Pig & Whistle Tales - A World of Warcraft Podcast

Azeroth's Tavern Talk: WoW Updates and Insights

• Gabriel • Season 5 • Episode 6

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We tackle the latest developments in World of Warcraft, from the Mists of Pandaria Classic beta to upcoming retail game features like the Lorewalking system and combat assistance features.

• Weekly events include Shirai and Gobfather world bosses plus Battlegrounds bonus event and Comp Stomp brawl for maximum honor
• Mists of Pandaria Classic beta enters second week with level 90 unlocked, player farms, and Black Market Auction House
• Fondly remembering MoP's zones, music, raids, and class features like Symbiosis and Void Shift
• Patch 11.1.7 "Legacy of Arathor" will include a new Arathi Highlands faction campaign with unique rewards
• Lorewalker Cho introduces Lorewalking system with three storylines exploring Zalatath, Arthas, and the Ethereals
• New player-friendly features include Combat Assistant and Single Button Assistant to help with ability rotations
• Overcharged Delves adding affixes, rare enemies, and new rewards to six delve locations

Thank you all very much for listening. Do check out all of the socials down below. Constant stuff happening over there, as well as the Etsy shop with multiple things going up there each and every day.

Hope you all enjoy and hope you relate to any of these stories. And I will speak to you all in the next episode!

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Speaker 1:

The Thank you, hello and welcome to the Pig and Whistle Tales from Azeroth. As always here at the Pig and Whistle in Stormwind, I go for a variety of subjects with regards to World of Warcraft. If you've got a bottle or a pint, sit back and enjoy this episode. We're going to be looking at a multitude of things With regards to World of Warcraft, the copper bottle or a pint sit back and enjoy this episode. We're going to be looking at a multitude of things. We're going to be looking at mop. We're going to be looking at what is it? 11.5.7? No, 11.7.0, I think that patch. We're going to be looking at phase four. We're going to be looking at an interview that has recently happened with um people such as ian has a costas and stuff like that, so people on the blizzard team and essentially go over what they have said. So we'll start off with the weekly news, as always um shirai.

Speaker 1:

Um is your world boss for the week, as well as the gob father. They can be located within the undermine and arathi. These are world bosses where you can get pieces of gear. You might get unlucky and just get some gold, but essentially they're useful to do each and every week. Battlegrounds is your bonus event for the week. This means that you get more honor for completing battlegrounds, and you can pair this up with your brawl for the week, which is comp stomp. This means that you get more honor for completing battlegrounds, and you can pair this up with your brawl for the week, which is comp stomp. This means that you can get a shit ton of honor, because comp stomp is basically you're going against AI in a wrathy basin and you just absolutely like destroy them. Yeah, it's about a five minute game. You get loads of honor for it, and with the battleground bonus event, you get even more. So it's absolutely amazing, definitely worth it and definitely worth getting the honor this week, because you know, bloodstones do cost quite a fair amount of gold at the moment. So if you can earn any during your current time period, it's good to do so.

Speaker 1:

Now, what we're going to do is start off with mr pandaria. Mr pandaria came out um near 13 years ago I think it was 2012 that it came out and we are coming back around to it with mr pandaria classic, and recently the beta has gone out to two players. I myself have been very lucky I received one yesterday as of when this episode came out and this means that I got access to this Pandaria beta, allowing me to level in this seeing the monks, seeing boomkins, seeing how it all plays out. And what they have just released is essentially the next stage of the uh like beta test. So with this second week of beta, uh, they officially enter the legendary like. It's time to officially like enter, uh, pandaria. Okay, so our test focus this week will be on the pandaren level experience, with level 90 now unlocked.

Speaker 1:

So this includes zones such as the jade forest valley of the four winds, carousel, carousel wilds couldn't lie summit, the veiled stair town, long state steps and the dread waste all normal and heroic. Missopandaria dungeons are available. Very good player farms now that's something that I absolutely love. Black market auction house this is the first time that the black market auction house made its way into world of warcraft, and you might be thinking as well what the hell are player farms? Player farms are something where, uh, they kind of it's a super early iteration of maybe something like a garrison or something that's personal, or even player housing to some extent. Now, player farms. There is a place in valley of the four Winds called Half Hill, and Half Hill is a small little town located slap bang in the middle of the zone. This zone, or this town, offers a small farming area and this farming area is instanced for just you and you can increase your farming, the amount of farming, like space that you have when, by doing daily quests, by increasing your reputation with certain people, and this is a good way to collect materials for, um, like cooking or something like that. It's really good, it's really cool and it's honestly quite a cute little way of earning your materials, like to make your cooking recipes and stuff. I think it's absolutely amazing and very much worth doing. This is a very early iteration of garrisons, which, by the way, we get garrisons in wad, uh, classic, which is kind of crazy. Now, uh, level 85 misopandaria character templates are available. You can also copy your live characters from cataclysm. Okay, this is really good, makes it easier. Uh, please note that the majority features will not be available this week but will be arriving soon.

