Episode 612: Warzone on Hajin Is Fine, and That's the Problem

We start with a short follow-up on the Fragmentary Order gameplay reveal. We think it ends up taking the whole extraction shooter genre from Escape from Tarkov, and the $45 Prime Batch looks like a good deal next to Tarkov's $150 editions. Then Warzone moves to Modern Warfare 4 with the new Hajin map. The early reviews are better than we expected: the movement is better and the map is fine, but the audio and performance are rough, and it's solos and quads only. Raz thinks DMZ is now officially dead, and that the real problem with Warzone is that nothing is new. Every year they get a few things right that they already got right before, so why isn't there just one Warzone that builds on the last? We also go over the MW4 launch numbers, which came in under Black Ops 7, and why Call of Duty keeps losing people. Then World of Warcraft Forever. Raz has been playing an undead warlock and explains what's different from WoW Classic, why it's the biggest WoW launch ever, and what bugs him: the long runs, the paid Skyborn race and region locking. Jake still can't tell it apart from Path of Exile. We finish on why players keep paying for old versions of games like Old School RuneScape and WoW Classic, and which Call of Duty we'd freeze forever. The two-hour Fragmentary Order reveal breakdown is on Patreon: patreon.com/thedropshot 0:00 - Intro 2:37 - Today's lineup 3:06 - New Patreon bonus on Fragmentary Order 4:57 - Fragmentary Order: Tarkov in space 7:09 - Tarkov is ugly and clunky. This isn't 10:35 - Jake: the stuff outside the raid 12:18 - Playable as soon as December? 13:29 - War Dogs at 60%, Fragmentary Order at 95% 15:44 - Why stop-start betas suck 17:41 - Does GTA 6 hurt Fragmentary Order? 18:46 - Will the NDA let us talk? 19:17 - The $45 Prime Batch vs Tarkov's $150 editions 21:16 - One extraction shooter takes the whole genre 22:24 - Warzone moves to MW4 23:25 - DMZ is officially dead 24:55 - What Warzone on Hajin got right 25:42 - Audio and performance are rough 26:24 - Aim assist is too strong again 26:55 - Grabber drone and movable cover 28:51 - Mixed reviews, leaning positive 29:33 - Day one hype always fades 30:26 - Why can't we just have one Warzone? 33:50 - Battle royales are played out 35:16 - Jake: nothing gets me back on it 36:33 - Solos and quads only 37:38 - Not enough players to split the playlists 38:32 - The XDefiant problem 39:39 - MW4 launch numbers came in under Black Ops 7 44:41 - Is Call of Duty finally slipping? 46:27 - From the classics to Vanguard 49:11 - What can Call of Duty even do now? 50:18 - A data-driven dopamine machine 51:16 - Peaks and valleys 52:54 - We've seen this before: MW3 to BO6 53:36 - World of Warcraft Forever 54:21 - Raz the MMO guy 56:09 - What WoW Forever actually is 58:10 - Reviews: slow, old school, long runs 59:27 - You're not 14 anymore 1:00:08 - Raz's WoW history 1:00:44 - The plan: ranked Battlegrounds 1:02:15 - Biggest WoW launch ever 1:03:00 - Jake: it looks like 2004 1:04:05 - Don't call your game retail 1:05:10 - Where Forever goes next decides everything 1:06:32 - Who's streaming it 1:07:26 - WoW vs Path of Exile, explained 1:10:23 - Leveling vs endgame: where MMOs fail 1:15:05 - Open world PvP 1:16:55 - Auction house and the PoE economy 1:17:42 - Blue fireball this time 1:18:10 - Ugly, boring and region locked 1:21:19 - Smoothest launch in WoW history 1:22:13 - Skyborn, the paid race 1:23:01 - Included in the normal sub. Right call? 1:24:05 - Why players keep buying the old version 1:27:33 - Which CoD would you freeze forever? 1:29:50 - Why not Aion 2? Pay-to-win whales 1:33:21 - Playing it for the pod 1:34:00 - Wrap up and next Saturday _Note: timestamps may be slightly misaligned on podcast apps (but not on YouTube) due to dynamic ads._ The podcast is available wherever you listen to podcasts, and ad-free & early access versions - as well as bonus episodes - are available to all of our Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/thedropshot) supporters. We stream the podcast live on our YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/c/thedropshotpodcast) every Saturday morning at ~9 o'clock