Patch 12.1 Fixes Midnight's Busywork — Full Breakdown & Transcript

[00:02] simple one. Here's every midnight problem that we know is going away in patch 12.1 and even some that are going away a little later. And these are from massive headaches to minor quibbles, so let's go through the announced,

[00:14] >> more importantly, the unannounced and even some of the hidden changes that turns out the patch notes and the Wowhead cast really only told half the story. So, let's begin with the gameplay ones that everyone's going to feel. But

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[01:51] personally. I've even given them to my parents. They I them. You can find the links down below. Blizzard announced tier sets, but they didn't talk about how they're actually changing tier sets. Now, do you remember

[02:04] what your tier set did for season one of Midnight? I'll be honest with you, I don't. They were just really simple buffs that made them quite boring, and this was really by design. They usually do this with the first tier of a new

[02:16] expansion. It's to make sure that any new class changes or the likes of say Apex talents basically pan out the way Blizzard expected. This time though, they're a hell of a lot more juiced. Demon hunters get rotation changing

[02:29] bonuses, druids get big timing specific damage buffs, and everyone's favorite, cool down extensions. Wrath paladins get a new mechanic where using a proc on a specific ability gives you a free spender. Now, some players aren't very

[02:44] happy about how these can kind of lock you into certain talents for the duration of an entire tier, but let's take a look at the brighter side of this. These are tier bonuses that people will actually feel when they play the

[02:57] patch, instead of just being there and being maybe a bit present in their damage meter or their log. Definitely some excitement that I think gearing needs. And it turns out on the front of gearing, well, they are actually going

[03:09] to also improve how we get our tier sets. Our next problem is a gameplay texture issue. You see, over the years the catalyst became a little bit boring. You wait for charges, get four items, turn

[03:21] them into tier, then you're done. Maybe you recatalyze later and you get some new upgrades, but basically instead of a fun bonus way to get tier or a nice bad luck protection thing, it ended up becoming the fastest and most chore-like

[03:34] way to get tier. Well, Blizzard have now got an idea to think to do that without killing the feature and killing the convenience. So, now the gear that you catalyze will actually matter. That's because it keeps

[03:48] the stats and effects it already has whenever you turn it into a piece of tier gear. That means you'll probably keep on using the catalyst across the entire tier as you find better items or better stats instead of just once or

[04:01] twice with major upgrades. This seems like a great change and it's the change there's another change that's only been picked up in the data mining. You see, another issue with the catalyst is that you've got to wait. Now to fix that,

[04:14] achievement so that you can farm up more charges. But of course, you need to get your full tier set first to unlock that achievement. Well, 12.1 appears to change that. Catalyst charges look like they'll start dropping from the

[04:29] beginning of the season with the achievement still existing but just increasing the drop rate of the charges which I think actually fits quite well with the new way that the catalyst will interact with gear. Now of course, this

[04:41] is still in development. It could change. I mean, it looks like it might drop partial charges instead of full charges which would make it a bit less volatile but also maybe a bit slower. Either way though, the catalyst is now

[04:54] more interesting and less time gated which I think a lot of people will like. history where they were totally fine for years and years until raiders started to

[05:06] use them to do pesky things like drawing diagrams and solving mechanics on the Star Augur encounter during the Legion expansion. Since that incident, Blizzard have banned add-ons from changing friendly nameplates within instances.

