Up next in 10
Santa Rossi is visiting us this week with player housing-related delights, like the upcoming Night Elf and Blood Elf house exteriors! But beware, if you're naughty, Joe will tell you the tale of how healing, and especially resto shaman are shaping up on the Midnight beta -- and that's a ghost story that would kill a Victorian child. Liz also has a few dire predictions for transmog future, but this month's trading post fits the theme with a blood elf-styled red and gold theme.
Plus, The Indie Awards takes a hardline anti-AI stance, which puts Clair Obscur front and center again, but in a way that would put coal in anyone's stocking.
Subscribe to Blizzard Watch in your podcast player for more of the latest news:
RSS: https://feeds.acast.com/public/shows/656a381dff3911001256c7bf
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/blizzard-watch/id964696892
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2mRiUSalfnFAUfKO2yh4RG
Visit us at https://blizzardwatch.com for the latest news on Blizzard games, and don't forget to subscribe on Patreon to support our efforts! https://www.patreon.com/blizzardwatch
Discord: https://discord.gg/MY9p4d7t8U
Bluesky: @blizzardwatch.com
X: @BlizzardWatch
Show More Show Less View Video Transcript
0:10
Hello everyone. Uh, welcome to the Blizzard Watch podcast. This is said pad
0:15
podcast. I'm Matt. I'm hosting this thing. I've I've actually got a really huge gray beard now. So, yeah, I'm I'm
0:21
I'm your Santa this week. Um, with me this week are the two fantastic co-hosts
0:26
who run everything and make the site and this podcast exist in the first place. Uh, Liz Harper, the editor-inchief, and
0:33
Joe Perez, practically the the actual artificer of the site who keeps, you
0:39
know, finding new ways to make this podcast exist. Thank you to both of you for being here. Well, thanks. Thanks for continuing to
0:46
let me be here. Well, I guess it's not your choice. So, thank you guys for listeners at home for continuing me to be here. Yeah, I I No, I mean, I'm glad
0:53
you're here, but no one asked me. And why would they? I wouldn't entrust me with this. Let's give Matt some power.
1:00
No one has ever said that. No one has ever said, "He seems like a stable chap. Let's give him power." Uh, speaking of
1:07
power, World of Warcraft has some beta things happening, so we're going to talk about them. They now have the Night Elf
1:13
and Blood Elf house exteriors. Uh, this is on the beta. This is not live, right?
1:18
Okay. Correct. It's only on the beta. I'm I'm hoping it'll be here in pre- patch, but Blizzard has not said that it will. So,
1:25
don't count on it. Yeah, I'm Don't hold your breath because uh that would You can't hold your breath
1:31
for that long. You just shouldn't try. It's not safe. It's not a good idea even if you're Batman. Batman or Tom Cruz. I guess both
1:38
Batman and Tom Cruz can hold their breath the requisite 10 minutes. I'm not sure how Tom Cruz does it, but Batman
1:44
can do it. Uh but at this point there's a note here saying Joe wants to talk about resto
1:51
shaman healing. Uh this is again on the beta I assume so it's for midnight.
1:56
Uh Joe, it is Lizzie, do you have something to add to it? Oh, I was I was just wondering if we am
2:04
I the only one who has seen these new housing styles in the beta? Yeah, I was going to say do we want to like save me for after everything else
2:10
because I was just reading the notes, man. The notes it's right there. So, I just kept reading it. Why don't we come back to me?
2:16
Uh, do you still want to talk about night elf and blood elf or do you want to talk to about the decorative mailboxes?
2:21
Well, I I think the night elf and blood elf uh styles are something people have been super hyped about. This was one of
2:28
the big things because the alliance zone has those kind of ordinary L1 houses and maybe you like them, but it's that's
2:35
that's it. We've got a lot of night elf fans out there who have been looking forward to night elf houses since day
2:41
one. And similarly on the Horde side in the Horde neighborhood, work houses are
2:47
not I don't want to say not anyone's aesthetic, but uh no no I'll tell you right now whose
2:53
aesthetic they are. Do you like Axe body spray? Do you enjoy the smell of clothing that you haven't washed
2:59
recently enough? Just trapesed about your house. Do you think that boiled
3:04
sausage is a good scent? Then welcome to orc housing. That's how they look. They
3:10
look to me like like like fantasy co college students. They're out. They're
3:16
finally not having to listen to their mom anymore. Uh and their mom can throw a mean shoe because I'm convinced orcs
3:22
throw shoes like they are champion chunkler throwers. I will not be dissuaded on this. But once you leave
3:29
home as an orc, you build your first orc house, I feel like it would wreak like armpit and and possibly onion
3:36
broughtwurst. So yeah, that's that's orousing for you. If you like that, there you go. It's just, you know, the the
3:42
it's very it's very brutalist. No, I'm I'm it's I wouldn't even call it
3:48
brutalist because it's like a brutalism has a sort of massive grandeur. But
3:56
orcousing, there's this athe aesthetic of nothing lines up. There are no
4:01
perfectly straight lines. There's no It depends. There is one that there is one that basically turns your house into
4:07
a fortress. Um like you add those uh those bits on the side
4:13
which I think look really weird. They look really really weird but that's what I mean like it's it's very it's
4:18
utility, right? Like it's very it's it's very like it's not it's not pretty. It's not meant to be pretty. It can be if you
4:24
like it, you like it, but like it's not meant to be overly pretty. My wife just overheard us having this conversation as she was walking by and
4:31
she said just tell them it's shack nasty. So that's apparently in my wife's
4:36
opinion or housing is shack. I I don't make the rules nor do I even know what that means.
4:42
I I don't know either. So we're I don't know what else to say to that. The I say I've looked at the blood elf
4:48
house like I've I went and looked at the pictures we have of it and it's pretty it is almost exactly what you'd expect
4:54
for a blood elf house. the night elf house. Um, it doesn't quite look like I
5:00
was expecting based on night elf places I've been to. Well, there are so many night elf
5:05
housing option housing styles we've seen that are like open in a way that would
5:11
not work for player housing, you know, like like the back
5:16
Yeah. Back in Teldrasil, you had all those open platform houses. is you've got an open platform on the lower floor,
5:22
an open platform on the upper floor, but a player house is contained. So, um, but
5:29
also also you do see some kinds if you wander around Teldrasil, you do see some houses that are kind of little
5:34
self-contained houses and they've tried to catch that aesthetic and the aesthetic you get on Bellamth. There
5:40
were already some Bellameth interiors with different with a certain kind of woodwork and colors uh that you had. But
5:48
I mean, yeah, they're they they're elfy, but yeah, they may not be exactly what
5:54
you expect if you're like, "Okay, I just rolled a night elf. I'm walking out of Darnacus." And I don't know, are we
6:00
thumbs up or thumbs down for housing? I like both of them. I think both options are actually very, very pretty.
6:07
Um, I would just like to see I would like to see the color variation a little bit more. Like um I I don't have a problem
6:13
with the night elf one for us in architectural terms. I think it looks nice. Uh but the colors are a little I
6:20
would like to see some variation like the Feather Moon stronghold houses which are lighter cover and they they
6:26
almost look like they've got Lykan on them. uh versus the ones on Darnasses which are a much greenier color, much
6:33
more like hey living plants are growing out of this thing. Um but I don't have a
6:39
problem with them otherwise. I think the blood elf one it plays it safe but it's almost it is impossible to complain
6:46
about this. Like it looks like what you think of when you say blood elf. I you know I hadn't considered that
6:52
until you said it Matt but yeah it plays it almost too safe. It's a very conventional blood elf architecture. Uh
6:59
the only thing I thought was a little unusual about it is the the entranceways which you have like a grand entrance
7:06
way, a super grand entrance way and just a door. Those are your three entrance way options.
