Yeah, do you have your bag of marbles you may just throw it out?
SPEAKER_03No, I still don't know.
SPEAKER_11Welcome to the first episode of the Pull 10 Podcast. Uh, we are going to be talking about Classic Plus for weeks and months to come. Um I would like to introduce you guys to my co-host Jordy and Ren Cognito. Jordi's down here. Ren's over there. Um, they are gonna be joining me on this journey together. And um today we have a very special first guest. Um, and I hope you guys are aware of his series because it's my favorite thing on YouTube right now, uh, G Bay99. Um so we're gonna go around and kind of give a little bit of uh intro for everybody and get everybody a chance to speak. But um very excited to have everybody here. We'll be doing these podcasts every week, so that's going to be uh something that you guys can look forward to in your feed. Everything will get uploaded to all of the socials, Spotify, YouTube, all that stuff. So um welcome. We're very excited to be here and we're partnering with WoWhead. Thankfully, they're giving us a little boost of energy. Um, so Wowhead, thank you so much. Um all right, why don't we start with G Bay and then we'll get into the hosts? Um G Bay, what's up? How are you?
SPEAKER_06I'm doing well. I'm doing well. I'm having a lot of fun. Uh a lot of fun playing Wow, a lot of fun playing all the Warcraft games lately, actually. Uh it's uh it's a world that you just keep diving into and um and yeah, it doesn't it doesn't have an end.
SPEAKER_11Uh yet, yet. Um all right, Jordy, what's up?
SPEAKER_07Oh, hi. I I'm Jordy. I'm uh the browner version of Jordi uh and equally as handsome, and I a am a WoW head writer, uh method writer now too, and I'm playing WoW for 20 years. Started back in TBC pre-patch. Uh like retail, but classics just always been my home.
SPEAKER_11I know his name is Jordi, and I'm Jordi. We're gonna get over it. Okay. We're going to uh we're going to beat this challenge together and enunciate our names. Um, it's gonna be tough. Um but then we have Rennie. What's up?
SPEAKER_02Hi, um, can I can I swear in here?
SPEAKER_11Fuck yeah.
SPEAKER_02What the fuck is upie? It's Rennie with the henny. I actually started um World My World of Warcraft journey back during COVID. Uh it was during classic reboot, and I am um to my detriment, a ret paladin main. So I've been playing in multiple NA speedrun top NA speedrun guilds here and there, but I've kind of slowed down. But that's my wow history.
SPEAKER_11Uh some somehow we have two paladin mains on this podcast. We're we're we're completely fucked. Um but uh we we will we will uh fight on. Okay. Um so we want to get into uh a lot about classic plus, but I think the the beauty of uh this first episode having J Bay as a guest is his journey has been so um profoundly uh uh pure. He's just he's in the he's in the early game. Uh he's got that that like amazing experience that we all had when we were kids. Um and J Bay, do you mind if we play a quick little supercut of you just to kind of get people uh up to speed uh and a little bit of your vibe before we get into um hearing about what you've been up to?
SPEAKER_06Yeah, of course. Go right ahead. Hell yeah, okay, here we go. You know, a funny thing about my experience playing Classic WoW for the first time is I've started to learn I might be more positive about this game than most WoW players are. And I'm only one hour in. This journey hasn't even really begun. Which side note, can I say how much I love how long the flights in this game take? It is so cool that the game gives you these moments of peace where you're forced to wait. Another super cool, awesome system that makes the world feel so realistic. God, okay, stay focused, don't get distracted. God, I love seeing the same players around on these servers. And that's when I saw this game has a day-night cycle. Which, oh my god, I don't know if I can accurately describe how cool this is for a new player. So I'm giddy as I take the report and run straight for the keep, this time heading straight down the hall, ready to meet whoever the ruler of all the land is. That's it. Is that really the end of the story? There's no follow-up quest! That can't actually be the grand finale, can it? I was left on edge again! The game keeps edging me.
SPEAKER_11I'm I I'm sorry, the the game keeps edging me is so accurate. Um uh but yeah, man, welcome. We're excited to talk to you.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, I'm excited to be here. It's it's uh it's funny that, you know, I all these years I feel like I had the complete wrong idea about World of Warcraft. You know, I just through cultural osmosis, I'd always heard over the years that wow, it was the game where you were just told to kill 10 boars over and over and then take some item back and and complete your quests, and that's that's all that you do in the game. And it is maybe just because my expectations were so low that when I started playing it, it has blown me away how how much how much more there is to it than uh than my first my first thoughts.
SPEAKER_11What what was it exactly that uh gave you that impression before you got to play the game?
SPEAKER_06Like um, I mean Yeah, I mean it it it it might be a mixture of all the all the various different ways that WoW has been parodied through through culture, through I mean the South Park episode. Of course, I saw I I've heard all sorts of references and and jokes. And you know, in general, people talk about MMO quests as they talk about WoW quests because WoW was such a cultural institution that that solidified so much of what at least a theme park MMO is is meant to look like that you know, oftentimes when people boil it down to its most basic elements, you know, you you get this, I don't know, misunderstanding of of how much how much more thought and effort and care and I don't know how much more substance there is to it than um than what you might feel from from the jokes that everybody makes about it. Sure.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, well it's funny because like I I I used to play old school RuneScape, that's what I played first back when it was just RuneScape, and my mom thought it caused viruses and stuff like that. So I only play it when she wasn't home. Um and that was back when someone called on the phone and you lost your internet. And I saw the episode of South Park and I was like, this game looks so fucking sick. I want to play this so bad. So I started WoW because of the South Park episode, and I wanted to be the dwarf because Carpent was a dwarf. It made me laugh. So I I started playing, and my my friends and I started playing, and and just me and my brother every Saturday was just like Saturday morning, was we get two hours a while because my mom put a timer on it back when the parent restrictions were a thing, and I just I just fell in love with it. Like I I had like embarrassingly enough when I was a kid, I was like, I had like Lego sets I'd make wild characters with, and like I I just I was just hooked. I I was on MMO Champion reading the next, like, what's the next expansion? What's the next expansion? Like I'm I was just I've been obsessed with it for 20 years, man.
SPEAKER_02I'm not gonna lie, I was a D1 hater originally. Like I thought that the graphics were awful, and I was like, why would I ever play that game when like all these other games exist? But then like after playing it, I feel like the shitty graphics, the classic graphics are part of the charm. Does that make sense?
SPEAKER_07No, you it certainly makes sense.
SPEAKER_02You know, like when you play Gary's mod, and it's like, you know, everything's square and pixelated.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, I mean, uh this is my soapbox. I love low poly games. I I love the comparison. I say low poly games are like an impressionist painting or something, where sure it might not look realistic, but it you can see the the individual brush strokes that that an artist made in creating it. I I just I I'll never be able to get enough at low poly games. I I can always look past graphics for for not being uh not being as impressive as other triple A titles, but I can't understand why why it is a barrier for many others.
SPEAKER_11I think there's like some point, there's some like unique beauty of a low poly game too, because it as long as it gets the point across, it's timeless, right? Like the the the current games are chasing like a graphical fidelity that isn't at some point going to be um a problem, right? Because you're gonna be like, oh, this game doesn't look modern, and like that becomes like a thing. But when with the way that I think WoW is animated and and drawn, like it is it's artistic and um isn't intended to necessarily be true to life, which makes it more uh uh timeless. Um and so I don't know, it's something that I really think that like gives it a staying power that a lot of MMOs like Lord of the Rings Online or even EverQuest don't quite have because of those like less I mean maybe EverQuest isn't isn't the best example, but um you know what I mean.
SPEAKER_07I I I I totally get what you're saying because like there were like like everyone's everyone's on the Unreal Engine now. Every every game like looks the same like nowadays. And I just I'm just so over it. And you get games like like wow, and I I said this too, I said to my friends while back, it's like World of Warcraft and then Rest in Peace New World were like two games that just looked different. And then I would when I look at other MMOs, I'm like if you just share this picture of a generic MMO, I could guess five MMOs that it could be, but you know what World of Warcraft is, it just especially classic, you know what WoW Classic looks like.
SPEAKER_11Absolutely. Um okay, so GB, where does your name come from?
SPEAKER_06Yeah, so my name comes from uh from sports. I'm I'm a huge fan of the Green Bay Packers. I think the first username I ever needed to make was for RuneScape. And um up until then, I I like when I would play um play Halo with friends at someone's house, I would just my real name's Nathaniel. I I would just use Nate as as my handle, but I needed something a little more obscure, a little more unique when uh when creating my first username. And I thought of G Bay just because a big fan of the Green Bay Packers, and G Bay was already taken, so I just added 99 to the end with no real purpose to it, just needed some numbers as as you do. Um, yeah, that's where it comes from.
SPEAKER_07I thought it was like a play on eBay, like you liked you were an eBay fanatic. Like, oh yeah, Gbay. Yeah, that's cool. Green Bay Packers, that's cool.
SPEAKER_11And you're not 27, right? I would assume 99 is not your birth year. So it is not my birth year.
SPEAKER_06Okay, that's what everybody always always assumes. Everyone always thinks it's either the birth year or that it's because 99 was max max uh skills in RuneScape, but um, yeah, there was there was no thought to the numbers. I just wanted something that didn't look like you know a a million strings of numbers. Sure.
SPEAKER_11Um all right, Ren, you wanna you wanna get started on uh the next question?
SPEAKER_02All right. What are your first impressions on classic? And are there any quality of life changes that you would want to do or like to see implemented?
SPEAKER_06You know, it's tough to say. Like I'm well, my first my first impressions of classic are just I'm I'm shocked at how how dense and and how much depth there feels like there is to WOW. Um like uh I've I've when I've always heard people talk about theme park MMOs, because I played a number of MMOs over the years, but I never really played uh I never played WoW and hadn't really spent a lot of time in other theme park MMOs. And I'd always assumed that theme park MMOs were very artificial, that that you would place quest givers and and mobs in certain areas just for the sake of having um something for players to do. And so it's been shocking to me to to play through WoW and realize that every city has so much lore that you can dive into. Every mob has a has a story and a reason it's there and history that you can go read 20 lore books about. I mean, it shocked me how much depth the the world itself has that really makes it feel like it comes alive. And I mean, there certainly is a lot of friction that I've experienced when playing it, but whatever friction there's been, like I've just been so hooked on on wanting to explore the world more and see more that there is that I will push through whatever whatever difficult you know quality of life issues there might be that that stand in my way, I think. Um, just because it it's I don't know, it's it's like uh a great tasty meal or something that I've just taken the first bite. I I just want to dive in more.
SPEAKER_02Elaborate on what a theme park MMO means, because that's the first time I've ever heard of that.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, so I've always heard MMOs uh branched into one of two categories. You have sandbox MMOs and theme park MMOs. And I've heard different different um definitions attributed to each over the years. But to my understanding, when someone talks about a sand a sandbox MMO, there's very little developer direction telling players where they go and what they can do. And a classic example might be RuneScape. Some people call it sandbox, some people call it a curated sandbox. But you know, in RuneScape, when you when you make a character, you're plopped into the world and there is low and high-level content scattered all throughout the map. You're pretty much free to go wherever you want. You can go train whatever skill you want. There is sort of an optimal path that you could choose to go down if it's your fifth account or something, but you're basically free to go wherever you want. Whereas a theme park MMO is a little more structured, um, like a theme park where there are sort of designated zones where a player will start in one area and then sort of be nudged into another and and kind of guided a little more strictly from a developer's hand. And I've always taken that guidance to mean there's less room to explore, less, less inventive playstyle opportunities for for players, but at least WoW does not seem to have that that stigma that I thought that theme park MMOs traditionally have.
