Episode 531: The clock struck WoW Midnight

Hey, welcome to the very first episode of the Massively OP Podcast. My name's Justin, by the way. I'm with Bree. It's 2003. We're very excited to talk about this new MMORPG trend that's really hot in the nation. I'm looking forward to this game. I don't know if you heard about it. Warcraft 3 is making an MMO. And Bree is playing this Star Wars game that undoubtedly will go on forever because such a hot IP right there.

I miss those days, Justin. I do too. I miss them so much. I remember back then, my guild, we were obsessed about always watching the next big thing. Literally, it was like a meme for us. That's why I even have that in my...

my bio always looking for the next big thing i maintained this gigantic list of all of the mmos that we knew about and i had like little icons and everything because i was constantly trying to i was like doing this job but not getting paid for it so i was keeping track of all of the games that were coming and letting my guild know where we could go next. And, yeah. Wouldn't it have been weird if we...

This was Mass League all the way back then. We had it. Oh, man. In the early 2000s. We just have three games to talk about for a while. But all these upcoming games. You say that, but wasn't it 2007? that massively got founded right so like it that was pretty like it was only a couple years that was kind of early like honestly there are people playing well we weren't there we weren't doing the podcast it would have just been a no a different vibe

Yeah, nobody really did podcasts. That was not really a thing. Now we're old and haggard and cynical and jaded. Nah, we've still got a spark of life left to us. And I know you guys do, too, because you're listening to us. That's a good sign. I got my crochet duck with me. MJ, happy birthday, by the way. I think of her every time I look at a duck. So there you go. I do this too. Yeah. And she never crocheted me a duck.

Well, that my daughter did. Oh, okay, okay. Yeah, MJ, come on. Get on the crochet project. Ghost crawler owes me a pony and MJ owes us a duck. All right. Well, it's actually episode 531 of the Massively OP podcast. It's 2025. We've got stuff to talk about. Gamescom.

happened and we've got some news that it just kind of happened to us it happened to a lot of people it was a lot it was simultaneously overwhelming and underwhelming it's kind of funny how all the shows do that now there's a lot of stuff none of it is what I want but you know you still had to cover it I no longer feel any sort of pull to ever want to attend these shows ever again. In 1990s, Justin would be like, oh, E3, I wish I could go to one of those. Those sound amazing. Yeah, maybe.

I don't know. We're both very introverted, so I'm not sure that's a dig on the industry as much as it is on a, you know, I kind of like my comfy pajamas and my couch and my laptop. Once you've done it once or twice, you're just like, I'm done. I'm done. Done with crowds. You know, I was watching that ESO interview this morning and the fact that the developer and the interviewer all had to have like headsets and mics on reminded me like, oh, it's so noisy in there. This is like the worst place.

Yes. Yeah. For those interviews. Do you remember getting your little recorder out? I still have it. I keep it. I use it every once in a while. It's useful. Yeah. I'm putting it as close as possible to the developer because you know you'd have to transcribe it later and you'd be doing it. against a wall of background noise it was just deafening yeah that sucks now we just have kids which are also deafening but in a different way

A lot of stuff is so online now in a way. I don't know. I don't mind that. I feel like it's probably... Probably for the best, because I'm not really sure how much useful information ever really came out of that. It was definitely an experience, and the hobnobbing was fun, but...

Yeah, I'm not really sure. They would send out press releases the next week. Yeah, most of the important stuff. You might get a juicy quote or two. But, like, you can do that in an interview. This convention should have been an email. But kind of. I mean, I'm saying that, but kind of. I don't know. I like the hoopla, too. And the race to get the information out as fast as possible. As if this was like the most important, you know, Nobel Prize worthy.

Pulitzer Prize, you know, event that's going to happen. Some of that stuff was holdover from a different time and never even, it didn't even make sense 15 years ago is what I'm saying and we were still doing it. Yeah.

All right, well, before we get into Gamescom, let's talk about some adventures in MMOs. I'm actually going to start today. You're going first, yeah. Yeah, shaking up the meta. That's what we're doing here. Change. People are curled up into fetal positions right now. I can't handle change. Yeah, so it was a fun weekend, kind of calm. I needed a little bit of that this past week. It was insane. I think we were talking about this coming week since everything.

Prior to kids going back to school is always crazy times. And you're just surfing the top of the wave hoping that their rip current isn't going to pull you under. So as I'm doing that, playing some. Some very calm Zen WoW Classic was really good. My WoW Hunter is all the way almost up to 50. I'm at 49 right now. I'm feeling like, oh, wow, like pressing into some of these higher level zones.

getting like the feel of some of those zones because it's been so long like going back to fralus which was never a zone i spent a lot of time in and just looking around going yeah it's really pretty like it's It's a decently pretty zone and it never gets talked about that much when people are kind of ranking zones and stuff. And then going from that to like Tenaris, you know, to wow, Tatooine is what I call it. It's such a wild shift in...

So, yeah, actually, I found a really nice guild. I think I told you last week my prior guild got dissolved, so I found a new one. And, yeah, everybody's actually just talking about... The Burning Crusade. In fact, half of our guild never played it. What? Yeah, because they were in retail long, long after and they've never had a reason to go back. Are they Wrath Babies?

Yeah, they're calling themselves Burning Crusade Virgins, but Wrath Babies too, yes. I like Wrath Babies. I don't mind. That's not a judgment, by the way. Wrath Babies are sweet. They're adorable. A little icy, but they're adorable. Yeah, and then Retail, just trying to catch up doing some 11.2 content. I actually jumped on my Death Knight for the first time since 11.2 dropped, and we didn't really talk about this as much.

on the site or the podcast but there was a lot of class changes that happened as well and that kind of got rolled in and some of them were fine they were a little buffy and some were very big changes and i got on my death knight i realized like they had just taken out two of my staple abilities i was always using and i was like no how you know like the rage the instant rage the slap across the face

It happened. And then I got to playing it. I'm like, oh, I'm actually way more powerful than I was. There you go. So, you know. I just got a thing on classes coming later this week is Tyler. He actually did a whole thing on comparing it like his warlock and did some. there's some demon hunter stuff in there but he actually really likes the pandaria class changes so there's some you know like a reverse and perspective there he he likes them so that's that's the thing it seems like wow sometimes

