The Instance: Billions of Corpse Runs

0:00So I learned a little something this week, Bobby. You wanna hear about this? You wanna hear about this? Yeah, okay. What? Hit me. 10s of billions of character deaths have happened in World Warcraft since 2004, since the release of the game. That doesn't include classic, doesn't include the, you know, when Arthas wipes everybody it, but you all come back right after, doesn't count any of that. Like none of this artificial stuff. Okay, because that's like a fake death. That's a fake death. You were not gonna be dead for long. It was annoying. Or the first of my sawd, I actually was surprised back because I didn't see any videos leading up to it. Back in those Wrath Days. So it was actually. It was great. But tens of billions, we don't have an exact account of this because Blizzard has never released numbers in this regard. But that's a lot of characters just die in and then running, flying, or riding back ghostly form to their lumpy body and picking her back up again, you know? There are less than 10 billion people on Earth. Do you think it includes all the deaths

1:02from when you logged into the game on New Patch Day and the Zeppelin took you out into the middle of the ocean and dumped you into the water and you died? Probably, probably. Or even people who swam too far, you know, how that would work. You'd go, like, I think I can go forever and then you would start like making your sick or whatever your character'd throbbing red and then you'd die out in the middle of nowhere. I'll bet those are in there. Well, I'm gonna say that those are fake numbers then because they juiced them with all their crappy code. Oh, shit. Thank you. Hello, everybody. Welcome to the instance. I'm Scott and that's Bobby there. Hello. Hi, we're hanging out. We got stuff to do. We got things to cover and why not? Cause it's, it's a blizzcon in a week, dude. We're not going. Neither of us are going.

2:03No, it'll be, let's see. So I've been in ways away from me. I had been to every blizzcon from 2011 on until, let's see, I guess until the pandemic, how long does it take you to get to, do you fly? Yeah, when you would go, you flew. Yeah, we only flew, we only ever flew it. It was like an hour, it's nothing. It's an hour flight. Yeah, that's like, so if you were to drive there, how long would it take? So about 10 and a half hours to drive to LA. Wait, holy, what, how do you, how do you translate, is it because of the mountains? It's, no, it's because of speed limits. And things like that. Cause it makes it, okay, okay, hold on. Cause as the crow flies, as you know, is a little different than when, as the, as the van drives. Yeah, when I drive to, so my, my dad lives in Atlanta. And when I drive to his house, it takes about four hours from where I am. Yeah. And that's like an hour flight, if I were to fly,

3:03hour and a half, maybe. Okay, that's interesting. How is, how did the travel math, travel math doesn't make any sense? No, that's actually really good. That's a really good point. Why does it take so much longer by road? And I can confirm this from other perspectives. It takes about six, five to six hours to get from LA to Vegas if you drive. And that's with no traffic. So we're assuming no traffic across the board here for this, for this trip. It might be closer to eight and a half if you have zero traffic, but that doesn't exist in California, especially as your, let me ask you, do you mean to say that if you take off at 10 o'clock, so at like city time, you will land at 11 o'clock California time? No, if I take off, it is only one Earth clock ticking hour. Like you are in the air for an hour. Correct. Now, there may be a bunch of getting ready in the plane's late or you're taxing forever for getting all that. If you're just from what lift off to, we have lift off to, we've landed.

4:06That's about an hour, like getting glasses at a lens crafters at the mall. That's about weird about that. I'm gonna have to look into that. Can you do that? Because if I've got this wrong, then I would love to hear the guy here who actually has a license to fly a plane, which is Bobby and not me. This is fly. I would love to hear more about that. But I'm not going because of two reasons. Number one, Blizzard used to give press credentials and or help out a little bit with costs to a much lower mid to low tier of community sort of influence or types hosts, podcasts hosts, video channels, that sort of thing. And something changed this year, where, and I can't speak to when they announced midnight if that one, the 2023 one was any different. But they don't do that, like they used to do it. And now it's like, I think I mentioned this a couple episodes ago, but it's like two or three big mainstream,

5:08the kids know who they are type influencers. And then kind of none of the usual faces. And it's also true of the bands and stuff. It's all K-pop, J-pop, I guess T-Pains old, so I'm not really sure why he's going, but no longer are we the dad rock era of Metallica and the Foo Fighters and all that shiz. So I don't know what that means. It probably means there was a meeting at some point where they went, look, all the older here, we're all playing, they're committed. Anyone, we're not gonna sell to new 45 year old dudes who want to play World of Warcraft for the most part. What we should do is focus on the kids because the kids are all playing Fortnite and Roblox and they don't want anything to do with us. So how do we get those guys? Something like that happened, I believe. I think you're probably right. Because if you're trying to, what's the point and why do you invite these people? Why do you do? Why do you organize it and structure it in any way?

6:10It's at least from a business perspective. Now we could all talk about why we would structure in a certain way because we wanna have fun and we wanna see this. But from a business perspective, from a corporate business perspective, they're probably thinking about growth. And as you said, the 40 to 55 demographic... It's no longer the target. It's probably not a growth demographic. No, I think it's been a very healthy thing for them as a World of Warcraft in 2004 required a bunch of young 30 year olds to kick things off. And we did. And we were there for it. And then time passed and now they're going, oh shit, we can't do this. I think there's some of that to it. I also think that they're just simplifying in general. And I don't necessarily blame them. It's a giant cluster. And I did it for so many years and I don't know how they ever pulled this shit off. I'm like talking to people internally, it was just like, wow, I don't know how you guys do. How do you even run this?

7:11And it is primarily these days being run by a contracted third party. So they don't even do most of it internally the way they used to. So just a lot of that has changed. The price of tickets has gone way up, the cost of getting there, staying anywhere near there is all exponentially grown. So those are factors also. I think had I been given at least press access, I may have flinagled away to figure it out. But they didn't do any of that. I was here with anybody. And it's not just me going, okay, I didn't get it. Like I had my time in the sun up there. I'm good. But everybody I've talked to that are in similar boats or kind of in the same vein of coverage or the gut communities that are a little bit smaller, more adjacent, whatever. All of them got snubbed as well. Again, I don't mean it as a negative thing. I just think this is the nature of this business now. And they're not interested. Snubbed can be a positive word. Yeah, I really can't. It can be, honestly.

8:11Like they're times I've heard it used to be a positive guy. There's times where I like being snubbed. Like if there's a party and someone's like, ah, we're not inviting them. Actually, I'm okay with that. You might like, you might, you might like that you were snubbed. But nobody says that they're going to snub someone that someone was snubbed and that's a positive thing. Yeah, I just, I got to push you. This is the mountain, this is the hill I'm going to. You're going to die on this that snubbed is never a positive term. Right. Unless, no, you're right. That's it. I was trying to think of like another use for snubbed. But I would say you're right that we were, people like us were overlooked. And yeah, that's why would you, why would you look at us? Yeah. And also, this is also a blizzard that is not the same blizzard. When more time and those guys were, even in the very beginning and then throughout the kind of growth of the company and even at that sort of, let's say 2010, 20 to 2015 kind of era of the height of it all, I think that they, they were still that kind of company

9:13where that, the community that got you there still mattered. And all those guys are that age too, you know, more time in them or all, you know, pushing 60 now, but you know, Metsons and his 50s, everybody's in their 50s. And they were, when they started this company, they were all young, hungry, 22 year olds. And it just feels like the inevitable thing, enough time passes, the sort of thing can't last forever. People literally die off. Like, that's just the truth. And where are we at now? Well, we're at a place where they have a big corporate mandate. And right now things are weird with that mandate. Blizzard is their top performer. So maybe it makes them seem safe, but I think it's also a little weird. So I don't know, there's a lot to talk about with all that. Some of it is pure conjecture which don't freaking know, but yeah. I don't want to think I do like this here, is they're going to stream the entire thing

10:16and not make it a $50, you know, pay for it thing. You can just see it on Twitch, YouTube, wherever. Yeah, and that's great because you and I, we're going to talk about this again later, but you and I are going to stream, coast stream, the opening ceremonies and a bunch of the wild stuff on Saturday, the 12th of this month. Yeah, that'll be fun. Yeah, that will be fun. You said we're going to talk about it later. So maybe I'm going to ask you a question, which is because you came in hot and I want to know, we haven't talked, it's been like two weeks since I talked to you. How you doing? I'm doing all right. I went to Moab, Utah. Oh, yeah. I know you went somewhere, it was for your anniversary. Was? Yeah. Now here's some more confusing travel time. I thought it took five hours to get the Moab. It takes three and a half hours. Now I don't know if that's because speed limits have changed since 07 last time I was there or something else, I don't know. But for whatever reason I was there. The universe is expanding, that's why I got there. Maybe that's it. I got stoked because I got in the car, fired up the old GPS through on car play and went,

11:17all right, let's lock it in. And I'm ready to look at a number that says five points, something hours. Because you're like, all right, car video game time. Yeah, or nap or whatever it was going to do. I was having a book, I was reading all this stuff. So I do that and it says three point hour and 20, or three hours and 20 minutes. I'm like, what? I couldn't believe it. I was so excited. So we got their way quick. But there's a wow connection out in Moab that I didn't expect. One I expected, one I didn't expect. One of the reasons that I've said. Is that a thousand needles thing again? Yeah, it might be. Might be. Just a little though. Thousand needles which is currently underwater. Yeah, which is a real shame. And it has been since what, 2012, whenever that expansion came out. When would I change? When was the mad dragon expansion? Cataclysm. When was that 2011, 12? Nope. I don't know. So 10, whatever it was. December 7th, 2010.

