WOW Forever

0:10 Hello fellow gamers and welcome to the video gamers podcast. How can an MMO that's 22 years old become the most popular launch in the history of World of Warcraft? Well, you go back to the roots. This isn't a remake of WoW. It's a dmake. And yes, I did just make that up. Returning World of Warcraft to what it was intended to be might just have been a massive recipe for success. But what exactly is World of Warcraft Forever? Is it even approachable for new players, or do you need 3,000 hours in the original for this to interest you? Well, on today's episode, we're giving you all the perspectives from a WoW veteran to a complete noob and everything in between. Before we get to that, some introductions are in order. I am your host, Josh, and joining me, he's our WoW veteran, but don't expect him to

1:11 know anything about the game cuz he's just here to cast fireballs. It's Ryan. I was running the raid. talking. I know exactly. I'm like, "Guys, I'm going to be honest. I don't know where we're supposed to go. I just throw fireballs. That's all I do. That's I'm That's all I mage, baby. That's all I'm supposed to do." DPS. Ryan, you're the veteran of this game. You've run this dungeon like four times now. I did it once. And we're like, "Ryan, where do we go?" And Ryan's like, "I don't even know where I am right now." Like like just point just I just throw fireballs, man. Fireballs. I've run this once and I know where like nine out of the 10 enemy like the the bosses are, man. And Ryan's like, "Yeah, uh, you're asking the wrong guy." Yeah, it's not me. I'm not that guy. I'm not that guy, pal. I'm not that guy, pal. And joining us, he doesn't know a dang thing about this game and kept asking when it gets fun because all he's doing is killing the same three animals over

2:11 and over and over again. It's Ace. That's not true. I did start killing a different variety of spider near the end there. Oh. Oh, this one actually on me. Sweet, sweet progression. Did it after I woke up the same as all the other spiders? What? Yeah. Did it look the same as all the other spiders? Just a different color? Yeah, it was just a different color, you know. Yeah. Yeah. The games do that a lot. That's That's lazy. That's lazy. Well, listen. Welcome in everybody. It is time to chat. Wow. Forever. We've been talking about this. Uh, we dove in. Uh, some of us dove into the deep end, some of us dipped our toes into the kitty pool and then nope out. Uh, but we're going to give you all the perspectives uh, from somebody that has played World of Warcraft way back in the day and had an absolutely just, you know, marvelous opinion of it. That's Ryan. To somebody like me who I am an MMO veteran. I have thousands and thousands of hours in EverQuest and

3:12 other MMOs, but I never really played World of Warcraft. Uh, so this game is fairly new to me. Uh, and then we have Ace, who has never played an MMO of any kind. And then dove into World of Warcraft forever and then went, "What the heck is this game?" Yeah. Dove. Dove. Ryan's doing Eric. stove might be 5 hours diving enough for me. 5 hours is looking over at the box on the shelf and then maybe pondering it for a second when it comes to an MMO like Yep. like World of Warcraft. Uh so we're going to talk about it. You know, we have seen so many people in our community that have been like, "Hey, I've never played WoW. I'm seeing everybody talking about it. I'm getting FOMO. Do you think I'll like this? Is it too late? Do I need to have played the original?" And that these are all very good questions. people that have 3,000 hours in what they call retail, I guess, now. Uh they're the ones that are going like, is Wow forever

4:12 for me? You know, is it really worth me putting aside the thousands of hours in retail and then picking up and starting all over with WoW Forever? So, that is our goal this episode is to talk about that, give you three different perspectives because we all have a different one, I'm sure. Listen, we don't need to break down what World of Warcraft is for most people. Unless you have been living under a rock for most of your life, you know what World of Warcraft is. So, our goal on this one is not to talk about game mechanics and what the heart of World of Warcraft is. It's more so to talk about what Forever is, our experience with it so far, and whether we think you might enjoy diving in and and kind of giving it a test run yourself. Um, and then, you know, what our plans are. Is this a game that we're truly going to play forever or is this a drop in the pan for the podcast and then we're going to move on to the next thing? So, um, before we do that, Ryan, we have been searching high and low for a review. Actually, we haven't. You guys have been awesome out there, by the way.

5:12 The reviews have been pouring in. Thank you to everybody that has left us a review. U, but Ryan, you found one that you said you were very excited to read. Um, so what do you have for us? Yes, this is an amazing review. Um, it's going to test my uh Fsbian nature. Uh, I'm gonna have to really kind of it's got I'm gonna have to do a lot to to to to bring this to life. Uh, this is an amazing five-star review titled Nice from the one and only Race Car Dude and it reads as follows. Very good. and scene. Bam. Ryan, Oscar awardw winning performance right there. I was going to say the clapping was for you, Ryan. That was one. Dude, you nailed that. I mean, nailed that, dude. That might be one of your best reviews you've ever read. Thank you. Thank you. Uh, anyone that wants to leave more like that, you're good to go. I love it. No, don't don't listen to Ryan.

