Overwatch Gameplay Review

Welcome back agents!

As promised, this week I want to talk about the series of gameplay previews posted on the Overwatch youtube page over the past two months. We have previews for all of the currently known heroes as of this past Thursday, and now it's time to analyze a bit. I recommend watching the videos if you haven't to this point. Most of them are entertaining to watch, although a couple characters have this issue of being somewhat dull to watch without having hands on experience. Keep in mind as we go that I don't have a ton of experience with team based shooters so take my my thoughts with a grain of salt.

First I want to talk about the base UI. These videos are the first time we see a version of the in game interface. As with anything there are some things to like and some things to be improved upon. This is a pre-alpha version of the game obviously, but that doesn't mean that we can't critique and provide feedback on what we are given.

He we have the base UI for Tracer out of combat before the game starts. The targeting reticle is a small circle at the center of the screen. The bottom left side of the screen has the player health bar in white, and armor in blue and the current total health amount larger next to the hero portrait. The bottom right side tracks the current ammo count and cooldown for your on use abilities. Shift usually controls your movement speed ability (in Tracer's case her Blink), and E controls a secondary ability that varies from character to character (her Recall ability). The blue arrows at the center of the screen depict the number of charges of Blink available. And finally the bottom center of the screen tracks progress toward your hero's ultimate ability. Throughout the action you will see the ability charge up based on damage done, damage taken, and for some heroes, damage absorbed or healed. Overall I think the UI is ok for this stage in the game. Vital information is all readily available, and the UI itself helps to explain how the character plays right from the start. I am a fan of a minimalist approach to user interface for most games, but I'm sure there are people out there who want more information. There are a couple of things worth noting. As you can see in the videos, once the game actually starts the timer at the top of the screen lets you know if capture points are currently being taken, and in the case of payload maps, how far along the payload is to a checkpoint, and how many players are actively escorting it. The other is the gun icon at the bottom right, depicting Tracer's Pulse Pistols. This may be nothing of importance, but it may suggest that different weapon types may eventually become available at some point. This could simply be an old aspect of the game that has yet to be removed so it may be nothing, but I think it's worth drawing attention to.

Of course there are also some issues with the UI that may not be as apparent from Tracer's point of view.

Here we have screenshots from Zarya and Winstons perspective. One of the issues that is present throughout these videos is the amount of screen real estate that the character and guns take up. In Zarya's case, Her Particle Cannon and left arm take up nearly a third of the screen and can take even more when she is firing as a beam. Winston meanwhile, has a Tesla Cannon that takes up a decent amount of room, but he also has a left arm that comes into view every step that he takes that blocks vision on that side of the screen. Don't get me wrong, I love the attention to detail that Blizzard is taking when integrating these characters. This is in line with how a gorilla would run so it fits for you to see it in front of you to maintain the fantasy of playing as a giant rage-ape from the moon. However, one of Blizzard's own values is "Gameplay first" and the character models taking up that much of the screen hurts the gameplay in my opinion. There have been countless posts on the Overwatch Reddit with complaints and requests for a field of view slider as is typically present in present day shooters. They have listed issues with nausea and headaches resulted from a FOV that is too small, and as of now the only response we have heard from Blizzard was that they wanted to have a locked FOV in order to create an even playing field for new and experienced shooter players. I understand Blizzard's desire to keep UI aspects consistent among all players, but at the same time I can sympathize with players being concerned about actual medical issues as a result of the current state of things. We have evidence, especially lately with what happened in World of Warcraft surrounding flying, that Blizzard is willing to compromise. I think a fair compromise would be to increase the field of vision, or at the very least scale back the size ratio of the character models, and then lock the FOV and weapon size there.

Some aspects of the combat UI can also feel cluttered once the fighting begins.

Both of these screenshots show both sides of Mercy's channelled ability to empower her targets attacks. From Mercy's point of view, we have a huge health bar in the the center of the screen obviously meant to give information and urge you to switch to her healing channel if your target starts coming under fire. The problem is that the bar appears directly in the center of the screen where your eyes naturally go as you move around the battlefield. As I watched the gameplay video for Mercy I couldn't help but feel like that aspect of her UI was too prominent and distracted from what was actually happening in the fight. It's similar to how players new to healing in WoW can tunnel vision their player frames and end up standing in the fire and dying themselves. I understand this shouldn't be a problem for experienced players, but it could present a problem for new players intrigued by the prospects of healing in a shooter. The second screenshot shows the same power-up being provided to Pharah. It's hard to tell from a still image, but the blue arrows on the outside of the screen scroll by continuously while you are being channelled on. I think the one central blue arrow next to your targeting reticle is enough to let you know you are being powered up. The outside ones are almost a distraction to me. I could be being overly critical of this but it's just another thing on the screen in a fight that I don't think needs to be there.

