39: The Geekenders: Preach Discusses WOW and other MMO's with us!

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Yeah, yeah, you know what time it is.

It's time for the geek in this podcast.

Mega Rand, Jesse, and Dodger.

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Yo, it's the weekend.

Yeah, it's time to geek out.

Let it begin.

Go on, stream and shout.

It's Jesse and Dodger.

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Yo, it's the weekend.

Yeah, it's time to geek out.

Let it begin.

Go on, stream and shout.

It's Jesse and Dodger.

So give them a follow.

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Yo, it's the weekend.

Yeah, it's time to geek out.

Let it begin.

Go on, scream and shout.

It's Jesse and Dodger.

So, give them a follow, number one, geek podcast.

without a doubt.

Hello, everybody, and welcome to Geekenders.

Oh, God.

The pre-show button was still on.

It's fine.

Hello, everybody, and welcome to Geek Enders.

Jesus Christ.

What?

We got this.

This is going to be a good one.

It's going really well today, I think.

A piece of my equipment just fell off of the table, also.

So, you know, we're just

crushing it today.

Hello, everybody.

I'm Dodger.

That's Jesse.

That's Preach.

Hi.

And we're doing a geek genders.

Preach.

How are you?

I am awesome.

And this is welcome.

I am.

I'm really good.

I've had a really good week.

It's been great.

And I get to see Jesse again.

I've never met you, though.

You've never crossed past

Dodger.

Yeah.

What's that about?

You don't leave the farm, right?

You're stuck in mud, mud like a moat is around you or something i do love the mud yeah

yes do you think that's not even a joke is that i know the deep down no really i love the mud i love the mud i like a little piggy out there

just going mad in the mud i believe it i when the camera goes off it's like oh yeah i'm a mud person oh yeah just like cover yourself in mud like i'm wearing my

yeah yeah that's what it is i believe that don't think it couldn't even convince me otherwise.

Yeah.

I hate the summer because we don't get enough rain for the mud.

The dirt's too dry to put on your body.

No, I understand.

Yeah.

It's unfortunate.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Bring your own water, my own jugs to make it work.

But yeah, I am awesome.

It's been a solid week, surprisingly.

Yeah, I'm glad.

Yeah, we had a WoW expansion launch.

It was good.

Jesse's.

I'm worried about talking to it about Jesse because I don't want him to sniff the heroin pipe ever again.

I am.

Thank you.

First off, thank you for that.

But I'm also living vicariously through people right now because I'm trying to suss out whether it's good or not.

So I'm glad you're on because I know you'll give like an honest estimation.

But my version I've realized of watching people play is not the vast majority.

Watching Grendor play World of Warcraft is like watching a man, he'll get into a zone and be like, wow, look at that lizard and spend 20 minutes looking at a lizard.

I'm like, okay, I'm not getting an accurate representation of what this game is.

Not really.

I've watched this man be like, look at him.

Look at his eyes.

Look at his little eyes.

Look at him.

I'm like,

play the game, dude.

No, that is him playing the game.

That's an MMO, right?

Everyone's doing their own thing.

Don't worry about what everyone else is doing.

Do your own thing.

This is such a top 10 in the making.

Top 10 lizards.

Oh, it's going to be so good.

Top 10 lizards.

Oh, dude.

I spent one hour with Crendor, right?

And he was like, we're going to do this fishing thing.

It's going to be great.

And he had me film a solid hour on my PC of in like 4k of me fishing.

And then he went, I can't be asked receiving the file and just said, don't worry about it and left it.

I was like, So, what are you going to put there?

And he's like, I'll just put me fishing instead.

I'm like, Okay, that sounds right, that's what we're doing.

That's the exact experience, yeah.

Yeah,

he's like, Fuck it, the file's too big, I'm not bothering.

All right, okay,

but he took 40.

I'm not joking, he took 40 minutes finding the right fishing spot.

He's like, What's your favorite expansion?

I'm like, I don't know, TVC.

And he goes, Okay, let's find a good fishing spot.

It took ages, so they was like, I can't be asked, I'm not doing it.

Not bothering it.

Oh, that sounds, I believe everything you're saying.

You you can tell

that sounds yeah yeah

that was my first time talking to credor i was like oh

that was your first interaction was offishing with crendor yeah i met jesse like a million times probably more than he remembers because i was just getting started youtube when we first met i was like oh jesse i really like you and he went uh-huh move about the way pleb in blizzcon you know what he's like in real life he's like truly anti-social rude

but yeah it does sound like me yeah but for everyone i had my people push you aside I was like, I fought through them to get to you because you had that circle of people all suit.

Right, right, right.

Yeah, it looked like evil within or something.

Like the agency was protecting you.

But I got in there and I just was like, oh, how's it going?

And you went.

Yeah.

Spit directly in your face.

Right in my eye.

Like, you're so accurate.

You just spat right in my eye.

That's because I do it often.

That's because I often spit directly in people's eyes.

I want them to know that I hate them.

I look down upon them.

And that's maybe that's a little spit.

That's a spectrum.

Yeah.

Yeah.

that was great.

Plus, I just like spitting, it's one of my favorite things to do.

I spit everywhere all day, yeah.

I was gonna say, so that's why you came back, right?

That's why you came for to say hello a second time.

Well, yeah, yeah, no, the best thing ever was when I randomly texted him saying, Yo, can I use your studio?

We met like three times for 10 seconds.

Can I use your studio for like five hours to do interviews?

And he was like, Yeah,

and then he made me walk through a maze and was like voicing, like, where am I?

You'll never find me.

I'm lurking around.

Like, I was walking through an empty building in LA.

I'm like, where the fuck is he going to be?

Down some weird corridor.

Yeah, it was, uh, it was great.

It was really good.

That's how I hide from people after I spit on them.

You got to get away, you know, because people, they're bad people, and then you run away.

Yeah.

People don't look at being spit on the same way anymore.

Back in the day, it was classy.

You got spit on, you were like, thank you, sir, for your water.

These days, everyone's a little angry about it.

I don't know, I know, especially in America, like they just give you water for nothing, you know.

Yeah,

yeah, I really do.

Time has changed.

Used to be a nice scene, and there used to be a nice, gentlemany, classy interaction between people.

You used to be able to spit on people and they'd say, Thank you, sir.

Not anymore.

What's happening?

This country has gone to shit.

Morality's ruined.

Full shambles, man.

Anyway, how is the expansion?

I mean, how do you want to approach this genuinely?

Like general science?

Yeah, I think on our side, we have not touched it at all.

I have.

I am not a Wowman.

Yeah.

Just to give you base level.

I've snooped enough classes.

I've been over to MMO Champion and Wowhead and done all the like.

What's good?

I'm looking at what the experience is like.

Well, I mean, I haven't looked at the forms.

I've just looked at the news.

So I play it safe.

Don't worry.

There's a sentence that was written there, which finally stopped me going to MMO champion because the fact that these words came from like a human being with fingers that could access the internet blew my mind.

I read it.

I was like, this can't be real.

And it is real.

I was like, that's it.

I'm done.

I can't go back there again.

That was

insane.

My experience with all of me like snooping and being like,

what they're doing over there?

My favorite thing.

I'm going to send this to you.

Hopefully the link still works.

So I've been sort of watching, especially on Reddit, there's a lot of ads for the new expansion.

And most of them are like, hey, play the game.

It's going to be awesome.

Come back.

You're going to have a good time.

But then

there's one ad that I saw that just blew my mind.

And it is genuinely one of the most insane things I've ever seen in my entire life.

And I must stress to you, I need to find this link for you guys because it is

now.

I'm now looking for the sentence because I'm going to one-up you big time.

All right.

I hope you're ready for this.

Shall I also find a funny email, except it has nothing to do with WoW?

Go for it.

I think we should all share our funny emails.

Okay, let's see.

What funny email do I have?

Wow.

I'm super lazy.

This is madness.

I'm going to start deleting things so I can find this.

I am so, I ground this entire show to a halt, but this is worth it.

This is

oh, it's an advertisement, and it's

wild.

Yes, here we go.

All right, I found it.

Hopefully, it still works.

Yes, okay.

All right.

So this is, um, I'll put it in chat here

for everyone, for everyone to look at.

Uh, hopefully this link works.

Um

please

enjoy this video called alone abandon the Number One Problem Facing Video Game Characters Today.

Literally, it is an ad where it's like,

Your characters miss you.

You haven't been home.

Oh, simply.

They're sitting around.

It is crazy.

I was like, whoa, hold on.

We are hitting the like.

You used to play.

That's some animal crossing shit, dude.

Yeah, I was like, really sad.

They miss their mare.

I didn't click any of these adverts.

Like, I see them all the time, and I didn't watch a single one.

It is the most guilt-trippy, sad, like, FOMO.

Like, I was like, please come back.

Please, please come back.

Have they got a dog in it?

I want to see, like, a dog, you know, your pet, your dog pet is missing you.

He's not been fed in like 10 years.

The fact that one of the lines is forever imprisoned, wherever you last logged off.

I'm like, yo,

dude.

Digital hell is where you belong.

Yeah.

You left your friend, your 15-year friend in a void, never to be played with again.

How do you feel about that?

I was like, whoa.

Damn.

Out of all the things I saw promoting, I was like, this is the craziest.

This is insane to me what this ad is, but I absolutely love it.

It's like...

The most emotionally manipulative thing I've ever seen in my entire time.

Dude, think about your characters, though, but you're like,

right.

Little Jesse's not been played with.

No, I was like, F that guy.

Yeah.

No,

no, I'm all right.

That's just bits.

That's just bits and data.

I don't care.

Okay.

All right.

I'll give you the Gerald before we get specifics.

So

they've been a little clever with the marketing here, right?

Because at BlizzCon, they had Chris Metson come back.

He's like, please come home.

Right.

That was his big shout.

He'd come out on the stage.

He's like, it's time to come home.

I am back.

You should come back too.

Stop playing Final Fantasy, idiots.

Come back here.

And so a lot of people did hear that I heard you know a lot of people came in I was like when I saw Metzon I was I was like okay I need to come back but they kept it a secret up until I like four days or three days before the pre-early access launch which is a whole thing in itself that he actually hasn't done much with the launch of this expansion because it was already done when he came back So the war within was already being made.

And we're inferring a little bit here from his interview he did that they released really close because I think everybody was under the impression this is like a Metson-led saga, which it is.

But when he came back, they were already making the war within, which is what's just launched.

And so he like took it and took some things out and moved it in a different direction.

But we're not going to see the Metson full influence until later on, because that's when they were making the later content, right?

So everybody was coming back, Metson-led, really exciting, but it's kind of not really at the start.

It is the first time

they've done a narrative-led expansion.

And that is awesome because their story is really good and obviously they've seen the exodus to ff14 and how people are like crying and being all emotional and they're like okay we now lots millions of people have realized you can get that in an mmo i dismissed it for years i was never into the wow story but they've seen that they've replaced a lot of the writing team they've got new people in and now they've got a really narrative led focused game

And its biggest issue is that World of Warcraft players have been trained since day one that if anything pops pops onto your screen, like a cutscene or a quest text box, is you are the fastest gun in the West on your escape key to get rid of it as quickly as humanly possible.

Like, get that shit out of my face.

I don't want to watch it.

I'm out of here.

And so they've done some cool stuff.

Like, if you don't read any of the story, they've voicelined loads of things.

So even if you instantly skip, the character will then talk to you to tell you the gist of what's happening because they really want you to know what the story is.

And that was a good move.

And then obviously the response I got was, I don't play wow with sound on.

I was like, at a certain point, they can't win.

If you're not going to read or listen to the game, then there's you know, there's only so much they could do.

Um, one thing I really liked this time is they didn't change the gameplay much at all from Dragonflight, the previous expansion.

They were like, This is good, we don't need to about with this.

They put some talents in, but they don't really do anything, they're like passive talents, so you get something as you level up, but it's it's neither here nor there.

