is
16:20
that a game no one would ever really think about, but there it is. I'm like, "Oh, this is perfect. This is the MI
16:27
game." And what's it called? Uh, Zil City, if I'm pronouncing that correct.
16:32
Uh, well, that's always a question. So many things that we read instead of hear.
16:37
Correct. I heard Joe go, but I think he was just doing for game. Do you have anything
16:43
yourself? Nope. I'm good. All right. Uh then I guess at this point we can move on to talking about uh World
16:51
of Warcraft a bit. Although man, we're we we blew through some stuff here.
16:56
We're actually going much faster than we usually do. I'm a little disappointed in us. Although I guess I could just ramble
17:02
on more. It's not like it ever stopped me before. Um, let's talk quickly about
17:08
Legion Remix because that's going to get its next phase with the catch-up mechanics uh on December 9th, which I
17:15
got to say, um, I started a remix character uh, in in this case a a death
17:22
knight. And then I realized, oh wait, I played a death knight at the time. I've
17:28
seen their order hall. And I played a hunter at the time, so I've seen their order hall. And I played a paladin at
17:33
the time. So I've seen their order hole. So I had to delete my my death knight
17:39
and and I'm playing a mage. That's right. I am playing a mage in Legion Remix. When when the next catchup
17:47
mechanics come, I'm going to jump back in harder because right now I'm kind of I haven't been I've been playing a ton
17:53
of the outer worlds. I I haven't really been giving this full attention. But there is so much to do in video games
17:59
right now. And even if all you do is play Warcraft, there is so much to do. Yes, World Warcraft has indeed much to
18:06
do. Uh, as a result though, I I'm super interested in seeing what the next phase
18:12
like plays like, what it looks like. Um, I haven't gotten into much rating, so I
18:18
think it but it's going to be the Enourus, right? Already last expansion.
18:24
Yeah, Tourus was the last phase. So, this has no it's it's already rolled
18:29
through all of the content in Legion. This is catch-up mechanics and other
18:35
question mark. So, it could be like what they did before. Uh but that was Yeah, I could
18:41
see what they they might just, you know, make it easier for people to catch up. They are offering uh the ability to gain
18:47
the uh tokens, the moes you need to gain uh power significantly easier because
18:53
you'll be able to trade in for them as well as more world bosses will be spawning. Uh that's all that's been
19:00
revealed so far. And there is talk of more quests specifically revolving
19:05
around Remix launching at the same time. Yeah. And also while we're talking about this, we know that Mr. Fandaria Classic
19:11
is getting phase two uh of the same day. They're both both of these are December 9th.
19:16
Uh this one's gonna be Throne of Thunder, which if I were playing Miss Aendaria Classic,
19:22
I would be super excited because Throne of Thunder is one of my favorite bits. Um it's it's got its moments that make
19:29
me sad. Like the the bridge of the wind. Uh that that I don't I did not like the
19:35
windy bridge. It it blew me off of it way too many times and I I got upset.
19:41
The number of times that our guild our guildy bug lamps drove me off that bridge while I jumped on the other back
19:47
and uh drew a travel is not insignificant. I have fond memories of this bridge.
19:52
Yeah, I I I just felt really frustrated. Uh I never liked dying. It's one of those things. Um but yeah, so there's
19:59
Windy Bridge, there's there's the Zappy troll who's up front. Uh, I I'm gonna
20:05
say right now, I I hope they've preserved certain things that technically you don't really get your
20:11
artifact in this, right? You just get the appearance. You don't really actually get your artifacts. I haven't I have not played
20:16
I believe you do get the uh cloak in this. Okay, you do. All right, cool. So, yeah,
20:24
Throne of Thunder should be fine. Um, it's fine. We're fine. Uh but yeah, no,
20:31
it's I I I always like I like the raid. Um I especially liked the things like
20:37
the the snail monsters, the isopod. They No. Bad. Bad. Very bad.
20:44
Very bad. But fun. As a tank. So bad. As a tank, I often would just
20:49
jump up and and taunt the thing knowing this is me dying, but it'll keep it'll it'll let them get away and somebody can
20:56
like faint death or something and and possibly res the raid. Uh because Yeah. No, he gets near you and you're just
21:03
gone. Um yeah, that thing. So, yeah, I'm I'm happy about that. Uh I won't be playing
21:09
it, but you know, I I know I will be doing Legion remix because I'm I just got to see the catchup. If you're
21:15
playing modern WoW, it's just really hard to also make the commitment to classic. I I have a classic character
21:21
that I was trying to play through miss and I just don't have the time. But this is a great patch. This is such a good
21:27
patch. Yeah, it's got all the open world stuff, too. I mean, there's a whole bunch of stuff on the aisle of thunder before you
21:33
even get into the raid. So, yeah, there's there's a lot to it. The campaign's pretty good. Overall, um it's one of my favorite
21:39
expansions. So, the fact that it's it's getting the classic, it's a it's a phase two of the classics. Uh, that's great.
21:45
I'm I'm happy. But I don't understand this next sentence. New Twitch drops
21:50
turvy Joker's mask. Can someone explain this to me because I don't know what it is. It's a mask that you can get as a Twitch
21:57
drop and it's live right now. So, I don't know. What do you mean Joker's mask? Not
22:03
really. We received masks very similar to it earlier in the this year in the trading post. They are kind of birdlike.
22:11
Oh, it's that mask. I'm looking at it now. It's that mask they used to drop from uh the the hawk boss in Zulleamon.
22:18
It's that mask. It's a little Ericoay, but yeah, it's a different set of colors than Don't forget the N'oth eye on it because
22:24
that's important. It's the N'oth eye. Yeah. Yeah, that's But it's a blue N'oth eye. Is that like N'oth?
