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We're waiting on a whole lot this week -- servers to come up for the Burning Crusade Classic Anniversary realms pre-patch, and for the Midnight pre-patch next week, and all the sweeping changes that brings. The team discusses the addons they'll miss and why, which also serves as a bit of a reminder to you to make sure yours are all updated, or they won't work at all come patch 12.0. There was also a really nice technical post about that Burning Crusade Anniversary pre-patch rollover, which Joe and Phil Ulrich team up to try to explain to us less enterprising folks. (That's a pun, because it involves enterprise backups to tape).
Also, oh hey, Guild Halls are coming soon to Player Housing! If you're surprised, don't worry -- so are we. This is the first time this was discussed beyond a far-reaching future possible feature, and now it's just kinda tossed off with a "coming soon," along with several other anticipated features.
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0:00
[Music]
0:10
Hi everybody and welcome to the Blizzard Watch podcast. Um, I'm Matt. I'm hosting
0:15
with me this week our fantastic co-hosts and a special guest co-host who and together we will all join in form
0:21
Voltron, but not the cool lion Voltron. We're going to be the cars Voltron. I don't make the rules.
0:27
I mean, believe me, if I made the rules, we'd be the lion's robot Voltron. I I don't even like the cars Voltron because
0:34
he's not really Voltron. That's just that was just what they did as a greedy power play. I'm angry about it. But
0:40
anyway, if we were the cool Voltron, uh we're here with Joe and Liz, who would
0:45
both be the feet, I think, because the feet are the coolest part, right? Feet arms. What do I got to be the feet?
0:51
What's wrong with being the feet? You keep everything held up. Come on. You know you would be the yellow lion. No, I'm short. I'd be Pidge.
0:57
See, know I think you're more you're you're not Pidge material. You're not I'm not honk fishy enough.
1:03
I'm not honk. Okay. I I was going to say honk. I get You could be Keith. I'd rather be
1:08
I'd rather be. Uh anyway, so those are your options. Yeah.
1:13
Also with us besides Liz and Joe, who you know will determine which lions they would be. Uh we've got Phil. Uh Phil, do
1:21
you want to pick a lion? Uh no. I'll I'll let somebody decide me once. All right, you're red. Um,
1:27
okay. And and I I guess I would form the head. Also, there was like five voltrons, just so you guys know. I know we've been missing a person.
1:33
Well, we we'll make Cory be one later. No, no, no. I mean five different like full robots combined with Voltron. You
1:39
You're getting into a Gustalt territory. This This podcast is very close to becoming all about Gustalts. So, we need
1:44
to move on cuz I will I will info dump. Okay. Well, if you're going to info
1:50
dump, Joe, info dump about World of Warcraft. Uh, midnight pre- patch January 20th. We already knew this, but
1:56
you know, it's still worth talking about it. That's um uh that's very that's extremely soon.
2:02
It is next week. As of the time of this recording, it is one week away. So,
2:07
u there's going to be the elf houses and the endeavors as well. They're going to be elf endeavors.
2:13
Uh no, those are two separate things. Uh okay. We did not really we didn't really
2:18
know much about what kind of housing stuff would be in the pre- patch because Blizzard had not confirmed they hadn't
2:24
committed to doing any housing specific things in the pre- patch. But they have now confirmed that your night elf and
2:31
blood elf houses will be available in the pre- patch and endeavors which are your neighborhoodwide activities will
2:38
also be available in the priest patch. And that's that's great because uh
2:43
endeavors seem like they're going to be and endeavors seem like the primary way
2:48
to earn XP and you know housing launched in early access without that which has made leveling
2:56
your house if you desire to do so quite a grind because the only way to earn XP is by collecting a new decor for which
3:04
you get 10 experience per piece of decor per piece of unique decor. or that's
3:10
uncommon, rarity, or higher that you think there's only Yeah. the first time. The first time. So, uh,
3:18
that can be very expensive to level your house in that way. But endeavors should help. My only concern about this is that
3:25
Endeavors have been kind of flaky on the beta. So, we'll we'll see.
3:31
We'll see what they look like when they launch. That's kind of a big question mark right now because we've only seen
3:36
one endeavor on the beta and it's kind of I don't know. It's its functionality
3:41
is a little questionable, but we will see. I'm excited to see what they look like and what is available.
3:47
Okay. Um I wanted to actually talk about this anyway, so it's good that it's the next thing up. Uh we're also going to
3:53
have a lot of changes to add-ons. um you know this any pre- patch you know some
3:59
add-ons break some add-ons uh don't work and you have to wait for them to get updated and some of your favorite add-ons however are not going to update
4:05
and there's just there's a lot to to keep in mind we have a post on the site by the way if you want to look and
4:12
search talking about what add-ons you might want to try the telling explaining which add-ons won't be working um I I
4:19
think we should just pull the bandage off and talk about the ones that will not be working anymore uh do you guys
4:25
want Like is there anyone you know that you use that's not going to be going coming back? I mean the biggest one is weak or is
4:31
probably for everybody. Yeah. Uh because that's that's kind of your go-to for creating customized alerts and
4:39
just doing because we is such a big add-on. It's so flexible. You can do a
4:44
lot of things with it and a lot of people use it. It will the developers have said they will not continue
4:50
updating weak oras for midnight because its functionality would be so limited.
4:57
It wouldn't be completely limited, but they'd have to recode it and its functionality would be so much less than
5:02
what it is today that they're just not going to do it. Which I can understand. I can understand that.
5:08
I was surprised to see Healbot on this list. I'm not. It's an automated healer add-on.
5:14
mostly suppressed healot still exists if I'm being 100% honest. That too big
5:19
a name that I'm recognized. So the big change that is causing all of
5:25
this problem is that add-ons will no longer be able to access live combat data. So any add-ons that are related to
5:33
combat either have to go or they have to change significantly. And this touches a
5:39
whole lot of add-ons. I mean like um it like uh Oh man, I'm I'm forgetting what
5:46
I think GTFO that one hurts a lot honestly. Yeah.
5:52
Well, they they want us to pay attention to what's going on which is a problem us
5:58
No. No. I'm not I'm not taking responsibility for this and I'm going to I'm sorry. I'll I'll let you finish in a
6:04
second here. GTFO and they say if they say they want us to pay attention, we are already paying attention. There's
6:10
too much garbage on the ground to to know what's good and what's bad. The game has become even with the new
6:18
version, if you've done any ray testing or any mythic testing in the beta. There's still too much garbage on the
6:24
ground and you can never always know for sure that you're not standing in something even if you are paying 100%
6:30
attention. GTFO going away is awful. So that sorry it is and they need to either
6:37
put something like GTFO in the game for accessibility too because it's a huge accessibility add-on
6:43
for people that have maybe I don't know site issues, color blindness, color blindness that isn't covered by
6:50
one of the color blind modes that they have in the game. Uh there there's a a myriad of reasons
6:56
that it it needs to it should have been continued. But with the developers, there's a big blue circle on the ground
7:02
and another big blue circle on the ground's good overlap. Yeah. I I mean, how many times have you
7:07
run away from the shaman's healing circle and straight into like a dying circle? I've done this.
7:12
Um but but again, like it's one of those things where the developer has straight
7:18
up said that they're not going to continue it anymore. Blizzard needs to step up and and and take that slack up.