SPEAKER_02So theme park MMOs would be categorized as like vertical progression versus like RuneScape, which is more horizontal, right?
SPEAKER_06Yeah, that's that's I I think that's probably another um very I mean you could you they probably go hand in hand, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_11I think um like the the subsequent expansions after vanilla can feel very theme parky because you kind of get forced to sit on a giant island, right? And it's just like okay, we're on this island for two years, and then we go to another island for two years, and that's but like the size of Azeroth and the the scope of the leveling range and the fact that you kind of have to go all over the place to like do a bunch of different stuff makes it definitely feel less a theme park for just vanilla specifically, I think. Even though I think it strictly will still be considered that. Um but it's tough, it's tough, right? Like um finding that balance of uh sandbox and theme park will be something that for Classic Plus, I think Blizzard's going to probably try to do. Um, and it's gonna be difficult, I would imagine, yeah, for them to figure that out.
SPEAKER_02And by horizontal progression, I mean like being able to get Ash Candy and it still being useful, or like getting staff a Jordan and it's still relevant in later like time period of like later phases. That's what I mean by like.
SPEAKER_11Could you explain what horizontal progression is in like something like RuneScape and what that looks like?
SPEAKER_06Yeah, so well, RuneScape's really a uh a big game when it comes to horizontal progression. Um, I mean, in in RuneScape, there's I don't know, there's so much content, and there's there's no real right way to sort of go through it that you're you're kind of free to pick and choose what you want. But generally speaking, in RuneScape, there there isn't really content that people would call dead or irrelevant. Oftentimes, as as you're acquiring items, you're still using those items, even when you acquire other items that might be better because there's different use cases that that each item will have. You know, the a classic example being that um the the melee attack weapons have either crush attack, slash attack, or stab attack, and then different bosses are going to be weaker uh to different weapons. So you kind of want to make sure that, you know, just because you can upgrade if it's a crush weapon, that doesn't mean you sell all your stab weapons or anything like that. And in general, you know, there's a variety of different um use cases for all the different weapons and armor that that you have over the over over the course of your play style. So um acquiring something new feels like progression, even if it isn't necessarily making you like better in that it it makes everything you've done already useless or or irrelevant. Um but again, those are I mean, these are all terms that a lot of different people have different definitions they like to ascribe to them.
SPEAKER_02I do like that aspect of RuneScape, like old school RuneScape, being able to use old items and they're still, you know, relevant and useful.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, I there's like and even in playing the Burning Christian Anniversary right now, like Top Guilds will use Annihilator for armor penetration. They'll go to AQ 40 to get uh badges of the swarm guard because it has armor penetration on it, and you'll go to AQ for your tanks to get the scarab trinket that increases your magic resistance, and that helps you in fights like fights like Hydros, that's you know, all elemental damage, Leotheris, or if you want to two tank Illidon, you want your tanks to have that trinket that's level 60, even though that was from a previous uh version, you're level 70, you're going to old content to get that. I although some people don't like that, especially with Badge of the Swarm Guard, I I think it's cool to go to old stuff to use it for newer content. Like AQ came out like probably what? Oh what did AQ come out? Oh five originally.
SPEAKER_11Just for the record, and then G Bay doesn't know any of this, so we gotta you're speaking like Japanese to him. So I do think like trinkets specifically in classic, I think are the most horizontal progression of the gear that we have, right? Like there's a lot of trinkets you pick up uh in a lot of various places that have a like good use in a random fight in a raid, right? Um There's a boss in AQ that spams poison, and there's a trinket that re removes one poison from you. And like so you'll go into Maradon and get that trinket when you're doing AQ, which is like a you know, a a three the third of four raids, and you're using a level 50 trinkets. Like that that stuff's really fun, I think. Um and I hope they're able to continue that in classical. I mean, dude, there uh G Bay, have you have you done a Raphi yet?
SPEAKER_06Um I don't think so.
SPEAKER_11I mean, Araphi Highlands, you've walked around. Oh yeah, I've walked around the Rapid Highlands, yeah. Um so not to spoil it, but there's a there's a there's a harbor um that you can there's like a qu a little questing area, and there's a rare mob that spawns down there that only spawns once every three days, and it drops a level 30 something trinket called Tidal Charm, and it it uh on use stuns a target for three seconds. And like in PvP that can be the best trinket you have at level 60. Just stuff like that is just so fun. I love that shit. Like people camp that stuff for months when vanilla launched like a wish wow had more things like that, like across all items.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, totally. Like bag of marbles, so you lose that level 60.
SPEAKER_11Yeah, do you have your bag of marbles, you may just throw it out? No, I sold it. I had a bag of marble.
SPEAKER_03You sold your bag of marbles?
SPEAKER_11Tragic. So so I when there's there is a there's an extremely hard-hitting boss called Patchwork uh in Max Ramus, and week one, when when you're going into it with the last tiers gear, um bag of marbles reduces the target's uh chance to hit by 50 or whatever it is. And week one, we would do a bag of marbles rotation on patchwork so that it had a lower chance of doing damage and you. Could get through the fight. Yeah, you could use a bag of marbles in in TBC. We had bag of marbles for Brutalis, The Last Rain T BC. Like, I love that stuff. And you only got one of them.
SPEAKER_02Or um or Ravager.
SPEAKER_11Ravager. Um Light of a Loon. Have you heard of have you gotten your light of a loon, GB?
SPEAKER_06Um, I don't think so.
SPEAKER_11I might have um we're we're throwing a lot at you, and I'm sorry, I don't want to overwhelm you. No, you're fine. We've got years and years of like knowledge. There is an item that you can get in um Ashenvale, alliance-only quest reward, that just gives you 10 seconds of invulnerability. It's a potion. And it's the only item in the game that can give you invulnerability that long. And for hardcore players, you can pop a light of a loon and then hearth. And so it is a you have one single get out of jail free card as a hardcore player if you're Alliance. Horde don't get it, nor should they. But um But you gotta make but you gotta make a macro. There's some great clip, there's a great clip of um what's her name? Uh she was in that video with me, whatever. She she didn't make the macro, but she pulled a bunch of mobs in hardcore. She just hit 60 and she opened her bags and was like shaking because there were all these mobs coming at her, and she hit her light of a loon and then hit her hearthstone, but didn't have the macro set up. So within the one second difference between her hitting light of a loon and hearthstone, the mob hit her, interrupted the hearthstone, and she died. And it was just like so good. I love that shit. Um, it wasn't was it Emeru? Maybe it was Emeru, I can't remember. Um okay, we're getting off topic. Um where are you in your leveling journey right now? What what level are we?
SPEAKER_06So I'm I haven't made that much progress since my last episode because I I had this whole idea to play through the original Warcraft Orcs of Humans and Warcraft 2 Tides of Darkness, which I thought was just gonna be like a fun little diversion, but I ended up liking both of those games almost as much as Warcraft 3, which shocked me. And I had to make a whole video about that. That's gonna come out shortly. But um, I just started uh leveling again. I think I'm up to 34, 35. I just did Nomergon for the first time. And I the nicest player. I I was questing with this dude who who he said that he he was gonna run the dungeon and asked if I could join in. I'm like, yeah, you know, I I can tank if you want to, but I'm I'm a new player, completely new. And he's like, oh, don't worry about it. And he was like, he was DMing me while we were going through the dungeon trying to explain the story of it and the lore. Saying Oh, this is how I think that's awesome. If I remember correctly, this is why this is like this. And he was one of the I mean, I I've met so many nice players as I've been leveling and playing, but he was a super nice and helpful guy that uh just another great community interaction.
SPEAKER_02Nomer is meet a lot of nice people out in the world, like the open world. Especially when you're leveling, not when you're 60, though.
SPEAKER_11Yeah, what was that person's name that you befriended in the cave?
SPEAKER_06Yeah, Zawatsky.
SPEAKER_11Yeah, Zawatsky.
SPEAKER_06I I'll I'll always remember his name. He was the the first guy that that invited me to um to to you know help me out with something. And uh it's really it it really feels like at least I don't know, I've been playing for however many months now. It doesn't feel like it ever gets old, the the connections that you make when you just stumble across a random player and then you know become friends for a brief moment, even if you never see each other again. It's so I don't know, it feels like such a special moment every time it happens that I don't know, I haven't gotten tired of it.
SPEAKER_07Maybe Stan Zawatsky here and Queasy.
SPEAKER_11Yeah, Queasy too. It's really fun to see every time uh you uh you know, I've been watching your videos and you run into like another player. I'm like, please don't be the one bad guy who's gonna give him a bad time. And everybody's come through so far, so which is which is great. They're representing our community well. Um which is great. Uh we'll see if you hit 60 uh what that'll look like. But um I think the leveling uh community on Era is just like they're just it's just a vibe. Everybody's just there for the love of it because they're not racing towards anything. And so um yeah, it's been cool to see.
SPEAKER_07I'm so happy he has an experience because my first time when I did Dead Minds, and I remember this 20 years ago, this group, they were so mean to me. They I I didn't know any of the bosses like, hey, swim down this water, it's a shortcut, like, oh sick, cool. And they said, Go first, okay. And I did, and then I aggroed Mr. Smite, and Mr. Smite killed me, and they kicked me from the group. What did I even what did I do to deserve that? And I was like, 12, and they kicked me, and I actually cried. I was so sad. I was like, What what did I do? And you get all these nice people like Zawatsky helping you out. I get people who are mad that I'm probably typing as a 12-year-old in a dead mines. Like, I couldn't believe it. 20 years later, I still remembered that.
SPEAKER_11Uh, of the dungeons you've done so far, which one's your favorite?
SPEAKER_06Oh, that's tough. I mean, I've only done three. I've only done stockades, deadmines, and Nomer Guns. So it's not stockades. So that we got that. Yeah, it's not stockades. Um, I am I mean I need to I need to at least run Nomer Gun once or twice more because it's it feels so much bigger and so much more confusing to make my way around, or maybe it's just because it's it's the newest thing that I've just stumbled across. But I mean Deadmines really Deadmin's felt so integrated into the world because it had this huge quest chain leading up to it that um really made the payoff feel so so special and and sweet. Um so if if I had to pick, I might have to pick Deadmines for now.
SPEAKER_11I think Nomer, I mean like the a lot of the dungeons in in classic, they're there's they're kind of like three different sizes. There's like the really small like stockades, there's like the medium dungeons like SFK or whatever, and then there's the gigantic dungeons like uh Nomer or Maradon or whatever, and Carly Monastery. Well Scarlet Monastery's yeah, but BR BRD uh I think is everybody's favorite dungeon. Uh it's my favorite dungeon, like without a doubt. 100%. It is it has 30 quests, maybe. When I was a child, I or teenager, I remember if I would join a BRD group, I'd be like, okay, well, I guess that's all I'm doing today. We're doing BRD all day long. It was one run, and uh that's it. And and I think games today don't really want you to have to sit there for a full day and play it, but there's something really uh incredible about committing to something and then slowly ticking away at it. Um and I think I don't know, but I I can't wait for you to get there. It's it's so much fun.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, you're in for a treat. For sure.
