World of Warcast: A World of Warcraft Podcast

Discord: http://discord.worldofwarcast.com
Twitch: http://twitch.tv/starmiketv
Mount Up Add-on: https://wow.curseforge.com/projects/mount-up

Our first impressions of Battle For Azeroth!

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This Week in WoW:

Pet battle bonus event
Darkmoon Faire starts Sunday

News:
Lots of hotfixes to classes, creatures, professions, raids, dungeons and quests - almost daily since prepatch
Hotfix to experience: experience required to level has been lowered for all levels 40-100. Reduction averages 14% between 60-80, with smaller reductions at other levels.
Quest log bug -
“Due to an issue, during a short time between 1st of August, 09:30 pm and 2nd of August 01:45 am players would get all their quest log abandoned when using a teleportation ability, such as hearthstone or mage portal. This issue is fixed by now, and we will try to assist you with recovering your quest progress.

If you lost a progress of a quest, that can be completed during single play session, please, proceed by restarting this quest.

If you were impacted by this issue and you lost a progress of a multistep quest, that takes several days to complete or a quest that you are not able to pick up anymore, we will try to recover the progress. Please, note, that we do not guarantee to recover progress as it was before the loss, but we will do our best.”

War of Thorns parts 1&2: thoughts

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Ren:
Mocktail of the Cast: Juniper and Tonic
Shoulder surgery on June 9; haven’t been able to do much in game since
Shoulder surgery turned out to be a little more involved than anticipated; spending 2 weeks in cast. Now have leave to spend small amounts of time out so I can type, but WoW doesn’t work
Playing turn based strategy games instead
Tried a multi button gaming mouse and the compact keypad and neither worked well
Figured out the art of mouse flying but fighting is nearly impossible
Finished home renovation projects
Only real post-patch activity is logging onto characters and resetting talents

Mike:
Tried to get in on Tuesday. Nope.

This Week in WoW:
Who knows -- it’s been damn near impossible to play
This week: Battleground Bonus Event - next week, Legion Dungeon Event

News:
CALL THE ORKIN MAN became OMG the bugs
Drivers
Some people reporting their drivers are fully up to date but Blizzard still flagging them for having un-updated drivers
Legion App:
Problems with only being able to access 3 characters
Only way to change characters: log completely out of the app, sign back in, and select the starting character you want
BlizzardCS confirmed in a tweet on 7/19: “Switch Character button was intentionally removed. You now switch characters by logging out, then logging in again. You'll be taken to the list of characters to select from at that point.”
Cue well deserved community shit fit. Now as of 3:30 PM EST, they are saying they are “working on a fix for this issue.”
Talents
Icy-Veins has already updated class guides and talent suggestions for prepatch
Communities
Disabled on some realms, in testing on others

8.0 Undocumented features

Q&A overview

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Happy 13th!

Ren
Cocktail of the Cast: Julep Zecca Italiana
About 80% through the “Home Flooring Renovation” achievement
Completed the new pre-expansion quest line on paladin - upgraded artifact from 75 to 126
Purchased a small one-handed gaming keyboard from DeLux - $30. Taking some time to get used to but may be easier to use than full sized keyboard when I’m one handed.
Only real problem is maneuvering while flying
Other issue: no English instructions came with it

Mike
I made a thing.
I thought I needed things from Midsummer - nope.
Did the artifact thing
Poop quest :P
Still need to do the mage tower

This Week in WoW
Midsummer Fire Festival continues through July 5 (Thursday)
This Week: Arena Skirmishes; next week, World Quest Bonus Event
Darkmoon Faire starts Sunday, July 1

News
Pre-expansion artifact quest in Silithus went live this week
Achievement: Crucible’s Promise - upgrades your artifact from 75 to 126
Several of the Silithus quests are NOT REQUIRED to complete this (but you can’t skip the trips to Stormwind or Orgrimmar)
Only the quests directly from Nolan Speed (Alliance) and Grol Warblade (Horde) are required to complete the quest line
First Horde quest: motivate peons; first Alliance quest, collect Mysterious Ore by killing goblins. Horde quest turns in to Grol. Alliance has turn-in for Mysterious Ore going to a dwarf, but then return to Nolan Speed to pick the line back up.
From this point on, the main line is identical, Horde or Alliance.
Pick up “The Twilight Survivor” from Nolan or Grol. Ignore “Desert Research” because it’s just a breadcrumb to an unnecessary gnome or goblin line.
Pick up “A Recent Arrival” to talk to Khadgar, and this leads to the end.
You can skip ALL the gnome quests (Alliance) and goblin quests (Horde) and the outhouse quest and it does not affect progress. These extras provide color and 18g but no rep or other rewards
Confirmed upgraded ALL owned weapon artifacts, whether they are on you or in the bank
When you have completed this quest, if you complete any other weapon quests, these fully upgrade as soon as you shift into that specialization
Underlight Angler graphics do what the regular artifacts do and it shows TRILLIONS of AP, but doesn’t actually upgrade the Angler (AP yellow bar still shows proper amount of points. Display bug)
Reportedly making the Mage Tower much easier to complete and sudden uptick in new guilds finishing Mythi and Cutting Edge Argus the Unmaker achievements.
Mage Tower is now live 24/7

