Embark on an adventure to the virtual lands of Azeroth with us at the Pig and Whistle Inn, where the arcane winds of change are bringing fresh updates to challenge even the most seasoned World of Warcraft adventurers. As we meander through the latest Season of Discovery, you'll grasp the pivotal shifts in gameplay, be it mastering the strategies to conquer the weekly world bosses or fine-tuning your approach to the updated Mythic+ affixes. Listen closely for our tactical insights that could be the difference between victory and defeat in the Warsong Scramble, and unravel the secrets behind the new class runes that promise to redefine your combat style.
Gear up for an immersive rundown of the Temple of Atal'Hakar, where eight formidable bosses await with treasures tailored just for your character's needs. Whether you're a druid longing for a class-specific overhaul or a rogue itching to close the gap on your enemies, there's something in the Season of Discovery to pique your curiosity and challenge your skills. Meanwhile, the Cataclysm Beta testing beckons with its untamed realms and class revamps that hint at a more streamlined future for Azeroth's heroes. As we dissect the details from our firsthand experiences in the beta, we'll illuminate the path ahead, speculating on what the unfolding Cataclysm will mean for your journey through World of Warcraft's ever-expanding universe.
Hope you all enjoy and hope you relate to any of these stories. And I will speak to you all in the next episode!
The do do. Hello and welcome to the Pig and Whistle Tales from Azeroth. As always here at the Pig and Whistle Inn in Stilwind, I go through a variety of subjects with regards to World of Warcraft. A grub, a bottle or a pint sit back and enjoy this episode. We'll be going over a multitude of things. We'll be looking at Cataclysm Beta, we'll be looking at Season 3 of Season of Discovery and we'll maybe finish up on some forums, depending on the time limit, and stuff like that. So we're covering quite a variety in this episode. But we'll be looking over essentially what's on the beta, what is in Season 3 of Discovery to look forward to, and, yeah, we'll go from there.
Speaker 1:
But, as always, we have the weekly news. We have Liskinos, zarkali, elders and Aerostar as your weekly world bosses for the week. They are located in Thaldrassus, zarkilac Caverns and Emerald Dream. For Aerostar, dragonflight Dungeons and Pet Battles are your bonus events for the week. Pet Battles you get more experience on your Pet Battles so it is quicker to level them, and Dragonflight Dungeon as your bonus event means that you get a extra piece of gear at the end of a dungeon. So if you're looking to gear up, doing some mythics or anything like that. Now is the time to do so, as you get more bang for your buck, so to speak.
Speaker 1:
Warsong scramble is your brawl for the week. This is essentially it's Warsong Gulch, but there are three flags. These flags can all be returned to your base at any given time and you need 10 flags captured in order to win the game mode. It's very simple, it's good fun, it's chaotic and it's worth playing. Afflicted, bolstering and Tyrannical are your Mythic Fixes for the week. Afflicted, you simply want to. Is this the one that you have to CC? I think it is, if I'm not mistaken. You have to CC these adds that get spawned Blind Clone Fear, anything like that. Just make sure they are CC'd.
Speaker 1:
Bolstering when a mob mob dies, essentially it lets out a roar and this roar increases the damage and health of any nearby allies to the mob. So you want to kill everything at the exact same time, or don't pull too many mobs. And tyrannical the non or the boss enemies have increased health and damage, so make sure you bring a talent build that can accommodate for that. So we'll start off with season of discovery. Um, because cataclysm is the one that I want to get into second mainly now with season of discovery uh, we didn't really get much of a notice. That comes out on April 4th, so next reset, essentially and this was announced a few days ago, if that. Yeah, I think about two to three days ago as of this episode coming out and it brings a lot with it, essentially. So the new things that they are going to be adding is a new level cap, obviously. So you are now going to be leveling to level 50. This will unlock a lot of things for people in their talent trees. This means that people can start going into different talent trees. You know that kind of thing. Essentially, it allows for more of a variety of gameplay.
