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
Friday, May 29, 2015
Thursday, May 21, 2015
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
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
Monday, May 11, 2015
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
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
Monday, April 20, 2015
Warlords of Lame-or?
Well met adventurers! As I was working on last weeks review of patch 6.2, I started thinking about I honestly felt about Warlords of Draenor so far on the whole. Any time a new patch or expansion goes into a testing phase, players become excited. They become excited for new things to do, new bosses to defeat, and new places to explore. However, this time around, it sort of feels like we are excited for 6.2 primarily because it could serve as a break in the monotony we've been feeling for most of this expansion. I'll elaborate on this more later on in the post, but for now I want to focus on the things that Warlords of Draenor has gotten right.
The Good:
The Leveling Content: The entire leveling process from 90 to 100 was exactly what I have been looking for from World of Warcraft since Cataclysm. The 1-60 revamp was excellent, but players who were already max level didn't get to experience it fully. Even when playing an alt, the leveling process has become so accelerated that you need to stay in a zone well past level in order to see how the story of the zone plays out. Mists of Pandaria leveling was alright, but other than the Jade Forest quests, too much story telling was left to the level 90 daily progression. Warlords of Draenor did a near perfect job of walking you through the zone in a way that felt complete. The zones are beautiful and unique, while at the same time feeling familiar to the Outland zones we know. You had an indicator in the quest log that told you when you finished all of the story quests, and when you looked at the zone map you weren't leaving too much behind if you decided to move into the next zone to pick up the story there. The amount of XP gained in a zone was the amount you needed to level out of the zone without making you grind mobs for the extra half level. Also, the cinematic tied to each zone really made it feel like a story was being told. There were some points that could have used a little more help. Orgrim Doomhammer was inserted and taken out of the storyline very abruptly and somewhat unceremoniously. We didn't spend nearly enough time dealing with Shattrath, but I'll touch on that later. Save a few blemishes, the leveling process did a great job of making us feel like we were a part of Draenor.
Raid and Dungeon Quality: The dungeons this expansion hit it out of the park in my opinion. The zones were beautiful, they had a story being told, and they had us deal with characters we know. Some may say that taking out Ner'zhul in Shadowmoon Burial Grounds was too low key and doesn't give the character the attention he deserves. I'd argue that if we were to devote a raid to each of these warlords the expansion would last 3 years and we would all be burnt out by the end. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to be able to fully explore each of these warlords and learn their entire stories, but that kind of time just isn't available. Auchindoun feels like a holy site under siege by Gorefiend. Even Grimrail Depot, while somewhat tedious to run, was implemented well and achieved the fantasy of fighting on a moving train. The raids we've seen so far in Warlords are equally well done. Highmaul feels like an ogre city and the progression through it feels like we are working our way to the top to find and defeat the leader. We take down the denizens of the lower city, then fight our way through the bodyguards of the Imperator, then we take down the man in charge himself. Fighting ogres isn't the most exciting raid theme in the world, but as a beginning raid to get people up to speed in raiding it does a great job. Then we come to Blackrock Foundry. The Iron Horde is producing weapons here to supply their army against us and for their attempted invasion of our Azeroth. I have to commend Blizzards design on this raid because that's exactly what it feels like. There is the giant furnace powered by a fire elemental being used to fuel the forges. There are conveyor belts of weapons running from the furnaces. There is a train depot bringing shipments to the Iron Docks for distribution. The whole instance really feels like it's a massive forge fueling an army. And obviously it culminated in an awesome encounter with one of the warlords. There are some things to criticize obviously, as nothing is perfect, but I will touch on that later as well. All in all, Warlords has an excellent set of dungeons and raids so far. I'd even go so far as to say that Blackrock Foundry is close to my top 5 of raids all time.
The Garrison: This is sort of a split feature for me in terms of whether it is a plus or a minus. I chose to put Garrisons in the good section because I think the feature as whole is a good thing. Much of the negative feeling associated with garrisons so far has been due to the effects they have had on gameplay, not necessarily with the garrisons themselves. It feels good to have my own base of operations, and to finally feel like I'm important to the story after saving Azeroth SO many times. I enjoy the perks of being able to customize my buildings to suit my gameplay. Some buildings allow me to teleport around the continent, while some buildings allow you to do quests for forgotten secondary characters and receive cool items and followers. The garrison campaign quests are a great storytelling device (Azuka Bladefury is an awesome new character in a world full of familiar faces). Garrison invasions are a fun, quick way to get a rewards while also reminding us that we aren't in our world and it is dangerous. There are some places to improve obviously. The mission table takes us out of the fantasy of the garrison being a place for us to lead our forces against the Iron Horde. It's nice to see our followers walk around our garrison and interact, but the only way we see them actually accomplish anything is through a quick attack animation upon mission completion (and that's only if you don't use Master Plan, and who isn't using that at this point?). It just feels like the mission system takes away from the immersion that the rest of the garrison does a great job with. The rest of the downsides I'll talk about next.
The Bad:
The Garrison Downsides: Blizzard had expressed their concerns about implementing player housing in the past. It's been a question posed at every Blizzcon before Warlords announced the garrison feature. Blizzard was concerned that it would be an extension of the capital city problem where players just hang out in the capital city until it's time to do a raid or dungeon, then they just go back to Orgrimmar or Stormwind. And they were right. We queue for dungeons and battlegrounds from our garrisons and get teleported back when were finished. The apexis dailies help a bit but don't do enough. At Blizzcon 2013 we were told that we would be able to build our garrison in any zone in Draenor that we chose. I understand the issues that may cause and why they eventually chose to go the way they did instead, but even something as small as being able to change the look of where our garrison is located would have helped to break up the monotony of being in the same place all the time. Professions suffered as a result of garrisons as well. In order to create diversity in small building choices, any player was given the chance to build any profession building. A paladin can build a forge without being a blacksmith and craft plate gear for themselves. There are 10 choices in small buildings currently. Eight of them are profession buildings and the other two are the Salvage Yard and Storehouse. Without being able to make any of the profession buildings, players would end up with buildings for their two professions and one of the two others. Not a lot of diversity and Blizzard wanted everyones garrison to feel somewhat unique. This, along with every player having access to ore and herbs in their garrison, made professions somewhat trivial. The benefit of having any given profession was decreased by giving everyone access to 70% of what those professions had to offer. As an expansion progresses, the value of professions decreases. Gear becomes available to players through new avenues, and as a result less crafted gear is needed. There are some exceptions like enchants and item upgrades but that doesn't eliminate the issues the garrison options create.
