Get it out friends it's Blister Guy, and this, uh, well hang on, what are we doing? Yes, I've like, I've been up since 4.45 like this. It's Thursday the 14th, yes, Thursday the 14th of November, and this is episode 1385 of Walk to Welcome Mobile House, don't worry guys, I knew we'd get there, see that was more fun than just stopping the recording and starting again, which like over the years I've probably done like a dozen times, I don't know, or actually maybe more even, who knows, maybe a couple of dozen times, but given 1385 episodes, that's not a bad strike rate of like, oops, start that again, and sometimes the start again has come from, uh, like, alright, let's start recording it up, that was a really loud motorbike, that doesn't make for a great intro, you know, that kind of thing, anyway, we're recapping the Warcraft 30 direct, is that what they're called, I think that's what they're called, it's, uh, not the easiest name to the Warcraft direct, uh, celebrating 30 years of Warcraft, uh, is it 30, my gosh, 30 years, oh yes, and 20 years of Warcraft, 10 years of Hearthstone in one year of Warcraft Rumble, that's what it is, right, and so, uh, I sat in the lamp for 4, 44 a.m. and I woke up, uh, I knew the first 15 minutes was just going to be like, heartwarming retrospective stuff, it was mostly, uh, interviews with people who'd work at Blizzard about how special they think it is to work on these things, which I imagine it is, I don't wanna sound like I'm belittling that, I'm sure it is very special, again, I've been awake for a long time, uh, not enough sleep, that kind of stuff, which is nice, and then of course 5 a.m. my time, the actual presentation started, uh, you have to, like, it was about 45 minutes long and you have to assume that the mid bulk of it is going to be covering World of Warcraft, um, because it's the biggest thing, like, it has a big game, it has, it's been bifurcated, numerous times into various things, they have classic, they're going to have a classic classic, apparently, they actually called it that, I was like, really, uh, and the season I'm discovering all that stuff, but, um, they started with Hearthstone and then went on to Rumble, uh, and I will talk about both of those things, um, and then of course, they went on to Warcraft, uh, partly it was like, is that it, and I think that was the lack of sleep talking, because when I think about what there is, like, there's a lot, uh, that we've been told, even at the bulk of what we've been told is basically what the next three expansions are called, and, uh, the thrust of what their content is going to be, which is unusual, we often get a roadmap that doesn't say it, but, like, I guess, we're having a big thing, what are you going to do? I guess we could tell everyone what the expansions are, that's what magic does, right? The next three expansions are all called this, and honestly, I don't mind that, that's fine. Um, first, I have to thank Patrons, I knew I, I forgot this yesterday, uh, yesterday, the day before yesterday, right, and I said, "Oh, next episode, I'll thank two," because for some reason, when I listen back, I sound like that, um, and so, whereas my notes, not that page, this page, not that page, over here, there it is. And so today we are thanking two Patrons, we are thanking both Gromok and Ryan, thank you to you both, and all the Patrons that support the work we do here, to walk to work in over the last time podcast. Have you got to afford a sport, go to patreon.com/sps2guy, any amount helps, uh, and if you can't just tell a friend, leave a review, it all goes a long way, it all helps. Anyway, thank you to everyone who sports the work we do here. Now, I don't have extensive notes on this thing, often when there's going to be some kind of reveal sort of stuff, in the creative program, we get a heads up about what's coming. We didn't this time. We knew it was coming because, you know, all the Warcraft channels have been advertising that it's coming, and we also knew in the creative program that they're like, "Yeah, we've been told we can't tell you anything, we're sorry, it's going to be exciting, it's going to be cool, but we can't tell you anything." And given what's been revealed, I don't know that that was necessarily worth it, because I don't think anything that's been revealed for any of them is particularly huge enough to merit the embargo, but, you know, they wanted to make it a thing, and they wanted to make it so that people tuned in, and then people saw the stuff, and it was exciting, which is, this is cool, that's fine, and that's all good. I've a strange note last night, so, like, we've been talking about how Twitter has been, like, wow, I know, it's just getting worse, right, like, it's steadily worse since Elon Musk basically got a whole bunch of investors to take it over, like, to the point where, in the last week I've noticed that the ads have become more and more intrusive and annoying, and it's probably just put my umbrella down, it's like it's raining right now, and I'm in a tight confines of a scaffolding thing, but it's not going down because it's trying to munch the recording devices, ah, wow, struggle struggle, right, there we go, that was the click that we're going down, that's much