7:23
And I I don't say that very often, but that is a huge accessibility feature that needs to become baseline. Just
7:29
throwing it out there. Sorry. Well, I definitely agree. I No, I definitely agree that combat is wildly
7:35
busy. I mean, I've talked before on the podcast about how I have a weak word
7:40
that just points at my character on the screen so I can find myself because I am
7:47
a tiny gnome and there are tons of spell effects and larger player models all
7:52
around me. I'm a tiny gnome in Melee. How am I supposed to see that? How am I
7:58
supposed to know what's going on? It's Yeah, it's actually funny. It's funny because it can be hard to spot
8:03
anybody, but when you're like a gnome or a I can't forget what the fox people are called, but the uh
8:10
Vulper or even like a goblin, it can be kind of tricky to like know, okay, which
8:16
of these weird sparkle things is actually me versus all the things exploding and Yeah. Yeah. It could be it
8:23
can be quite a thing and it and it can be difficult to see, okay, where exactly am I standing? Am I standing right inside the circle or
8:28
right outside the circle? And as sometimes it's hard to tell, okay, which direction am I facing specific, like if
8:35
I'm totally lost in a crowd. So, and yeah, I have I have visual effects
8:40
turned down as low as it'll go. I have the reduced spell effects uh setting turned down to its minimum, but there
8:48
are still so many spell effects. Combat is just so visually noisy. So, uh, yes,
8:55
I do not I do not have something to help me overcome this challenge in um in
9:00
Midnight. And Blizzard does offer some tools that ostensibly help with this.
9:05
You can have a circle around your character at all times, and the circle actually does indicate which direction
9:11
you're pointing. That circle also gets lost in all of the combat spam and spell effects. uh kind of all of the effects
9:19
Blizzard has to help you with this can just also get lost in everything that's going on during a raid encounter. So
9:27
I don't have solutions to every problem that I have yet and I'm probably going to be figuring out a lot on the fly. So
9:34
it's good that the midnight pre- patch will be running for about a month. Yeah. And I we may be what it takes.
9:40
Yeah. Everyone here has gotten to complain except Phil. Phil, do you have anything specific you'd like to complain about before we continue to complain? uh
9:46
just a lot of general complaints, but uh I have a feeling that there will be something to come back to uh place GTFO
9:52
because there's uh um there is there is a feature that Blizzard is adding for audio alerts when you're targeted by
9:59
spells. Um which there are add-ons that are already building on top of that, which to me sounds like a gateway to
10:05
have something like a GTFO, even if it's not GTFO itself. Um, mostly just the
10:11
weird one is going to be like some add-ons that I've depended on for a while that have just continued to work
10:16
by happen stance that still don't break the the new upcoming rules are going to break because one of the things that I
10:22
haven't actually seen a lot of sites mention I think we did though um is that add-ons that don't match the current
10:28
version um there will be no more option to load those add-ons like if if something is
10:34
uh just flipping through my add-on list here I actually have one that I wrote um that adds to the tool tip to tell me who
10:40
cast a spell on me. Um, but it's I haven't updated the version number since like 11.0. So, it's just continued to
10:47
work. Um, but add-ons that aren't 12.0 or higher in their, you know, in the
10:53
file that tells an, you know, that tells the game what an add-on does, um, will not be able to load. Like, it will not
10:59
let you load a pre-midnight add-on. So, that wasn't updated is basically just gone whether or not it was working up
11:05
until this point. Yes, exactly. Um, I will miss weak or u, but I know that time that I spent
11:10
fiddling with weak oras whenever I'm playing a new class will just be replaced with fiddling with the cool down manager. Um,
11:18
I think I think it's going to be kind it's going to be a brand new world. I know there's a lot of things that are
11:25
um still being pulled back, still being adjusted even here at the last second, but uh I I don't know if Blizzard has
11:32
accomplished their what they wanted to do here entirely. um and also are
11:38
inconveniencing a lot of people. So, I'm I'm on this one. I I I think this is one of the we've
11:43
talked about it before, but I'll reiterated. It's good that we have a month of wiggle um because they're
11:51
either going to have to unblock things in that month uh or they're going to
11:56
have to there's going to be add-on developers that are going to have to fill that gap or get their stuff going. And again, I I I am very very grateful
12:06
to add-on developers. A have somebody who's done software development before. You already don't get paid enough as it
12:12
is and then doing it for free half the time or for a very minimal like Patreon or donation based uh uh you know,
12:20
kickback or you know, whatever meager split of ad revenue you get from Curse.
12:26
um truly appreciate the hard work that they do because they're filling in gaps
12:31
that for they have been filling in gaps for decades, literally decades at this
12:36
point. Um so yeah, but again, we'll see what happens. We have a month. A lot of
12:42
your favorites are are either going away potentially or have been updated. Like
12:47
bartender is a big one for me because I hate the default uh the default bars in WoW. are not customizable enough for me
12:54
even with all the options they've added to the game. Um or uh the the one that's
13:00
really like name plates, platter name plates and stuff like that. That's a huge one for me. Um because and I think
13:07
I talked about this last time and if I haven't I I'll I'll just kind of throw it out there real quick. Um name plates
13:12
are too busy in Blizzard's default UI and the lack of ability to filter things makes it really difficult sometimes as a
13:19
healer to see what's on people. because I don't care what positive buffs are on there. Um, I need to see what negative
13:26
things are on there. And the thing that they're doing with the UI now is there are certain abilities, debuffs, spells,
13:33
or things that are auto highlighted. Like they take up the largest portion of the bar and you cannot click through
13:39
them both in their raid frames and their their unit frames uh potentially. And
13:45
that makes it exceptionally difficult to click and heal somebody because you're
13:50
clicking in a lot of cases this big old honking button uh that is not what you
13:56
were trying to click on. Um and it doesn't let you actually heal click to heal through it to heal the person. Um
14:03
healing mythics on uh the the beta has been very interesting with that and I
14:08
hate it. Uh so yeah th those but again it's not all doom and gloom and I want
14:15
to make sure that that's perfectly clear like while I'm am griping there are people who are working on things and
14:21
updating them to be compliant with the new standards and many of them have been in contact with Blizzard working with
14:28
them to make sure either that they're compliant or Blizzard un unscrews up the connection that they have to the game uh
14:35
if it's something that you know isn't gamebreaking. I'm not sad to see method raid tools tools go. I've talked about
14:41
that being just an absolutely broken necessary thing. Great that it's gone.
14:46
Um but other things like you know grid and and other stuff like that except I I thought method was staying
14:53
around. Uh I thought that they were mythic dungeon tools was confirmed.
14:59
It's uh 12.0. So like mythic dungeon tools is staying around. Um, but things
15:04
like their add-on packs that would, you know, automatically call out assignments for you, that kind of thing is going
15:10
away. Yeah. Which is But there are there are some add-ons replacing them like Northern Sky Raid tools, which kind of do the same kind of
15:17
functionality without the automation. Um, also you did call out Plater. Plater is continuing into 12.0. They have they
15:24
actually they've actually got a version flag 12.0.1 updated this week. Oh, so is
15:31
actively continuing. And for a lot of add-ons, for a lot of add-ons, it's just going to be finding the closest replacement. Like, I'm pretty sure um
15:38
the add-on that I used for years and years and years for chat, uh Pratt, I don't know if Pratt is continuing, but
15:45
recently, uh, one developer has put out actually both a name plate add-on and a chat add-on, Platinator and Chattinator,
15:51
uh, which both were, um, developed ahead of time to be compatible with, uh, 12.0, now um and are uh continuing to stay uh
16:01
like up to date as the rules have changed or gotten pulled back or things like that. So um it it may be surprising
16:08
exactly what things uh stick around and I think yeah a lot of old favorites are
16:13
uh updating. It's just like a few key ones like uh at least um like we is the
16:18
biggest one is pretty much it. Like they were pretty much the first ones to say no we're not going to continue it. When
16:24
you think about everything wears can potentially do, that is the one that it makes the most sense to say, "No,
16:30
there's no way we could bring this into 12.0 and retain a third of this functionality." You can maybe make 10 different add-ons,
16:36
six of which won't work in the current system. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's the other thing. It's going to go back to instead
16:42
of having, you know, 20 20 weeks, you're going to have 20 very tiny add-ons that do work with the rules and kind of bring
16:47
back that same functionality. like people have been uh one of the one of the things that I've called out in bug
16:53
reports um as a shorting as a shortage in the cooldown manager is there is no way to note trinket cooldowns um but
17:00
players have found limitations around that and they're uh there are standalone add-ons at this time to base to
17:07
essentially add that functionality to the cooldown manager so I think that's the kind of thing we'll see uh more
17:12
commonly going forward oh my goodness you you said platinator and I just started looking at everything
17:18
that this developer does. Plus mouse, you are doing an amazing job. I
17:24
literally just hit the right. Hold on a second. I just I just hit the donate button. I'm not even joking.
