Midnight's Preorder Controversy: Early Access Dilemma

We discuss the accidentally released pre-order for the upcoming Midnight expansion, including early access to player housing and what this means for the community.

• Weekly world bosses: Kordak, Godfather, and Rationor
• Rationor requires using Reshi wraps and phase diving to defeat properly
• Midnight expansion pre-order accidentally appeared on inactive WoW accounts
• Early access to player housing sparks controversy about fairness and accessibility
• Complete Mists of Pandaria raid release schedule: Mogushan Vaults, Heart of Fear (Aug 21), and Terrace of Endless Springs (Sept 4)
• Celestial Dungeons coming August 12 offering LFR gear for alt catch-up
• GDKP raids represent a community solution rather than a Blizzard problem
• Discussion about the future of WoW Classic and potential progression to later expansions

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:45

Thank you, hello and welcome to the Pig and Whistle Tales from Azeroth. As always here at the Pig and Whistle Inn in Stormwind, we go through a variety of subjects with regards to World of Warcraft. If I grab a bottle or a pint, sit back and enjoy this episode. We'll be going over a few things more mop related, a couple bits and bobs here and there, but mostly to do with missa pandaria, I think. Um, over the next couple weeks it's going to be very mainly midnight focused and stuff. So we'll get the mop stuff out of the way here and now and then we can really focus and hone in on that. But there is still some midnight content in this episode for you guys. So we will start off with the weekly news. As always, we have kordak and the godfather as your world bosses for this week. Also, we have a new world boss for the week, rational. Now there's a bit of controversy with this guy, so I'll leave that until after the weekly stuff. But he is located within kvett, kashik, kvesh as a vesh. I've forgotten the name of the world. Koresh, koresh. There we go, we got it. We got it. Uh, he is located within koresh and, yes, I'll get on to why he is a bit of a problem. In the second uh, arena skirmishes are your bonus event for the week. This is simply you get more honor for competing in arenas. Very simple, and the brawl for this week is shadow pan showdown. This is a 6v6, where you have to defeat a enemy boss whilst battling the opposition in the arena at the exact same time. Very simple first to kill, the boss wins. It's that simple.

Speaker 1: 2:30

So let's start off with Rationor and Midnight. Rationor is the new world boss that is located within Koresh, and people are having a lot of problems with him because it takes multiple raids to kill him. Okay, it's apparently having a lot of problems with him because it takes multiple raids to kill him. Okay, it's apparently taking a lot of raids to kill rational, and it's taking a lot of deaths to do so. Now, what a lot of people don't know about this boss is that when he goes untargetable, he is actually still targetable. You're meant to utilize your new Reshi wraps, which you have in this patch, and go into phase diving. Once you go into phase diving, you can continue to attack him. Okay, it's that simple. Dodge mechanics don't be stupid. Get good, okay, but he does have a lot of health. Okay, he's a little bit overtuned and he does one-shot, so I would be careful still.

Speaker 1: 3:26

But yeah, this is why a lot of people are kind of complaining about him, um, but I think that they'll either keep him that difficulty and just being like, deal with it, or they will be very much reluctant, or they'll be more like, yeah, we, we should nerf him, kind of deal. If they nerf him. It seems a bit weird, though. World bosses are meant to be that bosses and they're meant to be tough and they're meant to be scary. You don't want to come across them and then kill them with five people. You want to come across them and have big raid groups where it's like, oh shit, we need everyone to kill this guy because he's a big threat, um, so I would like to see them keep it the same. But hey, it is what it is, it is what it is. So there is another thing that I wanted to talk about very quickly on Midnight.

Speaker 1: 4:16

Now, midnight is obviously very close to being announced. This announcement will happen anywhere between two and three weeks whenever the gamescom happens. So on the 19th of august is when we're probably going to get the information, if not the 20th. Yeah, so we're going to get a trailer for it, we're going to get pre-orders, we're going to get dates for it, and all of that. But what if I told you there was already a way to pre-order, and this is obviously something that was leaked. I say leaked, but it was dropped and it shouldn't have been dropped. Okay, you can't actually pre-order it now, by the way, but if you were to go onto a separate WoW account that isn't paid for, like a wow two, wow three, whatever and you logged on to a character and you went on to the store and you went on to character, the character tab in that store, you could have pre-ordered midnight and it showed the perks as to what you could get with the pre-order, and a couple of these perks are obviously stuff like, um, early access to player housing and a couple other cosmetics for your player housing, these sort of things.