Speaker 1:

So veil of eternal blossoms is where the capital cities are pet battles, battlegrounds and challenge mode dungeons. Challenge mode dungeons are the very first iteration of mythic plus and they stay into the game, into warlords of draenor. But legion is when it changes to mythic plus challenge mode dungeons. Basically, you go into a dungeon and you have a set timer that you need to complete it by if you and you get ranked based on it so you can get a bronze, silver or gold medal and, depending on what you get, depends on if you can buy something from a vendor, and these uh things that you can buy are very, very much just cosmetics and wall as a drain. Or being one of the biggest sort of um regrets that I don't have in doing these challenge dungeons, because it has an item called Cloudsong Glaive and this Cloudsong Glaive is one of the best items that I have ever seen transmog wise, it fits my class druid so perfectly and it fits many others. So, you know, a little bit upsetting, but challenge mode dungeons are very, very good. It gives more end game content for people to do essentially, rather than just raids.

Speaker 1:

Now this is all that's happening with mists at the moment, but I do have good memories of mr pandaria. I have very, very fond memories of it and I think that a lot of people will actually enjoy the expansion as a whole. I definitely will. I think that the raids were very solid. I think maybe the start of the expansion the raids were a bit meh, but towards the expansion you have thrown a thunder and siege of Orgrimmar, which are very, very good raids in their own right, even though they're probably very long raids. Yeah, the longer the raid, not great, to be honest, but you know it is what it is. So these are something to look forward to.

Speaker 1:

I definitely think that mr pandaria is underrated, um, by a lot of people and I think that people will actually see it as a very good thing to try out. Okay, I would definitely say it's better than Cataclysm. For sure, I would say it's up there alongside sort of Burning Crusade and a little bit under Wrath, but I would say that it's a very solid expansion, with the likes of Symbiosis coming in, with the likes of Void Shift, with the likes of just so many quality of life things that are happening. Also, monk being introduced means that there's a new tank healer and dps, so it's absolutely amazing to have. Uh, yeah, look, it's a great expansion. The music is amazing in all of these zones. The zones themselves are amazing.

Speaker 1:

I think people will just be a bit like oh, I don't really want to do it again because of the remix and the remix is gonna be a bit. It's gonna be a bit stale for people because they would have been like, oh, I've already leveled through the jade forest in the remix, like several months ago. I don't really want to do it again and I don't know. I feel like they could have done Warlords of Draenor remix or Legion remix first. Yeah, it's not great going back to Pandaria this quickly after the remix because it will be a bit like it will feel slower, obviously. But, honestly, one of the better expansions that I have fond memories of. I really do have fond memories of it and I think that people should definitely give it a try. They really really should.

Speaker 1:

I expect this to be out next month. I genuinely think it will be June, like mid June, that Mists of Pandaria will come out and they have a sort of deadline when it's like I think the deadlines before 31st of July. So I'm pretty sure, with the beta being in its second week, they're going to be testing level 90 stuff, they're going to be testing the raid. Soon, probably they're going to be looking at a June release, in my honest opinion, because Kata or Classic as a whole needs a little bit of an injection of a player base back because it has become very stale and it will always become stale, no matter what expansion you do in classic. Because just the further you get into classic, like expansion wise, the less people will dip off towards the end of the expansion, like the less phases, because there is more end game content to do, like the uh challenge modes, um, for missa pandaria, whereas in cataclysm you have heroics and kind of it really, and nothing else. Same with wrath of the lich king. You don't really have a lot uh to off of, so it's kind of bland in that regard. So yeah, the more and more you get through the expansions, the more it will retain people towards the end of the phase, but the less it will pick up at the start of the classic expansion. So you know there's a little bit of give and take there.