SPEAKER_07A BRD quest a BRD quest run is always fun on a fresh server for your first time doing it.
SPEAKER_11And then when you're when you're doing BRD2, like you the way it's intended is you're not supposed to do all the quests at once. And you really can't because there's a lot of two parters and three parters, but like the way that we've optimized it now, you can do 20 quests in one go, but it's intended to do like five, six different runs and get all of them done and like you know, target one area of the dungeon and then do another one. So um so yeah, I think I think Deadmind's a little bit simpler. Nomer's one of those mega dungeons too that they I think that they could totally expand the lore of Gnomer in Classic Plus and do a little quest lead up and stuff. Um I don't know. What do you what like like just based off of you playing, what do you know about Nomer right now? Like what like lore-wise?
SPEAKER_06Lore-wise, I oh, I I don't remember much. I I was kind of in a rush to try to pick up like as many quests as I as I could to to um go through with that group because I everyone was being so nice to me, I didn't want to like hold them up by by running around and grabbing all the quests and and reading all the text. Like I have the slow scrolling text uh on because I actually read through every quest. And everyone tells me, oh, you can turn that off. And I'm like, well, it it goes about as fast as I can read anyway. I'm not gonna not read the quests. So I'm that was the one time where I was like, oh, actually, I I'm gonna rush it a little bit just to um make sure I'm not wasting other people's time. Um but yeah, so if I remember correctly, like it it used to be a city or something, and and there were um there were trongs or something that that invaded, and there's all those leper, um, leper gnomes, and and all the mobs kept on thinking that we were trungs when we were going through. I mean, I I I want to go back and and just look through my footage again to to read the quest dialogue a bit more carefully because um yeah, I don't know. I I'm I'm a big I love the story in in WoW and I'm always uh excited to learn more about it.
SPEAKER_02Favorite like um race or creatures so far that you've like discovered or interacted with.
SPEAKER_06Oh well, in WoW, like my favorite creatures in the Warcraft universe are might might just be the furbogs from Warcraft 3, just because they were so adorable. But um, and I just felt so sad that they kept on having like all these terrible things happen to them.
SPEAKER_02So cute.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, they're adorable. I I don't know in in wow, in wow, I don't know. That's a good question, actually. I like there's there's a lot that I'm I'm really excited because I keep on getting like the beginning of story threads, like I keep on beginning getting the beginning of like, oh, the Wargan and how did they get into Duskwood and the Scythe of a Loon. And then I ran into the Syndicate and in um in Hillsbrad, right? And and then I after just playing through Warcraft 2, I started learning about like the fall of Stromgard and everything that happened there. But I feel like I'm still at like the start of of every little storyline that I've um come across that um yeah, it's hard to it's hard to pick a favorite.
SPEAKER_11It's interesting, I think, because um there's there's a much uh more uh it's much more complex to tell a story in an MMO than it is in a like an RTS, right? Because the RTS you're um going through all these main events and you can time skip and stuff, but in an MMO you're in the world and you have to structure a story like a pl like a person going through their day, right? Kinda. And um do you do you feel like WoW does a good job of telling its story, or do you think it could be uh improved upon?
SPEAKER_06Yeah, so I love so personally speaking, I love MMOs when they tell stories because I think MMOs give a really unique or a really unusual experience that not many other games give, where when you tell a story in an MMO, you're kind of acting as an archaeologist because oftentimes the world is in a sort of persistent state, and you can't have like huge events happening unless there's some sort of like big world event which can be hit or miss. And if you if you're not playing the game at that time, you just don't get that part of the story, which can stink. But like the the feeling of going around an area and then discovering quests that slowly reveal more about what was happening in that area and then recontextualizing like the the people and the the places and the cities, like WoW does that really well. Runescape also actually does that really well. And um yeah, I don't know. I so far I've been very impressed with how um at least how the zones that I've been through have kind of explored and and given these um these backstories that um like Dusquid, it just every quest in Duskwood just blows my mind more and more. Yeah, and um, and again, now after going back and playing through some of the older RTS titles, I'm I'm even getting that experience a little bit with Hillsbrad and and Altar Ec. And um yeah, I don't know. There's I I I love that kind of storytelling, so I'm I'm always a sucker for it.
SPEAKER_02Are you the kind of person that 100% each zone? Like, would you go for the insane title?
SPEAKER_10Well, I'm we should explain okay.
SPEAKER_02Well, the insane title is whenever you get 100% reputation with every faction, basically.
SPEAKER_06Okay, well, I I still don't I don't I don't know that much about faction yet. Like I've I've learned a little bit about like oh when I do these quests I get stormwind reputation or whatnot, but I'm I still don't totally know how that system like works beyond the little bits and pieces I've seen. Um, I've never really been like that much of a completionist when playing other games over the years. Like I haven't been the kind of person that wants to get every achievement uh, you know, when I was a kid playing Xbox or something, I I wouldn't necessarily do that. But there is something about wow where I've I've started feeling like, okay, I don't want to miss any of the quests in these zones that I'm going through because they're so good. And I don't want to miss something that I then outlevel because I've learned that, you know, if you get too high of a level, then the the little quest marker disappears and you can't see anywhere or to pick up quests anymore, and then they don't give you much experience anyway. Um, so I've I've kind of started to get a little bit of a completionist mindset just because I don't want to miss anything.
SPEAKER_02Well, you're you're playing human, correct?
SPEAKER_06Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Okay, well, lucky for you, you get extra repu reputation percentage for all the quests that you complete. Because uh Dorty over here loves playing dwarves, so he has to work a little bit harder to gain reputations with different um dwarfs abyss.
SPEAKER_11I mean, if if you're saying uh dwarves aren't this, I'm gonna lose it. They are based. I'm I'm really so there's there's uh in in vanilla G Bay uh priests have specific spells that are based off of their race. It's the only uh class that has that uh mechanic. So there are different uh spells you get as a dwarf priest than you would as a human or a night elf. And the dwarf priest ones specifically are Fear Ward, which is a spell that uh uh when you it's a buff that it's a three-minute like uh uh immunity to fear. And it gets consumed once you get feared once. And when you're in a raid, uh you don't want your tank getting feared because then the dragon will turn and breath everybody. So uh every single priest on Alliance is dwarf. Um it's just like one of those things. And uh I'm hoping in Classic Plus they fix it a little bit, but um there is some really gorgeous joy in the waddling robed priest man.
SPEAKER_08The battle braids.
SPEAKER_11Yeah, I'm gonna be a dwarf priest in Classic Plus. I refuse to be a dwarf ballad. Um it's just it's just gonna be I'm also part half Scottish and wash your back is part of my my blood. So um yeah. Uh okay, wait, can we can we just reorient this a bit towards Classic Plus? Because I think that it's important that we we don't just wax nostalgic about how gorgeous the game is.
SPEAKER_07We I wanted to I wanted to touch up on what he brought with the with the questing on the skip stuff because like do you like like because you quested an Elwyn? I was watching your your Elwyn part, your first video, and then when you're going to Fargo Deep, I'm like, is he gonna go to the Macler Vineyards? Is he gonna go to Stonefield where there's extra quests, or is he gonna skip those by accident? Because when you first go to Fargo Deep, you're like it's like Blizzard's intent that you see these farms, like, oh, that's cool. Maybe I should go exploit those farms. And then when you exploit the farms, they have more quests for the Fargo Deep mine when you do the chains. But you can obviously miss that. Like you mentioned, you missed a quest over in North Shire Abbey at first, too, and you went back and still did it. Do you do you like that sort of like reward for exploration, but you have the opportunity to miss things versus when you play retail where it's campaigned and streamlined? Like it's impossible pretty much to miss the quest in retail because the explanation points on your map and there's a campaign you're going through. So, do you are you a fan of that opportunity to miss stuff when you're playing like an MMO nowadays?
SPEAKER_06That's an interesting question. I I think that you know what one of the things that when I was going through retail, one of the things I picked up on kind of quickly was that I because there's a little marker that shows what's like part of the main quest line and what's just a side quest. And I kind of started just skipping the side quest because it didn't feel significant leveling anyway, since everything scaled to my level. And I that I I thankfully ended up doing the the one quest for um for the Alexander character that ended up being a fantastic side quest story that um tugged in my heartstrings and and made me realize how much the the questing had been kind of gamified. And now in in classic, I I kind of like the the ex the exploration because I did miss some of those quests and I had to go back into into Fargo Deep to um to get the pendant or whatever off of Gold Tooth. Like as I was going through the first time with Zawodski, I ended up seeing Gold Tooth and realized, like, oh, this is probably an important mob that you know we killed him and he didn't drop anything for me. So I I kind of picked up on like, okay, I probably missed something. And, you know, if anything, that that does kind of just provide an opportunity for for you know replay value on on a second playthrough where um it can be a little fun trying to optimize and and better, you know, plan a route. Um so yeah, I don't know. I think I think I'd I'd prefer having a place that I have to explore myself and the opportunity to to miss things because um yeah, because that that just feels uh, I don't know, more real, more tangible and and significant.
SPEAKER_07The general audience is a fan of that too nowadays. Because like, although I think a lot of us who are older like that, you know, obviously a game like Classic Plus wants more people to play it besides the 30 plus year olds. Is that something that people are gonna be interested in? Like, hey, I miss this, and like I'm not gonna be you know upset by it. Because I when I played Elden Ring, I hated missing stuff. I played it six times though, so I didn't mix anything. But I'm just wondering, is that what like is that a decision Blizzard should keep going with? Would the audience be a fan of when they when they do that, if they did that?
SPEAKER_06Yeah, so this gets a little abstract, but it it it's my opinion that I think older games in general and older game design is oftentimes given a bad rap, and and people call it you know nostalgia to go back and play older games as a sort of dirty word. But we don't really do that with any other kind of media. Nobody says it's nostalgia if you want to go back and read the original Lord of the Rings. Nobody says it's nostalgia if you want to go back and watch The Godfather. And in the same way, I think, you know, I think The Godfather is just a great movie. And even if you're born many years after it came out, there is still value and plenty of movie buffs still. Go back and rewatch it and love it because it is a quality movie. Now, I don't know how much I want to say like specific mechanics or specific, you know, potentially outdated, you know, friction issues that that classic has are perfect in the way that The Godfather is, but I do think that classic isn't necessarily something that younger audiences can't enjoy or that they that they you know it's it's past their their prime. I think it's just a good game. And the same way that you can go back and play any good old game, um, even if you're someone that was born many years after the the heyday of wow, I think that you can still enjoy it. And I think that, you know, old school RuneScape has kind of proven that that's true to some degree. I I always remember hearing some stat that says like there are more people playing the old school version of the game now than there were back in 2007, and um, you know, the the iteration that the game was based on. So yeah, I I it's hard for me, especially as a new player to WoW, to comment on like the specific um, you know, the specific mechanics and say, like, yes, this is definitely something that that makes WoW perfect and this is something that can be changed. But in general, I'm I am all for saying like keep a lot of that friction, keep a lot of that um, you know, what that what what defines older games in in that way because because a good game is a good game, regardless of when it came out.