Speaker 1:
New raid, which is a sunken temple raid, and I genuinely thought that this was going to be scarlet monastery. Um, I don't know why I thought it was going to be scarlet monastery. I just did, I really did. Um, this is a 20 player version, though, of the raid, because they wanted to experiment with, obviously, the 10 player raids and earlier levels a lot. It's a lot easier to get 10 people for a raid than it is 20, but now the guilds will have to accommodate for 20 man versions of the raids essentially, and this is what's going to be happening going forward. Um, yeah, there's not going to be much change on the 20 player rosters going forward. I think this is what they want to stick with and it's not a bad show. It's certainly better than the 40 man raid. But you know it's 20 player versions are a bit rough, in my opinion, sometimes updated loot, so obviously Sunken Temple gets new uh, epic loot, bosses etc. And it's just a completely different loot table uh as to what it usually is in, whether it be classic or retail, new class runes so you can engrave your helm and braces.
Speaker 1:
Now, uh, going up to level 50, they didn't give much on uh runes. They want us to discover them. There is no ptr for this phase of season of discovery as well. That way, people can experience a lot of the things like firsthand and stuff. Now, obviously, I don't know all the runes and I don't have time to go through all of them, but it's going to be stuff like for hunters. They are getting rapid fire, which is a very prominent spell in retail, and you get stuff that can reduce the cooldown of rapid fire and stuff like that. So these are the sort of runes that we will be looking at and yeah, I think that it's very good at the moment in terms of what they're doing with the rune system PvP updates.
Speaker 1:
So the Blood Moon event in Stranglethorn will now give an extra currency and, with that, some extra prizes for higher level players. You do not get the currency if you kill lower level players. I'm not sure what level range that is. Maybe they have to be like yellow level, um. What I mean by that is if you're a level 40, like 8, and you kill anything between a level 50 and level 46, um, you get it. Or you have to be max level, which is 50, and you only get it for killing players level 48 and above. Um, that's the more realistic option in my honest opinion, but who knows, who knows? Um.
Speaker 1:
World event updates. You have nightmare incursions. These nightmare incursions happen around the portals of the world. Uh, dragon world bosses. The dragon world bosses are like isondra and stuff like that. Uh, so in dark shore no, not dark shore duskwood in oh, where is it? It's top right ashenvale, that's the one you have hinterlands, and then you have one more in the, in feralas. So these are where these go, are going to occur. I believe they occur just around the portals, if I'm not mistaken, although there are some high level elites there. Hmm, maybe it's the zones, maybe it's just zone wide again. I could just be making like stuff up for that um. But yeah, essentially it's the new pvp event and we don't know anything about the rewards, we don't know anything like that, but we'll just see how it plays out.
Speaker 1:
The full profession system. So essentially you can get to max level professions now and this allows you to obviously have new uh profession items and quests. They are putting more and more into the game, like they have previous um patches. This means that you can get more use out of these uh different professions and more benefits from them. And there is the biggest change, in my honest opinion, and that is system updates dual spec there is a dwarf that allows you to dual spec in season of discovery. This is an amazing change and one of the best ones that they've added so far, because it allows a lot of people in raids to be a lot more flexible. If someone leaves, has an emergency and your druid, who's a wrestler druid, is like, don't worry, I'll switch into bear and it'll be a lot easier. You know, we can feel that, um, and then when your dps goes heal, you know you've lost only a dps nothing too crazy like a tank or a um healer. So dual spec being in the being in season discovery is amazing. That is honestly quality to see now going up to level 50.
Speaker 1:
This does obviously unlock a couple new zones where you can quest in, like the Plaguelands, tanaris, as well as dungeons. I know people have already been doing Alderman, but you can do it actually at the level that it's meant to be played at, as well as Zulfurak A quick note from Blizzard as well, by the way A quick note from Blizzard as well, by the way Marks of Honor, bone Necklaces and Waste Wonder Water Pouches won't be leveling you. So what does that mean? Essentially, what these quests do is they are turning quests and these turning quests are repeatable and they give you a little bit of XP. Now, obviously, blizzard know this and they've essentially said that you can do the quest once, but after that it won't give you XP, because what people did was buy all of the troll necklaces that they could off the auction house and essentially just spam turn in this quest and it got them a level Essentially like within five minutes, however long it took them to hand in all of their like troll necklaces, um, which shouldn't be the case at all, and I'm glad that they have taken that out of the game or not out of the game, but they've limited it to just the one turn in because otherwise it would making it would make leveling in this sort of phase very, very trivial.
