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 Silmwind, I go through 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 the alpha of the War Within now. The alpha was obviously something that came out before season four and we knew that by looking at the roadmap of retail, and this was essentially the last week that it could have happened. So we kind of knew that it was going to happen essentially this week. But we do the alpha now. It has been out for about a day now since this episode has come out and I was purposely holding off on the recording just so that I could go over what I've seen. What you know looks good, what looks quite funny, you know the bugs and all of that bits and bobs. What's in it? Um, but for those that don't know, the war within is the next expansion of world of warcraft and you'll be leveling up to level 80. You'll be traveling to the isle of dawn and this is a island that essentially, uh, kind of dwarves inhabit, the I forget the name of the dwarves. I completely forget the name of them, um, but they are more dwarves. They're more dwarves that are rock dwarves I completely forget the name of them, but they are more dwarves. They're more dwarves that are rock dwarves is the best way to put them. And essentially, the way that the four zones work in the Isle of Dawn is you have one that's at the surface, so the very surface of Azeroth itself, and then each zone goes down a layer into the crust of azeroth. So you've got a zone that's below the isle of dawn and then the zone that's below that and then a zone that's below that. Um, so you have four zones in total, the bottom one being where all the nerubians are and the raids. And you know, every single, essentially every single zone has its own um, unique lighting, unique like source. You know, look and feel, but we'll get more into that in a second.
Speaker 1:
We will start off with the weekly news. As always, we're basil, zikali, elders and aerostar as your weekly world bosses for the week. Basil is located in the Azure Span, zarkali Elders in Zara Lake Caverns and Aerostar in the Emerald Dream. The bonus event for this week is a world quest, so you get more reputation for doing world quests this week and this is especially good for me because I like to do the Kul Tiran or the Proudmoore Admiralty rep to try and get the Jaina's music box, and that's what I will be doing in the next couple of days before that goes away. So make sure, if there's any reputations that you want you do look to do these world quests during this week Solo Shuffle no, no, not Solo Shuffle, no, no, not Solo Shuffle.
Speaker 1:
South Shore versus Taran Mill is your brawl for the week. This is a 40 versus 40 battleground and essentially it's located in Hillsbrad Foothills and it's just a giant 40 versus 40. First one to lose 150 people, like 150 people die, is going to be, when it ends, essentially Volcanic. Spiteful and Fortified are your mythic affixes for the week. It's volcanic, essentially. A small little eruption happens underneath your character. You have a few seconds to move, move away, just move away it. It's gonna help you a lot in the long run. Um, spiteful when a mob dies, it summons a spiteful shade. Simply cc these things like keep them slow to kill them off. You know, cleave off of them, just don't get hit by them. They do a lot of damage when they hit you and they will fixate onto a target. So make sure that you know if one does fixate on you or 10 fixate on you, you're just running away and not taking the hits and the extra damage. And finally, fortified, non-boss enemies have more health and the minions that they summon do more damage and that stuff. So bring a talent build that can accommodate for that. So back to the alpha dawn. The isle of dawn is your first location and it's the only zone that is available at the alpha at the moment. Um, this is the, like I said, the surface zone. Essentially, this is where your capital city is for the expansion. This is where the dwarves are going to be located and essentially your main hub for the expansion, kind of like how dalaran is, or stormwind, or grima, you know all of them sort of zones. They are going to be your main hub for the expansion going forward.
Speaker 1:
There's a couple of dungeons that you can test out during this alpha. That is the Rookery and Cinderbrew Maidery. Now, I've had a look at the Cinderbrew Maidery. It looks like that dungeon from Mists of Pandaria, uh brew one that's at the bottom of, uh, the, not foothills, the, ah, I've completely forgotten the zone, the zone that comes after the valley of the four winds, I think that's it. Yeah, I think that's it. Um, in that zone it looks basically like that. I think that's just called the Brewery Thundershout Brewery, I think it's called, maybe I don't know. It's got loads of monkey-like NPCs in it. You guys will understand, but yeah, it kind of looks like that. It's got that sort of feel and these new dungeons are obviously going to be tested indefinitely, or not indefinitely, but a lot throughout the dungeons, because a lot of people want to test out their characters, their abilities, their hero talents, etc. Etc.
Speaker 1:
The character level. So each phase we encourage players to make a new template character and avoid using their previous characters as they could potentially be in a broken state. After making a new template character, make sure to talk to quest quest sir torren and he will prepare you for any available content. So obviously at the current moment you have level 70 character templates and you can get up to a maximum level of 73. They do not allow you to progress further than that and obviously only one zone is available for testing at the moment.