7:12
Dur entrance. Well, I mean, the the just a door was something we definitely saw in Suramar
7:18
of all places. So that kind of makes sense at least a little I mean I mean I for nightborn architecture to be
7:24
influencing blood blood elf architecture considering they probably visit each other's cities quite a bit. I was going to say because of the
7:29
marriage probably frequently. Are we talking about the wedding that I still have not been invited to? Is that
7:36
what we're talking about here? Yes. Yes. But I mean but no seriously it makes you feel better. My character
7:43
wasn't my character not only wasn't invited. Uh I and as a night elf I spent several like levels of my character
7:50
helping the nighttor and then they joined the horde and I was like okay guess I shouldn't have
7:56
bothered with that. But but yeah seriously go go look at um if you look at the blood elf player
8:01
housing and then go like look at the overview of Suramar uh and Silver Moon and then start
8:07
comparing the two. You'll you'll see where like the blend comes from. I don't now that you've said this and Liz
8:12
mentioned Bellamth before I think those two places are responsible for some of the elements I'm seeing in
8:18
the night elf one correct which is what the next thing is is you got it's and not necessar they call it night
8:24
elf housing they call it blood elf housing but it's more elfousing for each faction and each faction technically has
8:31
two elves associated um technically I'm I'm air quoting yeah there's a certain amount of there's
8:37
a certain amount of void elf in the coloration of this house. But void elves are void elves are are
8:43
while they are on the alliance side, they're still technically high elves. Um
8:49
at least most of them if I remember correctly. Um and that would influence through the uh the blood elf
8:55
architecture. It's it's one of those really things of where like they're kind
9:00
of trying to pay homage to everything in one tight thing. Like when they do dwarf housing, you're going to see that same
9:07
thing. You're going to see influences from like an the the wild hammers and uh
9:14
you know the um bronze beards and you're also going to see influences from the dark iron, right? Because
9:21
you're going to have to have all those influences and instead of having one individual style of housing for each you
9:27
have a catchall and then you let players build off of that to sort of narrow it
9:32
down and and appreciate the vision. Right. I do think though I will say that I do think that you're on to something
9:38
but I will also do think that there is this is meant to look the heaviest influence on the the horde one is night
9:45
is blood elves of course. Yeah, the same, the spires are the same, and the obviously there's
9:51
a little bit more different influences on the night off one, but it still looks it is not that dissimilar to stuff you'd
9:57
see in Feather Moon or on on Teldrasil, just the coloration and the enclosing is
10:04
different because there's not big structures like this don't exist in those places that are not open. But I
10:11
would argue that it does pay homage to Warcraft 3 night elves, which was the start of night elves in general, where
10:18
the building the the housing the player housing itself has a lot of the elements that look like it was taken from the
10:24
buildings that you would put down as a night elf. Yeah, I can't speak to that at the moment, so I haven't looked at that. But
10:30
regardless, I do think that these are they're it's good to see something that isn't just orcer human. Um, I mean, I
10:37
still I'm still holding out for Torin. Um, I'd love to see some crazy crystal
10:42
floating treny stuff. Um, for that matter, I might just make my own. It's not like I can't make a crystal bigger
10:49
and float it somewhere. So, yeah. The thing that I'm really hoping at some point we get is I'm really hoping we get the the option to choose
10:56
like a cross faction like housing style um on on like a
11:01
different like we're on a hoorde um our guild our main guild stuff. Uh for mine and this is selfish. We're on the horde
11:08
side. I actually like uh a lot of the plots on the Horde side. Um and the one
11:13
I have I really really enjoy, but I just hate the Horde housing that's available
11:18
so far. And I would really love the ability to when dwarf housing becomes available shove a dwarf house there.
11:26
Like I really hope that that's something that they look at opening up. I don't know if they've even talked about uh
11:31
with any sort of like a it's on on like a whiteboard somewhere maybe, but it
11:36
would be nice to see if that's an option because again the the whole aesthetic thing I' I'd like to be able to to have
11:43
the player housing that I want in the area that I want. I think at this point we should move on to mailboxes though because I think this
11:48
is pretty important. If you are are building your player house and you decide to give yourself a decorative mailbox, it works. You can
11:57
I should we should say it will work. It is working on the beta, not uh not live
12:04
game, not early access, but yeah. Yeah. But uh actual functional
12:09
mailboxes, not just decorative mailboxes. They they do more than sit there and look pretty. Now, I think this is fine because whilst
12:16
it will allow you to prepare more, it doesn't actually obviate the need to go
12:22
to an auction house. Um, you know, you can't just do everything at your player
12:28
house, which is one of the biggest problems we had with strongholds. They just basically kind of replaced
12:33
practically everything you did, ironically, except go to the auction house. Um, but you know, all the other
12:40
stuff you could do, you just did there. You made your gold there with the the um
12:45
map daily. I forget what it's called. My god, the the uh table. Um, I cannot remember the name of that stupid table.
12:51
My god, mission table. Mission table. Thank you. I I had to I had to dig into the back of
12:56
my mind. Yeah. Yeah. That I'd repress that. Um but yeah, so it's a
13:02
far cry from that and but I do think it is nice to just it's it's a it's just an
13:07
easy thing to to give people and then they can just click on it and get stuff out and decide, oh, am I going to resell
13:14
this? Am I going to put it in the bank? What am I going to do? I I think it's generally a pretty cool idea. It's also
13:19
uh something you can already do with uh toys or with certain mounts. It's just
13:25
this will make mail more accessible and mail is not such a such a huge pool that
13:31
it's going to I don't think this unbalances anything. It's just a nice little convenient to have a mailbox
13:37
there if you want one. You don't have to put a mailbox out. And also they're decorative so they can Some of them are pretty which is always
13:43
nice. You can That is true. Stick a pretty little mailbox up front. Then you can try to get inside it, I
13:48
guess. I don't know. It's not bigger on the inside. It's a mailbox. The houses are bigger on the inside. The
13:54
mailboxes are just mailboxes. I mean, we don't know. We haven't been in there. Uh, but actually, I want to
13:59
talk about this one, though, because lumber. Hello. Uh, I didn't This is on the beta right now. Harvest 250 of any
14:07
kind of lumber to be able to harvest it while staying mounted. Uh, yes. uh on the there are
14:13
achievements in the beta that will award you with the ability to mount while you
14:18
are still flying after harvesting 250 pieces of that type of lumber. So you
14:25
would have to do this for the type of lumber in every expansion. And uh that's
14:31
that's a significant quantity of lumber. Even 250 by itself is a significant quantity of lumber. And I would say okay
14:39
this is neat. This is neat. you can go and uh and more easily farm things. And
14:45
then I would say just roll a druid. Druids can do that already. Here's my question though. When it says
14:51
of to harvest 250 of any kind of lumber, does it mean any like you can be any
14:57
kind of lumber, but it has to be 250 pieces of the same lumber. 250 pieces of the same lumber. And then
15:03
you can harvest that particular lumber without dismounting. That you have to do this over and over
15:08
again. It's already it's less. Yes. Yes. So, you have to do it for the classic lumber and the Burning Crusade
15:14
lumber and the Wrath lumber and the You see where I'm going with this? Can we can Hey, Blizz, can we can we not
15:22
can we just like you cuz you only get like one lumber per and you're you're
15:28
getting them so rarely. That's insane. Agonizing. Just either make it 250 total or or just
15:35
let us have it while mounted. Come on. the like fif 50 50 each. Even 50 is a
15:41
lot. Yeah. And if you're talking about doing 50 for each expansion Warcraft has ever
15:46
dropped, this is these are hours of your life that you are never going to get back. I'm sorry. If if nothing else, they have
15:53
to give you a title for doing this. Like the deforest, you know, lumber bane,
16:01
tree killer, tree killer. If you're a troll, just something. My god, 250 lumber times like
16:08
what, six expansions? Um, it's a lot. Everything Everything including classic
16:15
original WoW and all the expansions except Midnight 250 per. So yeah, that's
16:21
250 500 750 1,000 by Cataclysm. Then you
16:27
go um mist is another We're doing it live. We're doing math live on air.
