Ep 17 - Calebthegamedoc and Dylan Get Dumb

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. [00:00:07] Speaker B: Welcome everyone to another episode of Azeroth with Attitude. My name is Ava Dillon and we have a amazing special guest this week. Please introduce yourself. Hello. [00:00:21] Speaker A: Hi everyone. This is Caleb the Game Dog, Azerothsworld's famous Dom Top. I hope all is well with you. Yeah, you can find me on all the social media, twitch, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube. Caleb, the game Doc is very nice to be here. I'm so happy and honored and I'm ready to have a good time. Let's go. [00:00:44] Speaker B: I am so excited to have you here. Literally. Okay, so Art as you. I know, shocker. Art's not here, y'. All. Art is still recovering from his surgery, so we, we're hoping that we can get them in next week. But when we had a list, we had a, we had a list of like, who do we want a special guests? It was Steph and you. It's so happy that you were able to say yes to this. And like, we get you on. Yes. Caleb, hilarious content creator, Dom Top. As. As we've established, yes. Very gay. Very Dom Top. Um, I'm just so excited because your content is very much in the realm of like Azeroth attitude. It's very stupid. It's very like just not cringe, but it's like gay brain rot in a sense. And so it. I'm just so excited to have you here. I really am. And thank you. I live for your short form content that I see all the time on Instagram. [00:01:54] Speaker A: Yeah, it's not polished. No, no, it. Listen, I. When I came into this game, I was like, I am not an editor, I am not a planner. I. I'm just off the cusp. Like, I come from an improv background. And I said, you know what, if I'm going to be out there and expose myself to a bunch of people, I'm going to do it my most authentic self. And I was like, I'm silly. I'm just gonna. I'm just gonna green screen something, just talk about it. Read a down in a transmog, you know, a little short or I'm just going to like, you know, just, just be there, be informational or have some sort of value to people that stop by and watch things that I, I put out there. [00:02:37] Speaker B: Hell yeah. I mean, I love to hear it, but I have to know because I, I see your content now, but how long have you been making content in the space? I'm curious. [00:02:49] Speaker A: So officially I graduated with my PhD back in 2024 in May, and my research and dissertation was World of Warcraft. It was looking for group. It was the experience of college students who play World of Warcraft and kind of how they balance their academic life and their online realms, Personas and like the communities. So right after I graduated, I said, listen, I need to like get into this because I wanted to write a whole bunch of like articles and things of that nature. And I started. So I started around April 2024, May 2024. And it was like all my stuff was like all academic based, like, hello, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna discuss the intricacies of like meeting your significant other in World of Warcraft. And it was just. Nobody was interested. It was, it was very humbling. And then like, I just remember posting a short, short about. I don't know, I was reading someone's Transmog and it just blew up. It was like a cold Tyran and like the Sylvanas attire. Wait, so, yeah, it was just ridiculous. I was like, okay, this is, this is amazing. And I just talked about it and it just went off. And that's when I started seeing that as like, okay, people don't want to come online to learn. Yeah, sometimes educational, but they'll go to YouTube for that. But for the short form content, I usually try to keep it fun, keep it informational, but I. Around. Around 2024. Ish. So it's been, it's been two years now? Pretty much, yeah. [00:04:28] Speaker B: That's so fascinating. I need to ask you about your PhD background because I find that so interesting. As someone that also came from like the medical side, I not anywhere near PhD or master's degree, but there is another universe. There's an alternate drain or out there that is an alternate Earth where I am going to school for public health and I'm working in the public health field and not in games and marketing. So I'm curious for you. Obviously you had an interest in World of Warcraft as you were going for your PhD. How far back does your like interest in gaming go and did that inspire you to kind of go into this, like going for your doctorate, if you will? [00:05:23] Speaker A: Yeah. So I want to say the most influential game that brought me kind of into the realm of just what I like to play it was Final Fantasy 7 that that game opened my life up. Like I was like, what's an rpg? And I started playing it and it was honestly, I don't know, it was like a light bulb moment. I felt at home with the characters just going through the journey and things of that nature. And that was that's really what opened up my love for a bunch of games. I'm very RPG story based on the games like Baldur's Gate and all of that. Like I love that. I love a good game here, there. I'll beat a bitch ass in Mortal Kombat. But. But that's like my bread and butter. And honestly, when I was in middle school, I don't. Have you ever heard of the game Everquest? [00:06:14] Speaker B: Of course I've heard of Everquest. [00:06:17] Speaker A: Okay. So Everquest, I was just like, I was just a middle school kid and Everquest came on and it was just, it blew my mind. It's like first of all I'm. I'm online and I'm playing with people from around the world. Like it's insane. So I got into that. I didn't get too far. That game was hard as hell. That game is so hard. That's what I've heard it. Insane. And a lot of the World of Warcraft developers that came into creating what we play now came from Everquest and like the, the culture of raiding, the culture of getting together groups of people. Like back then they had raids of like 72 plus people. So it was, it was pretty crazy, right? That's why rating was like, is why way more than we do now. I mean the 40 man raised back in like vanilla are. Are something that I think about. And I was like, oh, that was cool to raid with that many people. But that, that shit was also very hard to manage. But I digress. It was, it was around every quest time when I was like, okay, MMOs are definitely something that I don't know. I was, I was, I was a very outgoing person and I still am. But like I love my time at home. I love to just sit down, be in my room and just play, hang out with people. Let's be with my tribe, if you know what I mean. So yeah, that was, I mean pretty much that's what got me into gaming. And then obviously just going through all the iterations of the expansions and things of that nature and wow has always kind of been like home base to me. At least I played the game 90% of the time, you know. [00:07:52] Speaker B: Okay, so I have to ask about EverQuest because I've never played EverQuest. I've definitely heard of EverQuest. EverQuest is the one where you could play as ogres and like really ugly, ugly