22:31
It's for color coordination. He's wearing contacts. It's fine. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's But is this like
22:36
N'oth's good twin brother? No, it's I thought N'oth was his twin
22:42
brother. Okay. But I'm eating all your soul.
22:47
On that note, the best part is that's me, but I I just now so you can I can sing it all I want
22:54
unless you stop me, which you will. Uh Joe will be at my house in seconds like, "Oh god, he's got me." Anyway,
23:01
but it's live right now through December 30th and uh you have to watch 4 hours of
23:07
World of Warcraft on Twitch to pick up your uh weird Ericoa N'oth eye mask.
23:14
Yeah, I know. I'll easily be doing that just watching uh people design their houses on streams.
23:21
Yes, you know, player housing, it gives you many gifts. to get just watching people. Um I don't I don't have the I I
23:27
have to get a prick so I can actually start doing Maybe it's too late. It's probably too late, isn't it? No, it's not. Okay, good.
23:33
Any anytime you order it, you can get in on uh Wow. I guess we're It's about time
23:38
to talk about this, huh? Yes, it is. Yes. Go ahead.
23:43
Player housing is now live in World of Warcraft. We have been waiting for this for so long. So long. How long have we
23:52
wanted to have a house in Azeroth? I mean, since 20 years.
23:57
Didn't Didn't Wrath of the Lich King basically kind of make us think we were going to get him? No, it was Dance Studio. I'm sorry.
24:03
Yeah, that was the Dance Studio. And Flying Combat. I'm still mad that we don't have a Dance Studio.
24:08
Yeah, but Dance Studio is literally the only thing left that they could possibly pull out of the big binder of ideas that
24:14
did. They're just going to make us make it in our homes. That's really what it's going to be. Your own dance studio.
24:20
Yeah. You get you get yourself a disco ball by killing um what's his name? Darumu. Yeah, you kill Darumu for the
24:26
disco ball and then you need to kill um I I want to say just bosses in in in
24:33
Upper Black Rock Spire to to get the you know pole. No, no, lower black rock
24:38
spire. That's right. The the guys got kited all the time. The good news is you're probably going to be revisiting a lot of those dungeons
24:44
relatively soon because uh yeah, going back to the whole player housing is live. We've been waiting a long time for
24:50
this. Uh, and uh, because Collection Marathon is officially on. Go ahead, Liz. Before we get too far into this, I do
24:57
want to say this is player housing early access, which you only have access to if
25:02
you have pre-ordered Midnight. Now, you don't need to have the epic edition or the heroic edition or any of the fancy
25:09
editions. You just need to pre-order some version of Midnight. Housing is a midnight only feature and so it is only
25:17
available if you have midnight on your account. Even if you wait until midnight launch, you will not get housing unless
25:22
you buy midnight. So, and it doesn't matter if you own midnight today. If you bought it now, you can get into player
25:29
housing. If you aren't buying it now, but you buy it in a week or in a month, you can get into player housing then.
25:35
So, uh, but that's the big caveat is that we're talking about, oh, player
25:40
housing in WoW, but it's only there if you have pre-ordered Midnight. Should we actually mention what else is
25:46
going on on this patch? The war, the war within the warning. Just just give people a There's a lot in the There's a lot in
25:52
the patch we can talk about, but we should probably finish talking about housing first. Yeah, I'm just saying go ahead and and
25:58
do that. But, I mean, there it is a a full patch, patch 11.2.7 2.7 launched and it does it
26:06
has a midnight prologue campaign available right now. It has uh more lore
26:12
walking with an elves campaign. It has pandan heritage armor. Uh we should well we should we should
26:18
specifically say it's the elves of Qualos. So blood elves. Okay. Elves of Quelos. Blood elves which
26:24
now is the time. Yes. Now is the time to review your blood elf history. Also listen to lore watch for some of that.
26:30
Um, I think the pandarin heritage armor is interesting because it has three color variants that you can pick from. I
26:36
think that's really cool. We have turbulent timeways. We should probably the three color variants being for each faction and then
26:43
also honoring uh the players who decided to level to max level without choosing a faction as you have a neutral faction uh
26:50
armor color of gray as well. So, I mean, good luck doing that quest, but yeah. Um, also we should mention housing
26:58
decor is also getting the weekly quests. Those are starting on the second. So you will be able to do the weekly quests to
27:04
help you at least somewhat with housing. You can't isn't the full This is not the full roll out.
27:10
Uh, no, it's it's not the full roll out. You're getting most, but not all of the
27:15
housing features. Some are still waiting for midnight launch. There is a uh you
27:21
aren't getting the much talked about uh night elf and blood elf housing
27:26
exteriors which were supposed to go into the beta last week and did not. Now
27:32
they're delayed until midnight launch. Hopefully we'll see them in the beta sometime before then. Um and endeavors
27:39
are not in the game. Endeavors are kind of your big neighborhoodwide activities. Those are also not going to launch until
27:45
midnight, but you can buy your house, customize your house, antagonize your neighbors, build things, collect decor,
27:53
all of that you can do there. The only the only caveat There's one caveat though is you can only max out at level five with your house
28:00
despite anything you collect in the preview. That's as high as you can go. And that does make a difference with
28:06
what rooms are available and how much you can put down. Also, the thematic rooms such as the one that has the night
28:12
sky or the daytime sky, the sky box rooms are not available until midnight launches.
28:17
Correct. Important caveats to know. For those of us who were designing our
28:23
rooms on beta based off of those. Yes. I mean, you know, this is going to be it's
28:29
going to be kind of hard to even anticipate how much of an impact this is going to have because it is so this has
28:37
been something people have been asking for since vanilla. Yes.