better, now, where are we, no, that's looking at it, hmm, anyway, Twitter bad, have started blue skying, a lot of people are going to blue sky, apparently all of the Taylor Swift fans are going to blue sky, and that does seem like a bit of a watershed moment where blue skies are going to pick up, now I don't know exactly what my content on blue sky will look like, so far it's been more casual, I would post about half stone stuff, I posted when I got wild legend over there, and then just did a screenshot to it on Twitter, just as sort of a hint, but I've also been posting little anecdotes about my kids and stuff, the kind of things that I probably should have been doing on Twitter but had gotten too scared to do, anyway, last night on Twitter I was followed by one Johanna Fairies, who's the president of Blizzard, ah ha ha, I don't know what that means, I'm not sure why she would know who I am, or why she would follow me, other than maybe she's just, it's a name, she's sorry, you know, ah, looking at these devs or something, a bunch of them follow, this blue sky will follow him too, or whether somebody gave her a list of people in the creator programs and she's like, I should follow them, like she's following like 1,900 people, like a lot of people right, so I would say it's not a feed that she's scanning regularly or anything, but it was still odd to see, I was like, ah, anyway, that's beside the point, so lots of things to cover from the director, now I posted a graphic to the patrons last night, that indicated that there was going to be gameplay today, I don't know that they will now, now that I've seen how much we've got to talk about, and even though I've kind of buried a little bit by saying, it's a little bit underwhelming, there's still a lot to cover, it's just one of those, like, but why, why did we need a whole thing, anyway, anyway, that's, do I need to put the umbrella up again, I think maybe I do, I've got lots of notes to go from, like, you know, because clearly they put up blog posts and things, so we can read a lot of stuff out, ah, first of all, I'd sort of talk quickly about Rumble, um, Warcraft Rumble the first year of it has been beset by issues, like, it really does seem that I'm guessing Bobby Kotik or whoever below him thought it was important, rushed Rumble to market, now I've been playing Rumble since the beta in, ah, 2023, 2022, sorry, like, May 2022 was when I got it, and it needed some polish at then, but it was still good, it was still very playable, and it was still, ah, a lot of it was still the experience that you get now, and so it makes you wonder, like, how much it's had to go since then, some things change from the beta to live, and understand that it takes work, ah, but the whole live release has been buggier than any game I've encountered before, and I'm not played a lot of different games, so maybe my experience is, ah, it's a little sheltered in that front, but, like, it has been pretty bad, but overall it's still been a lot of fun, and it has had a lot of really cool content, so, because of the issues, people have been theorizing for a long time, oh, this is, this is not going to last long, they'll scrap this project, you know, it's clearly suffering, it's clearly under resourced and all that stuff, and I think realistically what happened was that it was pushed to market too quickly, ah, in the anticipation of the Microsoft merger, extra money in the door, extra title to throw them with a deal, all that stuff. It's not underway, and also, like, when we've seen the survival game got scrapped and stuff like that, there's every risk that if it had not gotten to that point, it may have been scrapped, ah, by Microsoft or whoever, right, and so, ah, there's like, we just want to get this thing live, because we do know it's fun, and it is fun. So, who knows? Anyway, there's always been a lot of theorizing about the future of it, how long it will last, and I'm reasonably sure, given the pace with which they release content, which is deliberate, and not too fast, ah, and they're not, appear to be milking obvious things, like, people are like, ah, when are we going to get the Lich King? It's like, well, if we're following World of Warcraft content, because currently we're in kind of like the classic model in Rob Rumbel, or the original World of Warcraft was, at some point we'll get the Burning Crusade and we'll have Illidan, and that'll be a big thing, right, and maybe we'll get some other stuff along with that, whatever Kevin Burning Crusade, and after that you get, um, the Lich King, what was that called, Frozen, Frozen, Frozen? Well, I kind of remember what the expansion was called, anyway, it doesn't matter, that was when I stopped playing originally, so, but like, that's when, that'll come, and like, if they were looking to milk the property before scrapping it, we'd probably seal that stuff sooner than that, and the fact that they're spreading that out suggests to me that they do want this thing to last for a while, the fact that they have a Warcraft 30 direct thing, and it includes Rumbel, they don't want to be like, egg on their face, well, we'll scrap the mobile thing now, because, you know, we don't believe in it, so, it feels encouraging to me that, uh, that