17:30
I'm over here making Joe throw money at the screen. I want to shout out Chattinator especially as a replacement for Pratt. It's
17:36
so good. It's so good. Uh even on an aesthetic level where all the all the timestamps
17:41
line up on the left for the chat messages plus worked on Pratt 3.0. That's why I'm looking at the the
17:47
Yeah. Well, there you go. That's why I'm honestly looking forward to not having to update Pratt because Pratt is always
17:52
the one that wouldn't update when the patch dropped. And nine times out of 10, it would keep you from chatting in any
17:58
way whatsoever. It would There's one time I couldn't play my character because Pratt ate
18:04
every input whatsoever. So, I couldn't chat. Log out to to the Yeah.
18:10
Yeah. So, won't miss that. Uh but as much as we could continue to talk
18:15
about this, we do have other things to talk about. So, um I don't think anybody here is particularly interested in
18:21
player housing. Yeah. No one. You mean you mean you're going to you're
18:26
deny you're going to deny me the thing that we can talk about that I literally begged and asked them to put in the game
18:31
with player housing? I'm not denying you anything, man. You're going to talk about player housing. Come on. Come. You know me. You
18:37
know me. We We do podcasts a lot and you know my sense of humor. Anyway, yeah, lots of stuff. We've Blizzard did an
18:43
info dump talking about various things coming. Uh, I do want to talk about really fast because because Liz
18:49
mentioned it up top and I am interested. We're gonna get the guild hall and we
18:56
don't really know much more about that other than it's coming. There's there's a TM soon of course.
19:01
Well, go ahead, Liz. I heard you. We we we don't know much about it because I don't think Blizzard has ever
19:07
talked about it. maybe talked about it on a wish list of far future features
19:12
and in an interview they just tossed it out there. Uh, guild guild houses or
19:19
guild halls are coming soon and it's like what? Yes. What are they?
19:26
They never mentioned it before. That's my point. It's like everyone's like could you could you clarify? No. Could you back up?
19:33
It's like back up and explain this. No, they have explained nothing. We know nothing. It's just they threw this name
19:40
out here. It may not launch in the pre- patch, but it's coming soon. And it's like, what? What?
19:45
Yeah. I mean, this is something I I we don't know much about it, but the speculation is that they listened um and
19:53
that we're going to get uh what a lot of players were asking for, which is the uh
20:00
guild super group style housing that, you know, was around like with City of
20:07
Heroes and some other games that did housing. Uh, so like if that's what it is, that's really really cool. And I
20:15
cannot wait to see what horrors our guild produces. Uh, because with with
20:21
Ado being in charge of things, it's going to be terrible and hilarious. I'm less excited now.
20:26
I'm super excited. Yeah, we can I'm less excited now. I Yeah. Okay,
20:31
that's okay. You You've got me here to temper his nonsense. That'll be fun. Yeah. Then I remembered what my guild is
20:37
like and now I'm like, "Oh, maybe maybe this loves us. Don't let her."
20:45
Someone can love you and still recognize that you are not domesticated. That is fair.
20:52
It's like I love you, but you really should stay outside with the possum. We talked about possums before and you
20:58
belong possum because you're just going to you're going to disrupt my cool my fang here. I've got this whole thing set
21:03
up and and already there's a giant floating skull screaming at people. That's not what I was looking for. I'm
21:08
just saying sometimes people have different ideas. Yeah, that's true. I I do want to say uh
21:15
in neighborhoods in both neighborhoods though I particularly notice it in the the Alliance neighborhood there's like
21:22
empty spaces. There are empty spaces where it seems like something should be and
21:27
and particularly the alliance area has things that appear to be under construction and it's like what is this
21:34
for? What? You can't just leave a little under construction spot in the middle of
21:40
a neighborhood. It has to be for something, right? I mean, they can. They can, but it seems weird.
21:46
So, I'm wondering if Yeah, it might be the guilt halls. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. I wonder if these are planned to
21:51
be communal spaces that you can that you'll be able to build with the guild, which would be really cool because one
21:58
of the things that I heard mentioned really early in this is like, can we have our own tavern to like hang out in
22:05
and put stuff in and you know, something like that, a communal space that people
22:11
could build in. That's not just, oh, here's my house. It's like, no, here's the here's the bar in the neighborhood.
22:18
Here's the here's the neighborhood and these are communal spaces.
22:23
Yeah. Um, also what's interesting is a lot of the other stuff's coming that's not coming with the pre- patch. It's
22:28
coming when Midnight actually launches. Uh, just one of the things that I think
22:34
is really cool is that with each raid is going to be dropping guaranteed number of items from each boss that has decor.
22:41
So, there'll be a bunch of decor coming from bosses like in the various first set of raids. For sure. Yeah,
22:47
there'll probably be more for next race, but they haven't actually said anything about that. Uh there's going to be more renown levels and more housing XP.
22:55
They said about five levels per major patch, five or more. So that's we're
23:00
going to keep leveling the houses and we're going to keep getting new decor. It's not this is not a oneanddone
23:06
thing. It's not like they rolled it out and now this is everything. It's no, they rolled it out and they are
23:12
continuing to add tons of stuff to it. They even said it's not going to be limited to midnight. Like, this is
23:18
something that they will continue to work on going forward, which I think is a good idea. Do you guys know about exterior rooms?
23:24
Uh, yes. Those were in the beta, but they didn't go live in early access. Uh, they're just sort of rooms you can put
23:30
in your house that look like you're outside. They're kind of weird, frankly. They're meant to build in and not just
23:37
be a place because they they're a very obviously circular room with a skybox for a wall. But
23:43
people have done such really neat things with them. I saw somebody who built like an entire little like they built like a what they describe as
23:50
like a torren refuge in theirs. Like they basically built an additional house inside their house which was just people
23:57
put so much creative work into these outside rooms. Um somebody else has something else to
24:03
say I think. if then if not I'll talk about the next thing but go ahead if you have it because I thought I heard someone saying something
24:08
I'm just really glad that this is not a one and done because this uh has kind of turned me into a monster um now when I
24:13
look at things in uh things in the world like I'm over in Legion I've earned all
24:19
the you know the Legion themed decor from Legion and I'm spending extra bronze buying extra copies and then I'm
24:26
just like you know now I'm looking around the camp that the infinite dragonfly has set up though looking at all the cool stuff they have that hasn't
24:32
been offered to me is an option to purchase. I was like, uh, this feels like a missed opportunity. Let me let me
24:38
let me in the dragon flight stuff. No, you just have to buy more fell chains. And
24:44
I've got so many chains at this point. I do like one thing I want to mention
24:49
really fast. Apparently, they're talking about getting the the import and export rooms
24:55
uh function, which is where people can basically design a room in their house and then say, "This is what it looks
25:00
like." And now other people could then build it. That's actually really neat. Even if you don't want to send it to somebody else
25:06
because for example I Yeah. Or if you want to change the room that's attached to say your entrance, but you've built a
25:13
bunch of house up first. Um you need to like you can't remove rooms while you're
25:19
in the room editor in such a way that it would leave disconnected rooms. So often the first room inside your entrance
25:25
cannot be changed without demolishing your whole house. Um, so just being able to like export the rest of your house,
25:31
tear it down, change that first room, and then reimpport all your rooms would be so huge. That's something I I would
25:38
have a use for literally right now if they gave it to me. So, uh, just going to talk
25:44
a few little things coming up. Uh, increased out outdoor decor cap, which
25:50
uh, that outdoor decor extremely limited right now. That's going to get increased
25:56
again. Outdoor lighting will be coming. Outdoor lighting has not been available
26:01
since the alpha when a certain someone created a fire garden and then there was
26:07
no outdoor lighting for anyone. So nice.