12:19There you go. According to that makes sense. Because we learned about Pandaria pretty quickly after that. And then that blizzcon, 2011 blizzcon, I get to play it. So that's what that makes sense. So anyway, my favorite zone in the entirety of the World of Warcraft was thousand needles. And then they then they flooded it, the bastards. A fan did, I don't know where this is. It's somewhere in my office, but there's a painting he made of Gurp and Henry, my hunter and his pet, Neil, Gurp's kneeling and Henry's next to him at the base of the bottom of that canyon. And behind him there's a giant water wall like a wave, tidal wave. That's pretty cool. Coming in to like change things forever, right? Super cool. I treasure it. I freaking love it. This guy did this. But it really, I have just lots of feelings about it. And it turns out the reason I do is as a kid, we would go to Moab and like Powell and all these places with huge walls of Red Rock and balancing stones

13:21and weird arches and all that stuff, right? And that's that. I mean, that is that area. That is another planet. If you've never been down there, I highly recommend it. It is absolutely crazy. You just go to Arches National Park and you'll just be like, what the frick is this? Like you really do feel like you've got, you know, no man's sky somewhere. And this was just such a great reminder of that. I was like, oh yeah, dude, this is just printed on me. This kind of, this does these places are printed in my soul. Yeah, yeah, I mean, you like all, I mean, you always like all kinds of media, video games, movies and everything that look like this. Deserts, yeah, baby. And you know, it's not just Fury Road. Those people, you know, tease me for loving that movie so much. But it's got a huge, it's a huge part of why I love Fury Road is the vibe. And the vibe is this. So that was my first thing. I'm waiting there. It's like having 1000 needles back. This is great. Yeah, walking around some taurans

14:22doing stuff and just getting there's no taurans. But there's this dude named Matt too. Now the reason his name is Matt too is he's a waiter at this burger place, this pub we went to in town. You know, that normally he's packed and crazy, but we're off season last week. So it was great. We were kind of alone. And this guy goes, hey, I'm Matt too, because there's another Matt and he's been here longer. So they call me Matt too and like sweet class. That too. And he goes, I know you're shirt and I went, I don't know yours. No, I said, oh, really? And I looked down and sure enough, I had forgotten I'd done it. But I'm wearing a World of Warcraft big gold logo shirt. Yeah, I've had forever. And he goes, he goes, oh, I miss World of Warcraft so much. I say, I'm still out there for him. He's still playing it. I know, but this and that and time and whatever. And there's that internet out in Moab and all this sort of thing. And he's like, I had all these reasons why I can't play, but he was so excited to talk about the game a little bit. I told him about the show and he goes, I think I heard of that show before. I said, you might have, it was kind of a big deal on the day.

15:25And I don't want to brag or anything. Yeah, I don't want to. But it was kind of a big deal. Then he goes, you go into that blizzcon. That's coming up as, I mean, he knew all that stuff. And yeah, yeah. So we had this whole conversation and it was lovely. It was like a nice little person to person, you know, no, no money on the table other than the burger I had to pay for. But, you know, this is an exchange of a shared thing. And it was nice. So even though I got to play like no video games all week, which is probably good as my anniversary, not meant to go play video games while I'm supposed to be spending time with my wife. But I didn't play, wow, I didn't play anything else. And a little bit of Pokemon pinball in the car. That was about it. You got to get something in, you know. Yeah, I mean, who am I? What am I crazy? I read a lot. I did a lot of reading. So that was cool. But anyway, so, shout out. I don't think you'll hear it. I maybe you will. I told him about the show and where to get it. But Matt too, if you're listening, that was genuinely a cool experience to talk about

16:27one of the greatest video games ever made in the backdrop of the place that makes me love. I'm not even, I don't think I'm hoard without it. Honestly, my devotion to hoard people think it's just, oh, you like the dirty races or that freaking, you know, whatever it is, right? I've always been accused of various things with that. But the bottom line is they live where I want to live in the desert, even though I'm the widest man you'll ever meet and I'll get freaking 50 kinds of skin cancer and burned every day. All of that aside, cover me up. I'm fine. That is where I want to be. It's where I want to live. It's where I want to die. You know what? I wouldn't mind if I, some of the Scott, you've got terminal butt cancer. You need to, you need to, you're going to be gone in like a week. I probably say see ya and get out to some canyon somewhere. Nope, nope, nope. If I had to, I'd want to be somewhere with good plumbing. Well, the Grand Canyon, delicate arch, these places don't have good plumbing.

17:29So it wouldn't work that way. But even if it's just as simple, like take my ashes to Moab, sprinkle them around, you know, out in the dirt somewhere, take a path, don't even do it legally. Don't care what anyone says. Just find where nobody is and just sprinkle them around. Let the lizards know that I'm up there. Let the lizards know. That's a T-shirt if I ever. Yeah. World of Warcraft. Let the lizards know. What do you think of that? I barely know what it means. So it's a great T-shirt. Well, anyway, it was really fun and the only bummer was a couple of shows got dinged. This was one of them because I was gone and we really couldn't do much to do anything remote. Yeah. To have to miss a show is right as the season two started. Yeah. Getting all hairy in there. As far as I know, you have both your raid teams or both raid teams you're involved with. Have you taken down the great? No. My primary raid team is usually always a little bit behind the core within core guild raid

18:32team. Because Tanner's a task master. That's because Tanner runs a tight ship. And if you don't, if he demands performance and if you don't perform, then he's going to say a lot of mean words to you. Yep. You come to that guy and you go, Hey, Tanner, I hit whatever I level and he'll go. That could be better, he'd say. Yeah. It's fine, I guess. Yeah. We're actually. That's the thing about Tanner. He's got such a like a like a like a calm kind of voice. You feel like you feel like you're disappointing him. Yeah. And that just feels so bad. Yeah, I don't want to disappoint him. He's going to, he's going to blizzcon. He's going to do some back and forth with me and we're going to try to just get some on the ground business. Great. I don't know how much he'll get to see outside of whatever one I'll get to see, but he's going to give it a shot. So maybe get some soundbites for us. At the usual thing we used to do when we go to the show.

19:34So yeah, yeah. Yeah. Both his kind of voice goes, but But it's on the ground, but you got busy playing. I played nothing I played nothing. And again, busy. So you got way busy. Did you, I mean, where are you? You've cleared everything you beat the world of Warcraft. You're done. Yeah. So, so let's talk about, I feel like this will be a thing commonly because I consistent like, I'm playing the game every week, so it's like, what did Bobby do this week in World of Warcraft? It's going to be hard to avoid because Scott has had no time. I'm paying for a month right now, but I'm not in there at the moment. That's all that Blizzard cares about. Oh, I know. No, honestly, they care about the hot new influencer come into BlizzCon to talk to the kids and they care about my 2004 and forward sub that I've had. They briefly had the 100-year card or whatever it was called. Just for a second. And then they changed how they let that work and I know. Oh, okay. Yeah, but you talk to somebody at Blizzard and you say, like, oh, I just haven't really

20:34been into World of Warcraft and then they're going to be like, oh, well, what is it? How can we? And then you say, well, I'm still paying for the subscription. They're like, oh, okay, never mind. We're talking. F off. We're busy. No. So, yeah, it's season two started. And so what have I been doing? So the first thing I did was I was getting into Mythic Plus a little bit. We talked about that last time a little bit in the week before the season starts. I was doing like the Mythic Plus World Tour, you know, trying to get familiar with all that stuff. That's what everybody does. And how much of that for you is tied with, like, I've seen four videos and I'm also now seeing it for the first time on Mythic Zero. And now I'm all ready to go. Or you just, are you just wrong? I am. I don't. People might be shocked by this. I don't know how many people will be shocked by this. I don't watch, like, videos for how to do these things.

21:36Maybe a little bit of that is because I am a tank, so I have the privilege of everyone needing me to be in a group. So they have to put up with if I'm learning and not doing a good job. But I'm always like, I can't watch a whole video about, you know, the temple of Scythralis and then say, and then remember, I can't be expected to remember all of that stuff. That's a lot to be expected to be expected of. By the time I get to the end of the video and there is some dude is explaining in the terrible way that YouTubers explain how the strategies work for the last boss. I've forgotten what the first boss even is. So I just jump in there and, and, and roll with it. Yeah. And see what happens. But anyway, I didn't do that the first week when the, when the season started. I actually jumped into Delves because they, they have this thing in the Delves.