is the position on it, now, oop, excitable puppies, poor Rocky, Rocky's just been possessed by a large Labrador, Rocky is a little fluffy dog, lovely little fluffy dog, but it looks a bit, anyway, I don't know, have I talked to Rocky before, I feel like maybe I've spoken to Rocky before down here, and Rocky wanted to cuddle, but maybe it was on us, anyway, look, I think the future is positive for Rumbel, even if it's, you know, a little buggy at times, what they've suggested today, like, they've changed Sylvanas from a horde, to a horde, sorry, so from undead, to undead slash horde, they now have split faction heroes, and that changes a bunch of things, they talked about three more faction, split faction heroes that are coming, but most importantly, they revealed that they are going to beta for the PC client in December, so if one of the reasons you've avoided Warcraft Rumbel is because you don't like playing games on your phone, it is coming to PC, and I think that's an important step for them to understand, that it's difficult, like, for me, like, creating content on the phone with it, it's not, it's not really, I tried, it's not really working, but if I was able to play it on the PC, I could stream it as well, so that would just increase the range of things that I could be doing, and I think that could be fun. I don't think it's a game that translates well to three-hour streaming sessions, but my life also doesn't translate well to three-hour streaming sessions, so maybe I could stream it for like 45 minutes at a time, sometimes in my lunch break, or whatever, right, like, it's possible, and if I can do that from a PC, that's even easier, so I think that is a really promising thing, like, I think if they want people to be able to create content more easily for the game, the fact that it's going to be on PC is going to make a lot more sense, and I think that's really positive, so overall, that's good, as far as Rumbel goes, Hearthstone. Now, we don't usually know about the next mini set, but we do now, and it's thematically it's a doozy. It's not the kind of thing that I'm very familiar with, but basically they're doing a crossover between Hearthstone and StarCraft, which, you know, shouldn't be terribly surprising, given we're in space-themed stuff now. I've got some umbrella down again, I think I kind of can. Hard to tell, like, is it because I'm under a tree? Like, it's obviously awkward carrying the umbrella under, according to us at the same time. Anyway, put the umbrella down again, we'll put it up again if we need to. StarCraft is a game that existed, I think, before World of Warcraft, maybe not before Warcraft. It was a real-time strategy game. I have tried to play it once, wasn't quite my thing, so when talking about real-time strategy games, because they're also remasting Warcraft reforge, which is like the original one, and, like, I don't know, maybe I should try that again. The problem with those games for me is they're not June 2000, or June 2. June, as in the movie with the sandworms, I read that book as a teenager. Not a shame to admit this, although obviously it's a bad thing to have done. Me and some friends of mine stole copies of the June novel from our school. So, basically, our homeroom in the first year of high school was our English teacher's room, and off her room there was a library of books that they gave out to students to read. We were reading boring books, like "Catcher in the Rye" and stuff like that, you know, and we saw them there that they had copies of June and we were like, "How can we not get sweet books like this?" So, me and two friends, each stole a copy, and I still have that copy, you know, kind of to remind me that mistakes can be made, because theft is bad, and schools are exactly underfunded, as you'd imagine, and really that wasn't helping. But I got a copy and I read it, and I enjoyed it. And then, also, after that, we found there was a computer game on the Amiga 500 that we were playing that, called June. I don't know how much I enjoyed that. It was just still graphics and words as a cover, but then June 2 came out, and it was basically real-time strategy like Warcraft, like Command & Conquer, but I feel like maybe it was one of the first ones. I don't know, like maybe Command & Conquer actually existed beforehand, I don't know. I later tried Command & Conquer, I was like, "Ah, but it's not June 2." They re-released it in 2000s, called June 2000, I think, or maybe it was before that in the 90s. I don't know, but I enjoyed that too. Never quite finished the game, could always beat it as Harkonun, but never as a tradies or a aldos. But loved it, loved the play feel of that, and if they had ever released June 2000 on the phone, I would probably play it. But playing Command & Conquer gave that same feel, but not the same resonance, which is weird, because I'm not that attached to the June universe. One of the things I like to say about the June books is the first one was great. Second and third ones, they weren't bad, but the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and whatever else was so terrible that I wish I didn't know they existed, and I wish I hadn't even read the second and third books, even though they were good, because all they