races and Species Girl. [00:08:06] Speaker A: All those, all those models were ugly. Yes, they were. We were played in like 8 bit land. Like the character models were like 2 pixels max. [00:08:16] Speaker B: Yeah, it was. [00:08:17] Speaker A: It was a mess. But yeah, there was ogres, trolls. They had a. Like a lizard race called Exar. They had the Karen and. And the frogs. The frog logs. So funny story is my. I knew I was okay like you said. [00:08:34] Speaker B: I knew I was gay when I played frogs. They were my awakening. [00:08:42] Speaker A: They were my awakening. Let's say you gotta kiss a few frogs to get to your prince. Right? [00:08:46] Speaker B: Exactly. [00:08:47] Speaker A: But EverQuest 2 actually was my kind of. It was my gay awakening of, oh, shoot, I'm kind of good at video games and I actually was in the world first guild in EverQuest 2. And yeah, we were like the Team Liquid of EverQuest 2 back in the day. Special shout out to Ascendance. I know y' all still out there. Okay. Hell, they run it. I see over here. There. But yeah, it was, it was interesting because our raid schedule was like five days a week for six plus hours. And that's a lot. That's a lot. It's a lot. Especially for a game that honestly the end game content wasn't as fleshed out as wow. But we would just be out there and I was hanging out with these people like over 30 plus hours a week. And you know, those people become your family and things of that nature. But yeah, that was like, okay, I'm good. And that's what got me into like the competitive edge of, of. Of WOW in general. Now I love pushing keys, I love mythic raiding and things of that nature. [00:09:51] Speaker B: That is fascinating. I didn't realize I was in the presence of an celebrity. No, that's. That's so cool. So wait, speaking about wow, okay, so I asked our previous guest last week the same question. Steph, who is the mother of all mothers to you? Kayla? [00:10:14] Speaker A: I love Steph. I met her in Northrend Live back in late February. Jealous Toronto. She is everything. I have pictures with her. I'm like, oh, I most cherished of pictures. No such a vibe. She's such a vibe. A special shout out. Steph, good to see you girl. [00:10:31] Speaker B: But who's your. Who's your mother of all mothers and wow. [00:10:34] Speaker A: Oh my God. Are you talking about like NPCs? [00:10:38] Speaker B: Yes. Okay, so imagine there's like we did an episode previous, like later, earlier, earlier on in the year called the Mother Olympics. We put every woman like mother, like iconic woman from WOW against each other head to head. If there was a Mother Olympics for you, who is the number one, like iconic woman in the World of Warcraft universe for you? [00:11:04] Speaker A: Oh my God. This is a very hard question because there's so many baddies. There are so many baddies. And for different reasons too. You know what I mean? [00:11:13] Speaker B: I'll give you a debrief of who's. Who's been crowned mother thus far. [00:11:17] Speaker A: Okay. Yeah. [00:11:18] Speaker B: So Art and I fought on this, but Jayna did end up winning our Mother Olympics with Sylvanas being second place. Steph crowned Tyrande. So I'm curious. You could either agree with any of those or make your own determination. [00:11:36] Speaker A: Tyrande is a baddie. You know what? I'm going to go with a little bit more of an obscure pick. [00:11:44] Speaker B: Okay. [00:11:45] Speaker A: And I'm going to say Maiev Shadowsong. Oh, okay. I have to know why Maiev, okay, Maeve, is that, you know how you, like when you form a team, you have your strengths and weaknesses of the team members. You have the people that like to delegate. You have the people that like to, you know, just be the worker bees, the task goal setters, and things of that nature. Mav, is that that you need in the office room to get done? All right. [00:12:17] Speaker B: Okay. Okay. [00:12:18] Speaker A: They're. They're sitting around their little council table talking about, oh, we need to do this, we need to do that. And Mav's already out there doing the thing and she, when she hits a goal, she's like, oh, wait, Iladin. Yeah, I got you. I'm going to be your jailer for over a thousand years. Right? Like, she means business. I mean, I love people like that. Like, she's just straight to the point. She's going to do what she does and she stays true to herself. I think she's a baddie. I think she'd be, she should be up there at least honorably mentioned. [00:12:46] Speaker B: Okay. No, I'm here for this. [00:12:48] Speaker A: She. [00:12:49] Speaker B: She didn't do as well in our Mother Olympics. But also, to preface this, Art and I, we are people that don't come from, like, the classic wow, like, iconery. Like, we. I'm playing Warcraft 3 for, like, the first time, and I don't think Art's ever played Warcraft 3. So we just don't have that, like, old school mindset of like, these characters. And I know that she's a baddie. I know she is because I saw a little bit of it in Legion because she shows up there. [00:13:21] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:13:23] Speaker B: She's. She's iconic. Okay, cool. So with us talking about World of Warcraft, I, I do want to know what are your thoughts thus far on Midnight? How are you Feeling with it. How does it rank in like your order of operations when it comes to expansion packs? [00:13:45] Speaker A: Okay. I know this might be a little controversial, but easily, easily at this moment, top three expansions of all time. [00:13:54] Speaker B: Oh, okay. Okay. [00:13:55] Speaker A: All right. And listen, I, we all know the Internet and I recently posted like a short about expansions and as a joke I, I ranked the expansions based off of like a tier list, but I did it by their name. So Shadowlands was S tier, War within was W tier and I got so much hate. This is one of the most successful viewed videos and it's just me rage baiting or just joking. Right. [00:14:28] Speaker B: Love it. [00:14:28] Speaker A: So yeah, please don't come for me. Midnight is great. Obviously this past patch has been kind of controversial in the community. [00:14:37] Speaker B: When we'll talk about it. [00:14:38] Speaker A: We will, but I think, I don't know about you, but I'm like a middle of the trilogy gal. Like my favorite, my favorite movie in Lord of the Rings is the second movie. [00:14:50] Speaker B: Okay. I mean, yeah, no, I feel that. Yeah, Yeah, I like the second one too. [00:14:54] Speaker A: It, it just has, it has. And obviously the elves and the elven culture is so, it's so rich, it's so fleshed out and for good reason because everyone likes elves. I mean listen, we're, we're, we're shallow creatures. All right? Elves are pretty. There's a background there. You know, there's a lot of Lord and just elves throughout. All sorts of like culture, media, things of that nature have always been like such a powerhouse of a, of a race. So to have a very elf centric expansion story wise, I think they're, they're cooking with it. Right. There's little elements here and there we can see tied up. Hopefully we'll see