28:42
You know, so a lot of people are going to be like, "Yes, oh, oh, yes, finally."
28:47
And then there will also be the people who are like, "I don't get it. I just want to, you know, run around killing
28:53
stuff in the woods. Why am I Why am I doing this?" The good news is well, I was going to say there's a couple other things to make note of for those
28:59
people that maybe don't care about housing as well that we didn't get through, which is uh the turbulent time waves, which will start on December
29:06
second. We did mention it. Um did we mention the Brawlers Guild? No, that's the one thing we didn't cuz that's December 9th.
29:11
So So that's next week. Yeah. But uh Turbulent Timeways is going to be a great way to level any of those
29:18
for all of those people who have alts. They still haven't leveled. That can be a good speedy way to do it.
29:25
Yep. Yep. Absolutely. As well as also the Go ahead. Go ahead, Flynn. Sorry. Also, the new form of leveling
29:31
such as the shortened version of War Within and the Accelerated Dragon Aisles
29:36
went live today as well. Yes. So, I logged on to an alt and they're like, "Hey, would you like to do the faster version of War Within?"
29:44
Yes, please. And then the returning players have a new player experience that will send them on a quest in the
29:50
Arathy Highlands with I believe Jana or Thr. So it's a big thematic thing to get
29:57
you up to speed and used to playing again. Yeah, it's in the returning player uh
30:03
experiences part of the post which is actually really good news. We should also mention since we didn't actually
30:08
mention it directly. Jo Joe mentioned that it was the elves who call the lost but he didn't specifically say this and
30:15
I think it's worth saying. You will be basically looking at the history of the blood elves and the void elves um
30:21
because that's you know high elves as well but you know if you're playing a void elf you'll have quests that are
30:27
specific to your character's history and same with the blood elves. So yeah, the
30:34
even the creation of you know the the tainting of the soft the sun well and
30:39
the creation of the void elves are both also going to be featured. So yeah, there's it is a very good time to review all of
30:45
those things. Yep. Um also turbulent times goes all the way to February 9th.
30:51
Yeah. So because they're running through pretty much every expansion via time walking it. There's a lot of that. Uh
30:57
they've added they've added everyone's favorite expansion, Shadowlands. I like Hey, Mikey.
31:03
There there's there's also a couple other things to mention that I think uh are are not getting as much uh fanfare
31:10
uh that I just want to kind of run through real quick before we get back into the housing stuff. Uh so we did mention about the the Brawlers Guild. Um
31:17
but they are making adjustments to it where uh there's going to be changing the boss rotation, adding some new
31:22
bosses along the way. Uh, and you are going to be able to earn challenge achievements and collect some new rewards which include housing decor,
31:30
flying mounts, uh, and even Bruce is going to have a new color variation, which I think is important. If you are
31:36
still doing your horrific visions, uh, you are now able to queue for either of them. There is no more rotation between
31:42
them. Um, certain currencies have been made warbound uh, essentially. Uh, so
31:48
you have the Apexus crystals, uh, order resources and veiled augurite are now,
31:53
uh, against all of it. They've also adjusted skyriding, which I don't think we've really talked about, uh, but most
32:00
abilities now have six charges and vigor has been removed. Your takeoff is now free to use, and whirling surge is on a
32:08
30-se secondond cool down. It's kind of a huge deal for uh, for skyriting, which
32:14
I think is really interesting. um potentially makes it a lot more accessible for people that were having
32:20
trouble managing their vigor because managing an extra resource while you're already trying to fly and steer that thing, woo, no good.
32:28
Um yeah, now you're it's and now your vigor sort of respon respawns on a timer. So
32:34
it's you aren't necessarily trying to minmax or paying as much attention as
32:40
you may have been before. It's just kind of it uh it regens over time. And then
32:45
there's a bunch of user interface and accessibility stuff that went live as well. Uh which I also think is important
32:50
to note. Um so now you have single button single button assist or press and
32:56
hold options. Uh guards in capital cities will now tell you where training dummies are as a point of interest. Um
33:03
you have the catchup experience which is now we were talking about. Uh so if a player hasn't logged in for 60 days on
33:08
the character select screen, characters may have the option to log into the catchup experience. so they can actually
33:14
choose to go do that. Uh, a new tutorials tab has been added to the adventurers guide for players to
33:19
automatically start catchup experience at any time. Uh, they've updated a bunch of the tutorials to make it a lot more
33:26
userfriendly, which is something we've been asking for every time a an expansion comes out is the continued
33:32
refinement of that new player experience. Uh, and then they've also updated the art for the for certain hand cursor
33:38
items such as grabbing, pointing, holding, and open hands. So your your icon might be a little bit different. Uh
33:46
and now they've also changed the PVP group finder if you've used the shortcut uh from H to now shift N. So little
33:56
little tiny quality of life stuff also sneaking its way into the uh the patch
34:01
uh which again will be overshadowed inevitably by all of us gathering our plots and and Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah, they also changed
34:08
how uh the A and D button. Instead of them turning, they are now strafing, which is what most people were doing. I
34:14
didn't I didn't realize that that was the uh that was what most players were doing. Not everybody, cuz I heard Liz
34:19
say, "I hate it. I hate it because it's it's different." And as soon as you log
34:25
in, it wants you to change them. And I'm like, "No, no, don't stay away back." Well, it's automatically changing it to
34:32
the to the strafing and it's letting you choose right there. Do you want to go back to the original style?