would do is encourage me to read further, and to discover just how terrible those were, I wish only the first book existed. Anyway, so I don't know why I'm so tied to that. It's kind of like they only ever did one part of the Caribbean movie, which is a joke I make frequently, and we'll make it again. Anyway, I should try Warcraft 3 Reforged, because they're fixing it up, making it better, and like, because I do like Warcraft stuff, and maybe I'll have some resonance with it and I'll enjoy it. Anyway, StarCraft is another game like that, but it's like Aliens, like Space Marine. I enjoyed some Space Marine stuff as well in my time, Warhammer 40,000. I'm not so sure I've risen up with StarCraft, but I know a lot of people have played it. Like, I actually had friends at work who were playing StarCraft together in this spare time, and they said, "You should play." And I tried it, I don't have time, I'm sorry. Like, I tried it, it's cool, thanks, but it's not for me, which is a shame, because Herod is now crossing up with Hasta, and I'm like, "Oh, I probably should have donated more time to it." So the mini set is Heroes of StarCraft, which means we have a StarCraft themed mini set. Coming in January, we don't know the exact date, but that's probably what we'd expect. It's just unusual for us to know this fire in advance. Interestingly, there are three factions in StarCraft, just like they were in June 2000. Oh, it's copying over. But, and they don't divide up that evenly across Hearthstone. Let's see if I've got a thing here that shows me, I think I've got the breakdown of it. Nope, that's screenshots of the, here we go, yes. No, that's, I know what I need, I need the blog entry thing. Where is it? Not that one, I've got all these screenshots that I just took this morning. No, no, that's a, not that, here we go, oh yes, here we go, here we go. Let's just read the blurb. Expand the thing on my phone. No, don't, don't delete the image. Apparently, I put the umbrella up, I don't remember doing that. Anyway, early next year, Hearthstone is going beyond Warcraft and into Heroes of StarCraft, which, I'm sorry, terrible name, by the way. Like, we don't call Warcraft Heroes a Warcraft anymore, but anyway, this special miniset will have a whopping 49 cards. That's a normal miniset size, right? Like, how we have, we have 11 classes times 3 is 33. No, that's more than usual, actually. That's interesting. So, usually 33, because we have 11 classes, 33 plus like, 3 neutrals is like 36, we have 36, maybe it's 39 now, cards in the miniset or something, but this is a lot more than that. So, bigger miniset, okay. I cross three themed factions. So, it's not the usual classes. It's three factions instead of the 11 classes, which are broken up as follows, we'll get to that. Which show the StarCraft universe would look like in the Hearthstone 7. Now, that bit, I don't mind. It's a bit weird. Hearthstone thematically is meant to be a game inside the World of Warcraft that can potentially show alternate Warcraft universe stuff. So, if you were in the World of Warcraft universe, you could go to a tavern and play Hearthstone. And of course, it may have some alternate universe stuff, such as like, Ragnaros the Light Lord. Doesn't exist in World of Warcraft, but does it in Hearthstone. And, you know, because Ragnaros exists in World of Warcraft, people are like, "Hey, I did a light version of the Fire Lord. Wouldn't want to tell him that ha ha, that kind of thing, right?" But, StarCraft doesn't exist in World of Warcraft universe. So, it's a, like, what are the denizens of World of Warcraft going to say? What is this? I don't know. Like, we've been to space, I guess, with Draenei and stuff. So, maybe, maybe it's not that out of there. Anyway, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Each faction is made up of cards that can be used across multiple classes, including an iconic hero card. I don't know which one it is, but I guess we'll find out anyway, the Zerg. So, people often use the term Zerg to mean, like, a minion rush sort of thing. Like, because I believe the playstyle of that faction was always, like, make lots of little enemies and just rush in there and just, like, overwhelm people. Zerg is going to be representing Death Knight, Demon Hunter, Hunter, Hunter, and Warlock, led by the formidable Sarah Kerrigan, which I know, I thought they were, like, aliens, like Xenomorphs. So, to have, like, an English name, I don't know. Anyway, also English name. That's an Australian name. You know how I mentioned the castle last week, the movie? Like, that family are called the Kerrigan's. So, yeah, if she comes out, she's like, "Oh, yeah, mate, forward into the breach, am I right?" Like, "Oh, I've got to be brilliant." Anyway, I don't think they'll do that. They'll have the aggressive cards that win the game by swarming the board. See, very Zerg-like. Anyway, Protos, druid mage, priest, and rogue will fight for the Protos Empire, led by their high-templer, Artanis. They will have powerful high-cost cards that are made cheaper throughout the game. Because, you know, things that are expensive that are made cheaper throughout the game, that's never come back to bite us. Anyway, the last sort of the Terran, Paladin, Charmin, and