Speaker 1:
Everyone would just buy the troll necklaces and the pouches and be like, all right, cool, that's me done. You know it would literally take probably less than like several hours to ding like to level 50 if they allowed this, because everyone would just be farming the water pouches and the way that you would go about it is just farm them and turn these in and that's your biggest source of like xp income. I'm glad that they've actually, like you know, acknowledged that. Um, you can obviously still do quests before the phase drops and turn them in as the phase drops. That way you get a big uh bulk turning of xp before that.
Speaker 1:
But you know, each to their own, if you don't want to do this, you certainly do not have to. I very much am on the side of I wouldn't do this. There's no point mid max in season of discovery unless you're like really gonna go for it. I think that season of discovery is very much a chilled environment that needs to be looked at and like protected in that sort of way, in my opinion. Now they've also stated that the 100% XP buff will remain for levels one to 39 and players at level 40 to 49 will get a different version of it, which is a 50% xp buff, which is really really good, and this is because it will adjust the experience automatically to adjust the leveling curve, helping you to prevent, like, running out of quests and stuff. So what I get from this what they've said is essentially you start off with 50% increased XP at level 40, and then at level 41, you get 45%, 42%, 40%, 43%, 35% you know that kind of deal until you get to level 49, and then finally, your XP stops at level 50. I think this is a clever way to do it, to be honest with you, because some people like the element of levelling through out Cataclysm no, not cataclysm throughout um classic, and I think that they, towards the later stages of the game, enjoy it a lot more because you obviously have a lot more spells to play around with and you know that sort of deal. So you kind of keep that grind there. But at the same time you've taken it away from the earlier levels, which means that people can be a bit more alt friendly with it, which is really, really good.
Speaker 1:
Now, to go over some of the temple of atal hakar, sunken temple raid, you have, excuse me, eight bosses in total, the final one being, uh, iranicus, I believe. You have obviously different loots, so there's certain trinkets that allow you to, you know, just have some fun where you can sacrifice someone, literally sacrifice someone, um, you can place a hex upon yourself. There's obviously different swords, different like a piece of armor, so chest piece head, all of that stuff. Certain items have been re-itemized for the classes that they were meant to sort of help out in the past, so you obviously have a two-handed mace in there that now increases your attack power in bear form, cat form and stuff For druids. The druids really do need the uh, feral druids definitely needed the help.
Speaker 1:
We also have pvp sets coming to season of discovery. So with pvp in the previous patches it's very much if you've done the raiding content you're at such a good advantage. But there isn't any pvp gear, um, at them levels which was level 25 and level 40. So they've added a new pvp set into the game for the next phase and what this is. It's called, so it's kind of the same, but knight, lieutenant and some things can be called blood guard and stuff like that. Um, these are all different sets. They kind of work as the level or rank 9, 10 or 8, 9, 10 uh pvp sets from the old ranking system, um, and essentially they have just more stats associated with pvp and bonuses associated with uh pvp abilities, whether it be damage increase, reduce, blink, cooldown, increase, stamina, you know all of that sort of uh bits and bobs that you can have.
Speaker 1:
Now, the blood moon update, you can get stuff for at level 50, which is like a crossbow that I think heals you. Yeah, your ranged attacks unleash five health from targets. You actually get a heal as a hunter. Um, technically you have you have something called a corrupted smash bringer, which is just a two-handed mace that can disorientate targets. You have a throne spear headhunters. Barbed spear helps the spear at the target in immobilizing them for five seconds, which is crazy to think. Um, this is for rogues. So rogues actually have like a gap closer, which is crazy to think, considering they already have like shadow step and vanish and preparation vanish and blinds you know, kind of crazy, um.
Speaker 1:
But yeah, they've made so many updates with the blood moon, so many updates in season of discovery in general, that it's actually looking very tempting to play. And I can see why people would want to be playing season discovery as their main world of warcraft at the moment, because it is getting a lot of love from the devs and I think what they're doing is amazing. But it will all come down to how they tackle the end game of it. So level 60 is going to be. Obviously they've got a first raid, uh, in mind, which is probably karazhan crypts, um, but the like way that they go about things after the karazhan crypts has been released has yet to be seen and we don't know anything if anything will actually happen to it, um, so it could just die out. That'll be the very sad thing, but I would imagine it's been a decent success, that it would carry on and, you know, do well in the future. But hey, that's all speculation, but let's move on to cataclysm beta now.