it. But as far as the esthetic, the gameplay, I think personally, I think making mythic plus dungeons easier and reading easier is a good healthy thing for the game. [00:15:46] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:15:47] Speaker A: Because there's, there's always, there's always the opportunity to, to infinitely scale in your mythic plus keys. So if you want a challenge, you can go for the challenge. But why are you going to try to come for people that are trying to get into the game? Right. We need to keep the game healthy. We need a good player base and sometimes I'm not really down for the elitism of people trying to gatekeep things like that. So I think Midnight's a good step in the right direction of kind of like broadening the game to more people. [00:16:15] Speaker B: Yeah, I agree with that. We've talked about This a little bit on the pod, but I. I have. I still think that the beginning nature of the game still needs a little bit of work, especially as I have dabbled obviously in, like, other MMORPGs to see, like, what is their new player experience like. And wow just has a lot it still needs to work on in order to make this a good introductory mmorpg. I just feel like it's like one of the big things that we constantly bring up is they do a good job of teaching you how to play your class, and they teach you how, like, accept this quest, do this thing. But then everything outside of that is not explained. Like, transmogging, not explained, the pet system, not explained. Like, the. There you. You get a pet, but if you're a hunter, you have your combat pets, which are different than the pets that you can summon just for cosmetically. Like, it's. There's just all these different systems, especially if you, like, get into, like, battle pets, you're like, what is this? Like, nothing's explained there. All of a sudden I'm in a pet battle. Like, I don't. I don't get it. So you know what I mean? Like, it's. It's very jarring. And I've recently been playing more Guild Wars 2 just to kind of fill time, because it's. For me, I've been able to get Guild Wars 2 to work on my Steam deck, and I've been traveling a lot for work. So it's been really good to just, like, log on to Guild Wars 2 and get some missions done. And that game does an amazing job of, like, getting you into the game. You have this personal quest line. You're kind of invested in the growth of your character and, like, what's happening in the world. So I think it does a really good job of, like, tying you along with the story while also allowing you free rein to kind of explore and do whatever the hell you want to do. And I want. Wow. To get to a point where it doesn't just feel like this intro part of the game is only there so I can speed my speedrun my way to the end game. And that's not a fun experience for a new player because they know that the. The carrot that's dangled in front of their face is like 80 levels down the line. And I want that carrot to be dangled on my face at the start of the game. So I get cool stuff right from the start. And I think we'll get there. I think we'll get there. It's going to take a little bit of time though before. [00:18:49] Speaker A: Yeah, we, you. We definitely need that carrot dangled in front of our face right from the beginning. I mean you, you hit the nail on the head like there. They've done a better job of bringing storylines and like with the campaign quest because back in the day we didn't have campaign quests. We were just mindlessly just questing everywhere. And if you wanted to know about a story, you had to find it outside of the game. You had to go to a YouTube video, you had to go to the community, the forums. And you're right. You're absolutely right. And I think they're reigning in all of that media to give that fleshed out storytelling. That's something really good that Final Fantasy 14 has been really good at with their story telling and things of that nature. I mean I stopped playing after Endbringer, but it's. Yeah, you're absolutely right. And. And it can only get better. And I do agree. I. I just recently started leveling my druid and I was. I don't know, I was in some fortress and Thrall and Jaina were there. I was like, okay, okay. I with the big hitters out here and then I get teleported somewhere and now many Krobi time I'm like, what the hell? It could be very jarring and confusing for new players. And you're right, the systems do need to have some sort of like in game tutorial about them. [00:20:11] Speaker B: Yeah, I. I just wish that with Wow. I. It's like a have your cake and eat it too situation because I feel like for a while it's hard to understand the story and know what's happening. So they're doing a good job sort of with like let's get you through the storyline quickly give you this spark notes versions of like the War within and whatnot. But I think that on the flip side of this, Final Fantasy 14 suffers from the issue of if you want to get to this really cool story in this new expansion, you now have to play through every single story beat that's ever existed in this game in order to even understand what's happening. And it is a slog to get through that game story. And it's not voice acted. [00:21:03] Speaker A: That voice acted and they're like bitch, if you want to skip this, you gotta pay for it. Yeah, okay, there's an option. You wanna skip the main story quest. Go go over to thing. Yeah, $25. [00:21:14] Speaker B: Let's go. $25. Yeah, exactly. And then. Oh, sorry. This is now me ranting about Final Fantasy 14. So another issue that I had with Final Fantasy 14, I tried and listen, I get it. New trailer just came out for the new expansion. Everyone's really excited and I'm happy for those that are happy, but for me personally, I played through all of the Realm Reborn. I was like, okay, this is cute. This is fun. What I hated was most of the story based content is instanced. And there's. Sorry. There are better ways to do instance content because I think like, Guild Wars 2 does instance content really well. If I'm playing with a friend and we happen to be on the same quest line, we can share progress by doing this instanced storyline. We can choose whether to share the experience. We can choose not to. That's like fully up to us. In Final Fantasy 14, if you're playing with a friend, it is like so insanely hard to quest alongside each other in that main storyline. You're like, all right, well, I have to do these next three missions by myself and you're gonna have to do those same three. But then we can like work together in this, like, dungeon that we have to do. That's like five person. It's. It's like coordination is needed in order to play that game together. Yeah. But it's very pretty. It's a very pretty game. [00:22:44] Speaker A: Very pretty. Very pretty. But you're right. Very confusing. I mean, I. I might dabble again. I stopped playing after like a tear or so. But you're right, you're right. It was. Wow's my home. For now at least. [00:23:00] Speaker B: I want to know more about this, like, patch because I know people are really mad about