34:39
Yeah, exactly. It just it auto switches you. It's like, no, no, I like it. This is what I'm used to. Do not change
34:46
things. Speaking of changing something though that you might like or you might not
34:51
like. I don't know. Uh the legacy currencies have two three more have been changed to be shared lootlessly between
34:58
characters within a war. Did you mention that? I didn't hear you. Sure did. We're okay. We're good on our crystals.
35:04
Cool. That's cool. That's a good change. Um, I don't think anybody is gonna be
35:10
like, "No, I want veiled Argonite to stay stuck on my character. I don't want it to be warband." Especially because we're going
35:17
to have to dig into a lot of these old currencies to buy housing items, to buy decor.
35:23
A lot of these old factions, uh, a lot of these old factions are going to have
35:29
reputation rewards. So, if you're a certain reputation, you can go back to those vendors and buy things. and they
35:35
are definitely going to cost you expansion specific currency. So, being able to transfer that stuff is going to
35:41
be awesome. Uh I will say makes it less painful in general. It definitely does and you're going to
35:47
be experiencing a lot of older content probably if you're going to be cuz now we're going to talk about housing and that's why FL's here and we're going to
35:53
we're going to we're going to go about it. Um, but there's a bunch of of stuff to obtain now from older content,
35:58
whether it's dungeons, um, quest lines, um, that you can potentially get where
36:05
certain bosses and certain dungeons and I think certain raids. The last boss has guaranteed decor drops, uh, that not
36:12
only give you the decor, but also give you XP to level up your house because your house has an experience level, uh,
36:18
that we talked about where you can, right now in the preview, if you're doing it, you can get to level five. Um,
36:23
but also when you log into the game for the first time, if you're doing this, you're probably going to get bombarded with a bunch of spam of stuff that
36:29
you've already achieved or possibly have unlocked already. Um, and I will
36:35
recommend that. And just a little PSA, log into all of your characters that you
36:40
play regularly or have played regularly uh before you like do your housing stuff
36:45
because I'm hearing from some people that are logging in that not everything that was unlocked accountwide is
36:52
actually unlocking decor-wise until you log into those characters. I'm sure that will be fixed, but just something to be
36:57
aware of if you definitely know you did something and you're not seeing the thing. Like if you killed Enixia on your
37:03
one old tune, uh, and you log into your new main and you don't see the head of Enixia to put on your wall, log into
37:09
your old tune. It'll probably show up in your decor box. So, Flynn, I we've talked a lot today and I'm going to turn it over to you. Lay lay us on uh lay lay
37:18
upon us the truth of the player housing information that we need to know. So, the big truth of player housing is it is
37:26
expensive in old mats. You need tons upon tons of old mats just
37:33
to build one single small light. Uh, this one light that I just put up in my
37:40
house took 96 dark iron ore, which is a
37:45
considerable amount just to make one tiny sconce. But I wonder takes, isn't
37:51
it? My my digital hoarding is now coming in handy is what I'm hearing. Yes. And I spent a good uh week uh
38:00
blowing off my uh PTO at work, farming every single old man I could just so
38:08
that I could get my house inside uh the live game to be similar to the one I've
38:13
been building up in beta. And it is getting there very fast because I paid attention to each and every little
38:20
hardened obsidian bar that I needed. Every single uh Arcanite bar, which I
38:27
had to build up about a stockpile of 412, and I'm down to 100 of them left
38:34
already. That's how much Aranite you're going through in order to design houses.
38:40
It is a massive amount of old math. We should probably clarify that's for
38:45
crafting of the the items, right? Which is you don't Yeah, it's not the only way.
38:52
Yes, there's decor everywhere, but some really amazing decor is through crafting. And any crafted decor has
39:00
really significant materials cost. I honestly wish they had cut the materials cost in half before launch and they
39:08
would still be very expensive if they were cut in half. Yeah, the some of these are higher than they than it took
39:14
to make legendary weapons back in the day. That's how much old mats you were
39:20
going through cuz it's always the high legendaries. Even there was like the Arcanite Reaper and Arcanite
39:25
Champion didn't take that much Arcanite. You know, I I know I made them. Yeah. This is more than it was for a set
39:33
of Dark Iron uh armor back in the day just to make a table saw. That's how
39:38
much it's going through. But that stuff will also be available for people that do craft it. There's going to be you're
39:44
you're probably going to still pay an arm and a leg for it, but some of the stuff will be available on the auction house as well.
39:49
Uh so if you have money that you just want to throw at the problem, you can probably do it that way. And people they really are so far
39:57
have a lot of old resources. What was that, Liz? You I was trying to say none of the crafted
40:03
stuff is buying on pickup. All of it can be put in the auction house. Uh, one possible delay is that almost all of it
40:10
requires lumber, which the crafter has to farm up because that is warbound once
40:16
you pick it up. And how does somebody get lumber? We should probably talk about. Ah, yes, we did talk about this last
40:22
week and learning via lumberjack all over again. And uh, uh, basically, you
40:27
can do a short quest which will give you an axe in your neighborhood. Use the axe and you will be able to identify that a
40:34
tree can be turned into lumber. Um, and it's uh not all trees are lumber, but
40:41
most trees are lumber and there's a specific type of lumber for each expansion which is used for that expansion's crafting recipes. And I I
40:49
think that's a significant grind. What have you found, Flan, if you're crafting stuff already? I have found that it is a
40:57
grind to go through the old zones uh such as Mount Hyel or I was also flying
41:04
around Gilaeas earlier because Gilaeas city besides selling a lot of really gorgeous decor also has some of the uh
41:12
the lumber that is specifically for Cataclysm which does make that a nice easy farm
41:18
but it is very time consuming because you're getting on average one to maybe two if you're lucky pieces of lumber per
41:26
tree. It the the rates feel very slow feel very low.