22:36So every Delve for, for those who maybe haven't played in a while and don't know Delves are a single player thing. You know, like, you just go in and you know what a Delve is. It's like a single person dungeon run. Really? So, so you go in there, you're doing the Delves, but there's always, at the end of, there's sort of like a mini quest thing that introduces you to, there's always like a Delve boss, which is the Delve nemesis. And every season has a different boss. And if you beat that boss, you get some rewards, but it's on, it has two difficulties. It has like a question mark difficulty. I don't know why they do question marks. So I guess because Delves have different tiers, you select and the, the question mark, I guess is supposed to be like, oh no, what is this? How hard is this? Yeah. Usually not very. It turns out, unless you're, yeah, the first one isn't too bad though, same, but then

23:36they have a one level above that for the same boss, which is the double question mark. It's, it's question mark, question mark. Whoa. That one usually is very hard. I usually take that as somebody's. If you have one question mark, there's just asking a question. If you have two, they're panicking. Yeah. You know what I mean? So that's what it is. You kind of are panicking when you're fighting these bosses. The double question mark version of these nemesis bosses and every Delve and every season is always really, really hard. So what they've done in the past is, I think they just did it for the first time in season one of midnight. What they did is like the first, I think it was like the first, I think it was like the first thousand people to beat the double question mark boss got a, a feat of strength in a title achievement. I didn't know they did that. That's cool. Yeah. It was cool. It was called like the fabled, let me solo him, whatever the boss's name was or anyway.

24:38So that was cool. You know, like those thousand people, they get something special. There's a big community, sort of uproar about that because the first thousand people sounds cool and everything. But if it's time, like if it kicks off right when the season starts, then it's a little unfair for, you know, like it favors the no lifers who can sit there and hit it over and over and over again as soon as it drops and don't have jobs and don't have kids and are asleep maybe when it starts and stuff like that. It's a problem with these in general. Like when Diablo get it or the first thousand to hit a hundred or whatever, which both shorts got into. Yeah. Right. I mean, it favored him, which was a guy at the time who wasn't working anywhere and was something he wasn't working. Yeah, all the things I just said, he wasn't working. He doesn't have kids. He's, you know, but which is fine for him, but for people like me, so I wasn't like upset

25:38about anything. Just like, well, I'm not going to get that. So whatever. But they changed it this season to be instead of the first thousand people, it was the first, it was the anybody who was able to beat the question, double question mark boss in the first week of the season, which I think works pretty well because you still, it's still very hard to do it at all. Yeah. Lettle and in the first week, it's especially hard because you don't, you haven't built up a lot of gear to protect you from making mistakes. Because these delve nemesis bosses are designed with gimmicks that you have to, you can't just out gear it. Or can help you survive certain mechanics that maybe are unforgiving, but you have to,

26:41the real test is that you can learn the gimmicks. You can learn the, where to move, how it works and all that kind of stuff and that you can execute it more or less perfectly. And what gear does is, like I said, it, typically what gear does is it makes it so that you'll kill the boss faster because you have higher DPS. So you'll have to, you'll have to deal with the mechanics for a shorter amount of time, but you still have to execute it perfectly. Anyway, the point I'm making is that doing it in the first week is really, really hard because you don't have all the new gear yet. Right. And so that's what I did the first week and I got it. Nice. So I killed the boss and you get, you get a title. What's the title? The fabled vanquisher of Ashtorek. Damn. I had to ask my doctor if Ashtorek was right for me. Yeah. It turns out it's not. Okay. Being recalled because you didn't get the title.

27:42Okay. Well, that makes sense. That's cool though. How many of those do you have these unique titles that are tied to that kind of achievement where everyone's going to get? I've never, I've never really tried to push really hard to get something that you have to be on the cutting edge to really get unless you count like ahead of the curve, which I don't really because it's pretty, like if you put any kind of effort into getting ahead of the rate achievements ahead of the curve, then you'll get it. Like you just have to put some effort into it. You'll get it. Sure. But I've never tried anything like this before to get it because I'm usually like, I've got other things I want to do. I don't want to devote because you really, I really had to sit down. It's a very hard boss to beat. This one required a memory game. It was really, really, so what happens is at a certain point, I won't go through all the mechanics, but the main gimmick is that at three points throughout the fight, based on percentage when the boss gets down to 90% health, then 60% then 30% health,

28:43a memory game happens. The boss runs into the middle of the room and will basically will cover the room with a bunch of poison. We'll shoot out a bunch of poison into the room, except for one quadrant of the room is kept safe. All right. You can see it. It's pretty easy to see. You run to that quadrant and you're safe, and then it moves to another one, and then it moves to another one. You're moving around, right? It happens that movement and that happens. The first time it happens at 90% health, it does it five times. The second time it happens at 60% health, it does it six times. Then at 30% health, he does it seven times. You have to find the safe spot or the safe quadrant of the room that many times each time it happens. It sounds easy enough, right? Typical mechanic, you stand near the boss and you can move to each of the quadrants really quickly because he's in the middle of the room.

29:44Pretty easy. Sure. The hard part is, there are two things. First, the hard part is after he does it and you move it, he then does it again. In the same order that he did the first time, but now you can't see it. You have to just go and stand in those locations. It's a memory game. It's a memory game. You have to remember how it went. Even harder though, because remember, it starts with five and then six and then seven. When you're at 30% health, you're trying to memorize a sequence of seven quadrants. It's hard. At the same time, he has created a duplicate image of himself that you're having to fight and these bosses, you have to be ready to interrupt and to move at other stuff and to all this kind of stuff while you're memorizing the sequence. That just seems like dirty pool. It's very hard.

30:45It's one of those challenges that is very frustrating and incredibly rewarding when you get it. I don't know how I feel about this one. I've always thought that I like the del bosses because of that, how they're always very challenging and it feels very rewarding to be. This one though, I did not want to use an add-on to figure it out. That's just a kind of sort of hobby as you guys. That's a cheat for him. Well, because I don't just want, I don't know. It's just for me. If someone sees the title and the mount, they don't know if they probably even assumed because there are add-ons that exist. They don't solve it for you, but they add on that exist because the game doesn't do add-ons like that anymore. But the add-on that exists, it basically puts like you put some colored markers down on the ground so that you can easily identify, oh, it's the green section.

31:48It's the purple section. It's the orange section. Can you just do those standard grade markers if you add to? Put down the spell. Yeah, so you do that. You put those on the ground and then the add-on, what it does is it puts like an interface box on your screen and that sort of looks like a Simon game, right? Then as it's happening, you're moving and then you click. Oh, it was in the purple one. Oh, it was in the blue one. Then when it's over because it's timer-based, when it's over, it then goes back through them slowly based on the timer and then it tells you which one to go, which color section to go to. Gotcha. I did not want to do that because that's hard still. For me, I was like, I can do it. I tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and it was, I couldn't get it. I even tried so hard not to use the add-on that at one point, I got my daughter in here and I said, okay, here's what you're going to do.

32:49She's 11 years old. She doesn't want to do this, but I was like, this is what I need you to do. She's a biological add-on. She really was. She came in and I gave her a piece of paper and a pencil and I said, here's what we're going to do. I'm going to go through. I'm going to call out the colors and then you're going to write them down and then I'm going to have you read them back to me. After she did that, because the fight is long, after she did that a couple of times, she got really bored. So I didn't make her do it anymore. That's when I realized, what are you doing, Bobby? That's what the add-on does. Just use the add-on. Yeah, you were trying to skirt around the add-on. You created your own add-on, but it was more complicated. You made that easy. Yeah, what really made convinced me to just do the add-on was I was like, what am I going to tell people? Yeah, I didn't use an add-on. Then I'll describe the way I did it and then they're just going to be like, Bobby, you still... That's what the add-on does. Yeah, the add-on does what you did physically. That's funny. Yeah. I mean, so I did it. I still impressed. Anytime they add a third dimension to memory games, I'm great with up, down, left, right.

33:55No problem. Let's go. North, south, east, west. Not a problem, but if you start saying, or if you have to rotate and what was on my, I don't know, north, east is now my southwest. I can't keep that shit. I can't do that. It's very hard, but I got it. That was exciting and that was the first thing I have done. We don't usually call out chat stuff in the middle of the show, but I just have to do this one. Jerry Tolbert says, this is your human analog color keeper or hack. There you go. That's pretty good. I like that. It's pretty good. Bobby Hack, the game, everybody. Yeah, I did hack it. So that's cool though. I think you still deserve it, even though you kind of did the shortcut. They all do. Everyone's using the shortcut. So you're playing on an equal field. It's not like, you know, I'm sure someone, someone somewhere is bragging right now that they did it without it. I'm sure. And they truly, they deserve something extra if they did it without an add-on because

34:58it is very hard. It is still hard. I keep saying it. It's still hard. I keep saying it because I want people to be impressed that I did it. But it is still hard to do it with the add-on, but it is very hard to do it without an add-on. How many wipes do you figure? You went through? Oh, I don't know. It's easily 40 or 50. But that's not even that many. Some of the ones in the past seasons of Delves, I easily did 115, 130 wipes on some of those. Yeah, it's a Tier 8, Tier 9 ones. I remember being pretty spiky at the end. And I would go through, I would die a lot and go, well, maybe I'll come back to this. Yeah, those nemesis bosses are really, really tough. But that was the Delves. And then once I did that, I was like, okay, now I can get into Mythic Plus. But by then it was like, it was raid night. So we've raided both the teams.