Ashran: I want to preface this section by pointing out that I don't PvP. I have queued for Ashran a total of 3 times. However, that doesn't take away from the fact that Ashran is kind of a mess. Blizzard set the player limit in order to improve on the Wintergrasp experience of Wrath of the Lich King. Faction imbalance cause one side of the battle for Wintergrasp to be massively outnumbered and receive a huge health and damage buff to compensate. Unfortunately, the buff wasn't enough most of the time and the lower population faction would be locked out of some parts of content. While I applaud Blizzard for preventing that issue, having a world event gated by a queue prevents people on both sides from being able to access the content and that's not a place a game designer wants to be. PvP has enough of a barrier to entry as it is and it doesn't need to be compounded upon. Additionally, Ashran has sort of become a game of keep away as I understand it. Faction death balls rush from one bonus objective to another, avoiding the other team entirely, in order to maximize Conquest Point gain. THE PvP zone has become a PvE zone with the option of trying to interact with the opposing faction. Ashran was hyped up to be a huge PvP zone with constant objectives and things going on. It was meant to be an improvement on Wintergrasp and Tol Barad and instead took a step backward. Now it looks more like a Alterac Valley sprint to the faction leader. I'm confident that Ashran is also not living up to Blizzards expectations, and I think my next item has something to do with it.
Warspear/Stormshield: When Warlords of Draenor was announced, the original faction capitals were Bladespire Citadel in Frostfire Ridge for the Horde, and Karabor in Shadowmoon Valley for the Alliance. The quests to reclaim both of these locations are still in place and happen early in the questing process, right around the same time we get our quests to visit the current factions hubs in Ashran in fact. I think as the garrison feature grew (and eventually even took over patch 6.1) Blizzard realized that they would serve as the factions base of operations as opposed to any specific Draenor city. They were right, but only a form of self fulfilling prophecy. All the quests that tell move us to the next zone or story point, tell us to return to our garrison when they could easily tell us to return to Karabor. The Frostwolves and Draenei are our only true allies in taking on the Iron Horde, and rather than treat them as allies who have integrated themselves with our cause, they become basically nomads jumping from one quest hub to another. We should have had fully realized capital cities that had the look and feel of the continent we have come to explore and save. Instead, we were given a plot of land on a distant island and threw up huts and buildings to serve whatever random purposes we needed. And as a result, Ashran was shrunk down to accommodate two faction capitals. I think this change during the development process was the biggest mistake Blizzard made with this expansion. The original cities could have helped to separate some of the garrison importance while reinforcing the immersion in Draenor. Blizzard increased our characters importance at the cost of several other pieces of content.
Daily Quests?: This is a bit of a minor gripe but it's worth pointing out. One of the major complaints of Mists of Pandaria was that there were so many daily quests and that they felt mandatory. And they were mandatory for more that one reason. If you wanted access to the best enchants or BOE gear you had to grind multiple reps to exalted, and you had to do the same if you wanted to see the story develop. Blizzard took that criticism to heart, but as they have in the past, they took it too far. Now we get one apexis daily to choose every day along with some pet battle quests or dungeon quests from the Inn if you have that building in your garrison. To compound the issue, all of the apexis quests are the same thing. You kill mobs and click on items to fill up a bar. What you are killing is irrelevant. They all feel the same and they don't tell you anything about what's going on. I talked earlier about how Shattrath was underutilized. We spend a couple of quests in Talador dealing with the invasion of the Burning Legion, then we fight a few dozen of them off when we choose that apexis daily. That's it. Why not implement a quest chain similar to patch 5.1 where we have 2-3 quests to do every day, then once a week we get a story quest that tells us something about the Legion's plans. You could even go with every two weeks if you wanted to spread things out like the garrison campaign did. This again comes back to the garrison issue. We need more reasons to be out in the world besides farming for savage blood and farming mobs for horrible rep grinds.
Well that ended up being longer than I thought it would. As I said last week, I'm optimistic that 6.2 will bring some improvements and some enjoyable content to the game, but I will do another one of these posts as we get toward the end of Warlords to see if those improvements were enough.
Thanks again for reading,
Chris
The Good:
The Leveling Content: The entire leveling process from 90 to 100 was exactly what I have been looking for from World of Warcraft since Cataclysm. The 1-60 revamp was excellent, but players who were already max level didn't get to experience it fully. Even when playing an alt, the leveling process has become so accelerated that you need to stay in a zone well past level in order to see how the story of the zone plays out. Mists of Pandaria leveling was alright, but other than the Jade Forest quests, too much story telling was left to the level 90 daily progression. Warlords of Draenor did a near perfect job of walking you through the zone in a way that felt complete. The zones are beautiful and unique, while at the same time feeling familiar to the Outland zones we know. You had an indicator in the quest log that told you when you finished all of the story quests, and when you looked at the zone map you weren't leaving too much behind if you decided to move into the next zone to pick up the story there. The amount of XP gained in a zone was the amount you needed to level out of the zone without making you grind mobs for the extra half level. Also, the cinematic tied to each zone really made it feel like a story was being told. There were some points that could have used a little more help. Orgrim Doomhammer was inserted and taken out of the storyline very abruptly and somewhat unceremoniously. We didn't spend nearly enough time dealing with Shattrath, but I'll touch on that later. Save a few blemishes, the leveling process did a great job of making us feel like we were a part of Draenor.