this news patch. Now, I haven't been able to play WoW at all, really, this week due to a lot of work travel. But I've heard that it's like very buggy. It's glitchy. There was like a new event that came out that didn't work. Do you know more? Do you have more info you could share? [00:23:25] Speaker A: Yeah, I actually was just recently graciously invited with a bunch of other streamers on the Warcraft channel when we did the decor Duels. This is like one of the main features, right? You. It's kind of like hide and seek, pro hunt or whatever. You're like, oh, like prop hunt. Yeah, prop hunt. That's what I meant. It's pretty much prop hunt. [00:23:48] Speaker B: Oh. [00:23:49] Speaker A: And you go around. It's like a. It's like a 6v6, 7v7. And you're. You're a hider or seeker. And you can. You can hide and disguise yourself as a bunch of various, like, decor items. And you're around, like, this base in Silver Moon. You have a bunch of these abilities that you unlock. And it was. I. Okay, I was a little skeptical at first, but I had so much damn fun. Maybe it's with the people I would play with, but we were having the time of our lives. Unfortunately, when it first came out with launch, it was buggy in the. In the sense that it was easy to exploit. You can actually go out of bounds of the area, so you couldn't be found. So people were winning in that. In that way. And, I mean, it's not like you're getting much player power. It's all, like, aesthetics. Transmog, you can get. Transmog, you can get a mount. There's a new B mount that looks absolutely slay. And there's home decor. Like, you can. There's this nice little Silver Moon swing and things of that nature. So, I mean, outside. Outside. Yeah. I was like, swing, swing. Of course, my. Of course my head went to something else. I'm talking about the one, like, at the playground, y'. All. [00:24:59] Speaker B: Okay, yeah. [00:25:00] Speaker A: Keep your bottle. So, yeah, that ended up being kind of like a little bit of a hot mess in the beginning. They did fix it and patch it to where you were able to play it correctly, and no one can cheat. The other aspect of the patch that came out was the opening of what we call the Voidforge. Have you done any of the Void Storm stuff? [00:25:24] Speaker B: Yes. I have been pestered by my chat to finish the voidforge storyline. I have not, but I know that it's another way for you to reroll another mythic or to get another mythic item. And that was glitchy. Correct. For a lot of people where they didn't get a role. [00:25:41] Speaker A: Right. It was okay. So the premise of that is you have to pretty much go through a series of quests. It's complete mythic dungeons, kill a raid boss, finish a delve, right? And you had to do that five different sets of times. Like, you had to kill three of those objectives five times. And so you go through the quest, you do your thing, and once you unlock the bonus roll portion of it, you got two rolls. Now, when you use a bonus roll in a mythic dungeon, you get. There's a pool of loot that you get. And after you reroll, if you get something and you get what you want, great. If not, they take that item out of the potential loot. Pool so that the next time you reroll, instead of rolling for four items, you're going to roll for three items because you already got the one item. The bug was people were rerolling twice and they were getting the same duplicate item that was supposed to be taken out of the pool. [00:26:38] Speaker B: My God, that's so annoying. [00:26:40] Speaker A: Right? So then, of course, people were complaining. They just recently hot fixed it where everyone who rolled before the Hotfix got refunded the coins back and bitch, they got to keep the items too. [00:26:53] Speaker B: So. [00:26:53] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I guess that was like a oops, we're sorry sort of moment. But that's a big thing. But I think the other big issue with the patch was the time gating aspect. So I don't know. Dylan, have you ever participated in the, it's called the Turbo Boost of the season, like mid season, where you like, juice up your gear with more Crest, like they increase the item level of your items. [00:27:18] Speaker B: No, I haven't. What? Please explain. [00:27:20] Speaker A: Okay, so it's supposed to be, it's supposed to be a thing where guilds that are struggling in progression and raiding, they, they go, hey, in the middle of the season, they'll say, here's a Turbo boost. We're going to give you six more item levels on all your gear, right? So you go and you grind out the Crest and these six item levels per person in the whole raid. That's a lot of extra firepower to finish through. Well, for this Midnight patch specifically, we can only Turbo boost our weapons and our trinkets to get more item level on it. But when people were ready to go in, they realized, oh, we have to collect an item four times and you can only get the item once a week. So now people had to wait four weeks in order to get this little Turbo boost patch. And people were kind of like, well, it wasn't clarified or it wasn't communicated to us that we had to do and make this wait. So of course a lot of people got really upset about that. So outside of that, I haven't touched the Void Assault. I think the patch is fine. Fine. I think the addition of the Core Duels are cool. There's new mounts to collect and new Transmogs. But I think overall they know they kind of like, maybe drop the ball on this one just a little bit. But we still love them. They're human, right? We all make mistakes. [00:28:41] Speaker B: I, I, that's like one thing that we're pretty passionate about on this podcast is like, I mean, I come from a gaming background. So I know that, like, I get it when people are like, really mad that they don't get what they want from a game. But I also think that the level of scrutiny that we have for the timeline that Blizzard has given this game, we are getting a lot of content in a short time frame. There is bound to be bugs, glitches, issues that come up as. As long as it's playable, I think that's the. That's the metric that we want. Is it playable? In the instance of decor hunts? It wasn't. So they fixed it pretty quickly. I think in most games, if things were buggy like that, if they were unplayable, you wouldn't be getting a patch fixing that for another two weeks. Like, the fact that they're like, prioritizing fixes. They're prioritizing like, they're understanding, like, oh, we messed up here. I think that's huge. Like, listen, call me crazy, drinking the Kool Aid, but I think that it's very rare for a game company to admit that they are not delivering a stellar product that they expect that you expect them to deliver. So for them to kind of fall on their own sword and be like, listen, we messed up here is huge. You wouldn't get that, like, from most games. Now that I know that decor hunts are out though, I will see you all on the battleground as a broom. Okay. Because, yes, I'm a prop hunt girly. I love my prop hunt shout out. Okay. For those, that. For the. For the girls that