36:04As I said, the core within team, we have cleared normal. Did that one night, right? No, it was the second week that we cleared it. Oh, okay. Well, you guys ripped through that for some reason. I don't know why. No, it took us two weeks. Both the raid teams that are in the race to core first competition that the core guild has, both of us, only two guilds are competing this time. Usually three, right? I think there's been four before, but usually three, yeah. So what happened? The other ones just, there's some of them are listening to this. You guys just baby out what happened? You wienies? No, I don't know. I think there was some, there was some, and I don't actually know, I'm speculating because I don't keep up very well with like the guild politics. The politics is the wrong word, but for lack of a better word, guild politics. But I know that, I guess, because again, drama has sort of a pejorative feel to it.

37:06Drama is probably the correct word, but I don't mean it in a negative way. Like snub, it's like that. Yeah. Right. Yeah, you know a bunch of snowflakes. And I don't mean that in a negative way. No, I don't mean it in a bad way, because snub is awesome, man. You're just skiing in it. But I think there are just some bad, people weren't feeling good about the competitive nature of that, that everybody just felt compelled to do because all the raid teams were just by default thrown into this. Yeah. It started out very friendly like, hey, let's all do this and then I, that can build up and get weird. Yeah. And it did, I think it got a little weird for some people and some of the teams and, and so some people were really enjoying it. I really like the competition. It's fun. I don't take it personally or anything like that. I like competing and I, and I get like, in general, my attitude is I'm a very like lighthearted, friendly, competitive, natured person. I would have liked to, I like to trash talk and I like to, you know, but it's all for

38:10show. I don't really care. Yeah. If you lose, it's fine, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. And the core within Guild, we didn't win in the last season. And I was like, you know, congratulations to the people who won because whatever, you know, we're still having fun. But anyway, I think the idea was a lot of people really enjoyed doing it, but a lot of people didn't. So they just changed how it works. And basically the teams have to agree to opt, you opt in to the, to the race core. And only two of the teams decided to do it this time. Our team and who's the other team? I want to, I want to mention them. So. I used to know them all by heart. No, remember them now. All takes is missing a couple of seasons and you're like, Oh, shit, who would, who would we hear it is? It's the, oh, shrimp shack. That's right. The shrimp shack shooters. Yeah. I love that. I love that team name. Yeah, that's good. Well, the other one though, I was a little bit more like self deprecating name. Wasn't it? The other guys that were always up our butt.

39:11Yeah, it was a very competitive race. Yeah. But if you're, if your guild can handle it, I recommend it because it's fun. But if it gets too hairy, then, you know, I don't know, then I think about, we do it all big too. Like, like we have special badges that are designed by core guild members to be like, if you, if you get the, if you win, if you get AOTC first, because that's, that's the race. It's not mythic. You're not clearing mythic. Yeah. Whoever gets AOTC first. Right. But you get like a special badge next to your name saying for that season, that's specially designed for that season, saying, hey, you got it. And anyway, core within, we've cleared normal. Shrimp shack didn't. They're one boss down, but they have a habit of doing something, which is they'll probably do it this time too. I'm guessing last season, they didn't clear the final boss on normal.

40:15And they got up to the final boss and went ahead and started heroic at that point. Oh, what are we? What are you? What's the? Well, the, I mean, the rules are whoever clears heroic first. So it's totally within the rules, but it's, it's, you know, you know, I don't want to say that we are technically ahead, even though we are. Time to amend the guild constitution is what it sounds like to me. You got to know. It's, it's a strategy, right? Like, can your team get anything from the last boss on normal? Like, presumably you're clearing normal to learn the fights and to get gear to prepare you for heroic. If you don't need all the bosses on normal, then why do it? Yeah. The goal is to clear heroic. So I think it's totally fine. It's legitimate, totally legitimate. All right. You know what? I'll just go ahead and agree because it sounds like that's it everybody else has settled on. But you could make a rule. It just says you got to do everything on normal then heroic. You could do that. You could. But I don't think it's necessary. All right.

41:16It's if you're clearing heroic, if you, if you skip normal entirely and just go straight into heroic and clear it, you deserve the win. Yeah. You know, you should get something. Um, yeah. So, uh, anyway, so heroic starts tonight though, right? Yeah. So we're starting the core within and I, this week, both the teams I'm guessing are going to be starting heroic. So, so the race really kind of starts to heat up now. Anyone streaming that these days? If anyone wants to watch it, I don't know. I don't know. I did a little bit. I don't think I know how to stream anymore. So I forgot. I don't know about it. Uh, if anyone in that group is, let us know in the discord. We'll spread it around and be fun to watch. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Sure. If you're on, if you're in the core, uh, discord, then, um, then I'm sure or the core within guild, discord, not the core within the core guild discord. Correct. The name of our team, discord.dg slash core guild is my understanding. Right.

42:16Yeah. I think they're probably, probably people stream it on discord for sure. Oh, yeah. Um, but, uh, I don't know about Twitter, YouTube or anything. Does, does Tanner make you do like, you know, how coaches have game video and then they make the, the players rewatch game video to see where they're f and up and how they got us. No, no, he's, he's really good at reviewing all that stuff himself and coming up with the strategies and everything, um, that we're going to follow. And he's, he, he's, uh, he, he definitely, he like, this is the way we're doing it. And you're going to do it this way. Yep. Um, says it with like a certain kind of resolve that's hard to argue with. Yeah. It's, it's, it's, it's, and, and what's great about Tanner is you know, it's not just him on a power trip. It's, he's done the research. Yep. He's, trust it. He's, he's, he's a good, he's a good coach. Yeah. Yeah. He's there for, he's, um, he's got, he's on the whiteboard with the X's in the O's and figuring

43:23it out, right? And he's decided this is how we're going to do it. And it typically works. Um, so we trust him. Tanner's a good raid leader. We like him. He's also a really nice guy. So yeah, even when he gets started, I know I'm making him sound like a huge A hole, but, uh, well, even when he gets stern, I think he's, he's not like I said, he's quietly disappointed that your DPS is not high enough. Yeah. Now, I, what are you, where are you? I level wise. I see 309 here. Is that current? Yeah. I'm, I level 309. And I haven't, um, I haven't used any of my crests in the, in the past week to upgrade any of my gear. So it's probably more like three, ten or three, eleven. But, um, so what I'm seeing, I saw something on my head that says the current max is now with this new season six 71 or six 78 or something. If you're max upgraded, that seems, there's no way that you're reading something incorrect. That can't be right, right? No, it's three something. Yeah, it can't be six. This is aft. Yeah. All right.

44:24You're, you're, your internet, your Google is in, is in like 2017 mode. I'm giving, yeah, these haven't been squished yet. I'm seeing, I think I'm just seeing a forum post and the guy in here has it wrong. Okay. Well, that makes sense. But you, uh, listen, I have no doubt that wherever you're at is the right place to be that I know. Yeah. And my mythic, so I've, I've also been doing mythic plus, of course, I got the keystone master achievement, which is to get 2000 mythic plus rating. That's not too hard. The next level is 3000, which is keystone legend, I think. Um, so I'm going to push for that. Well, I go to 3400, which is the maximum one keystone, something or other keystone, the best. Um, I don't know. I'm at 20, 2499 rating right now, which isn't particularly high. Um, it's for people who are really like into mythic plus, it's definitely not particularly high. Um, but, um, I've, you know, I'm kind of taking it easy this season because I'm starting

45:30a new job. I've got school started here, all this kind of stuff. Yeah. So do you get that end up getting that school gig? I have, um, I have, I am, I've been given my new higher orientation date next week. I'm going to be teaching a science lab at an elementary school. This is awesome. For those that don't know, Bobby's also a science podcaster and this is like up his butt, man. Yeah. It's probably a better way to sing that. This is up your alley. There you go. I'm not going to talk about elementary schools and, and, but, um, no, the, uh, but, uh, the, um, there are a lot of schools will have what, what I've basically tried to create, because our school, our elementary school that my kids went to, um, didn't have this. I will be the first one to have this position, but it's a lot of elementary schools will have a science lab teacher and they work closely with the, um, the, what you call it,

46:32the classroom teachers on working for, working at, who's calling important call for the principal? Mr. Frankenberger, we regret to tell you that you're, you need to shave that head before you can mention elementary school and butts in the same stream. You're fired. You're out. Yeah. The science of being fired. Yeah. So, so I work with it. I'll be working with the teachers and doing, like, some labs that are supplementary to, um, what they're learning in the classroom that are aligned with the science standards and all that kind of stuff. The cool thing is a lot of these schools that do that. This is the point I was getting at and why I'm excited. A lot of the schools that, uh, do this, they kind of focus on second, third grade, end up through fifth grade or whatever. Um, I guess the sense is that first graders and kindergarteners are too young, but I'm going to be doing work with kindergarten through fifth grade. And that's what I'm excited about because I do firmly strongly believe that kindergartners can be taught a science foundation just as easily as it should be.