Speaker 1:
I myself was checking out the beta, like last night a couple of days ago, whenever I was after. This has been uploaded and essentially you can now copy your characters onto the and essentially, you can test out these cataclysm leveling experiences, the character copy function and templates to get you straight into the end game. At this time, the following features have been added level 80 to 85 zones are unlocked at Bashir, mount Hyjal, deepholm, oldham and Twilight Highlands. Leveling dungeons Level 80 players will begin to gain experience. Your character copy and archaeology is actually available for testing now. The following features are still a work in progress and are unable for now Reforging Transmog Guild System Updates, dungeon Journal, looking for Dungeon and Tol Barad unable for now.
Speaker 1:
Um reforging transmog guild system. Update uh, dungeon journal looking for dungeon and tol barad now, tol barad is obviously end game. Uh, reforging kind of is as well. Transmog that is an end game. I do think that they're making big changes to transmog. I think they're trying to implement the retail transmog into cataclysm classic, so hopefully that'll be able to be tested very soon. But these are very small things that need to be changed. Essentially, in my honest opinion, nothing too crazy is being missed out on yet, as they are testing now the main bulk of the expansion, which is the zones and the questing and everything to do with that. Um, which is amazing. That's absolutely amazing. This only confirms that it's getting closer and closer as close on pre-patch, and it really does need it. It really does. Um.
Speaker 1:
There are some following issues the questing the cinematic doesn't play properly during the eye of the storm, causing players to be stuck for four minutes without being able to interact with the quest giver. Uh, I may or may not have had this bug and you just stand there, nothing spawns, and I simply logged out, log back in and that works for me. But if you've got four minutes to kill the cinematics technically playing and playing in the background, you just can't see it. It's that simple. And the quest be raptor is not completable. Not sure what that quest is. Some cinematics don't play properly. Replay, um requiring players to escape out of them.
Speaker 1:
Okay, class and combat players can still learn some weapon skills which are not in the game anymore, so kind of a bit problematic. Um, resistances aren't calculating properly. That's a numbers thing. That is pretty easy and one of the last things that they will do, most likely through it. The euphoria proc rate when casting Starfire and Wrath is significantly lower than it should be. Good, we get a buff. Boomkins get a buff. I think that's a Boomkin spell, which would be amazing.
Speaker 1:
Druid Mangle, cat and Bear are unlearned on logout. Interesting. Druid Rejuve is doing significantly lower healing than it should. Okay, death Knight, raise Dead doesn't raise a goal. Excuse me that, one's kind of funny. It's like, oh well, that's just a dud spell. Then great, uh, death knight rune tap doesn't, uh, does not activate a rune immediately. Okay, kind of a bit shit.
Speaker 1:
Um, goblin, your rocket barrage doesn't scale with attack power. Is that that's their ratio, isn't it? It does like damage. Oh my God, I forgot that they had like a damaging ratio. I'm not going to lie. Paladin and Warrior block only, block one damage. No, no, no, you heard me right. That's how they wrote it. That's the official post. Block only, block one damage. Okay, I love reading uh, patch notes. It just it seems so funny. And warlock blood pack gives strength instead of stamina. How is that a thing? What the hell? Okay and miscellaneous. Some orc and gnome npcs are displaying untextured pink facial hair and then in brackets, questionable fashion choice. I like that.
Speaker 1:
Um, the the bugs essentially that are in cataclysm beta are minuscule. That they're not that bad at all, and we will be getting a lot more info on when all of this is coming out now, season of discovery. Um obviously was the last thing to come out before cataclysm, pre-patch, and in my honest opinion we're getting catapro patch. Early to mid-May is like the earliest that I think. I think it will be more late May Even so, I think it will be amazing. I cannot wait for Caterpillar and prepatch.
Speaker 1:
The amount of spells. I tried this on the beta last night. I was testing out loads of classes. They really do. I don't want to say gut the classes, but they do tone a lot of things down when it does come to the classes. Now what this means is with Druid I usually have, you know it's tough to tell without my usual like UI add-on. I usually have dominoes but it doesn't work on the beta.