6:14 What we really want is for you to test your vocabulary and flex your vocabulary in these reviews because Ryan has to read them and and we need you to get creative with some of the words. Stop. What are you doing? No. You know, like, you know, just saying if you want to hear it on the show, that's the best way to make sure that happens. Don't say words that sound like other words. That's what I'm pretty sure that's don't sound anything like other words that don't not say very good. I like it. Well, listen. That's our challenge to you is give Ryan some tough words to say in these reviews, people. Oh, what? Yes, they're going to do that now, dude. What are you doing? I know they're going to do it because they're awesome. It's going to be great, man. Heartfelt review and then just one really hard work. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, let's do this, boys. Let's talk about World of Warcraft Forever, as we always do. I always like to say, what's your hype

7:14 level? What's your hype level going into a game? Because it, you know, we say this time and time again, but it does matter. Expectations versus what you get out of a game can can absolutely matter. Um, you know, I I played WoW for a few days back in the late days of retail where I, you know, I leveled up my warrior to level 80 in three days. I'll be honest, it was the most mind-numbing, boring thing I think I've ever seen. Uh, it was just like this game's made for children. Uh, that's not a slander to anybody. I just felt like the gameplay part was so dumbed down that it was like there's no challenge here. And anybody that's been listening to this podcast knows I feed off of challenge in a game. might want to overcome that obstacle, that boss fight, whatever. And I really found WoW retail to just be mind-numbing it to to me, especially as somebody that came from the the hardcore days of EverQuest. Um Ryan, you have been playing WoW since the beginning. Little bit. Just maybe a little bit. A little bit. Now, I know you haven't played WoW in a long time. So, you did

8:14 play for a long time, but then you put WoW down for a long time, I'm assuming. I was I was in on launch so the very very beginning in like 200 three or four I can't remember the exact time uh but I played with old host of the show Paul um and we got in from the get-go very very beginning and it was very much like this is now um where it's it's a tough game man there's a lot of time and dedication you have to put into it and and there's a lot to go through and there's a lot of running and and so I have I have been in this world of of World of Warcraft uh for for a long time. I mean, jeez, what 20 something years. I think it came out in 2004. It was four. Okay. And it was right around there. So, it's been 22 years since the original World of Warcraft launch. Also, that makes me feel insanely old to say that this game's been around for 22 years. And here we are doing an episode on World of Warcraft

9:14 forever, which still baffles me to this day. But the world has been talking about this game. Our community has been talking about this game. And if you're the kind of person where you're like, I don't care about World of Warcraft. This is what people, this is what's happening in the gaming world right now. Um, I said this in the intro. It smashed every World of Warcraft launch record. They came out, Blizzard came out and said, "World of Warcraft Forever is our most successful launch we have ever had." like through DLC's, through expansions, through the initial World of Warcraft, like all that, like that should give you some perspective on how big World of Warcraft Forever is right now, which is why we're doing this episode, number one. But number two, we've been playing it. We kind of like talk about games we've been playing. Ace, you're the you're the you're the the the oddity here, Ace. You're the noob. You're the guy that's never played an MMO. Mhm.

10:15 I don't know what your like you've said this before like where you're like I don't really know what to expect from MMO. I've never really played one. WoW has been around for a long time. Did you have any expectations or hype at all going into this? No. I was trying to keep basically blank slate go in and see, you know, build my expectations from there. And then as soon as I opened the character creation menu and saw what it looked like, my brain just shut off. Okay, I'm so glad you led with this because it's perfect. It's perfect. Any chance we control you, buddy. You know, we love you. But like, I said this to you because Ace of all people in the world started complaining about the graphics in World of Warcraft. It's an ugly, ugly game. Listen, I can complain about the graphics because I'm a graphics snob. Ryan, you can complain about the graphics because it's been 22 years and you played the original World of Warcraft. So, you could have been like, "Hey, man. What the heck? You guys couldn't have like, you know, after 22

11:15 years made these graphics look better." Yep. Ace is the guy that plays all these indie games that are two pixels and then talks about how beautiful they are gameplay to make up for their graphics. He starts coming into our chat and talking about how bad the graphics are in World of Warcraft forever. I was like, "Ace, you don't get to do this." This game has an ugly art style. It's insane. That's absolutely insane. The stuff you send us and like just, you know, chat everybody this we only like bring to light a little bit of what Ace sends us like this much. The stuff he sends us in in our our chat that we have together as hosts is is some of the craziest things I've ever seen. The difference is indie studios can make what they can pay for. Blizzard is a massive AAA studio that can make whatever they want. Look at Diablo and Overwatch. Both of those. Did you watch the opening cinematic for

12:16 World of Warcraft forever? Was deceiving cuz then you watch that cinematic and then you get to Ugly Verse. He's like, "Wait a second. Wait a second. doesn't look anything like the cinematics. It's like when you buy the you buy the game with like the the game art and you're like, "Wow, I can't wait to play this when I get home." And you pop it in. It looks like freaking Mario 1. The game's been out for as almost as long as you've been alive. You can't even like He's got a point. Come on. He's got a point. I was alive for four years longer than the game. All right. Yeah. But I I will say the the rugpull of like the beautiful opening cinematic to Wow Forever and then just getting dumped into the character creation screen and being like this ugly low poly castle that's on fire. Loading. Loading. All right. See, you had no hype. You had no expectations about this at all. You were curious, though. I was curious to see if I'd like what an MMO is. Okay. Uh, I'm willing to bet you don't