Speaker 1: 5:37

Okay, now there's a couple of additions to this. There's the base, uh, pre-order. There's obviously a heroic pre-order. They each have their own different things. They give traders tendies, they give like character boosts and stuff, all this type of like stuff. But that's a real big like ball to drop on blizzard's behalf, that that you could literally go on to like, wow live world of warcraft and pre-order it. That's not a leak, that's a bull being dropped by someone at blizzard and it's quite funny, to be honest. Obviously it's not there anymore, so I wouldn't attempt doing this. I definitely wouldn't attempt buying it now, if and if it's still up there, um, as I imagine it's not quite ready to be pre-ordered, it probably is. No product is ready when it is pre-ordered, but you might get some backlash with it with your money. You might not actually get the pre-order and you might lose your money, who knows. But yeah, they really messed up there. But it's good to see that we are most likely if not we already knew going to get a midnight pre-order on the 19th or 20th, to be able to go on to midnight and hopefully we'll get a date for when this expansion releases on these dates at Gamescom on the 19th or the 20th. So here's only hoping that we get that date. But yeah, they did kind of drop the ball with the pre-order. Um, it's quite, it is quite funny.

Speaker 1: 7:12

My thoughts on it in terms of early access to player housing. That that feels kind of shit. I'm not gonna lie because, look, I'm gonna pre-order. Okay, I've always pre-ordered an expansion. I'm not pre-ordering it for the early access. I'm not pre-ordering for anything. I pre-order because I know it's a game that I'm going to play. Um, it's a comfort game that I've played all my life and I just know that I'm going to make use out of the pre-order and the game itself. So I will always just buy it when I can kind of deal.

Speaker 1: 7:48

Now, this is awful for other people, though, who aren't able to pre-order it and were looking forward to player housing, because when someone loads up a game and they have something that you do not have in that game, you feel kind of shitty about it. Ok, now I know that this is how they get you to buy the pre-order, because it makes you feel awful that you don't have something that this other player does because they pre-ordered all of that nonsense. But player housing should have been a universal thing that was allowed access to everyone at the exact same time. Flip a switch, there you go. There's your housing, go and enjoy it. Everyone go and enjoy it, and you would have a universal sort of love for that mechanic in the game at that point. But it puts a sour taste in your mouth when you get early access to something via a pre-order. In my honest opinion, it's like when you pre-order anything else and you get something that is just better and useful in a game that other people would just not have.

Speaker 1: 8:57

Now I'm not saying player housing is useful in any way. I'm not saying that it's going to make or break the characters or anything. It isn't okay. It's purely cosmetic based. But it's something that player base of world of warcraft have been wanting for nearly 20 years. Um, and to allow people people to have earlier access to it is a little bit of a kick in the balls to those who can't get the pre-order. But yeah, they will always find ways to put more incentives in pre-orders so that people buy it. Essentially, it's just that way. Yeah, it just leaves a bit of a sour taste in the mouth with the pre-order and the early access. That's all I'm gonna say on it. That's all I'm gonna say on it.

Speaker 1: 9:52

Look, I think that it won't be that much longer that people have player housing when they pre-order. I think it's going to be about a week, two weeks, if that two weeks I would say. Usually it's about a week, like where they open up the new lands or the new zones to people. I think they did this in Dragonflight, where you could access Dragon Isles like a week earlier for those who pre-ordered or got a specific pre-order, and I really don't like it. It does help, though, in the fact or in the sense that the servers aren't necessarily going to be blown up at that time and you're going to get multiple disconnects.

Speaker 1: 10:30

I think they maybe should have done this with Pandaria a little bit, in terms of they should have segmented. No, how do you do that with mob? Because it's an expansion, it's an entire expansion. I don't know. As long as they don't do it with midnight zones and it's just player housing, I think I'll be content with it. If they open up midnight zones, that's a whole different bowl of worms. Okay, that is a no-go for me and it's really bad if they do that. But the player housing is the only one I know about as of this current moment. So we will see, uh, in about a couple weeks time, less or less than a couple weeks time actually. So who knows, who knows.