16:33
It's over a thousand and I'm done. And I'm done trying to count the rest of these expansions. So, probably 2,000.
16:38
2,000 lumber. When each lumber is one per tree, you are a maniac. And you are
16:44
literally druids should be throwing themselves at you to stop you. Unfortunately, the druids are also busy
16:50
turning into birds to get lumber while staying flying. So, they're too busy.
16:56
They're too busy to stop us from destroying all of Azeroth's. That's the thing. Druids don't have to do this. Druids can just druids just
17:04
stay bird form while boy we're going to get into druid bias in a few moments. Don't you worry.
17:10
I mean if if you want to farm lumber, roll a druid. That is step one. Roll a
17:16
druid. And that is the only one farming lumber for you because it when lumber is
17:22
few and far between that that extra time to mount and dismount that saves you a
17:27
lot. Roll a druid guys. If your druid happens to get these achievements and you can do this on
17:33
other characters, fine. Start with a druid. Okay. Now that we've talked about all that, um Joe, do do you want to jump in
17:40
and talk about the healing thing now or I do because it's a topic that we talked about we talked about earlier where uh
17:47
healing is getting pruned in a lot of cases um for for certain classes. Resto
17:53
shaman being the one that probably got pruned the heaviest on beta. They've been slowly walking back some of that
17:58
pruning, trying to find balance and figuring things out. And while things have definitely improved, um I can say
18:05
with certainty that the two weakest healers right now as far as uh content goes in terms of raid and mythic plus
18:13
are uh in my opinion, holy paladin and resto shaman. And it's not for a lack of
18:19
tools, it's for how the tools work. everything and I can't talk so much for
18:25
in depth about the paladin. I'm still kind of messing around with it and and kind of figuring things out. Um, but it
18:32
just feels woefully like weaker than it has in a while as far as like its
18:37
available throughput. Resto shaman on the other hand, I know like the back of my hand and it is RNG dependent right
18:46
now and that is an awful place to be for any healer. So everything triggers off
18:52
of like your spell cast, which is fine, but everything's a percentage to trigger. So every time you cast a
18:58
riptide or a healing wave or a chain heal, you have an like an the
19:05
possibility of procking an ancestor or procking your totem or uh doing whatever
19:12
as far as Farsier goes. and Farcere is mathematically the the superior throughput uh skill or the throughput uh
19:19
talent system. Uh Totemic is way down. Uh Totem at the best of times was at one
19:26
point it was like the the the best throughput in the game and now it's even worse trying to get people to stand in
19:33
your healing stuff. Um because most of your healing comes from downpour from
19:39
your healing rain. So, if people aren't standing in your healing rain or they move out of it or I don't know, the
19:45
fight requires movement, so you can't just place a static effect on the ground effectively and people move out of it
19:51
because they have to in order to not die, all of your healing goes away. And if all of your throughput is put into
19:57
that ability, then you're losing a big chunk of healing and you're not going to be able to keep up with damage. And
20:03
that's a lot of the ways it feels with uh Farsier wrestle shaman right now as well is because it's so reliant on RNG.
20:12
You can't accurately predict what like how to react to things all the time. And
20:18
I'm not saying that it's unplayable. It's definitely not uh it's it's it's certainly better than it was when the
20:25
beta started, but it's interesting that they're they're doubling down on procs
20:32
for a healing class. And then you look at other classes, and this is where I go
20:37
into the druid bias. Druids are top of the food chain right now. Like, yes, they're they have hots and and and
20:42
that's mainly what they do, but it's predictable what they have the a druid
20:48
can plan for. They can put stuff where they want to. It's not a like in the wrestle shaman case, I can put my
20:54
riptide on people, but then half of my other stuff is I might proc an extra ripide on some other random player in
21:01
the in the group. I can't plan for that. I don't know when it's going to happen. I don't know who's going to get it. Um,
21:07
and then that could result in overhealing. Druids, on the other hand, can just put hots where they need to go, let them do their thing, and consume
21:14
cool downs as necessary to, you know, increase their healing. It's it's an
21:19
interesting balancing act and I'm very curious how they're going to fix it before it
21:24
goes live. Uh because now we know when the prep patch for Midnight happens and then you know it pre- patch events are
21:31
are essentially where this stuff changes, right? Um and then it's only a matter of time before you get to the re
21:38
the actual release and it's going to feel weird. Now at least they're
21:43
listening. It seems like they're listening to player feedback, but it's again a very curious design choice to
21:51
lean so heavily into RNG for something that is supposed to be some like
21:57
predictable. I don't know. It's I wanted to talk about it a little bit, not necessarily rant, um, but just mostly put it out
22:05
there where it's still seems like it's not quite balanced where it needs to be. And that may be me. Uh that may be me uh
22:14
looking I don't want to say too far into it. Uh but if I'm judging by the player reactions in like Earth Shrine and
22:20
Ancestral Guidance and other places on the internet, I'm not the only one that feels that way. So hopefully they
22:26
continue to to listen and hopefully they continue to balance it before it goes live. But man, it is a weird time to be
22:32
a resto shaman. All right. Uh thank you Joe. And I'm not going to be getting my resto shaman out of retirement this expansion. I guess um
22:39
I think I heard Liz. You never know. This is This is You can get some weird power swings, but I I
22:45
don't know what would prompt anyone to look at class and say, "You know what? This needs more RNG." You know what
22:51
players love? More RNG. I mean, there's such a fine
22:59
No, go ahead. There's just such a fine line between, oh, here's a proc. It's exciting and fun
23:05
and you can go like, wow, this is awesome. I got a proc on this cool thing. and just feeling disappointed
23:12
because you're relying on that proc and it's not frequent enough or predictable
23:17
enough, you know. So, yeah, it's it's a disad you two both play heroes a lot, right?
23:22
Uh I haven't been playing one lately, but uh yeah, I have the mindset. I think let me actually put it to you this way.
23:28
Would you agree or disagree with this statement RNG feels much more fun for DPS than for healers? I would argue that
23:37
RNG has killed DPS class specs in the game already looking at rogues and making them completely unplayable
23:44
because even then DPS also has to have a level of predictability to it there. I
23:49
think it's more of a disconnect between um group content predictability
23:55
necessity and world class fantasy, right? Like I think RNG procs feel great
24:01
for class fantasy. Um, when you're in the world and you you do something and an ancestor pops up and does it
24:07
alongside of you, that's cool. Uh, if you're a rogue and, you know, randomly you throw dice out and it gives you a a
24:14
a DPS proc, that's cool. When you're in a raid environment or a key environment
24:19
or a group environment where you have to pull your own weight, it's a little less
24:24
cool because now the mechanics of what you are engaging in are naturally at
24:31
odds with that class fantasy of random number generation. Yeah. I wonder how much of it is to the
24:37
fact that because procs tend to be strong, they've tended to make them very
24:43
low chance of procking compared to just having an ability that you can push a button on.
