Speaker 1:
Thank you, hello and welcome to the Pig and Whistle Tales from Azeroth. As always here at the Pig and Whistle Inn in Stormwind, I go for a variety of subjects with regards to World of Warcraft, so grab a bottle or a pint, sit back and enjoy this episode. We'll be looking at many different aspects of WoW. We'll be looking at the beta that has been announced. We'll be looking at a couple of other bits and bobs. With regards to PvP, we're going to be looking at a tier list and going and judging that. But yeah, just all around a few bits and bobs here and there, but mainly we're looking at the beta. Now, as always, we have the weekly news. So Berserkron, sakali, elders and Aerostar are your world bosses for the week. They are located within the Waking Shore, zarahat Caverns and Emerald Dream. We have World Quests as your bonus event for this week. So if you need any reputation with certain uh reps, now is the time to do it, as you get that little bit extra from the world quest that you do.
Speaker 1:
Comp stomp is your brawl for the week. This is simply I think it's 10 v 10 uh, arathi basin only, and you're going against ais. Ais that are really easy and it's comp stomp, you just stomp them. It's ridiculously easy. It's like five minute games if that, and you get a nice chunk of honor and a little bit of conquest for it. So if you want to gear something or test something out in terms of a rotation, that is the time to do so in comp stomp, storming, bursting and fortified are your mythic affixes for the week. Storming there are little vortexes that fly around. Simply dodge them. Bursting when you kill a mob it will explode, essentially giving you a debuff, and this debuff will do some damage. This debuff stacks indefinitely. So kill everything quickly and then pop a defensive. Or kill everything, get mass master spell by a priest, or kill stuff um, and let your debuffs drop off and then kill the next load of mobs within that pack. But even way don't, you know, not use a defensive for your healers. It would be much appreciated by them and they will hate you if you don't. And fortified, the non-boss enemies have more health and damage and anything that they summon, so bring a talent build that can accommodate for that.
Speaker 1:
So let's start with the beta. The beta was announced, um, that it will be beginning on june 5th, so literally next reset. This was announced a couple days ago as of this poddie going live, and this means that we're in sort of the end stage of the War Within testing. I would say. The alpha has been out for about a month now or so A month or so, yeah, and they've added everything in terms of hero talents and the story campaigns and the zones and stuff like that. But here is everything that you will be able to look for within the beta. Firstly, you will get an email to say that you are able to participate in the beta. I'm not sure if this is now or if this is on the day. I'm pretty sure it would be on the day that your account has been flagged to participate in the beta. So keep an eye on that.
Speaker 1:
And essentially, what you would want to do if you do get the beta access is go to your battlenet and go on to click the normal, the retail world of warcraft, and in the drop down menus where you can change between world of warcrafts, there'll be a in development section. You want to click the war within beta and then download it. That's where it will be if you get beta access. If you don't, I wouldn't worry about it too much. Um, I'm personally only wanting to test the hero talents, and that's where my sort of extent goes, as I leave the um, that questing and stuff to when I'm actually doing the content itself or the expansion itself. I don't want any real spoilers, even though I've been spoiled with some story spoilers already, but that's besides the point. I'm obviously not going to list them here because I want to spoil it for you guys. But that is how you download the beta. If you haven't, or if you uh, the way that you get into the beta is via having pre-purchased a heroic pack for it or something. I think it's something along them lines or, um, if you have signed up to participate in the war within beta, there is simple links on wowhead or just type into Google the war within beta, like participation, something like that, and there will be links that get you to where you can sign up for it.
Speaker 1:
So what's available in the beta? The new systems, leveling experience, a complete leveling experience is what they say the zones, dungeons, delvesves, warbands and the new playable earthen also available in the beta, apparently. Uh, raid testing will come at a later time, so raid testing, I would imagine, is a week or two after the beta is released. Um, I would imagine all of the mythic guilds and stuff are testing the raid on the beta, because, well, they just are, they always do, I think. I'm not sure if they stream it, but I'm pretty sure they do. I'm pretty sure they do.