13:16 like what this MMO is because Ryan and I know you really well. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. I hated every second of it, but we'll get to it. It's We know each other. Ryan and I were like, "He hates this game. He hates this game so much." And we were like, "Oh, he's probably I'll be surprised if he puts in more than like four hours into this thing." Yep. Uh, so, you know, that's where we're at with it. You know, I was excited. I've been saying for a long time I want an MMO to kind of dive back into. I will say this Ryan is the one that I think completely caught me off guard with this because you you were saying right up like during launch week, Ryan, you were like, "Bro, I might be more excited for WoW Forever than I am for GTA 6 right now." And I was like, "Cool, man. This is this like this warms my heart, you know? This is great." And then I saw Ryan do something. Never. Don't tell people. What are you doing? Don't tell me. This This is the guy that works like 60

14:17 hours a week. This is the guy where we sometimes have to go, "Hey, Ryan, are you going to be okay to record this deep dive this week?" Cuz we know you've been working every single day, but like, "Have you put in the time?" And then Ryan will be like, "Yeah, I'll just stay up late tonight and I'll make sure I get my hours in. Like, it's fine." And we're like, "Okay." Ryan put in like, and I'm not exaggerating this, Ryan put in like 24 hours of of WoW Forever time in the first three days. I went to work one morning and saw you in chat with a couple of your friends. I came home from work 8 hours later and saw you in the chat with your friends and the little Discord timer. It's It's such a It's such a tattletail. That timer that timer said 8 hours and I was just like Ryan like what are you doing? And you were like huh where am I? What time is it?

15:17 Very next day same thing. Check the chat. You've been in there for 6 hours. So Ryan, I'm guessing you've uh been enjoying your time back in Azeroth. You know, it's been kind of mediocre, man. I really wish the graphics were better. It's kind of like they've had all this time. Come on, you know. No, it's been freaking amazing. I absolutely have loved it. That's why I've cracked out so much. Um I feel like I'm feel like I'm a little kid again. And it's awesome, dude. I'm I'm I'm in. I'm so in. Like I'm not I'm not I'm genuinely I don't care that much about GTA right now. Like I really don't. crazy because I know it's crazy but I don't right now I'm excited to go play GTA and I were talking before I want to go fishing. I want to go fishing with my subatoon and like try to get my fishing up and then work on my tailoring. Like I I just something about Wow, man. It's it's uh it's bringing me back. This game just reminded me like my

16:17 parents used to play like sticks and hoops as kids like cuz that's what this game is to me is sticks and hoops. I love that. This is when you found out your parents game was like sticks and hoops or whatever. This makes me depressed because I think about what my parents never I've never seen Ryan crack out on a game like I have. No, this is this is and I'm here for it. Number one, I I love picking on you, Ryan, but like it also does make me happy cuz it's like we're gaming podcast, man. When somebody gets like enamored of a game, you know, like to that degree, it's like you feel good for the person. You're like, dude, I'm glad that you're having fun. I've been playing with you, Ryan. We've run a couple dungeons together and it it has been an absolute blast. I will say this since we're kind of sharing our thoughts on the game. I went into this excited but without a lot of like high expectations for it. I had a funny story because I prepped for this by setting up some of the add-ons, some of the UI tweaks and stuff like that. And I logged in, we had like seven people in a voice chat where everybody's trying to get in the This might be one

17:18 of the We got I got I got to segue for a second. Kudos to Blizzard. This launch is the smoothest launch I have ever seen, dude. Oh my god. So clean. It's not often we're praising Blizzard for for a lot of things, but dude, the launch of WoW Forever was the smoothest launch I have ever seen on a scale. Now, I didn't know, we didn't know at the time how big this was, but when they came out and said this is our biggest launch by far, that tells you how many millions of people were trying to all log in at the same time. And the queue was like two minutes. I got like I spent two minutes in the queue, got disconnected, hopped back in the queue, spent two more minutes in the queue, and I was in. And the servers ran fine. It was not the lagfest. So, anybody that was wondering, they figured it out and we weren't so sure they were going to figure it out, but got to give them their praise there because they absolutely earned that one. Um, now back to my initial experience, cuz I'm not going to lie, my initial experience was pretty terrible.

18:19 I log into this game, I have no idea what I'm doing. I've played RPGs, I've played MMOs, I get my I create my guy, I'm doing all this and like there's no quest markers, there's no where do you go next? There's just a big open plane. I'm supposed to go kill some chickens and some plane striders and collect some beaks and all that stuff. And I I'm I'm running around and it's like nothing is working. I don't know where my quests are. I can't see like the like long story short after all of my friends mocking me and calling me dad for the next few hours because nothing Yeah. I was getting called. I was getting called dad because I'm like guys, how do I know where my next quest is? I got stuck in first person mode at one point and I couldn't get out of it. And I was like, he goes, "Oh, guys, look. I'm in I'm in first person mode. This is so cool." And he's like, "Oh, wait. I can't get out. I can't get out." And everything was broken. Come to find out