26:14
I'm not saying I'm not saying who did it. It's just someone created garden made out of fire and now none of us can
26:20
create gardens made out of fire. It's a little unfair. Um, and this is this is a
26:26
big one for those of you making exciting things outside your house. Visible plot
26:31
boundaries around your home. Thank you. So you can see the edges of your plot.
26:37
It's so necessary. Currently, you have no idea where the edges of your plot are, and you just
26:44
have to move things around until it won't let you move them, and that's how you figure out where the edges of your
26:49
plot are. So, all of these guys, awesome.
26:55
Uh, lots of great changes, lots of things that just going to make this more usable, more fun, give us more options.
27:02
Uh, and also, you can finally build the fire garden of your dreams at
27:08
the future. Since Liz Liz opened this up by talking about exterior decor, mounts and pets you've collected will be allowed to
27:15
wander your home. Yeah, that's real cool, you know.
27:21
characters are harder to get, you know, those things in, but mountain pets, the
27:26
general mountain pets are going to be coming soon. They're going to work on hunter pets. That's technically harder
27:32
for some reason. Yeah, I was going to Well, I mean, Phil Phil raised a good point. Like, I think people were asking for that for a while
27:37
because of uh the garrison and what the garrison did. Um, so yeah, like I think it's really
27:44
cool and the technical limitation on the hunter pets. Hunter pets have or uh always been weirdly coded. So I
27:52
mean they actually have stats where you know Yeah. It's a different situation. They actually have talents and so forth.
27:57
Yeah. And I'm sure some of it is just because of like the dynamic stuff around those whereas battle pets are pretty much all battle pets. There's not really
28:03
any customization you can do other than naming them. So, um, and I know some I know some of this
28:08
also has to do with path finding around dynamic terrain because, you know, on the outside it's probably fine, but on
28:13
the inside that that layout could be anything. So, yeah, that's fair. I also do there's
28:19
just so much more stuff to talk about. Uh, the one that I'm going to mention here and then I'll stop and then you guys can mention stuff if you want to,
28:25
but interactive objects, which is lets a player do things like pick up a glass or a book or play a game. Like for
28:32
instance, we got that chess set from Diablo I, which I I have cuz I pre-ordered. Um, you can now play a game
28:39
on that or if they brought the Hearthstone board in and let you use that, you could do that. I think that's
28:45
really cool just because it's nice to have that level of immersion if you want to have it.
28:50
I just want to be able to put a giantized version of the Diablo chess set outside on my lawn.
28:56
Give me wizard. Give me wizard chest. Dang it. Anyway, especially if you could then have your, you know, pets or mounts playing chess.
29:03
That'd be fantastic. You kidding me? Yeah. Or just hitting the the chess board like with their tails or whatever.
29:08
I want to see my brut I want to see my brutaur playing chess with my uh like my OG uh sparkle bony brutasaur. Uh Liz,
29:16
Phil, you guys got anything? Nothing new. I'm just very excited that this seems to be one of those features
29:22
where Blizzard really loves to take feedback from the players and that I can think of very few things where they've given us a hard no. Yeah. Thank Thank
29:28
you, housing team. I love you. Yep. Uh I I do just want to add that we do
29:34
not have release dates for any of this. They have a big future feature list
29:39
future feature wish list and we there are all sorts of cool things on it. We don't know when any of this is
29:45
happening. But the future question mark one hopes the future. If they did it in
29:51
the past that's really mean. That's very complicated. Yeah. If they did it in the past we have a lot of questions to ask. Yeah, like
29:58
they did it 300 years ago, so before computers. Really, it's just a list they
30:04
taped to a box. I don't know what's going on anymore. Anyway, before I lose my mind, let's talk a little bit about
30:10
some quick stuff. Legion Remix is ending on January 19th. If you haven't done all
30:15
you want to do in Legion Remix, you have until then, which is not a lot of time. It's It's a busy week. It's It's looking
30:22
like a busy week for my Legion Remix goals. I I do want to say Matt, somehow I went
30:29
from having zero max level warriors in the past 20 years to having two max
30:38
level warriors over the past like heroically got you in, didn't it? Y Legion Remix is good for that kind of
30:45
thing. I got to be upfront with it. Well, it's I had I had one warrior and I was like, I'm going to do I'm going to
30:51
do time walking with this because we also have the uh turbulent time waves going on right now and if you do a time
30:57
walking every week, you get a mount. And so I thought I'll just use I don't play this character enough. It's not even max
31:03
level. I'm just going to use it to do time walking and I'll log off and save my buff and get do it again next week.
31:09
And so it took like one dungeon to to hit level 80. Yep. Uh and and then I I leveled one in
31:17
Legion Remix because I'm like, "Oh, well, I've never done the warrior class hall quest. I'll I'll do that. I'll do the class hall quest I haven't done."
31:23
And uh yeah, kind of. I I still dislike Odin. I just
31:28
Odin is still out there Odining. But yes, I to be the very best like no one ever
31:34
was. I I am now possessed of two max level uh fury warriors, which is it. There are
31:42
lots of buttons to press very fast, which is in and of itself kind of fun. It's just your the click click click
31:49
click click click click. Yep. Like people are always like, you know, the thing with the warrior rotation is
31:56
there's some certain people that can hit it really well and then there's people like me who just flail at their keyboard
32:01
and hope to God that they hit the right button at the right time. Yeah, frankly, that's kind of what I do.
32:06
Yeah, it's it's I I ra I'm not a good warrior, but I have been having fun, and that's that's
32:12
what matters. That's pretty much what anyone can ask. So, I'm glad to hear that. That's what we can ask for in life.
32:18
Uh now, we should talk briefly about the six month subrewards. Um cuz they're cool. Uh, specifically, I love I
32:25
absolutely love the little like pet in WoW classic and then you've got like
32:32
this ridiculously nice mount in in retail. That's completely a completely new
32:38
rigging, too. Like completely new animations, completely new spell effects, uh like completely new behaviors and and
32:45
skeletal uh armature. like the developer that worked on it was posting on uh Blue
32:52
Sky about it and it was fascinating to watch them put the stuff in. Uh giant
32:57
flame Pegasus for those because I realize we didn't describe what it is and this is a uh visual or a nonvisual
33:04
medium. Uh it is a giant flame Pegasus with a really cool set of armor and a giant plume of of of a feather in its
33:11
hair and it just looks so good. And it's very pretty. And then the pet
33:17
is the little tiny pony version of it. Like the My Little Pony version of it. The baby. Yeah. It's like there's the baby. And then when you go back to
33:23
there, it's grown up. It literally It literally looks like the My Little Pony toys from like the 80s.
33:28
It really does. The the the It is pretty close. Yep. It doesn't have a butt thing, but otherwise Yep. Absolutely.