41:31
That must be some artisan lumber because you're like chopping down a tree and I have one log from this tree. I have one
41:38
plank of wood and I need 90 to craft this thing. Correct. World of Warcraft Midnight.
41:46
It's original subtitle is going to be Deforestation Rock. Like I feel that's the real reason why
41:52
this has dropped uh three months before midnight drops because it's going to take that long just to farm up all the
41:57
lumber. Yeah. But would there be midnight specific lumber you will only be able to get by
42:03
going to the There is no lumber for midnight zones or
42:08
lumber required for midnight crafting as of right now in the beta. That's really cool. Although we still
42:14
have lumber from pretty much every other expansion, right? For literally every other expansion, there is a different
42:20
type of lumber which you do need to get in order to craft decor from that expansion. Uh, and it's it is a little
42:28
confusing. There are also uh for food items that you want to put on display. There are
42:34
also preserves that are also special for uh the midnight release. They did not
42:39
exist at cooking vendors before today. H I know that because I tried to uh farm
42:45
them up beforehand and could not do so. I one of the surprising things about housing to me is just how much of the
42:54
game it touches. Like you think, oh, you're going to go build a house in this one place and then you're going to fill
43:00
it with stuff and decorate it. No, this h this touches
43:05
every part of the game. Every single part. Every expansion has
43:11
housing decor to collect. Uh raids, dungeons, they have housing decor boss
43:16
drops throughout your achievements. Housing decor for getting an achievement. That's how you get an
43:22
Nexia's head after all to put on the wall. And also, if you want more than one Enixia's head, you you just go to uh
43:29
Dusquala Marsh and there's a vendor in I'm forgetting the name of that little town, that little goblin town, who will
43:36
sell you a completely legitimate, definitely not fake replica of Anixia's head. So, if you want like an entire
43:43
wall of Anixia's head, you could do that. Yeah, I want to say Mud Sprocket.
43:48
Mud Sprocket. Ah, Mud Sprocket. Yes. I do want to say that like it they're doing it right.
43:54
Right. Like so they're we we talked about this before where I I honestly think that one of the best player
44:00
housing systems that ever existed was Wildstar and this was how Wildstar did
44:05
things. not necessarily the achievements and feats uh because they weren't really
44:11
doing that quite as a thing, but like dungeons and doing specific things and
44:17
uh getting things crafted and going to vendors throughout the world and kind of engaging with the entirety of the game
44:24
to get your housing decor uh was really cool and integral. It was something that
44:31
I thought was really nice. The thing that I was surprised about and I'm very happy about is that WoW was doing that,
44:37
but they're not ignoring the old content. And we knew that they were going to do stuff with raid drops, but having vendors in the world that let you
44:44
buy stuff, uh having quest lines that now have stuff like that tied to it, uh having to go to different various parts
44:50
of the world to get your resources that are tied into the crafting for the decor. All of that is to me makes it a
44:57
really engaging system that doesn't ignore the old to make way for the new.
45:04
And I think that's really really neat. And I think that's really really cool. There is one thing I do want to add
45:09
though because this has been coming up a bit. There are some people who are not
45:15
interested in engaging in housing at all. And that's okay. This isn't vital
45:21
to the game such as garrisons were. You can totally ignore housing and still
45:27
play midnight and have a good time. This is just another part that people can engage in if they want to, but you're
45:34
not forced to, which garrisons did force. You were forced to do garrison stuff.
45:39
And also, there is no no player power tied to these. Uh no no materials you can farm
45:46
like at the garrisons. Nothing. You're not going to collect gear here. It's just it's all cosmetic. the stuff you
45:53
collect in your neighborhood is for your house. However, garrisons are a really useful way to get some of those resources
45:58
farmed up that you need for some of your housing decor. Uh, and then if you're like me, I have been designing my house
46:03
in CAD for the last week to go on live. Not in game, not in beta, in CAD. I
46:09
actually broke out blueprinting software to do this. I am That is really impressive.
46:15
Like I I joke about this and I've talked about this before. My education is in architecture. It was my first love. This
46:22
is what I went to school for. I actually, and I've talked about this on the like pre-shows and stuff like that,
46:28
I have sold blueprints as a teenager that paid my way through college of houses that are physically built in my city. Like, this is my jam. When I
46:36
played Wildstar and I got to level 14, the rest of the game stopped existing. It was dangerous. This is also
46:43
dangerous. I'm probably going to be doing nothing but this for a very long time. And if you ask anybody in our
46:51
guild, uh the levels that I go to to build extreme stuff, even in Minecraft,
46:57
my little area is so detailed and like actually based off of real architecture
47:03
principles that it is goofy. I am going to you you have no idea how much
47:08
willpower it has taken me not to load the game up and be playing it right this second to be here. I'm this this was
47:15
made for me. But what so Flynn I know you've been building a lot on the beta. Is there
47:22
something in particular you are looking forward to that went live today or or
47:27
that you've already engaged with? I don't know how much you've already put into it. I've uh put in mostly that I've just
47:33
been uh making dyes to because I loved being able to paint the house in the
47:39
styles that I like and the colors I like. I'm a person who likes I'm from the Philadelphia region. I like orange
47:45
and black cuz it's I'm a Flyers fan. So, everything is going into an orange and
47:50
black decor for me and I've been collecting herbs in order to design in my personal style all over. And I do
47:58
love how I can engage that way that if I want something to be if I want a chair
48:03
that is basically like the chair I'm sitting on in my house right now, I can do that and it is allowing me to do
48:10
that. I know at one point you and I were uh doing gaming tables inside of our beta houses as well and making uh making
48:17
all sort of that that the the different layouts and stuff. I'm excited to see what our community is going to come up
48:22
with. You are all of you listeners I like we have some very creative folks.