47:36I think. Yeah. And should be and should be start them early, man. Yeah. Let's get back to those, uh, that's a complete view of what's going on with Bobby this week. Yeah. And you're a busy guy. So the point is that you've, I think you've accomplished a great many things in world of the work craft, despite all the other crap you got going on in your life. So, uh, I guess well done on that front. Um, yeah. All right, guys, what have you done in world of work craft this week? Nothing. I did jack. Actually, I guess I've, um, what'd done anything? I got to reinstall it on the PC. I played on that's a, that's, that takes, that takes some takes a little time. Yeah. I'm not really though because I have a fiber now. So it's really fast. So I don't know. You know, nothing really. I got nothing done. Honestly, it's a little, you clicked install and battlenet and walked away. That's the story. When I restarted my sub and I went, you know, we're, we're back to the, you know, we came into this new phase or this, this phase of episodes going, you know, Scott's not even sure he wants to get, get back in and Bobby's in no matter what.

48:36So what's this going to be like? So just talking about some made me want to like, you know, do things. But then part of me is like, uh, this late in the expansion, do I really want to try to pick the rope up and do that again? Do I do it again? Or do I wait for the next big thing or is somehow Blizzcon going to be responsible for the, for the inspiration I need? I don't know. I don't know. It could be, what do we think is going to, speaking of Blizzcon, what do we think is going to be? All right. So I wanted to ask you this. This is what I wanted to ask you when we talked this week was, um, you are more, I think, plugged into like the rumors and the scuttle butt and, um, sure. And what people are thinking about is coming. What are we, what are we, what are people expecting to be set, happen, happen, other than like talking about what the last Titan is going to look like? Sure. We expect that. We expect that. I think last Titan will get a big showcase for sure. Yeah. Um, who will do that? Well, uh, how that'll be presented. I don't know yet.

49:37Usually that's a thing I can guess pretty confidently, but not this time because it's just, I don't know, things are different this year. But, um, you'll get that for sure. In the key art, there's often like a lot of freak out about old and the key art. There's a little slot over there that's not filled. What's going on there? Is there a new game getting announced or whatever? Most everybody thinks this is a big year for Starcraft, the IP in general. Really? Why do people think that? Well, there are two reasons because I've heard you say that a couple times on core, but why do people think that? So there's two reasons. There were, there was some unearthed paperwork about next on the Korean based publisher developer getting the contract to third party develop Starcraft III, a proper RTS Starcraft game. Wow. Well, that gets announced or not is still up in the air, but that seems like that's happening. They got whatever the bid was and they're going to do that. And they're not, this meaning they're not going to build this internally in, in, in,

50:38in, uh, Anna, I'm, or in, uh, it blizzard on Blizzard campus. However, that would be very closely worked on with Blizzard, that's how the, how they work with things like this. Right. But keep in mind, like the oboe two and one for that matter, we're not developed at Blizzard. They were developed at Blizzard North. It was a totally different office. It was a different developer. Blizzard essentially. Right. This is how video games work. How the world of video games get developed. So people shouldn't get weird about that. I don't think, um, it's kind of a normal thing to do and we'll see. So that's one aspect of Starcraft, I think, is, is, is, is happening, whether we hear about an announcement or not, who knows. But it seems very likely that there's a big old hole for a Starcraft something announcement beyond that. And the indicators are the key arts missing a big honking thing in the middle of it. We're trying to figure out what that is. Three persistent rumors that they finally, finally settled on a shooter based in the Star craft universe. I don't know if that means third person, first person, squad based multiplayer only single

51:39player. We don't know. We don't know any of those things. But the long awaited many times project canceled trek to getting a shooter in that universe. Looks like that's probably going to happen. My personal prediction is that you and I are going to see that next Friday Saturday. That would be big because that's, that's what people, people waiting for that for because they were working on it and then it got canned. Yeah. They had one that was like battlefield levels of kind of game. Yeah. And it got canceled and that is, that was like last straw for who worked on Starcraft and then heroes lead and then he was lead on that. I can't think of his name. Anyway, he bolted and they started a new studio right after that. They were very upset about that because that apparently was kind of deep into development, even though it was never, never announced. This is probably the fine, we're finally getting here something on that front. The other reason is if you go to Starcraft.com right now, I'll do that and show people and

52:43I will also do that and show myself. The website is glitching out on purpose. You'll see some, see, look on purpose. You see some glitchy lights and whatnot. Because typically this type of glitching that you see is not some, websites don't glitch. No, this doesn't fit with any like web-based problems. Like you're literally changing the brightness of the back and like there's things going on here that are, and it's across the site. There are a couple of places where, let's see if I can get to do like last night. Yeah. If you click on races and like click on tarant, for example. We'll see how long it takes for this to happen. Last night it did it real quick so they may have tweaked it. They tweaked it didn't they? All right, we'll try it again. It works with Zerg too. What happens is this page will sometimes flip out and behind it was some heroes of the storm art, which some people are like, well, they're going to do hero shit. I can't believe it. I don't think so. I think this is like, they just had that back there.

53:45I don't think it's cashed or I don't think it's something from another site. I think it's just, I think sometimes, people over like over, I don't want to say overthink it because this is all over thinking, right? Yeah. But I think sometimes people overestimate like how much how intentional every little thing is. Sometimes you're just doing, you just want a glitchy effect and you're just going to grab some art assets that you happen to have. Yeah. Let's see if I can find it. Here it is. This is something on Reddit where these were seen either in like some of the glitches. You briefly see these messages and it's like sensor feed 7400. You said, first it looked like kind of code, but then it's like a message and it's a, let's say blood pressure, heart rate, respiratory rate.

54:45Just talking about somebody's deal and some of it's redacted. Then they got this whole other thing which is like a letter and email electronic community K about head into the rock Sarah system and sending a freighter full of a squadron of what is it? The theta squadrons on its way, arrival protocol, zip that, zip, right? All this silliness. They're doing something. Yeah. That certainly is intentional. Oh, without a doubt. If that if that's in there, right? Without a doubt. Yeah. And the glitches for sure too, just I have enough web to have knowledge to know that this stuff doesn't just suddenly start happening if it was a real issue and some of that stuff is very artistically glitched. So yeah, web pages aren't in your web browser because they're being beamed to your web browser from a satellite or something. You know, like these glitches, that's not what these, yeah, it's not going to glitch like that. Exactly. Like we're the point being that obviously they're glitching it to be a tease of some kind.

55:46Yeah, they're being dorks and that's cool. Yeah. I was trying to find that you can actually do, you can look at the dev window and see all this stuff underneath it yourself, but I'm not, I'm, I forgot how to do it on here. It's a commande. No. Well, anyway, control shift I on Chrome. No shift. I. What is it for Firefox? Does anyone know? I don't know. Whatever. Do people use Firefox? I do. I love Firefox. I've been using it forever though, so I'm kind of stuck in it. But anyway, the point is this is all, and this is like the StarCraft remastered site, but it's kind of like anything else they have on here. Like it's all slipping out and people, people are pretty sure that this confirms that we'll get some kind of StarCraft big announcement on stage. It's either three, like mentioned before, which is already rumored, or it's this mythical shooter thing, or some of us like to dream that they'd make a universe of StarCraft MMO

56:49finally, and it would be this amazing giant. I have to say that I don't, I hope it's not that. I don't think it's going to be that at all for a ton of reasons. Some of them are business oriented, some of them are just you, you could go this long without leaking something. Like there's a million reasons why that's not going to be true, but there's a little part of me that's like, hell yeah, I'd play the shit out of that into my eyes. Yeah, but you know, I would play it for like a month. Oh, I don't know, man. I mean, if it's got the Blizzard sauce, like you just add, you just don't want to do the sci-fi things, what you're saying. No, no, no. If we're being honest, so if you want to know truly what it is, if everyone in my, if everyone that I play video, that I play World of Warcraft with, all decided everyone just decided, hey, we're going to go play, we're going to go play the Old Republic now. That's where I'd go. Because you want to do it for fun. That's the reason, yeah, that's the reason, because I wouldn't be playing World of Warcraft

57:50if it wasn't for playing with my friend. I've sound like a, I sound like a promotional video for Blizzard right now. You know, like it's, I wouldn't be playing this game if it wasn't for my friends, you know. But it's true. That's why I play that, that's why I continue to play the game is because I play with people that I like playing with. Yeah. And rightly so. Oh, it's F12. Thank you, chat. Sorry, I found it. I just got still breaking the rules. I could go through here and really learn it, but I don't want to. It's cool. But so Starcraft would be fun. And if everybody who decided to, to play it for a while, I would, I would jump on and play it as well if it was an MMO. If it's as good, but if it's as good as anything Blizzard's ever made, it's a very good chance. And this is one of the reasons I think they'd never do it. It would destroy their base. Well, yeah, wow. And why would they want to do that? It's a zero sum game when it comes to MMOs, I think. Yeah. I think you have to think of it that way because people's time is, it's a zero sum game, right? Yeah.