Raid and Dungeon Quality: The dungeons this expansion hit it out of the park in my opinion. The zones were beautiful, they had a story being told, and they had us deal with characters we know. Some may say that taking out Ner'zhul in Shadowmoon Burial Grounds was too low key and doesn't give the character the attention he deserves. I'd argue that if we were to devote a raid to each of these warlords the expansion would last 3 years and we would all be burnt out by the end. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to be able to fully explore each of these warlords and learn their entire stories, but that kind of time just isn't available. Auchindoun feels like a holy site under siege by Gorefiend. Even Grimrail Depot, while somewhat tedious to run, was implemented well and achieved the fantasy of fighting on a moving train. The raids we've seen so far in Warlords are equally well done. Highmaul feels like an ogre city and the progression through it feels like we are working our way to the top to find and defeat the leader. We take down the denizens of the lower city, then fight our way through the bodyguards of the Imperator, then we take down the man in charge himself. Fighting ogres isn't the most exciting raid theme in the world, but as a beginning raid to get people up to speed in raiding it does a great job. Then we come to Blackrock Foundry. The Iron Horde is producing weapons here to supply their army against us and for their attempted invasion of our Azeroth. I have to commend Blizzards design on this raid because that's exactly what it feels like. There is the giant furnace powered by a fire elemental being used to fuel the forges. There are conveyor belts of weapons running from the furnaces. There is a train depot bringing shipments to the Iron Docks for distribution. The whole instance really feels like it's a massive forge fueling an army. And obviously it culminated in an awesome encounter with one of the warlords. There are some things to criticize obviously, as nothing is perfect, but I will touch on that later as well. All in all, Warlords has an excellent set of dungeons and raids so far. I'd even go so far as to say that Blackrock Foundry is close to my top 5 of raids all time.
The Garrison: This is sort of a split feature for me in terms of whether it is a plus or a minus. I chose to put Garrisons in the good section because I think the feature as whole is a good thing. Much of the negative feeling associated with garrisons so far has been due to the effects they have had on gameplay, not necessarily with the garrisons themselves. It feels good to have my own base of operations, and to finally feel like I'm important to the story after saving Azeroth SO many times. I enjoy the perks of being able to customize my buildings to suit my gameplay. Some buildings allow me to teleport around the continent, while some buildings allow you to do quests for forgotten secondary characters and receive cool items and followers. The garrison campaign quests are a great storytelling device (Azuka Bladefury is an awesome new character in a world full of familiar faces). Garrison invasions are a fun, quick way to get a rewards while also reminding us that we aren't in our world and it is dangerous. There are some places to improve obviously. The mission table takes us out of the fantasy of the garrison being a place for us to lead our forces against the Iron Horde. It's nice to see our followers walk around our garrison and interact, but the only way we see them actually accomplish anything is through a quick attack animation upon mission completion (and that's only if you don't use Master Plan, and who isn't using that at this point?). It just feels like the mission system takes away from the immersion that the rest of the garrison does a great job with. The rest of the downsides I'll talk about next.
The Bad:
The Garrison Downsides: Blizzard had expressed their concerns about implementing player housing in the past. It's been a question posed at every Blizzcon before Warlords announced the garrison feature. Blizzard was concerned that it would be an extension of the capital city problem where players just hang out in the capital city until it's time to do a raid or dungeon, then they just go back to Orgrimmar or Stormwind. And they were right. We queue for dungeons and battlegrounds from our garrisons and get teleported back when were finished. The apexis dailies help a bit but don't do enough. At Blizzcon 2013 we were told that we would be able to build our garrison in any zone in Draenor that we chose. I understand the issues that may cause and why they eventually chose to go the way they did instead, but even something as small as being able to change the look of where our garrison is located would have helped to break up the monotony of being in the same place all the time. Professions suffered as a result of garrisons as well. In order to create diversity in small building choices, any player was given the chance to build any profession building. A paladin can build a forge without being a blacksmith and craft plate gear for themselves. There are 10 choices in small buildings currently. Eight of them are profession buildings and the other two are the Salvage Yard and Storehouse. Without being able to make any of the profession buildings, players would end up with buildings for their two professions and one of the two others. Not a lot of diversity and Blizzard wanted everyones garrison to feel somewhat unique. This, along with every player having access to ore and herbs in their garrison, made professions somewhat trivial. The benefit of having any given profession was decreased by giving everyone access to 70% of what those professions had to offer. As an expansion progresses, the value of professions decreases. Gear becomes available to players through new avenues, and as a result less crafted gear is needed. There are some exceptions like enchants and item upgrades but that doesn't eliminate the issues the garrison options create.
Ashran: I want to preface this section by pointing out that I don't PvP. I have queued for Ashran a total of 3 times. However, that doesn't take away from the fact that Ashran is kind of a mess. Blizzard set the player limit in order to improve on the Wintergrasp experience of Wrath of the Lich King. Faction imbalance cause one side of the battle for Wintergrasp to be massively outnumbered and receive a huge health and damage buff to compensate. Unfortunately, the buff wasn't enough most of the time and the lower population faction would be locked out of some parts of content. While I applaud Blizzard for preventing that issue, having a world event gated by a queue prevents people on both sides from being able to access the content and that's not a place a game designer wants to be. PvP has enough of a barrier to entry as it is and it doesn't need to be compounded upon. Additionally, Ashran has sort of become a game of keep away as I understand it. Faction death balls rush from one bonus objective to another, avoiding the other team entirely, in order to maximize Conquest Point gain. THE PvP zone has become a PvE zone with the option of trying to interact with the opposing faction. Ashran was hyped up to be a huge PvP zone with constant objectives and things going on. It was meant to be an improvement on Wintergrasp and Tol Barad and instead took a step backward. Now it looks more like a Alterac Valley sprint to the faction leader. I'm confident that Ashran is also not living up to Blizzards expectations, and I think my next item has something to do with it.
