AggroChat #398 – Just a Rounding Error

Featuring: Ammosart, Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Tamrielo, and Thalen
Tonight we are down a Kodra because he is off enjoying GenCon.  If you see a spot on Fred from Scooby Doo in GenCon photos, that would probably be him.  We start with a topic that was purposefully bumped from last week because the ramifications were not specific yet.  Essentially Star Citizen did a progress wipe and maybe got it wrong with a rounding error causing players to end up with way more money than they had before.  From there we talk about the Festival of the Four Winds in Guild Wars 2 and some purposefully non-spoiler Sandman discussion.  Bel talks a bit about trying out Kingdom Come Deliverance and how their attempt at a clever combat system blows but can largely be fixed with mods.  From there we dive into a weird topic against gatekeeping and the joy of seeing people discovering Kate Bush.  Then we dive into a Blizzard section as we talk about the cancellation of WoW Mobile, grouping issues in Diablo Immortal, and just general issues with Blizzard.  Finally, we wrap things up with a little discussion about Xenoblade 3.

Topics Discussed:

  • Star Citizen 3.17.2
    • Wipes
    • Stipends
    • Content Drop
    • Problems
  • Guild Wars 2 
    • Festival of the Four Winds
  • No Spoiler Sandman
  • Kingdom Come Deliverance
    • Fixing it with Mods
  • A Case Against Gatekeeping
    • The Return of Kate Bush
  • WoW Mobile Cancelled
    • Exploring the potential whys
  • Diablo Immortal Grouping Problems
    • 100k Whale can’t get a group
  • Blizzard Woes
  • Xenoblade 3 Rocks
The post AggroChat #398 – Just a Rounding Error appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.

Pat Finnerty Rocks

The internet can be a really weird place sometimes. This morning’s post is more or less me explaining a rabbit hole I have been going down over the last few days. So some background information… I often times listen to YouTube as though it were a podcast while I do work on the other monitor… and admittedly also spend a fair amount of time reading Twitter. On the second something about MGK aka Machinegun Kelly aka Colson Baker aka Megan Fox’s boyfriend… scrolled across my Twitter feed. Now I have listened to quite a bit of music from him because at face value his newer stuff sounds like a lot of the pop-punk music that I actually dig. However the longer I have listened to it the more it has bothered me… how it is essentially this inch-deep surface-level interpretation of the 90s pop punk and emo genres.
This led to me tweeting that it sounds like the music had been generated by an AI that was trained by feeding it essentially everything from the 90s and early Oughts and having it regurgitate a song. The lyrics are bad, the emotional content is shallow, and ultimately sounds like the most generic version of the music you have already heard before. It is a recreation of a genre without understanding any of the elements that led that genre to come into being in the first place. This is where things take an interesting turn. For years I’ve known that behind the scenes everything we are saying and doing is being linked to some algorithm designed to feed us more relevant content. I cannot count the number of times my wife and I have had a conversation inside our home… and then moments later we are getting fed advertisements related to that conversation. Granted we don’t have any voice assistants but I am pretty sure that both of our phones are reporting back what we are saying.
It was shortly after writing this tweet that I turned around and hit refresh on the YouTube home feed to find the next thing to listen to… that I was served up this video. So some background that I did not know going into this adventure. Pat Finnerty is a musician from Scranton, PA, and a member of a band called Okay Paddy and has toured with other bands and projects. Based on my further journey down this rabbit hole, it seems like his moment of internet fame came during the quarantine era of this pandemic doing Instagram live concerts from his home and eventual rooftop. During one of these he staged a “Grohl-a-thon” where after 9 hours of being on air, Dave Grohl hopped on the feed and joined him for some discussion of Dire Straights of all things.
The other thing that he is known for, and the reason I now know he exists… and have subsequently torn through all of these videos… is a series called “What Makes This Song Stink”. He explains in the first video that he is a fan of a series by Rick Beato called “What Makes This Song Great?”, and wanted to essentially create the counterpoint. At face value that is a reasonable concept, but what carries it forward and makes these videos so damned entertaining is that they go some places. It is not just Pat technically breaking down what is wrong with a given song, they are this entire story journey weaving in bits of his past and a whole cast of characters that grows over the course of the series including “Blinds-to-Go Guy” and a fictitious radio station called “The Moose”.
What is even wilder is during the course of these videos… sometimes he decides he can do it better. So in the MGK video, he creates his own emo/punk pop band called “August is Falling”. During this, he goes to the Mall of America and gets fashion advice from a pair of extremely good nature people at Hot Topic. It doesn’t stop there… because apparently he actually played on stage AS the band.. after finding an Emo rock bassist on Instagram to sit in on the set. Taking the joke even further… you can now listen to Mad This Summer by August is Falling over on Bandcamp. Another video has this entire running gag about Here Comes the Hotstepper rocking… and he convinces the band he rents a studio from to release a cover… which now exists.
Then there is the whole Kravitz Bowl… which is a video parody of the classic era of the Super Bowl pitting American Woman against Fly Away in an attempt to determine which song stinks the worst. Like I said before these videos are a lot and in around 45 minutes each… they go on this wild journey while actually explaining the technical faults with each song covered. The could be a slog to get through at that length were it not for the fact that Pat is legitimately hilarious. I guess one of the traits that musicians and comedians both share are understanding how important timing is… and he nails the delivery of what would otherwise feel like purely video parody.
I think it would be unfair if I did not close by sharing one of his performances. On top of being funny as hell… he is legitimately a deeply talented musician. I’ve always loved Sultans of Swing and this rendition is most excellent. One of the things that have come up multiple times during this most recent Blaugust is whether or not you should stick to a theme with your blog. While Tales of the Aggronaut is for the most part a Video Game blog… I have to leave myself room to talk about other things that interest me. This morning is a prime example because I could not experience this ride… without sharing it with you all. The post Pat Finnerty Rocks appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.