Outside of the UI, I think there is a lot to be excited about from these previews. The game length seems to be between 7 and 12 minutes depending on how close the game is. This is great for a couple of reasons. First, games that are roughly 10 minutes long lend themselves to short game sessions really well. One of the things that turned me off of League of Legends was playing for 45 minutes to an hour only to lose. The fact that I can log into the game on a lunch break or quickly before I head out for the day and get a few games in is really exciting. Secondly, the 7 and 8 minute games are pretty one sided where one ream doesn't capture the first point or reach the first checkpoint with the payload. Everyone has been in one of those games where you are just getting steamrolled. They aren't fun and if they last too long they can turn people off of the game. The fact that the games are designed to be short makes it easier to shake off a bad loss and also makes the closer games last longer so you have more chances to make plays to come out on top.

The maps themselves are really well designed as well. From what I can tell, there are tons of narrow halls and choke points that lead to a lot of interaction from the start. And Blizzard has done a really good job making the maps seem vertical as well to take advantage of difference heroes mobility. Widowmaker and Hanzo have no shortage of places to set up shop above the fight using their grappling hook and wall climb. Likewise, Torbjorn and Bastion have plenty of places they can strategically set up turrets and siege mode to "safely" hold off the other team. Given my limited shooter experience, there could be some shortcomings I'm missing with these maps that more experienced players can see, but so far I'm very impressed.

If these videos were meant to get me even more excited for Overwatch then it definitely succeeded. Selfishly I am worried that Wednesday will come and we will have nothing else to view or analyze on this game, but that's what is great about it. This world is all new to us, and every tidbit we get will be brand new. With all that being said, feel free as always to comment with your thoughts or hopes for Overwatch.

Thanks for reading as always,

Chris

A quick trip around the Blizzard landscape

Greetings Travelers!

This week I have been somewhat distracted by real life things. As a result I haven't been able to give as much though to a full post this week. Next week the plan is to dive into the series of Overwatch videos Blizzard has been releasing over the past few weeks. I want to touch on the gameplay itself as well as the UI elements that have been a hot topic around the internet. For this week, I'll just touch on the few things that have happened across Blizzard's game in the last couple weeks.

World of Warcraft

The much maligned issue of Flying in Draenor was tackled by Blizzard as I'm sure most players are aware. I touched on the subject myself a couple of weeks ago, and I'll just elaborate by saying I am happy with Blizzard's decision to instate flying with 6.2. It will have to be earned through a series of achievements which shouldn't be much trouble for most players who care about flying to accomplish. I myself unlocked all of the achievements necessary up to 6.1 just through leveling and normal daily content. There is an argument that by gating the ability to fly behind a bunch of exploration and questing content, that Blizzard is giving us flying only after making us do all the things we wanted flying for in the first place. I think the argument is fair, but I don't have a problem with developers and designers not wanting content that they spend time creating simply being passed over and potentially ignored for convenience sake. I understand that not all content is for all players and it should be the players choice how they enjoy the game, but I'm fine with trusting a company to create a sense of immersion with their content and allowing that to dictate my gameplay to certain extent.

With that being said, 6.2 hits on Tuesday and along with it Tanaan Jungle and Hellfire Citadel the REMIX! I'll will no doubt write a post detailing my experiences once I've had a chance to dive in. Blizzard posted a developer Q&A on June 13th that touched on some of the changes as well as a variety of other topics. After watching I came away with the opinion that they realize a lot of the missteps of Warlords so far, and are looking to avoid them in the future. There were are few times where their response to a criticism was just simply "we were wrong". I like when a company has the awareness to be able to look past what can often be a loud offensive critical minority of fans, and acknowledge their shortcomings. Don't get me wrong, they have a lot of work to do. And I'm fairly certain that Warlords of Draenor has been somewhat of a nail in the coffin of the prospects of Warcraft returning to its heyday. As someone who enjoys some aspects of the game and finds himself finding other things to do with his gaming time far more often than he used to, I can only hope that Blizzard learns from their mistakes this expansion and can keep me interested going forward.