know, there was a Dead by Daylight like game. It was an asymmetrical horror game. I think it was called Prop Night or something like that. It was like a prop hunt dead by daylight light game that doesn't exist anymore. But the girls that know know, and I miss that game. And so I'll be able to like, kind of relive that fantasy a little bit with some World of Warcraft God you just got. I'm now excited. I. I streamed Warcraft 3 this morning. I should have streamed to core hunts for the game. [00:30:52] Speaker A: You're gonna have a time. I was. I was screeching, screaming. I felt like I was playing dead by daylight. I like the damn show coming after me. It like, it was such a rush and it was. And there's so many ways you can. You have so many abilities, right? You can switch with different decor around you in the area. So if you're. If there's like a detector coming towards you, you can switch out. There's a long cooldown on the Ability though. So you're like, oh my God, I hope we were juking people. We were like. I felt like I was playing football the way I was breaking people's ankles, man. I was like, I was doing good. I did get caught a lot the first initial rounds, but then I kind of got used to the groove and I was like, yes, this is the one. This is a little short match. [00:31:35] Speaker B: I love when I'm about to sneeze. It's about to be nasty. [00:31:38] Speaker A: Do your thing. [00:31:39] Speaker B: Oh, okay. No, we're good. I love when World or the Blizzard devs do a very strange game mode. Like, I was one of the strongest like advocates for Plunderstorm, even though it wasn't people's tea. I loved Plunderstorm because I was like, oh, it's like I feel like I'm playing Fortnite. Kind of like I'm doing this little battle royale thing. I was starting to come up with like storylines in my head whenever I made a character and I was like, I gotta get a win on this character in order to move on to the next character. And like it was fun on stream. So I'm curious in decor hunts, are you playing as your character or is it like a full separate game mode that you go from like the main [00:32:25] Speaker A: menu, you play as your character. There is a little intro quest that you can pick up in by the bank area in Silver Moon and it'll take you to the NPC like a breadcrumb. And then yeah, you just queue up. There's a queue system so you don't have to like find a group or anything. You can just queue right in from wherever you are. [00:32:43] Speaker B: Cool. [00:32:44] Speaker A: You come in and you'll have a pre made group and you'll either start as a Hider or the Seeker. There's different abilities. Yeah, it's very easy. Just like Thunderstorm, right? You're in a waiting area, you go do your thing. By the way, I love Plunderstorm too. Like we love Plunder Store, but yeah, no, it's very simple. They made it very easy to participate in, which I think is really cool. And it gives something for non PvE players to kind of bite their teeth into. Because right now you know, we're getting a lot of like the Sims girlies. Like we're getting a lot of the people that like world building Minecraft because housing has been such a hit. I've been seeing so, so many people make amazing stuff out there and just like the creativity and content, it's insane. So of course Blizzard's gonna be like, hey, we need to supplement our game to kind of cater to this brand new influx of interest and people that are like, dealing with our housing systems. Because housing systems have been around in MMOs since the beginning, right? There's housing systems in EverQuest and there's housing system in Guild Wars. So it's. It's long overdue. And I think the big, I guess, obstacle in the past where they didn't want to bring housing is they thought it was going to make the cities emptier and make the towns like ghost towns, but I think it's the opposite effect. Like you have these now neighborhoods where every neighborhood is different. Like you have like legit neighbors and you can bring yourself into. More into the game. So I think that's just such a great step in. Wow. And I think that's why Midnight is going to be one of the top three expansions of all time. Because of these features they keep on coming out with. [00:34:30] Speaker B: Yeah, I. I fully agree with you. I think Midnight has a lot more staying power. I. This happens all the time with every expansion. People are like, this was the worst expansion ever. This was the worst expansion ever. Like, they'll always keep saying that. And we all know that the worst expansion ever was Shadowlands. But no, no. Okay, listen, not too much, not too much. I'm so sorry my Shadowland lover is out there. But all two of you. I. I joke. The thing that I wanted to ask you though, is because if you were talking about your top three expansions and you would consider Midnight in that top three, what are your other two top expansion packs? And wow. And why. [00:35:13] Speaker A: Yeah, right off the gate. Burning Crusade is my favorite expansion of all time. [00:35:18] Speaker B: Okay. [00:35:19] Speaker A: And maybe because it's the nostalgia, but I think Burning Crusade had the perfect mix of lore, the story where we love, we love our local thoughts and our Illidan. Right. Lady Vash. Oh, Lady Vash is another baddie. Honorable mention. Yeah, Mother Olympics. But tbc, you, you know, it still had that vanilla essence where, yeah, things were harder, gameplay was slower, but you really did need a community of people to help you get through things. And then the rating was amazing. They had the different T5 rating. It was all in different instances. You had Serpent's Shrine Cavern, you had Tempest Keep. Right. So it was thematically one of my favorites. And then my second favorite was Legion. Legion's my second favorite of all time. And I think Legion's kind of like it brought WOW out literally off of life support. Because for those that don't know that Wad was an amazing expansion until we got into that two year gap of no content because they literally said, we got to pull the plug on Watt. Let's get Legion started. So they started a lot of Legion stuff because the content was a cut in. Warlords of Drano would have been an amazing expansion. Yeah, but they cut content. We were stuck with our little mission tables in our garrisons and like a. Could make some good gold back then. I know people who still have gold that they made from the mission tables and Warlords of Draenor. I was like, damn, is that. Was that your Roth IRA account? Like, what the hell? But yeah. Legion. Second favorite. Just the class halls. The esthetic of the. The. The questing. The class hall quests were amazing. Just the cast of main characters in the story. Right. Sylvanas variant. All of them. It's. [00:37:23] Speaker B: It. [00:37:24] Speaker A: It'll be my top two. We'll see where Midnight ends because I. That's why it's in my top three. By the end of the last patch, then I can comfortably put Midnight in between one of those, depending. [00:37:34] Speaker B: I agree. [00:37:35] Speaker A: I. I have really high hopes for it. [00:37:37] Speaker