Gets to a point where they get a class so good. And then you're just like, please never touch it again. Please never touch it again. And wow, just like Blizzard just slowly reaches out. You're like, no, don't do it. Don't do it. Take a safety pin. just poke it full of holes yeah so yeah doing actually did one of the brand new delves i've never done uh that was on crash last night it was really cool it's very ethereal i don't know what they call those ethereal

The guys with mummy wraps, whatever. Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay. Whatever. So it was that kind of theme. And it was, yeah, it was fun. So, yeah, did that. I'm still in Moria.

eternally in moria with my you like it there so you're not even in a hurry to leave i'm actually i'm done with every side quest in the entire place i'm actually crap yeah i'm actually going through the epic right now which I have forgotten, and maybe this is just a willful amnesia that I...

you know, bonk myself on the head because I want to forget how long the epic is in Moria. It goes on and on and on and on and on. And just when you think you're out, like it sends you outside. It's like, go to Lothorin. Now come back in. for the next 17 quests you're like oh forget you guys come on yeah it's uh i don't know i i'm having a i'm okay having a good time i think i've got an article brewing about

this game needs some quest pruning really badly. It needs some streamlining a little bit. There were people who want you to do that. I saw that in your last column. You teased it, and they were like, yep, let's have it. We want to... I don't want it to go away. I don't want that stuff to get deleted. No. Reduce somehow so that every hobbit doesn't have a, you know.

Do me next. Do me next. That would be nice. I don't know. I don't know how to go about it. I think you want better contextualization for that comment. Pastor Justin. I didn't say it. I'm just saying, you know, phrasing. All right. Well, yeah, that's pretty much what I did. I did a...

Tiny little bit of rift, but nothing to talk about there. Did they actually show up at Gamescom? Oh, they said they would. I wasn't there. You wouldn't spring for a plane ticket to Germany for some reason. Yeah, crazy, I know. It's funny because our music director was just in Germany this past week doing an intensive language course. And I'm like, ah, you should go to this game thing. They're looking at you like you're crazy, right?

All right. So what were you? Oh, well, I finally got to play the Guild Wars 2. Visions of Eternity Elite Spec Beta. I'm so tired of typing Guild Wars Visions of Eternity Elite Spec Beta. At this point, I need to, like, abbreviate it because I keep... It's a lot. But yeah, they had a real struggle getting it out last week. They were having all kinds of problems. Not everybody was having problems. That was a weird thing. I suspect it was some sort of like, I don't know.

Chris and I were theorizing that it was some sort of particle effect driver or something going on with it because not everybody had problems. My own kid, one of my kids anyway, was able to get in no problem the first day running around playing his Ratmancer and my daughter couldn't get in. She just could not make a...

character nothing would work so we're like i don't know maybe some sort of technical glitch and it took i read it several days to they pull the they pulled the beta back on offline and then they put it back up was it friday night finally it came back online so it was down for like

the bulk of like two three days so but it's i saw it out of the corner of my eye it was really bad i had no idea what was going on it was just super weird but i'm they fixed it and they extended everything twitch drops are still going so it's not like it's the end of the world it just If you were hoping to play last week, you didn't get to, but it was up all weekend, so I actually got to play this weekend and try out everything, actually. I tried out everything. Okay, wait. Yes.

Can you name all the elite specs off the top of your head? I don't have to because I have notes. Oh, okay. You know me. I made notes on every class because otherwise I was going to forget. Of course you did. I will say that my take is not definitive. It's going to be based on things I like, like Revenant, still at the bottom. I don't like the Revenant and I don't like the Revenant spec, so at the bottom. But Chris also played everything and he has a Choose My Adventure coming out.

tuesday where he also kind of briefly talks about the classes he really liked the specs he really liked so yeah i can be brief here

Absolute top of my list, the Yale shot. I was not really expecting this. I thought that it would be visually cool, but it also packs a serious punch. Instant fave. I'm actually going to pull my... Is that a Ranger? Yes, it's the Ranger. I'm going to pull her out of mothballs. I had kind of shelved her last year because I just didn't like the way the Ranger played. I didn't like any of the Ranger specs. I wasn't, you know, enjoying...

being more melee than I wanted to be and only getting to use bow occasionally, or if I was willing to be weaker than I could use bow. I don't want to do that. This is like bow front and center. The animations are awesome. I hit the Hawkeye skill at one point and I chortled because the damage was just absolutely just wiped out the mob that I was fighting. It was it was awesome.

I really like that. If you are really missing having a bow character and you don't want to play a dragon hunter or something, this might be your jam finally. They're really putting an emphasis on the bow. The second one... ritualist i wasn't necessarily expecting to like this but i really did is really nostalgic justin they didn't just pick the name ritualist like every skill is some sort of throwback to the original it's named that way it some of them

function that way the the weapon skills the spirits that you're summoning there's even a summon spirit skill that's identical to the lux and faction skill in guild wars one i saw that and i was like oh it's like coming home so you can like move your spirits around the battlefield i really like it i'm definitely gonna bring my necro back out of

because I rolled a second one last year and then never got around to really doing anything with her. Now I'm going to play her because I really want to try this out. You've got to imagine there was a lot of pressure to stay as faithful as possible. I love my urns. and there are no urns but even this i was really impressed you be quiet my my son is is in the room he plays a necro is his main but i don't i don't know did you like the ritualist He's shrugging at me I don't even think he played it

He played Ratmancer, though. Ratmancer is not as high on my list as you might think. My second one is Luminary. Again, I was really impressed with the Guardian. I do not play a Guardian, whether I have one, but I haven't played her in years. My husband's main character is a Guardian, so I don't usually bother with it.

he's usually got all that stuff covered i really liked how the luminary played i liked the graphics i don't know why i'm not playing a guardian like when i when i started playing this i was like okay this this really works it feels very

Face rolly. The face rolly characters tend to be my favorite. I actually thought the paragon, the warrior's paragon, was pretty good too. Again, I didn't really like my paragon in Guild Wars 1. She was down there at the bottom with my sin for playability. I think I finished Nightfall.

never touched her again you know I just not my thing I didn't really like the animations these animations though on the warrior are pretty good I do kind of think that it's going to be more of an endgame character it's very chant driven buff driven like group buffs group heals that kind of stuff

So that's something the warrior already had a little bit. And now you've got kind of this alternative way of playing if you wanted to play it more like a paladin kind of. Anyway, I really liked it. I did not hate it at all. Troubadour was also up there.