Starcraft

Last week amidst all the gaming keynotes at E3 there was a PC gaming show which Blizzard attended. Most of the show was sort of dull and slow with only a few real gameplay previews or demos over the course of 3 hours. Blizzard came in toward the end of the show and gave one of the few true presentations. In addition to some Heroes of the Storm stuff that I'll touch on later, Dustin Browder and Chris Sigaty announced Prologue missions for Legacy of the Void that will be free to play for everyone.  I think this is a nice touch when paired with the fact that Legacy of the Void won't require players to own the previous Starcraft 2 expansions. This will let those of us who dabble in Starcraft for the story get caught up with what's going on heading in to Legacy without some tie in novel as has been the case previously. I like Christie Golden and recommend her novels to anyone who loves Blizzard lore, but they shouldn't be required for people to get the whole story. I'm excited to see the culmination of this story and I'm glad more people will be able to see part of it for free.

Heroes of the Storm

Along with the Starcraft announcement, Blizzard surprisingly also showed a new trailer for the Eternal Conflict which gave us some new tidbits. We got a full blown preview of the Skeleton King, a new Diablo Warrior, and a look at the model for the Monk, a Diablo Support. Leoric the Skeleton King has a very interesting trait that allows his ghost to stay on the battlefield while he is dead, and his attacks accelerate his resurrection timer. His kit seems pretty strong and his trait is a nice twist on death mechanics. It is somewhat similar to Uther and Tyreal and their traits but it seems like Leoric's can have a lot more of an impact. The Monk fills the Support deficit we are seeing currently and less importantly fills the gap at Diablo Support. What we have yet to see if whether or not the Monk will be a true Support or a hybrid similar to Tassadar and Tyrande. Right now there is a balance issue in matchmaking where a team with Tassadar as a support will be matched against a team with a Brightwing or Uther who fill more a true healer role. Blizzard has mentioned a couple times that they want to recategorize some heroes for this reason, but we haven't been given any details.  Blizzard has been knocking it out of the park leading up to this event in Heroes of the Storm. What we originally thought was simply going to be a couple of heroes and new battleground, has become at least 4 heroes, multiple skins, and potentially multiple battlegrounds. I really like the precedent that the Eternal Conflict can set for Heroes going forward. Hopefully we see it expanded to not only Starcraft, Warcraft, and Retro games, but also crossovers and things like that. Blizzard seems to be all-in on Heroes of the Storm and I am excited to see what happens.

Hearthstone

Tavern Brawl launched this past week along with the first 3 new hero portraits. I'm not going to spend any more time on the portraits since they've been talked almost to death. But I do want to talk about Tavern Brawl a little bit. I've seen a lot of criticism that the feature isn't an online tournament mode. I don't think people quite understand the kind of behind the scenes work that a tournament mode requires. I don't doubt that we will see a tournament feature in the Hearthstone client eventually, but it is a completely different set of matchmaking and player pairing system than is currently in place. Blizzard would also need to implement some kind of server side locks prohibiting deck changes or just determining tournament format rules and how to enforce them unilaterally. All in all it is a ton of work and as someone who wants it as much as the next guy, I want it to run correctly once it's here. What we did get in Tavern Brawl is a bit disappointing from the bit I've played so far. Ragnaros vs Nefarious seems a bit lopsided in Nefarion's favor primarily due to his card advantage from his hero power, and his mana advantage from starting with 4 mana crystals. It is not impossible for Ragnaros but he definitely starts on the back foot. I got a good hour of enjoyment out of seeing all the new cards specific to the brawl decks, but after that it gets pretty stale. I'm also a little concerned given the balance issues this week. We can't look past the difficulty of creating a new twist week after week. And if a event for the week of Tavern Brawl isn't properly tested or implimented, people could be turned off quickly. When the main complaint with the game is that there isn't enough to do besides ladder and arena, you can't really afford to have a new mode fizzle out. In all fairness, the could be weeks where whatever mode we are given is exciting and addicting, but for now I'm not sure it has the staying power it needs.

And that should be about it for this week. Next week I'll be going in depth on Overwatch. As always, comments are always appreciated. Thanks for reading.

Till next time,
Chris

The Eternal Conflict

Welcome back friends!