SPEAKER_07Well, yeah, because like like even in like Elwin Forest, like I've leveled a human like one to thirty, it's peak. That and leveling up a blood elf, one to twenty peak leveling experiences. Um but like there's a quest in Gold Shire on Morse Task that takes you to the Dwarven district, and then it takes you to Loch Modon. Say, hey, there's a totally separate thing you can do. If you're like, you know, you don't have the Elwin Forest, well, there's also the Dwarven area. Try going over here. You might want to, and you might have to. But then, like in Cataclysm, like the developer ship and they change to like let's get rid of that, just put a war board that just has quests for people that start them off in a new zone. And like as the game kept going, it streamlines more and more towards like just get them to quest and like help them. We're not gonna you don't need you don't need to think. Just get the quest. And I I I think that with a classic plus like thing like you're saying like it's it's good to have like just the idea exploration and just keep that stuff that slows you down instead of just giving away all the answers for you.
SPEAKER_02It's funny that oh sorry go ahead.
SPEAKER_06Alright I was just gonna say that like I didn't even realize that's how things got changed in cataclysm because that that does sound like um you know taking away a large part of the exploration which in an MMO especially like exploration and and learning the lay of the land is a is a major part. So yeah like if that's the alternative then I would definitely prefer not not making that change.
SPEAKER_02It's funny you talk about changes because um actually during COVID the initial classic reboot was hashtag no changes and then the iteration of wow that you're currently playing is anniversary correct so it's a little bit expedited.
SPEAKER_06Exactly well I am on the era servers era oh era but yeah I I remember hearing about that I remember hearing people talk about um you know no changes which I always thought was maybe a step too far like I understand and especially with um you know with the way that people view Blizzard at the time like how you might not necessarily trust changes that yeah that could be added. But like I I I mean one thing that does make me very excited for for the idea of Classic Plus is you know the idea of having um a a game that is evolving that that doesn't feel like it's it's you know got an end or got a limit or got some sort of um you know finish line that you eventually cross that there that there is always going to be the the potential for for and and then that makes it feel worth it to invest time into a character whereas uh you know otherwise it it feels like oh well if if there's this predetermined end you know maybe maybe then it's not worth it you know um so yeah that's definitely the issue with the seasonal servers is like you know it's two years and then it's over and so people are a little bit less inclined to like spend the time to just vibe and they race to the end because they want to see it all before it's over.
SPEAKER_02The expiration date.
SPEAKER_11Yeah and then I think even even with expansions in in the regular game these these days like um sorry am I loud enough um I think you know you you only get so much time in the current thing before it it becomes irrelevant and so you race towards the end and you don't stop and smell the roses so to speak like which I think is probably the joy of an MMO really is feeling immersed and you know um you know we'll still uh what uh you know maximize the game as much min-max as much as we do but uh hopefully they're able to figure out some sort of way to make it so that uh the game doesn't invalidate everything you've done up till now um because I think that can be a big issue with retail these days.
SPEAKER_06Um and then so just really quick going back to uh you know your your new playerness um and I think I think you mentioned this earlier there there's a there's a weird like onboarding thing the game does that doesn't quite like uh tell you anything it doesn't really teach you stuff super well um how do you think the game should evolve in terms of you know getting new players and tutorials and like what is you know we we're an aging player base as sad as it is to to say is is there a way to get those new players in that are like hey you know this isn't just a boomer game this is you know this is a fucking adventure yeah so I mean this is something that I could go on for for a very long time so feel free to cut me off but I feel like it's clear that Blizzard wants to have new players that come into WoW because they keep on in retail you know they they keep on trying to create tutorials and and you know it's the game's now free for the first 20 levels and they they redid the tutorial of Exiles Reach recently and they're they're they're clearly interested in drawing in new players but they they aren't like selling to prospective new players why they should play WoW. They're explaining the game but they aren't explaining why you should play it. And so personally I feel like like what got me interested in WoW was Warcraft three. So I would even love it if Blizzard did like like um maybe one day a year they have Artist day and Warcraft three goes on sale for a dollar and you know then all the gaming publications are writing about it and saying like oh you can you can play the greatest campaign in in all all of all of gaming the greatest single player story in all gaming for one dollar today and and you know generate interest that way maybe maybe it's too much you know that's leaving too much money on the table to give out Warcraft three for one dollar so make like the the human campaign a tutorial or something or a a demo right like something to sell you on the story because the the world and the story is so compelling. And then once once you're hooked on something like that, once you're hooked on wanting to see the end of the story or or once you're hooked on you know some element of the game like that then no amount of of friction or difficulty is going to stop you from seeing the end. I mean that that's that's what so many video games just are in general right like I mean I remember as a kid growing up when I got hooked on on a story of playing through a Halo campaign or something it didn't matter how hard the game got I would I would keep on playing it because I wanted to beat it because I wanted to see the end. And that's the problem right now in my opinion is that there's no real hook for for new players getting into um getting into the Warcraft universe which is so vibrant and rich that once you are hooked on it, you want to go through and experience everything. And so I don't know I feel like it's a marketing issue more than anything. It's it's a matter of you know one thing they did really well recently was that um that animation for for midnight um that was like a mini anime or something I saw posted to YouTube. That felt like okay now this is an interesting story that that hooks my attention way more so than telling me that now I can learn how things work easier through exile's reach or whatever.
SPEAKER_11Like hooking players on the on the content of the world is is um something I I just wish um yeah I wish Blizzard would would take more of a stab at to your point I think Riot knows this really really well you know with Arcane it is um it's one of those things where they like are very good at the uh the ancillary media that it's not the main game and it and these things drive traffic towards uh the main game and the beauty of it is you're like watching something that's actually good on its own but you're also being um introduced to all these characters that you're way more likely to engage with the game itself. And I feel like Blizzard has failed miserably at the secondary media um and we've said for years and years and years why don't you guys do more do more do more and they did the Warcraft movie which I think is better than most people give it credit for but I love that movie have you seen it G Because I love that movie. No but I I want to now that um that is just that is a video that is a video by itself I promise you it is uh it is a it is a trip and a half um maybe it's a hot take take but yeah I liked it yeah it's it's wild um there was one thing I think that um you know the the there's there was a leaked slate uh that I don't know if you saw that GB but it has a bunch of um timetables uh that are going to be essentially possibly who knows released down the line and one of them is an artist live action show uh another one is a Warcraft anime which I think that that video that you're referring to is kind of the proof of concept for if I had to guess um it would go so hard um so hopefully we're able to see some more stuff soon um I've been working on writing a uh Defias uh origin story script uh I got J Bay to read it he liked it um and we'll see if like they're able to come up with some sort of something so that we just can hook people because Warcraft 3 was that thing that you're referring to that hooked people early on right and and when we were kids Warcraft 3 was the launch pad to World of Warcraft and Riot has a lot of that too but kids these days or teenagers whatever don't there's there's no entry point um so I agree though 100% do you like what story would you want to see animated?
SPEAKER_06What what what are your most well characters do you like what would you want to see on on screen oh I I love all of it I there's there's no wrong choice I feel like um I mean just playing through Warcraft 2 one thing that I learned recently that I thought was interesting that it that I actually searched up um to see if there was any sort of like additional story that apparently hasn't really been fleshed out is how Stromguard and the nation of Alterek if I'm getting my names right betrayed the humans in the second war signing a non-aggression pact with the Horde allowing them passage through the Arathi Highlands and Lord Parinold was this betrayer like I don't know that sounds like a fascinating story um I mean everything with all the great characters of Arthus and Illidan and I mean everywhere I look in the Warcraft universe there are so many fantastic characters. Like I'm reading through the Lord of the Clans book right now and and hearing about Thrall's father Duritan right um and and Orgrim Doomhammer like I don't know there's so much substance and one of the things that the Warcraft universe does surprisingly well compared to other fantasy universes that I'm aware of is that every character is fascinating and fun to read about or learn about even if they're a straight villain even if they're you know irredeemable or I don't know someone that that you hate they're still so fascinating and fun to engage with their stories and oftentimes have these really original um backstories and and pieces of lore so I I really don't think there's there's a wrong there's a wrong answer. Blizzard could take any one of the um the corners of Azeroth and and create a compelling narrative out of it and yeah I just I would love to see them do more of it.
SPEAKER_11I I know watching your uh series you are a huge Illins Dan um who can blame you uh the man's gorgeous but you know I I think one thing that I and I and I think uh Arkane did a good job of this is starting uh small and starting um more realistic to the real world because when things get um big and crazy and dragons and stuff like that super fast it can be kind of a turnoff to people that aren't based in that uh are super familiar with with the genre so that that's what I would do if I were them um is start with a human story try not to do the big crazy stuff early um Illidan is a wild character um what do you I mean what about him are you are you into because he is just so emo.
SPEAKER_06Well yeah I mean he he just reminds me so much of of how yeah I was as a teenage boy right like that's so much of every you know Midwest teenage boy can see himself in Illidan I'm sure but one thing I I think is really impressive about yeah well he's just misunderstood I think is uh is really impressive about the Warcraft franchise and you know I guess is is maybe a credit to Chris Metzen is that so much of of the character design is is fantastic and again feels very original. Like I'm not the biggest fantasy guy I I never really got super into Dungeons and Dragons although I you know I am a Lord of the Rings fan as everybody is and I've you know read certain classics but all that to say like I might not be the most the biggest authority on this but I feel like so much of the character design with certain certain um figureheads in in the Warcraft universe feels so original. Like looking at Illidon I can I can so instantly know so much about his personality and and his um I don't know motivations and he clear like just having huge devil horns and and uh blindfold instantly suggests this interesting backstory that you want to learn more about that can be hinted at in in little text you know going back to Warcraft 3 and I don't know there's there's something about the the character design of of him and so many other um figureheads in Azeroth that is uh just on first glance you can tell it's a it's a fascinating character that you want to learn more about.