Speaker 1:
Um, so the aisles or the zones that you have are the Isle of Dawn, the Ringing Deep, hallowfall and Ajkahet. So, the Isle of Dawn, discover the land of Khazalgar, off the western shore of Pandaria and home to the Earthen, their capital city. Oh God, dornogal, I want to say, will become the new meeting ground for Horden Alliance. There is your city. So Dornogal is your main hub for the warm of in the Ringing Deep. This gigantic cavern serves as the home of the machine speakers, earthen, who maintain the gigantic titan machines of old hello fall, lit by a massive crystal at its center. This bright underground zone is home to the, who are engaged in a continuous battle against the nerubians. Um, this zone looks like my favorite, I'm not gonna lie, it looks amazing. The crystal especially so. The crystal, for those that don't know, is just your light source within the zone itself and I think every couple hours it will turn purple for 15 minutes, and when it does, the mobs in the zone change the whole dynamic changes. The whole look changes. It's absolutely spectacular and like. This is going to be my most enjoyed zone. I already know it will be.
Speaker 1:
And then you have ash kahet, the pinnacle of nerubian society, where, where Zalataf, harbinger of the Void, has been gathering and mutating Nerubian forces to create an unstoppable army. This is where the raid takes place. I want to no, I wanted to say the Eternal Palace, but that is, that's BFA. I can't remember the raid name. It will be down there somewhere. But for those who are concerned about entering into a space filled with spiders as well, there is an arachnophobia filter that can be turned on, which turns everything into crabs instead, which is really cool. It allows for those who are a bit more. It allows for more variety if people aren't as keen on the Nerubian slash spider idea of things, the Earthen. So we've met Titanforged Earthen before in Ulduar and other places. But this society of Earthen has been isolated within Khazalgar for a long while and have developed their own manners and customs. Visually they're a bit larger and gem-encrusted manners and customs. Visually they're a bit larger and gem encrusted. Earthen will also uh, will also unlock as a playable race, replenishing the creature's dwindling numbers. By either joining the horde or the alliance, players will be able to choose either faction to begin their journey. There are many customizations that will be coming to these earthen, including different gem encrustations, beards for all body types, skin colorizations and more.
Speaker 1:
I think, well, it's another dwarf race, isn't it? But the Horde get a dwarf race, which is really really cool. This is the first Dwarven race for Horde, which I think is needed. I think it's something that could have been done because, obviously, alliance have Dark Iron Dwarves and just Dwarves in general. Horde had none of that, whereas, you know, we share some races. We share the Drakthyr, the Pandaren, I think that's about it. Yeah, because we have Kul Tiras as the Alliance. The Horde got zandalari. You know, it's nice that they are sharing other races with the other faction. I think that that's very needed.
Speaker 1:
And these sort of, uh, different types of dwarves, or whether they be trolls or you know, uh, highborn or night elves slash, highborn, nightborn, you know that kind of deal. Night Elves slash Highborn, nightborn, you know that kind of deal. I think that's the best way to do it. So, you know, grats to Horde for getting a Dwarven race, I guess. And they are a bit taller so I'd like to see them up against another Dwarf. But the customizations are amazing, like gem encrustations and stuff. The beards are magnificent, all of it is magnificent. I and stuff the beards are magnificent, all of it is magnificent. I think that you'd want to make one of these doors because of just the customizations alone are really, really cool.
Speaker 1:
Dungeons, similar to launch of the previous expansions, there will be four level up dungeons and four max level dungeons that are available in each of the four zones. So the level up dungeons are the rookery, the stone vault, prior priory of the sacred flame, and then city of threads. City of threads sounds amazing. Max level dungeons are cinder brew, meadry, dark flame, cleft, the dawn breaker and old city. Now, old city sounds really good. The dawn breaker sounds really good. I know that one of these dungeons has like dragon riding where you have to stay near a ship or something, so I'm going to be very curious about that. But yeah, these are the dungeons and if you don't want to use the dungeon finder to take part with other players, you can continue the campaign story with follower dungeons which are available in all of the level up dungeon.