Speaker 1:
I would imagine they're going to roll this out during iterations or on a biweekly sort of a thing, kind of like what they did with Cataclysm, where every reset they update it and give it new things. So next week we might see the second zone come out and people can test that out. They might see like two new zones, they might do raid testing, they might do dungeon testing. Who knows? They will probably do this every week on the resets. They'll obviously throw out a updated version of the game and people can play around with that and any bug fixes that have occurred in the previous one can maybe be fixed slowly but surely. You know testing, damage wise, numbers, but numbers wise is always what's looked at last in terms of damage done, healing done, all of that stuff, because that's a simple numerical value that could be changed in. Uh, you know the code. I would imagine it's nothing too game breaking. It's not something that will break the game if you change that code, maybe actually spaghetti code and all that. You know blizzard, um. But yeah, level 73 is your maximum character at the moment and if you are lucky to have the alpha and it does update with different zones, it does encourage you to make a new character because they might be in a broken state just based on the quests that they've done and stuff like that. It might just bug them out, essentially For classes that are available.
Speaker 1:
Here's what they have to say. Hero talents can be accessed, even naturally, by leveling. Your first point is granted at level 71, or can be boosted by interacting with the Quest Zatoran NPC in Orgrimmar and Stormwind and will immediately boost you to level 71 and also grant you all 10 hero talent points. Now, the reason that they're doing this? Because obviously you won't have all 10 of your hero talent points as you're leveling. You get one talent point per level. So 71, 72, 73, etc. Etc. Um, they're doing this so that you can obviously test out the hero talents and see how they feel, how they interact, if there's any bugs, um, stuff like that, because I've been watching a couple streams.
Speaker 1:
Um, I'm obviously most interested in moon king gameplay and there's two hero talents for that. There is, uh, uh, a loon, the wrath of a loon or something, and or loons chosen, I said I should say and the keeper of the grove. The keeper of the grove is something to do with your treants. But the sad thing is, treants do no damage. You lose some. You lose warrior of a loon, which can get you into an eclipse quicker. Um, if you're doing pvp, this is from a pvp standpoint, by the way, um, and the treants just do nothing like damage, wise, they don't give you any sort of value, um, but the thing is, the keeper of the grove might be the one to go for, because it's just boosting your star surge damage.
Speaker 1:
Now, personally, I liked the look of elune's chosen, where you're just summoning a sh*t ton of fury of elunes and doing loads of damage, and consistent damage, and with the nerfs to astral power, these fury of balloons can be a godsend. To be honest with you, it's a constant astral power generator and, who knows, it might just be useful. Um, but please note that doing this will give you a permanent debuff that will reduce your damage. Done so, you do not overpower content due to having a larger amount of talent points than intended. So if you're questing, the numbers might seem a bit lower, which kind of makes a lot of sense. Additionally, this process is not reversible, so if you'd like to experience the natural flow of progression, you'll need to make a new character. Okay, that kind of makes sense. You can. You can make loads of characters because you can just boost them immediately to level 70 or 71 and essentially, you can have one that goes through the questing zones and naturally progresses and you can have one to test out the uh hero talents if you really wanted.
Speaker 1:
Um, additionally in this alpha, there are a few callouts we wanted to make in regard to the readiness of hero talents. Several hero talent trees have not had their new visual effects or audios added. These trees are using placeholder assets for now and will be updated over the course of the alpha. I cannot say which ones these are because it doesn't tell me and I frankly don't know. Power tuning of these abilities is still in early passes and will be ongoing.
Speaker 1:
This is obviously what I refer to, as it's just a numbers game. People of the Grove looks absolutely underwhelming for druids, for balanced druids, and I would like to see it a bit, you know, tweaked in terms of numbers, but again, that'll be the last thing on their mind because that's just simply changing the numbers. On certain ability, um, there might be abilities that are labeled as nya. Um, these are not yet implemented and will likely be a little bit prone to bugs until they're fully implemented. Makes sense. Um, speaking of bugs, uh, for boomkin now, I've obviously not seen most of the um. Roster of classes is the best way to put it, but for boomkin, whenever you press incarnation, it disconnects you, so you can't use your biggest cooldown ability, which isn't great it's. It's not a great thing to have in an alpha, but that'll get fixed. Again, all of these bugs will be picked up and you know it'll be figured out by that time, so we'll just have to wait and see. With that, uh, the user interface frame for hero talents is still being polished and is missing a few bits of art and animation and other small changes. So again, it looks good.
Speaker 1:
The alpha actually looks really, really good and it looks more like a beta, to be honest with you, which is incredible. That is so incredible. It's so good to see how far along this expansion is already. They've pretty much got everything to do and it's just polishing up things, which is absolutely amazing to see. We are on track for a super early release for this expansion. We are actually on track For probably a Possible June release. I highly doubt it, but June, maybe July June is way too soon, maybe I can hope.