Warrior make up the Terran forces. And I think these might be, like, Space Marine-type stuff, I'm not sure, I can't remember. Anyway, maybe the Protos are, like, psychic and, you know, well, I mean, we'll see. Anyway, led by the one and only Jim Raynor. Jim Raynor. Right, okay. Another very, this sounds like a very American name, clearly. They will command battle cruisers, a special take on the Starship mechanic from the Great Darkbound. I mean, I like Starships. Spenthips! So, that's cool. I'm excited by that. The mini set will feature a slew of StarCraft units, which will make sure to invoke Nostalgia, as well as the Terran-armoured Merlok Grunti. So, Terran, yeah, Terran must be the Space Marine, sort of thing. So, Merlok and the Space Marine thing, I'm all for it. And new thematic music, instead, of course, on the Heroes of StarCraft's mini set, launching in January 2025. And more details to come to the launch, obviously. Cool. But that's not the only thing that's been announced. We'll get to the expansions, yeah, and yeah, we're not doing gameplay today. Like, by the way, I've had four final bosses instead and lost them all. The Starship Death Knight deck I was playing has been working until it wasn't. I'm just doing a lot of two losses one win. So, I haven't got that yet, but I'm like Diamond 2 and 2 stars. So, we're pretty close. I was going to try a Discover Hunter egg hunter list today. I'm quite excited to try that. I'll try that at my own time. Will I be talking about Legend tomorrow? I don't know. We should see. But no time for gameplay today. We'll talk more about that tomorrow, obviously. There's some major updates to Arena. I want to tackle this before we get lost in what the next three expansions are, because I will get lost in those. Major Arena Update. Let's just read the words here that they've given us. Hopefully, that'll explain more. Also, have a good authority. This is all done by Sage Georgiou, being Cora's brother, who's also... Like, Arena has been a lot better in the last year, and it's all because of Sage. This is also Sage's design. Sage is great. Sage's Cora's little brother. He is under-spoken and quiet, but we did see him in the Paris and Paradise reveal. He's fantastic. I have it on good authority, cough his dead, that he is responsible for this. Then, for the first time in 10 years, Arena Mode is getting a major overhaul. With that update, there'll be two kinds of Arena to choose from. Normal Arena will be shorter form, allowing you to compete for runs more quickly, and competitive for Arena players will be able to play in the highest stakes underground Arena. With longer runs and a new feature, Redraft on Loss. Redraft on Loss means that after you lose, you have the option to redraft cards in it, you can keep your run alive. I believe, I don't know how final this is, the structure for regular normal Arena now is like, you get to five wins, and you're out at two losses, which is better than 12 and 3. When Arena first launched, it was 9 and 3, and then when they increased it to 12, and I remember when they increased it to 12, I was like, "I just don't want to play that long." Even if I'm winning, I don't want to get 12 runs because that just takes so much work. It didn't play as much Arena, but I think that was a natural extension of the game having more and more things to do at the time, and that was fine. But anyway, normal Arena will now be five and two, which is much faster to know. You get to try and you dig more frequently, even if you're winning. So that's pretty cool. We don't know what the price structure and the ticket cost is, but I suspect it's still much the same. The break even point is probably quicker to get to, but anyway, that's different. Redraft won't lose. Immediately people had concerns. I'll get this going. Wait a minute. You pay extra to draft more, like, "No, no, no, there's no paying extra to draft more." Also, normal Arena is paired now by MMR. Before it was paired by your rate in the Arena, sorry, your win rate. So if you had four wins, you're paired with someone else who had four wins, which meant that the further you got into it, the harder your opponents were. In normal Arena, it's going to be paired by an MMR now, which means if you're new and you're not very good, Arena is still a good place to start, whereas it wasn't previously because you're getting there and a lot of the people who are still playing Arena were really good. But now you're getting paired by your MMR in Arena, which means it should be some easier matchups for a while, or at least even matchups, which is good. In the underground Arena, the competitive one, you'll be paired by your win rate more, which is probably fine. Now, what the redraft on loss means. Apparently, when you lose, you'll be offered five more cards, and I'm assuming it's like five picks, like, kind of like how when you're doing a Arena draft, you get 30 picks. Now it's five more picks, and then those five cards go into your pool and you can edit your deck, removing some of the existing cards, add some of the new ones. And I'm guessing, if you don't like any of the five cards you picked in the redraft, you just get to keep your original deck, but, you know, you lost. Maybe you do want to tailor it. And