Warspear/Stormshield: When Warlords of Draenor was announced, the original faction capitals were Bladespire Citadel in Frostfire Ridge for the Horde, and Karabor in Shadowmoon Valley for the Alliance. The quests to reclaim both of these locations are still in place and happen early in the questing process, right around the same time we get our quests to visit the current factions hubs in Ashran in fact. I think as the garrison feature grew (and eventually even took over patch 6.1) Blizzard realized that they would serve as the factions base of operations as opposed to any specific Draenor city. They were right, but only a form of self fulfilling prophecy. All the quests that tell move us to the next zone or story point, tell us to return to our garrison when they could easily tell us to return to Karabor. The Frostwolves and Draenei are our only true allies in taking on the Iron Horde, and rather than treat them as allies who have integrated themselves with our cause, they become basically nomads jumping from one quest hub to another. We should have had fully realized capital cities that had the look and feel of the continent we have come to explore and save. Instead, we were given a plot of land on a distant island and threw up huts and buildings to serve whatever random purposes we needed. And as a result, Ashran was shrunk down to accommodate two faction capitals. I think this change during the development process was the biggest mistake Blizzard made with this expansion. The original cities could have helped to separate some of the garrison importance while reinforcing the immersion in Draenor. Blizzard increased our characters importance at the cost of several other pieces of content.
Daily Quests?: This is a bit of a minor gripe but it's worth pointing out. One of the major complaints of Mists of Pandaria was that there were so many daily quests and that they felt mandatory. And they were mandatory for more that one reason. If you wanted access to the best enchants or BOE gear you had to grind multiple reps to exalted, and you had to do the same if you wanted to see the story develop. Blizzard took that criticism to heart, but as they have in the past, they took it too far. Now we get one apexis daily to choose every day along with some pet battle quests or dungeon quests from the Inn if you have that building in your garrison. To compound the issue, all of the apexis quests are the same thing. You kill mobs and click on items to fill up a bar. What you are killing is irrelevant. They all feel the same and they don't tell you anything about what's going on. I talked earlier about how Shattrath was underutilized. We spend a couple of quests in Talador dealing with the invasion of the Burning Legion, then we fight a few dozen of them off when we choose that apexis daily. That's it. Why not implement a quest chain similar to patch 5.1 where we have 2-3 quests to do every day, then once a week we get a story quest that tells us something about the Legion's plans. You could even go with every two weeks if you wanted to spread things out like the garrison campaign did. This again comes back to the garrison issue. We need more reasons to be out in the world besides farming for savage blood and farming mobs for horrible rep grinds.
Well that ended up being longer than I thought it would. As I said last week, I'm optimistic that 6.2 will bring some improvements and some enjoyable content to the game, but I will do another one of these posts as we get toward the end of Warlords to see if those improvements were enough.
Thanks again for reading,
Chris
Wednesday, April 15, 2015
Warlords of Draenor 6.2
Welcome back friends! Sorry I missed posting last week. I've been sick as a dog and spent 4 days or so mostly in bed. Fortunately, patch 6.2 for Warlords of Draenor dropped on the PTR this week, which gives me plenty to write about to make up for it. Fair warning, some of the things I touch on may be spoilers for some of you, so precede at your own risk.
Patch 6.2, unnamed as of now, will let us follow Gul'dan and the Iron Horde back into Tanaan Jungle. It's very much the same jungle area from the Warlords starting experience, but with some new areas to explore as well as a new daily quest hub. Most exciting of which is Hellfire Citadel, our new tier 18 raid zone. As many of you may remember, Hellfire Citadel was a dungeon and raid zone in Hellfire Peninsula during Burning Crusade. It held 3 dungeons, Hellfire Ramparts, the Blood Furnace, and the Shattered Halls (featuring our timelines Kargath Bladefist), and one raid, Magtheridon's Lair. As a side note, it seems silly to call it Magtheridon's Lair when he is being held captive there by the fel orcs to drain his blood. Hellfire Citadel in Tanaan Jungle has a similar look to it, obviously minus the red tint of shattered Outland, however this time it has become Gul'dan's hideout used as a fortress for the demons of the Burning Legion. Of course, as the biggest bad asses Azeroth has to offer, it's our job to storm the Citadel and take out the Legion's forces concluding with our favorite tree lover, Archimonde. As someone who began playing in Burning Crusade, but wasn't current with raiding for Mount Hyjal, I'm excited for a chance to take this guy on. The other bosses are just as exciting. A newly Fel-corrupted Kilrogg, a soul-gorged Gorefiend, and a reanimated Mannoroth! A great way to get me excited about a raid is to introduce interesting bosses for me to kill. While I enjoy Blackrock Foundry a lot, it is a little boring at times killing mostly orcs with different jobs. There is some diversity to the bosses, but not as much as there seems to be in Hellfire Citadel.
There are goodies to earn in the new raid other than shiny new loot of course. There is a follower to earn similar to Aknor Steelbreaker in the Flamebender Ka'graz in BRF. We also will have a chance for a Felsteel Annihilator mount which is an awesome reskin of the Sky Golem mount in the form of the iconic Fel Reaver from Burning Crusade. Players who finish the Glory of the Hellfire Raider will be rewarded with the Reins of the Corrupted Dreadwing, a Fel corrupted version of the Warlords Deluxe Edition mount reward. All in all Hellfire Citadel seems like a great raid tier that I'm extremely excited for.
Once again, our Garrisons will be getting another update. This time we will need to add on a shipyard in order to make our way to Tanaan and confront Gul'dans apparent naval force. I don't have much information yet on how all of this plays out, as the PTR is currently bugged and won't allow quest progress. I'm going to try and progress through it and see how it all ties together because it all just seems a bit clunky to me right now. Adding in naval missions doesn't feel interesting to me. There is already barely a difference between the different types of missions outside of what rewards they give, and I'm skeptical that naval missions will feel any different.