24:48
Cuz then when you when you have a thing you can push a button on, you control it. You can choose to use it. Okay, we know
24:56
this is going to be a very high damage boss. Um, shaman, you you know, earth
25:01
shield him or what have you. There's an ability you can tell people, okay, I'm going to have a rotation. People are
25:07
going to use cooldowns on rotation to keep the tank up because if any one of these hits them two twice in a row,
25:13
they're going to die unless we have cooldowns. Whereas, if you're just if it's RNG, then you just have to hope it
25:19
goes off. You can't you can't decide to use it. and being you might get more
25:26
actual healing out of it as a proc as opposed to getting to use it when you want to, but when you can use it when
25:32
you want to, you can control how you're using it. Um, I don't know cuz I I have to go back to Gerlac. You guys remember
25:38
Gerolac? The the sword from uh Deathwing? It had a ridiculously
25:44
powerful proc that went off all the time and there was an exploit. It was a two-hander. And so if you had two of
25:51
them on a fury warrior that they could proc individually. So you could have instead of just one tentacle popping up
25:57
out of the ground and laser beaming things, you could proc two of them. And then if two of them were up, another one
26:03
could proc. Yeah. The you could have But that's like those are edge cases. I wonder if that's the
26:09
problem is they could they've tried to make procking less overwhelmingly common
26:14
maybe. But also so much of like the class is tied up in the procs to do its
26:19
job, right? Like that's that's sort of a weird disconnect. Like a random like,
26:26
how do I phrase this? If you have a baseline and the baseline is good and then sometimes something procs and it
26:31
makes that baseline skyrocket for a couple seconds and then drop back down, I don't see that as a problem because
26:37
your baseline is still good. If you balance everything around that huge
26:42
spike, however, and that is your expectation of where the class is going to be or should be when it performs or
26:50
that's where all of your abilities go around. That's where all your talents roll around and that's where all of your throughput lives. That becomes a
26:57
problem. And it seems like that's kind of where the class design idea is
27:03
living. And it started living definitely with the Farsseier uh hero talent spec stuff. um like the procs and and things
27:11
like that were all about these incremental procs that popped off and then when they were all going well uh
27:18
you just sort of you know did fantastic huge numbers but the benefit was your
27:23
baseline was solid. So your baseline, you could still do all of the minimal healing that you needed to do to deal
27:30
with whatever was coming in and you still had access to your your external cooldowns and and whatever else you
27:35
needed. Moving more into those procs and basing so much of the throughput on it,
27:40
at least for uh Farsier in in my opinion, is a strange decision because
27:47
now you're essentially relying on gambling to make the class good. And if my luck is awful, then I'm going to have
27:55
a terrible night and I'm not going to feel like I'm pulling my weight, right? Or if I have a hot streak, I'm going to
28:01
blow all the other healers away potentially. Um, and then that doesn't feel good either. I consistency in those
28:10
instances breeds a better fun environment in my opinion. And you at home may disagree with me and I'm
28:16
curious if how you feel about it. Um, but it's just and like it's the same thing with like uh the toemic healing.
28:23
Having it tied so heavily on an unmovable AoE effect is an interesting
28:29
choice. And it's great in some cases, but the way that encounters are designed, you're moving a lot and you
28:36
can't move it. And so if everybody moves or you incorrectly time it by even a
28:42
couple seconds, your throughput drops dramatically. and Downpour was like, if
28:48
I was if I was looking at the the the combat logging correctly, it was like
28:53
the second or third like highest number of healing throughput uh for that
28:59
particular hero talent. It's really interesting. I I I'm hoping that they balance it and we got time. Um and I've
29:06
already submitted my feedback. I've submitted probably books of feedback at this point with like citing numbers and
29:13
everything else. I I'm was not joking. I told you when I got into the beta that I was going to be dumping like data on the
29:19
on them. I've done this before and I've I've I've made arguments which is why Spirit Link worked the way it did in the
29:25
first place. I was among the group that definitely lambassed them and made sure that it worked it did. Um but yeah, it's
29:31
it's hopefully they'll continue to look at it. Hopefully they'll make some adjustments and walk back some of that RNG reliance as like your throughput
29:39
because I'll tell you right now I if it stays like this while I can heal I don't know that I want to and that's a pretty
29:47
big thing for me to be saying that I've been playing a healer for over 20 years in this game on the same class. M.
29:55
So, the the thing about RNG in healing, I mean, I think Matt did have a point
30:01
there that RNG is maybe more fun as a DPS because you do get those exciting
30:08
spikes and it's, you know, exciting, but if you're a healer and you're required to have a spike in order to keep the
30:15
party alive, that's not fun. you're relying on a random proc in order to
30:22
keep your fellow players alive so all of you can keep playing. That's not fun, not strategic. But um if you have a proc
30:31
that's powerful enough to keep the party alive, a proc that's impactful,
30:36
then the whole class has to be balanced around the knowledge that this proc will happen a certain percentage of the time.
30:42
But if you are unlucky and you're not hitting that proc when you need it, then
30:48
it's just going to feel bad. And it's not bad as in, man, my DPS was really
30:53
bad in this fight. It's bad as in we had a party wipe because
30:59
because I couldn't do the thing because the random thing, you know, it also influences
31:04
that's not fun for it's not fun for everybody, but it also in it does influence things like
31:09
uh mythic plus grouping, right? Like if you're looking for a healer for a mythic plus group,
31:15
you need you need consistency. You need Yeah. And so now you need someone who's reliable.
31:22
Exactly. And if if if the class is not able to be reliable because you can't predict the RNG or the RNG is too swingy
31:29
and it feels too swingy, you're going to essentially lock that particular player
31:36
class out of that content because players are not going to take that class
31:41
if they can avoid it. Because again, like you said, player wipes, when you
31:46
have a timer and you're trying to achieve something in a a predictable like in a certain amount of time, you need efficiency. You can't do that with
31:52
RNG. Balancing around procs is is not where you should be at. Um, I'm going to
31:58
call this out for the recording, but also live. Monsoon Mike is absolutely right. Games shouldn't be balanced
32:03
around random procs. The proc should be the icing on the cake. I That's exactly the core of it.
32:09
And one thing that I think has long been an issue with uh holy paladins is that
32:15
the power of avenging wrath. You know, Paladin pops those wings. You get such a
32:21
boost. You You get such a boost with your wings out, but
32:26
you're so powerful with those wings out. Blizzard has to balance the class around
32:31
that power level. So, when you pull those wings out, it feels awesome. You
32:36
can keep the party alive. You were you were slinging heels like crazy. But you've got you got a couple minutes
32:43
between those cool down windows. And in that time, it often feels like you're hitting like a wet noodle. You're not
32:49
doing anything. Your heels are pathetic. They cost a ton of mana. And it just so
32:57
because you have that high burst, it it feels like you're constantly weaker all
33:02
of these other times. And of course, that's a proc you have full control over. You can put that out when you want
33:07
it. Full control. But you have to Blizzard has to balance around the higher power level. So that means that
33:15
there are times you're going to feel very weak. You're either on way on top of the game or you're way below game and
33:21
there's there's nowhere in between. Yeah. I I mean, yeah, I don't really disagree. Yeah, I I I did see that. I don't know
33:27
what happened. It wasn't that. Oh, bloody heck brain. I wanted to talk
33:33
about something else and now I can't remember what it was. Ah, I hate when this happens to me.
33:38
Well, hold on. We We could indeed move on to the next topic. patch. Yes,
33:44
that's what it was. Um, we've got a release date which is uh midnight pre-
33:49
patch is January 20th, but the event starts on the 27th. So, for the first
33:54
week, you won't be able to do the event because it starts week. You'll still get the other stuff that's
34:00
coming. You know, there is a lot of content in the prep patch for better and for worse. Um, you
34:06
got your new devour demon hunters. You've got void elf demon hunters. This will be your first chance to level a
34:12
void elf demon hunter or race change to a void elf demon hunter if that is what you desire. You're going to have all of
34:18
these class changes and that's that's not actually very long before this is going live. We've got uh a little less
34:24
than a month before all of this goes live. So if you have feedback, send in your feedback. This is the time. This is
34:31
uh this is kind of not that Blizzard can't change things after the fact. Yeah, they'll still adjust it, I'm sure.