SPEAKER_11Have you seen the TBC cinematic um I think so although not recently I mean I'm sure I have over the you are not prepared yeah um yeah I'm pretty sure I have okay uh it's it's part of the intro for the thing um we can we can play it super quick uh just because it's dope as shit um but he he doesn't really he doesn't really get his moment um it's just so incredible you are not prepared shivers dude shivers like it is it's just one of those things where like they have so much opportunity to build off of that and for classic plus I mean if he doesn't go to outland then what's going on with Illidan? You know what I mean? Um there's a lot of opportunity uh you you have um a little thing on Garethos in your Warcraft 3 uh series there's a guy in my Discord uh the Classic Plus project Discord who RPs as Garethos and he just posts pictures of his of Garethos lines in chat as like responses to stuff and um that stuff just get just gets me so excited. I just love it so much and he's he's a total dick but he uh I and I can't tell if it's like he's actually a dick or if he's just if he's just Garethos. So um you know uh okay what's next what do we what do we want to go to leak of the week should we go to should we go to the leak? Can we can we bring you in on a leak uh GB is there any chance you're gonna not feel spoiled by something um no go ahead okay because it'll be fascinating uh to see your thoughts on this okay so I'm gonna post the leak and when I say leak it could be absolutely nothing um if you are an audio listener we're gonna post the leak in the description um and we're gonna take everything that we're gonna be reading with a grain of salt. Let me pull this up hold on where is it? So this is all speculation um I I like to call it uh creative writing um because I'm not convinced uh any of it is real but uh people like to talk about it and there's a lot of um there's a lot of content being made on the leaks right now and I personally find it um signal boosting people's creative writing skills uh when it's full of shit isn't my favorite thing but they're fun to talk about sometimes and maybe we're going to uh see one that actually has some some legs. I hope Leak of the week away okay leak of the week thank you farts for making that I was involved with testing Project Camelot obviously not the real internal name I mean that would be the internal name but whatever and I'm just dumping everything I can remember before I forget looking forward to Blitz on this year's zones. The southern expanse is a new island off the coast of Tenaris that somehow resurfaces. Horde and alliance both end up racing each other to explore it. It was split into three zones. The northern area is called the Savannah Plateau it's a huge savanna with mesas, giant trees and abandoned stone watchtowers scattered all over the place. Most mobs are giant sized and overgrown looking think Jumanji. One of the main enemy factions is a tribe of giant quilbor that built these massive thorn fortresses into the cliffs basically razor fend downs on steroids. You haven't done razor fend downs yet that is a very cool dungeon it is it's weird though um and the lore the Laurent it's wild. From what I remember they worship whatever force change the island and see everyone else as a trespasser. The Rotting Woods felt like Duswood had a baby with Silverpine. Argol comes back as a lich questline explains his rebirth he's raising undead versions of just about everything on the island including Wargan Knolls and even the giant Quilbore. Most of the quests there revolve around pushing deeper into his history into his territory while he keeps experimenting with stronger undead. And then finally Blackwater jungle is the southern part of the island lots of rivers ruins and ridiculously dense jungle this one felt like on Gora without the dinosaurs because the vines that attack you trees move around giant carnivorous plants everywhere the Blackwater Murlocks are one of the bigger factions and they're way more advanced than normal murlocks don't worry they still murgle they have temples and settlements hidden through the throughout the swamps they're mostly trying to stop every from covering whatever is buried beneath the island.
SPEAKER_02Okay let's stop there does this sound like something we think they would do what do you think Ron I'm processing it honestly uh it sounds like it definitely needs more work obviously it's like you know still in the alpha or whatever um yeah I'm it's kind of sounding like what's that um BFA didn't plan like the zones literally the way they're describing the zones literally remind me of BFA and I don't know how I feel about that honestly with a dress bar right yeah so it's like also three zones um there's like one dead arid zone there's one like forest Amazonian jungle zone and I for honestly a little BFA right yeah I did I mean that that was what I accidentally ended up playing when I retail so yeah that this is written low key describes or reminds me of that um I don't know how they would intertwine this with classic but I'd be interested to see obviously that's why we're all here we want to know what is going on in classic plus yeah that's my first impression my brain's just so fried from all the the leaks I've read but I like the idea of the the black water jungle I like jungle stuff I like uh swimming through rivers and like there's terrains that stop you and I I was a big fan of Unguro Crater when I quest there um I hate murlocks though I I every time I get to a level I'm like I'm I'm done with murlocks I'm not a low level anymore and there's a new place in my motherfucker goddamn it I'm so tired of these murlocks dude wait G Bay have you done underwater quests or anything like that yet um I mean there was one underwater quest in Red Ridge to find the um yeah that one barely and then killing murlocks around Red Ridge um
SPEAKER_06I think that's that's about it.
SPEAKER_11Oh, that that harbor I was talking about earlier in Arathy, that's one of those underwater quests. I almost died uh there on hardcore one time. Um underwater quests suck in this game, notoriously. We all hate them. Um the Z-axis is really buggy in classic at least. There's like a bug where if you uh move uh up or down too quickly, the game thinks you're fly hacking and will automatically disconnect you. And um for some reason it hasn't been fixed. And so there are many, many clips of people uh swimming up to catch their breath and then disconnecting and dying in hardcore, which is tragic. Um but yeah, you'll get there. It's fun. It's not fun.
SPEAKER_02Um what are your thoughts on this, Jordy?
SPEAKER_11On this? I don't know, GB, what do you think? Does this sound real to you? Would you would you think Blizzard would do this for Classic Plus?
SPEAKER_06Well, I don't I don't know Blizzard well enough to make a judgment call on the case. I disagree.
SPEAKER_11I I disagree at least you you've you've played Warcraft 3 and you you've played a little bit of retail and you played a little bit of classic. I think that's enough to you you have a good sense of it now, I think.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, but I don't know if I would say I have a good sense of Blizzard as a company, especially like post um Microsoft takeover. Um, because like what makes sense for the world and what's gonna make sense for Microsoft's like KPIs are two different things. And you know, I I'm not sure if um to some degree, you know, there it's a business and and you know they want to turn a profit and make money and and do whatever they think will um you know succeed in in a business world. Now, I I don't know, I feel like this is immediately suspicious that he says that he's testing Project Camelot and it's not the real internal name when that is the internal name, right? Um, I mean that that immediately sets off alarm bells to me, but um I don't know, just like there is something about it that seems a little bit um suspicious, like I don't know. This just it kind of just sounds like an expansion to me. I don't know. Like I don't know that much about expansions and how they how they roll out, but this sounds like just an expansion, which that's I don't know, that's like what classic plus should be.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, to me, classic plus would be like um what's that one knot that one place in Tenares that's like um it looks like a yes, they would flesh that out and they would do something with that, or they would probably do something with caverns of time, just like things that are pre-existing in the world that should have been finished in classic that they could go back and redo. Right. That's like how I would interpret.
SPEAKER_11I think that's my biggest issue with it is that it's just a bunch of new shit that has not been uh uh ever talked about or seen. And especially if you're gonna be launching a game, right? You would you wouldn't do something like this first. You would you would do the thing that gets people hyped, and that would be something that the community's been wanting for a long time, in my opinion.
SPEAKER_02Like how do you segue into that?
SPEAKER_11Yeah, it'd be it'd be really hard. Um, and this is just it just seems so out of left field to me. Um so uh yeah, I I think this is a crock of shit personally. Um it just doesn't make any sense. It makes no sense. Um like I think there is there is room for new stuff in Classic Plus, I think.
SPEAKER_02Like, but I think that's imagine if you went back and did Novergon and there were like different modes or etc. Things like that, I feel like would be much cooler than building out rent. I mean, building out brand new zones would be cool if it was like in the pre-existing Azeroth, but just like making stuff up and then slapping it on a platter and feeding it to you doesn't sound that appetizing.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, I don't know.
SPEAKER_02That could just be me.
SPEAKER_07I I think you'd if plus if they were testing stuff, they would test like one through 30 stuff first and stuff. Let's say, hey, it's like a new area over here, not just like, yeah, here's a bunch of new shit that just exists now that never's been talked about in any sort of lore. So I think a big thing people want is to finish stuff that's not finished, not just we just added a new island, go have fun and do island shit over there. Probably shouldn't say that nowadays.
SPEAKER_11Um apparently the the internet's getting extra bad.
SPEAKER_02Like, Chi Bay, how would you feel if you went back to stockades and there were like new wings or new bosses, or like I don't know, something that you come back to at a later level and then it gets harder. Like, does that seem enticing to you or yeah?
SPEAKER_06I mean, I would say that in general, new content that I want to see in in Classic Plus would be content that integrates itself into the already existing world and fleshes out either quest lines or storylines that were previously left unfinished, or I've heard just secondhand, obviously I haven't seen it much myself in game, but I've heard secondhand that that um the original vanilla version of the game, like all of Calumdor didn't get as much time to be developed as the Eastern Kingdoms did. So, you know, fleshing out more content, more quests in the already existing areas. And if they really wanted to add new um, I don't know, a new island, a new landmass, I would kind of expect that it would be like a reimagined Cultiris or a reimagined Northrend or like a place that was already existing in Warcraft 2, Warcraft III, rather than just inventing a new island so you can go and do some sort of you know mini-game or something. Like that, that seems to me, that kind of just sounds like a regular expansion that that retail would get. Whereas um, like a denser Azeroth compared to what exists in vanilla era, um, just with with more in that sounds way more in line with what people would want in classic rather than glomming on you know new random, uh new random mini games.
SPEAKER_02Um I feel like there's so much potential.
SPEAKER_06Do you have anything you want to see the most? Oh, that's a good question. It's hard to say because I don't know what I'm gonna see later on. Um I'm trying to like not spoil myself, so I don't know what I you know might get to see later, but I guess in general, um yeah, I mean I just more, I don't know, more of everything. I I would love more, you know, more of uh like one thing I I saw that I think I got spoiled for was in one of my recent episodes I did a quest in Duskwood that hinted that there was like some sort of rebellion or or subversives that had to do with why the land was so cursed or something uh that that doesn't actually lead to anything. Um, Jordy, you mentioned to me that you don't actually get to find the king of Stormwind uh in in the big quest lane that I thought like, oh great, that this isn't just gonna edge me again. This is actually gonna have some sort of ending. And um that sounds like a questline I would love to see completed. Um yeah, I don't know. There's so there's so many, I feel like there's so many interesting corners of the map that already exist. You can you can just get a good writer and then they're gonna have so much opportunity to expand.
SPEAKER_11That might be asking a bit much, but sure. Yeah. Um I agree. I think, you know, we've uh we've talked about it in some of my videos about things I'm hoping for and all that, but like uh I just want them to fill in the corners and make sure everything's kind of figured out and then building out from there. And uh I'm okay with experimentation, but as long as it's not um at the uh you know detriment of the other stuff that already exists. Um and so I'm a little bit worried that that's gonna be uh something that happens. And and it just to go back to the no changes thing, I think that the reason the reason no changes was such a thing is because we don't trust them and we know what the game that we wanted is, and we would rather have a slightly fucked version of the game that we want than the risk of them absolutely destroying it uh in the present. And so there was a lot of people that were saying no changes, and it wasn't because that the game doesn't need changes, it was just because we can't trust you to do the changes, and so um and I honestly think that that was pretty base at the time. It's okay now, you know, everybody's okay with changes now, and they've they've they've earned a little bit of uh uh ability, but it I don't think that at the time it was a wrong choice, personally.
SPEAKER_07Um, I I agree. I think that Temo's correct too. Yeah, okay.
SPEAKER_11Um should we continue with this leak or are we just saying it's bullshit? I mean, we we might as well get into some of it.
SPEAKER_02I'm sick of it.
SPEAKER_11You're you're sick of it?
SPEAKER_02You don't want to I mean, I'm I'm actually like flabbergasted at how ridiculous it is.
SPEAKER_11Let's just do the headlines of it. No mythic plus, there's heroics. Cares on Crips is a sod version reused, cares on Crips, you're not gonna get to play. Um GB, but uh I do recommend um checking it out. It is it is I think the best clue towards modern blizzard's ability in the classic space, and um it really is a great dungeon. It was a great dungeon. It had its issues for sure. They did this cool thing with uh like light. Karazan's like this giant mage tower, and the crypts underneath are you know full of whatever, and it's it's pitch black underneath. It's at the beginning of the dungeon, they give you a torch and it follows one person around. And the draw distance of any enemies is only within the light of that torch or any light that's naturally in the dungeon. So if something is out of the draw distance or something out of the light, it disappears and you can't target it, which is really cool. Um, the torch mechanic wasn't everybody's favorite, but it was pretty cool, I think. Um all right, uh, meeting stones will work as actual summoning stones. I'm very against meeting stones personally. I don't know. Would you really would you want meeting stones, GA?