Speaker 1:
Um, they're looking at doing something like this for the raid as well. So you, you don't have to do the raid as the raid um with other people, with 20 other people or 19, I should say and you can do it with a simple small group of five, like npcs or other players, and you can essentially go through the raid to see the story elements of it. You, it's not actually raiding, you are just seeing the story elements of it, which I think is amazing to do. I think that is one of the best changes that they've had, or that I've seen so far in the war within alpha, and I think that it's just a massive bonus, because their storytelling is what they wanted to focus on, with the war within and the subsequent um expansions coming after it. So I think this is a very good change and it allows people to actually explore the storyline of the raid itself, because when you go into a raid, you don't really know what's happening. If you're a hardcore raider, you go into the mythic raid and you're like, okay, screw the uh. Like um, what is it? The conversations or the dialogues that's been have? Uh, having everyone shut up. We're listening to the raid leader and you know we're getting into the boss fight. We're not here to listen to the dialogue and the storytelling, um. So this gives them people sort of another option just to actually go and relive it via the story, which is really cool. So the naruba palace raid dungeon, here we go. The naruba palace raid dungeon will offer 8 boss encounter, located in Azhkahar. It will result in the culmination of the story we see playing out, involving the mechanisms of the Nerubian Empire and Queen and Sarek's collaboration with Zalatath. Players can now experience new tier rewards for their valiant efforts. So this is the thing that I was just talking about before. This is where you're allowed to experience the story behind the raid, but not actually do the raid as a raid itself, if that makes sense. So that's how that'll work.
Speaker 1:
New features Delves, the surface of the. The surface lies, oh my god. Deep beneath the surface lies treasure vaults waiting to be discovered. Explore these world instances solo or up to four friends along with an NPC companion. I think the first one that you get is Bronzebeard, if I'm not mistaken. Defeat bosses and gain epic and endgame loot. Delve's new mechanical reward.
Speaker 1:
So the mix and match customization to make your own new mount. So this is the first of its kind the mount is. Essentially, you have a base of a mount and this base is kind of like a boat but a ship at the same time. You have, from what I see here, five different side customizations, five different front customizations, five different back and then four different top. So, to give you some perspective, the top customizations can be a giant sort of nuke, a flag, a sort of propeller, and then a glider. The back piece can be rockets or you know a, what do you call them that are on a boat, a propeller, yeah, propeller, I think. I think it's a propeller, um, something that you know helps boats move along in the water. I've completely forgotten the name, but you have many different front parts as well. You have a drill, you have a light, you have another propeller, um, you have sides, so you have wings to glide. You have propellers, you have rockets. There are many different things that you can mix and match, essentially, which is really cool. I think that this is how mount should be going forward.
Speaker 1:
In my honest opinion, warbands expand the potential of your alternate characters with account, wide progression across your family of characters on your battlenet account, share your warband bank access, war within renown achievements, collections and more, visit our latest article. Yeah, yeah, so warbands. Essentially, you pick four characters and these four characters can share a bank uh, they share gold. They sure share many different things. Many things within the war within are going to become war bound account or something like that, it's something along them lines, and essentially you can put it in this war bound account and those who are those characters that are within your war band can take them out. It's really really cool. It's going to be the first time that we see a different main menu in 20 years of World of Warcraft and, honestly, I can't wait for it. It's going to be so amazing to have four of your characters all sat around a campfire. You know chilling. I think it's going to be really cool, and them small things, I think, are what's going to do it for me. Um, it's not the big stuff, it's them small things, them small changes that are going to make it more enjoyable for me personally.