I thought it looked really cool, but I definitely felt like I was going to need to see the min-maxers tackle this and figure out what the right rotation is. Because that's always how it is with Mesmer. You can't face roll a Mesmer or you will die. But actually, I say that and I was doing... okay not really knowing what I was doing the graphics are really cool I really have to say that the floating um

Like the floating lute or mandolin, whatever it's supposed to be, out to the side. I really like that. Whether it will actually play at high end, I don't know. Then the Antiquary, then the Ratmancer. That's the Skritt summoning one.

didn't like how do I say this I thought it was hilarious like everybody needs to make one of these just to hit the big giant script party button whatever it's called and some in this huge field of script they're like hailing and dancing and there's like i don't know if they're doing the little like rave uh yes it's pretty much that it's hilarious um chris really

liked this class by the way i think he's going to end up maining it so this is this is again personal opinion but it was not really maybe i need to play around with different i don't know i didn't really think like playability-wise, like after the gimmick wore off, that it was something I wanted to personally play. But I still think it's awesome, so I'm kind of torn on that one. After that would be the Engineer's Amalgam. I don't get it.

The Engineer is my main character right now and has been since last year. And I... just was not impressed with the amalgam again it's one of those things where it's just like the holosmith where there's a very specific rotation you need to do if you actually want to make it good and if you don't it's going to be kind of mid and that is how i have a feeling this is going to play

like I really need to see the the number crunchers the people who really you know live and breathe for this is the exact spec you need in the exact tree what I need to figure that out and I'm sure it will play fine but I wasn't digging the animations it wasn't taking the grass They're high-end for Guild Wars 2 and definitely unique, but I...

They make me feel nothing. Whereas like the Holosmith, like I love those graphics. They're super cool. Oh, that was something I should say about the Luminary. Definitely try the Luminary at some point and hit the like, what is it called? Did I write that down? um maybe i wrote it down daring advance that one it pulls out this ring that goes all the way around you that looks like the arena net

You know how the arena net symbol looks like a coliseum with the arches and stuff? The whole thing around you looks like that. I was like, oh, that's so cute. I don't know if anybody else is going to notice that, but that is a arena net all the way.

um after the amalgam was the evoker i really did not like the evoker but to be fair i'm not a huge elementalist player i feel like they are squishy as heck and they require so much precision play they're a lot like the mesmer you can't face roll them or you will die in fact i did manage to die on the evoker were trying to figure it out so

Elementalists are probably going to like it, but I wasn't seeing that it added a whole lot to the existing Elementalist specs. I'm sure Elementalist maids will completely disagree. Great, I'm glad for you guys. And at the very bottom was the Conduit. don't get it. Revenants make no sense to me, and I really didn't really think the Reza graphics and stuff for the new Legendary. I was not super impressed, but...

Again, I wasn't super. It's hard to explain because revenants are like they fit like this cool niche. They're like right in between like a warrior, a guardian and a thief, maybe even a little necro in there. And there's kind of this mix there. They remind me of Death Knight. They remind me of Shadow Knights. Shatter Knights.

But I don't like those glasses. So I was never going to like that. So that's my ranking, like from top to bottom. And some of them I was, again, I was mostly disappointed in the amalgam more than anything because I was really hoping the NG would stay my main. But I think she might.

she just won't be an amalgam you know what I mean and that's kind of like the upshot of all of this is that you don't have to play any of these you can keep playing the game exactly the way you are you don't have to grind any of these out if you don't like any of them just Do whatever you want. There's what? What does that come out to? 36 specs now that you can pick from? They've got almost everything covered unless you want to be like a purity buffer or pure healer or pure controller.

They have like every flavor of everything. I don't even know what they could possibly do next time. I'm sure they have a list, but it's probably running small. So overall, like it seemed really smooth once they got it running. The specs are all functioning. I think it's going to be like a downhill roll into the expansion in a good way, in an easy roll down into the expansion by Halloween. I'm real excited, Justin. Yeah, it sounds like there's something for pretty much any taste. That's great.

yeah and not having just yeah just one thing world of warcraft i'm looking at you demon hunter spec come on i hope they do this again next year i'm sure this takes a lot out of them i would I would almost rather have a little less content. in exchange for more of this because this kind of stuff sustains me just like mapping does does that make sense sure and i don't care so much about the storylines i i realize they are the connecting tissue between all of the maps but i kind of don't care

I would actually rather have this because even though I'm not a huge theory crafter, I really like to play with different types of characters. Other people have come up with the... correct way of playing the munchkin way of playing i'm i'm fine with that but sometimes i really just like playing something new and i think that's gonna i think that's gonna wet the whistle of the guild wars 2 community because that is definitely something they've been complaining about really since

You know, since we all got bored of the End of Dragons specs. So it's been a couple of years. Yeah, I mean, when they do it this way, it both injects interest into the... Characters you already have and also, you know, it helps promote autism. So both of those things. Yeah.

I just wish, having gone back a couple weeks ago and just not feeling anything, going, oh, I wish. I remember the days. I really, really, truly enjoyed the game. And it's just not, at least not right now, it's not going to be for me. But I'm very excited for you guys. I'm glad that this seems like it's going to be such a net positive for the game. Yeah. That's good.

All right, well, let's get out of Bree's wheelhouse. Let's get into mine. I don't know what a wheelhouse is. It's a house with wheels, and some of those wheels have elite specs, and some have Zalatath, who has wheels on her shoulders for some reason.

What is happening with Ms. Zalataph? With Ms. Feet here. What's with the... feet it's because every cut scene that they've done in this expansion seems to start or end with like her floating feet coming into view and so it's become this meme that blizzard has this weird foot fetish and now it's just just literally putting feet in her face all the time.

And so it's become all in good fun, this running gag, and I'm loving it. I'm here for it. Okay, so World of Warcraft, we knew that they were going to do their big midnight reveal here at Gamescom. Oh. now probably regretting doing a big Gamescom reveal. You know, you got a lot of spotlight on any particular titles you're bringing out. You've got a lot of journalists, you've got a lot of cameras, people with phones, whatever recording you.

at the same time don't have a lot of control over the situation and messaging in short it was It was awkward. It was scattered. It was all over the place. Some of the big things were right there almost at the beginning. You were talking about how they did a giant asset dump on you. Oh, yeah. I was shocked.