34:37
But yeah, but but getting in while it's still a work in progress. Um
34:44
uh we're also going to see the stat squish will come with the with the the the pre-patch. Yep. Words totally on top
34:52
of this. And the uh eueie changes are coming, which means uh our add-ons are
34:58
going to stop working. Some of them will never start working again because Blizzard no longer allows add-ons to
35:05
access combat data, which really shuts down a lot of add-ons. Um, but also
35:12
Blizzard is adding more in-game tools for encounter tracking for DPS tracking.
35:18
So, the built-in tools are better, but some of the more advanced tools that we're used to using now will be gone.
35:26
And we we we just have to learn to live with it. I don't know what else to say.
35:31
That's uh we're going to have to deal with this one. New transmog system is coming. Oh man, I want to swear I want to swear
35:37
so badly, but I'm not going to. Yeah. Do we do we just have to just have
35:44
to move forward? There was only progress. Only progress. Um new transmog
35:51
system is coming. I I love it and I hate it because it is it is offers a lot of big improvements on the current transmog
35:57
system. Transmog will be tied to your armor slot whe rather than to a specific item. So if you get a new pair of
36:04
gloves, you will still you can put them on without breaking your amazing look.
36:09
Uh you can also change set up transm situationally. So, like if you teleport into your home, you have a cozy inh home
36:17
transmog. Or if you go into your raid, it'll put you in your most awesome looking murder and armor. So, all of
36:24
these things really cool, but uh setting up these appearances is significantly
36:31
more expensive than it is right now. Like, so much more expensive. Even after
36:38
Blizzard reduced the cost by 60% in the beta, it is still so so so so much more
36:45
expensive. And I'm I'm not thrilled by it. I'm not I am I am a single issue voter in this case. And I am really not
36:53
thrilled about transmog right now, which is Yeah. Okay, that's thing. Transmog.
36:59
Yay. Yay. Um, we're also getting the Let's Let's move on. PvP training
37:05
grants, which is uh a a comp stomp style PvP versus AI with that will include
37:13
Arathy Basin, Silvershard Mines, and the Battle for Gilaeas. Uh unlike Comtop,
37:19
this will be around all the time. You can just go play some PvP against AI opponents and enjoy it without enjoying
37:26
the stress of having to deal with other humans, cuz that that can be stressful.
37:31
And of course, all of these all of these class changes, so many new changes keep
37:37
coming out. Uh those are all going to go live on January 20th. And of course, that's also exactly the day after Legion
37:45
remix ends. So, you also have that's how long you got to do all of your remix stuff. Uh, if you're still trying to
37:51
collect rewards or transmogs like I am, cuz there were a lot of them, you have
37:58
until the 19th to do your remix thing. And then we've got uh pre- patch.
38:04
Yeah, I Yes, that is what's happening. I don't know. Sometimes I just feel like I I don't have anything to say, but if I
38:09
don't talk, we don't get to the next thing. Um, trading post for January, which has got uh basically it looks very
38:16
um I'd say very elfie. Uh, it's the red and gold one. I believe it is. I hope
38:22
the golds are all like unified to each other. Uh, I hate it when they do gold stuff and it's not. It's like one of a
38:28
billion shades of gold. It's very hard to tell the difference, but it's there once you actually assemble a piece and
38:35
you're like, "Oh god, this is more of a bronze color than a gold color." So, I'm hoping they they work on that. Uh, but I
38:40
am I'm pretty excited to see it. Um, says here, one of the things I think you listed was the Scarlet Crusade style
38:46
would also go with that. That's cool, too. Yeah, it's a little it's a little hollow fall action in my mind is kind of some
38:54
of the vibes. Yeah, I can see that. This is actually this is a bit of a smaller trading post really. There are
39:00
some um reruns from last January. Like the the mount here is uh that sort of
39:08
red orange peacock mount that's from last January. Yes. Yes, it is.
39:14
And it's like okay. I mean, I I like it. I like the vibe. I like riding around on
39:19
an angry, fiery peacock. That's that's a great energy, but yeah, it's it's not
39:25
the most it's not the most thrilling trading post. But, uh, you can you can
39:32
get a savage crimson battle turtle to ride, which is a recolor of the other battle
39:38
turtle, I think. It's so cool, but it doesn't fly. So, what am I going to do? walk around on
39:44
the ground. No. Yeah. Someday they have to make a t a turtle mount that literally pulls its
39:50
head and legs in and flies like spinning. Yeah. start spinning and fire shooting everywhere
39:57
and just be like on the back of it going ah like maybe the chair you're on could be
40:02
like a a like gyroscopic chair you keep pointing forward while the turtle is spinning wildly and you'd be
40:09
like I don't I don't don't look at the spinning turtle just keep looking straight and maybe you actually have as
40:16
an as a throwback to the old carrot on a stick trinket maybe you actually have a carrot on a stick that you throw out a
40:22
head of the turtle and the turtle's head pops out and is trying to get the carrot and that's why why you're flying in that
40:28
direction. Um or or they have cannons on the turtle. Just let me turn them around and turn
40:33
them into rockets. This is fine. It's Blastoise. Listen, in Grand Theft Auto 3, I Grand
40:41
Theft Auto 3, I remember getting the tank, turning the turret around, and launching myself into the air with it.
40:47
Let's bring that back. I'm not going to argue. There's also the ensemble called
40:52
Vengeful Regalia of the Crusader. Uh I it that's the that's the the the that's the
40:57
month reward, right? Yeah, that's the Yeah, that is the month bonus. Well, keep going. I was just curious.
41:04
This is this is this is the one that feels to me a little hellof a You know, I'm looking I'm looking at it.
41:10
I definitely I can definitely see that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's kind of like the chest piece is kind of like a stained glass window
41:16
thing going on. I mean, if you're going to have chest armor, you want it to look like a stained glass window cuz the best
41:23
armor ever. I mean, I looks looks are way up there.
41:29
I don't know about the practicality of wearing a stained glass window on your chest, but looking cool does improve
41:36
your DPS. So, I learned that from the You know, I'm here for it. Basically, this is a like a Warhammer
41:43
orc showed up and was like, "No, make it good. look good is good, you know. No, this is this is definitely
41:48
like Warhammer Inquisition coded like 100%. Yeah, they do. The helmet is an
41:55
interesting look in that uh you cannot see out of this helmet. Your eyes are
42:00
literally covered with a blindfold. So, that's not my favorite way to enter
42:07
combat. But, it's also kind of a busy hat to be completely honest with you. It it looks less like a helmet and more like
42:14
like a pith helmet gone mad, but the body looks great. I mean, I think that the the overall look of the
42:20
armor is really good, but I do think that that helmet's a bit like that. You really have to commit to that. Uh
42:27
because it does look like a fire hydrant or something. Fire hydrant. I just It's a lot. There's
42:33
a lot happening here. This looks like a League of Legends skin for Lein. Like the Blind Monk. That's
42:38
That's what this looks like. I I don't hate it, but I definitely do not like the helmet. It is I think the helmet is the least um
42:46
flexible in terms of It's not necessarily bad. Uh I I feel like you you it would be
42:52
really good as part of a Dan eye the like a Dan eye look. Interestingly enough, the coloration matches uh T2 Paladin uh skirt.
42:59
Yeah. Yeah, it does. A little lighter. Of course. So it does look like a lighter red.