Speaker 1:
Hero talents rise to the new heights of your power with hero talent trees. Each class specialization has access to two choice of self-contained hero talent trees inspired by iconic warcraft universe archetypes. Revisit our previous hero talents preview to get a glimpse of what is in development so some of these can be updated before the release and you know even the beta. But these are the hero talents that are going to be within the beta, all of them essentially, but mountain thane, lightsmith, sand lane chrono, warden, keeper of the grove, dark ranger, hunter, frost, fire mage and oracle, elune's Chosen, windwalker and Wild Stalker, druids, Scale Commander, evoker, herald of the Sun and Templar Paladins, trickster, rogue, diabolist, warlock and Colossus Warrior, rider of the Apocalypse and Deathbringer, death Knights. Oh God, I hate reading the Demon Hunter ones Alderaiki, reaver, demon Hunters I've probably butchered that. Druid of the Claw, druids, flameshaper, evoker, pack Leader, hunter, bell, slinger Mage, shadow Pan and Conduit of the Cel of the celestial monks, farseer, shaman, hell cooler, warlock and slayer warrior. All of these are different hero talents within the war within and, honestly, they all look really enjoyable. They all look so fun. Um, definitely test them out if you get the beta, test out your classes like stuff, but they all look really enjoyable and they bring a different element to the classes themselves. Definitely worth looking out for.
Speaker 1:
There is a new battleground deep pool ravine. This is essentially what is it? The silver shard mines and kind of a raffy, but more Eye of the Storm I would say. So you have a capture point and then you have the tracks, the carts. Essentially, you can do both. You can capture the flag or capture the cart. Each rewards its own separate amount of whatever the resource is and essentially that's how you win the battlegrounds. Nothing too crazy about it. We've seen these sort of battlegrounds before. The notable difference is that there is a cart that you can hop in that takes you from one side of the battleground to the other within a couple of seconds. There was a quick sort of rotation for a team essentially, which is really cool. It's a cool little feature and worth keeping an eye out for.
Speaker 1:
For professions, there's just new recipes and enchants, um, and updated npc work orders. This is the big one. So obviously, work orders you don't really get a lot during the expansion or during a season, so npcs will constantly be putting up work orders, um. This will allow a decent amount of gold that can be utilized when people essentially are going through their professions and there's a lack of player work orders on the market at the time. So you know it's a decent gold income and hopefully this will help with people having to. This will help with gold influx for those who deal in professions mainly. There are new UI updates, so improve quest icons to make types of quests clearer. So you know how. The story missions have this like shield icon around the exclamation mark. Missions have this like shield icon around the exclamation mark.
Speaker 1:
Well, there'll be different ones for daily quests, for uh, side quests, for uh, what is it? Maybe character specific quests or class quests. You know that kind of deal. That's what they're going for with that. So, yes, the heroic edition is where you will get certain benefits to the war Within. You'll get a little bit of Trader's Tender and it allows you to get the what is it? Oh my god, the three-day access in for the war within. No, that's the epic edition, sorry. The heroic one will allow you to get a mount and a little transmog set.
Speaker 1:
The epic edition will allow you to get three days early access as well as more traders tender, and you'll have an extra 30 days game time as well as well, as I think it's a three-day early access, if I'm not too, yes, it's an early access that you get. So, three days before the War of Wind launches for everyone else, those who have early access are allowed to play it. Now, this isn't too much of a bother. In all honesty, three days are three days. It's not going to be that worth, and it just kind of allows people to not experience a laggy sort of start. This will actually spread the player base out quite nicely. It means that there won't be a massive influx on the servers and you won't have to deal with server lag or anything like that. So you know, if 50 of the people buy the three-day early access, they'll be gone by the time that the people who didn't buy it get into the game and there's no lag for anyone, which is really good.
Speaker 1:
I don't know. It's looking really really good. It really is looking good and I think that it's going to be one of the best expansions potentially that they've ever released. It depends on if it's going to be kind of a standalone expansion or it will be something that leads into the saga, essentially that they wanted to do with the next two expansions after this. So it's either going to be one of the best expansions ever or it will be a setup-based expansion where it sets up everything for the coming expansions. I just hope that they don't use it as the setup base one, because I think that it has a lot of potential by itself and I think that it would ruin or give a bad taste in the mouth to the player base if it was just used as a setup expansion. Essentially, it wouldn't be enjoyable in my opinion. But yeah, that's where the base will end. I'll give my two cents on a quick forum post, because I just can't with some people.