Speaker 1:

Next we're moving on to probably news that I didn't expect, but patch 11.1.7, legacy of Arathor preview. So this is the name of the patch, legacy of Arathor, and there's going to be a few things coming in this. So tier two recolors again a pirate dragon mount and lore walking Now the lore walking is the big one for me. A Pirate Dragon Mount and Lorewall King Now the Lorewall King's the big one for me. Now, in this blue post it says take your advantages further, adventurers, further in the Legacy of Arathor, our next content update, you'll amp up the challenge in overcharged Dells, get a helping hand with a new combat assistant and a single button assistant and more New Arathi highlands campaign.

Speaker 1:

While attentions have been focused on kazalgar, a new storm is brewing in the arathi highlands. Arathi highlands being um on the original content continent. Uh, tensions are rising between the horden alliance, john joined feyren and danath as they attempt to quell the rising tides of hostility between the two factions. In a new multi-quest campaign, you'll get to experience this new two-chapter storyline with branching viewpoints for each faction as you play through. Oh, that's kind of cool. So you get different viewpoints of it. I like that. I like that Players will receive a few rewards for their efforts Alliance, a Stromguard Tabard and for the horde and magard tabard.

Speaker 1:

Uh, shoulder transmog inspired by feyren's own pauldrons. Oh, that's really cool. So the pauldrons that feyren wears is the? She's the chick who doesn't have an arm. Okay, she. She's the one who, uh, has lost her arm and essentially she wields a shield as her arm. It's really sick. Okay, the pauldrons herself that she wears are really cool as well, and they very much will match a sort of warrior or more paladin mog and a deal, but still it's very nice to have. Um, this is the one that I'm really interested in as well, though.

Speaker 1:

Go law walking with law walker cho. Okay, law walker cho is a panda and essentially he keeps records of what's happened within azeroth, which is cool. So players level 10 and above can speak with law walker cho in either stormwind or grima or dawn ago for a renewed questing experience. You'll step back into some iconic lore moments in azeroth with both previous quests and a few new ones. So the current way that you level in uh retail is you go to chromie, you pick an expansion, you level in that expansion till level 70 and then you get ripped out of that expansion and plopped into dawn of goal and kazalgar leveling. It's not great, because if you're halfway through the leveling experience, you don't actually see the end of it. So you don't see the end of the burning crusade, you don't see the end of wrath of the lich king, missa pandaria, cataclysm, warlords of draenor, etc. Etc. Um, but this will change that.

Speaker 1:

There are three available repeatable quest. Change uh chains, sorry. Meet the ethereals, travel to netherstorm to fight demensius. Meet up with alleria and locus walker in legion and head into the Shadowlands to beat the Brokers and gain access to Tazavesh. You'll also meet up with Vinari.

Speaker 1:

So this is a it's going to be a certain. It will take you through these questing journeys and it won't be. Oh, you're going to go to Legion. And then you know why would I go to Legion? Oh, it's to learn about the Ethereals and Locus Walker, because he is an Ethereal, and Demensius, who is a planet killing void god kind of deal. People don't know about this guy. Ok, he leads into Shadowlands where the Brokers and the Ethereals are in Tazavesh and the Ethereals are in Tazavesh and they sell multiple different rarities throughout the galaxy, essentially the cosmos. And then you go, obviously, into speaking with Venari, who's a very good voice actor, very, very good voice, is iconic, and Venari is sort of a different cartel kind of deal and sort of, honestly, an anomaly when it comes to brokers and stuff or the Ethereals Experience Zalatath's storyline.

Speaker 1:

So this one's going to be the important one for people who want to catch up with the current storyline of the War. With it, Learn about the Blade of the black empire in legion. So the blade of the black empire is a blade that shadow priests were allowed to acquire as their legion artifact weapon. This held, or this blade um held a sort of soul, as it were, and this soul is Zalatath and she would speak to you through the blade. Okay, as a shadow priest, you had an entire expansion with Zalatath chilling as your weapon. Basically, see how Zalatath gained her body in battle for Azeroth.

Speaker 1:

So the next expansion and I'm not going to spoil much here because it is a very good storyline Xalataths and go back in time to the Black Empire to experience Xalatath's encounter with the Old Gods. Now that one's interesting. I think that's new and I would love to see that, because that is going to be really sick, unless I'm crazy and I've overlooked it in some expansion, but I don't think I have. And then you have the third one Face the Past with Arthas. This one's so good.