58:51And MMOs, almost by definition, are time syncs. They suck your time. So I, and I, this is not like a revelatory insight that I'm giving right now. Like certainly they are thinking the same thing. Like, well, if, and maybe one day they would make a Starcraft MMO once they've decided World of Warcraft, nobody's playing it anymore. Nobody like cares about this game anymore. Let's get all these wild players back by doing a Starcraft MMO. You know, that's when I could see that or a Diablo MMO. That's when I see them making an MMO in one of those properties is, but not to run concurrently because they would be splitting their, they, they, they, it would be at the very least they'd be making the same amount of money for twice the development. And maybe a little, there'd be a very small sliver of overlap of people who'd played at the same time. And that wouldn't be enough money to probably justify an entire video game having to maintain.

59:53Some of those require a ton, a ton of upkeep. Yeah. And it's what killed Titan. Titan was an MMO before it became Overwatch. Titan was a game that was going to be a big massively multiplayer thing. The bank, the idea they had there that they were banking on was that because it was so radically different than the fundamental way that World of Warcraft played. It was going to be from a shooter, first person shooter perspective. It was going to be this wildly different setting, very different engine. Like everything about it was going to be so different that you could justify it and say, well, this is a totally different experience. Therefore, it's not, it's not going to cut into those numbers. And I think in the end, the powers that, that were there, some, some still vehemently, vehemently, vehemently, vehemently, disagree with them and think it was a mistake to cancel it. But I think they canceled it for those reasons. Everything you just say, it's just cannibalistic, right? And how Guild Wars 3 is going to manage that is going to be fascinating because Guild Wars

1:00:55is a really good game. And Guild Wars 2 is a fantastic MMO. What they showed of 3 looks really, really cool and impressive. I think they just think differently so they're going for this. That game is deep into development so it's not like they're turning back or canceling. I think that's going to be the one to watch to see if this can be done because no one else wants to try it. Right. Not very hard anyway. We've seen failures at this before. What was it? What was the, oh, Ashron's call. One, had a pretty good following. Did all right. It was never quite ever quest level, but it did okay. It was a good alternative. The second game comes out, all the hype in the world. Everyone stoked for Ashron call two. We get in that game and we realize this is now, and now we have moved into a maybe slightly graphically more impressive game that's not done yet because it's brand new MMOs take a long time to cook anyway.

1:01:57And all our stuff and our friends and our progress are in that old game that looks like ass, but it's there. And so everybody got in, checked it out, and then went back to Ashron's call one and Ashron's call two got canceled way before Ashron's call one ever went away. So I think that what you say is exactly why we won't see a name MMO. That's not going to happen. But so to my original question, are there any rumors about what we're going to see with World of Warcraft? No other than most are expecting last Titan, obviously big details, right? Like what's the theme? We kind of know the theme, but what's the, yeah, which is the reason that I'll be watching is because I want to see that kind of stuff. Yeah, we're going to find all that out, but I don't think there's supposed to be anything groundbreaking. The one thing could be interesting. There's a lot of talk from, how do we put this without getting in trouble? I have a friend at Microsoft, not at, I have friends at Blizzard, but I have a friend at Microsoft who believes that all, now you know what to hear, I was trying to skip around

1:03:06everything including gender. But anyway, he believes, he's narrowed it down to 90% of the workforce at Microsoft. Unfortunately. Anyway, they, they believe he believes that Blizzard is going to hunker down on more Warcraft IP based games, meaning things like last week we talked about what a single player Warcraft game looked like to somebody. We asked that question. Things like that, not mobile games or little free spin outs with pre-deplaced, not like that, but like actual products within that universe in the way that you see. What's an example of somebody who does that well, I guess, I mean, but that's just sort of not really though, like Elder Scrolls, they have an MMO, they have mainline games they have. Yeah, I came the other way around though. Yeah, it's single player and I can't really think of a good example of this, but it's their money maker. It's the thing that makes the money the most money.

1:04:06It's an IP that everybody loves. And so now that they're with Microsoft, who have a ton of money, presumably, I don't know anything about that. I don't see their balance sheets. They're one of the largest companies in the world and have a market cap in the trillions, I think. Presumably, I would guess that they have, whether or not they want to do this is a different question. But they have the capability to experiment with things and be like, you know what, let's see, maybe people would like a single player, work craft universe experience. Maybe people would like, you know, another real time strategy, work craft, you know. Oh, man, I wouldn't mind hearing about that. Yeah. I mean, I actually, I don't really like three that much. I like the story of three because three led into. Wow. So well, but I don't like mechanically. I'm not a big three guy. I don't like the hero thing.

1:05:08That's a bomb drop. It is a bit of a bomb drop. I've said it before, but I don't, Starcraft's my jam. Starcraft's my jam before three, Warcraft was amazing. Three introduced the hero character and the XP system and leveling up your hero, especially multiplayer stuff. And that meant doing moba style stuff where you'd have to go, you know, before moba's existed. So it's an early example of this. Go into a cova trees, find three big warmer locks and then you got a kill him and get XP and you know, to compete, you got a strength in your hero. I didn't like that. I was like, I'm not. I'm not about the macro here. Give me the, give me the tons of units coming over the hill and, you know, I want that warcraft, that starcraft vibe. So for me, I didn't like it because of, because it was not fun for you to play against other people. Yes. And that is primarily why I was in RTS's at the time. It was all. Yeah. And I think that was the difference, I guess, because I could see starcraft, I think, is a better game competitively with other people. And, but I liked, I always, I liked playing Warcraft 3 single player.

1:06:12I thought it was a really fun experience. Yeah. The campaign's amazing. Like, don't get me wrong. I loved that. But when it came to me and those office parties I was having, I hated playing it. I did not enjoy it. However, a Mal-Vander in the chat says, right, how it going on with other studios for a while. That interesting idea. And maybe this thing with Starcraft 3 going to next time is a, so we're just moving on to talking to the chat now. You've just given up on that. You know what? Let's talk to the chat for a second. Let's, we may as well do it, because this fits. They, Riot was trying to make everything connected to League of Legends for a while there. They had like an initiative that an MMO and, and in production, they had, I think, two single player RPGs came out. One was a turn-based thing that was kind of 2D, but you ran around a 3D world, but the fighting was kind of JRPG style. I forgot it was called. Ruin King was that it? It was good. Yeah. It was a good game. They did the show, arcane, like they went nuts, the fighting game.

1:07:13But now they're shutting the fighting game down. The MMO is on permanent hiatus of the fur development. They're not going to, I don't think it ever sees the light of day. It's the one Greg Street worked on before he left there. Yeah. And no new other titles have been announced. So you have, if you're Blizzard, you have to be watching what Riot just went through and said that we really want to make a bunch of IP stuff and work craft and have hardly any of it hit. You don't know what I mean? Like, I can't help but think they have to watch those lessons and pay attention to them. Yeah. So I don't know. I don't know to make it up. Let's get to what the chat has to say. Chat, put your questions, form them into the form of questions. First you could tell us what you would do, what you would want a single player world of work craft experience to be. Yeah. What do you want it to be? That's what we wanted to talk about. Yeah. Big, open world skyrim style experience, something smaller. Yeah. I don't know. Like what are your ideas? Because it clearly blizzard struggles to find the right place.

1:08:16That's what I would want is a single player sort of skyrim experience. I would love that. Oh my gosh. I would lose myself. Take my money, meme all day. Like that's what would happen. Yeah. That's all I'd want. It's all I'd want. If they may, okay, so way back in the 90s, they had late 90s. Yeah. Was before the odds. They started development on and got pretty far with and then canceled a point and click adventure game set in the work craft universe. And it was like a throw. The story of throw growing up and all the stuff he went through is basically throw story in a point and click adventure. And they canceled it famously and you can find this thing. It's actually a really pre alpha build and jenky is all hell and back, but it works and you can actually kind of get a taste for what they were trying to make. Man, I would have been into that. Like I was so into point and clicks and I thought that is going to be cool. I wouldn't mind it if they could just do.

1:09:18It's okay to do some smaller stuff. Like do that. Do a vampire survivors like where it's set in the work craft universe and you pull the camera way out and have thrall spinning around and shoot and shit and trying to survive and roguelike it up. Like you don't need them. That would be really fun. You have enough like like hero type characters in world of work craft to make a good like survivors like type game. You know like where you got illidan spinning around shooting warglaves all over the place and just going. And just going to go and shoot and ice beams and our cane bolts everywhere. See the heroes are already there to get and the lock them in and you can make it. You could even go super stylized to make it pixily or whatever you want to do. People do this all the time. Yeah. I would I would pay as much as $20 for that. I would too and you know what people pay for those right now like five to eight. So the fact they were willing to spend 20 that should make blizzard go.