Speaker 1: 11:10

But let us get on to more of the mr pandaria stuff at the moment. So a couple days ago, we obviously got a release schedule for the next raids as well, and this is really good. So mogul shun vaults just recently released I believe it was last sunday, yeah, the third, yeah, yeah the third or the 31st somewhere last week of july, slash august, okay. And now we're getting, uh, celestial dungeonsgeons on August the 12th. We are getting Heart of Fear on August 21st. We're getting Shard of Anger and Galleon Drop Tier 14 gear, which is really good on August 26th. So they're constantly updating the world bosses as well, very good. We are getting Celestial Dungeons Hall of Fame for Celestial Rewards on the September 2nd Celestial Dungeon Hall of Fame. I'll go over that in a second. On September 4th we're getting Terrorists of Endless Springs Raid and September 16th we are getting Terrorists of Endless Springs Celestial Rewards.

Speaker 1: 12:19

Okay, so the Celestial Dungeons are dungeons that are basically Hero, basically heroic plus, and they have looking for raid gear in the dungeons themselves. You can collect the tier sets from these raids and that are no longer available because there is no looking for raid and you can do the dungeons and they can drop these currencies and you can use this currency to buy the looking for a tier set. This is how to gear up alt characters. If you need to. This is the best way to do it and essentially, um, this is, yeah, the best way to gear any sort of character, because the tier sets are very important, uh, just for any sort of character in general. But if you're in a guild and you're raiding constantly, you shouldn't need these dungeons. They are very much for alt catch-up mechanics, very, very much so.

Speaker 1: 13:07

So heart of fear unlocks, obviously on the 21st. This is a six boss raid and you're going to have the subsequent achievements with it, as well as realm firsts and stuff like that. So, very simple same with heart of fear, um, no sorry. Same with Heart of Fear, no, sorry. Same with Terrace of Endless Springs. This release is full for September Four bosses Now. This is a lot shorter of a raid, I should say, but again, comes with all of the achievements, comes with all of the different world first achievements and stuff. It's very good, as well as the guild achievements, meta achievements you will be able to earn. So if you complete all four of the bosses on Heroic in what is it? Terrace of Endless Springs, and complete all challenge achievements, for each boss you get Heavily Crimson Cloud terrorist offender springs. And for the meta achievement for heart of fear, you get heavenly crimson cloud serpent. Okay, this is complete, all six bosses on heroic and complete all the achievements for each boss. So you obviously have the meta achievements. These are the big ones that a lot of guilds would maybe like to go for, but obviously you just have better gear going forward and hopefully we shall see a release cadence quite similar to this, to be honest, going forward, where you're releasing raids constantly.

Speaker 1: 14:37

I think that the next raid that we will see is what is the next raid? It's not a throne of thunder. It might be thrown a thunder, running thunder. 5.2. Siege of orgrim are 5.4. What was 5.3? I'm missing a raid. It will come back to me. It will come back to me, but they want to do sort of a year release cadence. Okay, now this release is every few months for a new raid. Okay, we're going to get Terrace of Endless Springs end or beginning of September, which is a month away. I would imagine that we're going to see the next raid November time, maybe mainly because Mogushan Vaults released August 12th or, sorry, last week, around early August, and this would coincide with the release cadence that they wanted, which is every few months. This is matching the Mists of Pandaria release cadence and hopefully they do stick to that narrative, but I would say November or December time for the new raid to come out, or the next raid, and then this gives you a lot of time to do Mogushan Vault, heart of Fear and Terrace of Endless Springs.

Speaker 1: 15:52

However you want to do them with your guild. Very simple. There's a few things that people are not happy about, though, and obviously on the forums, people get a little bit pissy, so some of these are going to be ridiculous and I'm just going to say you're being stupid and shut it down. Some of these are going to be a bit more like oh yeah, that kind of makes sense. I'll get to them this one, though. No, looking for raid to encourage guild raiding but then allow GDKP. Still Lol, talk about contradiction, that's it OK. Still, lol, talk about contradiction, that's it okay. Looking for raid is something that you click a button and you sign up for. Yeah, they have changed looking for raid so that when celestial dungeons come out, they are going to be the gear from them. Raids are going to be in the dungeons.

Speaker 1: 16:40

Very simple gdkps are pug groups. Our groups happened in classic pug groups happened in tbc wrath, cataclysm, all throughout. Wow, okay, even in retail. There are these pug raids that say, oh, come, like, buy this. Essentially, come buy this piece of gear, come buy your achievement. Okay, for gold. That's what gdkps are. You buy your gear and then it gets divvied out at the end.