Yeah. that kind of dumb i was shocked because you know i went to go look i figured it would just be a few screenshots no it was like all of the screenshots for the whole con they had put up early which isn't super unusual a lot of times but like we knew they had more stuff coming and i was just surprised

they were going to kind of scoop themselves a little bit. You know what I mean? Or maybe they thought they'd leak out anyway. I don't know. The whole thing was like... Well, like you said, it was a little scattered.

Yeah, Night 1, they had the initial presentation, they had the cinematic trailer, they had the gameplay reveal trailer, which was the more important one. Right. And then on the website, pretty quickly, they had the full expansion link, you know, bullet points, here's what's happening.

but not full full explanations and there was a lot of gaps like people are asking immediately are there going to be more levels are we leveling is there a level squish are there new talent points like that a lot of these basic things they didn't touch on at all and it was a little weird because in past expansion gameplay reveal trailers they made a big deal of this like 10 new talent points 10 new levels you know not saying that stuff raised you know so all these extra questions

weren't answering that initial reveal they were just scattered among all these different interviews that happened these twitch streams yeah they were extra panels they had like four extra panels like one like almost every single day but they didn't make it up online They didn't show up. Some of them took more than a day to actually show up. The first one wasn't out until late that night. It was like, well...

I don't know. Sometimes you had to go to YouTube Shorts to find a particular information on a topic. And you're like, okay, this could have all been consolidated to a central source. Again, this convention should have been an email.

No, this reveal should have been a website and a reveal. We want both the hoopla and the deets. Give us both. Yeah. I want Holly Longdale's awesome new costume, her cosplay outfit, and I want the press release that tells me what the heck is happening. I want both. Can we just... Yeah. Blizzard. So it was messy. There's just no way around it. The WoW community was kind of, I think, just like me, just a little bit torn.

Son, I am disappointed. But at the same time, I am also interested. I want to hear what you have to say. This has been an expansion that we've been very much looking forward to, especially since...

All the way last November when they, again, scooped themselves by announcing that WoW was getting housing. And this was going to be a major feature of the Midnight expansion. That... backfired in a little bit of a weird way because everybody thought oh man if they announced that amazing huge new feature what else do they have to tell us and you could just see blizzard like sweating behind the scenes like no no guys that was it that was the big that was the big thing and

And suddenly there's like bingo sheets and everybody's been speculating for months now. Like there's been so many speculation. What new class could they, you know, like they had tier lists of different types of classes that they could be coming up with long. rumored are we finally getting the bard the tinkerer what would fit in this you know new new brand new races what could we be getting and in the end it was just like okay we need to really lower your expectations here because it's

Kind of a standard expansion. You're getting four zones. Two of those are just reworks. Yeah, okay. You got to explain to me. Why are we doing reworks now? They're kind of taking us back into Azeroth. So instead of the past several expansions.

where they have like mini continents and we're just kind of hopping around a little island clusters yeah yeah it can be they're they're kind of going back and they're going to have four zones that you can do in any order you like but they are going to be kind of scattered around the world from what i hear i think one is still underground i think that's the new heron air heron air uh zone okay yeah the little

jungle tree i don't even know what those are supposed to be but yes i like those i think those are cool that's the that's the new race right the new what are they yeah it's a new allied race it's it's kind of like troll trolls and elves doing a making a baby okay although i think they're supposed to be like the original troll elf i don't know my wow laura i'm not how dare you not memorize this made-up stuff

And everybody's going, oh, more elves? Thank you. We only have like 22 elf races in this game. We need more, I guess. They don't look like elves to me. I don't know.

It depends, I guess, which character customization package you're with. I definitely feel like they're more on the troll side. I would be with you on that. They look cool. Yeah, they're not bad. They're not... terrible i think you know it's really cool i think that the best selling point is brand new druid forms are going to be because this race can be druid and they get their own which is i think one of the coolest touches that wow does and it still carries forward is that every

Every druid race has her own distinct... druid shape-shifting forms and that's cool so kul tiran always looks different than you know worgen looks different than night elf and so on that is kind of neat wait worgens can be druids how long has that been true that's my that is my druid i've had since

um okay so it has been okay release worgen yeah neat i don't think i knew that that was the first time so it never occurred to me to memorize that yeah that was cataclysm right that was that was the first time oh my gosh for real alliance ever got a second druid race so it was a really big deal and yeah i

I still like my Worgen Druid. She's pretty awesome. Neat. Okay. So, yeah, there you go. Okay, so four zones, new allied classes we just talked about. There's going to be a new spec for the Demon Hunter, which...

Okay, that's fine. It needed a new spec. They only had two, right? They only had two. Yeah, okay. So they're getting their third, which is the Devourer. and i i think that actually brings it up into parody with most other classes because even the evoker class had like

Two to start with, and I think they added a third along the way. What's going on with the hunting system thing? The prey system. Yes. That's a new system that they announced as the only really new kind of shocking, semi-shocking thing. Yeah, this is a little interesting. You kind of go, as far as I understand it, from like... We're talking like social media posts, picture, infographics, and a few written paragraph descriptions. This is an opt-in system where...

You basically go, oh, I'm going to go out and do landscaping, normal stuff. I'm going to go do quests and world quests and stuff like that. But I can, at the beginning of that, opt in to... hunting a particular prey and so as i'm questing this prey is like going to pop out at me at random times and is going to hunt me for a little while we're going to have a tussle Going to be doing a little Steve Irwin style tussle there. And then...

And then if we win, you know, I win or whatever, it goes away for a while, comes back. Like basically you're going to be hunting it over several different encounters until you finally have a final culmination and then kill it and win some. you know, rewards. So it is kind of like that Lotro thing on the specialized servers, right? Like what? Isn't there like, what?