19:19 that one of the add-ons that I had installed was just broken and was breaking the UI. And when I disabled that and restarted things, all of a sudden, I could see my quest. I could see the arrows pointing me where to go. I actually knew what I was supposed to be doing and it really helped my enjoyment of this game after that. But one thing I didn't know is apparently that's how vanilla WoW was on launch. Like you actually had to read your quests. There were no indicators or markers or anything like that, which again takes me back to my EverQuest days, but I'm so glad that those days are over. Yeah. Uh, so I didn't have the best introduction to WoW forever, but I will say I I have put in a decent bit of time. I I'm I'm probably 20 plus hours in. Uh, and I have absolutely been having a blast with this game. Um, the progression is fantastic. The the social aspect of WoW Forever is fantastic. Ace, I'm gonna say this. I don't blame

20:19 you for not liking this game because if you are judging WoW Forever on the game play alone, it is kind of sucky. Kind of sucky. It sucks. Ryan's shaking his head. It is a serotonin farm where you don't do anything to earn what you're doing. You're just attacking things and watching your bar and your number go up. That's it. You you kill thing bar number go up. That's it. Like you just 100%ed Phantom Blade Zero. All you do is attack stuff. What do you mean Blade Zero? I had things I could explore. There was there were characters I could talk to if I wanted to. You got a lot of characters. You're literally describing Wow. You could talk to characters you can explore and you can kill stuff. Do not compare Phantom Z. Tell me the difference. What's the difference? What's the difference? Phantom Blade Zero is fun. Oh, so you didn't have fun. That's I didn't have to walk around slow as 2 million people. 2 million concurrent players have a different spires and

21:20 skeletons and zombies for 4 and a half hours to reach level six. Hey, skill issue. Skill issue and nobody will talk to you in the world chat unless you're joining their guild. That's true. That's for a silver. All they do is spam. Join my guild. Join my guild. So, I said I was on a Societal. I don't know how I don't know how close on AS side I am on this. I but I will say this because there's a lot of new people that are saying like do you think I would enjoy WoW forever? No. Here's I think you have to approach this game the right way. This is a longterm largecale MMO. If you are looking for the in the the minute-to-minute gameplay to be riveting, you're not going to like this game. Like it is my I'll be honest and I can say this because I'm squarely between the two of you on this. Uh so like you know going out and collecting five bore tusks is there's a reason memes exist for these kind of quests

22:21 now. They made a they made a South Park episode on it, you know. Yes. And it's like this is literally WoW forever. This WoW is the reason that these memes exist. And so if you think that like collect five bore tusks, okay, now go collect five, you know, chicken feet. Okay, now go collect five bristlebar hides. Okay, now go collect this and then bring these back, right? Like that is very much a lie at the very early game. Yeah, bore skin simulator. And and it there's there's a lot of truth to that. Sword slash simulator. Like that's all you're doing. Like what are you talking about? You are comparing bosses like compliments whatever. You're both dumb. You're both That's my take on this is you're both dumb. I'm the voice of reason around here. People listen to me. Like but as I said this to you. We're going to take a break here in just a minute. And I said this to you where I said, "Listen, if you're if you're playing WoW Forever for the game play, the actual minute-to-minute

23:22 gameplay, I think you could walk away like you walked away being sorely disappointed and going, "This game is boring, dude. Why is this game so popular? You're telling me I got to spend five minutes running? Like literally just watching my screen doing absolutely nothing. Walking. Five. That's a quick jaunt." Yeah, that is a quick run. Are you kidding me? It takes 10 minutes to get anywhere. But so I get that. Like I can absolutely respect that opinion, but at the same time I also understand Ryan's take on this where it's sometimes it's the culmination of everything. And with WoW Forever, it's it's not necessarily about killing the five bore or the fiveminute run here. It is about the the pay putting in your dues to have an experience with other people that will ultimately wind up being a grand experience. And I am to the point in this game where I'm starting to get that like grand experience where I'm interacting with people and I'm running dungeons and and I'm I'm understanding what people are saying in chat and people forming groups to go take down

24:22 this boss is happening and I'm like, "Hey, I'll I'll help with that." And then I join some rando group. We swim out into the ocean and kill a shark because there's some named shark out in the ocean, you know? And then it's like two of the people die, the other three are alive, but we do it and everybody rejoices together. And then everybody goes, "Cool, thanks." And then everybody just leaves and they all go their their own way. Like that experience is why people enjoy these kind of games. And Ace, I pointed this out to you because you've always said you're a fan of these social hangout type games like the Big Walk for instance, right? Where you're like, "Oh, no. These are these are games where it's not really about the game. It's about the experience that you get to have with your friends. The game play is secondary, right? Like it's not about what you're actually doing. It's about the fact that this game gives you an opportunity to just hang out. Yeah. And that is the magic of World of Warcraft in my opinion. Difference is Big Walk isn't a $15 a month subscription for Big Walk was 40 bucks, wasn't it? No, [clears throat] it was 20 flat.

25:23 Dang it. Well, that's one month. We play Big Walk twice. You know how many hours there are in a month? $15 subscription. Yeah, I do. Right. And I'm sure you do, too. This game is free and I'm trying to get every ounce of it. Yeah. So, all right. Listen, we got to take a break. We'll come back. We'll talk about a little bit more perspective. We'll talk about some fun things that happened, you know, to give people an idea. But, you know, as we go into the break, the the true takeaway is this is a game that thrives on the social aspect and the interaction with other people. If that is something you enjoy, I think that you will absolutely car like find the magic in World of Warcraft forever. If it's something that you don't enjoy or you're not willing to put up with pretty bland gameplay for the most part to get to that, I think it's probably not the right game for you at that point. So, you you ponder that out there, wise listener, and we'll be right back after this break. All right, we're back.