And the story has got no fat on it at all, like it's very streamlined and very new it's very different than any world of warcraft story i've played through so for that 10 out of 10.

i think they did a fantastic job it's not the best story ever written but it's really good for world of warcraft especially when you when you talk about the the voiceover stuff one of the things i always and i even think final fantasy 14 should steal this woe always takes the best from other mmos and sort of incorporates it and i feel like

The thing they should always do is in Guild Wars 2 when like dudes run around they just talk to you while you're doing missions so it's like yo I don't have to sit here and read a thing or sit through a bunch of cutscenes I feel like everyone should just take that idea it makes everything so much more simplified and like oh I don't just have to stand here I can like we're moving we're doing things we're yep is that what you're talking about is that what they've taken and put in well yeah uh if it's important to the story so they've really uh made it so that they'll run and they'll yeah they'll run to the quest and they'll talk for only like 15 20 seconds but that you will get the gist of why you're here and why you're doing it in there and they'll also have the voice box above them as well so they're really like we get it you're you're trained we have trained you for years to skip and go as fast as humanly possible to get through the content to get to level cap so now it's like okay you probably read this if you did but if you didn't this is why we're doing this and it's important that's nice awareness honestly for them

to be able to really see how how their base plays the game and be like okay how do we work around this if we want them to actually pay attention to the story?

I know

my partner, Sam, he was told when he started playing, everyone was like, make sure you turn off chat because you don't want to get spoiled.

And he was like, spoiled on what?

He was like, I've never played WoW and worried about getting spoiled on shit.

But

he got a few hours in and was like, I'm so glad I had chat off because there

were stuff that I, yeah, that I didn't want to know was going to happen.

So yeah.

Ah, okay.

Yeah.

I didn't have that experience.

But then again, I don't really read in game chat.

Obviously,

streamers, right?

Our chat is over on the other side.

So I wasn't really paying attention to that.

But again, it's no fight.

It's really short.

So they've made a choice that like you have to do the campaign because it's narrative focused.

They want you to do the story.

And you can finish that midway through the leveling if you just do the story.

If you did like no dungeons or anything else, you will finish way below level cap, but they open all the endgame for you immediately.

Levels don't really mean anything in the new expansion.

So, if you want to start working on the endgame stuff, you could do that long before you level cap because it's about the story and then just go and do whatever the hell you want to do.

Um, that was great.

However,

however,

there is some phenomenal stuff happening in the war within.

And the main story, we'll call it the MSQ, is really tight.

It's good.

There's no fat on it.

It all makes sense.

It's really logical, which is worth talking about later.

But

the old wow is still there and if you do the side quests you will hit one that's like damn this is amazing like they've put so much stuff in which is stay a while and listen for people who care and it's extraordinary they've considered the setting the light behind them and they talk about important things that make you care and then You'll do like four of them, which are like, oh, this is old wow,

which is just completely rushed and unearned storytelling that makes no sense whatsoever.

It's like, hi, we're these important characters.

Oh my God, they died five seconds later.

Oh my God, we must seek retribution and retribution is achieved.

And you're like, what just happened?

Who are these people?

Why would I care?

Wait, what?

Yeah, exactly.

And you're just looking around going, uh,

I guess.

And that feels like old wow storytelling where it's like, can we make the Avengers in five minutes?

I think we can.

Let's take that challenge and make it happen.

Or a storyline that just has no relevance to whatever's going on whatsoever.

It's just like, hi, I'm standing here because I'm on a mission and you should help me do this mission.

Good job.

You helped me do the mission.

So there's times when the way that they're developing the story is Marvel.

And then there are times when it's DC.

And you're like, no, wait.

Kind of.

Yeah.

It's like

a bit.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's like, if you could be, I would like to do a list of like, do these quests because there's a quest in the first zone that I think is probably the first quest that's made some people cry.

Like, it's really good.

It deals with like Alzheimer's and old age and things like that.

And you don't see it coming.

And then by the end of it, you're like, oh my God, like, this is, I've never really had this feeling in wow.

Like, this is, this is new.

And then suddenly the next quest is like, did you know I need 12 butterfly wings for no reason at all?

They're right there.

You got to get those butterfly wings, dude.

I mean, like, yeah, you need them.

You've got to get them.

Yeah.

So

they're not quite there yet

on that.

It's significantly better.

And if you just did the ones that clearly are like the modern WoW stuff,

way better.

Infinitely better.

You know what's even better, though?

The cutscenes are not like massive exposition dumps.

You know, you play WoW sometimes and you get a cutscene and it just like drops a whole bunch of story on you because they're kind of designed to appear on websites for people who haven't played the game.

So it's like we have to start here.

Yeah, we have to start at A, but we kind of need to finish this cutscene at H.

We need to get a load of stuff in instead of it just going from A to B and being a little thing.

I don't remember if you were at, man,

it was definitely a BlizzCon.

There was some conversation that like a bunch of us were just having with, I think, Taryn Gregory at the time.

And it was about the cutscenes and the process of making the cutscenes.

And now, really, you're absolutely correct.

Like a lot of, for most people, going through the game is skip, skip, skip, skip, skip.

But people want to see the cutscenes because cutscenes look cool.

So at some point, the team was just like, all right, we have to put a lot of information into cutscenes because that's how most people are going to enjoy the story.

So, and yeah, I'm glad that it moved away from that because it very clearly after especially all the dragon flight stuff that I saw it was just like ah We have gathered together my fellow dragons and you're like oof bro oof And it's those cutscenes are some of the coolest things they have and to waste it on a scene where it's just people talking is like you could have done that in game in the in-game engine It didn't need to be a cutscene.

And so I'm glad like some of the stuff I've seen online looks great.

I'm like, oh, that's cool as hell.

So I'm happy they're actually showing cool things rather than like, and now our characters will chat about a thing you just did.

Like, okay.

And especially really hyper-accelerated storytelling.

The Dragonflight is probably the worst offender is there's a character called Viranoth who's a baddie.

And she's an ice dragon.

And she's like, hey, I hate you all.

And then the next cutscene, which is, if you play the campaign straight through, it happens within minutes.

And she's like, maybe I don't want to be a bad guy.

And the next cutscene is, you are now one of us and we trust you implicitly.

And then minutes later, it's like, and now we fight to the death on behalf of Azeroth.

Let's go.

And you're like, what the f just happened?

Like, how did this occur in any way, shape, or form?

Like, it's totally unearned.

It makes no sense.

And you can't buy into it in any way.

But these cutscenes are, they've loads more of them, but they're about 30 seconds long.

And they're just real sort of conversations that would happen instead of these massive exposition dumps where they're definitely designed to appear on websites and stuff.

They're just little things like Cadgar and Illyria.

Let's have a little chat and then send her on away and fill your own other characters.

Interestingly, what you said there, Jesse, though, they have a massive issue that they have to solve.

The pre-rendered in-game cinematics that they've worked on because they're important, perfect.

Absolutely perfect.

However,

they're interspersed like one for one almost.

So it's like 50-50 on which one you're going to get with ones that are in-game.

They're like,

And they're so distracting because it's so bad.

It's really horrendous.

It's not even close.

It's like so bad that you're watching it going.

This is really pulling me out of it.

The worst is as a troll, like most characters.

If you're an elf or you're something, you're just like,

if you're a troll, you're like.

Yeah, the entire time.

I'm like, it's too much.

Yeah, it looks so goofy.

It's so distracting.

I was like, please just stop showing their faces.

Like, give everybody a mask.

If you can't fix this, cover their mouths with like a bush.

I would like them to do that.

It'd be kind of funny.

If every scene is like, there's a a twig or something or a bird flies by at the right time because it's really distracting when it happens.

It's just how old.

It's weird to see people talk about like the age of games when you realize like, wow, it's old, old.

Like, and no matter how much they like doll it up and make it look better, it's still an an old game with old.

Yeah.

The bones are fragile on that beast.

And I feel like

even though I don't know that it would happen, I keep wondering if the whole like,

hey, we're going to try to bring the old story to a conclusion and have a new fresh start after these three.

Like, if that wouldn't lead to them being like, hey, here's a new engine for like WoW 2.

You know, I don't know what they call it that.

But I feel like certainly if they want to keep the train going, they have to do something.

That is my theory, and I are getting so much pushback on it.

I made a video about it.

I was like, I'm pretty sure they are working on what we can call it WowTwo, and people get a really different understanding of what that means.

That doesn't mean it's going to be like Unreal 5 or something.

I think, like,

because if they're going to kill Azeroth,

now is when you do it.

The World Soul Saga ends with that happening.

And because one of the biggest issues they're suffering from is the world is so freaking big and empty.

It's just not, it's way too big geographically for getting people in there.

And this makes sense that if they give themselves six years, they've been working on it for a few years.

Is and people are like, so

what do you mean?

So it looks like

it looks like COD.

I'm like, no, it's still wow, but they're held back so much by their engine and the old spaghetti code of what they would like to do, more than likely.

And, you know, they've told me that as well.

It's like we can revamp it.

We can do something else.

And we have an excuse for changing the world in some magical way.

And now would be the perfect time.

If they're going to do it, it should be now.

I mean, it's, it's like Metson, even if you go back to him talking, dude's like, hey, it's gonna be the end of a story, so your grandkids won't have to play it kind of vibe.

And all of that, yeah, I think you're absolutely correct.

I think all of it points to they're hiring people to do work on new stuff.

And it seems like

all the

sort of hiring things, the notices, even though it's like, oh, is this some sort of

like survival game or that kind of mind?

I'm telling you, I guarantee

behind the scenes, they're definitely, they have to be because it's 2004.

After a while, it's diminishing returns.

Like, you can only keep working on such an old structure for so long.

And, you know, everyone talks about like the age of Guild Wars or Final Fantasy or any of the.

They are young in comparison.

They're 10 years younger for the most part.

I'm talking about the era of San Andreas is when it came out.

Doom 3 is 2004.

Like, that's where this game came from.

Halo 2, those are the games of 2004.

You look at them and you're like, okay, we keep this going.

And this game isn't going anywhere.

If it survived the Shadowlands, it's fine for another fucking 10 years.

It's all good, baby.

It's all good.

So let's revamp this instead of...

Like, are they going to keep making the world bigger, right?

Like, we talked to Yashi P about it recently.

He's like, what are you going to do with keep adding jobs and things?

He's like, oh, my God, dude.

Like, it gets completely out of hand

with like oh we got to make cosmetics for now like 50 jobs hey that's really fun right uh we got to balance all this shit no they want to chop some of it out and get it down and the world right now wow is just absurdly huge you're just wandering around like i wish there was other people playing this game uh but they're all in one city that's everybody is the longest time i was like um

oh man i love that in world of warcraft a player could jump in if they're new and they can get anywhere and see anything and they can do everything.

And I love that the intro just like gets you into it.

And I was like, Final Fantasy XIV, it's rough because that you have to start.

And they say you have to start from the beginning because you're playing an RPG and they want you to experience the story from the start.

And I was like, I'd like that as an MMO.

Wow, let's you jump in.

And then I watched day nine play.

Oh, and God is so bad.

And he was like, yo, I don't know what I'm doing.

I don't know how I'm, who is this person?

And I realized watching him do it, I was like, oh my God, it's not nearly as cool as I thought it was.

That is a complete mess.

And I guess because I had years of playing it, I kind of knew things in advance and I was in my little like fun bubble.

But I realized, like, oh my, yeah, that sucks.

I'm watching him be like, what?

Who?

Why am I here now?

And why are you the champion of Alberta?

Is it that it was never?

That accessible or the new player experience is just different than it is.

20 years of stories and 10 expansions.

And everybody who starts World wants to get to the latest and greatest that they've seen the marketing for.

So they like fast forward you really quickly.

Like right now, if you were a fresh player, you start on like a tutorial island where you shipwreck.

It's a great tutorial, by the way.

It's really well done.

And then you go to Dragonflight.

And they're like, okay, you did a little simple tutorial, but have you heard of the aspects?

And now Rathian is here.

And Thrall's here.

And Jada's really upset.

Alex Draz has got a power pack.

And you're like, who the fuck?

What is happening here?

Like, why should I?

Now you're dragonflying.

Jump through the hoops.

You're like,

now there's Tuscar people who are frozen with fish.

Burn their people.

And you're like,

I guess.

Like,

Yesera's alive now.

Who?

Like, why is this happening?

Like, all these things.

And the worst part about the new one is Andwin, who's the main focus story character of The War Within, isn't in Dragonflight.

So it's like, oh, I did play through Dragonflight.

I took in that story.

I'm good now.

Stop the new story.

I guess I'm asking because, again, I've only played Vanilla Wow.

I stopped playing before there was an expansion.

And I honestly like don't.

I don't remember being confused, but I also don't remember it being very complex yet.

Well, I mean, that was vanilla wow.

That's very much going on.

Yeah, vanilla wow was the story you and your friends created because it was when you look back once you get to like level 50, 55

whatever story they were trying like falls apart.