I don't even know. I don't play. I don't play. Oh, the fancy frangle. Yes. The ring rates where they pop out and they like try to wreck your face. And you're like, yeah, I'm just trying. old brigands leave me alone no way yeah yeah it's kind of a little like that a little do you think okay i was i was originally thinking it was more like the challenge system no

I think the Ring Race, that's a fair comparison. Not perfect. Again, we didn't see it in action. They didn't do any videos or anything. Are you sure? Because I haven't watched all of them. no i'm not entirely sure but systems panels but i don't know if they tackled this in them

They talked about it a little bit. Again, it's like three different difficulty levels and some rewards. It's like an extra layer of challenge. Again, if you know you're going to be doing some landscaping, I know that's not the verb I want to use there. should be overland hunting how's that yeah if you want to you know spice it up a little bit so that that was a new system announced okay

Yeah, I think the most interesting stuff kind of came out in like day two, day three, day four. Talked a lot about housing, obviously, and we found out some new nice details, especially the fact that we're going to be getting housing by the end of the year. So it is absolutely confirmed. it's going to come in 11.2.7 so not the next patch but the patch after

And so we're going to be getting that relatively soon, like November-ish, maybe December at this point. This will be early access housing. So two caveats here. One, you can't get it unless you pre-order the expansion. So you at least need... the base expansion and two it will not include neighbor like social neighborhood features like the new endeavor system which is all tied to the expansion itself so it kind of makes sense it's also you know

No neighborhood events and some of the social features will be held back. But you will be able to go... in and start decorating your house, start collecting decor. In fact, Ian Hazacostas said that they thought that this was the best time to put in early access housing that way.

You didn't feel like you had to go into the new expansion and start doing that stuff right now. While all of the old content was tied to a lot of this housing stuff, you'd have a few months to go back and do whatever old content you wanted to get as much housing. your money almost a year early and they don't have to play out as many patches because it takes up a whole patch cycle sure yeah this the expansion has been i don't want to say delayed but like originally i

I had the distinct impression they were originally trying to make this expansion for the end of this year. And then we kind of got walked back to the beginning of next year. And now they're like, yeah, by June 30th. I was never under the impression it was coming this year.

Well, I was last year. That was what I thought. And I remember talking about this with Elliot and he really thought they were aiming for the end of this year. But like, it's kind of shifted. I mean, they hadn't like... put it in stone or anything they still yeah they still have before these things up because they were being planned in advance but there's only so much you know magic the team can do in a year but like and they've got

i mean by this thing to do they've got the early access housing they've got wow legion remix so i mean the earliest i was always thinking march or april And that was the impression I had gotten just from different sites that were timing stuff out. But yeah, it could be as late as June. I hope it's not that late.

Yeah, they might want to take – I hope that they tested enough, especially housing. I think it's wise to get the housing – part of the housing system in early because they're going to be doing a lot of bug fixing on that, I'm sure. And they don't want to be doing that on day one of the – Wow.

So other than that, Transmog is getting some really nice improvements, some nice quality of life. I really like this new situations feature that they're doing where you're going to be able to create different outfits and then they'll trigger those outfits automatically.

on your character based on where you're at in the world or what situation you're in. And so that's kind of cool. So you don't have to manually always be flicking between them. I don't know a lot of MMOs that have done that. I was trying to think of other titles that might have had. ones where your outfits would automatically change based on a particular place that you're in. Like if you go into a dungeon, suddenly your dungeon outfit comes on. Oh, I see. Okay.

Yeah, or you go into your house and suddenly you're wearing, you know, your bathrobe, bunny slippers or something. That's really cool. I know, it's absolutely cool. I think that's a it's a really nice little touch. And if it's something that's a great idea, I hope it spreads to other MMOs because I would love.

This is a very City of Heroes kind of thing, right? Because I know you can change different outfits, different costumes in Makros in City of Heroes. But you'd have to manually... do it it's not like automatic going into combat would change your outfit but you could do that with your you know what i'm saying or gosh could you do that and i bet you could do that in star wars too

you would have to have something where the players had like complete control over the maker system. And there's only a handful of MMOs that really give you that. So yeah, that's kind of cool. It is kind of cool. Yeah. We're getting some new talent. We're getting 10 new talent points. They talked about how they're going to be.

spread out between the three trees that everybody always has, including a new apex talent that's going to come out. So every class is at least getting one, maybe hopefully more options of that. So yeah, a lot of these little things, I think we're a little more.

interesting than some of the big standard features also want to really quickly mention that they're launching with three raids instead of one and all three they're kind of rolling out at the same time oh which is i think they've done it in the past but like way in the past not in the last few expansions so that's you know for end game raiders that's going to be a pretty big deal right there and new delves and dungeons and you know yeah i mean

doesn't seem that bad like honestly I'm looking at it I mean I realize this is not my game anymore but like if it were I would be super excited about this like I don't know like you said sometimes it's

Don't even listen to me. Go listen to Elliot. Elliot has been on this terror the last couple of weeks or so. He did some stuff in vague patch notes and then he's got a column coming this week. I think it's the Final Fantasy column. Yeah, it is. Where he's talking about...

Just playing a game for a long time means that things that used to be exciting to you that are just as good as they are now, maybe even better, are going to be less exciting to you. And that's just the reality of playing a game for like a million years.

I try to bear that in mind when people are like, oh, this is boring. This isn't that good. And I'm trying to compare it. I'm like, man, if we had gotten this 10 years ago, we would have lost our minds. This is just as good and in many cases way better. I don't want to. You know what's a point of comparison? What? Like little kids are so easy to impress. Yes.

And bigger kids, it just takes so much more money and effort to impress them with anything. Yes! They've just been around for a while. It's not as fresh. It's not as new. But these things are still exciting. They can still be fun. Yeah, you kind of have to shift your mentality maybe a little bit. And we're not the only ones playing. There are 13-year-olds out there whose dad is just not letting them play World of Warcraft for the first time, right? This is going to blow their minds.

They're not even going to know how good they've got it because this is their baseline now. So sometimes we got to chill out on stuff like this. No, overall, I'm pretty excited. I wish the rollout had gone better. you know tempering expectations i think this is always a good lesson to learn you know you have have the hype have fun speculating but

Be very cautious how many of these content creators who are feeding you, like, I know exactly what it's going to be. Because they're trying to generate clicks and all that. Of course. You've got to be very careful about buying into that. Because I heard way too many.

content creators like definitively telling us this is what it's going to be and then when it's all rolled out they're like oh yeah this is what i wanted all along right yeah don't see their eyes shifting back and forth even so though justin i didn't even think the rollout was that bad it was kind of scattered. But like...