Farewell to WoW Mobile

For a while now we have known that Blizzard was working on a game with Net Ease that would translate the World of Warcraft experience to the mobile platform. I think many of us became deeply concerned about what this might look like when Diablo Immortal launched and turned out to be the egregious money grab that it was. Yesterday Bloomberg broke the news that it seems like the partnership between Netease and Blizzard is strained and the World of Warcraft mobile project has been canceled. This game had reportedly been in development for three years and the only reason reported was a “conflict about financial terms”. So this leaves us to speculate exactly what happened and given that I like theorizing things I can see three paths that might have taken place. I have no knowledge if what I am about to say is true, but I am just theory-crafting the downfall of this game.

The Backlash from Diablo Immortal

Giving Blizzard the benefit of the doubt, it is entirely possible that they were caught off guard by the negative reaction towards Diablo Immortal by the traditional gaming audience. It is possible that they thought they were releasing a game that would play by mobile gaming practices and it would have no blowback on their existing franchise. This was wrong and Diablo as a brand has been deeply tarnished by this game. So for theory number one, it could be that folks inside of Blizzard realize this and do not want to do anything to harm the recovery trajectory of World of Warcraft. Interest in Diablo 4 has seemingly fallen as a result of Diablo Immortal, and there is no way that the Warcraft brand can sustain another hit to the player base. So it is entirely possible that WoW Mobile has had the plug pulled on it to stem the bleeding and signal a shift in direction.

NetEase in Hot Water

Anytime you talk about Chinese politics, things get confusing quickly. Right now both NetEase and Tencent seem to be singled out by China as “problem children”. There have been several stories indicating this including one from June where those two publishers were specifically excluded from getting games approved by the regulatory bodies. Video Games in general is getting caught up in a sweep of things being deemed harmful to “cultural unity”, and I do not have enough time to really address this point today. However, if you are curious look up the Tang Ping aka “lying flat” movement, and Bai Lan or “let it rot” movement. Essentially there is a group of disaffected youth that are actively rebelling against the “996” culture or 9 am to 9 pm 6 days a week. As a result video games, take-out food, and social media are being blamed… and the Chinese government has been actively targeting these sectors. Diablo Immortal was clearly banking on the mobile game spending habits of the Chinese market for success and in order to bring a game into that market, you need to partner with a Chinese company. Generally speaking, this is required to navigate the regulatory red tape in order to get a green light. However, with NetEase already being shunned by these regulators, it is entirely possible that Blizzard is considering this a risky proposition and actively chopping for another company to collaborate with that is not being actively targeted.