26:25 I feel like I feel like dad. I'm like in I'm in between Ryan and Ace who just want to like fight each other over this like their takes on this. You know, I got so bored of this game I chose to play a game about picking up leaves over Okay. All right. You keep segueing into great things because here I've had this thought. I've been I've been doing a lot of whining to to my friends in World of Warcraft because it's like it takes forever to get anywhere and it's like I mentioned that like my UI was broken. The first question out of my mouth when I loaded in was where is the sprint button and they laughed at me. They laughed at me and they said, "What do you mean?" And I said, "Where is the sprint button?" And they went, "There's no sprint." But there's a jump. There's a jumpint sprint. Like, what is this game? There's not a sprint button. Should they have made you slower and then just given you a sprint? Cuz you're the fastest. Yes.

27:25 You're the fastest character. It was hilarious watching Josh run past all of us and then complaining about how long it took to get places. And we're like, "Oh, I'm like a duck just waddling away and he's just like sprinting off like freaking uh like a racehorse just gone." Yeah. So, I mean, it's just Secretariat just like zooming away. I I am really fast now that I know a little bit more and I can see me run past everybody. I'm like, "Oh, okay. My guy's pretty fast." Uh because I get a racial trait that makes me accelerate and run faster than everybody else. But Ace, you okay, this is where I'm a little baffled by your take on this. Even though I say it, I can understand it because I do understand like just sitting there killing a boar for the 15th time is is not very riveting, but like there's a certain like just laidback to that like like a charm. Like people play Powerwash Simulator. You confessed that you went to play a leaf

28:25 collecting game instead. Yep. It's the same thing. It's not. You No, you progress way faster in the leaf game than you do in that game. I don't have to spend an hour picking up leaves. I've only put 111 minutes into the leaf game. And I've already You want your gold stars. Is that what it is? Like you want like to mean something. Here you go. Here you go. I want my upgrades to feel meaningful. And that they are meaningful, but you have to put in the work. I'm sorry that you're not willing to put in the work. No, I'm not willing to waste my life on World of Warcraft. But you wasted the games that you send us that you play picking up leaves. I'll waste my life picking up leaves and 100% Phantom Blade Zero before I commit my life to World War. Every time Ace makes a good point and I'm like, "Okay, Ace. That's Then he just ruins it by saying you were picking up virtual leaves, Ace. That's not whatever. I don't have I don't have a yard." The thing in this Okay, so I'm to clean a yard and mow a yard. I apartment. Josh Josh Josh made a really

29:25 good point with this is is is the the so social circumstance like being with people and all this. A lot of that stuff is all to get to the point where you can be with people, you can you can run the dungeons, you can run the raids, you're doing the other stuff. It's you really don't level or quest with friends. Like you can do it a little bit and sometimes, but you do it to get to the dungeons and to the raids and to the areas where you can run those things with people. And that's that's what the game is about. That's what we play it for. That's what you do all the hard work to get to that part of it. And so that's the the the disconnect for UAE is is like all of that leads to this like that leads to it's like the training area. It's hard to get an enemy if the combat sucks. Getting used to the tutorial cuz the combat gets harder. It does. It absolutely gets harder and

30:26 then you have to learn how to manage multiple things and multiple people and like depending on your character, you have to understand who needs what and and everybody has a job and and and uh something to do within the the dungeon. And so there's so much more. And then again, once you get to that, even if it's not hard and you're maybe overleveled, it's still a fun time to like hang out with your buddies and and you're you're completing this and then you you get a set a set raid uh or or different uh material or class or whatever, whatever you need, like you'll get it and you're just hanging out with your friends and you're you're accomplishing this uh dungeon and then you go back and you turn your quests in and and then you reload and do it again. Like it's just one of those things like to where you have to get to that point to really understand it and then you you you drive to get to the fun part. Like it's like a work to get to play. It's if not enough time to sell me on a

31:27 game. The game is not worth my time. That's that's a gen What what gen is he? What what gen Zen X? I don't know. I'm not a Pokemon. Gen dum dum. That's funny. So, like in in all honesty, I get both perspectives on this. Like, when a game is intended to be a thousandhour game or a 2,000hour game, your tutorial section in that game is like 20 hours. And that's legitimately like what World of Warcraft Forever is. Like, as somebody that knows MMOs but does not know World of Warcraft, this is this is like standard for for this genre. And it might just be the ace. like you're, you know, you're not into the genre as a whole, but like it that's kind of the name of the game. And Ryan is right on the one hand where it's like it, you know, the running around and the the you only have three skills and you kill 15 boore and then you run back to this town and then it leads you to the next town. It's like slowly guiding you through this massive massive world and it's slowly teaching you the systems because