[05:18] Now though, in this patch, they're kind of in their final form. There are new options for names only, for class colors, and even hiding the realm name. And now in instances, you can clearly see players' names at a distance without

[05:32] having to deal with giant and completely redundant health bars. It's a minor enough update but I bring it up because it's flown under everyone's radar at least as far as we could tell looking through the internet. It's one of those

[05:44] changes that's subtle but it's actually kind of amazing for the usability of dungeons and raids. But by this stage in the video, there's probably an issue really talked about yet. It's pretty simple. It's that things just feel a bit

[05:57] overwhelming and disjointed. The good news is that's our next fix. upgrades, and all of the things in season 1 was a little bit of a

[06:09] nightmare. It was kind of confusing and overwhelming. Now, doing some quests is one thing, but Decimus was asking for tons of gold, marl, or crests to make your bonus roll cores. And then, if you wanted more, you had to know to take the

[06:22] bonus currency from the vault and then trade that in. I can guarantee probably most people didn't even know that was an option. The good news is in 12.1, they're simplifying all of that down. Weekly cores just come from the

[06:36] catalyst without bleeding your wallet dry. And from what we can tell, it of these each week from the vault you own by itself. Now, this is hardly a game-changing thing, but it's lots of little pointless bits

[06:51] of UI friction that Blizzard are sanding away, which I think is absolutely a good Our next pain point, and speaking of pointless UI friction, everyone hates currencies. I mean, they're fine as a game system, but man, they can clog

[07:06] things up. Now, Blizzard putting more into currencies has absolutely helped caused another issue, which is that the currencies tab is a little bit of a mess. 12.1 attempts to fix that. It's not the biggest deal, but they've now

[07:19] got a ton of subcategories that you can hide away. So, a simple fix for a simple problem. Sadly though, there is no search feature, so Blizzard, think about lifesaver. Warbands were the big feature of the war

[07:34] within, and accordingly, Blizzard made sure that we'd have new campsites to earn every patch. And then, midnight kind of just abandoned the whole thing. Now, the pre-patch did give us the housing areas as a warband campsite, but

[07:46] then there was nothing, not even Silvermoon. So, people grew a bit scared the graveyard. And that's where I thankfully have some good news. We have Silvermoon and Silvermoon void edition campsites coming

[08:01] in this new patch. So, the feature is not dead, it was seemingly just on break, and hopefully they can spin up some more of these before the patch release. Like uh you know, maybe a warband campsite that's themed

[08:13] after the new patch and Solemnan, that sort of thing would be pretty good. Next, and also very good, the Hall of Fame is no longer for delves.

[08:25] feel like a valid way to experience the game. And to that end, they added a Hall of Fame for the delve nemesis in Midnight. Except that for some reason, differently, where they limited it to just being the first 4,000 players per

[08:40] region, and also made the boss doable in day one, which was completely chaotic. That meant that the devoted, or maybe some would say unemployed, were [laughter] able to fill up the Hall of Fame within about 14 hours of the NA

[08:55] reset, and in the EU, only nine hours. And that would mean that for so many people, like quite literally, by the time they'd get home from work to play wow, it would be impossible to make it in the Hall of Fame.

[09:07] it's going to work differently. Rather than being the first 4,000 players, it's now anyone who kills the new delve nemesis boss within the first week of the season. That may not sound like much, but it is a really nice fix for

[09:21] people who care about, you know, solo skill, and more importantly, the prestige of getting Hall of Fame. going on? Well, when we first heard about delves, we were promised wild

[09:35] things like new companions every season. That did not pan out, and accordingly, we saw a lot of Bran Bronzebeard. Blizzard are clearly trying to avoid actually got some new options this time around. As a rogue, she can use poisons.

[09:51] They're just the poisons she already had access to, but they were based on her role. And what's changed is [music] that now you can actually pick. So, you can pick your poison. This is pretty cool though, because in a world where we're

[10:03] season, I think being able to have more customization of the companion we do have, in terms of its gameplay, is a really, really good option. So, this is changes as well, like they're also updating the delve teleport bot for

[10:16] midnight, but it's going to be on rank seven of the delver's journey in the new season. So, there's a bunch of nice lesser known changes and fixes. And by now, we've come to the end of what we are sure is in [music] patch 12.1.

[10:28] That means we can go into the exciting bit, because here's the stuff that is bit, because here's the stuff that is best described as insanely huge upgrades patch, or are planned for later, and just hinted at.