Forbes Interviews with Ion Hazzikostas
Change in BFA: Prevent players from swapping gear in high difficulty Mythic+ dungeons - make it consistent with not changing talents mid-encounter. Mythic+ now requires complete speccing (talents AND gear) for the entire dungeon, which Blizzard now views as a single encounter.
New Azerite armor
Can’t be warforged or titanforged
Only source that can be run repeatedly is normal or heroic dungeons
Can be gained as a world quest emissary reward, but not from world quests themselves
Can get as a weekly PvP or conquest reward, but not at the end of a match
Mythic dungeons - not from box at the end, but only from the weekly reward box
Clear tiers of Azerite armor
Communities
Will not be cross faction (“we’re at war!”]
Yay Discord!
Confirmed the following are all going away in the prepatch:
First Aid achievements
Ahead of the Curve and Cutting Edge achievements
Violet Spellwing mount quest from killing Argus.
Guaranteed mount drops from mythic Argus and Gul’dan in The Nighthold will become rare drops
The Chosen title (killing bosses in mythic Trial of Valor without dying)
Brawler’s Guild seasonal achievements
Legion Elite PvP armor sets, achievements related to the Ashran battlefield and several other Legion specific PvP achievements
Mentioned Fisherfriends of the Isles isn’t going away but will be a lot easier to achieve now that there are huge groups doing it
Professions
Professions system is “changing dramatically”
Each expansion will have its own separate skill tier level\
Analogy: Pandaria cooking
If you have 800 skill in a profession, you’ll be at 100 skill level in each expansion’s profession tier, and will start BFA as level 1 for BFA crafting.
If you have 650, for example, you will have 100 through Pandaria, then 50 for Warlords, and no Legion
Also means is that if all you want to do is craft items for Battle of Azeroth, there’s nothing you have to do - you do not need to get your profession to 800 - there is no advantage because all 800 profession skill level means now is that you will have 100 level in all expansion tiers short of BFA. Everyone will start at level 1 for BFA crafting and gathering.
Question: how is racial profession bonus going to figure into this?
Also means if you want to change professions, it’s a great time to do it.
Ian’s advice: professions “extremely optional” to level up - “don’t worry about anything other than the Mage Tower”.
No specific events planned for prepatch that will boost levels the way the Legion invasions did
BFA kinder to alts?
Only things specifically mentioned:
artifact necklace will work for all specs - no having to develop separate necklaces for tanking, DPS and healing
No class legendaries

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Episode 289

Ren
Finished Fisherfriend of the Isles
ALMOST finished Lucid Nightmare
Got into Beta, but no time to do anything about it
On Sylvanus server, copied my Horde paladin Krystoff onto it and created a Warcast channel

Mike
Nothing
Well, did some beta w/Ali but basically covered the same ground as pre-reset.
Guild moving to horde

This Week in WoW
Pet Battle Bonus Event
Next week: Cataclysm Timewalking
Midsummer Fire Festival starts Thursday, June 21
New from 2017: Set of Matches toy (500 Burning Blossoms), Igneous Flameling pet (350 Burning Blossoms), Illusion: Deathfrost from Ahune (Slave Pens)

News

BfA news

8.0 prepatch live on the PTR
Players gain access to a multitude of features and system updates in the pre-patch, including Communities, War Mode, the new Honor System, overhauled Professions, and Legion's final storyline leading up to Burning of Teldrassil and the Battle for Lordaeron.
Artifacts will be disabled when the pre-patch goes live. Player power will be buffed to compensate for the power loss.
Class Changes
A stat/item squish
Legendaries won't work past level 115.
Retired artifacts lose all their traits and become normal weapons, with stats scaling with relics installed in the artifact weapon. The main artifact effect of each spec's weapons is becoming a talent instead, as are several class specific legendaries.
Underlight Angler was originally showing as disabled, but the latest build fixed it.

WoW Classic
Will start with 1.12 Drums of War: Features introduced in 1.12 included:
Cross realm battlegrounds (Alterac Valley, Warsong Gulch, Arathi Basin)
World PvP
Some of the past things from previous patches that will be included as a result:
Ruins and Temple of Ahn'Qiraj - so this will be after opening those
Blackwing Lair
Darkmoon Faire
Raid dungeon timers, calendars and lockouts
The high level class dungeon armor sets
Weather
Quest experience for gold at level 60
Final destination flight paths
Linked auction houses
Some world holidays
Soul shard bags (!!!)
Expected issues with the first prototype
didn't recognize current video cards and was incompatible with the current login/authentication server (authenticator became available 2 Jun 2008, almost 2 years after 1.12's release on 22 August 2006)
Does not support modern security and anti-cheating capabilities
Second prototype: instead of going forward with old code, work backward: take the modern back-end code and use it to process Patch 1.12 game data
Start with modern architecture, security and stability - catalogue any differences in behavior between the development build and the Patch 1.12 reference build
Three types of game data:
Table data: numbers - hit points, stats, spawn timers, etc.
File data: dense data such as 3d models, textures, animations, terrain, user interface, and art models (don't use the same file formats as commercial art tools - no jpgs, tifs, etc.
Lua scrips: custom behaviors for server side logic without needing engineering knowledge
Engineering challenges
All classic data is in original form since launch, but format has changed substantially over the year. Modern client is not compatible with old data.
Master data problem: from single line on a master table to multiple linked tables catalogued by ID number
much richer environment but not compatible with the single line system
For example, spells could only apply up to three actions on a target in classic
In current form, spells no longer limited to three effects and are formatted differently
Almost all other data such as items, characters, creatures, NPCs, AI, spawning and more) have had their database formats changed