32:29 there's so many systems. Like I haven't done a shred of crafting. I'm level 21 at this point. I have I'm not a crafter in a game. And everybody's telling me, "Oh, dude, you crafting is really important." But it's like, I don't want to craft. I'm not a crafter. You can't make me, you know. And they're like, "Okay, well, you're just going to be poor." Fine. I'll be poor. I got sugar daddies that'll give me gear and bags and stuff like that. Like, it's fine, you know. I know. Thank you, Ryan, for the bag you sent me. Um, but you know, I Ryan's right in the sense that like now that I have leveled and I'm doing dungeons and I'm taking, you know, travel slow, right? In this game, you have to you have to run to a town initially. Then you can unlock a flight path. But the flight paths are still slow. But to go across a continent, you got to take a zeppelin. But to do that, you have to run to where the zeppelins take off from. And then sometimes you got to wait three or four minutes for the zeppelin to show up. And then everybody hops on the zeppelin. And then you just wait for it to cross the ocean and then arrive in the new place. And it's like that all sounds very boring. That's agony. No. Right. All of that waiting. All of

33:29 that. It's value. It's value. And It makes sense to to why it everything has meaning. If everything is just easy and it doesn't matter, then why would you play it? Why would you play it? Every No, everything you do No, everything you do is is for a purpose. Everything you do is is is a reason to go to the next area. And then you're challenging yourself to level up and get the things you need to do to do that next dungeon, to do that next raid. That's what we talk about. We say, "Hey, I'm going to get to run this soon. What's the level cap?" "Oh, man. What's the level minimum?" Cuz that's where I'm close to. You know, like, "I'll try it. Let me see." And then you just get wiped. All right. I need to level up. I need to do these other things. Like, that's why you play this. That's why you challenge yourself to continue on is because you're trying to get to those like that's that's what makes the game. The dungeons and the raids are what WoW is and all the other stuff is filler, but all the other stuff that's filler can be

34:30 amazing with your when you're playing with your friends. I I don't like being the reasonable one. I don't like being the reasonable one. I don't like that you guys put me in this position, okay? Because Ace is right and Ryan is right. Like that's the like I get my generation. I'll be real. I think I get the mindset ace because like having to sit and wait. I mean maybe that might be honestly but like having to sit and wait for a transportation thing to go to somewhere. But what I will say is as somebody that can complain about that at the same time that importance of travel makes you decide whether it's important enough. Do you know what I mean? Like hey I'm running these quests. I'm doing this thing over in this area, but my buddies said that they want to do this dungeon, but to do the dungeon, I've got to go all the way to Ormar, which is the main city for the Horde, or one of them, at least. I I'm not a nerd. I don't know all these things, right? But it's like, I got to go all the way to Orurar, then I got to go to where the Zeppelins are, and then I got

35:31 to sit and wait for the Zeppelin, and then the Zeppelin's got to cross the ocean and load into the other continent, and then I got to jump off of that. Then I got to make my way through under city, which is a huge freaking city. That's a maze. Yeah. To to try to find the guy that will give me the quest that will then let us go do the dungeon. And you're talking like a 30 minute commitment of just that, right? Just to get to your friends to be able to do the dungeon that you want to do together. But I can say this with 100% certainty as someone that dabbled in WoW retail where all you did was click one button for a dungeon finder and it would auto group you and dump you at the entrance of that dungeon and then you could do the dungeon. That sucked. It sucked. It was the most dumbed down thing ever. But in WoW Forever having to do that journey and then like last night we did a we did a like a dungeon last night where we were waiting for a couple people but three of the group were there. So we were just hanging out chatting having fun being stupid in voice chat while we were waiting on our

36:32 other two people to make that long trip. And it was like we were interacting with the zone we were having fun together. We were joking and doing this kind of thing. And that is where like the minute-to-minute moments in in WoW and WoW Forever matter. And so it's like you're both kind of right because on the one hand it does suck and I still complain about having to run so far but then on the other hand it's like it makes it worthwhile at that point. So um all right funny stories. Uh and this is where to me the other part of this magic happens. I mean I have so many good memories of like EverQuest back in the day. I could tell EverQuest stories for years and not run out. But Ryan, like we were doing a dungeon with Andy and a couple other Was I in that one? I can't remember who was in that one. But you know, we're at the end of the dungeon. You've cleared out. You have to be proper. Ace. This is where the gameplay actually comes in because the mobs will wreck you if you pull too many mobs. Like your your whole group is wiping and then Ryan has to he's a mage so he has to

37:32 like polymorph one of the guys into a sheep. I'm the tank so I've got to hold aggro. the healer has to heal me and the DPS have to not overag aggro so that they get killed themselves and now we don't have any damage kind of thing. But we're at the end of this dungeon. We've worked our way through. We're like, "Oh, hey, we can drop down off this ledge to get to the final boss and we can skip like 18 trash mobs that we don't want to have to clear." So, we drop down. We're fighting the boss. It's going well. We we you know he's almost dead and then all of a sudden out of the corner of our eye. 15 freaking mobs show up in in what we call a train, right? Because they're all grouped up together and they just steamroll into our group, wipe us in like a few seconds and it's like what the heck just happened? Like who aggroed those guys? And then we see Andy's pet because he's a caster class that has a little pet and his pet shows up and it was like when we drop down off the ledge, his pet isn't smart enough to drop down with us. So it takes the next