Every video game is scattered at Gamescom. It's not like this is a World of Warcraft or Blizzard problem. Every MMO, every multiplayer game that we covered has had this kind of jagged pops of information. Not everything comes out the first night.

comes out the press release is late and like that's just standard for a convention so i think the problem here is another one of those i don't want to call us jaded but like we're really used to like blizzcons we're really used to blizzcon line we're really used to like blizzard doing it own thing and like completely like manufacturing the entire facade of a rollout of sure the announcements and this they have no control they have so very little control

And we know they've gutted their social media team. So some of the communication is just, you know, it's not even coming from people who care necessarily about the game. That was pointed out many times as the social team. I'm afraid you can kind of tell.

or at least I could kind of tell when I would go to like their Twitter account and look at the slides they were putting out the fonts were wrong and it wasn't the information you would want it was like bullet points but not necessarily the right bullet point

That's what I mean. So like some of that, they deserve criticism. Microsoft deserves criticism for that. Not so much the people who actually are just doing the job, but like Microsoft underfunding the team deserves it. But I think that would have happened something like that. would have happened the social media team even at its original strength you know with the original people we're not going to be able to like

completely massage Gamescom into the BlizzCon experience. It's literally just not set up for that. It's not really just about WoW. So I don't know. I'm willing to extend them some slack over this. I liked last November how they did that way more than I liked. Yeah, more than BlizzCon. I liked that. It was succinct. It was fun. They bounced between games. They gave us all the information. It was all pretty exciting.

We were done. It was like, okay, I'm not spending like four hours watching them just massage the crowd and drawing out these things forever. For the horde. Sorry. And I, yeah, it was pointed out like the lack of Chris Metzen was really felt right here. And that was. Yeah.

All right, well, let's shift over a little bit. Still a Microsoft-owned title, but let's go over to Elder Scrolls Online for a hot minute because... Things are changing and not just in the game itself, but in leadership. And this is something we've been covering ever since the big layoffs that happened earlier this year with Microsoft and that.

forced uh zenimax to lay off a lot of people including uh this uh game that they were working on this new mmo blackbird which we're obviously totally not sore about whatsoever yes very very extremely that's gonna probably make it to big disappointment of the year calling it now it's not even close so yeah i'm still kind of pissy it's the hemorrhoids of news right there so but we've got

Bad metaphors. That's what you tuned in to listen to. So what's going on with the new leadership? Because I know we already talked about how they got a new studio head because Matt Fuhrer left and that's... still like again that that would have been biggest disappointment if they hadn't asked an entire mmo in the process because i think a lot of people really liked him and had a lot of trust in him he'd been there almost what 20 years like uh has it been 20 years since he left camel

lot I can't even remember a really really long time and he had really driven you know ZOS to good heights to really to a top five MMO that's that's no joke and so it's very upsetting to see him kind of We still don't have the full details on what happened there. He hasn't actually said. Was he pushed out? Did he fall in his sword? Did they buy him out? I don't know.

But we do know he's gone and he had been replaced with Joe Berba. Seems a perfectly fine person. Had already, you know, been involved over there. And now, yeah, last week, was it last week? Lambert.

rich lambert announced that he was also departing but he's not leaving the company whereas fire left the company so it sounds like um lambert has been moved to a new position as what they call him studio studio game director which is kind of weird because now he's been replaced as game director on elder scrolls online with i'm trying to remember his name it's nick um nick giacomini right

He is now the Elder Scrolls Online guy, and Lambert has been moved up a peg to the kind of position you would have if you were going to be running more than one game, but... So far as I know, they're not. Very strange. So maybe they're trying to salvage Blackbird with what they have left. I do not know. I'm speculating here. And then Joe Berba is staying in his studio head.

But yeah, it seems kind of weird. I'm a little nervous about this. I'm not sure. It's not the kind of thing you do when you're trying to evacuate as many executive positions to save as much money as you can. you don't usually just create a new position and suck down a bunch of extra money so i don't know what they're doing do you know what they're doing do you have an idea yeah i i have the inside scoop i would like to know

Well, then you must subscribe. I'm just nervous about it. I don't like all of these changes at the same time. It's too much. especially on top of all of the existing layoffs going on within the company, within not just that studio, but also the Fallout studio across the town. So...

I don't like it. It makes me very nervous. I know you had this longstanding theory, Justin, that they're going to revert next year and put the cadence back. And at this point, I wouldn't be surprised at all. But they were still talking about like how awesome the season.

are they seem to like it now okay it's really hard to say like it's not like lambert wasn't on the the team before and um i'm trying to remember her name there's another did i list her here i don't think that i did it's something calf.

Susan, is it Susan Kath? Shoot, I'm so sorry. I've forgotten her name off the top of my head. I'm always on a quiz and I didn't prepare. I didn't study. She was really nice. She was at the thing. What I'm saying was the new executive producer is also fairly new to the executive.

team but she's been doing it since spring like they were all on board with the new season thing in this big you know forward thinking how do we maintain this game into the future so i'm not like super surprised i don't know i'm nervous about it the the stuff that came out this week. It's not in this article that you have linked. It's the other one, Justin. Let me find it real quick. Here we go. They basically went through and looked at what Joe Berba and

Is Kath on this one? Oh my goodness, I'm so bad at this! Sorry. it is susan kath i was right okay yeah so it talks to joe burba nick giacomini and susan kath and they're all talking about like what they're doing now that we're in charge like what's happening with the game and where do we see it going and like every single person on that little round table at least in the text version of this i haven't gotten to see they haven't put up yet as we're recording this still haven't put up the

video version from saturday or whenever it was but the text version of this round table they're like yeah 30 year game we're we're charging into the future we're gonna make this thing last as long as we can and i mean

I always like to hear things like that. You know who else says things like that is like Pearl Abyss is always saying that about Black Desert. And it gives me like... a little bit of faith that they're at least thinking about it they're not just thinking one or two years ahead they're thinking 10 15 years ahead how old is the game is only 10 years old 11 years old right 2014 11 years old so

It's got two-thirds of his life in front of it, and they're trying to plan for that. They're trying to lock it down and also convince us that it's safe when nothing is safe, when Microsoft is lighting things on fire, even as we speak. I don't know. Yeah, trying to project stability and future growth and confidence in your product is a little bit undercut when you're changing so much management at the same time. So yeah, I know a lot of people are very nervous right now.

That's sad. I hope things turn out like really... well like i i hate to to throw blackbird out but if it's it's gone out i'd at least like to say you know like use whatever you can to buoy up eso and to make it you know better than it We were afraid that it was on its way out. And so if it's not shifting gears right now, help it be better. Help it to go the distance.