43:05
somewhere. Raids is uh ready to slap somebody for continuing to bring back uh variations of I don't I don't think
43:13
that's a perfect match though. I think the reds too I'm going to try it's too I'm picky about these things. I'm picky
43:19
about these things. I want things to match or not match. At least all the gold on this set matches. There are some conferences
43:26
between the uh gloves and the rest of the armor, but the gold pretty much matches up. So that's nice. I don't know
43:32
if it'll match up with unrelated gold from other sets, though. Yeah, it's it's a slightly odd tone of
43:38
gold because every tone of gold has to have its unique level of goldenness
43:44
uh to torment to torment transmogers out there. I just want my armor trim to
43:49
match. Why? Why can't I get this little color of gold to match this other color of gold? To match this other color of
43:55
gold because they haven't added dying into the game yet, but I think we're one step closer
44:00
to it. This is why my my favorite transmog set is still a transmog set from Legion
44:06
because it it's all color related to itself and it matches the artifact. So yeah, I wear it a lot.
44:12
I often wonder like if they like when choosing the color palette for like a tier or an expansion or something like
44:18
that, like if they actually have like you stay within these colors conversations because it feels like they
44:25
used to and maybe they don't anymore. Like I I it might be unfair of me to
44:30
say, but like we're talking about the colors not matching and it bothers me incessantly, especially when like let's
44:37
say you get uh and it's been like this since at least for me since dragon flight. It really started like really
44:43
needling me. Um like the you get the tier set. The tier set is a particular
44:48
color that doesn't match anything else in the game. So you can't mix and match with anything but the tier set,
44:54
right? Um that that's sarcasm I'm sure because of the bucket. Um
45:00
but like it it it back in the old days and maybe it was just because it was a
45:05
limit more limited pallet or or whatever. You could get a piece of tier and it
45:10
would match with something else. Like I remember combining elements of the shaman tier from Ice Crown Citadel with
45:17
like going all the way back to like Harad's shoulders and stuff like that and the reds matched perfectly. And I'm
45:23
curious if there is no containment for that any. So I I feel like I feel like Blizzard
45:30
I'm making a guess here, but I feel like they feel that when they're designing class sets, they can go a little a
45:36
little more offthe-wall with color combinations and looks. And because that
45:42
the because the tier sets go kind of a step further than what they would do with sort of normal armor sets, just
45:48
everyday stuff. I think that's why you wind up with colors that maybe don't
45:54
match your day-to-day armors that uh are other things in your collection because they're trying to make they want to make
46:00
those tier sets really cool and really interesting and I want to be able to
46:06
listen. I'm looking for this wardrobe that I can mix and match. This is not helping. I love it. Not always helpful.
46:12
Yeah. Like don't get me wrong, I'm I'm cool. Like the design of it should be the part that's exciting and like epic
46:18
and I think that's fine. the colors matching the other colors of that tier or the other colors of that expansion to
46:25
me and the way my brain works. I I know I've talked about this on the pre-show. Um there are things called like hyper
46:32
and super chromats where like human eyes can only see certain like hues or
46:37
certain difference in hues. And the higher up that spectrum you go, uh the more you can recognize until you get to
46:43
like the top echelon. Um, it is very rare for uh genetic males to hit an
46:49
upper echelon. I'm in like the 99th percentile of like being able to recognize color. And it bothers me cuz
46:57
when something is like one hex code off, I can see it and it frustrates me and it
47:04
like and the fact that I cannot fix it infuriates me. And I know this is a me
47:10
problem, but man, I just want things to match. Is that too much to ask?
47:15
Yeah. Yeah, it clearly it apparently is. Yeah. Don't get me started on the golds.
47:20
The golds are golds. But we're going to move on because wow, we all day.
47:26
Uh we've got like eight minutes, so we could easily take up all those minutes. But let's let's talk about other games.
47:34
Uh I've first off, actually, I'm going to jump in real fast with the Diablo I thing because I've I've been playing it.
47:41
Um I've I've got my Paladin. I managed to pick that up. Uh, I just want to
47:47
report because we talked about it last week with Lispat. I want to report that my experience with it has been not
47:53
entirely dissimilar from what she described, but in some ways it has been in that I feel like I'm a god.
48:01
Like I I don't know how else to explain it. I was playing it. I think I'm on I
48:06
was on like hard or beyond hard just on my first season character. And at one
48:13
point I had like 35 monsters jump on me and they were dead before I like all I
48:20
used my AI my AE abilities and just destroyed them like nothing. Like I've
48:27
never had this experience. I I've seen necromancers do it but paladins are crazy. If you if you spec them for area
48:35
of effect attacks. Oh yeah, you can you can use each of your buttons to drop another one
48:41
and by the time you hit the last one, the first and second ones are both back off cooldown.
48:47
I am just destroying things. I'm actually worse single target than I am
48:53
against groups. Like I qu kind of wish that constantly was being attacked by groups because that makes it so much
48:58
easier. Uh, but I I mean I think if you wanted a good paladin class for Diablo I
49:05
mechanically they have given it to you and they've given it to you in a way where you have a lot of customization.
49:11
Like I've specked heavily into AoE. You do not have to. Um there's just the four
49:17
fanaticisms, the Zealot and the other three who I don't remember because Zealot is oh god so much. Um, it's it's
49:24
just really astonishing to to see the flexibility that the class has. I'm still going to play barbarians more than
49:31
I play these, but it's it's much closer than I was expecting. So, I wanted to throw that out there. Uh, Joe, you've
49:37
played Oh, Liz was talking. I do want to cut in for people who are maybe behind on the Diablo news that uh
49:44
there's a Diablo expansion coming out called Lord of Hatred. And if you pre-order the Diablo expansion, you can
49:49
play the new class, the Paladin, in Diablo I season 11 right now. And it it
49:55
sounds like the Paladin may be just the tiniest bit OP at the moment. Just maybe a little
50:00
I don't think it's as bad as Spiritorn were, but it's much closer. I mean, they were they were nuts. They were nuts. It's much closer to them than Liz gave
50:06
me the gave me the impression that they I I mean I I I have a very different
50:12
experience than you do, my friend. I feel like my paladin is made out of paper. Um especially
50:18
how do we take damage? Yeah. Well, especially early game like uh we're we when last time we talked
50:24
when we recorded uh Laura watch, we were both around level 17. Uh yeah. Nothing.
50:30
Yeah. I I haven't played since then, but like I could not take hits. I could not kill
50:35
things fast enough. Um, I was at a point where I was kiting stuff back to like
50:42
guards or to other players and getting assistance, which felt really weird and
50:48
I thought I was doing something wrong. Um, no, some
50:53
stuff just hits really really hard. Um, so like I I'm I'm curious. I'm going
50:59
have to dive back into it, but I've had a very different experience than you, my friend. Don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying
51:04
it because I'm throwing a lot of hammers around me and that is always a good time. Oh, okay. All right. You're using the hammers.
51:11
That was the first thing I picked up. Yeah, mine mine is much more based around the There's Mine's all zeal stuff
51:19
first off. Like zeal is my thing. um zealot. And because I'm using the armor
51:25
um aura and I've got it speced to give you thorns and when you when you expel
51:32
it, it explodes with the force of all your thorns and then regenerates your thorns back up. Um I take very little
51:39
damage. Like I just I just very When I do take damage, it's usually because I
51:44
can no longer I I've run out of buttons to push, which can happen, but does not
51:49
happen very often. So, I think it's possibly spec related to a degree, but I mean, some specs are just much better at
51:56
single target than I am. I have had difficulty killing bosses just because I
52:01
just can't do enough single target damage. Like, they they they will stand there and they will hit them and hit
52:07
them and hit them and they just don't die. Uh, meanwhile, every time they summon 30 ads, I'm like, "Okay, boom,
52:13
boom, boom, boom. Yay." But that's a very necromancer thing to say. Yeah, it does. It does feel a little
52:19
necromancery. I I will say it's like a good necromancer. It's like not good in quality, good as in morality. Not that
52:26
necromancers aren't, you know, we we're really devoted to the light thing and you guys are all into that death.