SPEAKER_06I still don't totally know how they work. Uh but I I feel like I don't know. I I it doesn't seem game-breaking to me, but I I don't. I haven't experienced them enough to form an opinion.
SPEAKER_02I feel bad for warlocks, I'll say it.
SPEAKER_11Why would you feel bad for warlocks though? Warlocks.
SPEAKER_02Um because they have no bag space.
SPEAKER_11Meeting meeting stones are, you know, those those stones that you were hanging out in front of outside of Deadmines? In in future games out of after vanilla, if you right-clicked it while targeting another party member, it created a warlock portal to summon them. And so you only need two players to summon everybody else as long as they're in front of the dungeon.
SPEAKER_06Um yeah, I've I've played a little bit of um of uh anniversary where that's on, right? Okay. Um is it on anniversary? Oh, TBC, I guess, yeah. Yep. And I mean it doesn't seem yeah, it doesn't seem game-breaking to me, especially if you're I don't know, if you're already making a couple people run to the dungeon anyway, that feels like you're you're already getting like it's not a I don't know, it's not a dungeon finder that's just automatically teleporting everybody. There's still some element of legwork that that has to be put in, right?
SPEAKER_11True, but I do think it devalues warlocks and their unique ability. So like when you have a warlock in a group, you're like, oh cool, I don't have to run, and that feels good, versus who gives a shit if you have a warlock in the group, if there's a if there's a summoning stone, right? Or meeting stone. And then I think that there's there's a lot of fun in feeling like you're in the world all the time and and feeling like part of I don't know. Uh, and when you can just teleport around, it just loses a little bit of that uh expansiveness over time.
SPEAKER_02There better not be flying in.
SPEAKER_11It's my I mean I don't think anybody thinks there's gonna be flying. That's like the one thing. Um but that's my soapbox, yeah. Um Scarlet Enclave got turned into another Scarlet Monastery wing, although it's much smaller than the Sawed Raid. Zero chance. Grimpatole is a level 60 dungeon split into upper and lower sections like Black Rock Spire. That could possibly be a thing, but um Grimpatole would be badass. Grimpatole would be badass. Um Meeting Stones finally work, but raid attumits are still in the game, but they're basically a one-shot questline now, and once you finish them, they are account wide. I didn't see any 10-man raids at all. There are two new 20-man raids at launch with no flex raid sizes. AQ-40 and axe can also be run as a 20-man version with normal and heroic difficulties. I think heroic unlocks the reputation, blah, blah, blah. Um what do you guys think about heroic dungeons? I'm I'm pretty I'm pretty neutral about it.
SPEAKER_02I'm indifferent.
SPEAKER_07It's hard because I like if you if you keep adding them and then you add catch up gear with a new heroic dungeon, I think it's like a s I hate to say slippery slope, I think it gets that way where it's like you really want to take your time before older content becomes irrelevant. Like, I don't want to spoil anything, how there's a certain ring and a certain dungeon that's pre-bused for warriors. It's really, really, it's a really great ring, and you don't want to like just invalidate that by adding something in real quick that replaces that. Like Sawd did that with um the Scarlet Enclave quest chain, it added a new version of a really strong trinket. I'm just trying to spoil anything here, and it just replaced it. So you didn't have to do that, get that trinket anymore because this new thing just completely replaced a better version of it. And I I as cool as it is for a seasonal server, I think if you add heroic dungeons, kind of like how Caraz and Cribs had like really good catch-up gear and sod, you make older stuff very like irrelevant quick. So it has to be rare when you do that, or the content has to be controversial, the content has to be really hard for you to get that gear.
SPEAKER_02How do you feel about daily doing dailies or like homework quests?
SPEAKER_06Oh, I mean, day I I'm I'm not a fan of of dailies at all. Like I I already I don't know that I play any game that has like daily quests other than I guess you could say like a farming run in RuneScape is is a daily quest, sort of, but that's more so just getting resources and and um you know and I guess like farming experience if you want to max out the scale. Like that it's not like I don't know, significant account progression that you're getting from from logging in every day. Um, but yeah, I I don't like it. It shouldn't feel like a like it shouldn't feel like a chore to play a video game. Like the games are supposed to be something that you're excited to log on and do. That's the thing that blows my mind about Rested XP is that it's like you're encouraged to not play it. You're encouraged to take a break and to step away, and it's it's a reverse daily quest. Like, yeah, I don't feel like I should be tricked into logging on and playing.
SPEAKER_08We have some breaking news. Breaking news, guys.
SPEAKER_11There is a classic plus leak, camelot leak on or data mine of some kind.
SPEAKER_02Is it legit?
SPEAKER_11Another Camelot leak looks like a Lorderon Tabard for Horde and Alliance. I only have two textures. Alliance version reminds me of that Skyborne decor banner leak in 12.0.5. Interesting. So if we're going to draw a line between this hilarious picture, um, and can you guys see this? I'm sorry, I might not be.
SPEAKER_02No, it's super.
SPEAKER_11Is it from is it from Steven? Uh it's from Steven, yeah. I'm posting it in uh guest info. Um so there is uh there was a a thing a while back, I'm not sure. There was a thing a while back where um Steven uh is the Wowhead uh data miner, and he posted something about something called the Skyborne, which everybody wasn't sure if they were uh retail or classic uh plus stuff, um because it could be anything, but we don't know what it is. Um but this seems to have a similar design as um that last thing, um which was a skyborn decor banner in 12.0.5. Um I'm not explaining this super great, but yeah, it's uh it's something. There's something going on here. Um we don't know what necessarily. Uh, but I think he's gonna need his midriff. What is the skyborn? Who knows, dude? I don't know.
SPEAKER_02What is the skyborn?
SPEAKER_11It's a word that we are seeing. Um what was this a there's a platinum wow video uh about some of this too that we can put in the description?
SPEAKER_10Um so yeah, um I'm a little bit a little bit suspicious by this. Uh this feels like something.
SPEAKER_01Um 12.0.5 decorator. I don't know what you guys think. There was some stuff that was dead of mind earlier for Skyboard a few months ago, too. That's what I'm talking about. Okay, yeah, yeah. That sounds cool.
SPEAKER_10I love all that shit, so Wild Classic Titan Patch 3.8. Yeah, that's that's Titan Reforged. Have you heard about the Titan servers, GA?
SPEAKER_11Um, I don't think so. The Chinese ones? Uh no. They are wild. It's Wild West over there. It's a it's a vanilla TBC Wrath combo server where everything is scaled to 80. All the raids are set to 80. So you're playing all three versions of the game at the same time. You know, you'll go from a mold core to what was the second raid? I think it was like uh SSC TK, which was a TBC raid, into like uh a Wrath of the Lich King raid as the next tier. And it it's just kind of all jumbled up, which is cool. Because they didn't get saw it and we did, so I guess they get something. Have you heard about that Neties drama too? The uh in China? Oh, we're we got so much lore to give you out of it. Bestow all this lore upon you. There was a got fresh baby eyes. Yeah, there was a contract dispute with Neties and Blizzard a while back, and uh we don't know too many of the specifics, but uh Neti's no longer hosted uh Blizzard products for a while in China, which was like their main distributor there. And so there was no Warcraft in China for like 18 months or two years, a while back, and then they finally figured out their contract dispute. Um, and Blizzard's been trying to catch them back up to the present ever since. Um so they've been a little bit behind and slowly catching up for a while. Um, and I think they're just now getting caught up, at least in the classic side. But uh they did get this server as a as an apology. So yeah. They have something like 10 times players we do. Like that's the that that's that's how big a deal it is uh that China is as into it as as they are. Um okay, sorry for the thing. We we can move on from leaks. I'm I don't think these leaks this is a very good leak personally. Um the only leak that I've believed so far is that one slate. Um I posted to Twitter a while back. Uh but yeah, this seems just a little bit too silly. Uh if you were going to have a new a new race, uh what would you guys want as your your single most important new race? Like brand new? High elves.
SPEAKER_08High elves. It's I do like the high elves. I like I like pretty races. But dwarves are pretty too, because I love dwarves. That's not a new r whatever.
SPEAKER_07Okay. So I'm saying I'm saying I love dwarves. I'm called a pre-too because I said early love dwarves. I know it's not a new race.
SPEAKER_02What if you had to play a murloc?
SPEAKER_05Or uh I would I would uh I'd like to see something new.
SPEAKER_11You want a brand new one? Or you want like what what would you because there this was this question on the survey the survey like we put out six months ago was would you want a race that's established in the lore? Would you want a brand new one?
SPEAKER_06Oh well I I would want something that that has ties to the lore that that feels like it fits in with the universe and has a lot of um has a lot of like connection to the the Warcraft IP already, but I wouldn't like I wouldn't necessarily maybe suppose just my perspective, like if I I certainly wouldn't be upset if they added races that you know get added later in in T V C or Wrath or whatever. Um but just from my perspective, not having played those expansions, I could also go play those expansions myself if I if if I wanted to experience those uh sure you know new races.
SPEAKER_11Uh for me it's ogre. Like that's my that's my big hope. Um I don't really need Wargan. I don't need high elf. I don't need I don't need I just want ogre. That's all I really want.
SPEAKER_14Naga. What should you play with?
SPEAKER_11So Naga would be weird because aren't are there any good Naga? Good is a w word, but like uh it's they're just associated with any lore masters in the chat. They're they're all just former night elves that have been turned into Naga by their uh association with the city. Um yeah, GBay T teaches, brother. You've the one that's been playing the playing the stuff recently. Um are there any good ones? Like, I mean I they could come up with whatever fucking retcotton lore reason they want, but like um would be weird.
SPEAKER_08How would they how would they mount if they have no feet?
SPEAKER_11Yeah, that's another thing.
SPEAKER_02Is they're they're very um they just slide really fast.
SPEAKER_11Like there's no way they're ever gonna release a race that is not able to mount. How do you think they make money?
SPEAKER_07I'm just upset that I still can't play as an Amani troll. I wanted to play as an Amani troll. This is TBC, and I saw Midnight and I was so excited, and I still can't play as an Amani troll. I wanted to play as an Amani troll so bad that in TBC I looked up Gamad. Like, how can I make my troll with a Gamani troll? I tried messing with the files and I logged in. And if y'all love poly, like polygons, my it looked like polygons, all right. It was like boxes and squares. Like, what did I do? I was and I had to uninstall. Wow. This is back when you had all the CDs and stuff for a while. So I could completely get rid of it and reinstall it. My brother was so pissed because we had we played on the same account. I just wanted to play it on Monty Troll so bad. All right, I know I went on a tangent there, sorry, but let's go ahead and move on to this next segment. It's Jordi's favorite. The intro that Fartz made is so funny, and this is called Loot and Order.