1:10:18Oh, then we can overcharge for a thing that everybody else because it's blizzard because the sauce is there like these are these all have potential. And this is something John on course been saying forever, which is just make stuff like make make fun games. Don't be afraid to make a small thing and make it work. I mean, hearthstone started that way and was a big success for them. I don't know how it's doing these days, but it was a big deal for a minute there. Oh, they got nine x sets something I thought was really interesting just in generally said. I'd like to see a single play warcraft where it's an RTS where you can click on a troop and then go into its third person mode or from its third person mode and you can go into first person and fight it until it's dead. So there are some games like that. Are there there are that's a cool idea that's been a long I feel like that's been like this weird holy grail idea of how do we how do we marry the two genres in a way that you are in God mode and you're sending your armies and you're doing your thing. But then also you're like, all right, I want to be that marine for the next 10 minutes because I'm going to really turn this war over there on this bridge he's fighting on.

1:11:21Yeah, yeah. There's something really attractive about that, but every attempt I've ever played felt wrong somehow blizzard might be able to pull that off. But I like that one. That's a good one. And they have so much history with multiplayer and with strategy and tactics and that sort of thing. The trick would be the way I see a game like that failing is making it completely optional, right? Right. Or maybe not. Maybe you want it to be consequential sometimes or maybe the trick is to have a come you know how like a starcraft in the campaign you'll have some missions where you're you've got the whole battlefield and you're doing all the RTS stuff. But then some missions you're taking Rayner and just Rayner through some spaceship. Sure. Or something like that. Maybe that's the way you do it. In those missions you take control of the person in first person mode and it is consequential. But in like a regular battle you can be the marine and but he's not.

1:12:22What I wouldn't want them to do is once you become the marine you're somehow able to use this single marine to completely turn the the tide of a battle because I feel like that would be too unre and you just want to play the RTS in first person mode all the time. Yeah. You would and there's certain players that are never want to be in the more methodic strategy mode and some players who never want to be in the twitchy shooter mode phase and there's some that would just want to be driving a tank a siege tank the whole time. Like there's going to be problems. That's why the shoot the the shooter they were working on that was like there was a little bit like battlefield. I wanted to see that because essentially you got to be whatever you want to do. Sure it's basic. It's still a shooter at its core but you got to be the kind of shooting like in battlefield I can fly the helicopter and have five guys with me. And I'm mostly just flying maybe a little strafing runs or whatever or I'm the jet fighter and I'm dropping payloads or I'm on the ground healing dudes. Whatever your your play style is they kind of have options for you.

1:13:24Something like that would be great in this IP that we love right. The problem is warcraft is as much as there's lots of stuff to do in that game that it's very action oriented. It's still a very story driven thing. Yeah. It's it'd be tricky. Well, Starcraft makes sense to me. It's like PPP. Well, let's go. Yeah. Yeah. That makes perfect sense to me. Another one in here I liked is Salamander Falls says he's on the YouTube chat. He said I like a single player game like freelance or meets mass effect two and three. Yeah. Yeah. Like again, more I would that I and he's probably talking about Starcraft there but a little harder or trickier to do with with Warcraft but Warcraft could do all sorts of fun stuff with like a small group of four character types. You know, think Dragon Age when it was good. Yeah. That would be cool. That would be cool. Like a Witcher style game even that would be fun.

1:14:26Yeah. Dr. Tolbert says a lower game in the style of black and white. That's interesting. Oh, yeah. Tolbert also said something that made me think of something else but he said Power Wash Simulators or Gates which would be pretty gross. I mean, they could do that now. They could cross over because they just did a Star Wars one. They could totally do that. But it made me think an actual chore-core style game that could be fun or just a simulator style game would be could be Zeppelin pilot simulator. Oh, that would be pretty fun. You know, I like the War, the chore-core is I would actually wouldn't mind running the Goblin Blimp system. You know, Azeroth Blimp Manager. Yeah. Oh, you have to like set up different like Zeppelin operations over here. Like, oh, you've earned enough money now you open up another another Zeppelin tower outside of Orgermar and yeah. Every once in a while, some of my favorites of those are when they when a small indie

1:15:27game or somebody will do a thing where they'll flip the script and go. The adventurers are out doing adventure things. You run this shop that sells equipment, gear, magic, junk like that. And then they get off, they come, they come home with things they can sell that you can decide, oh, I'm going to buy this thing he found while he was out there or sell him a better sword for his next thing. There's something about that that is always appealed to me. It's just like a little bit of script. Yeah, I wouldn't mind that in the Warcraft universe. And there's a couple of those being worked on. I know there's one right now being worked on that's in the Lord of the Rings universe that is exactly what I just described. Yeah. And then adventurers come in and they want to set their heartstone with you and you have like a whole mini game that you have to do to link their heartstone to your in. Yeah. I'm into this. This is a great idea. The thing is some of these things, I look, Blizzard's a big company with long history.

1:16:30I guarantee they've been sitting in some of these boardrooms sometimes and these ideas have been floated. I bet you you're right. Like, they have these kinds of meetings for you. Yeah. And some of them turn into a mode in the game. Like they never forget they made a freaking battle royale game with wow, what would they call that? Anyway, were you ran around basically? It was because it's Fortnite in wow. They bring it back every once in a while. Yeah, it comes in, it rotates with the thing they do with like classic and stuff. But that's them going, well, we could make a whole game or we'll do this mode and see how it goes. I think sometimes the seeing how it goes is giving them results that may not be indicative of if they made a whole game. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. Because then you just start thinking, well, that's just a mod. What do I care? They did plants versus zombies in World of Warcraft. What's the remember that? They did. They did. Do you remember when they when they allowed those pop cap flight mods where when you flew

1:17:32you could play a pebble? Oh, it was pebble or something. Yeah, pebble and the jeweled both and I did that, dude. I played pebble all day in there. I thought that was a really fun thing. Then there were some lawsuit or something weird thing happened. They pull it out. But anyway, the point is like there are many opportunities. Here's one I'm sure they've talked about. I would personally love Quesong, have you say your name? Nagi. Kira's song, Nagi says, a heroes of might and magic, magic could be cool or an XCOM like Starcraft. Yeah. So the heroes of might magic series, one of my favorites, they're remaking it. Never played it. Never played it. Oh, three is so good, dude. When they make that remake of three, you really should look at that. I think you'd like it. I will. I promise. Okay, good. Are they actually making a remake? They are. They announced it. They announced it. Okay. I promise something accidentally. I thought you're. No, for real. They showed it. They showed it. They showed it. Gamescom look really good. All of the games in the series have been good.

1:18:32So they're remaking it. But anyway, something like that would be cool, XCOM style. I've been playing zero company in the new Star Wars one. Yeah, I've been way into zero company. I would love one in the World Craft universe somehow. Hell yeah. Like, Starcraft seems like the easy answer, but I think World Craft is ripe for a tactics game. Yeah, you've got ranged melee tanks, healers. You've got the whole range of people in a squad. It fits right in, right? You have instead of a squad of four, you could have a squad of five and you could just the the the the the the ideas that it's a bunch of adventures going to do a dungeon or something. Yeah. I'm I'm all in on this one. Sign me up on that. Yeah. We've got another one here from Booge 731 who says, and over the shoulder, Dark Siders type game starring Illidan, who could voice it though? Well, I think Liam would be happy to voice it. Who could voice it? I think that's a sarcastic question. Yeah, I don't think anyone gets to voice it, but Liam. Like how how would you do that to the poor guy? He would get three fourths of the way through development.

1:19:33Liam would say, I'm too busy and they would say scrap it. Liam's out. We're out. I love it. Oh, Jerry's got a good one. Thousand needles version of peak where, you know, in the four of you're trying to get up these hills and cliffs and shit and proximity multiplayer voice stuff. I mean, look, obviously they're not going to make that, but why not? Like, I've never even heard of peak. Is that like ice climbers or something? Well, no, you know what? It peaks like they call it friend slop now. I don't think it's exactly fair, but these games that keep coming out for four players, usually on steam and it's you, you all have voice access. It's sometimes it's kind of horror based or space based and you got to run around and do shit and not die and laugh at each other while it's happening. It's one of those games, but you're climbing. So peak is that like phasmophobia? Would that qualify? Yes, there you go. I would argue phasmophobia started the whole trend, actually. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. That's fun game. Let's see. What else?

1:20:33Oh, I like salamander falls. I think a banner saga style starcraft game would be good. Warcraft too would be good. And that's the banner saga is awesome underrated. Let's see. Arcontina. What is Arcontina? Arcontina? Arcontina. The, the, the, the, why can't you feature that was in midnight where you can go? To, instead of feature, I didn't use it all because I don't remember the name. Or maybe it was, I think it was midnight. It was when it was introduced. I don't think it was the previous one. It's like a place that you can go that no one ever goes to anymore, but was really cool for like a week or two. I should have. Oh, that. I did that. Yeah. And then I never went back. And then I would never went back. Yeah. I, you know what I was impressed. I thought it was neat, but I just, it is neat. Yeah. And maybe, maybe people do that. Maybe I'm speaking out of turn, but I'm, I forgot about that. Yeah. But he says cooking mama. That should be a cooking mom again. I'm looking. That would be great.