There is no story.

It's like you're running around killing things.

You and your friends are exploring.

You're trying to sneak into Mount Hydral.

You're like doing cool stuff.

It's a vibe.

Like original vanilla WoW is straight up just like the first time I felt like I was exploring and discovering things in an MMORPG.

Like I'd played Final Fantasy 11 and I played some like EverQuest online adventures, ding.

But I, I was like, it's the first time I felt like I was discovering things with friends and we were doing cool stuff.

I remember discovering like the discs in Oldham or Eldwar or whatever hell is this.

yeah and i was like yo what the hell are these and i love that and it wasn't until i think probably wrath when they really started to like do story so yeah i under the vibe is different the vibe of the the franchise changes from where you started dukes to like where it is now where they definitely were like oh no we need to have a story and i think that clashes with a lot of players a lot of players don't give a damn about the story because they're there to raid they're there to have fun with friends it's a community experience with the guilds and stuff like that but there are players who love the story And so it's like a weird balancing act.

I think it's because they didn't set the ground rules at the beginning, which even though I think it's a giant pain in the ass that the Square NX team is like, it's a story.

It's always going to be a story start from the beginning.

And it makes a barrier of entry for people.

At least people understand what it is immediately.

Like WoW is an amorphous concept of like, it's 20 years of all these things they've put into it to make it sort of like approachable by everyone, which makes it confusing for a lot of people.

It's why a lot of my family left.

They all played WoW for years.

And every time they took a little break and came back, there was just too much shit.

They're like, I don't get what's happening.

Like, they tried in various expansions, and there was always like six or seven systems to learn that weren't there in the past.

And they were just overwhelmed.

And like, I just can't be bothered.

I'd rather play something that I understand and just left.

Which is what they've got rid of.

They've cut all that crap out.

Like, it's gone.

There's barely any systems in the game now at all that are like weird augments to your characters because they learn.

Like, people are just tired of it.

Like, it's, it's too much.

It's unapproachable.

It's inaccessible.

Nobody can be bothered and usually involves some sort of tedious grind.

And there's like 50 free-to-play amazing games around that people could just go, oh, I could just play this and have fun in five minutes time.

And that's much, much, much better for me to do.

Which is a good move.

Like so far, the direction is really exciting.

It's really exciting for me, especially because I have so burned and abandoned WoW and all that kind of stuff.

And to see them be like, okay, let's keep it simple, which is what they've done.

And let's focus on actually giving a story i will say this i hate the wow story in the past i never liked how it was told i didn't really care about it i didn't grow up with warcraft 2 3 or anything like that so i made a decision which was like okay i'm gonna forget everything i know about world of warcraft coming into the war within because there was a cutscene with uh jesseldo uh magni

where he was it's the lead-in to war within it was like the pre I was doing the pre-story for ready for the expansion launch right and I was I treated it like a stand-up comedy, which is how I treat WoW stories.

So I come in and he's like, oh, Azeroth's not talking to me anymore.

Boohoo, he's like a tier three simp and all this stuff.

There was memes flying everywhere about it.

And then I was walking home and I'm like,

if this was FF14, I would have really taken this seriously and been pretty upset that this guy who's dedicated his life to being the speaker of the entire planet has been abandoned and left behind and he doesn't know why.

And there's something similar in the Shadowbringers expansion where Heideland's disappeared and people are devastated.

Like, what have we done wrong?

Is she dead?

Has she abandoned us?

And all this.

And I was like, it's kind of a similar parallel in the story.

But I treated it this way because everything I know about the WoW story is that it'll be full of plot holes.

Something comedy is about to happen in five seconds' time that makes no sense.

And I'm just going to be like, this is stupid.

So I came back and was like, okay, I'm going to forget everything I know.

I treat these characters almost as if this is the first time I've met them.

And that's what I'm going to do.

And that was the best decision I've made because because it was infinitely better.

Because they have gone to such lengths, you know,

to remove plot holes.

Uh, because there was stuff I did do the alpha testing for the game, and there was a whole storyline thing with like uh these arathy people who are a bit xenophobic and they're scared of the void because of their god, and they were like, Oh, I don't like Illyria, she's got some void in her.

I don't think I'm gonna like this.

Like, the void is really bad, and they have this whole storyline with it, and they've cut it out because players can play characters that are influenced by the void.

It could be a shadow shadow priest or a void elf.

So, they've chopped all that out and then actually added extra dialogue in

because somebody must have gone.

It wouldn't make sense that they'd be scared of Illyria if you're stuck there glowing purple with void pouring out of you.

That would be really weird.

It's like we don't like this girl, but you, who's pouring out a void energy, you're okay.

Like, that wouldn't make any sense.

And they've done that in a number of other ways.

And there's a ton of foreshadowing of weird stuff happening, which I don't think we've seen before.

And wow,

like, there's a Jesse, you'll get this.

There's a weird squid thing floating around in a place that you can't reach called the guardian

Love it

yeah, I we're everyone's looking at we're looking at it today going

I Will say the one thing I'm very pleased with again having played none of the new stuff.

I'm really pleased with the fact that like when I saw some comments like

I don't know that I enjoy the fact that they brought back like naifu to be the villain.

Here's what I'll say.

I love that.

I'm so happy they were like, we're going to reuse old stuff and bring back old characters because one of my biggest pet peeves with WoW is they constantly are like, here's something totally new.

And there's about 18 characters you're not going to see that probably should be here, but we're going to ignore them for new.

And I'm glad they're like, no, no, no.

The villain this time is someone that we had from the past.

And like, we're going to bring that back and deal with it.

And I'm actually so pleased with that.

Because it's like, thank you.

Thank you for if they could end this three arc by just wrapping up loose threads boy would i be so thrilled about that entire premise yeah looks like the plan as well it's from the interviews they've they've teased it well it's it's like the most hammer on head subtle tease ever that illadan's back later on uh he's coming back they've dealt that i think everybody is there of relevance to the you know the longer story it's not a case of like why like you're saying here is like shouldn't kadgar be here because this is kind of a big deal shouldn't we call him like hey you know what the shit's hitting the fan here we should probably call this guy and they just don't uh that you know they've mentioned they've already mentioned the dragons are probably on the way as well so i think that's probably what mettson's uh from what i could tell and again i'm inferring a bit here from his wording is he came in and they were kind of making wow expansion the wow expansion

And it's like, this isn't going to work.

Like, if you want people to come back, we have to do something big.

We have to do something bold.

We need to change the direction.

We need a roadmap.

We need everything going on.

And that's when it changed direction to what it's doing now.

And it doesn't seem like they've missed anybody out.

Like, there's a few few people not there yet, but I kind of think they're coming.

And nothing I've seen so far that's a bit weird, I don't think isn't intentional.

Usually I could put stuff down in Wilds of like a bug or like, yeah, that's probably just a nothing thing that they've thrown in.

And 99% of the time, you're correct.

This time, though, there's a lot of stuff that's happening in the zones where you're like.

Pretty sure this is intentional and this is actually setting something up, which is great.

I actually had a theory,

which is kind of why I do hope you play it, Jesse, because we had to sit down, like we would do for FF, like we did recently.

What do you think all this means?

Because there's definitely things that we're discussing that there's a thing that can happen in one of the zones if you do something very specific that is really strange.

And we've managed to get some people to repeat it, but it's you have to be very specific in how you do it.

And if you do it, it's very odd.

What does this mean?

Like, why is this here?

Because nothing seems accidental so far let me ask you a quick so is it standard while operating procedure storytelling or is it more of a 14 style in that if i were to play now i'd have a complete end or is it you hit an end and but the story will continue through the patches and it's not really an end Yeah, so they are still, in my opinion, making a massive mistake in time gazing the last three quests of the story week by week.

Gotcha.

And I hate it.

I actually haven't even done it.

There's more story available.

I refuse until it's all out because I don't know about you, but I'm kind of old.

And if you feed me a bit of a story for 20 minutes, once per week, by the time it rolls around to the next 20 minutes.

I've forgotten it all.

I've forgotten the details.

I'm like, who is this again?

Why do I care?

I want that FF14 experience of it being like a nice big chunky lump of story that I can think about, I can carry on, and I could be immersed in.

I can't get immersed in the story after 20 minutes.

It's like reading one page of a book.

I'm like, I'll read the next page next week.

Like, that's not fun.

It's not interesting.

I don't like it.

I'd rather just give it us all.

So I've hard stopped.

It's like, the new story is out.

It's good.

I'm like, I don't care.

I'm not going to play it.

I think there's two more chapters due out over the next couple of weeks.

And I'm like, I'll just wait until we can do it all back to about.

I got a, a bunch of people were giving me, I was playing Guild Wars 2.

A bunch of people were giving me a hard time because the intro of the new expansion is you go to like a council meeting and everyone there literally summarizes what has happened in the previous expansions that they were involved in and everyone was like oh i hate this just talk it was like this is the best thing i've ever seen my entire life i mean you played it

i i mean i played guild wars 2 i'm talking about like when i play i play like

new expansion do a bunch of it and then don't touch it for like six months and then new expansion yeah and honestly i love that big fan of not having to worry about like paying out to just like have an account love that thank you you, Guild Wars 2.

But I keep, I'll do like 18 other games in between an expansion.

So when I come back, having them be like, hey, this is everything that's happened in the years and years that we've been doing this game.

I honestly, I was telling people, like, if anything, that's probably the expansion to start with.

You jump in, they tell you, here's a bunch of stuff that happened.

We're doing something new now.

We're going to go a different direction.

But like, this is why we're doing it.

And I was like,

Okay, I love that.

I'm glad it offered it for people.

But did you

chat was like, no, dude, this sucks.

There's so much talking.

And I was like, but I love this.

Yeah.

Kind of unique.

Did they only?

I'm curious because you've played it then.

Did they?

What about characters if you didn't do certain expansions?

Because they have the horizontal system.

So you can, you don't have to do expansions in an order.

Right.

So did those, did those characters just say, oh, even if you haven't played, say, Heart of Stone or whatever, I'm going to fill you in on what happened with like Path of Fire and things like that.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, they,

so you know, in different expansions, they'll call you different things.

Like, they'll call you commander.

They'll call, right?

All that plays a role too, where different people will call you different things and they have a conversation about, like, well, actually, I feel like you're definitely more of a commander type.

I don't know.

Like, it's very cute the way they do it, but they're all there from all the different storylines, the people that are left alive, and they're all there and they will just talk to you about it.

And you can walk around and it's all optional too.

So you can walk around, talk to them, and be like, yeah, you know, ever since Plant Harley Quinn destroyed that town, man, it's been crazy.

crazy.

And they'll, and, and you just get all the stuff.

And I'm like, yeah, okay.

I loved that.

I thought it was really great to just catch everyone up if it was needed.

And there were some things I absolutely forgot that it was like, that did happen.

Right, right.

And then they're like, all right, well, it's about to get a lot worse because the new big bad's coming.

So we need to send you off to go recruit some bear people.

And you're like, why would I want?

Like, no, we need those bear people, dude.

Like, okay, I'll go.

And then you go to the new area and you get caught up in another adventure and the story isn't like a grand sweeping tale it's pretty basic uh

but it's like the start of something big is definitely gonna happen and so you go you get like you know there's they bring back the spear which is a super fun thing so it isn't just an underwater vibe there's homesteading so you can like have a new like house

i didn't play because i i know i want like four days building my house like i don't i can say the wow was my expansion was coming i was like i don't want to start a guild Wars 2 expansion two days and then leave it for a while.

So I'm banking it.

But the whole setting looks awesome in the previous.

Yeah.

All of it's really cool.

I, what's crazy is I think I found out that some of my old items can be put into the, because there was stuff that you could put in like your guild house, which I never had one.

So I have no, I don't know a damn thing about how that works.

But there were some things that was like, hey.

Put that in your home.

You're going to love it, buddy.

And I was like, yes, okay.

It's, it's super neat to see how it all works.

And I'm a big big fan of just

the ease of access to that game.

Bless it for existing.

Like, you do not need to be a smart person to play Guild Wars 2.

It is 10 buttons max for a lot of people.

And you go in and you just do the whole thing.

And if you want to be good.

There's a very high ceiling to be good, but to access it, it's pretty simple.

Plus, free to play, unless you want to buy the expansions, in which case, by then, you'll know if you like it or not.

So, like,

if you haven't played before, give it a shot.

It's one of those ones that like is constantly on my PC that just exists.