Speaker 1:

This is possibly the best storyline WoW has ever done, with Arthas becoming the Lich King and all of that. It's so good. It went from Warcraft into warcraft 2, 3 and then into world of warcraft wrath of the lich king. So it spanned years. This storyline um return to stratholme with a condensed version of the culling of stratholme, which is a dungeon, which is really good because the culling of stratholme is a very important piece of Arthas's history. In the game, feel the stinging cold of the betrayal in the wrath of the Lich King yeah, that's sad and confront old memories as you step into the role of the Lich King as he faces down the heroes of Azeroth.

Speaker 1:

This means that you get to see or you get to play as Arthas and they have done this before. They have allowed you to play as Illidan fighting a group of adventurers on top of the Black Temple raid. They did this for the Demon Hunter or Legion sort of pre-patch or Demon Hunter pre-patch kind of deal and it showed what happened to Arthas or not Arthas, illidan after we defeated Illidan. He didn't die, he just got imprisoned, kind of deal, and it's really, really cool.

Speaker 1:

So these are great additions, just not for the player base leveling as a whole now for, like, older players, but but for newer players who are like well, what the fuck is happening? What in the what am I doing? Why is there a giant sword in this zone? Ok, even though I don't believe that there's a giant sword in the zone that's. That's always a myth. It's not there, well, not until two expansions time. But, yes, this is really good, this is a really promising thing and I think that this is going to be slept on a lot. Um, while law walking, you won't be able to undertake any other quests, but you'll be able to exit anytime you like and return to law Walker show. This is really good.

Speaker 1:

Again, like I said, this is going to be a very underrated thing and, uh, it allows them to tell stories of important characters. So if they wanted to see, let's God, what's a quick one that I could do, garrosh Okay, garrosh, you met him in Nagrand in the Burning Crusade and then he led the war effort into Wrath of the Lich King and then in Cataclysm he didn't really do much, he was just all kind of afk'd trying to do some, you know, green jesus stuff, whilst garrosh took the helm as war chief. And then in missa pandaria, he basically just went kind of crazy and went yeah, no, I'm, I'm gonna make my mark on the world, kind of deal. So you can have all of these different characters that you can pick and just go through their storyline. Basically, you get an in-depth look of their lore, which is really cool, and there's so many characters that you can do this of. You can do this of Anduin, varian, jaina. You have Vol'jin well, not anymore Sylvanas. You have so many characters that you can look into. Um, and I think that these are the three. Maybe the ethereals I'm not too sure about, but zalatath and arthas for sure, zalatath being the relevancy at the moment, arthas being the the most iconic villain in World of Warcraft. Okay, it's, yeah, he is the most iconic at the moment. Zalatath could be up there, but, but we don't know how her story ends yet. Okay, whereas with Arthas we knew how it happened, all of the steps that led him to there and then, eventually, us killing him on top of Icecrown Citadel, back in in wrath of the lich king. So you know, it is what it is.

Speaker 1:

Moving on to overcharged delves, things are about to become even more dangerous in delves. For you and bran, we're introducing a new delve, specific affix to six delves to push you to new feats of heroism or to earn more shiny loot. Look if I can do delves just to get some gold. Fine, um, I'm not even going to try and pronounce this. Peg vows, rest. I'm going to go with skittering breach, the spinal spiral, weave, nightfall, sanctum, fungal, folly, side streets, saloose.

Speaker 1:

You'll engage with new, rare enemies, more traps and unlock traits in a new trait tree specific to overcharged elves. Selecting the right traits can turn the tides of traps by making them more beneficial rather than detriment to your progress. It's kind of cool. It's kind of like Mythic Plus for delves. If you wanted to do harder and harder content continuously, you can always do this with these overcharged delves. Very simple, uh. Additionally, additional new rewards you get a titanic disc belt. Unlock the titanic disc belt at the start of the event and upgrade it for a weekly quest. Great um, new mount, overcharged mech, soup, new gear and more currency. So very, very simple.

Speaker 1:

You also have the last thing that I want to talk about is this new ai thing, not ai ui thing. So they have introduced, or they're going to introduce, essentially new ways to help players. So they have this combat assistant and a single button assistant. The combat assistant is a new feature coming along to the game that highlights the recommended next ability based on your resources and the situation your character is in. This feature is designed to help new players, players who are trying out a new specialization or those lacking for additional guidance or looking for additional guidance on the abilities they should use, without the need to turn on a third-party app or outside guides. This new feature is configured as an additional option that is part of the base UI, to assist you with a damage rotation, no matter what specialization you're using.