SPEAKER_00In the Azrathian justice system, creating drama is considered especially heinous. The dedicated hosts who investigate these vicious felonies are members of an elite squad known as the Loot and Order Unit. These are their stories.
SPEAKER_11Cleansliness. Yes. Um, but this first one uh it's it it's a little bit what's the word? Um a little bit more wholesome, even though it's kind of negative towards me. So we're gonna tell this story about a guy uh that uh we uh in I don't know if you guys remember Fusion. It was my guild in um in vanilla, but this this this man's doing a little bit uh his name is uh subtlety. He was a rogue in my guild, subtlety. And uh I want to make it clear, he uh he was a nice guy, he had no um uh ill will in in my guild pretty much ever. But this was the week that we were doing scarablord. And GB, I don't know if you know about scarablord. Have you heard of that term?
SPEAKER_05I have. I'm uh I've I've been close with uh with Barney from her phase. So I've seen her series. Okay, great.
SPEAKER_11So so scarablord is uh, for as many of you know, a very complicated questline, and it requires a uh massive amount of war effort materials in order to precede the server to the next event, which is the gate opening. Uh now my server, me included, we intended to open the gates right away. However, this guy, Subtlety, didn't realize that that was the plan and he intended to get scarablord, but didn't realize it. So the day that the the the patch hit, he decided that he was going to um roll up to BWL, and he realized that what was about to happen was he was about to get saved to an instance where he couldn't get uh the broodlord lash layer head, which you have to get that first week, or you can't finish the quest in a week, which is what we were gonna do. And he he's like, Hey, um I'm gonna go for scarablore, guys. He just like decided like the morning of uh it it was it was incredible, and so then he proceeded for the entire week to scrap, beg, and uh buy a lot of gold, allegedly, to afford everything he needed to get scarablord. Now my guild fusion we had already picked three scarablords, I was the first because I did all of the war effort organizing, and we had two others. And now this poor guy was mad at us for not picking him. He wasn't really a huge member of the community, so whatever. But then he recorded his entire journey, and I I can't recommend this chat enough. Uh it it is it is a harrowing experience. He was in North Carolina during a hurricane, and he had his power go out. There are there are power lines that go down.
SPEAKER_09It's Monday. I'm going for scarablord, and the power went out. The lights uh flickering, uh, the power's going on and off. And a hurricane uh might be the reason we don't become or I say we I don't become a scarablord. He's just trying to get scarablord.
SPEAKER_11And it is um it's mundane, it was incredible. So then at the end of the adventure, he's angry at us for not helping him more. Um and he somehow managed to pull it off. It was it was incredible. He got the um the green crystal shards, the the the drop in like two seconds, where it took me like forever. Um and he managed to finish with like an hour spare. He recorded this video of him bringing the gong.
SPEAKER_01This is what did he actually thought about?
SPEAKER_11And he was so mad at our guild, he G quit right before he rang the gong. And then everybody in this crowd is screaming fuck fusion and blah blah blah. Um, and this was like pretty mellow in the end, um, compared to some of the drama during this event, which I really hope Classic Plus is able to find some way to do events this large because they are so they're so good for narrative storytelling, and there aren't really events like this in other games that I I know of. Um, do you guys know of any other events like the the gate opening in the scarablord questline?
SPEAKER_12That was a huge war effort, literally uh appropriately named.
SPEAKER_13Um I'm trying to think of any other games that could have possibly implemented that.
SPEAKER_11Do you think that there's room in Classic Plus for a game that has a one-time event that you can then no longer go do? Is there a place for something like that in Classic Plus?
SPEAKER_14Like in Classic Plus?
SPEAKER_11Yes.
SPEAKER_14I think so. I think that's the allure of doing it, right? Because like you don't want FOMO, so you're gonna participate in it, and it's like it makes it even more attractive to like take part in.
SPEAKER_06I don't know, GB, what do you think? Yeah, I mean I would I would say definitely. Um I think that one of the best parts of MMOs internally is high rise that people don't ever or have no chance of of getting anymore. Like, I mean that that's that's um that's something that is I don't know, to to to me at least, MMOs are all about like being able to signal what you've accomplished in in a virtual world with your gear mostly. And I know that WoW is kind of like always had that, right? Like I've I remember reading years ago, like we were reading articles about how like there's an ivory raptor or something that you had to farm up a certain amount of gold within the the first few months or whatever of of WoW's release. And that that was the only way you could get it, and you could never get it again. And and yeah, being able to signal through your your status um that you were around for a certain time or had a certain um, you know, had a certain grind that you accomplished, I feel like that. As long as you're still adding more stuff so so you know, new players can join in on the next one, then yeah, by all means.
SPEAKER_02I take I hate transmogs.
SPEAKER_11That's not a hot at least in at least in the at least in the classic QMUE.
SPEAKER_02I want to be able to flex my tier three armor, you know, or like I don't know, Atiash or something like that.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_07It's nice to know what everyone's current power level is because you could see what they're wearing.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. Or if you're PvPing someone and you see like a freaking helmet change, you know, then it help it helps you.
SPEAKER_11How do you feel about the way that leveling gear looks, GB?
SPEAKER_06Yeah, I mean, I I've never understood the idea of transmog. Like I I don't understand the the um like I've had people try to explain the appeal of it, but to me, so much of like your you get to you get to show your your I don't know your your your journey through your gear that you're wearing when you're playing an MMO. And that's so much of it. Like now that I'm trying, I'm I still haven't got my Whirlwind X yet, but now every time I see a Whirlwind X, like I I know so much about like what that person has done and and what they've accomplished. And um and yeah, I mean also like again, having spent a lot of time in RuneScape where you know you're switching gear mid mid-battle, and and like that's a that's a visual indicator. That's like part of the skill is is doing a switch and and being able to quickly, you know, do your prayers and stuff.
SPEAKER_05Like that's when when the game gets into high-level stuff, but like being able to see what what a person is is um, I don't know, what they what they had, their status is that's the entire appeal of an MMO. Like if if you just want to dress yourself up, I don't want to be disparaging, but if you just want to dress yourself up and look nice, then you know you can go play the Simpsons or something. Like there are plenty of games where you get to, you know, do something like that. I I don't understand the appeal of um of that in MMOs.
SPEAKER_11I think when it when when the content gets so um far away from when it first released and stuff is like getting one shot, transmog is it just like the there's no challenge in you getting the ability to look a certain way, right? And I think that can be frustrating because it just becomes dress up. Um I do think that there is a lot of value in transmog in terms of addressing a certain like player, right? Like there are a lot of people who like that feature and want that and don't want to have to feel forced into playing the game with whatever gross piece of gear they have, and they they want to look at their character in a certain way, and I think that there is probably a solution for that, but well then then everyone just looks the same, but but I I think that the RPG part of the MMORPG that transmod completely undermines that, and I mean nothing is better than a leveling uh set of gear where you just have some mismatched crap, but then uh you you open your eyes and level you're level 44, and all of a sudden you've got such a cool, unique set of gear that no one's ever worn because you have a different journey than anybody else, right? And like that is such a joyful experience personally.
SPEAKER_12Um, like scablord.
SPEAKER_11Yeah, maybe. Um yeah, we got really far away from from the topic.
SPEAKER_02Well, it's uh though I mean it ties in.
SPEAKER_07It yeah, like I I I was talking to Hammer Dance about this actually. Like, there's so check mark when you get to like a benchmark of what you look like as a level 44 warrior. Like, I know what my level like got the shoulder on, I don't want to say where it's from though. Got the helmet from that one place, and I got my boots. Like, I just I just I know I can I think everybody who's played a warrior and has leveled up from one through 60 has that idea of what that like you know what someone is. I see that gear, it's like that's a level 46 warrior right now. I can tell because I know what they're wearing. And when you're doing your gear progression, like you know what you look like as a tiny little person at level one, and you get your first pair of shoulders at level 15. Like that's my favorite thing in the world. Getting your first pair of shoulder armor. Yeah. And then how you when your cape goes from small to big at like level 21, it's like, yes, I got the real cape now. Awesome. And then your gear just gets cooler and cooler and cooler, and then you get to level 60, and then you wear the same gear that the weird ugly clown suit that you wear as a warrior. But like, you know what it looks like because like it's just iconic. You know where someone's power level is at, you know, where someone's level is at.
SPEAKER_11I mean, I just posted my uh hardcore Shadow Priest that I leveled in TBC uh in the episode one discussion, and that that set is completely random that I just rolled into that at a certain level, and I was like, holy shit, this is the coolest. I've never looked cooler as a character. Yeah, like that was so cool.
SPEAKER_02Um and I think if there was like a once uh one-time only event, I think something that is universal, like for example, a cape, like in RuneScape, there's a fire cape, right? Everybody knows what it is, it's iconic. If there was something to signify like all the hard work and things like that in a special one-time event, I think that'd be really cool.
SPEAKER_11Absolutely. Um we'll see. I'm I I I'm worried about FOMO. I'm worried about FOMA personally. I mean, I had so much fun with this stuff, and uh this guy's subtlety, his story exists in my head because of this type of event. Um But is it worse for other players to not be able to get something? Like would someone feel disincentivized to play the game if they can't go get that thing that you have?
SPEAKER_07I don't know, as a game design uh pillar, it's I think you uh you could adjust like how scareblord is and is it the 12 hour, eight hour war? What is it the 12 or 8? 10 after in the gong 10? Sorry, I'll score in between. Um and like just make stuff like that longer. Yeah. Because if it's a 10-hour award, that could be a time where I just couldn't play those 10 hours.
SPEAKER_11But like the bug mount. You can only get the bug mount if you wear the gong during the thing.
SPEAKER_07I think that's okay, but maybe you make those events more frequent, not like every every month or week, right? But you make more events like that throughout where people get an opportunity. But I think big stuff like that, like I think prestige is cool. I agree. And like if if classic plus is supposed to be forever and not seasonal, which I think we all are preferring, it's forever, right? Then prestige is super cool. Sorry, my cat wanted to pet it there.
SPEAKER_11This kind of stuff exists in Newscape, right, GBay? Like, like the the seasonal servers, or what are they called that they I forget what they're called. Um, you mean um yeah, like uh their their special game modes and yeah, and then don't can't you get like transmogs or something like that, like certain items only from having played that that then goes into the main game?
SPEAKER_06Yeah, I think they're mostly cosmetics, and and um I actually haven't done one of them myself, um, but they're normally they're they're like trophies that you can put up in your house to uh to show other players. And I I think there are some cosmetics that you can wear. That's actually one thing that that's that surprised me a little bit about WOW is that there isn't a lot of bank space that you have, at least in classic, whereas in in RuneScape, you you have you know hundreds and hundreds of things that are just your your fashion scape outfits that oh, I wear this when I'm farming, I wear this when I'm running agility, I wear this when I'm mining, I wear this when I'm doing this activity. Um and yeah, maybe that's I guess going back to transmog a little bit. I can understand it a little bit of the argument of transmog.
SPEAKER_07If um, apologies to our listeners and viewers out there. Like y'all could already probably tell the audio got pretty scuffed on the latter half of this episode. Unfortunately, y'all could hear GBay's voice going out pretty bad here. It did get to a point where we couldn't salvage it, but luckily it cleared up a minute ahead. We did change topics though. So, what you're gonna hear now is us talking about our favorite parts of GBA's WoW classic videos.