Speaker 1:
But the problems or I have so many, many like buttons that I run out of action bars and like keybinds nearly now in cataclysm they take away quite a few things, quite a few like um spells that you wouldn't usually use. So I think soothe is still in there, although I didn't actually use my entire like spell book, so my entire spell book wasn't on my action bar, but it looks like I've got a lot less spells than what I do in wrath of the lich king. Um, it could just be because the ui is a bit different, because I don't use the base ui. It could be because I didn't put all the spells on my action bar so I can't actually test it fully. But if I look at shamans, I usually have no sort of room for any of my spells or my totems and stuff and it seems like I'm going to have loads of room to actually put totems on my action bar for once. Um, which is crazy to think now it's I, I don't know.
Speaker 1:
A lot of people hate that about cataclysm, that a lot of the spells get gutted. But let's face it. Are you really upset if they take away soothe for a druid that they haven't? But like it's as an example, like it's a spell that is so minuscule minuscule, that's not a word so rarely used that no one really would care if it got taken away. And I think people in cataclysm are very much like, or are scared of, getting stuff taken away from them, like by blizzard. Now, blizzard obviously can revert some of these things and be like oh no, actually you can have this, you can have this in the game and you know, test it out and we'll see how it feels in Cataclysm and stuff. Hopefully they do that and give it a little bit of a difference. But I think what the classic experience is is much this is how the expansion was People who didn't get to experience the expansion.
Speaker 1:
You're more than welcome to play Because, like so many people hadn't played these expansions, so many people hadn't played Classic or TBC or Wrath cataclysm a lot of people have barely even played like retail, like uh expansions, like battle for azeroth I think a lot of people haven't even played that. Now, don't get me wrong, battle for azeroth isn't like a great expansion, but a lot of people might want to test it out and see for themselves, because some of the questing in BFA was actually good Drustvar, polterus, stormsong Valley, zoldazar, boldoon, nazmir all of them zones were very good in terms of their own, like leveling and stuff like that, but a lot of people didn't get to test it out. So I think it's more allowing people to just test out the expansions. Now, mists of Pandaria, which is the one that comes after Cataclysm, is regarded as a very, very, very solid expansion. A lot of people don't like it because they view it as a joke like oh my god, there's pandas and stuff and it's like, yeah, there's Worgen, there's just wolves running on two feet. You know well what's wrong with the pandas. There's people who are like the size of toddlers running around. There's giant cows. There's cows running about like alongside orcs and trolls and stuff. It's a fantasy world. It's crazy. So I think a lot of people are scared about that, that it will become retail, but I think a lot of people, for from now on it will be very much.
Speaker 1:
I never got to experience this expansion and I want to try it. You know, it's one of them things because classic was the one that everyone wanted. Yeah, classic was the expansion that everyone wanted to go back to. They've kept classic like realms for people who want to play them, because classic was the one that was called out for. There wasn't that much interest in tbc. Everyone got to experience black temple, you know, serpent shrine, cavern, etc, etc. But to be able to go through all of the expansions again.
Speaker 1:
Personally, for me, I love it, because I loved some of these expansions. I have great memories about them. But for people who never got to experience them, they get to and they make their own decisions about it. It's a completely different group of people that are looking at this game now and it's people who never grew up on the game and who didn't grow up playing these expansions and they get to experience it and I think that's very good because this can lead them into okay, I didn't like, you know we'll say, mists of Pandaria classic, so I don't like the retail kind of version of WoW, so I'll go back and play Season of discovery or I'll go play on a classic era server and it's one of them things it's meant to kind of segue them into retail or classic era, that kind of thing. Um, in my honest opinion.
Speaker 1:
But it's just good to experience the um expansions again because you might have a false perspective on it. You might be like oh my god, this expansion was so shit. But it might be because it was just not a good time in your life or something that might have an impact on it, and you just might view that time period as like, oh my god, it was all shit, cataclysm was so bad, whereas in in reality it's probably like, okay, it wasn't actually that bad, it was quite decent. Um, you know that sort of stuff. But that is it for this episode. Thank you all very much for listening. As always, do check out all of the socials down below constant stuff happening over there. Thank you all very much for listening and go avala friend, goodbye, I'll see you next time, thank you.