48:29
So I'm going to put this out there right now. If you are engaging with this uh and and you are doing your housing
48:35
stuff, I want to see what you come up with. I want to see your plots. I want a house tour. Like I want to do like an
48:41
MTV like cribs episode. Like I want you to take me through your stuff. Ping us
48:46
on social media. I uh throw it in Discord. I'm absolutely want to see what
48:52
creativity people come up with this cuz that's the other thing that's really neat about this. The system is so
48:57
robust, especially internally when you're inside of the plots that you can
49:03
do so much. Like you can make almost anything out of anything. You can resize
49:10
stuff. You can turn on and off collision. Uh I've seen people on beta making parkour courses inside and
49:16
outside of their house. Like I have seen people make hobbit holes uh where they've been able to
49:22
manipulate the terrain uh and the flora and fauna that you can actually get the place outside of your home to make it
49:29
look exactly like a hobbit hole. Like there are so many creative things there. Like this might be a thing where I get
49:35
so obsessed with this. I might pitch to Liz that I want to do like a a bi-weekly like you know cribs episode like post of
49:42
like this is the plot of the week or something like that because I love what people come up with. If you do that I will play this just
49:50
enough to create a house with a room full of Guinness Book of World Record
49:56
awards and call myself some variation on Tommy Tarico. And I don't even care if
50:03
anyone understands this reference. It's such a deep weird cut.
50:08
Yes. Because you mentioned you mentioned, you know, MTV Cribs and he had a fake Cribs episode.
50:13
He absolutely did. So, yeah. And one thing I have been enjoying so
50:19
far is if somebody says in general chat, hey, who wants to check out my house? Do
50:26
it. Friend them. Uh, just create a party, right click to ju go to their
50:33
house, check it out. It's It's been worth it. Someone posted says, "Hey, who wants to check out plot 9?" I definitely
50:39
didn't design a murder room. I'm like, "I need to go see this murder room right now." He didn't design a murder room fan.
50:46
Weren't you listening? And the the other thing the other thing I will say is I walked in, I'm like, "Yes, this is totally not a murder room,
50:52
but I think your murder room could be better." I gave them a guillotine right on the spot. Here, you need to make your
50:57
murder room even better. That is the most that is the most Philadelphia thing ever. And I love you.
51:02
Yes. Let me clarify that uh the guillotine is
51:08
a crafted piece that is called a a Gilian problem solver is the technical
51:14
official name of the piece. So, if you're looking for it, that's what to look for on the auction house. Don't
51:20
search guillotine. Right. The Gilaan problem solver. I have one on my lawn right now. I I will say
51:26
that there is um and I was I I we I didn't get a list of them. There are a
51:31
ton of add-ons that have released today as well that track your decor and tell you where to get stuff from as well as
51:38
external websites that allow you to like just have checklists of where everything is. Um so if you are really into
51:44
collecting everything and you really want to, you know, if this is your Pokemon like it is mine,
51:49
they are going to be very very useful for you. Uh, and some of them even do stuff like give you uh translatable pins
51:56
or integrate with other things like TomTom uh or way points inside of this the game itself that tell you exactly
52:03
where stuff is so you can go find it easier if that's your thing. Um, so
52:08
throwing it out there. I I don't have any recommendations right this second because I have yet to log into the game today. Uh, but probably next week I will
52:15
probably highlight a few that I find useful for other people to consume. Yeah, I mean the hardest thing about
52:23
this uh this feature may be that it is so all-encompassing that it has so much
52:30
to it is you can get lost in it. You know, finding everything is just the
52:35
endest of endgame challenges. We we are a fans of saying that transmog is the
52:41
true endgame. This is has a lot more depth than transmog
52:46
despite the amount that I do love transmog. See, here's the thing. I want them to put in stuff like armor racks
52:53
and weapon racks and displayable weapons. Like the stuff I actually have.
52:58
There are stuff like that already. Yeah. Yeah. And that's that's what I want. Um like do they have a thing where you can
53:04
put your artifact weapons up on the wall? I don't think yet, but I I don't know that that will be not in the future. I
53:11
think they were asked about that at some point. These are things that I'm looking for from this as it moves forward. And if it
53:17
does that, then I can use my transmog as part of my house.
53:22
And then I'm just gonna be I'll be drawn into the vortex and my hand will be coming up as the dark dark waters of
53:29
commitment pull me under to to forever be doing this to forever be running old raids, getting
53:36
old gear, getting old currencies so I can build the ultimate display. And it's
53:42
just going to be Fallout 4 again. I'm just going to be I'm going to be
53:47
stuck doing Oh, look. This is my, you know, this is my recolor of warrior tier
53:52
10 just over and over again. Why did you do this to me? Why did you
53:57
give me what I wanted? Did I wish on a monkeykey's paw? So, what is everyone's favorite feature of housing so far?
54:05
Let's uh let's go around our virtual table. I mean, what do you love? What do
54:10
you I guess what do you hate? Do people hate anything about housing? Joe, go for
54:15
it. What's your favorite thing about housing? The fact that it's basically a TARDIS. So, the outside of the house and the
54:23
plot has a maximum size and a maximum allowance for like how your house can
54:28
actually look uh externally, but inside it it's like an extra dimensional space.