In my "break" from committing and real game time to World of Warcraft, I've been spending a lot of time making another Legend push in Hearthstone, and playing a lot of Heroes of the Storm with friends. The game is a ton of fun, especially when playing with a group you can talk to over Skype or whatever your voice chat of preference is. And this past weekend Blizzard gave us an event that we should have had in London at the actual launch event. But I won't go into that because I want to do a positive post ffs. Blizzard announced their first in what I'm going to assume is a series of in-game events of sorts.

The Eternal Conflict is a series of in-game releases based around the Diablo universe. It began, somewhat unceremoniously with the release of Johanna, and will continue for "a few months". We were shown a preview of the Butcher and our eighth battleground, The Battlefields of Eternity. I like the approach Blizzard is taking by creating an event around its releases. Let's face it, the Diablo and Starcraft universes are heavily overshadowed by Warcraft in Heroes at the moment. We still need a Diablo Support and a Starcraft Warrior. The approach of a theme surrounding releases spices up normal hero releases in comparison to other games. 

The Battlefields of Eternity battleground is our first venture into traditional Blizzard areas making their way into Heroes, and there are some nice changes that could be easily overlooked. There are only two traditional lanes, with the map objective in the center. This puts a huge emphasis on the objective of defeating the enemy's Immortal and controlling your own. On maps like Cursed Hollow and Sky Temple there are times that ignoring the map objective is a viable strategy that allows you to take an enemy fort or keep while the other team focuses on the objective. With only two lanes there is less of an opportunity to gain an experience advantage or to destroy an early keep to strengthen your lane minions. Another nice change is new type of mercenaries. Sky Temple brought a new look to siege giants and bruisers, but with Battlefields of Eternity, we get mercenaries with different abilities. Bruiser camps have two hell hounds and a shaman that will resummon the hounds until his is killed. This is similar to how the web weavers in Tomb of the Spider Queen behave and it's nice to see it transitioned to other maps and minions. 

The Butcher is our next melee Assassin. I was a bit worried he would be another Warrior based solely on his size, so it was a pleasant surprise that he was announced as a damage dealer. His trait is a twist on Diablo's soul gather mechanic. The Butcher collects Fresh Meat from minions and heroes he kills, and those stacks of Fresh Meat buff his attack damage up to 25%, all lost on death. He also comes with what seems to be a strong kit. He has a melee attack with a slow, a debuff effect that causes attacks against that target to heal him, and a long range charge stun. The charge stun seems a little unreliable. He moves pretty slowly so the target should have plenty of time to get away. His heroic abilities seem pretty strong as well. His Furnace Blast is a delayed explosion surrounding the Butcher that can be activated while using his charge ability to set up a sort of combo. But I think his Lamb to the Slaughter ability is insanely strong. He pins an enemy hero to a post and that hero can't move from that location. If they leave the area they are pulled back to the center. The level 20 talent for the ability causes it to chain all enemy heroes in the location. The potential this gives in team fights should be easily exploitable in the late game. 

We also got a glimpse of a new mount that sort of resembles a Kodo from WoW dressed up in Diablo garb. And there a poster for the event gives us a glimpse at some skins we can expect to see.

We saw Amazon Nova in one of the launch videos Blizzard released, but we also have an Angelic Diablo of some sort, and perhaps a preview of the redone Demonic Tyreal we were promised. And obviously we see the Skeleton King Leoric that we saw at Blizzcon last year. Expect him to be the next hero launched after the Butcher sometime in July. After that I would like to see a support from the Diablo universe to round out the event. Auriel could give us our second Angel hero, or we could see a Monk hero. Blizzard also hinted at multiple Diablo themed maps so we could see a second one similar to how Sky Temple and Tomb of the Spider Queen were tied together. I'm excited to see how much content this event brings to the game, as well as what it means for the inevitable Starcraft, Warcraft and Retro versions. While I still think the prices for these items are still too high, a strong amount of content released with this event is at least a show of good faith that the money is being used well. 

Feel free to let me know what you think of the event or what you would like to see in the future. Thanks as always for reading.

Till next time, Chris

Blizzard's price points are missing their mark

Welcome back friends!

When I started this blog, all I wanted was a place so modestly speculate and discuss the things Blizzard Entertainment had coming our way. I chose the name Blizzard Forecast partly because it was a weather pun, but also because regardless of what they have released over the last few years, I was excited about it. Hearthstone blindsided me as something I did not expect them to foray into. Heroes of the Storm made big changes to many of the things I disliked about the MOBA genre before. And Overwatch was a new IP that has created a level of excitement I haven't had for many games. With all of that in mind, it's disheartening to now have a second post in as many weeks that will be focused on a negative view of decisions made by Blizzard. Last week we talked about the decision to possibly discontinue flying in the future expansion of World of Warcraft. This week we are going to talk about their announcement of new Hearthstone hero skins.