Speaker 1: 17:09

Gdkps are different to everything. Gdkps are a community-based problem, not a blizzard problem. We as a community have deemed that gdkps is the best way to raid at the moment rather than just normal pugging. And this is because GDKPs, you buy your item for 1000 gold. Ok, it's going to be a lot more in Mists of Pandaria, I know, but we're going to say 1000 gold. This 1000 gold goes into a pot. The pot is then, at the end of the raid, divvied, or, you know, added up and then divvied out amongst the raiders. So if there's 10 raiders and you've made 10,000 gold at the end of the raid, so you all get 1,000 gold, obviously people will take a different cut. The raid leader might take 20%, so 200 gold, et cetera, et cetera. But that's how GDKPsps work. This is a community-based problem, not a blizzard problem. It's not a contradiction, because they're two completely different things as well ridiculous.

Speaker 1: 18:15

I get that people don't like gdkps. I don't like them as well, I don't think that they're amazing. I don't think they're bad. To be honest, I think that they're just there. If people want to use them, they are more than welcome to. If people don't, they don't think they're bad. To be honest, I think that they're just there. If people want to use them, they are more than welcome to. If people don't, they don't have to. It's as simple as that. Okay, but it's not a contradiction. This guy is just, yeah, being a bit stupid with that. I'm not going to lie. I get people don't like it, but it's not a Blizzard problem, it is a us problem. That the way it is. If we all just decided, yeah, we don't want to do gdkps, they wouldn't exist. That's how simple it is. If people didn't want to do gdkps, they just wouldn't exist. And I would say that they're quite good. Um, in terms of if you want to do the raid, they are very efficient at doing the raid. Okay, these GDKP groups are very, very good at raiding. They're not like slobs by any means. They are very, very solid raiders. So if people don't have a lot of time, this might be their best bet. It's also a good way to make gold, but you know, it is a community problem at the end of the day, not a Blizzard one.

Speaker 1: 19:24

Next one do you want what classic? Now, this one piqued my interest because they recently did a survey and the survey, uh, asked quite a few things. Did we want to go into world? Uh, warlords of draenor and then legion. Did we want to go into retail world of warcraft and have all the mogs transfer onto there? Did you want to go back to classic? Yeah, not sure about that one, um, but this person asked what do you want to happen to classic? Do you want to have your characters transferred to retail, as blizzard supposedly suggested in a recent poll? You want to get what classic do you want to go? What then legion? You want them to skip ward and go straight to legion. You want to get whatOD then Legion. Do you want them to skip WOD and go straight to Legion? Do you want to get WOD Classic, but with changes, ie Shattrath, ray, tyr or Feralon, and in this Classic journey kept going. Where should it stop? Legion Is the idea for a Classic BFA just way too cursed Opinions?

Speaker 1: 20:20

This is a very important topic. I would say that it is a very important topic. In my honest opinion, it's really tough. I would say classic goes up until you reached when it released. Okay, what do I mean by that? So when classic released in 2019, we were currently in battle slash shadowlands.

Speaker 1: 21:20

Yeah, I think we go up until bfa, and I am no fan of bfa. Okay, I am a real big no-go on bfa. But a lot of people who came back to play classic may never have experienced these expansions, and this is what I'm like. My other half, who plays wow, started in bfa, late bfa, like classic. She has never gotten to experience missa pandaria, wrath of the lich king, burning crusade, cataclysm um, warlords of draenor legion all of these expansions and a lot of other people haven't as well. That is the only reason I think that you would allow this to go on to bfa, because it allows people to experience these expansions as they were during the expansion itself, not after the fact, where it's like, oh cool, I can walk into a raid and one shot a boss kind of deal, but fully experience the expansion. And then I would like it to morph into retail and you get all the transmogs from retail or in retail. That's what I would like. Okay, and this works in my opinion, because you have classic, classic now.

Speaker 1: 22:37

So classic classic is currently in oh my god, I'm going to be saying this way too many times in vanilla in in Classic World of Warcraft. Okay, it is in the original World of Warcraft. This is going to move on to the Burning Crusade. This will they have confirmed it. So when this released, which was last year or this year, I can't remember, I think it was last year we're in AQ right now, so it might have been this year, I can't remember. I think it was last year. We're in a queue right now, so it might have been this year. But in 2025 we are currently in the war within slash dragonflight. We'll say that classic can maybe go up to dragonflight.