And if I'm bored one day, I'm like, yeah, I'll turn on good wars, see what's up.

Yeah, I'm not completing the map, though.

That is insanity.

No, there's no reason.

Like, there's no reason to.

If you're doing that, then you should get a different game.

That's too much.

That's like you love Ubisoft from start to finish.

Like, you really want to collect all those towers.

Like, there's no way.

Why is it

so difficult?

Because

some MMOs really throw themselves into their housing system and let you have all of this

play and ability to do so much, and everybody everybody gets a house and whatever and other MMOs make it a whole thing and make it much more difficult to have a house and to do whatever you'd like with it and and WoW still doesn't really have like a home system does it nope or um yeah when I spoke to them about it it's a case of they can do it like it's there they tried with like the garrison system in WAD But it's not going to compete with the way the game, this is what kind of Jesse was talking about earlier, is like it kind of needs a revamp revamp from the ground up, code-wise.

It's not going to be as the players would expect it to be.

Like, if they bring housing in, you want it to be like Wildstar or what Guild Wars 2 has just done, where you can do some absolutely crazy things.

Like, FF-14s is really good, but most, a lot of people use different ways of making things appear in the house because they're not designed to go in that way.

So they do things

as well.

Apparently, it's a really good housing system.

It's not like they don't want it, right?

It's not like they don't want to have diable armor.

How much money could they make out of it?

It's as simple as that.

It's not a case of they don't want this stuff,

but it just wouldn't fit into the way WoW is built.

So that's why I kind of suspect, and it makes sense, there's going to be a revamp in some way to allow them to do these things because they could make a fortune with diable armors and things.

It's like when Dod Trail was announced, it was all like, we're going to have a new story, new raid.

There's all these characters coming in.

Awesome.

Also, you could dye your armor two different colours.

Everyone lost.

That was it.

People were like, fuck everything else.

This is the best expansion ever because I could put two colors on my transmug.

Bro, I've worn the same leopard print underwear on my character for years now.

And there's only so many ways you could dye those underwear until now.

Life's different.

Yeah.

The spots can be all sorts of colors now.

The spots can be different colors.

It's so good, dude.

Yeah.

It's one of those things that I don't know why, but the answer they've always given is: if we create player housing and WoW, no one will be in in cities anymore.

They'll all just be hanging in their houses.

But every game I play that has player housing,

people just throw their crap in their house, then go back in the city to show off their outfits.

Like, they don't want it.

And some people are going to just hang out in their house and fiddle around with it.

And they're still playing your game.

Fucking Star Wars Galaxy had non-instance housing.

When was that game?

Literally, people built cities of player-made shit.

It's been done before.

It could be done again.

Surely, if, like, this idea, I think everyone thinks it would be like garrison's because that did happen in woe nobody oh yeah garrison like everybody was just like i'm not leaving this place because it had everything i need right on my doorstep it was ultra convenient but you don't have to do it instanced you could do and even if you could do it like 14 it is instanced but it has like 30 houses like there's people roaming around you have neighbors we threw a block party Where we had DJs in every different house and all the people who lived in the neighborhood threw a different style of party and that we traveled around to.

It was sick.

It was so good.

So it's like, yeah, this is great.

And WoW needs something like that because its social elements are trash and they're still trash to this day.

Where every other game has advanced in some way and made their social elements better.

Even Guild Wars has the Guildhousing.

I said we didn't use it, but 14 Without Player Housing for me is a dead game.

Like, it's so much a big part of the fun is to come home and see the Lalafells and put them in a fire spit.

Or they're having some sort of demonic ritual downstairs.

And we had the Race to World First for Savage recently, and they built a theater theater in the house themed around the raid where viewers of the race could come and sit and watch.

And we green screened them all.

So, and then we have the casters' characters in a little casting area in there.

Like, being able to do that, utterly incredible.

And you want shit like that

to happen.

So, yeah, they need to catch up on that stuff.

But I imagine if you, I mean, Jesse, you played Wad.

If Player Housing was like Garrison's, it's like, you could put something in this block and this block, the disappointment would be crushing.

The players would be like, no, dude, this is not what I'm thinking of with player housing at all.

So, yeah, they probably need to do a revamp to get it in.

The biggest problem with the garrisons was they gave you everything.

Like, most player housing is a house, and you get to put your stuff in it.

And maybe you can have an NPC or two that will like be a vendor or something.

Garrisons were like quest givers and auction houses.

And like, everything was like, you had everything.

I don't remember if auction absence, but it doesn't matter.

You had everything there.

You could craft.

You could do quests dailies.

And in a concept that's awesome i love that but in reality it just meant that you were constantly by yourself trying to like farm an npc who would be your friend and you're like please help me and i it's like okay i gear him up which you also did in your garrison which is the most hilarious part is like every it was why they went with practicality over cosmetics weird because they're like you can invite people over it's like why

Get out.

And then they literally put a mine and a garden in there so you could do your professions in there.

You never needed to leave.

You had your own private stash that respawned every little while and it kept feeding you points as well, like a pachinko machine.

If you stayed in there long enough, it just trickled some more points to you.

You're like, ooh, cool, I can do my next thing.

Yeah, that was

really didn't incentivize you to leave.

No, like an FF14 house has a room.

You can store stuff.

Other than that,

it's dress up, right?

And people love playing dress up in MMOs.

Like, that's all they want to do.

And if you work on that, it's great.

And I want to see it because it would be so good.

i would love to see proper guild halls and shit like that and in wow and little little tents i mean you want the pores to have their crap hole little like zugzug tent like for the orcs like a little orc village and then you know the everybody else doing their thing that's great that's really fun it adds to the atmosphere of the world so i hope we get there Plus it allows guilds to do what guilds do best in a while, which is show off.

And I feel like having a guild house where like in front of your house on a pole is the head of the most recent boss you killed.

And like, there's so many ways to do it.

And you can put up the trophies and different things.

It's what people have wanted forever.

And I feel like all you got to do is deliver on that and people will be so happy.

Guilds will eat that up.

They'll just be like, yeah, look at my, look what we did.

And so you get more than just a title.

You can have people come over and be like, wow, that's the world first killers of the boss.

Like, I don't know.

The race to world first, Jesse.

How dare you?

That's the world.

But like, you know, people would do that.

They'd be like, yo, look at them.

They got their house is all lit up with cool colors because they killed that thing that one time.

And WoW's very good about being like, you got an achievement and we're going to say this is the achievement for like, you were the first people to do this thing.

Taking that achievement and then putting it in like, now you can show it off in your house is like, only one guild has this.

I think that'd be super interesting to see.

Yep, that's the stuff we're hoping for in the future.

One day.

One day we'll get there.

One day.

The question that I was going to ask that might be a very silly question, but most of the people that I know that still play a lot of WoW, they'll say that they play a lot of it because they still have a bunch of friends that play it and they've invested all of this time.

And, like, you know, it's more, it's more for the community vibe because of how much of themselves they've invested in the game, right?

And you were talking about in 14 having like block parties and shit.

What does WoW have

for people to do with each other that's just like fun?

fun.

Uh, practically now a lot.

Like, I would say this is the best expansion to be a solo player ever that they've just released.

But everything you can do can be grouped up for as well.

Uh, so they've left that open.

Like, MMOs have kind of gone more catered towards the lone wolf types.

People do like just being able to get on with shit on their own and not be reliant on whether or not they're buddies online.

Uh, they try and schedule stuff like that.

Uh, so, like, for multiplayer, there's endless content, literally, like with Mythic Plus and the new Delft system and things like that.

But there's some more solo stuff in there.

But they don't have, and WoW's always

suffered for this, they don't have fun things to do that don't give rewards.

So that player base is kind of designed that everything that isn't giving you something tangible is a waste of time.

Whereas 14 has promoted the opposite.

There's a billion things to do.

That don't give you anything worthwhile, but are just really fun to do.

Right?

And I look forward to every single time I log into FF14 to go and do the slices right and it's kind of pointless yes yeah but it's so fun especially if you're streaming so that thing has like a hundred people on it that are just getting clobbered all over the platform and stuff like that and it's an utter waste of time and i love it now i must have played that a thousand plus times at this point and it's every time i log in yeah every time i log in i immediately go to do the gates i go do my cactpots

Do you play the kids lottery?

Do you log in like, I need to check my lottery ticket?

Yeah, just the mini ones.

I'm not doing the chumpo, no, because I forget about it, dude.

Because they're like, all right, check back in by this day.

And I'm like, I won't.

Thank you though.

Like, you know, so they set, it's kind of pointless.

I mean, they give mounts, they give you coins, right?

So you can eventually get mounts and things.

But people usually have millions more than they need.

But every week, people religiously log in because it's like, hey, we want you to come up with an outfit that's like summer honeybee themed.

Okay, go away and do it.

And then you come back and you get judged.

You get get a score.

You failed all the braces or whatever.

Yeah, it's really cute.

Just play minigames.

Octo got super into chocobo racing.

That was like his whole life for a while.

You know, just because he enjoyed it.

There was a time period.

Yeah, there was a time period when, sort of in between that period after, I think, Shadowbringers, where everyone started playing Final Fantasy 14 and jumping on that train.

If you watch those videos, most people are doing chocobo racing.

If you watch what people are doing, it's almost all chocobo racing and it it's a it has no point to the game it just exists they really need to revamp it if we're being if we're being real but it's a fun time killer it's fun it's fun to just be like

i made my new chocobo and i'm gonna take him racing yeah i enjoy it yeah i found it really weird wow they built a i can't remember his name gaslo maybe pleasure palace in one of the old zones.

Ajara,

ajara, and it had a race course that they built.

Like Like, nothing there, and it's totally cosmetic.

You can't click anything, you can't, it's got a swimming pool, it's got diving boards.

I was like, oh, they're doing it.

We should have some sort of gambling or something.

And WoW, they have it in 14, and it's fine.

Like, there are some countries that can't do it, so they change the rules for them.

But, like, we have race courses now, we have all these things, like, mini RC.

All the tech is there.

We control RC cars in the game.

There's even a game of chess now that came with the War Within.

You play chess with Andoin

and you play it like Fort Condor.

It's exactly like Fort Condor.

Yeah, and I was like, are we actually playing the game?

They're like, yep, you sit at a table and you play a game with Andoin.

And I'm like, this is awesome.

Nothing for the players anywhere.

Nothing whatsoever.

And they tried a snail race thing, I think, in Dragonflight, but it was kind of crap and slow.

I don't get it.

Like, it's just, where's that element of just getting together and having fun?

And also, that makes the world busy because people are always in the the gold saucer because there's always something going on.

They have a new event, big event every 20 minutes, and then they fill the place with mini-games.

So, there's constant activity and fun going on there.

Why has none of that?

It just seems to skip it over.

And I don't know whether it was because of gambling laws or whatever, but clearly FF's got around it, right?

But also, even in the gold saucer, some of those games are just straight jank.

But they're terrible.

They're fun to play.

The interesting thing is that I believe, and this, I could be mistaken, but I believe the lore behind it is that it's just like one-offs that devs on the team made in their free time to like make these things.

So, some of them are awesome, and some of them are super chank, and it's them just trying stuff.

So, it's like one dude made, oh, I made this game.

And I feel like you got to have that on the wow team.

There has to be so many people who could just make something, which is probably how they ended up with the chess game that's kind of like Four Condor, I guess.

Well, how do you think?

Let's do it.

Wow.

There's no hearthstone.

Like, your bottleneck account is clearly linked.

They know what cards you've got.

You know what gets you got.

How can you not in-game?

They literally have the deck.

You can get the thing and like, yeah.

Literally, you should be able to go up to it, sit down and be like, I'm now playing.

You go to some ends and it's just sitting there.

And I'm like, surely you could click on it.

And then you're playing it in game.

Like that could, that could be an easy thing.

There must be some sort of code issue or something.

Like maybe it is something that's linked to there because you would think it would bring up your, you would have a place in-game where you could go and get a game of Hearthstone going with somebody you can see.

Yep.

And you could click it and it's like, which deck do you want to play?

And you could talk to each other because you're in-game and have a little tournament or whatever,

organized tournaments and all this.

The tools for players, that's the only thing I miss from WoW, and it's still not here.

And I hope it comes, is FF-14 gives you a lot of tools for players to create their own content.

Right.

Like, there's all these tools that they don't, they just add things to it every now and again, but it's really just there for the players to make things and have fun with.