so I think this is kind of a thing that people have been asking for for a long time, so this is pretty exciting. And I think we'll definitely make Arena much cooler, but also separating it from basically casual to serious Arena. I think it's a big step forward to making Arena something that people can more engage with casually without feeling like they're getting just messed around by a serious cycle play. So I really like these Arena changes, and I think it's a really good change to the system, and hopefully we'll make Arena more interesting. Now, we're getting closer to the train station, so let's move on to talk about all three expansions for the next year. That's a heck of a thing to be told. So first up, next year, we'll have the Emerald Dream. Not only that, we've told what the mini sets are, although I think the third one is still a little bit TBA on the name. I'm having trouble zooming in, but can we put the umbrella down again? Can we free up some hands here? Okay. Okay. This phone has to go in the pocket for a second. I need extra hands. Okay. I think I used to be able to put the recording device in my pocket because it was a phone, and then it was no longer an impediment. Now I kind of told it. I do like the recording device a lot more. The quality is so much better. It doesn't accidentally unlock in my pocket. Anyway, I think we're okay. All right, here we go. First expansion is the Emerald Dream, and has a mini set of druids of the flame. Now the Emerald Dream is really very much a Ysera thing. Anytime we've seen Ysera in Warcraft Rumble, for example, you don't actually get to play Ysera. Ysera is asleep. I don't exactly remember the Ysera fight in World of Warcraft that well, but I have done it a bunch of times back in like 2006. Ysera is one of four world bosses. Now usually big raid bosses are in dungeons. When you go into the dungeon, you fight what we call trash mobs until you get to the boss. Then all 40 of you have to coordinate to fight the boss. After a while, they change 40 to 25, but you get the idea. If you had more than 40 players in your raid, I don't think you can have more than 40 people in a world boss, because you can only have 40 people going into the dungeon, but you could have more in the world. I don't know that necessarily counted for the extra people. Anyway, look, world bosses were just like dungeon bosses, but they were in the outside world. So you could typically run around. If you're not careful, you could have world enemies just engaged, but usually it's pretty easy to deal with unless it's an elite zone, so the mobs are elite. It's fun. It's cool. The coolest thing about world bosses is that if you say you're alliance players and you hear about a major horde guild taking on Ysera in the wild, you all can hit out there and try and interfere if you like. It didn't happen very often with the world boss dragons, because they weren't often up, but I think Kazek, who is a big world boss demon, was just generally more accessible. I remember being part of a 12-hour world PvP thing around Kazek. The thing with Kazek was if he killed a player, he healed a lot. So when you've got a lot of players who are near Kazek taking damage from Kazek, but also taking damage from other players and dying a lot, Kazek heals a lot. So we had Kazek up for like 12 hours, fighting forward versus alliance. It was amazing, because you've got to work, come back, get back in there. It was hilarious. World bosses are amazing, people love them. Did I not push the button to cross? I don't know. I don't know, there it is. Finally we go. Ysera was one of the four-wheel dragons. I remember Yersanjae, am I saying that right? I don't know. Semorous. Emorous. Emorous was one. And there was one that started with tea. I don't remember. I know there was one in the middle of Darkshire. I remember the first time I saw it. I was like, yeah, what are you going in here? It's like a little valley, you're going in here. Oh, well, it's like a portal. That's pretty cool. I then went back in there one day. I was like, there's a giant drape. I'm dead. Huh, okay. I don't remember which one was which. Emorous might be the one that did plague stuff. And I remember we had a lot of fun with Emorous. You could do this thing. If you heard about the Hakkar world plague pandemic that spread through World of Warcraft, it was literally studied by scientists to figure out how people would behave in a pandemic, by the way. Actually scientific journals study about this. We did a similar thing with Emorous where the hunter would get their pet poisoned and then dismiss their pet, which means puts them in hiding. So usually when you die, all the poison wears off, it's gone. But the pet still had it. They've since fixed the scene. Can't do it. So we went back to Ironforge and then what was his name? It was Martin's brother Hugh. Hugh was younger than Martin, but still a good friend of ours. I can't remember what his character was called. But Hugh would re-summon the pet and then it would poise like next to the mailbox, next to the bank in Ironforge. And just poisoned everyone there and it was like, hey, why are we dying? It was amazing. I remember a screen recording at the time and posting as a video, but like YouTube didn't