Hearthstone's popularity is right up there with the League of Legends  and WoWs of the world. With that kind of player base comes a microscope, analyzing every decision and release that you make. The outrage surrounding the hero skins was immediate and plentiful. The big arguments seem to be these; "You can't give us deck slots but you can give us this?" and "Holy shit $10 for nothing but a reskin?". While I understand the desire for new deck slots, I don't think the first complaint is legitimate. Deck slots is a UI change, where as hero skins is a art asset change. But I couldn't agree more with the pricing for these to be excessive. While we don't know all the content and changes coming in the patch containing these skins, given the information we have, we can assume that a full set of these reskins will cost us a whopping $90 USD. That's more than 3 full adventures and 75 packs. At $5 each I wouldn't bat an eye at picking these up as they are released. A change of scenery while climbing the ladder, along with another card back, which Blizzard does so well, would be a no brainer to me. At the current price however, I feel guilty about wanting to pick them up. No player should have to be ashamed for spending money on a game they enjoy. But this isn't the only game where Blizzard is "guilty" of these missteps.

Heroes of the Storm has been gaining a ton of momentum since the "launch". Twitch numbers are up and new players are coming in droves. But since the technical alpha one big criticism of the game has been the price of heroes and mounts in the shop. $10 for a mount that you will see maybe half of the game seems excessive. Compare that to $10 for every new hero that is released. At least the heroes come with a new kit of abilities and the team composition changes that come with it. A mount is purely a cosmetic item but cost the same as something that literally changes the game. Even the skin prices are on the high side. I'm not as bothered by the skin prices for two reasons. The more expensive skins come with new ability animations and voice effects, and the overall quality of even the lower level skins, is better than other games offer. Come on, if you play Tychus often, the Infested skin is worth it. That doesn't mean that the prices couldn't stand to be reduced by 20 or 30 percent. $10 for a "Legendary Skin" the quality of Infested Tychus seems about right. But that brings up my biggest issue with how they chose to price all of these items.

Blizzard has backed themselves into a corner in Heroes of the Storm and could potentially do the same with Hearthstone. By setting the price for these items high to start, they prevent themselves from lowering the price later without alienating the portion of the player base that already purchased them. Now their only option is to use sales to lower the prices temporarily. If they had started low on these prices they would have the option to increase them over time. Players who purchased initially feel like they got a deal, and players who didn't are urged (begrudgingly at time) to purchase items they want in the event the prices go up in the future. While increasing price may alienate players who feel like they missed out on their opportunity for the "right price", it's not much different than how Blizzard is removing mounts from the shop entirely. When the mounts return to the shop, player will feel like they need to purchase a mount they want in fear of never being able to obtain it, rather than the alternative of having to pay $2 more for it. The goal for Blizzard is for their free to play titles to earn money and we can't forget that. But I think they have ways to earn that money without alienating  their player base that they didn't take advantage of. Like I said before, we want to be satisfied with our purchases. Part of me wonders if due to their popularity as a company, Blizzard sees the number of purchases coming from their free to play titles and are happy with that number and therefore assume nothing is wrong.

I hope Blizzard sees the reaction to the Hearthstone skin announcement and takes the opportunity to lower the price before they are faced with the same situation as Heroes of the Storm. At the end of the say, we as players want to pay for content they enjoy.

Thanks again for reading. Please leave your thoughts or opinions in the comments. I'd love to discuss it further with the community. Have fun!

Chris

Flying in Warcraft and Expectations

Welcome back friends!

I wanted to jump right in this week and add my thoughts to all of the controversy this week surrounding Blizzards announcement that flying will not be enabled on Draenor this expansion. This coupled with the fact that Blizzard is unsure if flying will return in future expansions, has led to a lot of outrage from the community unlike we have really seen in quite a while. While I don't like the decision personally, and I'll explain my thoughts behind that, I think this topic brings to the forefront some interesting thoughts surrounding gamer expectations and Blizzards responsibility to us regarding them. I'll touch on the specific flight issue first, then move on to the greater idea. This is something I spend a decent amount of time thinking about so I is nice to have a chance to bring it up while it's so relevant.