Like, if you want to build a nightclub, an ERP club, or a hangout, or a bar or whatever you want to make, you can do that.

And it's all player-driven.

And that's been massively successful for them because Discords now pop up, which are telling you, like, hey, we're going on a hunt train.

They designed them in a way so you can do hunt trains.

They're one of the best things ever.

And in fact, I did the wings recently, FF-14.

I don't know if you've got them, Jesse.

But

it's like 99 kills of the boss.

or a random drop.

Yeah.

And the fact that you can re-farm bosses over and over again is a kiss and a curse because you end up like stuck there for days, like farming endlessly.

But that is kind of better than why I was like, oh, you get one try a week and that's it.

And then you end up like, okay,

I guess, but that's what I want to do.

And a lot of players want to do that as well.

And clearly it's not a problem over there.

So why is it a problem?

You know, that mentality is still different of like, oh, well, we want to restrict how much you can do or get, even if it's cosmetic.

We want to make sure you don't get too much.

And then you can try again next week and then week after and week after.

Instead of like, I'm going to dedicate and slam my face into this for three weeks or for three days and really have fun grinding this shit out.

And then, yeah, I get it.

It's awesome.

Really good.

And I would like to see more of that where I can just progress something.

Most things are gated in some way.

Yeah, it does.

So it feels like the same way with

like subscription streaming services.

The way that if you do WoW versus Final Fantasy as an example, Final Fantasy has sort of like the old streaming subscription service model where it's like, we will release all of a show at once

and then not have anything for a little bit.

And if you continue to pay your sub, thank you.

And WoW is like the Disney Plus model, which is like, no, no, no.

We're going to release something every week and you're going to get something new constantly, but it's just going to be a slow rollout.

But it makes you paying 15 bucks make sense because we're, you know, we're giving you something

and you're not just like going to wait.

Like, it's that weird thing where it's clearly to, to their benefit, but still, like, the selling point is like, hey, you're not going to have to pay us for nothing.

Yeah.

Like,

sure, sure, sure.

But it feels like that's the vibe where I can understand why some people in the 14 community, especially after N Walker or Dawn Trail or whatever, they hit the end and they're like, there's nothing to do.

What am I doing?

I want to do something right now.

And WoW consistently is like, oh, we'll give you stuff.

There's, here comes something new.

Here comes something new, but they gate things behind that new stuff every time.

So it's like,

I don't know.

It's, I mean, they're just different business models, but I always thought it was funny that your options are either play a thing a bunch and then either choose not to subscribe anymore or just sit on the fact that you're paying for nothing for a little bit or sit there patiently waiting for something new, but you can't get access to it.

And you're like, oh my God, I miss when you used to just release all the episodes at once and now I got to wait for a whole damn week.

This is stupid.

I hate this.

But those are the models.

And I will say, I've played Dragon.

What was it?

I played the new Wire expansion now pretty consistently since the early access Scamboozel.

I am still not even done with the Final Zones questing, let alone all the tracks and things you can work on.

Like, there's a huge amount they've put in there for you to work on and mess around with.

Even though I'm streaming it like seven hours a day,

there's a lot.

We are in the honeymoon phase, though, of every expansion.

The launch is the honeymoon phase and I'd like you Jesse as soon as the grind hits I'm out like I'm out at that point as soon as you're like okay now you kind of need to Dedicate and commit.

I'm like, I don't need to commit to shit.

I'm out of here.

I can go and play something else

I've got sat here and play some and do that which is way I prefer to play but right now I've still got infinite things to do So they've gotten much better in terms of just piling content in I haven't felt restricted yet, but it is there.

I know it's there.

I know in a couple of weeks, I'll probably hit it, and I'll be like, okay, there we are.

That's good.

But they can't help that, right?

MMOs can't make infinite content.

It'll just be gobbled up so fast by so many players.

It'd be so bad.

No good.

But it's better to do I see.

The story is good.

It's very good.

I'm here for a good story.

I'm here for it.

I'm going to be a patient boy and wait until...

I don't know if this is how modern WoW is, but I think my big takeaway from World of Warcraft is you're rewarded for not playing immediately.

Oh, dude.

That's how I feel.

I said this the other day.

I hadn't played at all in Dragonflight, really.

I jumped in every now and again to see what the new patch was about and then gone away again.

So I had it leveled anyway.

I characterized it.

It's the first WoW expansion since the Bird of Crusade.

I didn't have every character capped before the new expansion came out.

This time I had one that was ready.

They put in a system with a war with incoming that took you 30 minutes to cap your characters.

and i did them all in like four hours i was just done like i all 11 of them done and geared like most of them were geared right uh and i was like they really because at this point i don't know if you play any of you to both play mop remix

there was a short-term event called mr pandario remix they let you just make a brand new character level it up stupid fast like some people were doing it in less than 30 minutes from fresh and at the end of the remix when it ran ran out they just let you have that character on the retail game they just swapped it over people made 20 to 30 characters so they have completely given up after 20 years finally

on even caring how many alts people have because it's a losing battle right this game has been out for 20 years people have like 60 capped characters that they've just been playing on casually and leveling up so it's who fucking cares at this point about how whether you play alts or not which is why they got the warbands thing now which is really good so the rewards are shared across all your characters uh for the first time ever

so that's been impro they've seemed to have let go of a lot of the old traditions like oh no we want everyone to focus on one character only nope that's gone that's dead we're gonna time gate everything nope that's dead as well like you can focus on bunch of shit it's fine if you want everything yeah you're gonna have to dedicate as an mmo at the end of the day but like it'll you can either do it play a little bit get a bunch of rewards really quick and then dip out or you can kind of grind it out and get some silly things for it i'm impressed whether it'll last or not i'm really interested to see when we see full medson involvement which i think is going to be like midway and if some of the things that we've i'm hoping and praying a lot of the foreshadowing of weird stuff that we've seen

is all intentional i'm choosing to believe it is I am choosing to believe this is not just like crackpot theory, tinfoil, like, oh, I bet that's got some really interesting meaning.

And then it's like, no, we just like misnamed a mob.

No, yeah right that might happen but right now i'm choosing to believe that everything i'm seeing which is really weird and interesting and makes you go huh is all intentional i think it is but maybe i'm sniffing the balls i don't know i don't know it might be it might be but i'm i'm hoping i'm hoping on i keep getting told i'm riding crazy copium but

I'm pretty happy on it.

I'm still waiting on an answer for that tale in that dungeon.

It's been 10 years.

I got nothing.

So it may it may be a big nothing burger.

I don't know, man.

It reminds me of the

when they stuck the giant squid or octopus in the middle of the ocean.

Yeah.

And people discover it, like, what is that?

And he's like, we thought it looked cool.

Like, you know, it could just be a we thought it looked cool moment.

It is.

Like, I talked to, I'm not going to say his name, one of the devs, who literally stuck, because he thought it was funny.

He stuck an enemy below Silithus, one of the zones, just below it.

So you could target it, but you could never touch it.

And he made it unique because it constantly changed into every model in the game.

It just constantly kept cycling round and round.

So it was a ridiculous enemy.

And he put it there because he just thought it was hilarious and no one could get it.

And then five or six years later, WoW made Death Knights that could actually drag things.

They could move enemies.

And

then he pulled, someone pulled it out the floor.

And six years after the game was made, they're like, who the hell put this here?

Like, what is this thing?

Like, these players have found this thing that's doing that.

He's like, I mean, you know, it was funny.

I don't think there's much of that going on.

They feel much more like they're being professional.

It's important that there's no

nothing like that going on that leads to dead ends.

I haven't found any.

And I've been looking, man.

I've been looking real close.

I haven't found anything that's like, that doesn't make any sense.

And I'm waiting for it because I always have that with the WoW story.

I'm like, that doesn't make any sense.

That is stupid, right?

Like, we had Shadowlands where it was like, you saved us and opened our doors and rebuilt our God.

Now we'll never talk to you again because you didn't choose us with our special library card.

Get away, you scum.

It's like, what the fuck is going on here?

That's so weird.

Nothing like that's happening so far.

Everything seems to make sense.

Some creepy things, some fun things.

I mean, even if down the line, you're like, all right, yeah.

You know, the payoffs here, they weren't what I wanted them to be.

It just feels nicer to let yourself enjoy it and have fun than to be like, I bet this is going to be garbage in the end, you know?

Like, so I played ball for years, though.

Yeah, like, like when you, when you were talking about, you know, just sort of almost like to protect yourself, just impulsively making fun of every serious thing, right?

That's, it's like building up this crust of like, I refuse to just let myself get invested and have a nice time.

Like it's, I think it's nice to just go, you know what?

I'm going to just let myself have fun.

And if I get burned down the line, I had fun.

It's okay.

I had fun.

I'll never give them another chance on the story anyway.

They'll be dead to me, but at least I had a little bit of fun.

I'm not saying that, but like, if they were like, no, next time we're going to get the story right, and we're like, fuck you, man.

Like, we did this.

We played this.

I took that stand.

I said, look, I will forget everything about Magni turning up and going,

champion.

every time you see him like a ridiculous robot saying it over and over again.

I'm like, all right, I'm going to take this guy seriously.

Okay, this is kind of sad.

It's interesting.

It's heavy.

It's weighty.

But if they like burn me later on and suddenly we're doing some sort of Goku super cyan shooty laser thing at the old gods and oh my god kill me like I'm not doing this again man.

That's my biggest worry is

I am excited about the idea of what you're talking about.

I'm excited about the idea of Metson coming in and doing the whole thing.

But the the implication is this is a six-year story arc that will eventually pay off.

And the part of me that's like, y'all, I spent 15 years in that story arc that was eventually going to pay off and it did not.

So you want me to give you another six, bro?

And so I'm just patiently waiting for what this will be.

And then if it turns out to be awesome, I'll jump in right before the next expansion and be like.

All right, I'm ready to experience the story that I hope is going to be good.

But I'm terrified that I'll be like, all right, let's go.

I'm ready.

I'll get invested.

And then it'll be, you know, five years from now, the last expansion is like, my name is Gargamel and I'm the actual real villain.

And you didn't know about me, but I've always been here.

And I'll be like,

yeah, and I'll just, they call me.

But I was only the bad guy because of this other bad guy.

Yeah.

So you did play Dragonfly.

Well, yeah, Shadowlands.

That was the end of that one.

And really,

every single one, If you keep going back far enough, the like cause and effect of like, there was actually another

one.

I'm actually the victim and you should feel bad for me because of this guy over here.

Yes.

Yeah.

That was the end of Shadowlands.

Jesus Christ.

It's as crazy as I could guess that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, it was, it was, well, as you may have heard, not received very well.

We could say that.

A misstep in the game with that one.

What would you say is the last WOW expansion that was received?

well received well yeah oh boy i mean honestly the and this is just going by having play i would say the last time people loved universally was wrath of the lich king when cataclysm hit people did not like the fact that it was like new and the world changed after that you had miss and people did not like like there was always something someone hated

But if you mean like just generally across the board attitude, I'd probably say Legion was probably the last time because there's a lot of cool stuff in there.

But like universally loved is like 20 years ago.

I hate Wrath of the Lich King.

I am being the odd one.

Yeah.

Because I'm a raider.

I was the super nerd raider and they made everything so dirt box easy that I

nearly quit like very early on.

I was like, this is awful.

We finished everything in a week.

I was bored to death immediately because I did not care about the story.

I cared about getting shinies and doing more damage.

And

Wrath for me was like,

so boring.

I hate it.

I'm seeing a lot of people in your chat dudes be like, Mr.

Pandero is great.

Ladies and gentlemen,

you all got gaslit.

You got gaslit.

I roasted it, dude.

It's so roasted.

You got so gaslit.

The story, cool.

Locations, cool.

The actual mechanics and the things happening in the game, insane.

You have forgotten the grind they put in that game.

You're out of your mind, chat.

That was so gated and so like grindy and like, do your 25 quests a week or a day, dummy.

dummy like that was so you are out of your mind it ended it like WoW has always played this magic trick where it's generally started including Legion started horrible absolutely atrociously badly but by like midway to the end it gets really really good because they've usually stopped putting that shit on you they've like given up We don't need these massive grinds.

Everybody's complaining.

Everybody's bitching.

So we're just going to.

And then everybody gets, I thought it's bitching was all right, actually.

Yeah, because they get like eight, nine months of a really good game that was out for two years.

So Legion was like that.

Legion, everyone forgets.

Legion started to the biggest controversy of all time.