Speaker 1: 23:16

Do you see where I'm going with this? And then when they get to wrath of the lich king or cataclysm again, then they will release classic, classic, classic or whatever. Does this make sense? Where I'm going? Because if they constantly release a classic, that is, a few expansions behind, this will always be a consistent thing. People can play that expansion, people can play classic if they want. People can play TBC when it comes out Wrath of the Lich King, but the retail version of WoW will always keep going and people may not experience these versions of WoW, newer players, people might not have experienced Shadowlands, people might not have experienced Dragonfly. So every single Classic you release, you go up an extra two expansions. So you stop at BFA for this classic, this Mists of Pandaria classic, and then the next classic classic that's moving into TBC will go up to Shadowlands after BFA and then Dragonflight. It stops there, but then we're going to get Midnight soon. So the next classic that released classic times three we'll just call it, because I'm not saying that three times this will go up to the War of In and then Midnight.

Speaker 1: 24:34

So do you see what I'm kind of getting at here? That's kind of what I would think they might do, because it would have a constant release cadence of okay, every three expansions for classic there's a new classic server that comes out. That means that people who want a classic fresh can start fresh and constantly do it. That's what they want. That is what people want in classic. They want to restart fresh. Okay, we've tried the anniversary servers. The anniversary servers are constantly in classic, okay, and they are dying because people want to just feel the nostalgia of restarting a character. That's it. People want that nostalgia of yeah, we've restarted this character. That's what I want and that's kind of why there's always going to be a classic classic re-releasing.

Speaker 1: 25:21

So this is my idea of it and a take on it, because it allows people to focus on transmogs for retail, but in classic as well, because eventually that will get transferred to retail. If you never earned an atiash back in classic, you will get that on retail. If you picked up a mage and you really wanted to farm it, or warlock or a druid and you really wanted to farm it with a guild, you can get atih and then eventually it'll go onto your retail account. Yeah, does that make sense? And then the next time classic releases you go warrior and you get them sort of mobs where you get a thunder fury like an actual earned thunder fury during classic, you know, in molten core and stuff. So I think that that's the best way to do it.

Speaker 1: 26:04

Again, it would need ironing out, it would need a lot of different things, but that's off the top of my head. I don't think it's a bad idea because it allows people to experience these expansions when they haven't done in the past. I think that this is something that keeps the game fresh somewhat. The only problem that we would have is obviously retail would get to a point where it's a lot of expansions and Classic is trying to keep up, okay, but they would have to do a release cadence every couple months or something. It's like a couple months on this raid tier, a couple months on next, like they would really power through the raids, okay, and that's not really fun. You wouldn't be stuck on like um icc for eight months kind of deal. Yeah. So we'll see. We will see.

Speaker 1: 26:50

In my opinion, I think we go warlords of draenor classic though into legion and then we stop at legion or bfa, bfa again. I know it's not a great expansion, same with shadow, but they can clean up these expansions. They can see what was wrong in these expansions and be like, yeah, we will amend this and that's what I hope that they would do. Going forward in Classic.

Speaker 1: 27:13

Classic, like in Warlords of Draenor, I hope that they just have like, either the Shattrath raid, which would be really cool, because that's something that no one has experienced or they just release like content in terms of like, okay, this is what was released in warlords of draenor. There wasn't much. But instead of a year gap where there was no content, we will release this within like a six month period. Warlords of draenor will only be six months, kind of deal, um. And then in legion, obviously you have a lot more content and we'll release it the same release cadence that, um. And then in legion, obviously you have a lot more content and we'll release it the same release cadence that we did back in legion, which is every, I think, 61 days or something. It was on average. It was so good the release schedule for legion. But that's kind of my thoughts on it.

Speaker 1: 27:58

But yeah, what, what do you guys think? Do you think that we should carry on with classic? Do you think the classics are stupid at this point? What do you think? But let me know down below. Again, thank you all very much for listening. Do check out all of the socials down below. Constant stuff happening over there as well as etsy just recently got a scythe of a loon that went up on there. It's really cool, I'm so happy with it. I don't think there's anyone else doing a scythe of a loom 3d printed, so please do check it out. It's absolutely amazing. I'm very happy with it, um. But yeah, thank you all very much once again and go with valor, friend, goodbye, all do do, thank you.