Speaker 1:

Okay, that's very good. I think that this is very good. A lot of people use add-ons to help them with their rotation. Okay, your rotation is essentially I should press this button because it empowers this button, and then I use this button after that so that I can refresh this. And you know this kind of deal. And it does get overwhelming. It does get really, really overwhelming for new players, especially players who play retail, because there is a lot that affects other spells.

Speaker 1:

Ok, so, as a boomkin, I press moonfire and sunfire. Why do I do that? Ok, you do it for the damage. Yeah, sure, but I do it because when I press my inkhan, which is my big damage cooldown, it will you, it will proc a mushroom and this mushroom will be another dot, a damage over time effect on the target. Okay, that's fine, but what does that have to do with anything? Well, I need three dots on the target to increase my damage on the target by six percent. Yeah, hence why I need moonfire and sunfire always up on the target as well, because it, if I don't have them, I don't get that six percent damage increase. So I know this because I've played it a lot.

Speaker 1:

But if people are picking up Bumi, they wouldn't understand that or they wouldn't think about it as much. Yeah, they would all know they would have to really think about it and and this would compromise their gameplay in other ways, like they won't be doing as much um actions per minute or you know, they won't be using their astral power as much. You know these kind of things. So this is going to help new players. I think that it's amazing. Uh.

Speaker 1:

In addition to this, they are adding a single button assistant and this is essentially uh can be used to cast the next recommended ability in a sequence. This assistant is designed to have a small additional global cooldown added between abilities. That is still useful for learning new skills, aiding those who are looking for additional help or for those who want to experience the story or game on a more casual basis. It will also detect when an area of effect, aoe, spell or multi-target ability should be used. This is really good, and I think that this is good for those who are more casual, because it will just say, yep, do this next, do this next, do this next. And with the addition of the extra global cooldown, uh, so I think it's like 0.2 seconds. This means that it won't be beneficial to those playing at the highest level. Ok, because if you use this five times in a row, that's one second. Yeah, that's an extra one second where you haven't pressed anything, whereas someone else might have already like, got an extra spell in that one second because it is the length of a global cooldown. So you will lose out at higher ends of gameplay by using this. But the more casual, friendly people or the people who do like while casually or aren't as experienced, will get more use out of this. Okay, because it won't affect them, as they aren't needing to be like so quick with their actions per minute kind of deal, which is good. Both of these options should aid in lowering the barrier of entry for new players or players looking to explore new characters in a way that's meaningful to them. As with a new cooldown manager added in 11.1.5 content, it will continue to evolve over time. Yeah, I think this is really good. I think it's really really good and definitely needed for newer players. It allows to help them just understand the game more, because they're trying to figure out.

Speaker 1:

Okay, I'm a level one. Yeah, I have one ability, that's fine. I've got all of this like rage that I'm building up, but what do I spend? Ok, I've hit level two. Now I can use the rage to use this ability kind of deal. Ok, that's fine. But now I'm level 10 and I have 10 abilities. How do I use them? In what order? And I've also got to figure out where I'm going now to level, because I don't know what I'm doing. I've just been dropped off in a giant city.

Speaker 1:

Okay, there's 20 different quests on the map. Do I pick up all of them? Do I pick up none? Do I pick up only this one? You know there's so much to do in WoW. When you're a new player, you get overwhelmed. This will help them. Just be like okay, I don't need to worry about my abilities, this is what it's going to tell me what to press. I can just see where to go for quests.

Speaker 1:

Okay, you know, and this is amazing, although I do want to say the cooldown manager.

Speaker 1:

Please change it so that you can add and subtract what cooldowns you actually want on the cooldown manager.

Speaker 1:

It'd be really, really useful. And yeah, I think that's a little bit of an oversight that you didn't do that in the first place, but still, I think that the cooldown manager is very good for newer players really good. Yeah, I I don't know. Let me know what you think about the like single button assistant and the combat assistant, because I think that it's very good for newer players. I think these sort of things are needed in the game and, to be honest, I love the ideas that they're doing a patch that's more newer, player friendly based. I think that it's amazing and it should be done a lot more often, in my honest opinion. But that is where I will end it for this episode. Thank you all very much for listening. Do check out all of the socials down below. Constant stuff happening over there, as well as the Etsy shop Multiple things going up there each and every day. But thank you all very much once again and go, valor friend, goodbye all. Thank you.