33:35
Um a cutie mark. Yes, that's what they're called. Um you tried to trick me into actually saying
33:42
that word, but I didn't. It's a cutie mark. He's right. I foiled myself. These
33:47
are They're very cute. Um, you get them for six month subscription, uh, which is cool. There's also a 12-mon
33:53
subscription. Um, I'm not sure what the 12 month. Same rewards. Yeah, same rewards.
33:58
I don't I don't think you get anything extra. You're just I think the 12 month is slightly cheaper overall. Like it's slightly less per
34:05
month. No, I think the 12 and six are the same. I thought then there's absolutely no reason to get
34:11
the 12 month. And I don't know why they're doing it. I I would just really like my flaming Pegasus to show up now.
34:16
It has it has not shown up yet and I'm impatient. Where is my flaming my flaming horse? Where is my flaming horse? Blizzard.
34:23
Yes, I want my wing flame horse. Please, now give bluntfly. Yeah, I I I would
34:29
love to pick that up, but I um but yeah, this is a really cool looking horse. Uh
34:34
just straight up, it's really um got some wild if you're Well, go ahead. If you're currently subscribed at 6 months or more, it
34:41
should show up automatically. If you do subscribe for 6 months or more, uh, then
34:47
it will show up. So, there you are. Yes. And please give Phil his his
34:53
flaming horse of of coolness. It's black and red. It's just it's it's like the sports car of flaming sky horses. I
35:00
don't understand why it's Phil doesn't already have it. It's pretty fast, you know. It's fast. It's got a lot of red on it. Ah, but we should talk about WoW
35:07
Classic briefly. Um, we've got TBC Classic. The preo pre-patch launch is
35:13
coming. When exactly? It's already launched. February 5th.
35:18
The expansion's February 5th. That the prep patch has launched after a wildly
35:25
long maintenance and some slight minor technical challenges. Oh, I I I know
35:32
knew there was something up because when we were all getting ready to start the show as I as I came on to the the chat
35:38
channel, I thought I heard Phil say something like, "I hope Wow Classic comes back and I was like, okay, what
35:44
did Wow Classic do? What happened?" But I didn't get a chance to Joe or Phil, would one of you like to
35:49
talk about sort of the technical side of what's going on here? Because we did get a blue post about some of the database
35:56
stuff going on in the background, which was really interesting. We did, Phil. Do you want to I've been talking a lot. Do you want to take
36:01
point? Uh I can take a little of it. Um the I I just want to say first off I really love
36:07
that they did this. I've always wanted Blizzard to be more open about their technical environment the same way that for example Riot has their engineering
36:14
blog. I really wish Blizzard would do some of this stuff more often. Agreed. Um yeah, but uh I'm trying the gist of
36:20
it was that the anniversary realms and the classic error realms kind of existed like in the same set of three databases.
36:27
um in which there's the uh the persistent database which stores everything about your character, your
36:32
items, your name, your guild, etc., etc. Um the account uh database which has all
36:37
your account level info. So like for retail that would be where all your warb band stuff is I'm guessing. And then um I forget what the third one
36:45
is called, but it's essentially things like your character ID number on your realm, that kind of thing. Stores like realm level stuff. Um, and when they
36:53
created when they set these servers up, they were like they knew that um, eventually they were going to have to
36:59
address the fact that classic era was going to stay in classic forever while Anniversary was eventually going to continue to the Burning Crusade. U, they
37:06
decided to kick that can down the road and let future them deal with it. Um, this has had some interesting side
37:11
effects. For example, there was an Altteract Valley anniversary event where um characters from Season of Discovery
37:17
were able to show up in the same battlegrounds as regular classic era characters. Um and there still might be
37:23
a little bit of a power. Ouch. Oh god, they have new power. Oh no, this shaman's a tank. Uh but uh
37:31
so when it came time to you know finally they're basically now they're at the point where they have to address the
37:37
technical death they created for themselves to uh move classic to move anniversary forward. Um they thought at
37:45
first about just setting up new databases for it entirely and transferring everything over but
37:51
essentially you like guilds would be automatically disbanded, everybody would have name conflicts. everything would
37:57
just be everything would be a huge disaster and all your community would fall apart. And if anybody has played on
38:02
classic, you know that part of the experience of playing in classic is you get those tight-knit communities like
38:07
you got from vanilla from vanilla guilds that a lot of people complain they don't have anymore. Um and so they were they
38:16
essentially came up with a solution where uh two of the databases
38:21
uh would be migrated and the third one would just continue to run out of the same database as classic era but with an
38:29
additional flag to essentially say this is an anniversary character. They continue forward into into into Burning
38:35
Crusade. So, they'd be running two versions of the game out of the same database, which they have not done before, but have set themselves up to
38:42
do. Um, but it is a it doing something like this that is, as far as I know,
38:48
unprecedented in World of Warcraft, is a huge undertaking.
38:54
And so, this uh the moon, the launch of Burning Crusade Classic Era, Burning
39:00
Crusade Anniversary, even I can't keep the classic version straight. Burning Crusade on the anniversary servers was
39:07
being led into with a 24-hour downtime just to make sure that they could get
39:12
everything straightened out because you've got two different versions of the game writing to the same database and that is risky. Um, and that downtime has
39:21
even been extended a little and uh we were coming up on it when it was just about time for us to start recording the
39:27
podcast which is why I said I really hope it comes back okay. Uh but what it's not it's not reassuring earlier
39:33
today that one of the database engineers for Blizzard posted a uh picture on X of
39:38
the dog on fire or dog in a room on fire this is fine meme. Um that's not what
39:43
you want to see from your DB engineers. Um but uh it sounds really cool and I
39:49
really enjoyed this technical peak uh into Blizzard and I really hope that they get their stuff straightened out for their sake.
39:54
Yeah, they also posted a message that in all caps that said this is fine. Everything
40:00
is fine. Dave, where are the tape backups? Yeah. So, it's going great. It's going great.
40:06
Yeah, it's going great over there. Yeah. So, if if you if you are not familiar with it, tape backups mean the deep deep backups because usually
40:14
usually in a situation like this, you have multiple layers of backups, which you have your your uh your soft layer,
40:20
your hard layer, and then your archive layer. Um I'm oversimplifying it. Those are not the actual terms for the terms
40:26
depend on what actual database structure you're using or what tools you have in place. Um, tape backups are sort of like
40:33
the archive layer. When you have something on tape, it generally it doesn't change. It's like a snapshot
40:40
that cannot be uh or it can be but it's not meant to be overwritten. It's meant
40:46
to be in case of emergency break glass. Um, but what they're doing is they're
40:51
creating a interesting variance on a persistent in place database,
40:57
which if you've ever used like for those of our more technical friends out there, if you've ever used like MongoDB or any
41:02
of the LSMS out there, you you're probably very familiar with it. So, what it it essentially um keeps your data in
41:10
a uh a a storage type a hard type of storage that isn't memory. uh so that if
41:19
something uh happens the data persists. I already have that in place for like our character data to a certain level.
41:26
But the other aspect of that is how changes are applied to characters or in
41:32
this case the database flags and they're essentially adjusting it so that you can
41:38
have two independent sources essentially reading and writing to a
41:43
single database because it's essentially using uh essentially a aon
41:49
framework or essentially an altered only update. Um, this is my guess. I don't know. But from the way they describe
41:55
things, this is what it seems to me and what my my background uh is telling me.
42:00
Uh, which is incredibly good if you can get it working right, but incredibly
42:06
fragile when you're setting it up and putting it in place for the first time. So, the panic tweets or panic posts on
42:12
blue sky or social media, I'm not surprised. Um, the other part of it is if you've ever done a database migration
42:18
of something like this type where like let's say let's say you work in tech and you're migrating two domains to read off
42:24
of a single database uh let's say a company acquisition for for example and you're taking all the data from one
42:31
company and all the data from another company and merging them into a single unit. Uh it looks awful before it looks
42:37
great. Um and a lot of times you don't know if it works until you full send.