52:32
We're we're here to preserve the balance, Matthew. I feel like kind of like you're the the hot topic guys and we're the golden
52:39
retrievers. It's like I could actually see a necromancer and a paladin, you know, hanging out and I'd just be like, are we
52:45
going to do stuff now, buddy? Yes, we are going to achieve the balance. Does that mean I get to blow everything up?
52:51
Yes, that is what it means. Okay. But yeah, no, I just I wanted to talk about it because for one thing, I I'm really
52:57
interested in what Joe just said because now I'm like I got to see if it's just that I've managed to hit upon a particularly broken uh set of talents.
53:04
I'm also very curious about that as well. And I'm I'm we're going to have to compare notes because like I said, I feel like I made of paper right this
53:11
second. And I'm sure that's going to change. But like are you using a shield? Oh yeah. Get rid of a shield. Don't use a shield.
53:18
Okay. I I don't use one at all. And I think maybe that's part of the the thing.
53:23
Maybe that's maybe there's a bug in here somewhere. I'm gonna have to to play around with this tonight. Uh yeah, we
53:29
definitely we're definitely going to have to send each other our specs so we can we can compare this. Uh but again,
53:35
before we go into the indie game news stuff, uh Liz, uh do you mind doing the thing? Uh absolutely. I am here to remind all
53:43
of you listening at home that Blizzard Watch is made possible by our supporters. All of you listeners are
53:50
helping us out just by listening, but we I do want to send a special shout out to all of our Patreon supporters, which
53:57
really keeps the site and all of our podcasts going. So, um, if you can
54:03
support us on Patreon, $3 a month will give you early access to all of these podcasts, plus the special Blizzard
54:10
Watch podcast pre-show, which is an unpredictable delight, every week. And
54:17
uh, all of those are adsree at $5 a month. You also get adsree
54:22
access to the website at blizzardwatch.com. Yes, we we have a website. We don't just
54:28
talk to you, we type it. who also sometimes do. Um, if you can support us,
54:34
awesome. It is you guys who really keep the site alive. If you can't, I totally
54:40
totally understand. But, uh, you do support us by tuning in and listening. You support us by sharing our content,
54:47
whether that's sharing the podcast with a friend, whether it's leaving a comment, whether it's dropping us a like
54:54
on social media. And you can follow us on social media. We are Blizzardwatch on
54:59
Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Masttodon@gamepad. Club, blizzardwatch.com on Blue Sky,
55:06
Blizzardwatch podcasts on YouTube, and Blizzard.watch on Tik Tok. So, follow us for the latest
55:13
news, for clips of our podcasts, uh, for me. Sometimes posting transmog pictures,
55:19
you know, sometimes you do that just to see how many likes you can get and so you can feel cute. That's that's just a
55:26
thing. Uh, we are cute. We are very cute. Admire us. Admire my plumage.
55:32
I I did post a picture of my druid this week wearing a little blue snow hat and it's it's so adorable, but I feel more
55:39
adorable because a bunch of people liked it. Yeah. Anyways,
55:44
you can follow us on social media and uh liking and sharing our stuff really
55:50
helps us out. Uh, if you happen to be looking for any World of Warcraft books, we also have a guide to the books all in
55:57
chronological order at blizzardwatch.comwarcraft-books,
56:02
which and if you buy from a link on that page, we get a little uh affiliate
56:08
revenue. So, that helps support the site, too. If you uh you know, if you're just if you're buying books anyway, you
56:14
can buy them through those links and it helps us out. Uh, so if you can support
56:19
us on Patreon, that is patreon.com/b blizzardwatch or just stay here and keep
56:24
listening. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you. And if you have questions for this or any of our podcast, we've been a little low on
56:31
questions lately. So if you have questions, send them our way and we will try to answer them. They we you can
56:37
reach us at podcastblizzardwatch.com. Specify the show you want to ask and the subject line and any special
56:43
pronunciation of your name. You can also contact us on Discord in the patron Q
56:49
and podcast questions channel for patrons or the Q and podcast questions channel for everybody else. And uh we
56:56
love your questions so send them our way. And thank you to everyone listening
57:02
for your support. And thank you to Liz for reading all the site news. Keep the site going because
57:07
otherwise we would just be talking on Discord. We'd be talking to ourselves. Yeah.
57:12
But uh there's we're pretty much done. But I do wanted to throw out this indie game awards steal because this is me is
57:19
absolutely fascinating. Um, apparently game of the year went to Claire Obscura.
57:25
Go ahead, Liz. I heard you getting ready to queue up, so go. Um, yeah, the indie game awards were
57:31
just last week and they really they very much celebrate independent games and
57:37
some of the smaller games. So, you know, we saw the game year game awards a couple of weeks ago and it's all of the
57:44
big games and even though a lot of indies had representation at Clare Obscure won game of the year there as
57:50
well, you just you kind of saw the same large games and at indie game awards you
57:56
get just a lot more variety. There are lots more categories and more granular categories that helps give an
58:04
opportunity for more different kinds of games to shine. So, Clare Obscure for one, it didn't sweep the indie game
58:11
awards because it couldn't be nominated for everything because there's the categories are so so much more granular.
58:17
You just can't you can't fit into all of them with just one game. Uh but yeah, it
58:23
did win game of the year. If you go and you watch the the live the video of the
58:28
award show, you will see them accept game of the year and be very gracious about it. and they used their acceptance
58:35
speech to call out a lot of great games they'd played this year and all of their fellow indie devs. Um, and I thought it
58:42
was really I thought it was it was really nice. It was a good show. And but yeah, the day after the show,
58:49
uh, they pulled the award because of Claire Obscur's use of AI in the game,
58:55
which not not just AI, Gen AI. There's a there's a big there's a big difference
59:00
there. And uh yeah, that was that was definitely a surprise. The game of the
59:06
year award went to runnerup blueprints, which I loved the heck out of blueprints. Uh it's just this is wow.
59:14
The indie game awards does take a really strong anti- AI stance. And you are
59:20
required to when you submit your game for consideration, you're required to say, did this game use Gen AI? And uh
59:28
yeah, we're this is a this is a broader topic that we need to maybe have as a
59:34
major topic during the actual show. This is a big one. Yeah, because Larry also uh just got the
59:44
eye of the internet for a few days. Oh yes. Um and the thing is like there's a
59:49
certain amount of context that I think needs to be applied to it. I don't like AI and I'm going to be
59:54
clear about that. But but there are use cases when you are rapidly prototyping
1:00:00
and you have a contained LLM um that's only using your assets to
1:00:05
rapidly prototype stuff. I think that's fine. Um this however when the part that they
1:00:12
had shipped with Gen AI assets that is a problem and there's a lot of games that
1:00:20
are guilty of doing that. I think Arc Raiders was the other big one. everybody was loving it and then uh it was a I
1:00:27
guess a gen AI asset like nightmare and it's it's there has to be a distinction
1:00:34
drawn and one I'm glad that the Indie Game Awards called them out on it because I feel like shipping with it
1:00:42
live is a problem again using it on the back end to rapidly prototype or to test
1:00:48
a proof of concept and then going in and the humans doing what humans need to do is completely different. So
1:00:54
yeah, but that's like what you're talking about is a situation where they're using their all their own assets as correct training tools
1:01:01
and that's not what most generative AI is. That's not what Gen AI is. No, that's when they people basically just
1:01:08
turn the fire hose on and spray as much stuff as they and that's basically and this is the reason that I always feel
1:01:14
like I need to say when we're talking about this it this is just plagiarism on an assembly line. That's that's what
1:01:21
this is. goless. I do want to say we it's hard to say what the details are in, you know, in
1:01:29
the final the final way of things. We don't know exactly what kind of tools they were using. What we do know is that
1:01:37
Clare Obscur did ship with some with some generative assets, some AI created
1:01:42
assets. Um, for example, one of the ones players caught really quickly was newspaper clippings that were in
1:01:48
background textures that were You can tell when a Gen AI is making a fake
1:01:54
newspapers because they it looks good from afar, but if you ever stop to look at the details, it stops
1:02:00
working completely. Um, and that was patched out. It was patched out within a
1:02:05
week. They rolled out a patch and removed some of these assets which were accidentally shipped with the game. So
1:02:12
my point of confusion here is this was known this was known when the game launched. This came out with the when
1:02:18
the game launched when there was an interview over the summer with the uh
1:02:23
Spanish language publication El Pais and where they mentioned that they used AI
1:02:30
in development. They said I believe it they said very little. So, this was previously known, but it it
1:02:39
feels like something was said or done just after the awards show or when the
1:02:46
awards show aired that changed things. It like it feels like this was a thing
1:02:52
we knew about. So I and I've looked around to see okay who said what when
1:02:59
that changed this situation because this is something we found out about over the summer and
1:03:05
it it seems very sudden and it's kind of kind of whiplashy to see this to see
1:03:10
them do this great acceptance speech and the next day it's like no actually you aren't game of the year someone else is.