exist yet. And so it was just on forums and things. I have no access to it anymore. But it was my first attempt at making non-magic content, I think. It was a lot of fun. It was hilarious. Anyway, Yussera, I think, puts people to sleep, which is particularly dangerous if your main tank is put to sleep. Just a quick recap on that. When you are fighting bosses, you have someone who's a tank. That means an armor wearer who is tanked to the tank. Or you, your mum's ugly, that kind of thing. So the tank's like, really? Did you just say that? So the boss is saying that like, you know, boss's attention is on the tank. Healers are healing the tank because the tank is taking a lot of damage from the boss. The armor mitigates a lot of that, the shield mitigates there. If the boss were to turn around and target someone like me who was a mage, not wearing cloth armor, I would get one hit. That wouldn't be great. So the whole thing is like, tank distracts the boss. Healers heal the tank. Everyone else is dealing damage to the boss. And then dealing with whichever mechanics come along. Now, because Yussera would put people to sleep, the mechanics were that you had to have an extra tank ready to go to pick it up. And sometimes healers could be put to sleep, so you had to be ready for that. And of course, DPS people could be put to sleep. It's not so bad. And I think also there were, and I think Emmeris had the mushrooms and things yet to move up. They weren't terribly sophisticated things, but it was a lot of fun. Yussera has a lot to do with sleep. And anytime I've seen Yussera in World of Warcraft and now rumble a lot to a sleep, you can get Yussera as a hero now in World of Warcraft. So Reigns is going again and we've got to put the phone away and get the umbrella back up again. Yussera the hero, you never actually play it in World of Warcraft. Just like how in Hearthstone Yussera card gives you a bunch of Yussera spells, like mayonnaise and spells and things. And rumble, it gives you a bunch of spells and mayonnaise that you can play as well, which is pretty cool. So we've had a lot of Yussera around the offices at work, and we know what she is. The Emerald Dream, I believe, is where Yussera is. And I think it gets corrupted by demons. So there'll be a lot of demons in corruption and stuff. We've seen a lot of demon themed stuff in The Great Dark Beyond, so I think this makes sense to be followed with Emerald Dream stuff. No idea how it works. Told Mongus on the way to school this morning. Next thing is Emerald Dream was the dragon. She's like, "Yes, finally, something to do with dragons!" 'Cause she loves dragons. So I'm going to have to slip a word to say look. Emerald Dream sounds like it's dragon themed. Mongus has been waiting years for us to reveal a dragon. If you can make it happen, she'll be thrilled. Anyway, druids are the flame, druids, scenario and circle druids, I think, related to Yussera, so it makes sense for a mini set. The second mini set of the year is called the Shrouded City, which is not what I thought it was, I thought it was a return to Angoro, but it is basically a return to Angoro. Angoro is probably one of my favourite zones in World of Warcraft, and it was a very popular expansion. I think it was a ridiculous hat's favourite expansion, so no accident once he's joined the wizard going back to Angoro. I mean, I think it is just a coincidence. That's a side point. Angoro is a giant, jungled crater, surrounded underneath the side by deserts. So clearly, something from space crashed there, created a crater, it's teeming with life, unlike everywhere else around it. This is where you first, I think, encounter... Well, actually, rather along in the desert you see it, Cillithid, which is like the Xenomorph alien sort of stuff. You start encountering these things, which I think are part of alien race stuff. They have these little hives, and you go underground to see them. But there's also a heck of a lot of dinosaurs there, and there aren't really dinosaurs elsewhere in World of Warcraft, really. So it's kind of like a lost world sort of thing. It's a very cool feel, and that's great. One of the things that's good about it in World of Warcraft is it's... Well, it's not that condensed, but it's very compressed as far as quests. It's very easy to do a whole bunch of quests all at once and live a lot. And you get to it around just before level 50, it's a bit after, and it's one of those things where, as you're getting close to these higher levels, each level takes longer or longer. But going to Angoro, time passes very quickly, and it's a lot of fun, and there's dinosaurs, and sometimes there's giant devil swords that chase you and kill you, and you're like, "Ah, great stuff." Anyway, Angoro, thematically, is very popular with people. So, fun that we're going back there. There's a big volcano in the middle of there appears to be a lot of talk about the volcano, so I don't know what's going on there, but that's going to be neat. The mini set for this is called Festival of the Devil Sword. Devil Sword of the Big Dinosaur is that chase you around, so, again, not surprising. So that should be pretty popular. I'm about to go to the train station. I need to, okay, hearers of time. Next one's called