We will also be getting Mythic difficulty 5 man dungeons as well as Timewalker dungeons. Mythic 5 mans are interesting to me simply because its another attempt from Blizzard to keep 5 man dungeons relevant after the initial launch of the expansion. Challenge modes have help somewhat but the rewards become less and less worthwhile as the expansion goes on. Right now Mythic dungeons will reward 680 gear with a chance for 700 gear off of the last boss of the instance. This will prove useful for most raiders who aren't farming Mythic BRF. However, once we have a few weeks in Heroic Hellfire Citadel the reward for these may not be worth the effort anymore. Timewalker dungeons are definitely cool. Scaling down to current item level for Burning Crusade or Wrath of the Lich King dungeons is an interesting test of what the technology is capable of and how much external tuning is required. Dungeons in BC were tuned and designed around different sets of truths, and the same is true of WotLK. As the game grows and changes the basis on which things are designed changes. The danger is that the games current state requires too many changes to be made to previous content as it is made current. If Blizzard has to spend time rebalancing old content for the Timewalker feature, it may be too burdensome for us to see a Timewalker Black Temple run or something along those lines. I'm optimistic that that won't be the case but its something to keep an eye on.
I'm going to keep it to a short post for now. I will be putting some time into writing up a sort of mid-expansion report card for Warlords of Draenor. I want to take the time to talk about what I like so far and what things have missed the mark. It's a subject which everyone has some thoughts on so please check back and take a look and let me know what you think.
Thanks again for reading, Chris
Wednesday, April 1, 2015
Blackrock Mountain Review - The Good Stuff
Welcome back friends!
I've been playing a ton of Hearthstone lately. Some of it has to do with the fact that I got my fix of Sylvanas in Heroes of the Storm, but mostly, it's because Blackrock Mountain is coming. Last time I did a partial review of the cards we had been shown up to that point. This time I just want to stick to the cards I think will have a real impact. In my opinion Blackrock Mountain is bringing a bit less to the competitive scene than Naxxramas did. But who could have expected the effect of 30 cards in Naxx. Sludge Belcher, Loatheb, Zombie Chow, Shade of Naxxramas, Kel'thuzad, Mad Scientist, Webspinner, and obviously the mess that was Undertaker, have all made huge waves at one point or another. I'll start with the class specific stuff I think will see some play.
I've been playing a ton of Hearthstone lately. Some of it has to do with the fact that I got my fix of Sylvanas in Heroes of the Storm, but mostly, it's because Blackrock Mountain is coming. Last time I did a partial review of the cards we had been shown up to that point. This time I just want to stick to the cards I think will have a real impact. In my opinion Blackrock Mountain is bringing a bit less to the competitive scene than Naxxramas did. But who could have expected the effect of 30 cards in Naxx. Sludge Belcher, Loatheb, Zombie Chow, Shade of Naxxramas, Kel'thuzad, Mad Scientist, Webspinner, and obviously the mess that was Undertaker, have all made huge waves at one point or another. I'll start with the class specific stuff I think will see some play.
Fireguard Destroyer fits a spot that Shaman desperately needed some help. They have often struggled in the 4 drop spot and have been forced to play an excessive number of 5 drops and 3 mana overload spells. Even if this guy only gets 1 extra attack it's ahead of budget for a 4 drop and all that's left is to decide how much the Overload affects it. The downside is sometimes you will get 4 attack and play into your opponents Big Game Hunter (Shaman usually is light on targets) but those situations will be few and far between. I like the role this guy fills for shaman, giving it earlier board presence without relying on Flametongue Totem to make it's trades.
Demonlock has been around since GvG in one shape or another. Some versions were running Imp-losion and Mistress of Pain to control the board early, before Mal'ganis and Jaraxxus closed things out. Lately, we have transitioned into a hybrid Handlock/Demonlock that plays more to the late game. Demonwrath fits more in the former but could see play in both. A 3 mana Consecrate is nothing to scoff at. Especially when you don't have to worry about killing all the Imps you just made. Warlock does have a lot of competition in board sweepers with Hellfire and Shadowflame. I think all 3 have their upsides and the deck they are going into will decide which will see play. People are expecting BRM to usher in a very controlling metagame. If that doesn't end up being the case Demonwrath will go along way to keeping the hyper aggressive decks in check.
Paladin is being hyped as the class to truly take advantage of the dragon synergy theme of BRM and it's primarily due to this card. 5/5 for 5 is the stats we're looking for, and it comes with upside to boot. There is no shortage of Dragon cards with high cost and high upside that let you take advantage of this Battlecry. A turn 7 Ysera, or turn 6 Chromaggus (who we will get to in a minute) can have a huge effect on a game. We'll see exactly how the decks shape out but I expect to see a lot of Paladin on ladder the week Dragon Consort is released.
Chromaggus creates some interesting situations that we don't have a chance to see often. Similar to Duplicate and Echo of Medivh, it allows us to play 3 more of the same card in a game. Any time a card allows you to break the rules of the game it's worth paying attention to. This holds true in most games. Magic players may remember when the "Wish" cycle was released years ago. Being able to access your sideboard mid-game created avenues to win games that normally didn't exist. We get in habits of trying to bait the Black Knight or a Shaman's last Hex before playing a high impact minion. What happens when your opponent has a second Black Knight because of this core-hound dragon? Chromaggus has the size we want as well. Not enough power to get killed by BGH, and 8 health to not easily be taken down in combat. This is by no means a card for every deck, but it should see play in midrange and control decks, especially ones that have consistent card drawing engines.
This is the best card in the set. Expect to see this in any deck that doesn't want to win the game before turn 7. Similar to how Chromaggus lets us break the 2 card maximum rule, Thaurissan lets us break the 10 mana per turn maximum rule. I expect the Dark Iron Emperor to slide into decks the same way Loatheb did after Naxx. I can't overstate how powerful the effect on this card is. If your opponent gets 2 turns worth out of this with more than 3 cards in hand, expect to fall way behind. Decks like Freeze Mage, Combo Druid, and maybe even Malygos Shaman, will make this guy a lynchpin. Being able to play an Alezstrasza and an Ice Block in the same turn, Force of Nature and double Savage Roar in the same turn, or Malygos and multiple burn spells, sign me up. It is also going to become much more difficult to track what your opponents care capable of on a given turn. All that being said, kill this guy as soon as you can.