38:32 shortest path to try to catch up and that shortest path aggroed every creature in between. We all died. We had to all respawn and run all the way back to the dungeon and all that stuff. And it was like it sounded terrible, but it was kind of funny. And it was one of those moments where it's like, okay, that actually turned out to be kind of fun because even though we wiped and we had to spend 10 minutes running back and and you know, getting back to where we were, it was the comedy and the shared experience of that dungeon. And that shared experience is where every MMO excels. And I think World of Warcraft does a really good job. And I will say Wow Forever is 100% set up to to give people these experiences. It is by nature of the developers like stripped back. It is the old school uh it is the you can't fly. There will never be flying mounts, you know, that kind of thing. Everything that that kind of stripped that need to interact and

39:32 socialize from from people is now back in the game. And I personally am 100% here for it because that to me is what an MMO should be about. And it feels like what I want from an MMO at this point because I want those moments. I want those experiences. Um, and that is like that's the takeaway in my opinion. So, and I, you know, Ace, it's a fair point you make. The gameplay is me. Like ultimately, like I mean I I like if I'm being honest, the game play is meh, but it's the it's it's the it's the gameplay is just the vessel. And I remember you saying this to me when I was trolling Big Walk back in the day when we had the reveal for Big Walk and you were like, Josh, it's not about the gameplay, man. It's just about having something to do with your friends. Yeah. The difference is Bigwalk didn't have any combat and that wasn't the whole focus. It was a puzzle game, but you know. Yeah. So, um All right. So, Ace, you're out. You're out on World of Warcraft forever.

40:32 Yeah. No, I'm never It's I've already uninstalled it. I'm already done with it. Thanks for the 15day Thank you for the 15-day friend pass. Uh I'm glad I didn't pay for that. Unbelievable. It's you. No, you know, I'm going I'm going to go play Karen and I'm going to knock out the Karen DLC. That's what I'm gonna do. I I'm letting you know for like like three months now my my threshold on acceptance on like the crap you send us is going to be way lower cuz the stuff you send is so bad I'm going to be like you know what retaliatory strikes payback for wow bam bam bam I on the bright side I'll also like I won't be rating it I will not rate well no we're not going to rate it uh uh this is not really honestly this isn't a deep dive this is more like a first impressions thing. I mean, I'm only 20 I'm probably 25 hours in, you know. Um, and I put that in over the course of a week, not three days like Ryan did. Um, so

41:34 Ryan, listen, this Ryan messaged Ace and I and literally went, "Guys, I think I'm coming out of my WOW fog. What are we recording this week?" And it was like, "We haven't seen you in three days, Ryan. We haven't seen you in three days." It was weird. I like we didn't talk like podcast stuff for like days and I just was like, "Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow." for for like multiple like 48 straight hours is all I did. Oh yeah. RGC was just completely silent for like a day. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I was playing I'm loving it, don't get me wrong, but like Ryan just Ryan went to another universe for three days and I was like I I was a little jealous. I'm not gonna lie. I was a little jealous, dude. It was one because see you didn't play it. So to me it was it took me back to that time not only like of of that like nostalgia and stuff but it was just that that life of like not not having cares in the world and you just play this game that you get to be with your friends have a good time. I knew some of

42:34 the stuff already so it wasn't that big of a deal um to do it so I felt comfortable. It just everything lined up perfectly to where I was like, I'm doing only this for a couple days. And I don't do this like ever. And so 99% of the time I'm always got four million things to do. All I did for like two or three days was play WoW. And it was amazing. No, it's good to find a game you can lock in on like that. Yeah, you did that with Phantom Blade Zero. I want that. Well, I want to do that, guys. Where's my lock in game? Hey, you still have so much Phantom Blade Zero left. I don't want to hear it. I know. I I will say I mean I hardly ever lock in on a game. I will I am I am pretty locked in on World of Warcraft right now. I will say this. I don't know if this is going to be a forever game for me, but I am having a blast. I am enjoying every minute in the mornings. There's always something to do. Like that's the thing. I I woke up, you know, like in the mornings before work and I go, you know what? I could spend this 10 minutes while I'm drinking my coffee to

43:34 go run and hand in that quest. That's a perfect time to kill 10, 15 minutes, right? Uh you guys were joking cuz the other day you saw me log in at work, right? And then like we saw you log in at work and I was like I was running to hand in a quest. It was just for like it was seven minutes. But like this way I could go and I could hand in that quest and there's always something to do. That is the allure of any MMO. That is the allure of a game like this. It's not about the minute-to-minute gameplay. Ace, I completely understand and respect your take. Even if Ryan doesn't like it, I because there's people out there that are gonna go, "Is this game for me? Is it worth me trying?" Here's what I'll tell people. It's $15, four month subscription. You don't have to pay for the game itself. So, you don't buy the game and then buy a subscription. It's worth $15 to hop in and see what it's about. I do think you need to approach it with the it's not about the initial couple hours that you are going to experience killing the trash mobs, but if you are enamored of the world and you are enamored of the

44:35 social aspect of the game, that part comes. But you the game has you kind of have to learn the game, you know. But I do think it's well worth anybody to spend $15 to just give it a try and see what you think and dive in and kind of go, okay, what is this about? But to me, it's not about the minute-to-minute gameplay. It's about the social aspect, the progression aspect. Everybody knows I love progression. If those are carrots for you, then I think you will find a lot of value in this game. You don't have to have nostalgia because Ryan has all the nostalgia in the world. I don't have that people. I have zero nostalgia. In fact, actually, the little bit of World of Warcraft I played, it kind of put me off of it. So, like, you don't need that aspect of it either. You just need to go, this is a game that I don't need to grind, although you can. I just want to have fun. I just want to spend 10 minutes running to from point A to point B so that I can hand in this quest. I want to have this target so that I have something to work for. Oh, and yes, there's a million other people playing this game. And I occasionally like interacting with some of those