B: Yeah, I have high hopes too. I really hope that they stick the landing with these next few patches because I think the next one is definitely going to be in Zuloman. Like, we're gonna get some Amani Troll story, which I'm excited about. I love the Amani Trolls, but I just want it to feel like it makes sense for the story trajectory that we're on. I've talked about this previously on the Pod. Where previous expansions tend to have this like, weird thing they'll do where we'll get like intense story, another patch following that story, another. Maybe another patch following that story, and then some random freaking patch at the end that has nothing to do with what it is that we're doing. And they try to make it make sense. I'm looking at Mechagon, but like, it. It just makes no sense whatsoever. Okay. But I. I like those. I. I haven't fully played through tbc. I tried to level up a bit Blood Elf when Classic came out, but then Midnight came out and this is actually one thing that I want them to do in Wow. I would play more classic and get my feet wet and trying it out. If I was getting Trading Post Progress playing Classic. Like I want them to introduce like quests or something. It doesn't have to be that I'm unlocking stuff for Classic, but it would, I think, incentivize some of these Classic players to Try out retail knowing, oh, I have a ton of tender that I've just been earning by playing classic. Likewise, if I'm a retail player, it's going to incentivize me to want to play classic because then I don't feel like I'm losing progress by like trying out something new. Because that is one of the inhibitors of me like spending more time in classic. I'm like, well, I got to finish my Trading Post. Right? [00:39:35] Speaker A: Right. No, you're, it's, it's really interesting. Right? We, we play games for enjoyment, but I've always said that just playing MMOs in general has been such a, like it's a goal oriented activity. You're, you're. You log in and you go, all right, all right, bitch. What I got? What do I have to do today? Do I have to fill my vault? Do I have to like decorate my house? Do I gotta do this? So the power of incentivizing that, I can see that being a very popular thing. I could see some backlash from some purists as I why do I got to play classic in order to get retail stuff and vice versa was like, bitch is optional. Right? And we're giving people more options is a great thing. [00:40:17] Speaker B: So. [00:40:18] Speaker A: So I definitely agree with you on that. [00:40:20] Speaker B: And it's like one of those things where like, like currently in retail, if you're leveling up your Trading Post, you can do it in a variety of different ways. You can do like just focus on PvP and there's PvP quests there or raiding. You're like, I only do raids. Cool, cool. Well, you do enough of those raids, you might be able to fill your Trading Post. Altaholics. It's like, oh, I'm doing so many quests and doing so much profession stuff that I am able to fill that Trading Post. So there's like clearly better ways to do it than others. So just why not tack on classic quests onto that? It's like, oh, level up or do the X amount of quests in Classic. And you also add progress to your Trading Post. Right? Blizzard, you can have that one for free. Okay. [00:41:05] Speaker A: Yeah, [00:41:07] Speaker B: I, I also want to know because you were talking about this earlier and listen, I don't think art is a fighting game, girly. But you said you were, so I need to nerd out a little bit about fighting games because I. That is like one of my secret other like games that I love and I suck at them. I suck at fighting games. And previously I had been a big of a big mindset of like, wow. I really want to see what, like, Blizzard's take on a fighting game is. But then. But then Riot came out with two xko and I said, never mind. I don't. Yeah, I actually don't want to know because I. Listen, if you love 2xk out there. I don't. And that's fine. Uh, and I. It's because I play games for the story and there's no story in 2x ko so, anyway, to get back on track. Mortal Kombat. I love Mortal Kombat. It's like one of my favorite fighting games of all time. I. I like it probably just as much as I love World of Warcraft. So what is your fighting game like, background? I know you were talking about Mortal Kombat earlier, but I just want to nerd out a little bit. Some fight. [00:42:23] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mortal Kombat 100%. I played. I've been more of like, the older variations. I have played like the Mortal Kombat 10 and the more recent ones and. And they've introduced a lot more story into those, obviously, which is a really good element. But my first. Oh, my God. My first fighting game was Street Fighter. Street Fighter Special Shot. That movie's coming out very soon. [00:42:49] Speaker B: So excited. Yes. [00:42:52] Speaker A: Street Fighter. The big fighting games with the combos. I'm. Oh, my God. What was the name of that fighting game that was like 86 combo? Oh, Jago was the ninja. Glacius. [00:43:07] Speaker B: Oh, Killer Instinct. [00:43:09] Speaker A: Killer Instinct. [00:43:10] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:43:11] Speaker A: I loved that game. And I would spend hours trying to perfect the damn juggling combinations. Obviously. Tekken. Dead or Alive. Oh, my goodness. Those girlies are badass. [00:43:25] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:43:26] Speaker A: I just loved all those types of games. It's been a minute. It's been a minute since I've been back to that. But yeah, I. I love a good fighting game, so. But yeah, those usually like my mainstays of that. [00:43:39] Speaker B: Yeah. Give me the. The messier the physics engine on the women's chest, the more iconic the video game. [00:43:47] Speaker A: Yes, yes. [00:43:48] Speaker B: I'm like, those should not be moving in that way, but they are so fears. I love. Yeah. [00:43:54] Speaker A: Kasumi from Dead or Alive has almost turned me straight. Almost. Okay. Chun Lee will forever be mother like Tammy. I can't wait. I. Oh, my God. [00:44:06] Speaker B: I can't wait either. That movie. Okay. That movie is going to be so fierce. I also already have my tickets for the second Mortal Kombat film that's coming out in like. Yes. Like a week or two. I can't wait. Okay. So sorry, sorry. Glad to Geek out. Glad to geek out. I am very excited to see, like, where the story of Mortal Kombat goes. I need to get more into Street Fighter. I, I like the older games. It's the newer games that has been very overwhelming for me. But this newest one was so good at being like an introductory Street Fighter game if you've like never played any of them before. [00:44:40] Speaker A: Oh, okay. [00:44:42] Speaker B: They introduced because like in Street Fighter they have like the like rotational combos where you're like doing this is like down, like semicircle X, Y, like stuff like that. So in this new one they have more traditional control schemes if you want to play with that where it doesn't involve like doing any kind