In an interview during Blizzcon 2013, former Game Developer Greg Street mentioned how Blizzard thought back negatively on flying in zones and the limitations placed on them because of it. There was a bit of negative feed back but at that point it wasn't for certain and a lot of players just took a wait and see stance. Then Warlords launched amidst server stability issues and queue times and people were just happy to play and the flight thing just wasn't a big deal. I've said here before that I think the leveling experience up until Nagrand is one of the best parts of Warlords, and I would be lying if I said that the lack of flying isn't part of the reason why. More than other expansions, where we couldn't fly while leveling either, there was a sense of immersion. Completing sections of a zone and being told when you did based on a story thread felt great. The difference this time around was that once we hit max level, we couldn't go learn flying, and we didn't gain access to anything new because of it. In Burning Crusade we got to go to Ogri'la and Skettis that we couldn't access before. Sure they were just daily quest hubs, but that was relevant then because it was the first time dailies were a part of the end game experience. In Wrath of the Lich King, Dalaran had a flight pad that you could take off from and go anywhere, and you began the campaign against the Lich King with the Argent Crusade dailies. It felt like a increase in power, and we couldn't even access Naxxramas without flying up to the entrance (yeah yeah summon stone but you get the point). I would guess that where the problem came for Blizzard was Cataclysm. They enabled flying in Azeroth as part of the expansion features. It was part of the announcement trailer! The possibility of flying made it possible for zones like Deepholm and Twilight Highlands to be as huge and epic as they were, but the problem from Blizzards perspective, was flying made the questing process trivial. And that in turn made the process feel tedious to the players. Playing from 80 to 85 multiple times you just mounted up and flew from quest objective to quest objective without even taking in what was actually going on. I have to say I agree with the problem. For all the good that the Cataclysm revamp did to the old world questing experience, the 80 to 85 grind was miserable. However, that doesn't mean the solution is to remove flying all together, and I'm not sure that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

As I said before, there is a certain feeling of power associated with being able to fly over a world that you have conquered. Isn't that all the leveling experience is? We travel across an area piece by piece and defeat the bad guys within, and we learn about the enemies on the way. Hell, it's called gaining experience for a reason. And after I've worked my way through all the zones and I've learned about this new world or continent, I am rewarded with learning to traverse it through the air. The fantasy of that feels fine to me. I think the leveling experience should be flight free. The work that goes into everything in the world should be seen, even if it feels forced by some people. But flight always felt like a reward for leveling and making it through all that content. And Warlords to a step initially to delay that reward to a later date. We didn't know if it would be 6.1, 6.2 or when, but we all sort of thought it would come. Where the issue comes in, is that Warlords of Draenor felt lacking in rewards at level 100. Mists of Pandaria gave us dailies (WAY too many of them) to continue the story in a way that doesn't exist in Warlords. Wrath of the Lich King gave us different quest hubs at level 80 to show us what's going on with Malygos and the Blue Dragonflight, or what Tirion Fordring has in mind to confront the Lich King. In Draenor, we finish the story quest chains in Nagrand, we see the in-game cinematic between Thrall and Garrosh, and then we have a quick conversation where one person says "We should attack the Foundry" and another says "We should confront the Ogres" but it doesn't lead to anything. Our character is left standing there waiting for raids to release and that's it. It is a dry and hollow ending to an otherwise enjoyable experience. We got left to just camp out in our Garrison while waiting for dungeons for gear. I don't mind not getting flying as a reward at the end of it all if I feel like I am rewarded with something. Every expansion has a new spell and new dungeons at max level, but they have also offered other experiences as well where Draenor did not.

On a less serious but still important note, removing flying long term effects mounts in game negatively as well. Ashes of Alar, Invincible, Mimirion's Head. All of these mounts lose their flair when they are relegated to running or hovering just above the ground. Warlords of Draenor has had a subpar offering of mounts, partly because a majority of them are ground mounts. With the exception of store bought mounts, we have a plethora of wolves, boars, elekks, river beasts, and clefthoofs all with slight recolors or re-skins for achievements or rewards. There are as many as 6 recolors for the same ground mount model. It seems like a waste to limit themselves going forward without flying. Are we not going to get new dragons or other flying mounts, or if we do will that functionality be relegated to outdated content? I look forward to hearing more about their reasoning and what they believe the other downsides are to enabling flying.