I'm sure other cards will see some competitive play. Quick Shot is right up Face Hunter's alley. Both Volcanic Drake and Hungry Dragon will probably find decks. Maybe even Nefarian will find a home. I'm excited to see what Blackrock Mountain does to the game, and I'm excited to dive in.
Thanks for reading. See ya next time.
Chris
Thursday, March 26, 2015
Way Too Early Blizzcon Predictions
Welcome back friends!
It's official. Blizzcon will be back in Anaheim this November. It's an exciting time for any Blizzard fan. This past year was as good of an example of that as ever. The announcement of Overwatch was the biggest announcement Blizzard has given us in years. Any given year some IPs are represented more than others. For instance, 2014 had very underwhelming announcements for Warcraft, and especially Diablo. Warcraft got an exclusive movie preview, which is exciting in its own right, but not something that all fans can appreciate since it was only for con-goers. Other than that, we got some patch previews and a couple panels that served primarily as QA. We didn't even get a preview of 6.2 where they finally open up Tanaan Jungle to see what Gul'dan has been up to. Diablo got even less. There was a preview of Season 2 items and tweaks to the rift systems. However, most of what was shown was catered to the full time Diablo 3 player. No new story to explore, no truly new features, and no new incentives for Seasons. Obviously, Blizzard isn't going to have something big to preview for every game every year. They just don't produce content that quickly. Which brings us to the point of the post. Let's try and predict what we will see in November. TOO SOON EXECUTUS! you say? I know, I know. But hell, it's fun and I'm going to do it anyway. I will revisit after Gamescom or something as we get closer.
Starcraft:
Legacy of the Void beta is beginning in the next week or so. Blizzard has said that the beta is going to be longer than usual this time around. For reference, the beta for Heart of the Swarm began on September 4, 2012 and the game released on March 12, 2013. Therefore, if the LotV has a beta longer than 7 months, we may not see a release date announced until Blizzcon. As unfortunate as that would be, it seems possible. Blizzard stated in the LotV beta preview that they are going back to the drawing board with the second Terran unit. The unit will have to be designed, modeled, put into the beta for testing, all of which take time and we all know how Blizzard is with iteration. We shouldn't forget the mess that was the Warhound in Heart of the Swarm's beta period. Even if we do have a release date going into Blizzcon, I don't think we will see much for Starcraft. There will probably be a few new playable missions to give us more of a look in to the story or possibly the campaign only units. That's about it.
Heroes of the Storm:
Heroes feels like it has been out for a year for me. I was lucky enough to get into the tech alpha last year so my view of it is a little skewed. I've unlocked all the heroes and have settled into a rhythm of just buying whatever hero comes out every 6 weeks. Blizzard has said that's the timeframe they want for releasing new heroes, so there is reason to believe we will see 5 or 6 released between now and Blizzcon. Perhaps we will see a new map released by then too. I expect the Heroes panels to preview some characters and maps, which is always fun, but this year I expect the priority to be solidifying the esports side of things. Similar to how Blizzard handled the WCS, I see them setting up a tournament structure for Heroes. Promoting Heroes of the Storm as a competitive esport is essential in bringing people in from other competing MOBAs. I personally hope for some changes in pricing for the game's official release (the game is basically release now with anyone being able to buy in, but calling it a beta lets them change things like this). The price for heroes and mounts is just too high. I have less of a problem with skin prices just because the quality is just that much higher than any other game is offering right now. I'm interested in the process Blizzard will go through with their Heroes announcements. Being a free to play game without semi-regular expansions, it will be important to have a unique way to create hype.
Hearthstone:
We have a years worth of history to work with now for Hearthstone. I expect the schedule to continue as it did for 2014. Adventure mode announced at PAX East and released shortly after, followed by Expansion announced at Blizzcon and released shortly after. There is no shortage of raid and dungeon content in the Warcraft universe to convert to Adventures on a yearly basis. Expansions can be built around nearly any theme, and card games have some benefits that MMOs and RPGs don't. If balancing a card for release ends up more difficult than expected, you can simply put the card on the shelf until the next expansion rolls around and simply rethink the dressing. For example, if the Piloted cycle from Goblins vs. Gnomes wasn't working the way they wanted, they could take 5 months to tweak it and then release it as part of Blackrock Mountain as a Dragon rider cycle. This is a great advantage especially for a card game where regular releases of new cards is so important. We have no idea what to expect for the theme of the expansion announcement at Blizzcon. No one really expected GvG until datamines started popping up. It could be anything, and that's exciting.
Overwatch:
At PAX East we were told that the closed beta would begin "Fall 2015". I'm hoping that we don't have to wait until Blizzcon to find out the exact date, but that is a possibility. If the beta is going on at the time of Blizzcon I would expect a show match event similar to Heroes of the Storm in 2014. With the game entering beta in the fall, we still have a long time until we have a release date or anything along those lines. What I think we will see is more information on Blizzard's story plans and supplemental content outside of the game. It's curious to me that Christie Golden doesn't have any Warcraft novels announced for 2015. Christie has been a huge part of the out-of-game lore for Warcraft, and I find it hard to believe that they don't have her working on something. I'm not predicting any kind of Overwatch novel, but it's something to keep in the back of your mind. Outside of that, we will probably see a hero or two as well as a map. I think we will see some kind of video detailing some story aspects at an Overwatch panel, but who knows exactly what it will be. At this point, any Overwatch news is exciting.