54:34
So, you can kind of arrange things however you want. And I really like that. I think that is uh really useful
54:42
and really important. Uh and allows me to do all sorts of wild things and I am
54:47
here for it. Um my least favorite thing is just exterior and interior decoration
54:53
wise. We don't have everything yet. Um, so we know that we're getting more
54:58
appearances as the game rolls out, but I know that some of the ones that people were looking forward to the most, which
55:03
were elf related, are not available until the uh actual midnight release.
55:10
Um, so we got a little bit of time to wait and I think that's my least favorite part is that those didn't get
55:16
to live already. Oh, and I will say one one other thing. Um,
55:22
I don't like the fact that your plots
55:27
are tied to whatever your guild leader faction is because and I understand the
55:33
idea behind it. I understand the why, but I don't like it. Um, I don't like the fact that you can't have a mix of of
55:40
plots or houses. Like maybe somebody likes the external of the alliance houses more but likes the plots of the
55:47
Horde. Like you can't there's no mix and matching, right? So, I'd like to maybe see the ability to take some of the
55:53
alliance housing and put it in my horde plot for externally because personally that's what I would like to do because
55:59
it's doing stuff like with our guild where we have essentially two guilds now so that people can have alliance housing
56:05
and horde housing and it to me sort of defeats the purpose a little bit of having the whole guild.
56:10
I mean, more customization is the big thing. It's like there's a lot of customization but you're always what's
56:16
next? Where is the next thing? Because even though you have cool styles, you
56:22
know, Joe, you were just saying about the lack of night elf styles, which is coming with Midnight's launch. It's
56:28
like, okay, I'm playing a gnome. Where is my little gnome house? You can't make a gnome house unless, well, you you'd
56:34
have to be creative to make it because you're going to have to stack decor around your house to create something
56:40
that looks gnomeish. Uh, so that can be that can be a challenge. You only have a
56:46
couple of styles for the exterior right now. Well, the plan my biggest issue right now is the
56:55
limitation on outside decorating is still feels a little low. Uh 200 is
57:03
200 uh plottable objects. That's me putting a fence around the entire place
57:10
and that just feels a little bit too restrictive at the moment. But it there
57:15
are talks about it expanding, so I'm looking forward to that. And there were also some items that were not available
57:23
that are available on beta that are not quite available yet in game. I noticed
57:29
that a cobblestone that I designed most of my house around is not available in
57:35
live. So, I'm hoping that that appears soon. It may just be maybe it's a matter of
57:41
finding it. Maybe it's hiding somewhere. I've gone to the uh vendor who sells the
57:46
other styles of that cobblestone and it's they the arches are missing.
57:52
So that is what I'm that's what I'm missing at the moment. I would have liked them but I'm fine for
57:58
now using horde stone. Maybe if I go to the horde city I can find the cobblestone
58:04
maybe or go go visit the uh the pirate vendors
58:09
smugglers. That's where I got uh the stone I'm using right now. Actually,
58:15
wonder if that's the case. There there are indeed smugglers that you can find in your neighborhood selling alternate faction decor. Uh do
58:23
you have anything you're specifically looking forward to housing? Any Yes, actually the thing I like and the
58:28
thing I hate are decor. Um I like decor is available from questing. There's
58:35
raids and dungeon decor. There's reputation decor. There's achievement decor. There's profession decor,
58:41
craftable decor, um, and then there's events decor. And I like all that, and I want more of all of that. I I I think
58:48
that's great. I hate that that's going to be in the cash shop. Hate it. I do not want a piece of decor to be in
58:55
the cash shop, especially if they don't give me another way to get it. And I
59:01
don't know that they will because they don't have any cash stop shop stuff right now, but they've said they're
59:07
going to. And I I know how they do. Um I've been playing Diablo I this whole
59:14
time, so I'm well aware of how bad this can get in terms of, you know, I want to look cool and unfortunately that means I
59:20
have to spend $25. I don't want that for my house. Um I I feel like to a certain
59:26
degree decor is the real game for me more so than just I don't care. I'm I
59:32
would probably build my house as a gigantic single spade. Uh with what I want is to have like the thrones from
59:39
all the the the Black Rock dungeons like you know the the Black Rock Depths you
59:45
know chair that that uh the the Emperor is sitting on when you first get in there. The ones from um Blackwing Lair
59:52
and Blackwing Descent. I just want to grab a whole bunch of really cool dwarfy chairs. Um, and and stick them around
1:00:00
and and basically have a gigantic table in the middle and then have like big displays of all stuff like dragon heads
1:00:07
and so forth. That that's all great. I I love that. The idea of having to buy it with real money. No. No, you cannot have
1:00:15
that. I I I draw the line here only only because I'm afraid that they will do it
1:00:21
where you have to buy it to have that object. Like I just absolutely want to have these columns with these a special,
1:00:28
you know, caps like an like a a Dorian column, but I I the only way to get that
1:00:34
is to that would make me mad and I don't like the the idea that I'm even thinking about it is making me like unhappy. So
1:00:40
yeah, decor is my thing. So Blizzard has said that it's something like 1% of items will be in the cash shop. They
1:00:48
will not be items that are already in the game. So if you there's anything you see in the game you love, those are not
1:00:54
going to be in the cash shop. It's not going to be something specifically tied to like a class fantasy. So it's not
1:01:00
like if you want to make a night elf themed interior like you have to spend at the cash shop. That's all going to be
1:01:07
available in the game. But it certainly does sound like Yeah, there's this gazebo top in the
1:01:12
image I'm looking at which is very clearly um if you've gone to like the blood elf areas, it's a purple version
1:01:19
of that thing that they like to do. I don't want that to be just cash shop. If there's a way I can get it in the game,
1:01:25
then I'm I'm I have no problem. You know, let people spend money to get things if they can if that's how they
1:01:31
want to do it. But the idea that um springs- blossom is going to be only through cash
1:01:39
shop makes me feel on if it if it ends up that way. That's so I'm just being very anxious about it. It does sound like things in the cash
1:01:46
shop will probably only be in the cash shop, but it's going to be a minority of items. Uh and the cash shop for housing
1:01:54
is not live, so we do not know exactly what's going to be in it yet. For better or for worse. Also, the noodle carts.