They lied to the playerbase.

They lied to us.

They completely lied.

They had people grinding shit that didn't fucking work.

And they knew it didn't work because they had switched shit off and not told you.

And it was like, everyone forgets that.

It's fine because we got everything for free later on.

And Mop, the same.

I gave up on Mop because they were like, we promise we're putting in this new daily content.

It's just for fun.

You won't need to do it.

But by the way, we've tied all the legendary rewards to it.

So if you don't do it, you won't get your nice orange items, will you?

And you're like, you motherfuckers.

So you had to do it.

It was awful.

It was the worst thing ever.

But then later on, Mop was amazing.

Mop was so good.

But you forget that first eight months

where it's just horrible and nasty.

I mean, that's what I'm waiting for.

I'm waiting for the ecosystem of WoW content creation to finally catch up to the hype of the game.

Because it happens all the time.

And eventually, I don't know.

I'll give it maybe another week.

We're going to start seeing videos that are like top 10 reasons this game actually is ass.

And I'm waiting for that because it's going to happen.

I know there are going to be videos about why it sucks.

The thing is, what they put in those videos will determine if it actually sucks.

You know what I mean?

There's here are problems.

And then there's nitpicking.

I think this, even though Dodge is still working on Dawn Trail, and I really want to talk about Dawn Trail with you, but like, here we are.

Um,

got my shit.

In Dawn Trail,

you got the Dawn Track.

Yeah, the F-14 binder that Jesse doesn't have.

I hate you.

Um, so my God,

the uh, but like in that game, in Dawn Trail, there are absolutely critiques that I'm like, yeah, no, I agree with you completely on that.

And then there are things that are just so clearly nitpicks.

They're like, you're just looking for shit to be mad about now.

and i feel like that's the same case with wow is there are always going to be things and expansions that are like okay that stinks but then there are going to be things that's like y'all are just you got you need content to create is what you're doing right now like this is just you making a video because you got to like hit a quota and make a video this week and i'm waiting for that era to hit because that will be indicative of what the game actually is if people are just nitpicking about things Then that's just content creation for the sake of content creation.

There's got to be one game undy, right?

That's what it is.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

just like, all I play is this, and so I have to make stuff about this.

Yeah.

Yeah.

If I was, I was in that boat for ages because I got to the point of like depression because I was only making content on WoW and I was waking up every day fucking miserable because our job is to entertain.

Hopefully you should come and see us and people should walk away like, hey, I had a really good day today.

It was awesome.

We're putting the stream.

And I'm turning up like, okay, I guess we're playing WoW today and I fucking want to die.

Like, no, no, I've got to make a video about this later.

But how

stupid this is.

But at the same time, yeah, I did it for like 12 months until I gave up.

But you are, Jesse's right.

And I said this to Ian as well.

It's like, yes, I was very angry at you, but at the same time,

you did fuck up.

But the fuck-ups are only things that you would care about if you're playing this game nine hours a day, every single day.

Like the overwhelming majority of people don't even see these things.

And you're like, this tiny thing is the worst thing I've ever seen in the world.

And it's horrible.

And this is ruining the game.

For a start.

And I was a bit like that for a long time because I was embedded in it and if you're constantly getting harassed by this little tap on the side of the head that's not that annoying after nine hours i think is the worst fucking thing ever because no no people aren't really grinding islands expeditions relentlessly to get their artifact power to some obscure arbitrary level because it makes your shoulders work which is what we were doing right i mean that's still wow it's rot fault please don't do that to people like but yeah if you're content creating and you're only playing one game and it's your entire life, which it was, then yeah, you're going to run into that point of making these devices.

Your experience is different for sure.

You're going to make videos about this is so shit.

It's the worst thing ever.

And it's like, no, it's not.

Or you can be Crendor and be like, here are all the new towns and what

LaCroix they remind me of.

Good content.

Yeah.

Daddy.

Yeah, so all just dip when it hits that point.

When you're grinding, like, I'm done.

I've got to go play some rebirth or something like that.

And that's what I'm curious about.

I want to see what's going to happen when we get to that point.

When the sort of, because right now,

we're in the cycle of the, it's, dude, this is so refreshing.

It's so good.

This is great.

It'll eventually come back around to, all right, here's the problems.

And when I see what the problems are, then I'll have a better understanding of what the game actually is.

Because, yeah, people really don't notice stuff until...

max level and they're running around and they're so bored they're like finding issues at that point.

Then we'll know more.

But I'm pretty, you know, everyone that I've talked to so far has been like, yo, I'm really enjoying it.

I'm having a good time.

Again, most of them are people like Krendo, who's like, I just hit the second zone and I spent 20 minutes in a pool and I was looking at the fish.

Did you know there are four different types of fish in that pool?

And I'm like, no, I didn't, but I didn't know that.

And he's like, they're awesome looking.

I'm like, okay, cool.

Yeah.

How long do you expect to play an MMO for these days, genuinely?

I mean, two to three weeks.

That's it.

Yeah, it depends on most of the time.

I will do the story bits.

And then if they're like, hey, go do these side quest things or go grind this.

I'm like, nah.

Which is why I tend to gravitate more towards like a Guild Wars where you're paying, in this case, I think it was like 30 bucks for the expansion.

And then that's it.

So I can go in, I can play that, and I can move on.

The only thing I'm actually actively subscribed to is currently is Final Fantasy 14.

This is because I

play

they got look, they got me with the glams.

I'm like, I need that outfit dude i gotta log in today so i can get that outfit like that's where i'm at mentally it isn't about i was talking with uh another

final fantasy 14 streamer lamata yesterday and we were having this conversation about like well would you ever do another um

uh like ultimate fight and i was like well i looked through all of the weapon glams and um

yeah i mean like i got all i want already and all these other ones are cool but i'd have to like work really hard to get that and like i could just wear wear this other one, and it's so much cooler looking.

So, like, I don't think I need to do that.

And he's like, you don't want to do it just with a challenge?

It's like, no, no, I don't, like, I don't like the way that glam looks.

So, like, I don't really care that much.

That's where I'm at.

I only do things because it looks cool rather than, oh, well, I got to get that because I have a title that says I'm more important than you.

Like, I do not care.

I just want to like look like a little cool dude running around.

That's where I'm at mentally in video games now.

Like, yeah,

you're never looking cool, Jesse.

I've seen that thing.

I'm the coolest man.

He's so cool.

See, I know, obviously, I want to do that stuff because I've always been a mythic raider, high-end raider.

That's where I came from.

But my life doesn't allow it anymore.

I have two kids.

I'm married.

Like, that's not happening.

I can't stream raid progress.

It's too boring.

Like, I could get away with it for like a day.

And the next day it's like, okay, people just checking in.

What percentage we are?

All right, cool.

I'll come back later.

Like, it's just bad stream content.

Like, I'm not doing that.

So it's like, when would I do this?

So I have to get rid of my kids.

Maybe when they're like 18, I can raid them

or something like that.

And I could go home and raid.

People love a full circle, dude.

So when you come back around to doing content

the way you did pre-kids, people will be like, oh my God.

It's like old preach, you know?

I want to come back and watch you post 18-year-old kids play raiding and do that because I imagine you'll be like, why is it moving so fast?

Slow down.

Who is this boss?

What are you doing?

Oh, my God.

Did they make this harder?

Like, I just imagine that's what's going to happen.

Like, it's already there.

This is hard.

Dude, my kids are 11 and 9.

They play Fortnite relentlessly.

And they're like, dad, play Fortnite with us.

This was about a year ago.

And I was like, okay, I'm just going to shoot them in the head, right?

That's my FPS knowledge.

My kid built like a castle with working engineering and trade tracks in about five seconds flat.

And I was like, yeah, okay, you win.

I just left it out.

He's like,

on the controller, it was like a blur.

It It was like full Neo.

And he was like stood on top of a mountain with cannons and shit.

And he's sending down like troops.

I'm like, what is happening here?

He's like, oh, do you not know how to build that?

He's like, the slopes in seconds.

I was like, yeah.

Got one.

Open build menu.

Scroll and figure it out.

Right.

And I was like, I can get, but I still believe I can get good at this.

I have no desire to get good at this.

Right.

Right.

You know that mindset, which is like, yeah, if I invest like several hundred hours into this, I can get really good at it.

I don't want to do that.

So I'm just going to not do that and just put it down

that was my play that was my whole choice i was like you guys enjoy yourself i don't want to do this i'm not interested that is that is me with every fighting game in the history of fighting games yeah i know all the things i should be doing i'm aware of all the things i should learn and do i love watching evo i love seeing people who are good at it i i the last one i played I was about to say Street Fighter, but I think it was

the new Mortal Committee.

Mortal Comet 1.

They had Omni Man.

I discovered Omni Man had an attack that sent him around the outside of the screen and hit you from behind.

And when I realized how powerful it busted that was, that was all I did.

I was like, I found something that I'm going to press over and over and over again.

And no one's countering this.

So I'm just going to keep doing it.

I'm sure I should have learned like an adult to play, but I was like, yo, this just keeps working.

So I'm going to keep doing this.

I'm going to keep pressing the one button.

I'm going to keep doing it.

And then I learned one really good like finisher.

And that was it.

That's all I did.

And I was like, y'all, this is easy.

I'm feeling good about this game.

And I'm sure I should have learned like an adult to play for real, but I was like, nah.

Did it work online?

Yeah.

Hell yeah.

Now, obviously, I got to a point where I would play against people who knew how to play and they just stomped me.

Which I should have.

That's the worst.

He's like, I feel pretty confident.

I've done the PVE mode, beating everybody, beating the end boss.

All right, I've got to try online.

And there's just some kid just beats you to the floor like you're just an absolute peasant.

Yeah.

But I'm used to that.

I constantly get defeated by everyone online.

I'm so, I just do not care about learning.

I'm like, yeah, like I could learn that,

or I could go play something else and I will just leave.

But I'll try online first, just one time, and then I'll get stomped so badly.

I'm like, deserved.

I'm going to, all right, I'll be over here now.

And that's fine.

I don't care.

Not to compare your strategies to a seven-year-old, but when I was seven, I would play Mortal Kombat with my brother and his friends who were all 11 or 12 years older than me.

And I learned how to crouch and uppercut.

And it was shocking how many 11 and 12-year-olds couldn't figure out what to do if you just stayed crouched and uppercutted.

And I won a lot that way.

So

hero play.

Yeah.

Yeah, no, absolute hero play.

And then you got called a cheater.

My brother, bless him, eventually was like, I got to teach you how to do a fatality so that you can really flex on people.

So,

so yeah, I had a support system, I guess is what I'm saying.

I still missed it.

Don't you miss being that level of nerd, though?

I can still tell you, up, up, down, high kick, up, down, forward, forward, high punch.

Sure.

The finisher for sub-zero in Mortal Kombat 2.

And I had to play it without looking at the screen because I played it so much.

They wouldn't let me look at the TV while we did versus in Mortal Kombat.

And you'd still win.

I had to sit on the, because I was on a high cabinet.

I would have have to sit on the floor facing the other way.

And that was the only way my friends would play me at Mortal Kombat.

And I have, they'd give me scuff characters like Kano.

Like, okay, it's fine.

I'd still beat them.

And then they just wouldn't.

And then

no one wants to play with me anymore.

We used to have, we had like a little black book, except it wasn't salacious.

It was just like the babalities, the safeties, like all of

the like non-fatality ones, because I thought they were so funny.

And I was like, I can't forget these.

Yep.

You need to be able to do the proper uppercut on the pit.

It needs to go all the way down.

I had them all.

I had all my tip books sellotate together, like that you get free in the PC magazines.

That it was the Bible of game codes.

Not anymore.

Now I look at a game and I'm like,

it's like a shooter.

I have it with shooter games as well.

Like you look at Shroud playing, you're like, good.

I got to try that out.

And then you realize you do not have the 8,000 hours of experience

to back this up.

And you're just getting minced.

I was like, ah, god damn it.

I'm going to go back to my MMO and click my buttons?

I'm good here.

It's weird that sometimes I'll play those, like, any sort of FPS, if they include anything besides just a gun, I will always gravitate to that.

Like, battlefield games, there'll be times where, like, all right, we have to infiltrate this area.

And I'm like, yo, is that an anti-aircraft cannon?

I'm going to be on that thing.

And I'll jump over there and just like blast in planes.

I'm like, yo, this is so satisfying.

And they're like, we need you on the front line.