Diablo:
2015 will be the year we get some really Diablo news. I think we will see an expansion announcement in 2015. However, if history holds true we may see it at Gamescom rather than Blizzcon. Reaper of Souls was announced there so they may continue that trend. Either way, we won't have a release date at Gamescom so Blizzcon will be where we get the real meat. The story left off in Reaper of Souls with Tyreal nervous of the power of the Nephalem and the choice they have to fight alongside good or evil however they see fit. I'm sure there will be some kind of confrontation with Imperius since that guy has been being a dick to us for 2 games. We may get some information on where Ithereal went after the worldstone was destroyed. Then there is actual gameplay changes. Act 6 will come in of course. We will probably need to level to 80 if we expect to follow the pattern set in Reaper. A new class is likely, unfortunately there are a couple of issues with that. The most popular predictions are Assassin, Druid, and Necromancer. However, much of the Necromancer kit was rolled into the Witch Doctor, and the same is true of the Assassin to the Demon Hunter. Druid is most likely to me. How they build the kit I'm not exactly sure, but there are some signs in the story mode dialogue of the Horadrim heading to the Skovos Isles and that is the perfect setting to introduce a Druid class. I'm sure the kit will consist of some shapeshifting and party buffs and healing affects similar to the Monk mantras but after that I'm not sure. We also don't know what kind of primary stat a new class would focus on. The Crusader was an easy prediction because we only had one strength class at the time. Now we have two classes for each of Intellect, Dexterity, and Strength. An interesting way to go would be to have a Druid gain added benefit for Vitality. Who doesn't want something to do with the thousands of Amethyst in their stash. On a bit of a side note, I am anxious to see if the Diablo 3 team can come up with some way to get all of the Lesser and Greater Evils into the game some how. Even if all it is is another uber boss set up similar to the Hellfire crafting process. What Diablo player doesn't want to see a shiny new version of Mephisto!?
World of Warcraft:
We're getting an expansion announcement kids. I know, I'm really stepping out on a limb with that one. A lot of Warlords of Draenor has yet to play out, and we still don't know exactly what role the Burning Legion is playing. But we pretty much know that's what's coming next. The real question is how is it coming. It will all depend on how the last couple patches of Warlords pan out. We could remain in Draenor to keep the Legion from getting to our Azeroth. They may get there despite our best efforts before the next expansion. Maybe we go to Argus to enlist the Draenei's help in defending our planet. Or we could get thrown a curveball. Outside of the theme of the expansion is the question of new race or class. Warcraft has generally introduced one or the other in an expansion with the exception of Mists and Warlords. We saw both in Mists and neither in Warlords. I think we will get one or the other in our next expansion. If I had to venture a guess it would be for a new class. 12 classes just feels like a good number. If the expansion is indeed Legion focused, Demon Hunter makes sense as a class. Metzen has hinted in Blizzcons past at a desire to bring Illidan back into the fold somehow and that would be an absolutely awesome way to do it. There are some other options but none of them seem to fit quite as well. It's similar to how the Death Knight was the perfect class to introduce for the expansion where we take on the Lich King. An interesting side note is if we get a release date. Blizzard has been on record for quite a while that they want to roll out expansions quicker and it's getting to the point where they need to put up or shut up. If we get another 9 month last patch of this expansion people are going to get very frustrated and that could be a problem when the Warcraft subscription model is very much the lifeblood of their other games. I would also expect to see an official trailer for the Warcraft movie. We will be about 6 months away from the current release date so the press machine will be in full force.
I will revisit some of this stuff as we get closer to Blizzcon and after we see what some of the other conventions tell us. Thanks again for reading.
Until next time, Chris
It's official. Blizzcon will be back in Anaheim this November. It's an exciting time for any Blizzard fan. This past year was as good of an example of that as ever. The announcement of Overwatch was the biggest announcement Blizzard has given us in years. Any given year some IPs are represented more than others. For instance, 2014 had very underwhelming announcements for Warcraft, and especially Diablo. Warcraft got an exclusive movie preview, which is exciting in its own right, but not something that all fans can appreciate since it was only for con-goers. Other than that, we got some patch previews and a couple panels that served primarily as QA. We didn't even get a preview of 6.2 where they finally open up Tanaan Jungle to see what Gul'dan has been up to. Diablo got even less. There was a preview of Season 2 items and tweaks to the rift systems. However, most of what was shown was catered to the full time Diablo 3 player. No new story to explore, no truly new features, and no new incentives for Seasons. Obviously, Blizzard isn't going to have something big to preview for every game every year. They just don't produce content that quickly. Which brings us to the point of the post. Let's try and predict what we will see in November. TOO SOON EXECUTUS! you say? I know, I know. But hell, it's fun and I'm going to do it anyway. I will revisit after Gamescom or something as we get closer.
Starcraft:
Legacy of the Void beta is beginning in the next week or so. Blizzard has said that the beta is going to be longer than usual this time around. For reference, the beta for Heart of the Swarm began on September 4, 2012 and the game released on March 12, 2013. Therefore, if the LotV has a beta longer than 7 months, we may not see a release date announced until Blizzcon. As unfortunate as that would be, it seems possible. Blizzard stated in the LotV beta preview that they are going back to the drawing board with the second Terran unit. The unit will have to be designed, modeled, put into the beta for testing, all of which take time and we all know how Blizzard is with iteration. We shouldn't forget the mess that was the Warhound in Heart of the Swarm's beta period. Even if we do have a release date going into Blizzcon, I don't think we will see much for Starcraft. There will probably be a few new playable missions to give us more of a look in to the story or possibly the campaign only units. That's about it.
Heroes of the Storm:
Heroes feels like it has been out for a year for me. I was lucky enough to get into the tech alpha last year so my view of it is a little skewed. I've unlocked all the heroes and have settled into a rhythm of just buying whatever hero comes out every 6 weeks. Blizzard has said that's the timeframe they want for releasing new heroes, so there is reason to believe we will see 5 or 6 released between now and Blizzcon. Perhaps we will see a new map released by then too. I expect the Heroes panels to preview some characters and maps, which is always fun, but this year I expect the priority to be solidifying the esports side of things. Similar to how Blizzard handled the WCS, I see them setting up a tournament structure for Heroes. Promoting Heroes of the Storm as a competitive esport is essential in bringing people in from other competing MOBAs. I personally hope for some changes in pricing for the game's official release (the game is basically release now with anyone being able to buy in, but calling it a beta lets them change things like this). The price for heroes and mounts is just too high. I have less of a problem with skin prices just because the quality is just that much higher than any other game is offering right now. I'm interested in the process Blizzard will go through with their Heroes announcements. Being a free to play game without semi-regular expansions, it will be important to have a unique way to create hype.