1:03:16
I mean it is odd that they you know that they knew in advance and then the next
1:03:21
day it feels like somebody obviously I don't know. We don't know. We have no idea. We don't
1:03:26
know. Uh but I will say it's really fascinating to see this because clear obscur won so many awards
1:03:33
at the game awards this year. Yeah. And nobody batted an eye and nobody hey
1:03:38
said, "Hey, what about that generative AI?" Uh they're very different award shows. They are very different award shows. I
1:03:44
just think it's interesting. Um I'd like to know what we see in the future. Go ahead, Liz. I I'm just cur
1:03:51
Did either of you actually watch or listen to the to the award show, the Indie Game Awards?
1:03:56
I did not have time. Okay. I didn't I I had time, but I just I didn't.
1:04:03
I I don't like to watching award shows very much. They give me that. Do you ever get that that embarrassment for
1:04:08
people and it's like you start feeling like if I see people being embarrassed or if
1:04:13
they're like not winning an award that they obviously really want to win, I feel very intensely like their
1:04:21
embarrassment or disappointment to the point where I I I remember watching um
1:04:26
when I watched clips from the Game Awards. Uh there's one clip where I was so thrilled at Erica she she was just
1:04:32
eating popcorn and having a good time because usually there's somebody who's looks so crushed and I I was like I
1:04:38
can't do it. I can't do it. I can't Oh, thank God she's just eating popcorn. So, so here's here's the difference between
1:04:45
the Indie Game Awards the and the Game Awards, which is you're going to watch
1:04:51
the Game Awards, and it's this big flashy presentation that's mostly advertisements for future games, and
1:04:57
they're getting through the awards as fast as you can. And if your experience is anything like mine, you're going to
1:05:03
get to the end of the night and you're going to kind of hate the video game industry. like you've seen some good
1:05:08
trailers and you've seen these like as fast as they can get them off the stage acceptance speeches and it's like you've
1:05:14
watched three hours of advertisements and you just feel a little tired. You feel a little exhausted of it all
1:05:20
because Yeah. But if you watch the Indie Game Awards, this is not about
1:05:26
advertising future games. You're not going to watch trailers for future games. You're going to see trailers for the games trailers and clips for the
1:05:33
games that have been nominated. the actual developers of those games talking about how much they love making games,
1:05:40
how much they love the gaming industry, how much they love their games or other games people in the industry are making
1:05:46
right now. Um, it's not a live show. Acceptance speeches and things like that
1:05:51
are pre-recorded and sent in. So, you don't get that thing where people are
1:05:56
like called out of the blue like, "Hey, you won. Get up here on stage and now you have to make a coherent speech." Uh,
1:06:03
so it feels very clean and it feels you
1:06:08
can really see these people talking not just off the cuff because they've had
1:06:14
some time to prepare and what they to prepare what they want to say. And it's just you come out of this show with a
1:06:21
love of games because everyone in the show has such a love of games and they're so grateful to be part of the
1:06:28
industry and making games about them. Making the games that only they can make. That's the thing about indie games
1:06:34
is it doesn't have to be a thousand people in a giant multibillion dollar
1:06:40
company to make a game. It can be just one guy. It could be just a couple of people and telling stories that are
1:06:46
deeply personal and just for them. So if you haven't watched it, I would recommend watching it. It also takes a
1:06:54
very strong stance against about humanmade games. These are the games that only these people involved could
1:07:01
make. And it's just it's it's such a feel-good game show and it's kind of the
1:07:06
antidote to a big award show like the Game Awards. And it's so it's it's very
1:07:12
wholesome. Um but yes, it's interesting to see them take such a hard stand on
1:07:17
Clare Obscure and for it to have happened so suddenly when I felt like we knew about this in advance. So
1:07:23
yeah, but I think to a degree there's also the fact that it's simply not going to hurt Clare Obscure them. Oh, it's not going to hurt Claire. They
1:07:29
to a certain degree I feel like the Indie Games Awards are were they're free to do that because they don't have to
1:07:35
worry they're going to crush anybody. Well, and I don't think anyone I don't think anybody is arguing that the uh studio
1:07:42
behind Clarabc should be should be crushed. They shouldn't do that again. That's we're all like don't do that again.
1:07:48
We're not like burn them. So, I think that's one of the ways that they can just feel more comfortable
1:07:53
doing it. They can take the stance because they don't have the power to hurt people as badly. Go ahead. Well, it's just I mean it's in the
1:08:00
rules. These are human created games that did not use AI in development. It's just Yeah. Why give the award in the
1:08:06
first place if we'd already known about this and something must have come to light that I'm not aware of? Because
1:08:12
this felt like something that was wellnown before this point. Yeah. I don't want to keep talking about it because we're we're sort of running
1:08:18
out of time, but like my guts telling me that we're going to find out something more than just this accidentally shipped
1:08:24
with some assets is going to like be the next thing. But we'll see. Anyway, watch the Indie Game Awards.
1:08:29
It's such a good show and you will learn about so many cool games. Not games
1:08:35
coming out in years, but games that are out right now and games that are winning awards. And even the games that didn't
1:08:41
win awards, really great games. Sorry, you guys had really good air going and then you just stopped and I'm
1:08:46
like, "Oh, no, no, there they stopped." I was I was trying to think of something cool to say to wrap things up. Um, I'm
1:08:52
just going to go with Okay, guys. Thank you so much for being here with us. Uh, thank you to Liz and
1:08:58
Joe for having really good opinions that that allowed me to to kind of zone out there a little bit. I'm sorry. I was
1:09:03
thinking about my paladin. I'll be up front. I was like, I got to get out of here. I can go play my paladins some more. Um, I'm super into paladins now,
1:09:10
guys. This is like this so weird. I've never really been that into paladins in Diablo. I liked them in Diablo II, but I
1:09:19
mean, they clearly weren't my favorite right now. I mean, they're still not beating barbarians, but I am playing a
1:09:25
paladin, not a barbarian right now. So, you know, we'll see what happens. Terrifying. Yeah, I it's just I'm having
1:09:31
some Anyway, that's the important part. This has been the Blizzard Watch podcast. Thanks to Joe and Liz. Thanks
1:09:36
to all of you for being here so I can talk about Diablo 4 because I like doing
1:09:42
that and otherwise people get mad when I just stop won't stop doing it on buses. Um except sometimes I've actually had a
1:09:49
couple of really good conversations on buses about the game. But anyway, uh we'll talk to you guys next week.
#Online Media
#Computer & Video Games