Speaker 1:
What we do know Is that the beta of the War Within Will come out out after 10.7.2 or something. It's something like that patch and that patch is guaranteed to come out a week after season four. So season four is going to be coming out, uh, next week, next reset. So tuesday, if you're na, wednesday for eu, and this means that the time walking patch with the missa pandaria rework and remix, whatever it's called that will come out on the 30th or the 1st of may april slash may, which is amazing, because then the only thing that's left is the beta for the War Within and then the actual pre-patch. They're the next two after that patch drops. So we have to wait two weeks for the patch to drop. That is the one just before pre-patch.
Speaker 1:
It sounds ridiculous saying it like that. It sounds like I'm saying patch too much. You, you kind of understand where I'm getting that. We are very much on course for a early summer release and that is so amazing. We usually get expansions like november, like November, like October, november, you know that kind of deal, but we are looking at a possible June slash July release. How amazing would that be. Oh, I can't wait.
Speaker 1:
It's looking so promising, the alpha. If you look at people streaming it, there are obviously bugs. There are going to be bugs, a lot, lot of them, but a lot of it looks relatively clean. All of the hero talents are there for testing. There's new talent trees that are there for testing. Everything looks up to date. So what we're able to test right now. The following hero talents are available for play testing in public alpha one deathbringer, rider of the apocalypse and the sand lane. These are all of the death knight talents. Demon hunter, the aldrich reaver, which is havoc and vengeance, though one of the demon hunter specs is available for tanking or for testing, the other one is not. The four druid ones are available for testing. Which is druid of the claw, elune's chosen keeper of the grove and wild stalker. These are available for testing. Evokers are available for testing.
Speaker 1:
Chrono warden, flame shaper and scale commander, hunters, dark ranger, pack leader and sentinel mages, frostfire spell slinger sunfury, by the way, a little note, sunfury mages look crazy. They look absolutely ridiculous. Right now they summon phoenixes that just sh*t out amazing abilities, arcane search, greater pyroblasts. They, they look so cool. Fire mages and arcane mages like. It looks a lot of fun.
Speaker 1:
Mages are going to be busted in the the war within pvp wise. They're going to be absolutely busted, considering sun fury gets a stun. Yes, mages have a stun again. I'm not. I can't remember what it's called, but essentially it's a three second stun, uh, for some fury mages, so you would not go frost. You would not go frost mage at all. Um, because you're just gimped you, you do not have that. You don't have that stun for frost mage, and that's gonna really, really hinder it. It's going to need something really big for frost to be able to compete with fire and arcane in this expansion, purely because the arcane and fire mages have a stun and frost doesn't. It's going to be crazy. I'd love to see the tuning on it and stuff, but we just gotta wait and see. It looks amazing, I'm not gonna lie.
Speaker 1:
Uh, for monk, you have a conduit of the celestials, master of harmony and shadow pan. Um, all of these are available for testing. Developers note, though says master of harmony will be accessible in the hero talent tree, but there will be a handful of talents that are not fully implemented. Okay, so you got half of it there. For the master of harmony, which is mist weaver and brewmaster, which is cool, that's still cool. For paladin, you have heralded the sun. Lightsmith and templar all of these are available for testing.
Speaker 1:
Priest, you have one that is missing. You have oracle and void weaver or void weaver that you can test. The one that is missing, uh, you have oracle and void reaver or void void weaver that you can test. The one that is missing is, uh, holy shadow, I believe. Yeah, holy shadow. And for rogue, you have trickster, which is the sub and outlaw. The other two are not implemented yet.
Speaker 1:
Uh, so you need rogue priest. And what was the other one at the top demon hunter at the moment? Uh, shamans, you have farseer. That's the only one, not, oh, the only one available at the moment. And for warlocks, you have all three. And for warriors, you have all three warlocks, diabolist, heller and Soul, harvester Warriors, colossus Mountain, thane and Slayer.
Speaker 1:
So you have, out of all of these different hero talents, you have two, four, one, so five. You have six hero talents not available. Out of however many there is, there's 6 plus 3, 4, 10, 14, 17, 20, 23, 26, 29, 31, 32, 33. 39 hero talent trees and you have 6 not available in the first alpha. How crazy is that? That it looks. It looks so good. The alpha looks quite complete. Obviously there's going to be some glaring bugs and some bits and bobs that aren't working, but it looks complete. It looks like a beta, a very clean beta, which is quite good. I'm just so excited because we might actually see a early july, late june release, like there is that potential because of how far along we are with this and it's absolutely crazy.
Speaker 1:
Now I'm not going to get into all of the reworks, but there are reworks for a couple of classes the Druid, the Monk as well. These are for every spec as well, by the way, because there's new talents. Talents have been moved around and stuff like that. You know there's a sh*t ton that has changed. Paladins, you've had a few things that have been moved and updated and stuff. Paladins, you've had a few things that have been moved and updated and stuff. And I think Warriors have also had a couple of things that have changed and all of that stuff. But yeah, it's really, really looking good and I cannot stress enough just how good it's looking. To be honest with you, it's looking clean and it's very exciting.