45:36 people in the things that can happen together kind of thing. It's an experiment. It's your experiment as the listener to decide if that sounds like something fun for you or not. So, personally, I'm in. I don't know how long I'm going to be in for. I mean, maybe a long time, maybe not a long time. No, you you signed up forever. It's forever, dude. I know. I know. I can tell Ace. I said there is a part of me, even though I'm having an absolute blast right now, that I do this with like survival crafting games where I'm just I'm in, I'm in, I'm in. And then you kind of hit that wall and you go, look, the progression was great, but it's not enough to entice me to keep playing anymore. I don't know if that's going to happen or not because I really like raids and that's the end game kind of stuff. So maybe maybe still bailed out. I don't want to play with you anymore. I I will still bail out for Overwatch because I love playing a few rounds of Overwatch with with you and my kid and Ryan if he if we can drag him away from World of Warcraft for a little bit. So

46:36 all right. Well, listen, there you go people. That is hopefully everything you wanted to know about World of Warcraft forever. I do highly think it's worth checking out. As somebody that really had no expectations, didn't have the nostalgia of Ryan, has a background in MMOs. I think it's worth your time to dive in and check out. Just understand what you're getting. If you if you if you think like Ace might not, and that's not a slander. This might be an effective, you know. Oh, I mean Oh, wait. Oh, my mic was on. Oh, crap. You might like better games if you think like me. And there might be better games coming down the pike. Too many too many pixels. Too many pixels in this one. If nothing else, Ryan, World of Warcraft Forever got Ace excited for GTA. It got me excited to play not World of Warcraft. I'm excited to play not World of Warcraft and not another action game, I'll say. Yeah, there you go. There you go. Because it fit a lot of both. Uh Ryan, I I'm going to assume that this is a fully endorsed play this game everybody from you. Absolutely. for me. Um whether you have

47:37 the nostalgia or not, uh this one is a game that you can not only just play as like a cozy game cuz there's there's fishing, there's crafting, there's tailoring, there's all kinds of stuff that you can do that are not super intense and super uh uh stressful. And then there's dungeons and raids and and uh battlegrounds where you can do PvP. There's you can do PvP servers. Like there's everything you can do with this vast huge world that that would take you days to run across and traverse through if you just like kind of went through it. Um there's so much content. There's so much there available for you. And for $15 a month, you can't you can't That's what it was in 2004 when I was a kid and that we played it. So like the the fact that it's still the same price is insane. Um, I would say 100% if you are even interested, check it out. I think

48:39 I'm not 100% sure. If you get a referral, you get like two weeks free or something like that. I'm not 100% sure on that. But friend codes I don't for the first week of launch or something maybe. I don't I don't know. But like in any case, 15 bucks. You can check it out, see if you like it, and see if it's something for you. Um, again, it's grindy, but it's also grindy with your buddies and your friends. So, if you want something to do, like it's it's a really really good time and it's fun and there's like Josh said, there's always something to do. So, there's always something you can get, craft, put in the auction house. The economy, the economy is insane. It genuinely matters how much money you have and what you can buy and what you can list for sale in the auction house. So, all of it. I think it's it's just such a wellrun game and everybody should check it out if you're interested even a little bit. Um, so that's all I got to say. Or you could spend that 15 bucks on a better game like Hollow Knight and get like the best Metroid Vania ever made.

49:41 So, you know, some people say this is a Metroid Vania Ace. It's definitely not. Yeah, you got to go back to places. You got to go back to places and there's a walking sim. It's more of a walking sim. It's a Death Stranding vania. Oh man. All right. Listen, that's going to do it for this one, everybody. Uh we hope you enjoyed this episode. Listen, if you haven't done so already, please uh you know, follow the podcast. Hit that plus button, that follow button in your podcast app. That way, you get all of our episodes the day that they release. If you have not left us a review yet, like Race Car Dude did, uh it doesn't need to be long and wordy, but hey, if you want to throw in some tough vocabulary for Ryan, we're all about that, too. Uh, but you can leave a review on Apple Podcast. If you listen on Spotify, you can rate us five stars there. Let us know if you're playing WoW Forever. Uh, we do have a guild. Uh, there's a VGP guild. We are playing PVE or what they call normal mode. We are the hoorde. Uh, so if you want to play with us, you have to be those two things. But join our Discord server. If you go to our website, vetoamerspod.com,

50:43 you can set World of Warcraft Forever as a let'splay game, which means you can then tag people if you're trying to do a dungeon or a group or a raid or something like that. It's a great way to socialize with other gamers and actually meet up and play games with other people. Also, it's a great feature. It's one of the reasons we built that into the website. Um, but that is it. We're gonna end this episode. Uh, we got one more to do today and then Ryan and I have already said we're going to run a dungeon tonight and so that's what we're going to do. So, Ace, you're not invited. Until next time. Happy gaming for the Horde. See you. Peace out.