Speaker 1:
So full greens, no enchants. Could someone please tell me why it's unfair to be playing with people who are in full greens, not a single enchant with people who are full 5-2-8 gear and sockets Like how is that anywhere balanced? What a joke, lmao. So talking about solo shuffle and he's talking about PvP. In PvP, if you are full greens, you have 13 item levels difference from those who are full pvp gear, like full epics, and those who are full greens.
Speaker 1:
Enchants do help. They give you a bit more health. They give you a bit more. You know stat priority, but it can be overcome if you are good enough. If you are a DPS complaining about this and that person in full greens is losing every round, you are in the up because that will mean that you get four wins to two losses, so you shouldn't be complaining about that. If you're a healer, you can complain about this, because you'll go three and three because you'll always lose with that DPS. Because you'll go three and three, because you'll always lose with that DPS.
Speaker 1:
Now, this is a DPS that's saying this and he shouldn't be complaining because he's getting the extra win no matter what. Now, if he's losing with the person, that's fair enough. If he's winning with him, that's fair enough. But if he's losing against that person who's in all greens, then you have no one to blame but yourself, because if you aren't skilled enough to beat someone in full greens now, don't get me wrong the person in full greens might be better, like they just might be better than you straight up. It might just be a skill difference. Uh, in terms of like, they just have more knowledge of the game, know how to press their rotation buttons better, know how to press their rotation buttons better, know how to press their defensives, when to run, when to attack, all of that sort of thing. You can lose to these people and it just makes it a bit tougher.
Speaker 1:
I agree that it shouldn't be the case that people in full greens are coming into solo shuffle, but they are at your rating for a reason, are coming into solo shuffle, but they are at your rating for a reason. Um, well, sometimes the rating can be a bit different. If, um, you're at sort of 1600 or 1800 and their very first game in pvp they're all full greens, they are put at the 1800 bracket and then obviously they lose six. They go down in mmr. Uh, it is going to ruin that sort of game for a lot of people, but at the same time it's tough. You just have to accept it because it will happen. And the thing is, you can lose to the people in greens. If you aren't playing smart enough, you still can lose. But if you're a DPS, you simply just say yep, I'll take my four wins and go, because you're still getting four wins at people who are the same MMR. So you're still going up in rating and MMR. It's the healers that should be complaining about this because, well, someone going 0 in 6, it's really rough on a healer because it's just three in three like wins wise. I personally don't think it's that big of a deal.
Speaker 1:
I think solo shuffle is the place where you would learn your class in World of Warcraft. If you are wanting to learn a new class in WoW, you go solo shuffle or comp stomp or battlegrounds, anything like that. But you have to make that leap from battlegrounds or comp stomp to an arena based matchup eventually. Grounds or comp stomp to an arena based matchup eventually. And solo shuffle is the most, uh, accessible to do so because you can't get declined. Because if your gear is good enough you can sign up. But you cannot get declined because if you go in looking for group and try and sign up to people and they see that your item level is too low or that you're zero rating, you're going to get declined. So you have to practice somehow and solo shuffle is the most accessible.
Speaker 1:
So, yeah, it's one of them things I think people need to kind of get over it and just deal with it. If you can win with that guy, then perfect. And the thing is you can win with people who are in all greens. You simply just lay out a strat beforehand. It's like, okay, play it really safe, I'll look to just get in there and do the damage. You have to play for your life and we'll win in like deep dampening.
Speaker 1:
You know that kind of deal. Um, it's not. You know, argue with them and tell them to piss off or anything like that it is. You have to try and strategize. That's what solo shuffle is. It is very much. You've got to do this and we will win. I believe that we can do this. You've just got to trust me. I will do the damage for us and we'll win in dampening eventually. But it's one of them things People don't think about that they don't, and it's as simple as that. But oh well, if people want to complain, people can complain they. They've been doing it since 2004 and they'll keep doing it well into warcraft future. So it is what it is. But yeah, that's where I'll end it for this episode. Thank you all very much for listening. Do check out all the socials down below constant stuff happening over there. But thank you all very much for listening and go. Avala friend, goodbye all. Thank you.