SPEAKER_11It was the it was the the Vary and Rin one. We're like, I can't wait to see the end of this questline. And I was like, Yeah, that one I actually didn't know though.
SPEAKER_06I had no idea. Like, there are certain things that I've heard over the years just by you know, Blizzard being such a loud voice in the gaming industry. Like one thing I said in my Warcraft 3 video was I I complained that they changed Furian's name to Mal Furian. And I said, why don't retcon stuff, Blizzard? Because I'd always heard that Blizzard likes to retcon stuff, so I sort of played that as a joke a bit. Um, but oftentimes I I don't really know what I'm doing. I'm I'm kind of taking a stab in the dark um at uh like sometimes I'm thinking, oh, this can I'm gonna make this comment because this is either gonna be funny because it will maybe reference something I think it references, or it's gonna make me look like an idiot, and then that it'll be funny because of that.
SPEAKER_11It's funny no matter what, but I think it also like it's this beautiful it's this beautiful way to get interaction in your videos that I think is pretty brilliant.
SPEAKER_02Um genius, yeah.
SPEAKER_11It it and it's really subtle because it doesn't it because because I I mean I I do we do this for a living and even I'm not sure, which is like gorgeous. Um okay. Um all right, I think we're gonna try to wrap this up. Uh we've had internet issues, and I'm sorry, I'm we're gonna fix it for the next one, but it's recorded, so this will get posted to YouTube and everything will be fine. Um let's do uh one last quick segment um that we're gonna be calling one cool thing, um, which is going to be let me go back to the four shot. Um, which is just going to be um something that may or may not have to do with the game that we wanted to just share with the community. Um, because I feel like we talk about the game a lot and And we don't really learn a lot about each other. Um, and sometimes you just wanna wanna hang out with the bros. So um I don't know, Ren, you want to start?
SPEAKER_02Sure. Um my cool thing that I wanna discuss is that recently I've been getting into Magic the Gathering. Um if you don't know me, I'm actually training for the Chicago Marathon uh under St. Jude Children's Hospital. So I'm trying to fundraise for the Chicago Marathon. And I thought it'd be fun to start a run club centered around trading card games. And um I was actually thinking of partnering with Aya, who made a run club about WoW. So we were thinking about maybe doing something for BlizzCon, uh, which is coming up in September. And also um there was a recent leak that Dungeons and Dragons and WoW may be collabing. So because of that, there is speculation that Magic might collaborate with WoW. So that's my cool thing.
SPEAKER_11That'd be awesome. That's a couple cool things, but we're into it.
SPEAKER_02Sorry. They all like how dare you break format.
SPEAKER_07Um, Jurdy, wanna go? Uh yeah, you want to go, Jurdy? Sounds so enthused. Um my cool thing was it's not nearly as cool as Ren's, but I went to this uh classic games fest in Austin, and I met some heroes of mine. Like I've before it was World of Warcraft, it was Mario, and I've played every single Mario game up on every single Nintendo system. And I met Charles Martinet, who is the voice of Mario, and he's done doing that actually. He did this last game, I think, this year, and it was so awesome. He actually, hold on, let me get it. He signed this Mario Plus I had when I was since I was a kid, signed it right there. He was super cool.
SPEAKER_04Where did you post uh post oh yeah?
SPEAKER_07Here we go. So I met Charles Martinet, voice of Mario. I also oh this is this guy.
SPEAKER_11Oh, you can't see the stream, sorry.
SPEAKER_07Yeah.
SPEAKER_11This is this guy with the Mario shirt on, at least.
SPEAKER_07Yes. And then I also met a YouTuber I've watched since I was 12 years old, and that was the angry video game nerd, James Rolf. Yeah, he was there, and that was badass. And he's he's such an introvert, but he's so he's so nice. And we I talked shop with them about uh I watched some. I actually got my first girlfriend ever because we both talked about his YouTube channel if we both watched it. And then a bonus story. Holy and then a bonus was Grant Kirko was there. We said he should have promoted more because he's awesome. He's a video game composer. He wrote the DK rap for uh uh Donkey Kong 64. He wrote music for Banjo Kazoe, and he also recently wrote music for WoW. He wrote In The War With Thin for the New Rubians, he wrote um one of the Revendreth soundtracks for Shadowlands, and he wrote the Mel Draxis uh soundtrack for Shadowlands, and like he's an avid WoW fan. And then he told me about how he played back in Vanilla, TBC, Wrath, Kata, took a break after that a little bit, but still played. And it was just so cool to talk shop on like who's still there because Derek Duke's still there, and he's an OG music director since 04, and there's still like staff that were you know on the the team that are still there now, and it was just super cool to geek out and talk to all these guys. Super cool convention, too. There were so many nerds and people there, and they were all just so nice. It just felt like everyone just loved it. It was so cool.
SPEAKER_11Um where was this again exactly?
SPEAKER_07Oh, it was a convention called Classic Games Fest in Austin, Texas. Okay, nice. Did you go to DreamCon? I did not. I keep forgetting. Every year I'm gonna I said I'm gonna go and I don't. I heard DreamCon was incredible. Um cool, dude.
SPEAKER_11I'm glad you got to see all this stuff. Um I'll be in Austin in August, by the way. We'll hang out finally.
SPEAKER_02I'll be in Austin soon-ish.
SPEAKER_11Okay.
SPEAKER_02I don't know. I basically live there part-time.
SPEAKER_11Um, G Way, what we got?
SPEAKER_06Yeah, so my the the one thing that I'm obsessed with right now that I'm preaching to everybody about is Warcraft, but beyond Warcraft, uh, my one cool thing that's my obsession is automatic wristwatches. I've I've had this theory for a while that that people need like talismans in their life to to to ground them, to to give some sense of purpose. Like people, you know, ages ago in the in the Middle Ages, it used to be like a family Bible people would pass down. And you know, plenty of people nowadays, they might have a grandparent that passes down a wedding band to them, or or maybe like a piece of cast iron that their family has had for generations. But one of the coolest things, in my opinion, are wristwatches because so much of life is is built to be disposable now. You know, you buy a phone that's designed to break after a certain period of time, you know, everything is is designed to be something you consume and then throw away. And one of the few things that that still exists in the world that you can buy that is meant to outlive you is an automatic watch. It's something that an automatic watch never needs a battery change. It's something that you can keep the rest of your life and then pass down to a friend or child, and then they'll keep it the rest of their life. It's it's amazing to me, the permanence. And but it's a rabbit hole. You you oh god, it it destroys your wallet if you ever get into it. I mean, it's it's like magic or it's like you know, golf or one of the other hobbies that people pick up as an adult that they just spend so much money on. Um so be warned if you ever step into it. But it is a it is a rabbit hole that never ends if you like learning about stuff.
SPEAKER_08You're somebody who that's so cool.
SPEAKER_11You wave your wrists a lot when you talk, and when you're wearing a watch, do you ever like does the weight ever I don't know, like see?
SPEAKER_06Oh, the weight's never a problem for me. And if it if it is a problem, you can get a titanium.
SPEAKER_11I guess you're 6'5, so you're just like um yeah, I've been looking at getting one after I saw your video, which I'm playing on screen right now, and um you you you you might have made the greatest selling uh like marketing video for for Rogers as a whole uh has that has ever existed. Um they should be paying you millions and millions and millions of dollars as an industry. It's really good. I'm gonna link it in the chat if you guys haven't seen it. Um and we'll post it down below. Uh, but highly recommend it. How does your wife feel about all this?
SPEAKER_06Oh, I mean, she's she is um surprisingly supportive and and you know a a sigh, but she's grateful that I haven't blown all the family savings on on a watch because oh god, they can get so expensive.
SPEAKER_11I feel like at least with a watch, it's a tangible item versus just gaming where you're just like staring at a screen. It's harder to if you don't understand something, it's harder to get into. Um gaming is not the easiest hobby to relate with, but watches, I think it might be. The she game?
SPEAKER_06Yeah, um not as much ever since uh we had a child, but she's she's currently getting really into um Slay the Spire. Oh nice. She's one or two. Any uh one right now, she's playing on um on the the Switch because two is still in the beta, right? On on Steam. Yeah. Um I think so.
SPEAKER_11But it's two's really good. It's just you know, one is a nearly perfect game. It's hard to beat. Uh Slay the Spire and Balatro are like two perfect games of that genre. Um okay, we keep going on tangents. I'm sorry, I can't keep myself focused. Uh my one cool thing is uh, and so a lot of you have already DM'd me about it, but I've been obsessed with Dungeon Crawler Carl. Uh, I don't know if you guys have read uh any of this or heard of this book series, but it's essentially what would happen if Earth became a dungeon and we all became elevated dungeon crawlers. Um and it recently just got uh picked up by um Seth McFarlane from Family Guy to produce a TV show, which is very exciting. It's the per he's the perfect guy for that tone. Um I'm now on the book eight. It's been like two months since I got it, and I'm I've burned through seven books in two months, so it's been insane. Um yeah, uh I highly recommend it. Uh I keep calling it Boy Slop, which is kind of what Ready Player One felt like. Um but it's a little better than that, I think. And in the beginning I was like, what's the point of this? And then the some of the mystery starts to unfold, and uh I definitely recommend it. It's fun. Um, and the characters are really, really good. There's a there's a guide as boxers, and then a talking cat, and they get into a lot of hijinks. Her name is Princess Donut, um, and she is everybody's spirit animal. Um okay, so uh so yeah, I think that's it for us. Uh sorry about the tech tech issues, um, but thank you everybody for being here. We're gonna post this to YouTube and we will and all the other things and we will um dial ourselves in, but this is our first episode. Thank you to WoWhead for partnering with us and a massive thank you to GBay for being just yeah so kind in dealing with my shit and dirty shit and Ren's beautifulness. And um, you know, thanks, man, so much. I appreciate it. Thanks for being so.
SPEAKER_02Thank you for being here. Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_06I mean, it's yeah, it's it's been uh it's been a pleasure. And I'm I've uh I mean it feels like I missed the boat and not playing well as a kid, and so it's it's so fun to dive into it now and talk about it with other people. I I could go on for hours.
SPEAKER_11Uh yeah, well when it it it's it's so interesting because your perspective is just so much narrower than ours. And so I'm trying not to like ruin stuff um when we talk because I don't want to spoil anything, and I want you to enjoy that.
SPEAKER_07So yeah, I had to hold myself on the stuff I wanted to say because I wanted him to discover it.
SPEAKER_11Because we all respect it so much, we respect it so much.
SPEAKER_07We want, yeah. Um, stock and just shocked, keep playing. I won't do the work. Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_11You gotta you gotta you gotta get to 16.
SPEAKER_07I want to see I literally say I want to see what happens next. I want to know what you go to next.
SPEAKER_11Um okay. Well, that's it. Thank you guys. Uh we will do a little thingy and uh see you guys next week. Our next our week guest next week is Ompi, and we're gonna really get into the nitty gritty of Endgame. And um, after that, we've got some exciting guests, and then we're gonna do a live taping at BlizzCon, um, which will be fun. So, all right. Thanks guys, have a good one.
SPEAKER_14Bye. Thanks for watching.