of rotations, which I think is really cool. And there's like a whole storyline and everything. If you haven't played the newest Street Fighter, highly recommend it. It's very, very good. All right, so we talked about, Midnight, talked about fighting games. We talked about just in general, like gaming stuff. But I want to know more of the gay side. Caleb, the game dog. So if, if you're okay talking about it, how has it been for you being like openly queer in like the, the gaming space? Also I'm very curious about like, you know, going for your doctorate when it comes to like, I don't know, just in general, like how. What is your queer journey like? [00:45:51] Speaker A: Yeah, so I mean it was, it's been, it's, it's been interesting because I do remember back in the day on Team Speak, ventrilo mumble. Right. [00:46:05] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:46:05] Speaker A: I, I had friends and it was very like, I'm, I'm more on the cusp of elder millennial. Right. Her age. Right. So it was, it was interesting because they were like, Caleb. It's like, Caleb, you're so metrosexual. That was like the thing to say back then. You're so metrosexual. And I was like, girl, I'm gay. But I didn't really come out saying that. So I do, I do envy the younger generation of folks growing into their queerness and I think it's a wonderful, beautiful thing and, and to be able to be themselves online. For me it's interesting because I as, I'm a professional on in my day to day, right. I'm a professor, I'm a school counselor, I'm an administrator. I thought it was always important to be, to be a visual representation of what you can do as a person of queerness, as a person of color. Right. I think that's very important. But I so like I preface by saying this. None of my students know my social media. I completely smart separate the two. Yeah, right. The only time I've been clocked was someone reverse Google imaged me and they found my account. I'm like, God damn. All right, you did your homework. But yeah, going back to it. Like, I keep, I try to keep. And I'm not saying that I'm. I'm different from my day to day versus my online and especially with my queerness. Right. I'm open and I'm. I'm happy who I am, but there's like, I don't know, for students. I don't want the pressure of them gifting subs to me donating because I think that's unethical. They're broke college kids, right. I don't want them the pressure of doing that. But anyway, I digress. Going back to was. It was interesting. Like, I remember. I think I remember on Discord or. It wasn't Discord, it was team speak. And they were like talking and stuff and they were like, they were talking about Jessica Alba or something like, oh, she's so hot, she's so fine or whatever. They're like, caleb, who do you like? I was like, well, I like Paul Walker and everyone. This is a pause in the room. I was like, wait, you're gay? I was like, yeah. And like, oh, okay. And like it just went on. [00:48:34] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:48:35] Speaker A: So that's like one of the moments where it's like my identity of queerness, like came to be in the online space and ever since that big moment, it's just like, yeah, fudge it. Like, it's just I am who I am. It's. And it's different. I know it sounds weird for us to talk about that, but I still think like, you know, we all have our coming out stories and you're not. You don't come out to everybody all at the same time. It's so step by step. You have to talk to people here and there and for them to know that and to get such a. A cool ass response. Right? I. It wasn't. It wasn't anything crazy. And like, I still talk to those friends to this day and I hope they know how appreciative I am of them just being like, okay, it. And we still like did a dungeon or something, you know, it's very impactful for me. And that kind of like solidified. It says, yeah, I'm gonna be out there. So I do celebrate who I am and I celebrate my queerness in. In ways That I can to always make sure I highlight the communities that, that need to be heard with voices and things on nature. And I talked a little bit about this at Ima's restaurant. Wow. [00:49:47] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:49:48] Speaker A: Table talk. I had, I had the honor of being there with NT and Teo from JoJo Gaming and it was, it was really cool to kind of like discuss about our journeys. But yeah, no, I just been vibing ever since. I've been vibing ever since. You know, I'm. If you've ever been to a stream of mine, I'm, I'm always playful. We get a little spicy, but that's how it is sometimes. But in a good way. In a good way. Not nothing. You know, everything is pretty chill. But yeah, I could just say overall it's been a positive thing. I do get a lot of messages, comments on reels, tiktoks and things of that nature where you'll have like that Troll Blank Face account like, oh, you know, go, go do this to yourself and do that to yourself. Right? Trigger warning. And it's like, I take those in stride because I know that being out there, you're going to be exposed to so many people. And, and I've had people message me as like, oh, you're such a good. Wow. Content creator. But you made this gay video, so now I'm going to unfollow you. I'm like, well, I'm not for you then. I'm not for you then. Like, what do you want me to do? Right? [00:50:57] Speaker B: You're like, well, here's like 10 other gay videos that you can go hate on me and leave a comment on every single one of them and then also leave a like, yeah, exactly, Tee. [00:51:06] Speaker A: So it's been interesting navigating that more recently, but like, you find your tribe and the people that are love you are gonna love you and the people that you attract are gonna be there with you for life. And I wouldn't want people that don't want to be around me to be in my area anyway, you know what I mean? So. But yeah, I mean, pretty much that's, that's it as far as how my journey's been navigating myself as, as a gay man in the online space. [00:51:32] Speaker B: No, that's. I think that's fascinating. I, I think similarly to you. I think the first time I ever like, officially came out was on set. Skype. It was either Skype or aim. [00:51:45] Speaker A: Oh my God. A what was your AIM screen? Dan, I'm sorry to cut you off. [00:51:49] Speaker B: Okay, okay. I Think it was Funky Monkey 4710. So stupid. And I think I. And you know what's crazier is I'm pretty sure that was my grandma's AIM account because I. I'd never had my own because I just used my grandma's computer. So I was up late at night having like ASL conversations with randoms, which I'm pretty sure on my grandma's AIM account. [00:52:26] Speaker A: Why was everybody. Why was everybody 14 female California or 15 male New York City girl? We were outliving these fantasies. [00:52:35] Speaker B: No, truly, no. [00:52:38] Speaker A: That's. [00:52:38] Speaker B: That's so amazing to hear. I remember for me, when it came to like coming out, it was so interesting because the friends that I had in high school were like my gaming