I'm like, no, dude, I'll back.

I'll get you.

Absolutely not.

I love it.

Yeah, like, I'll get in a tank and like go around and blow guys up.

And they're like, get out of the tank and shoot.

I'm like, dude, I am shooting.

Boom.

And they're like,

you're useless.

And I'm like, no, actually, I'm preventing them from getting any armored vehicles onto the field, guys.

Like, that's where I'm at.

I love those things.

You played the British game recently, right?

Did you play it?

The fucking.

Thank goodness you're here.

Oh, yes.

Did you play it?

Did you play it?

Oh, good.

The accurate representation of british life in the north completely accurate

oh purely accurate

what a real mind fuck that was that was that entire game is pure goofery and i'm absolutely here for it although i will say there's some parts where i was like i can't tell if this is supposed to be funny or the most terrifying thing i've ever seen in my entire life i don't

is this some

the the part where you're like in the meat i was like what is happening right now what are like there's so many weird moments but

hilarious also there's clearly a Jesse Cox copyright infringement character who's talking to an old lady and they end up in a trash can together.

And I was like, they do.

That's just me, dude.

What is happening?

How often are you in trash cans with old ladies?

Is that like regular?

Quite often, actually.

It is.

More than you would expect.

Yeah, it's my thing.

In L.A., they call me the trash can lady man.

Yeah?

The kick in the doubts can't.

There he is.

He loves him.

He makes him work.

It is, yeah, it's a super fun game.

But it's one of those things that is clearly made for humor's sake rather than like some really compelling gameplay.

It's like, all right, I'm here to laugh, not like solve crazy puzzles.

Yeah.

I can handle that.

It's like a two-hour game, so whatever.

Yeah,

those are my jam at the moment.

Like, if I've got a spare day to throw one of those things out, they're so fun.

Like, MMOs are great, but I could, I need to break from them now as well.

Cause I almost fear getting invested.

I've never played Skyrim because i know i'm in it for such a long time when it happens like i'm gonna get it taken over and i'm with the other that's why i set like a time limit now three weeks max

probably like like why i was like staggered now so the raid's not even out for a couple of weeks and things like that and then i'm like i i make a little sheet of things i want tick the boxes i'm done that's it you're gonna leave there and i've got a terrible it's like it's like having a little bit of drugs because there's a there's absolutely a part.

There's a little bit.

There's a part of me that still exists.

That's like, I could just sit here day and night, turn my phone off and just play and play.

And then when I'm finished, there's nothing else to do.

It's like, I'll just level an alt then and we'll do it all again.

And then we'll just do it again and again and again and again and again.

I can't do that.

I never had that brain.

Oh, bless you.

Bless you.

I didn't touch a different game for seven years.

Seven years.

I came out of it like in a haze.

You know, like

I come out of a fog-filled room.

Like, what the hell is going on?

And they're like, oh, that's squinting at the sun.

Yeah.

They're like, did you know when new Bioshock came out?

I'm like, I love Bioshock.

Bioshock's my favorite game series.

Like, yeah, it came out like two years ago.

They're like, oh, okay.

Let's do this.

There's a time period for me between, I think, probably 2008.

to maybe 2011 where all I played was WoW.

And so I missed fundamental games.

I had to go back and like catch up on stuff because I only played that game.

And so,

yeah, no, I've definitely been there.

We come out and you're like,

what?

We've made advancements in technology.

Games look like this now.

What is, yeah, it's crazy.

It's great, though.

You come out with so many games to play.

I'm still catching up to this day.

People are like, oh, what are you going to play?

FF10-2?

It's like, it's so exciting when you play it.

And I'm like, okay, we'll put that down for next year.

Oh, you should play, oh, Warframe.

I had never touched Warframe.

I know you're playing it now.

And they reached out and they're like, hey, check this out.

I was like, okay, well, this game is sick.

And they're like, yeah, it came out like 20 years ago, Mike.

Like, this is

forever.

Half my stream had like thousands of hours in it.

I'm like, oh, this is a really cool game.

The community is so nice for it, though.

Like,

it's, they've been so good about not spoiling stuff, about only helping if I'm asking for help.

Like, it's, it's been a very, very nice experience considering how long that game has been out.

Did you find it hard when you jump into one of the missions with seasoned people though and they're done in five seconds and you're like

which direction are we going i play both i have played entirely solo

oh

okay

oh that's oh that's good because

because i was warned I was warned that playing with playing with other people, if I get thrown into a mission with really seasoned players, they're going to fucking bullet jump away, finish the mission, and then it's going to be like, move on to extraction, Tenno.

And I'd be like, what even was the mission?

What did we do?

100%.

That's exactly what I was asking.

That is the experience I had because my first time playing was sponsors.

They were like, please, will you do this?

And they gave me like a mentor, like a Walfram YouTuber who was like, okay, we're going to do this, this, and this.

He's like, the first thing you want to do is unlock all the planets.

Let's go.

And then like an hour or two later, I was like, what the fuck just happened?

Did we do something?

he's like yeah you've unlocked half the map now i was like what did i do i don't know you i like loaded into the map and then it said mission complete and then you were just stood waiting for me at the extraction point and i'm like okay right let's go um and i was i was lost for a while i was like i need to play this game on my own which was when i had way more fun yeah i was pretty determined to like have as pure of a new player experience as possible.

So I turned off gifting.

I only played by myself.

I was like, I just want to see what this game is like.

If you're like, I just want to, I just want to, you know, be a solo player and just come into this thing, you know.

And I've had a lot of fun with it.

It is definitely a game where if you don't enjoy

just grinding out the same mission over and over again, you're not going to like this game.

This is why they're so fast.

They know every pixel, every turn.

Yeah.

At first, I was literally combing every map.

Every mission, I'd be like, well, I have to go into every room, you know, but it became really clear pretty quickly: like, you're going to do this map over and over and over and over again.

The shit that you're farming for, you're actually going to get it faster if you just do the mission, do it again, do it again.

It's like today RPG, right?

It's like when you first play Diablo or Peyoid, you're like, I better pick up all the loots and see if it's any good.

And check the site amount.

And then you watch the season player, and they don't pick anything up.

They're just gone.

Like, they'd already finished the campaign.

Playing it, like, you just feel so zippy and powerful.

And it's just, if it wasn't, if it didn't feel nice to play it, it wouldn't feel nice to do those missions over and over.

But because, because you do feel really cool and it has that like dynasty warriors element of like, I just killed 300 dudes, you know, like it winds up being fine to be like, oh, I have to do this exact same mission eight times or more in order to get all the pieces I need.

Fine.

Yeah, I can do that.

You know, how do you feel about being so far behind when we do these?

Because I do a lot of new player runs and big games.

But, like, you can't really become an expert without super investing into it.

So, there's like a line that I draw at that point:

okay, I like this game.

It's awesome.

It's really fun.

But to go further, you know, like with the hardcore modding, like, sorry, Warframe, you could build some crazy loadouts that like specifically target certain enemies.

You know, you can mix toxic in and get these super gems and stuff like that.

Is that where you want to go with it, or is that where you like, uh,

I'm not really thinking about that yet?

Because, again, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not like a hardcore player that way typically with games.

So for me right now, I love that they have the auto mod option.

And I've gotten to the point, just kind of naturally, I've gotten to the point where I'll be like, wait a minute, why isn't it giving me this mod?

I really want this mod because I want, you know, the reach for Mag's magnetic thing or whatever.

So I'm, I'm sort of slowly noticing if it's giving me something I want or, you know, stuff like that.

So I'm trying not to worry about that too much because I don't see myself being sort of a hardcore endgame person really with any game.

I don't plan on that.

So it's nicer for me to just be to go in

assuming I'm going to be casual forever, you know, just like,

how long can I have fun with this if I'm if I'm not really taking it seriously?

You know, how, how long is this an enjoyable experience?

And currently I'm weeks in and, you know, playing a couple times a week and I have a blast.

So.

Can I vent to you two really quickly about enjoyable experiences?

Because it's been on my mind all week.

Yes, it needs to be quick, though, because we got to wrap soon.

So

go.

Sure.

Do it.

Star Wars Outlaws is a game that has so many things I love.

I can sit down in a cantina and play Sabak.

I can run around with my little tiny sweet boy Nicks and steal things.

I have factions I can mess with.

There's cool weapons to get.

There's fun stuff to do.

I have a speeder I can customize.

I have a ship I can mess with.

The characters are fun.

I love everything going on in it.

Half the missions are forced stealth missions and it drives me crazy.

It is like, okay, I need you to sneak into this base.

Don't get caught.

And they're like, if you get caught, they are going to get you and you're going to ruin the mission.

I'm like, okay, so if I get caught, I'm going to end up in a a shootout or whatever.

Here's the thing: sometimes that does happen.

Sometimes you sneak into a base, you're knocking dudes out, you're finding stuff, you're being a sneaky scoundrel, you do all sorts of cool stuff, and then someone spots you, and now you're shooting, and you're ducking, you're hiding.

It's like, cool, fun, video games.

But other times, it's like, okay, sneaking to the space.

And you're like, all right, you're sneaking in.

And then someone spots you and it's like, you've been detected, dummy.

Boots you outside.

Restart.

Restart.

And then there was one moment, and it's the very first mission.

and i was like trying to experiment and do different things i don't know my setting was normal i don't know if it was like normal means ultra hard but there was one point where i'm like hey nicks go and distract that guy and what ends up happening one guy walks so if i'm standing here hiding one guy walked this way one guy walked this way i was i was like how do i defeat this so i was like okay i gotta try it a different way so i go i keep doing it over and over and over again and one of the things that happened and this is what pissed me off the most is that i got a special special ability because I knocked out guys in a certain way enough times.

I unlocked a perk,

but then I got detected, booted out, perk gone, have to do it all over again.

And I was like, what kind of mechanic is this?

So already I'm frustrated.

Plus, any items I loot when I get booted, they are back, except that loot is random.

So if I loot a really good item and I get detected, I get booted, I lost the item, and it resets and now becomes something different.

It could just be money now.

And I'm like, what the hell is this?

And so at one point, a bunch of guards like bugged and stacked.

So my map, it looked like one guard.

But when I got close, eight dudes split off from one guy.

And I was like, bro, what?

And it just was so frustrating because

Another great example is I managed to sneak past a bunch of guys that were giving me trouble.

I knocked out a few dudes, got past the camera.

I'm like sneaking up and I see there's three guys in front of me.

And I'm like, okay, I got to get above them.

But maybe there's a banister.

I can climb down it.

I climb down the banister.

There's two guards down there just standing there.

I was like, I would never, how would I know they were there?

And so I just got immediately.

Do you think I or anything?

Oh, some soft

sense.

Yeah, your little companion has a predator sense kind of vibe where you can see stuff.

And so I scanned and it showed three guys in front of me.

And I saw a banister to the side.

And I was like, okay, if I jump down here.

So I jump down and then the bottom of it are just two guards standing there.

And they're like, oh, hey, detected, booted out.

I know legs holding.

Yeah.

This sounds like immediately.

There is somewhere, I'm sure you can go back to my stream.

Like, I'm going to say 35 minutes of me throwing my head, maybe longer, just slamming my head against the wall, trying to get past the first stealth mission to learn the mechanics of the stealth.

And it's unforgiving.

It's like just, oh, no, detected, detected, you're booted.

But then later, so in this mission, I got detected so many times and booted out, right?

Later on, there's another mission.

It's like, hey, you need to either pick this faction or this faction and steal from them to get the part we need.

Whoever you steal from, you have to sneak in there, do not get detected, or they're going to hate you.

Like, okay, same thing.

So I'm going in trying to like, all right, how do I do this?

Like, let's learn.

Obviously, they're just going to boot me out if I fail so I can do a good strategy, right?

So this point, I'm like in that mindset.

I get booted.

It's like minus 150 rep with the crimson dawn.

I'm like, what?

Oh,

my God.

I was so mad.

And it's so crazy to me because there's so many things in this game.

Like, you can get on an Imperial raid, like a GTA, where the Empire will get more and more pissed at you and send bigger and bigger things to get you if you like mess around in the open world areas and you piss off the Empire.

But at the same time, you can sneak into Imperial facilities, hack terminals, and delete your account from them.

And they are like, oh, well, we don't really, who are we looking for again?

You're like, awesome.

This is cool.