Hearers of Time. Gotta look at that. Minimize the umbrella. I mean, fold away the umbrella, minimize the window. Getting confused. So, Emerald Dream should be pretty popular. It will be popular long use, at least. Angoro will be exceptionally popular as a second except for the year. The last one is called, could I say, Heroes of Time. So, in the original warcraft, there was talk of the Caverns of Time. It was an area you couldn't get to. And it's something that came with the Burning Crusade, I think. But over, not far from Angoro, actually. On the other side of the desert, there were the Caverns of Time. And I think with the Burning Crusade, that sort of introduced that as a thing. And you went in there, there's a lot of defending the world tree, kind of stuff, world tree to do with Ysera and stuff like that as well. It's a lot of time walking stuff. That's where they introduced the idea of going back in time and doing it dungeon, like, you know, hundreds of years ago, where iconic warcraft storyline things are featured. There's a gnome, there's also a dragon called Chromi who, uh, modifies Time a lot. In the Caverns of Time Hearthstone, wild/twist expansion we had Chromi introduced as an idea. So, this is, interestingly, this is clearly an expansion where there was definitely cards from, uh, Kevin's of Time, which was suggested to be from future expansions, not stolen expansions. Ah, this is a mention where some of them might turn up. Which would be interesting, fine. But, like, personally, this is not clearly as imprisoned as the idea of Emerald Dream. I've played a bunch of Emerald Dream content in Legion, I think it was. And then, when I tried out Shadowlands, there's a bit there as well. Very pretty looking stuff, very ethereal forest, green emerald stuff, but then purple demony stuff. It's really nice. Ungoro, obviously, very popular, uh, looking forward to that. Heroes of Time, whatever it's called. Ah, okay, I'm not sure it'd be cool. The mini set is called The End of Time, and it says Asterix, uh, to be confirmed. It's obviously never done yet. Tyler Beelman, the director of Hearthstone, was presenting these, and he said "Gosh, you'll have no idea where we're going after that." Like, we have no idea, but like, if you're labelling the mini set at the end of time, people could be concerned about where you think you're going with that. I don't know. I don't think it's going to be the end of Hearthstone, but, uh, maybe it's certainly the start of something new. Uh, maybe they're redoing something like, I don't know, who knows? Like, it could be all manner of fixing things and changing things. Maybe we'll have Classic again, I don't know, but like, could be exciting, but it's very interesting to be given that whole Roadmap to see that. Usually when we see a Roadmap, it's more detailed. It has things like, and there'll be Battlegrounds things, and this kind of suggests that we Battlegrounds content each patch as well. I mean, there's got to be Tavenbroughls that, yeah, we get it, there's Tavenbroughly every week, you don't need to litter the Roadmap with that. So instead the Roadmap, this time doesn't just say second expansion, third expansion, it names the expansions, it gives you a graphic to show what it looks like, and like, we've been given a teaser of what it says, what are the words say about the Heroes of Time? Give my phone back out, I can actually look at that, right? It's one that says, okay, I can read these things, I should read them, here we go, because the trains not here yet. In the first expansion of the year, enter the Emerald Dream and join the battle between the Old Gods and Druids of the Emerald Dream for the fate of the World Tree. Cool, I like that, Old Gods in particular. Things will heat up even more, and the Druids of Flame light up the mini set. Oh god, are they going to burn the World Tree again? Anyway, it says it's releasing earlier than normal this year, including during the 32.2 patch, that's usually the Battlegrounds thing. There's a train coming, I'm going to get up on this in a second, yeah. The second expansion of the year is Hearthstone's first ever sequel, the return to Angora Crater joined a lease and a hunt for the mythical Lost Tortolland city, when you find it that joined the Tortollands in a festival to celebrate the mighty dinosaurs of the crater. And third expansion of the year, travel with Chromi through the alternate realities to recruit legendary Warcraft heroes like you've never seen them before, leading to the 35.4 mini set, an epic showdown against Murrzan at the end of time. Yikes, you know, look, let's get on this train. Follow me on Twitch, Twitter and YouTube, @blistaguy, I follow the podcast, walk to her catch us on Twitter and come hang out and discord, discord.me/blistaguy. Very abrupt, sorry enough, I know, I'm sorry, but like, it's raining a bit out here and I should get to work. It's always a pleasure to have you join me for my walk to work. Good luck, everyone, and everything you do because you're an absolute bloody legend. And I love you all, it's pretty exciting. There will be gameplay again tomorrow, I promise. We'll see what it will look like. Well, there'll be more final bosses to be. The tour is closing. Please stand clear. [Music]