I also want to discuss this topic on a grander scale. What do we as players have the right to expect from a company? I believe we have a right for any game to be playable and mostly bug free from launch. We have a right to a certain level of communication from the developers. We have the right to have our feedback heard. It's important to note that our feedback should be heard and taken seriously, but it does not need to ultimately be acted upon. If Blizzard decides, even amidst the uproar, to leave flying out of the game in the future, we need to be given the confidence that the community feedback was taken into account. We should also be able to expect things we have earned in the game to not become obsolete. There is a certain amount of every expansion that does not carry over. Sure you can always go back and complete old dungeons and raids, but the zones themselves are basically left to rot. Profession materials all become auction house fodder every expansion. But these are all things we are accustomed to "losing" every couple of years. The difference comes when players spend time farming mounts years after it is current. Players don't want to feel like things that they care about aren't useful anymore, and they shouldn't have to. I'm not saying that the reason to keep flying around is so that the people lucky enough or committed enough to get Mimiron's Head and the like can keep feeling special. But I am saying that as the game ages more things become trivialized, and vanity items are one of the things keeping past expansions relevant outside of a section of levels. That's the reason transmog is such a popular feature. We don't have a right to demand features be included or not included. But we do have a right to let our stance as consumers speak for us.

Sorry if this post was a bit of a ramble. There is a lot tied into this particular issue and I'm sure others have thoughts out there that are worth checking out. Thanks as always for reading!

Chris

Diablo 3 hitting its stride and Overwatch afterthoughts

Greetings Nephalem!

My gaming regiment usually rotates between everything Blizzard has to offer (with the exception of Starcraft usually). World of Warcraft usually maintains my focus through Garrison chores and raid nights. Until recently, I usually found myself logged in to Hearthstone when I feel like I have a good handle on the decks I'm seeing, and Heroes of the Storm when I don't. Lately however, Diablo has me logging in on a daily basis.

We all know about Diablo's checkered past. The nostalgia excitement around launch was quickly doused by error 37 and auction house woes. Since then, Blizzard has taken huge steps to try and improve on the game systems in order to turn the game around. They aren't quite there, but they are very close to this being the game I was hoping for 3 years ago. They have streamlined the leveling process so we no longer have to play through the campaign multiple times. Adventure mode gave the farming process some uniqueness from session to session. Seasons helped to recreate the D2 ladder system and gave us true competition in our PvE game.

Where they are hitting things out of the park for me, are the new sets and set changes introduced in patch 2.2. The Wizard, Demon Hunter, and Barbarian each got a new item set (Set details are in the links). And Wizard and Demon Hunter sets got some reworks to bring them more in line with other sets. The approach Blizzard has taken is to design each set around a specific class skill or set of skills.  Wizards got Meteors flying all over the place and Slow Time bubbles trapping and punishing enemies. Barbarians are back to Whirlwinding non-stop through fields of demons. And Demon Hunters are raining arrows and spraying shots to clear out entire screens. What I love most about this approach is the sets help to strengthen the class identity. Talk Rasha's set for wizards encourages you to cast spells of all the different element types to increase the number of meteors you call down. This makes perfect sense for the masters of magic. The Unhallowed Essense set for Demon Hunters encourages you to keep you distance from enemies and increases your damage for it. In addition to strengthening the feel of each class, the sets feel unique from other sets for the same classes. Wrath of the Wastes for Barbarians feels miles different from the Legacy of Raekor set they were using a season ago. This is something they succeeded in with Monk sets last season, and something I'm hoping they continue with next season when they introduce new sets for Witch Doctors, Monks, and Crusaders.

Let's be fair, there are still some things that require fixing. The leaderboards continue to be tarnished by exploits at the start of every season. The trial system makes the process of attacking the leaderboard tedious and inconsistent. And as with any competitive game, class balance is an ongoing task. Blizzard as shown they are committed to improving Diablo 3 and I'm excited to see they steps they make going forward.


Blizzard is quickly cranking through gameplay videos for specific heroes on the Overwatch Youtube. There are notable updates to UI and targeting reticles. We get a few good looks of how heroes interact with one another, and we see how a game plays out from start to finish. Take the time to check them out if you are anywhere near the excitement level I am for this game. As usual, OneAmongstMany has a nice breakdown of the Zenyatta video. There are a lot of nuances that he makes note of that I won't try to replicate here in writing.

Well that's going to be it for this post. Just a short one this week.

Thanks as always for reading,
Chris

The Truth Behind the Blizzard Q1 Earnings

Hello friends and welcome back!