Speaker 1:
But before that, we will obviously have the pre-patch event, before the expansion goes live, and what the pre-patch event is is something called Radiant Echoes. Now, what these Radiant Echoes are are essentially around Azeroth, duskweller Marsh, searing Gorge and Dragonblight are essentially around Azeroth, duskweller Marsh, searing Gorge and Dragonblight. These are going to be 30-minute duration or every 30 minutes, sorry, you're going to have these echoes available and they're shown with the sort of horn on the map. You know that kind of deal, kind of like for Dragon's Keep and stuff like that. So for the first phase of the event, a memory boss will spawn in one of the zones. This is, uh, something that is big from the past. So you have thorium, you have patches or no stitches, sorry, you know something a big bad that we've kind of known from the past. Um, you basically kill it and once the memory is defeated, a second phase of the event will spawn.
Speaker 1:
So six events will spawn through the zone the radiant echo is happening at, so throughout Dragonblight, dasguala Marsh and Searing Gorge, reflecting past memories seen through your adventurers in Azeroth. These will reflect events that happen in that continent. Ie, dasgual qualamar shows kalimdor memories, syrian gorge sees or shows eastern kingdoms, and dragon blight shows northrend, northrend, you can have loken maybe a yogsaron, maybe, you know, maybe a lich king, you know. Um, for the eastern kingdoms you've obviously got stitches and stuff like that. But yeah, I'll go over the bosses in a bit, but these events can include things like slay enemies of the past to help settle battles or even collect famous items from the past, which is really really cool. So they do give a few examples like thorim, stitches and stuff um. Once all six events are complete, a final boss of old will spawn onyxia in duskwell and marsh makes a lot of sense, ragnaros in syrian gorge again makes a lot of sense and the lich king in Dragonblight. Obviously, defeating each boss will complete the Radiant Echo. You've got very iconic characters there for the Echo.
Speaker 1:
There is a vendor in each of these event locations, but items on this vendor currently don't have any currency costs. We have screenshots of the vendor tabs below. They don't know what the currency event is called. Oh no, they do know that it's called residual memories as the currency for this event. It is currently unknown if there are any rewards from the event besides the vendor stuff, as mobs in the event are currently not dropping anything. What this event has to offer from the vendors? A lifeless stone ring. Its purpose is unknown, which is really cool. I like that. I love unknown items in the game because it could lead to something in the future where it's a hidden secret, discord kind of deal stuff like that.
Speaker 1:
But you have a 32-slot bag, a reagent bag, a slot uh bag, a reagent bag, a level a 30 slot reagent bag. Three battle pets a whelpling ghoul and kobold. Uh, they will have the same effect as the radiant echo npcs a full set of 489 gear. Um, it's equivalent to normal raid gear in dragon flight season four. This gear has an appearance similar to that of the void bound gear. Uh, data mind a couple patches ago. That's really cool, really cool. Um, now, it doesn't list everything, but you have a lot of items here that you can utilize as sort of um transmog, so transmog, or just fun bits and bobs. So you have a shriveled ancient tentacle and the thing that springs to mind is killing c'Thun and you can get a tentacle trinket from him which summons a tentacle. Um, maybe just something like that.
Speaker 1:
You, you obviously have a lot of pieces of gear like boots, gloves and stuff, and all of these are called Dalaran Defenders. And then, whichever it is, whichever gear piece it is, so mitts for gloves, boots for boots, gauntlets, you know, for the male version, grips for the cloth version, braces, wraps for the wrists, you know all of that stuff. You have a load of these different sets essentially. And then you have the weapons, which is Dalaran, defenders, dagger, saber, scepter, crusher, wand, impaler, spin, aegis Hammer. All of these are really, really cool looking weapons. If you haven't take a look at wowhead and take a look at these weapons, um, these were posted about, uh, probably probably a day ago on wowhead and they are really cool. They're definitely a mug that you kind of want and they'll go with quite a lot of things, to be honest, with you in the game. So definitely make sure that you pick some of these up, if you can.
Speaker 1:
I know that there's a lot happening in wow right now. There is a lot we've obviously got. We're in a purgatory stage, um, but once it hits that you know, 30th and we go into may, um, it's going to be a sh*t show of stuff. We're never going to be without content, essentially, for a while, and that's absolutely amazing. But I will end it here. All that I ask at the very end of this episode is can I please get an alpha Blizzard? If anyone's listening, you know it would be much appreciated. Just throw me an alpha client, it would be amazing. I would definitely appreciate it. But you know we all can't, uh, beggars can't be choosers, I guess, um, but yeah, thank you all very much for listening, as always, do check out all of the socials down below. Constant stuff is happening over there. Thank you all very much once again and go. A valid friend, goodbye, thank you.