1:02:01
Really? It is. Yeah. I mean, what's what's really fun about housing is the weird ways you can
1:02:08
combine things. Like, I'm I plan on working on creating a Hobbit hole house
1:02:14
because I've seen some that look great. I had this idea in the alpha and I
1:02:19
couldn't make it work. But I think it just takes uh patience, a lot of patience because you kind of have to
1:02:25
stack things around and above your house in such a way that you create that sort of that mound of a hobbit hole. Uh I
1:02:34
actually saw a really great hobbit hole uh today which like you know the hobbit
1:02:39
holes has their very round door. Someone had taken a rug and turned it on its
1:02:45
side. So that's your big circular door. And then they they'd gotten like a
1:02:50
wooden border around it, which may have been like a round platform that you put on its side. And then you've got the rug
1:02:56
kind of stuck to it in such a way that it's a painted door. And it's that's the
1:03:02
thing. You can combine things in all sorts of weird and wild ways to make the
1:03:09
looks that you want. And the whole thing is pure creativity. If you can if you
1:03:15
can dream it, you can do it. You can combine all of this stuff in wild ways to make things that are completely
1:03:22
unexpected, completely beyond anything Blizzard has shown in game. Even though these are assets that Blizzard already
1:03:28
has in game, I wouldn't mind if they did add a way that it would remember the last item you
1:03:33
worked on, specifically what size you already set it to. As Joe mentioned, we
1:03:40
built gaming tables. That's a lot of uh placemats. That's all I place my I'm
1:03:46
turning into playing cards. Gears of the kingdom. Why don't you do this? Why shouldn't Wow. But uh that that would probably be one
1:03:52
of my biggest issues is if I am doing the same task over and over again, let
1:03:58
me at least copy it if I already have the items. I mean, it does
1:04:05
it's missing some kind of like I would say like the tier 2 editing features that you might want. uh like copy and
1:04:12
paste, like the ability to stick two items together in a specific combination, which sometimes the game
1:04:19
seems to do automatically, like clunk things together, but not always. There doesn't seem to be a way to manually
1:04:25
say, "Okay, I want these two items to be one item, and then I want to copy that one item 10 times so I can make a bunch
1:04:31
of them." You can't do that. You have to manually set up things each time you want one. So, if I want to fill my house
1:04:38
with like vases full of flowers, okay, I've got to buy the vases and then I've got to buy the flowers and then I have
1:04:43
to size them both both to where they match and I've got to set the flowers in a certain way in the vase and I have to
1:04:49
do that every time for every vase of flowers. So, if I want a vase of flowers on like every side table, that's a lot
1:04:55
of tedious, painstaking manual work. And uh it would be nice if Blizzard made it
1:05:01
a little easier to do some of these things. Right now, you've got all kinds of placement tools and resizing tools
1:05:09
and uh just let you very granularly move things and put things exactly where you
1:05:15
want them, but um you don't have the kinds of tools that are going to make it easy to
1:05:22
replicate things. There's no way to save things. Like if you have a room that you
1:05:27
really love, but oh, I want to decorate for Halloween this month. I need to I
1:05:32
need to turn this room into a dungeon full of skeletons. Uh then you can't like go back. There's no undo button.
1:05:40
Things like that. It would be nice to have those sort of second tier tools. I was planning on just having a room full of skeletons anyway. So I'm always
1:05:47
going to be set for Halloween. Spooky scary living in your house. Uh this is really making me think more
1:05:54
about making another gigantic square building full of stuff. Um, but uh, Liz,
1:06:01
do you mind doing the same news? Uh, yes. We're kind of we're kind of at the end of our time. So, I just want to
1:06:08
remind you all that Blizzard Watch is made possible by listeners like you. You
1:06:13
guys keep us going, particularly the people who support us on Patreon. I want to give a big shout out to Michael who
1:06:20
joined us at $10 a month this week and that is
1:06:25
that helps us so much keep the site going and keep the podcast going. If you
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if you happen to be able to support us financially that is great. At $3 a
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1:06:42
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also get ads free access to blizzardwatch.com. All of our articles, all of our housing guides. We have so
1:06:56
many I have edited I have edited so many thousands of words of housing guides just this week already. And um if you
1:07:05
can't support us financially, I get it. You help us out so much just by listening, just by reading. But if you
1:07:12
can support us financially, patreon.com/blizzardwatch. Um you can also help us by listening to
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I already said that. I'm I'm so tongue tied thinking about my player housing plans. You can also help us by following
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else. So, thank you very much for supporting us and thank you so much for
1:08:36
listening. Yes, thank you guys for everything you do to make us possible for the Stephen exists. Uh, and also thank you to Joe,
1:08:44
Liz, and Flan for being here and talking about player housing for a good solid 20
1:08:49
minutes, thus alleviating my terror that we were going to run out of stuff to talk about like the fool I was. Uh,
1:08:56
thank you guys. Seriously. Um, I've learned quite a bit actually, which is nice because I didn't have to learn it
1:09:02
myself. I got it from you. That's great. That's kind of what we do. So, yay to all of you. Uh, this has been the watch
1:09:09
podcast. Thank you guys so much for being here with us and we'll be back next week.
1:09:16
[Music]
#Gaming Reference & Reviews