friends. Like we were playing like TF2 together. We were playing a little bit of Counter Strike, Gary's Model, like these games like back in the day and we would get on calls on like Skype or Teamspeak or we would just use the in game like voice chat if they. If they had one and we would just like yak it up. But I would be like portraying someone I'm not. And it wasn't until after high school that I eventually did come out that I realized how much more fun it was to like be in calls and playing games with people a who knew more of who I was. But also like very similar to me because listen, anyone out there, if you're not yapping and like gagging with the gays in a game, you have not game. Truly though I used to do like late nights playing like Smite and Heroes of the Storm like later in life and we would just be the most like ridiculous, insane like we'd have the most ridiculous, insane gay conversations as we're like, you know, killing mythical gods and Smite or running around as Arthas talking about how hot and daddy he is while you know, trying to not die in here's the Storm. Anyway, I digress. It's been, it's been a very interesting journey though seeing like how much the online space has changed because I think we are of a similar age. And so it's very interesting to see a. How the gaming space is completely different and also the content space because I think I may have talked about this on stream previously, but I've been in the content space now for like 12 years. Yeah. And I was one of the first, not the first, but one of the first openly gay Twitch streamers like Twitch Partners. And I. I think, I don't know if I've Ever told the story on stream. We are. Yeah. I was invited to the very second St. Jude play live that they ever did. And when I was at that event, I remember being the only openly gay person in the entire, like, invited list. And I had five separate instances, this was crazy. Of straight men coming up to me and trying to be forgiven for the slurs that they said on their stream. They would come up to me and be like, so I said this on my stream. We're cool, right? And of course I'd be like, absolutely not. We're not cool. Like, holy shit. But nowadays that would never happen. Like, you would never have, like, someone have that conversation with you or, like, come up to you in such a bold fashion. So I'm just so glad that, like, the industry has changed so much and there are so many, like, LGBTQI plus content creators, not just in the WOW space, but also, like, just in general across gaming. Like. Like, I think, like, dead by Daylight. It's almost all gay. And so it's just, like, cool to see, like, these little niches of queer creators out there and you can, like, have your pick of the litter of who you want to watch and, like, find someone that's just like you, which is super cool. [00:56:26] Speaker A: Dylan. That's amazing. I. I want to give you your flowers right now for that, because that is such. No, no, no, no, no. For real, though, like, to be able to be one of the first people to do that takes. It takes grit, it takes courage to be yourself. Right? And, like, you did that. I'm so proud of you. That's fantastic. I'm glad I learned that about you. [00:56:47] Speaker B: Yeah, it's. It was interesting. I got my start. My original username was like 8 bit homo back in the day. And yeah, I've got. Oh, God, I've got some crazy stories. Like, I'll tldr this one. I was managed by Disney back in the day and they would con. They would. This is back when I was, like, a Minecraft content creator and they would ship us off to, like, do different things. So we were doing this activation where we were playing Minecraft with our viewers and these, like, kids in a. In a movie theater. So Disney had, like, booked this movie theater and it was myself and I think, like five or six other content creators, and we were there playing Minecraft on the big screen and on our laptops. It was a lot of fun. But my in game username in Minecraft was 8 bit homo back in the day. So the kids didn't mind at all because they knew I was openly gay and they thought it was really cool to, like, meet someone who was gay. Especially back then. Back then, there were a lot of. There were quite a few openly gay, like, minecrafters in the YouTube space. There was a lot of openly gay representation in the Twitch partner space. There was less so in the live space. So I remember the management coming to me and saying, hey, we've gotten some complaints about you from the parents. We're going to have to ask you to leave. And I got kicked out of this event playing games with kids because my username was making the parents feel uncomfortable. It was so awkward. I had to stand up, close my laptop and the kids were like, where are you going? Where are you going? Where are you going? Some of which were like viewers of mine. And I was like, hey, I can't keep playing with you. I didn't want to cause a scene because I was being represented by. I was representing Disney in this instance. So I had to be like, all professional about it. And I was like, hey, I'll see you at the meet and greet after. I'm so excited to, like, chat with you all. And I had to stand at the back of the theater and watch as the rest of the influencers got to play with these kids. It was crazy. [00:59:03] Speaker A: Oh, my God, that is insanity. [00:59:05] Speaker B: Yeah, nowadays that would be a thing. Like, but it's just like, you know, the industry has changed a lot. [00:59:13] Speaker A: Yes. You've seen the changes firsthand. You were right there. [00:59:16] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, it was wild. Anyway, yeah, I could go on and on and on about this, but I just want to say thank you so much, Caleb, for joining us in this episode of Azeroth with Attitude. Truly, it's just been so amazing to see your content and we learned a little bit more about your background. Please, once again, tell us, where can people find you online? [00:59:45] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. Of course. This is what I live for. I just love the interaction and I love. I love, like, sitting down with folks and thank you so much. You could catch me. Twitch, Insta, tick tock, YouTube all. Caleb, the game doc. Yeah, it's a great time. Thank you so much. I really, really appreciate it. [01:00:10] Speaker B: Of course. I love having you. Maybe we'll have you on in the future again. We. I mean, it's always great chatting with you. Thank you all so much for tuning in. We will be doing viewer questions hopefully next week when Art is back. So we have a whole bank of questions that you all have been submitting. But if you do want to submit your questions, please submit [email protected] or leave a comment in our YouTube videos and let us know. Hey, this is a question that I want to submit. Let us know your username, Race, Class, Combo, where you're from and what your question is, and we'll get to it in a future episode. Thank you all so much for tuning in. We will see you all next week with another episode of Azeroth with Attitude. And until then, bye.