42:43
Uh, and so you have to essentially cross your fingers and hope at a certain point and hope that the magic box does what
42:50
you tell it to do in the right order uh, and bring it back up. This is incredibly ambitious. This is incredibly good. Um,
42:58
and it brings a more modern uh, scheming or modern thought process
43:05
to database management to uh, their game systems, which I think they've needed for a while. Um, I feel for all the devs
43:13
and all the the server folks and all the database engineers that are working on this right now. Godspeed, warriors. I
43:19
will light the candle in your name tonight and say the prayers and uh necessary sacrifices to the machine gods
43:25
uh because it is not an easy task. And when they said 24-hour downtime, uh the last time I did something like this, it
43:33
took 72 76 hours before we were up and running.
43:38
Uh so yeah uh if they can if they pull this together and everything's functional uh quicker than than that uh
43:46
I I I'm literally going to tip my hat. It it is it's also interesting the other
43:53
side of it like Phil said coming back to them being transparent about this stuff. I like learning about technical debt
43:59
mostly because it something that's been alive and in production for over 20 years at this point has gone through
44:06
changes and technology has shifted so much in that time period. The way that
44:12
they built database structures and servers in 2003 uh when they were getting ready for the
44:19
release of the game is wildly different than the technology and uh software and
44:25
uh essentially knowledge of this stuff that is available now. Uh can they change like the entirety of how
44:31
what kind of files they even use just to store information? Yeah, there have been there have been a couple big changes about that that
44:37
they've been open about and it's been really cool. One was the transition from Mists to Warlords of Dranor, which took
44:42
so very long because they had to rewrite the database or had to rewrite the underlying engine to handle numbers big
44:48
enough, which was very cool when they went into that kind of uh depth, talked about the things that they had considered and the different systems
44:54
they' talked about before finally just sitting on a full rewrite, which is why we're in Siege of Oramar forever. Um the
44:59
other one was when they were setting up classic to begin with. Um because they had to figure out how to get uh a
45:07
basically a modern codebase to pretend to be classic. Yeah. Um because the underlying database
45:12
structures had changed so heavily that it wasn't just like they could go, you know, like pull the the 1.10 whatever
45:18
code out of, you know, out of uh out of a repository and set it up. It it wouldn't work anymore because the
45:23
databases had changed so heavily underneath. Um I need you to pretend to be drunk computer. Yeah. Well, kind of. But we
45:30
also we also saw this and I and and we I know we talked about it at the time, but like Warcraft 3 Reforged uh wound up having
45:37
to go through something similar, which is why the whole Battle.net stuff got torn down and rebut back up the way it did. Uh trying to because they were
45:43
trying to modernize the code. And we saw how well that worked there. But then also Diablo II had to do very similar
45:50
stuff as well. Well, that one that one they actually forgot how they had set up a login system so that only everything
45:57
was trying to go through a tiny little portal. But uh the talk of technical debt is always interesting. Sorry. Please let us
46:04
move forward. We do have to move on. And before we do move on, I have to make sure that I turn to Liz. And once again, could you please
46:11
do the site news? Am I talking about Hearthstone? Is that what we're talking about? You'll do Hearthstone after. just do the
46:16
site news so we don't, you know, have to worry about going to make sure I talk about two significant things in a row.
46:22
Okay. Thank you, Matt. Uh, I want to say a big thank you to our supporters, all
46:28
of you out there listening, but particularly our supporters on Patreon. I want to send out a big thank you to
46:33
Mario who pledged this week at $5 and um, Eman, I apologize if I'm
46:40
mispronouncing your name, who upgraded their pledge to $10. You guys are what
46:45
keeps the site running, our biggest fans. So, thank you both so much. If you
46:52
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46:58
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47:05
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47:18
in case you only listen to the podcast and don't realize we also have a website. Well, we also have a website. Um, our support on Patreon is a little
47:25
low. So, if you can pledge, that really helps. If you can't pledge, I completely
47:31
understand. Times are yay. You know, it's tough out there. I get it. You help
47:36
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47:43
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47:48
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48:19
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48:25
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48:30
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48:37
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48:44
Tell us what show it's for and tell us how to pronounce your name. Uh, you can also contact us on Discord with your
48:51
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48:57
which we look to first as a special thank you. So, thank you so much to everyone who's listening. Special thank
49:04
you to Mario and Eman who pledged this past week. I appreciate you. Thanks so
49:10
much everybody. Thank you Liz. And now I talk a little bit to give you a chance to maybe get a sip of water or something cuz I know
49:16
that that breathe for a minute. And then I'm going to say okay now someone talk about the echoes of the
49:22
infinite mini set for Hearthstone. And then I look again at Liz because she was the one who's going to do it. So I'm
49:28
sorry Liz. I I I would have thought if I thought more about it, maybe I I wouldn't have changed anything. Come on,
49:33
we know me. Uh anyway, go tell us more about this because it actually looks really cool from what I'm looking at
49:39
about it. Uh so the Echoes of the Mini Infinite mini set is now live in Hearthstone. It
49:46
is, if you aren't familiar, Hearthstone mini sets are a collection of cards that it's just you pay for it and you get
49:54
these specific cards, which is it's a little revolutionary, but uh I think
50:01
it's a great way to collect specific cards. You know exactly what you're getting. That is fantastic. and it
50:07
continues the theming that we've had in the um in this expansion which is all
50:16
tiny wimy dragons and in so doing it is
50:21
bringing back some old mechanics. So some of the cards in here use dual class
50:26
mechanics which is one we haven't seen for a little while. We also have some imbue cards, some dark gift cards, and
50:35
uh we have a new Morchy le leg legendary, which of course we all love
50:41
Morche, right? Obviously, but with the Mchi legendary trauma from the Morche
50:46
fight, is that the same thing? I hurt me places I can't explain. That's
50:52
light, isn't it? That That's an example of a fight where Blizzard clearly needed to make that fight doable without add-ons. So
51:01
anyway, in Hearthstone, if you play Morchi when she's on the board, your
51:07
rewind effects keep both outcomes. So rewind is the new is the new mechanic in
51:13
this expansion. And if you play a card that could have multiple effects and you
51:18
don't like the effects it uh it hit, you can rewind it and play it again and see
51:25
what happens. But with Mori, you keep both outcomes. So you get you get twice
51:31
the power from those rewind cards. So it's going to be interesting to see how this fits into the meta. Are you
51:38
actually going to see more chi index? Because you know sometimes effects sound really cool, but they aren't sufficiently reliable. And uh so it's
51:46
just going to be interesting. It's good. They roll out a mini set about halfway through each of their expansions. And it
51:51
uh it's a little shake up of the meta and frank frank frankly with all of the
51:57
RNG going on it's just great to be able to buy the cards that you want you know
52:05
so yes uh and also you can buy this for uh in-game gold not a premium currency
52:12
the gold that you earn by playing the game you can buy the entire mini set for 2,000 gold and not pay any real cash
52:20
money als also a big benefit. All righty. Um, we also have some Diablo
52:25
news uh that that I'm probably going to be the one who ends up talking. So, at least I will be on my own. Liz,
52:31
explain this to me because I've only I know what's happening, but I don't know I don't know what it is exactly.
52:37
Well, two things are happening. One is that they're introducing the tower um which is a new game mode just like uh
52:44
the pit or you know the health, you know, the the infinite horde, the infernal hordes, sorry. um or the the I
52:52
forget what the one you go to uh fight and Ariel is, but it's that's another one. There's just a ton of these things.