The extra weird thing about this is that all of his news just completely squashed the fact that they actually had a DLC launch last week. yeah nobody knows nobody noticed nobody cares it's just when it was total cricket well we noticed but like we're nerds but like the general no it was the

The dungeon one, right? And a lot of people don't buy... Swimming mounts. Remember swimming mounts? It did. That's the one with swimming mounts. That's out. That's here. Crickets. Like, so they just... Yeah, I don't know. I'm nervous about it. I know stuff got delayed compared to their original plan in the fall, which is not usually a very Elder Scrolls thing. You guys know we've complained almost that they used to release things like clockwork. You could practically time your watch to...

know set your watch to their their cadence and we were like boring and so they were like let's shake it up and it was like not like that not like that like that's not what we meant exactly but like i know just from their original plan last fall or last spring, their stuff has definitely moved around in the schedule. Stuff got delayed. This was not supposed to be the right order. This was not supposed to be when things were coming. So I'm nervous.

I don't like the uncertainty. Give me the certainty and the boringness any day of the week. We have to go back, Kate. There, I'm just going to pepper you with all kinds of memes. Now you don't even know where to look. I'll stop talking about poor Elder Scrolls. We've done it to death.

Yeah, let's talk about Dungeons & Dragons online really quick here, because they had a new expansion came out this past week. Don't want to overlook that. Especially over the fact, and I went back and I counted as long as we're counting the Vekma Unleashed one as an example.

expansion which you can make a case either way this is the 10th expansion for ddo not bad not too shiny yeah so the chill of raven loft came out this past Wednesday as DDO's team is tearing its hair out trying to get all the transfers and all the server madness and everything that's been going on with that game.

still not going great performance wise yeah let's roll out an expansion in the middle of that i think from what i've heard it sounds like it's happened okay which is good but at the same time they're getting ready to shut off the old game worlds like next month or next sunday so uh yeah

Yeah, they're winding all that down really quickly here. And same with Lotro, by the way. So both of those games, if you have not transferred your characters off of the old 32-bit realms, this is the last week to do it. Otherwise, you're going to have to... to wait for them to kind of revive the dark worlds and yeah ask us how long it took last time was it like six years it was more than that longer than that i think yeah so

The Chill of Ravenloft as an expansion is pretty cool. This actually goes back to the Ravenloft campaign. DDO, you might know, kind of balances around between the different Dungeons & Dragons campaign settings. And so depending on what setting they're in, it's... very radically different in tone. Ravenloft is the horror setting for Dungeons & Dragons. So the last expansion was Vampire.

The last Ravenloft expansion was very vampire in theme. This one actually is more gothic horror, also like Frankenstein, Mad Science, kind of that sort of thing.

some zombies you can play as an undead race there's the new dampier race that you can roll a character you actually could have done that months ago if you had pre-ordered but it's still kind of rolling this into the expansion announcement here so yes sounds actually pretty cool i do want to get back at some point because i really genuinely enjoyed the old raven loft expansion and this one sounds even cooler they said amidst bleak alleys derelict factories grotesque laboratories

Sinister secrets fester beneath the surface. I'm like, yes, I'm there for that. Sounds like an average day in Detroit, right? Wow. Yeah. I wasn't expecting the hit on poor Detroit. Come on. 18 years. I'm allowed. I'm entitled.

Alright, our last story we want to talk about. Star Citizen has a firm absolute release window. Not really, but you know, let's talk about that. Because, you know, maybe it's coming out in as soon as...

Two years we could be playing Star Citizen? What do you think? No, next? I mean... so there's this interview that's out this is what we're talking about where uh you know the endless speculation of course that's been going on since uh the prehistoric times is when star citizen will launch and of course start before star citizen launches

Squadron 42, the solo player game that's released in the same universe, has to come out. And so there's this interview where CIG is kind of sort of talking about, yeah, maybe we'll get Squadron 42 out next year. and then maybe the year, year after that, Star Citizen. And I'm sure nobody's going to be latching onto this and holding them accountable whatsoever for these time windows. I just wanted to bring it up because, you know...

Obviously, it's a big game. It's a big project. It's a huge story, mostly revolving around the sheer amount of money that's been poured into this title and the sheer number of delays and lengthy alpha. process that's been going on and you know this this running gag of you know will star citizen ever launch or is it really just a money sink and so who knows but it's uh well cig might know but i can't even i can't even fathom

Just suddenly coming out? $858 million in crowdfunds. Like... Could have bought at least two golden yachts for that. At least. That's... That's crazy. And honestly, yeah, I was laughing before because I was rereading the part where Chris was just, he was basically just tapping the sign. Context box, just go on down there and read, because it's all in the context box. This game was kickstarted in 2012. You guys are like...

Yay, it might launch 15 years later. Like, give me a break. Stop giving them money for crying out loud. This is so dumb. How many Wing Commanders could he have created in the interim there? I know it's partly playable. I know it's... Do you remember Wing Commander Online was actually an MMO that EA was considering for a while there? For real?

Yeah, for real. I did a whole Game Archaeologist. That's probably the only place I've ever heard of it is Game Archaeologist. Privateer. They were kind of doing a Wing Commander Privateer online. And they did some work on it. But it never came to fruition. And that's a shame. I would have liked to see that. I thought that would have been cool. And that would have been out already for the last 20 years. And probably closed down. Yeah. Probably.

Maybe not. I'm just being snarky. Do you think you have any shot of launching the next couple of years? Yes. I'm going to be honest. Yes. Because listen, like Squadron. squadron 42 was like they finished like wrapping on filming years ago on the mocap stuff and then they brought everybody back in was it like a year or two ago to like do some cleanup

I can't imagine they're not almost ready with that. Like at some point, they're going to have to put that out just to recoup some of the money that they spent on it. Like it's got Mark Hamill. It's got Gillian Anderson. It's got Sean Reese Davies. It's like the list goes on. It's crazy.

The amount of money that must have cost just to do the mocap and the voice work is insane. I have no doubt, actually, that they will probably get Squadron 42 out at some point. They have to. And I'm shocked that it's not done yet.