[10:42] problem to you of what happens when you put a hat on your character in wow, all their hair disappears. It's pretty Almost every hat in World of Warcraft is, I would say, unwearable because of your character's hair being

[10:56] deleted. Now, quick disclaimer, this is not a full feature just yet, but there have been some curious items found in the [music] data mining. These new witch sets seemed off. They've got different versions of the same hat. Some versions

[11:11] come with a short back and sides like usual, but others actually show your character's existing hairstyle underneath. So, at long last, Blizzard have the technology. And implementation-wise, these are most

[11:23] you select in the transmog window, which means this won't magically be a new feature for every single hat or helmet, but still, is pretty good. And from a recent Q&A, we do know that Holly desperately wants this to be in the game

[11:38] and that a character customization overhaul is a massive ongoing project of Blizzard and one that they started many years ago. Perhaps they've cracked something that's allowed them to do this. Maybe this is a test run. Who

[11:51] knows, but hopefully before long, this will just be a toggle in your transmog window just like say the new sheathing option that Blizzard added for weapons. Some of our best written work can be found in the in-game books. It's kind of

[12:05] learned the deep history of the world from books lying around in tables and tucked away in dungeons like SM or Scholomance. It's a pretty awesome way to discover the lore, but then they just ended up being stuck there. Unless, of

[12:18] course, you got them as an item and then you could store those items, but then you'd have a clogged up bag and eventually a clogged up bank. Those are all minor annoyances that make the life of lore lovers a little bit harder.

[12:30] And that's why this is kind of neat. We have a hint of that feature that is long, long overdue. The first troll legend is an item on the The first troll legend is an item on the PTR with a very interesting effect. It

[12:43] says, "Use. Add this book to your book collection." That's a new thing cuz uh we we don't have a feature called book collections in wow. It certainly suggests one may be coming. Now, there are currently only

[12:57] six readable items in the PTR build so far and only one that has this effect on it. So, we'll have to see if this just quietly changes back to the usual style. But at any rate, even if it's not in 12.1, a way to browse all of wow's books

[13:11] is almost certainly in the pipeline and without having to use the Lorekeeper at all. Across all the things we do in game, we can meet so many people. And there's a bit of a problem with that. It's not

[13:23] easy to basically keep track of who does what. Maybe you need a certain DPS for Mythic Plus, and you maybe forget what spec that one big pumper you met last week actually played. Now, one thing you can do currently is add a note to people

[13:38] on Battle.net, but it's just that. It's a simple mouse-over note. And here's what's cool. As a part of Blizzard's social updates, they're actually adding labels. Now, this is only in the data mining, so it probably won't be in 12.1,

[13:51] Blizzard are looking into. Cuz what we can see is tags for role and tags for gameplay type. Now, if you're already using an add-on like Better Friend List, then well, this sort of thing may not be necessary or helpful because your add-on

[14:05] indicate that Blizzard are actually taking these social features seriously. >> This won't be a game-changer for everyone, but Holly did say there would be social updates, and with this, we can see evidence of that.

[14:19] loading up our tools and trying to data mine as best we can. Keep you updated on any of these unconfirmed ones, should they change, cuz let's be real, some of them are kind of huge. We'll obviously have to see if book collections or hair

[14:33] toggles are coming in 12.1, or if these are maybe leftovers of things that are going to be in upcoming minor patches. And remember, what we discussed today is basically just the undocumented stuff. If you go through the patch notes and

[14:45] other changes. And I'll recap them here for you now. There's things like healers being able to customize the buffs that they see in their frames. Housing is called blueprints, and a whole system around them. We've got new endeavors,

[14:59] new dye consolidations. World bosses are being moved into instanced layers to do things like fix world lag and add new difficulty levels. We've got bonus rolls patch. There's a whole bunch of things. So, if you want a refresher on all

[15:14] those, you can check out our big 12.1 news extravaganza video over here.