First, let me say sorry for the delay in putting this post together. I had some real life things take over for a week or two that included a flight across the country and being somewhat unplugged. However, that's behind us now and fortunately, it has given me time to really think about some of the events that took place while I was away.

Blizzard/Activision had their Q1 investor earnings call. By now I'm sure if you are still stopping by my page then you have seen the info and heard some views and opinions on what it means. I want to go through it and use it to look at the big picture. It may only be a small synopsis but I think it speaks volumes about what we can expect going forward as Blizzard fans.

First, lets touch on the small stuff we already knew about. Overwatch Beta is coming this Fall, and Starcraft 2: Legacy of the Void is in closed beta. I will say that Blizzard's decision to make Legacy of the Void a standalone game is a great decision for the longevity of the game. Starcraft is already an intimidating game for new players to get into, so leaving cost of up to $100 to pick up the three games would only compound that. The hype around Overwatch continues to be strong despite no real news since PAX East. There are rumors of a friends and family Alpha beginning due to Overwatch strings in the Battle.net client becoming active, but we don't have any way to confirm that at the moment.

Heroes of the Storm had 11 million beta sign-ups and launches on June 2nd. This isn't that important for a free to play game. What truly matters is how many people stick around after playing. Heroes of the Dorm was a nice start into showing people the depth the game has to offer. Any time a non-traditional sport is given air-time on ESPN there is negative feedback. The original airing of the World Series of Poker was met with some skepticism and is now a mainstay every summer. It caused a boom in the game that led to a jump in attendance from 839 in 2001 when it originally aired, to 2,576 the following year. That number has seen a steady increase to 6,683 in 2014. Now it would be foolish of me to think that Heroes of the Storm is going to become a regular part of ESPN's weekend line-up, but we have to start somewhere. The League of Legends World Championships got up to 8.5 million concurrent viewers last year. Compare that to the World Series game 1 which pulled in 12.2 million. An esport pulling in 2/3 of the viewership of a World Series game is nothing to scoff at. Especially when you factor in that the traditional form of viewing League of Legends matches is through streaming services and VODs. Despite the negativity from some of ESPN's fans and analysts,  the network is smart to want a piece of the esports pie. Maybe eventually we will see Heroes of the Storm or League of Legends instead of Bowling on ESPN2 on Sundays during football season.

I want to tie the Hearthstone and World of Warcraft numbers together because I think they are intertwined. World of Warcraft is down 3 million subscribers from the last earnings call. This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. People come back to check out the new content and once they've seen it, they leave again. Warlords hasn't done much to keep the interested but not invested around for long. I touched on a lot of this in a previous post so I won't repeat it now, but I'm less shocked by the 3 million loss than I was by the jump back up to 10 million at the start of the expansion. I expect we will see this trend to continue as the game continues to age. When the next expansion hits we will see a spike to the 8-9 million range then a drop back off to 6-7 million. Hearthstone going up to 30 million players worldwide helps to stem the bleeding of the Warcraft revenue loss. If 1% of Hearthstone players purchase the 40 pack bundle Blizzard makes $15 million (ignoring exchange rates and all that). I can guarantee that 99% of the player base is not going free to play. When you add in the adventure modes at $25 each and just normal player purchase habits, it is safe to say that Hearthstone has outperformed Blizzards loftiest expectations.

Hearthstone has given us a window into the future of Blizzard. They can no longer remain the MMO company, or the World of Warcraft company, and they know that. They have expanded full force into Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm and soon Overwatch. By broadening their scope of games they are bringing in potentially new players to their franchises, and from there it has a ripple effect. How many people began playing Starcraft because they enjoyed Warcraft 2 and the same company was making a sci-fi version. How many WoW players picked up Hearthstone because it was something new that was at the same time familiar.  In just 2 years they have doubled the number of games in their stable, and with Overwatch on the horizon they potentially have four IPs that their players are invested in. There will undoubtedly be another game in the Starcraft universe after Legacy of the Void. World of Warcraft will get continued support as long as people are willing to pay for it. And as long as people care about the characters in all of these worlds, players will be drawn to Heroes of the Storm.

Despite the negativity surrounding the WoW side of the earnings call, the diversity of their portfolio is beyond exciting. We have games and expansions to look forward to for the foreseeable future, in varieties for nearly everyone. And as the world of esports grows Blizzard has solidified their place in the forefront of it. All in all we have a ton to be excited about.

Thanks again for reading,
Chris