52:59
Um, however, the the the tower is different in that it's kind of like it's sort of like a super rift. It it it kind
53:07
of combines elements of previous types of content where you have to go in and you fight a lot of waves and
53:13
everything's timed and you collect a resource to ultimately get more power
53:18
and it it's just it's you're familiar if you know Diablo I's endgame. It's it's like an ultra version of that. But the
53:25
tower also comes with leaderboards. They've they've returned leaderboards. Both of these are in a quote unquote
53:31
beta right now. This is a beta in the live game, which I don't think Diablo I
53:37
has ever done before. I don't think any Diablo game has done that. Uh I don't remember Diablo II telling me, "Oh, this
53:43
is a beta like while I'm existing it in live." But uh yeah, in terms of the way the tower is set up, I've only gotten
53:49
into there once. I died like a chicken uh because I didn't know what I was doing. Uh but overall, it it feels
53:58
survivable to a degree. Like I feel like it's something you could do. It just gets harder and harder as you go. It's
54:03
literally like an infinite ramping and they have basically similar to the pit
54:08
and similar to rifts in D3. There's a tier like it's like a level of the thing
54:14
like you start mine started at 30 and then it can go up and the top tier right now for example uh a lot of people I
54:21
think the the highest tier people are currently on looking at the at the leaderboards is paladins at tier 133. Um
54:29
they are higher than anybody else. Most other people are like at 120. Um or like
54:35
right now I'm looking at the druids who are 123. The uh rogues 125.
54:41
Sorcerers uh 120. Don't have can't find spirit born yet. I'm sure it's in here, but the necromancers unfortunately are
54:48
the lowest at 119. And they have some they have some challenges. Yeah, barbarians are at 125. So it's
54:56
it's you know it's Spearorn 120. So yeah, it's pretty much paladins are the
55:01
lead right now. That's not surprising. Uh certain paladin builds are very strong. Uh I've I've mentioned this
55:07
before. Even I a complete, you know, giant monkey can't can actually play a paladin successfully. Um in terms of why
55:15
it's a beta test form, uh I do not know the answer to that question. I just know
55:21
that it is. Um, I do also got to say though in terms of the tower itself, uh,
55:27
it is one of those situations where it it is very quick to to play it like it
55:33
it you get thrown in almost immediately. As soon as you queue, you pick the the tier you want, you get thrown right in,
55:39
and it's just go go go from there. Uh, whether or not you do it, I don't there's groups um, four, three, two, and
55:46
then there's you can go solo. Um, so you can you can basically go in with a group
55:52
of four. Four, the group of four is the highest of groups that do it that they have the highest current tier that they
55:57
can run. Um, not it's just the highest someone's gotten to. There's there's no limit on the on the level. It's just
56:03
that's as high as people have gotten. Uh, it it's in a lot of ways it's not tremendously different, but it is unique
56:11
in terms of its endless scalability. Like it is designed to just keep going until you die. Like there's there's no
56:18
real win condition. Exactly. Um and which is so far it's fun. Like I said, I I got in, got killed like a chicken, and
56:24
then we had to do a podcast, so I couldn't really talk much more. I couldn't go play it more, unfortunately.
56:29
Uh cuz I'm sitting here right next to the thing right now waiting for us to be done podcasting, so I can play it. Um
56:35
but yeah, uh I I enjoy the concept if nothing else. I got that's it. You know,
56:40
it's like right now you can see it here. You can select the tier. um if you're watching us play it live. If you're not,
56:46
you have no idea what I'm talking about. But yeah, it basically has very similar difficulty levels to just doing the pit.
56:52
Uh which again, you just it lets you do up to like five levels, five tier levels
56:58
above the last one you completed successfully. So, for example, if you complete the tower on tier 30, you will
57:06
then be allowed to do tier 35. Uh so you could theoretically just leaprog up five
57:11
by five over and over again. You don't have to do each tier level individually. You you get five
57:17
five higher than the last one you successfully. So that's you could if you found yourself unable to complete the
57:23
level five up, you could do four or three until you hit one that you can do. Do it a bunch and then try jumping
57:30
again. But that's that's basically how it works. It is again otherwise pretty
57:35
much just um kind of like the horri the what are they like I think they were called whailing whailing nightmares from
57:42
D3. They're not too dissimilar from that. So that's basically it as far as I
57:47
can tell. I just find this idea of them beta testing during the live game to be really weird. Go ahead, Liz, as you just
57:54
and and also, yeah, I mean, leaderboards are kind of something Blizzard has talked about since the launch of Diablo I and that I believe a lot of players
58:01
have wanted and we're we're two years later, two and a half maybe, and it's
58:07
like we're we're finally getting these launched and they're launching in beta. I mean, I guess I guess this is kind of
58:13
a safety thing. You're saying, okay, you need Diablo doesn't do big beta tests or big
58:20
PTRs. it just it never has. So, this is a way to get a widespread test going. I
58:26
can I it's odd, but I can kind of understand it. They can get a widespread test and they can figure out if there are any issues or bugs and address them
58:34
before saying, "Okay, it's good. This is definitely totally live and real." Yeah, I think there's definitely a a chance
58:40
that this could end up getting changed pretty significantly um with future content patches just because uh it it's
58:48
it still doesn't quite I mean the leaderboard itself is fine. I mean you look at it right now I'm I mean when I'm
58:53
looking at it right now there's a bunch of people listed you you you know who the people are in it. Um and it goes it
59:01
breaks down by class and then it breaks down by how many people you go in with. Like if you're a solo player, they break
59:06
them down by class, but like obviously groups, they don't break them down by class. Yeah, it's it's it's perfectly
59:12
functional. I just feel like there's probably some more iteration they could do on it. Um maybe to let people look at
59:17
the actual specs people are running. Uh I don't know when if they'll ever do that because that's a lot of
59:22
information. But yeah, this this is quite playable. Uh it it works pretty well. Uh I you can get right into the
59:29
tower. It doesn't take a lot to do the leaderboard. That's That's not a very ringing endorsement, Matt.
59:35
It's playable for Diablo. Uh new new feature in Diablo
59:40
that they literally just introduced. I like saying saying it's pretty playable. Uh feels like a praise to me.
59:48
I was going to say when it first came out pretty high praise. Yeah. Remember the ultra rights when
59:54
Diablo 3 when it first came out? That that thing wasn't wasn't good. This is much more it feels like they might have
1:00:01
managed some expectations. But yeah, no, I I I actually really like the tower so far. Like I said, I it just didn't last
1:00:07
for it. Uh quite frankly, I my paladin build is like a guess. It's like I
1:00:12
really am not good at my paladin in any way, shape, or form. Whereas my my
1:00:18
barbarian build is essentially I won't die unless I really mess this up a lot.
1:00:23
Like if I leave my computer for a little bit, my character might die. But otherwise, the biggest problem I have is
1:00:28
just lack of sustained damage output, but getting killed is almost impossible. I got up to Torment 2 in like a week. Uh
1:00:36
just just smashing my face through it. So tower feels like it's cool. Uh it
1:00:41
feels like it's very dedicated to letting you play around with your play style, like cuz cuz I got I didn't get
1:00:48
very far in my paladin, but I felt like I could have if I made a few changes. So yeah, we'll see. I I definitely am glad
1:00:54
they finally put the leaderboards in. People have been wanting them forever. Uh, as Liz pointed out, it's very much
1:01:00
because it was a that was a Diablo II thing, right? Yeah, exactly. And by adding it to a
1:01:05
kind of system that feels very Diablo IIIish, it sort of kind of I don't know how to put this. It's like it it really
1:01:12
exemplifies Diablo I's tendency to want to be both things at once. It it wants to try to hit as much as it can
1:01:19
possible. It's not. No, it's absolutely not. Um, but I mean still, uh, yeah, I I I would
1:01:26
really like to get to play it and like test take it apart more and see what I can get done in there. See how far I can
1:01:33
get. I don't think I'm going to be pushing the board up to like 125 anytime soon. Uh, if I get to 60, I'm going to
1:01:39
feel like I've accomplished something real. U, but I, you, like I said, I'm up to level 30 uh, tier, so we'll see what
1:01:46
happens. That's basically all I have to say about that, though. If anyone else has anything to say about it, cool. Otherwise, we can move on to Blisscon
1:01:52
2026. No, I think we're good. So, uh, we're about to get going. I think we're we're
1:01:58
pretty low on time. So, let's really quickly I want everyone to like talk a little bit about Blizzcon 2026, but we
1:02:05
have one rumor to really mention first in that we're hearing something about Starcraft. Well, I the rumors are going
1:02:11
about Starcraft and the thing is Blizzcon is in September, which is a
1:02:17
shift from their recent trend of doing November BlizzCons,
1:02:22
but September is a really odd time for BlizzCon. It's like right after um Gamescom.