There's so much to love in this game, but it's gated consistently behind forced stealth and i'm like it is not 2010 we should not be doing this like this sucks

i've never been more put off by a game in my life that sounds awful yeah stealth with forced restarts when you have weapons is so dumb i would rather be the biggest outlaw ever that's like oh god he's here he's the but i would rather be the butcher of bakersfield in every mission stealth in hell no i'm taking heads baby like just give me the choice and you can there's one stealth mission where you do the stealth and then the minute the minute the stealth is over you accidentally trip an alarm and guys show up you're like well why the hell did i do any of that right if i would have killed them along the way then they uh i would have to fight them now but whatever so

there's also stuff where you can get blasters or sniper rifles or all sorts of things stealth kill is it all non-lethal Um, no, you can, there's half the time I'm blasting dudes, but the thing is, and you can use exploit, like, you can have Nick's your little guy, go and blow something up.

Um, you can blow it up yourself.

You can, uh, like, do all sorts of cool stuff.

You can speeder bike, run over people, right?

Like, you can do all sorts of different things.

The biggest issue is that in the stealth sections, sometimes there are just parameters that, like, sometimes you can use your weapon and it has a stun setting.

And you can fire stun and stun a guy and knock him over.

Or you can throw different grenades or whatever.

You can do things, but sometimes it just does not let you draw your weapon.

And it's like, no, you are sneaking.

Do not fight.

You are sneaking now.

And you're like, but I want to kill this guy and he's in my way.

no the lore reason is like we don't want them to get mad at you

even though game mechanic mechanically the game is like rebellion right you're the resistance they're already mad at you like the thing is you're supposed to be just a scoundrel and so you're like early on you meet some rebels and they're like yo we're for the rebellion you're like yeah okay i'm gonna go do a thing and you're like it's Fine because you're a scoundrel.

So in my mind, I'm thinking, I'm in the cantina and I'm blasting Greedo like on solo.

But in this game, sometimes it's like, no, no, no, you're in a cantina, please.

We do not shoot here.

And you're like, but I'm a scoundrel.

That is who I am.

Right.

And

yeah, there's a weird disconnect.

In some areas, the game is awesome.

And I love, like, you can play Sabach and use your little guy to cheat.

And so you can see their cards.

You can see it.

And I'm like, yo, this is great.

This is exactly the vibe I want.

And running from the Empire.

And like, you can meet a

like early on.

This is not a spoiler at at all it's so early in the game but like you can go into a computer system hack a terminal and you get information for one faction but you discover information for another faction and you now have the option to take that information sell it to the one faction you need to go meet or take it to the other guy and let him know one of his goons is like going to betray him and so you can do different things but it's all sort of boxed in by like the only way to get that stuff is to sneak into an area where if you get detected, you can't shoot them and murder them.

You will just be booted and lose reputation for being there.

And the reputation blocks off access to items.

So some factions will not sell to you if they do not like you, or they'll be actively aggressive to you if they see you on a planet somewhere.

And so

if you get caught, right?

That makes it

caught.

They know you did it, but to restart you as well just feels like twisting the knife for some reason.

Oh, it's such a knife twist.

Yeah, it's like, okay, we're going to restart you.

And they know you did it.

Well, that doesn't make any sense.

Like, how would that work?

Yeah, especially if you are

doing things that

are purposely hard.

Like there's one area of one of the stealth missions where there's two guards guarding a door and they're fully armored.

So they're just like always actively looking.

And then there's guys patrolling.

And the whole point is you need to get past them.

But the minute I would pass them without attacking them or doing anything to them, they would immediately detect me.

I was like, all right, I got to take these guys out.

So the minute that I like took out one guy, another guy was like, whoa.

And he just walked right towards me.

I was like, how does he see me?

I'm behind a wall.

And he's like,

I know you did that.

It's like, okay, I can't, I can't win here.

And so the way I beat it is I literally took out, I slowly and methodically took out all four guys.

And I was like, if I'm going to take them out anyway, let me shoot them.

Like, if it's, just let me shoot them.

I had to kill all four guys.

Just let me kill them with a blaster.

And that's the vibe.

It's the whole game is just.

I'm so in love with everything but what the core of the game is, which sucks.

Cause I'm like, I'm about, you can go into space and fly around your ship and get into TIE Fighter battles and like go explore things in wreckages in space.

I was like, this is cool as shit.

I love this.

But imagine if they took the space bit and are like, don't get detected by a Star Destroyer.

If that happens in this game, I'm going to lose my damn mind.

At that moment, I'm going to be like,

someone, so an ad just auto-ran, and someone said they got an Outlaws ad.

I see.

I've never watched

it.

I'm not sitting, dude.

Can I quicksave?

We can't quicksave.

No, you cannot quicksave.

There is no F5.

There is no F8.

It is strictly designed for console usage.

So you save right before you do the stealth mission, and then you can't get past an area and then quick save.

It does not happen.

There's no option to do so.

There's no menu.

You can't even get to the menu and then press save.

It does not happen.

You are just deal with it.

Learn to get good.

And I'm like, okay, yeah.

But then you change the rules.

Sometimes I can shoot.

Yeah, that's so.

And you don't don't tell you before.

You don't get like a parameter thing.

Like, you know, like the stupid Metal Gear things, like, just to let you know for this mission, no lethal attacks are allowed or no weapons or anything.

Like, they don't give you anything like that.

A character may say something like, if you sneak in there, be quiet.

But

yeah, they're like, you know, you have like someone be like, if you go in there, remember that I don't know you if you get caught.

It's like, okay.

Okay.

Like, all right, cool.

But

yeah, it's, it's weird because, again, it's, they give you like a cool world and a cool planet to explore and like a cool town to get into and some space stuff to do.

And they give you all, like, you can go to races and like bet on horses.

You can like steal from people and do all.

There's all sorts of cool things you can do.

And I'm like, yeah, this is the experience I want.

And they're like, now sneak, bitch.

And I'm like,

fine.

And then I just throw myself at it till I solve it because I now know everyone's movements, which is not, I wouldn't know that if I was the scouner.

I go in there and try to figure it out.

It's like, no, no, no.

You gotta learn it.

All right, all right.

I mean, playing.

All right.

I'll just say, if you play Mechanicus, it's like that.

It's brutal.

Yeah, I mean, but I want, if it's brutal, tell me it's brutal.

You know what I mean?

Don't be like, it's a fun Star Wars-y game.

I hate Star Wars.

I'm a hot trek.

That's the hot take we wanted.

There we go.

Yeah, that's what we're doing.

baby.

Preach, thank you so much for joining us.

So when we have guests, we typically ask them to give chat homework.

What?

I know.

It's cruel and unusual.

What is a game, movie, comic, show, whatever that you think is really good and you think people should give a shot?

Oh,

what's it called that we just talked about a minute ago that I think all three of us have played?

It's two hours.

Thank goodness it's me.

Yep.

thank goodness i'm here thank goodness thank goodness you're here

if you hate the uk it will be right up your alley because it'll have all the weird things in if you live in the uk you will get the references more and you'll find it funny as well like it's universally good you are it's either every trope of the uk or it's actually kind of realistic in some places uh involves beans yeah it's very good very funny

so straight thank goodness you're here that's it yeah thank goodness you're here you've been a fantastic guest.

How can people find you?

What are you doing?

Type preach.

It's a Google.

I don't know about that.

Yep, it works.

Have you beat out all of big religion?

Did you finally do it?

I fucking crushed Christianity.

I was like the ultimate fucking warrior.

I was right in there.

You can add preach gaming if you want, if your algorithm sends you a different way.

But preaching Google usually finds me and also tells you how to say my name if you struggle.

I am actually the second result if you type preach.

Interesting.

There we go.

Finger guns.

Get fucked, religion.

Easy win.

Oh my goodness.

Again, another spicy take for the very first time.

Star Wars and religion.

Fuck Star Wars.

Jesse, what are you up to?

What's going on in your life?

Oh my God.

Still trying to put together a Dawn Trail review video.

I keep changing my thoughts on things over time.

The more I look at it, the more I'm like, actually, I probably should expand upon this.

It's not something I'd recommend, y'all.

Making scripts for videos sucks.

I don't know why I did this.

I also just started playing Visions of Mana, the new mana game.

Nice.

It is the first time in a while it feels like the old Secret of Mana kind of vibe, where gameplay, you're like, oh, okay.

Very cool action RPG stuff, but I literally just started.

I'm like two hours in.

So I can't.

We'll see what happens there.

And yeah, I'm going to keep trying to play through

Star Wars Outlaws and see what happens.

Hear it out, man.

God help me, dude.

Yeah, it's a slack.

Let it go.

Let it go.

I keep rolling.

Yeah, I just like

stupid.

Yeah, so that's kind of where I'm at mentally, spiritually.

You know, just broken.

And super excited, by the way.

This is totally not related to me, but we're getting, for all my weird nerds out there, we're getting more control with control too, but also, I guess, a control and alloway TV show with Anna Perna.

I don't know what's happening.

I'm so hungry.

I'm ready.

Yes.

That sounds like it was made for you, dude.

Oh, 100%.

We got enough bluster of cartoons, aren't we?

Of all different games.

That's going to be sick.

That's going to be awesome.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's going to be good.

That was probably the best part of all the GamesCom stuff I saw.

I was like, yo, what is this?

Pretty excited for that.

Yep.

As for me, I just finished up Crime Scene Cleaner, moved on to Crypt Custodian.

There's a janitorial theme with the last couple of games that I've played, but they've both been very good.

There's that.

And then I would love to check out Tactical Breach Wizards soon because I loved the demo of that game.

And apparently, it just maintains quality through the whole thing.

So definitely want to do that.

But my kid,

and some Dawn Trail.

Yeah.

When you say some Dawn Trail, when, like, guesstimation, when can you and I finally talk about this game, dudes?

Are you thinking like 2026?

Like, what's your vibe?

Um, my cousin and I play once a week for about three hours.

So,

sometimes,

right, right, right.

Sometime in the distant future, you and I can finally have a deep discussion.

Maybe around Christmas, you and I could have, like, a special Christmas dawn trail.

By then, there'll be a huge MacGuffin thing that already will already be on the road to 7.2.

I'll be like, yo, so here's this thing.

And you'll be like, I haven't played 7.1 yet.

And I'll be like, spoilies.

Yeah, we'll catch up at Fun Fest 2020.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It'll be great.

I'll do my best.

I'll really crank it out, guys.

But yeah, thank you all so much for watching Geekeenders.

Thank you again, Preach, for joining us.

Have an amazing weekend, everybody.

And we will see you next Friday.

Okay.

Okay, fantastic.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

Come back.

Come back.

Come back.

Come back.

What?

I haven't got a new one.

Well, hold on, hold on.

One moment.

One moment.

If you're looking for this video later or any other geekenders, you will find them at youtube.com slash Jessecox.

That's where all of the VODs live.

We're also on all of the podcasty things.

If you would like to listen to us audio only and miss out on the visual goofs, for some reason, a lot of you do.

You love the audio only.

I'm letting you know you're missing.

This episode had many visual goofs, and I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

You missed out.

So, yeah.

I mean, I shouldn't have dressed as a clown for the whole thing.

It was weird, but like, fun choice.

Yeah, it was a very fun choice.

And you know what?

Maybe maybe then they'll go check out the vods at youtube.com/slash Jesse Cox.

Nice sell, boss.

Nice sell.

Thank you.

Got it.

Thank you so much.

Change.

Bye, guys.

See ya.

Bye.

Yeah, yeah.

You know what time it is.

It's time for the geek in this podcast.

Mega Rand, Jesse, and Dodger.

What up?

Let's go.

Yo, it's the weekend.

Yeah, it's time to geek out.

Let it be kid.

Go on, stream, and shout.

It's Jesse and Dodger.

So give them a follow and see what the geekenders are all about.

Yo, it's the weekend.

Yeah, it's time to geek out.

Let it be kid.

Go on, stream and shout.

It's Jesse and Dodger.

So give them a follow.

Number one geek podcast, without a doubt.

Yo, another end of another long week.

Got a job and a kid, I know that you all beat.

So take a second, grab a drink, and vibe.

While we catch you up in just a matter of time on gaming, comics, whatever you're doing.

If you're nerdy like us, then you know you should tune in.

Thank you for sharing our world with us.

Now follow, subscribe, subscribe, and turn this up.

Yo, it's the weekend.

Yeah, it's time to geek out.

Let it begin.

Go on, stream, and shout.

It's Jesse and Dodger.

So give them a follow.

Number one geek podcast without a doubt.