Hearthstone:
We have a years worth of history to work with now for Hearthstone. I expect the schedule to continue as it did for 2014. Adventure mode announced at PAX East and released shortly after, followed by Expansion announced at Blizzcon and released shortly after. There is no shortage of raid and dungeon content in the Warcraft universe to convert to Adventures on a yearly basis. Expansions can be built around nearly any theme, and card games have some benefits that MMOs and RPGs don't. If balancing a card for release ends up more difficult than expected, you can simply put the card on the shelf until the next expansion rolls around and simply rethink the dressing. For example, if the Piloted cycle from Goblins vs. Gnomes wasn't working the way they wanted, they could take 5 months to tweak it and then release it as part of Blackrock Mountain as a Dragon rider cycle. This is a great advantage especially for a card game where regular releases of new cards is so important. We have no idea what to expect for the theme of the expansion announcement at Blizzcon. No one really expected GvG until datamines started popping up. It could be anything, and that's exciting.
Overwatch:
At PAX East we were told that the closed beta would begin "Fall 2015". I'm hoping that we don't have to wait until Blizzcon to find out the exact date, but that is a possibility. If the beta is going on at the time of Blizzcon I would expect a show match event similar to Heroes of the Storm in 2014. With the game entering beta in the fall, we still have a long time until we have a release date or anything along those lines. What I think we will see is more information on Blizzard's story plans and supplemental content outside of the game. It's curious to me that Christie Golden doesn't have any Warcraft novels announced for 2015. Christie has been a huge part of the out-of-game lore for Warcraft, and I find it hard to believe that they don't have her working on something. I'm not predicting any kind of Overwatch novel, but it's something to keep in the back of your mind. Outside of that, we will probably see a hero or two as well as a map. I think we will see some kind of video detailing some story aspects at an Overwatch panel, but who knows exactly what it will be. At this point, any Overwatch news is exciting.
Diablo:
2015 will be the year we get some really Diablo news. I think we will see an expansion announcement in 2015. However, if history holds true we may see it at Gamescom rather than Blizzcon. Reaper of Souls was announced there so they may continue that trend. Either way, we won't have a release date at Gamescom so Blizzcon will be where we get the real meat. The story left off in Reaper of Souls with Tyreal nervous of the power of the Nephalem and the choice they have to fight alongside good or evil however they see fit. I'm sure there will be some kind of confrontation with Imperius since that guy has been being a dick to us for 2 games. We may get some information on where Ithereal went after the worldstone was destroyed. Then there is actual gameplay changes. Act 6 will come in of course. We will probably need to level to 80 if we expect to follow the pattern set in Reaper. A new class is likely, unfortunately there are a couple of issues with that. The most popular predictions are Assassin, Druid, and Necromancer. However, much of the Necromancer kit was rolled into the Witch Doctor, and the same is true of the Assassin to the Demon Hunter. Druid is most likely to me. How they build the kit I'm not exactly sure, but there are some signs in the story mode dialogue of the Horadrim heading to the Skovos Isles and that is the perfect setting to introduce a Druid class. I'm sure the kit will consist of some shapeshifting and party buffs and healing affects similar to the Monk mantras but after that I'm not sure. We also don't know what kind of primary stat a new class would focus on. The Crusader was an easy prediction because we only had one strength class at the time. Now we have two classes for each of Intellect, Dexterity, and Strength. An interesting way to go would be to have a Druid gain added benefit for Vitality. Who doesn't want something to do with the thousands of Amethyst in their stash. On a bit of a side note, I am anxious to see if the Diablo 3 team can come up with some way to get all of the Lesser and Greater Evils into the game some how. Even if all it is is another uber boss set up similar to the Hellfire crafting process. What Diablo player doesn't want to see a shiny new version of Mephisto!?
World of Warcraft:
We're getting an expansion announcement kids. I know, I'm really stepping out on a limb with that one. A lot of Warlords of Draenor has yet to play out, and we still don't know exactly what role the Burning Legion is playing. But we pretty much know that's what's coming next. The real question is how is it coming. It will all depend on how the last couple patches of Warlords pan out. We could remain in Draenor to keep the Legion from getting to our Azeroth. They may get there despite our best efforts before the next expansion. Maybe we go to Argus to enlist the Draenei's help in defending our planet. Or we could get thrown a curveball. Outside of the theme of the expansion is the question of new race or class. Warcraft has generally introduced one or the other in an expansion with the exception of Mists and Warlords. We saw both in Mists and neither in Warlords. I think we will get one or the other in our next expansion. If I had to venture a guess it would be for a new class. 12 classes just feels like a good number. If the expansion is indeed Legion focused, Demon Hunter makes sense as a class. Metzen has hinted in Blizzcons past at a desire to bring Illidan back into the fold somehow and that would be an absolutely awesome way to do it. There are some other options but none of them seem to fit quite as well. It's similar to how the Death Knight was the perfect class to introduce for the expansion where we take on the Lich King. An interesting side note is if we get a release date. Blizzard has been on record for quite a while that they want to roll out expansions quicker and it's getting to the point where they need to put up or shut up. If we get another 9 month last patch of this expansion people are going to get very frustrated and that could be a problem when the Warcraft subscription model is very much the lifeblood of their other games. I would also expect to see an official trailer for the Warcraft movie. We will be about 6 months away from the current release date so the press machine will be in full force.
I will revisit some of this stuff as we get closer to Blizzcon and after we see what some of the other conventions tell us. Thanks again for reading.
Until next time, Chris
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