1:02:28
Uh that's true. Gamescom is in August. Yeah. So, it's like two weeks after Gamescom they're going to have a
1:02:34
BlizzCon. Uh yeah, but it's also it's also an odd time for just for an announcement
1:02:41
schedule because based on Warcraft has been really good about doing patches
1:02:47
every two months, which would mean in September we're going to be uh patch
1:02:52
12.1 is either going to be out or about to come out or just out. We're going to
1:02:58
be right on that cusp and that's going to be What do you talk about? It's early to talk about patch 12.2 2. Maybe
1:03:06
maybe you talk about 12.2. Maybe 12.15
1:03:11
sounds like a pretty small announcement for a BlizzCon. Uh and in Diablo I
1:03:18
expansion launches in late April. We will probably be around time where we're
1:03:23
finishing a season, starting a new season. Yeah. But it's that's al that's also not
1:03:29
a big announcement and it's also something that's probably already going to be started. We're going to be in the next
1:03:35
season by the time Blizzcon arrives. It's going to be weird if the first BlizzCon in a few years is going to
1:03:40
basically be all the stuff we just released this year. I mean that that would be kind of
1:03:46
odd. It feels they've done it before, but yeah, it's just to come back and not
1:03:52
have much to talk about would be very odd. And I think that is part of what's fueling speculation about, okay, what is
1:03:59
Blizzard holding a Blizzcon to talk about? This is a big promo cost for them. This is a big advertising thing
1:04:05
for them. What are they going to talk about here? And Heroes of the Storm, obviously.
1:04:10
Yeah, I was just going to say Heroes. I actually I actually do think Heroes of the Storm is a likely.
1:04:18
Well, they're going to have it at the the con. They're going to have people playing it. I I see.
1:04:24
They have some Heroes esports. Uh, so I would not at all be surprised to see Heroes revamped here. Maybe we get a
1:04:31
Heroes 3.0. That would be really cool. Heroes has been getting a ton of updates in the last year and there's still a ton
1:04:38
of momentum behind it. I think maybe Microsoft recognizes the value of this
1:04:44
game maybe more than Blizzard did there at the end. I I maintain with the
1:04:50
literal crossgenerational success that League of Legends is having right now, uh, with it still being them starting a
1:04:58
brand new season right now, uh, with it still being one of the most played, if not the most played MOA in the world,
1:05:04
having all sorts of crossromotional uh, items and things that Microsoft is
1:05:11
absolutely paying attention to that. Uh, the League of Legends card game as an example, and I I bring this up,
1:05:16
Riftbound is so wildly popular that, you know, they can't keep it in stock. And
1:05:22
could you imagine what would happen if Blizzard earnestly put effort into any
1:05:28
of their IPs back into the physical space again? Like they could there I
1:05:34
think Microsoft would look at it and see that they're just sitting on potential money, right? If nothing else.
1:05:39
I don't disagree. And one of the other the thing is Starcraft.
1:05:45
Yeah, I was going to talk about Starcraft. I just think Starcraft is a brand that Blizzard that Microsoft recognizes its
1:05:52
value. It's used Starcraft promo art in everything when it's talking about Blizzard. So, it does feel like this is
1:05:58
a likely announcement and there are there are rumors swirling. Matt, well, Joe, there there's several
1:06:04
I don't know. Yeah, there's there's several rumors stirring, which is interesting because obviously everybody's been talking about for a
1:06:10
while now the idea of a Starcraft 3. Um, the good and bad of that is that RTS
1:06:18
games are really they take a long time to develop. Uh, and like when you have stuff like Stormgate that's releasing
1:06:24
from or released I think from frost giant games, it's free to play right now. Um, made from former developers
1:06:31
that worked on uh Starcraft. um receiving
1:06:36
mostly negative views uh and mixed reviews at best cuz it it needs to be,
1:06:41
you know, polished and and whatnot. Uh or that maybe it's the market saying that it doesn't want uh an RTS right
1:06:48
now. Uh Microsoft's probably looking at that and Blizzard's probably looking at that and seeing if if there is a
1:06:54
viability for it potentially compared to like you have to look at your competitors, right? You have to see if
1:06:59
there like Frost Studio Frost Studios took a leap. Is it successful for them?
1:07:05
Is it working out for them? Is it why isn't it working for them? If it's not working for them, what are the what are
1:07:11
the complaints? Is that something we can do better and cash in? Uh one of the other rumors is that they're talking
1:07:17
about uh potentially resurrecting the first person shooter genre. Uh because
1:07:23
again, there was supposed to be the ghost game which was dropped way way way way long ago. Mhm.
1:07:28
It was Aries that they were working on for a while shooter that that eventually became uh
1:07:35
uh Overwatch Titan became Overwatch. Yeah, but Titan Titan was also being
1:07:40
done in par whatever. Starcraft Starcraft Aries is also absolutely it's it's very big on the
1:07:46
creation of specific Overwatch heroes like uh the guy currently known as McCrae. Yeah. Um
1:07:52
not formerly sorry. Not not Yeah. Former League. But the the idea that something new could potentially be
1:07:58
announced with the Starcraft IP is really what the the uh the the root of
1:08:05
all the rumors are. Whether it's a genre adaptation that is uh made for modern sensibilities with the RTS or whether
1:08:11
it's another game set in that that IP universe. Um I think Microsoft understands the value
1:08:18
of it. I think sci-fi is extremely hot still. Uh, and with Blizzard basically
1:08:24
sitting on one of the largest uh IPs in sci-fi
1:08:29
gaming franchise history, it I would be surprised if we don't see something from Starcraft soon. I just don't know what
1:08:35
it's going to be. So, it's going to be an RPG. You know what? It might be. Who knows? They're switching everything around,
1:08:41
guys. I'm just I'm I'm kidding. But at the same time, I'm here for it. If if you're right, I'm
1:08:46
here for it. Yeah. I would love to see them them go to different genres with everything they do. Um, I would love to see a 4X game,
1:08:54
possibly a Diablo 4X game. That'd be wild. You know, you explore the whole of Sanctuary, you build empires, you fight
1:09:01
demons. You know, I could see that being cool. Give me civilization, but Starcraft or Warcraft, I'll be happy.
1:09:06
Yeah, exactly. Uh, but I think at this point, guys, we are going to have to wrap this up. Um, thank you to Liz, Joe,
1:09:14
and of course, Phil for being here with us so that we actually had a podcast and not just me complaining about my foot
1:09:20
for an hour. I don't think anybody would listen to that. Well, you're welcome. Yeah, thank you. Thank you for saying
1:09:25
that because it it gave me a beat there. Um, this has been the Blizzard Watch podcast. Thank you guys so much for
1:09:31
being here with us and we will be back next week. [Music]
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