But clearly they're still tinkering on it. Star Citizen is a whole other ballgame. They are not incentivized whatsoever to get that thing out anytime soon. So they're going to just keep dragging their feet while they can keep making money hand over fist. Why wouldn't they? people are going to keep, they're still falling for it. And like I said, it's not like there's nothing there. There is some gameplay there. You can go play it right now if you pony up for the...

I was going to say early access, but it's not even early access. You're still in pre-alpha or whatever they're calling it. Alpha, I guess, is what they're calling it now. Yeah, they're in alpha. I mean, whatever. But... It's such a bad precedent to set. I hope that people aren't giving them more money than just what it takes to play the bare minimum. But I know that they are. Or they wouldn't have $50 million.

That's the thing. If they say, oh, hey, you know, like give them some hopes, give them some false hope of a release window just to drive up.

donations is pretty low. So I hope that's not what they're doing here. I think they just get pressed on it so many times that after a while they just kind of... throw out stuff like yeah sure possibly could launch in the last couple years we'll see it's not impossible because they don't have to put it out finished either that's that's the other thing they could literally just say yeah we're launched and people would keep giving them money so maybe they

don't even need to drag it out anymore and then people would not have they wouldn't be able to say well you know it's not a finished game and then they do the other thing well you know it's a live product and it's still evolving and you know there's always There's always little tricks they can use to keep justifying why the game is not actually the full-fledged game you paid for.

I genuinely wonder how many people are still holding back on star citizen for that 1.0. Like they've just told themselves I'm not, I'm not pouring money into it. Yeah. But if they, if they launch, if the one day they launch, I will go check it out. I will go.

pay money for it like is there a is there a significant crowd out there that's just holding back like that or is that you know almost everybody who's invested money into it that's pretty much going to be their their player base uh you know like is there a secondary player basis i guess what i'm trying to say where they will expand to

new people when that happens i i don't know because i'm thinking of like a lot of kickstarter games that just go way too long in development and by the time that they kind of like limp across the finish line nobody's paying attention i mean i think people will pay attention to this just because of them

money mainstream will probably cover this just because of the money but it would have to be in really good condition be very exciting to to suddenly like swell in numbers and become um kind of the next big the next big thing are we doing that i think i think yes because i'm looking at this they've got 5.8 million backers which is an insane number if you were just thinking of it in terms of kickstarter but if you actually compare that the number of gamers

the planet or even just gamers in the you know in the west who speak english and would have any chance of playing this right that is a tiny fraction of those people

There's a huge potential player base and it gets a little bigger every year, right? Because, you know, we olds, we're not dying that fast. And every year we're getting another batch of, you know, nerd kids who are graduating into... potentially wanting this kind of game i think it's maybe one of the reasons they've toned down some of the mmo rhetoric along the way i don't know if y'all have noticed that but i sure have you know that so

Yeah, I actually think there's a huge potential player base of people who have never heard of this. Because part of it is, Justin, part of the reason a lot of people have never heard of this is because the mainstream news does not cover Star Citizen anymore. Like the last time most of the big gaming sites even... thought about Star Citizen was when they crossed 800 million.

And before that, it was when they crossed 750 million. Like they don't cover this every week like we do, like Chris does, where he does every video and every interesting interview, everything that comes out, we cover it. Most of the sites do not do this, which means most. people who actually still pay attention to

The mainstream YouTube, the mainstream news blogs, they have no idea what's going on with Star Citizen. And it is not at the top of their mind when they're looking for something to play or they're looking for something to buy into. So that's why you're looking at 5.8 million people. almost 900 million raised, it's the same 500, more likely it's the same couple hundred thousand people who just keep making that number go up.

But I think once they actually, you know, do a full marketing campaign, which they are not doing at all right now, once they actually start getting attention on mainstream YouTube, mainstream blogs, you know what I mean? That's the kind of thing where it's going to just blow it open and they have like Fortnite potential. But they actually have to have a finished game or people won't care. It has to be playable and functional and not a buggy hunk of junk.

We'll see. Yeah. Oh, man, I've wanted like a really good space sim MMO for a long time. And I wish this weren't the big one because I don't want to give them money. I don't like this business practice. I don't like like I wish Elite Dangerous had like.

hit the sweet spot for me you know what i mean i wish i wish because i'd rather give money to that mess you know what i mean it's a totally different kind of mess but i felt better about it or dual universe or there's like a bunch of sci-fi games out there that stars reach us The one I'm kind of putting more of my hopes in over here. But, you know. AI Backstars reach. We'll see.

More options is, I guess, more potential in development options is better for the consumer because you're just hoping one of them might be good enough to finish out and do really good. Anyways, tell us what you think of Star Citizen and possibly a 2027, 2028 release. Is that just ridiculous or is that something that could possibly happen? Are you interested in it? Yeah, that's what the comment section is for.

of the conversation here on the podcast. You guys continue it. Keep it going down there. Have fun. Keep it clean. Don't do these double entendres that we have gotten shamefully into in this show. Tell us if you're a wrath baby. Yeah. Yeah, that'd be a really good daily grind. Everybody who's still using that phrase, it just cracks me up. The weird ageism in this industry is so dumb.

You should do that as a daily grind. Like, what universal MMO experience have you just never had that everybody else seems to have? So I think there's always that. It's like that with movies. Like, you never saw Star Wars? What's wrong with you? You know there's a couple movies out there. There's a lot. Don't give me that one. All right. Thank you for listening to the Massively OP podcast.

check us out on social media. Check out our Patreon program on the right-hand side of the site. Keep sending in those podcast emails. We promise we're going to get to them. We're not overlooking them. Well, maybe we are, but not intentionally, not meanly. We will get to them soon.

hour later and yeah let us know what you might want to hear in our next feature show we haven't done a feature like a theme show in a while we're running out of the good themes is part of the problem oh i think there's more I think we need to do a whole lot of vanity pets, so you just sit there. Oh my gosh, we're not doing one on vanity pets. I don't care! You guys, help me out here.

I love my vanity pets. I'll make a list of everything we've done, but of the two, I have a list here from, I think Josh gave us one, and Java Jawa gave us one, and we've done almost everything on both of these lists. oh i think we've got lots more i think we got lots more we'll see all right all right well that's it for today's episode thanks for listening everybody have fun playing some games enjoy yourself and

Yeah, keep the hype up, but, you know, keep it down to reasonable levels. That's, you know, got to moderate. All right. Take care. Later, everybody.