1:21:34I'm into it. I'm into it. Uh, team money, MKE with the win here. He said, I'd love to play a game where you make sure the turtles make it safely to the water. Uh, yeah. I would play that. We had that game. It was called, uh, rule of work craft and the expansion. Which expansion was that though? Is that battle for Azeroth? I think it was. That's a getting turtle. Oh, you made the turtle get to the water safely. The old lady would say. Anyway, uh, let's see. Any others jump out here? Teddy's Haven on steam has a pretty wild look to the fantasy shop simulator game. Yeah. See a lot of those. Azeroth racing could be interesting. Solo single player, solo player, breath of the wild style game in the wild universe. More organic and emerging gameplay. Less checklist questing. I missed the way Azeroth felt huge and exploring was fun. Yeah. I agree with, especially the second half of that. Um, yeah. That would be a cool way to make the world seem big again.

1:22:36I mean, but that, to me, that's, that's in line with what I, the reason why I would love like a, like a, um, a Skyrim style, wild game. Yeah. Yeah. It seems, seems, seems like I think a lot of players would agree with you on that. If you end, uh, Salamander Falls or whoever said it. Certainly. Certainly. This is something that gets brought up all the time over there is whether or not they could figure out how to make some sort of single player RPG, Allah Skyrim or breath of the wild. Certainly that's been brought up many times. And I would, I would be really curious to hear what the reasoning for not doing it is. Um, I'm sure they're good reasons. I, I don't like to assume that that they're just dumb reasons. They might be really interesting for all we know. Yeah. But, but I'm sure they've thought about it. And so I'd be curious why, why they haven't. Uh, we have an email I put in here earlier that I think is worth reading before we close

1:23:38things down here today. This is from Justin, uh, who says, Hey, Scott, love the new format with Bobby. I've recently been listening to the earliest episodes of the instance for nostalgia sake. And would absolutely love to hear you listening to the super old episodes and have your directors commentary on, uh, from nowadays throughout it. I think it would be super entertaining to hear your take on the old episodes and maybe some behind the scenes stuff to make you remember. Dude, here's the biggest problem I would have. I will give you an example. I'm actually going to bring up an old episode. All right. It'll be random. I'll just pick one that random here. Let's go with the instance. Can I guess what the problem is? Uh, yeah. You know what? Guess it. The problem is that to you, all you would hear is Scott Johnson sounding like this. Yeah. I'm Scott Johnson. I was nazily sent. I don't think I sounded very good like 15 years ago. That's all I'm saying. That's how we all feel. Yeah. Nobody's. And nobody, it's not the, I don't know, it's just hearing myself for that much time would probably drive me nuts. But here's an example.

1:24:39But we all want to hear it now. I'll play this one. We'll see what we got. His back. The aircraft podcast. So you don't have to. All right. There you go. This is the instance. Is that flesher? Yeah, it's flesher. And then we had some guitar guys on that end. A long time ago. By the way, this is episode 120 here. This episode of the instance is brought to you. I'm going to stick it on. I'll stick it on. Yeah, I never wrote it. They were firing out into the bay itself. Randy sounds exactly the same. Yeah. He doesn't change it all. The taxi course there. Let me skip it, I'll be right on it. I'll do. There's no doubt. In fact, I just give me some Scott talk and find a way. You'd have some supplemental pet and perhaps it had to be airborne. Who is that? Oh my god. Seriously, I didn't recognize that was you at first. I had to listen for a second. I hate it. Dude, I freaking hate it. It would be so hard for me to listen to that. Like I, I mean, it could be a fun thing and like a one-off. If somebody found an episode and said, hey, there's this five minute segment where

1:25:41you guys make this prediction and now what do you think? And then commentary over that. I could do that. But if you're saying just like load up episodes and no way, man, I've just, my cadence has changed. Not just how low my voice is, how I approach it. I've done this for so many hours on so many shows for so long now. It's just, I don't have the same voice I used to have. This is different. You know what would be fun? This would require people to do the work to do it. What would be fun is if, like you said, it would have to be a segment that, a clip that people found that's like no more than like a couple of minutes. But it would be something because it'll get old really fast if it's just me and Scott making fun of how this show used to sound. Yeah, it would be fun to laugh. That's, we just did it. And guess what? That's it. That's how much fun it would be. Yeah.

1:26:42And, but if it was that, but the real thing was you found some interesting take that, like Scott and, and Randy had a long time ago or whoever the current co-host at the time was, some interesting take that they had and you want to hear what our take on is on that thing from back then. That might be interesting. Yeah, I'd do that. I'd do that. It would take that. That takes work though, so we won't get as many of those. No. But if someone sends that in, I'd be willing to listen and talk about it on the show. Check this. May 18th, 2006, more than 20 years ago, episode 20. Let's just hear how that sounded. You're listening to the instance. Heal my flesh. Heal my flesh. You sounded like you were trying to do a robot with. Heal my flat. I see. He's like listening to the instance. That's so bad. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the instance. This is instance number two.

1:27:42Hey, everybody. That was the episode that Kermit the Frog hosted the instance. I freaking hate it. Hey, everybody. Part of it's a mic. Part of it's a mother. Yeah. Part of it is our voices change when we go through puberty. Yeah. I mean, I've, I've gone through a lot since then. So 20 years, man. It's really weird. Anyway. There you go. Thanks for the message, Justin. And thanks, everybody in the chat for participating today. Do we have it? Do we want to put so far that the audience has been a little, you know, lackluster and making sure they answer it between episodes? Do we want to give them another like tester and say, Hey, here's a cool idea? I mean, I guess we can try. Maybe we're not telling them where they can contact us well enough. I can do that. Maybe. So we had people do it while we were gone for the last two weeks. But not about the subject we asked about, including Justin here. All right. So here's what we'll say. We, well, here's our new subject. Um, let's see how I put this.

1:28:44Oh, I want to know this. This is actually something I want to know. How much time are people spending in housing? Did housing end up being as big a deal as everybody kept saying it was? We begged for it for years. Many players did. Did. And now that we finally have it, we have a really good form of housing and they've updated it. Uh, you know, taking a lot of feedback, added new features, all that. How much time are people really spending in there? Did you hop in and go neat and then never go back? I'm curious about that as well because I'm also curious how I would love to hear actual numbers. Maybe someone can anonymously from Blizzard, who's listening can can leak us some actual data. Yeah. Anonymously on how much time people are spending in housing. Certainly it must be, it must be enough for them to justify continuing to work on it because they are still adding stuff. Yeah, and they plan on making it a permanent fixture of the game and improving it and tweaking it and all that. I don't, I don't think their, their commitment seems legit.

1:29:45I suppose if only five people walked into their house and used it, they would maybe not be doing it. But right. It's got to be more than that. So I'm just really curious, like cloned in the chat, his first reaction was a new collectathon for me. Maybe he means that in a good way. I'm not totally sure. I think, I think they do mean that because a lot of people, that's what they really enjoy. So. Yeah. And then we got people like Cruddlefish, he says, ah, this is an easy one. I can't stand the idea of housing in wow. So I've never done housing. So we're probably going to get answers all over the place. But yeah, you know, think about your relationship with housing, send us interesting messages about them and there are two ways to do it. The instance of Gmail.com, that's the email address or you can go to our website, which is frogpants.com slash instance. And on that page, you will find an embedded little thing that lets you send a voicemailer a text. We'll take either. Okay. Yeah. We don't discriminate against your communication methods. We'll do whatever it is you want to do. Except for facts. Oh, yeah, we only want facts.

1:30:45Don't lie to us. If that. No, I mean, that's the communication method that we discriminate against. You have facts. Messages sent to us via facts. Yeah. I was thinking of a CT and how correct they were. Well, that's both. You know what? Both. Yeah. Or both. Maybe eventually we'll get you a facts number. Yeah. I say both and both. I do the same thing, actually. You always say it's a Salt Lake City thing, but I say both. Do you really? Yeah. Dude, I thought of you a bunch because I know you were pretty blown away by the mountains when you're out here. Mm-hmm. When I was in Moab, I went, I bet Bob you would lose his F in mind here. I kept thinking. I spent a little while trying to convince Stephanie that we needed to move to Salt Lake City, but well, you already got friends. Come on, let's go. I think she thought I was joking. No, I understand it. I get it, but it's a beautiful place that no one expects until they come here and they go, what? And then they, it's great. Then they don't want to leave. All right.

1:31:45But I bought also no one, no one believed me. I would like my housing prices and our taxes to stay low and our cost of living, which is already being affected by California people around the pandemic. They all started moving out here and paying way too much for houses. Please stop doing that. We're weird. We're so weird. Don't come here. I'm just kidding. Salt Lake City sucks. Oh, we're so weird. I hated it while I was there. Yeah. So there's that. All right. So there you have it. I think that's it. That's the show. Patreon.com slash instance is a place you can support the show. Bobby's got the science podcast he does every week. Tell people where they can get that. It's just all around science is the name of the podcast. You can just search it up. Search it up all around science. Yep. You have the internet. Use it. There's lots of frog pants stuff happening as well. So check out frogpants.com. And I think that's going to do it for us. I hope you all have a lovely week in Azeroth. We'll be back next week with more. Bye. Bye.

1:32:53對啊, you. Bye. Hi. Oh. Yeah. Hi. 造. Yes. kokS. redfrogbans.gov.