Doing It On Their Own

I am certain that part of the equation with NetEase is also that they acted as a springboard to develop a mobile title. Diablo Immortal for example was built using the existing NetEase Messiah engine which likely sped up the development time considerably. Blizzard had released a few mobile apps but never anything to the level of a fully 3D action RPG, and as such, they were able to lean on a company that had released several. In the meantime, Blizzard has seemingly been actively building ArcLight Rumble, which itself is rather impressive graphically and by all accounts runs beautifully on various mobile devices. This appears to either be their own engine or leaning heavily on some tech from King, but whatever the case is not tied to NetEase. So this makes me wonder if the canceling of WoW Mobile is a signal that they feel like they can do this on their own now. Granted this does nothing to help with the Chinese regulatory hurdles, but it seems as though as a company they are feeling like they may have mastered mobile development. With some experience in building a mobile title, maybe the company views it as a little less daunting. Maybe there are even direct assets that they would want to reuse given that ArcLight Rumble is set in the Warcraft universe. I’ve not personally had a chance to play the game but from what I have heard from friends it really is a solid outing.

Bits and Pieces of the Above

It could be bits and pieces of everything that I just talked about. I would love to think that Diablo Immortal was a bit of a wake-up call that while it quite literally is a machine for printing money, it is also damaging the company as a brand. I do not think Blizzard could survive another fiasco this time centered around the, even more, beloved brand of World of Warcraft. Even if you are not actively playing the game you have nostalgia for it, and that nostalgia can be weaponized if it is handled improperly. I also think that the current state of NetEase in Chinese politics is probably a non-starter as well. There is significant cultural turmoil happening and video games are getting caught up in the mix. Finally, I do think that after ArcLight Rumble, Blizzard as a whole is in a better state to take on their own mobile development. As a result, I would probably bank that it is a little bit of each of the above topics wrapped up into one mix that lead to the cancellation of this project. Then again… as I said before I know nothing about this situation other than what I have read in the reporting so it could genuinely be none of the above. It could simply be as simple as what was stated that it was a “conflict about financial terms”. Maybe NetEase simply demanded a bigger cut of profits and that was enough to sever the relationship on this project. The post Farewell to WoW Mobile appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.

Warriors Are Good

Yesterday I really did not have any firm plans for my evening, so when I saw that there was a new Alpha update for Dragonflight I thought I would spend my night testing that. With this update brought the Warrior talent trees, which shifted my focus to spending the evening on a Warrior trying out the current state of protection. At this point I have played through the Dracthyr starter area twice and then Waking Shores twice: Once as a Blood Deathknight and once as a Protection Paladin. As I have said before the game is in a very rough alpha state but I have enjoyed my experiences so far. With the opening of Thaldraszus I also got to spend some time in Valdrakken, the new hub city of the expansion. The above screenshot is from the central area of the city staring up at the seat of the aspects. As far as cities go, this one feels like a blending of the Shrines from Pandaria and the Guardian Faction Capitol from Rift in that you have a central tower with a bunch of other buildings spread around it forming a larger campus. As far as scale goes think of something about the area of Zuldazar, but this time Dragon Flying helps you zip around various destinations rather quickly. The central tower is accessed through a portal/lift and then can be used as a launchpad to easily use dragon flying to get out to the other zones. So far it seems like a really great hub city, with more than enough room to keep it from feeling terribly cramped as players flood into it.
As far as Warriors go, each expansion seems to be a gamble. There are some times they feel great and other times they feel less so as they sort of vacillating between feeling like a god and feeling like a puny mortal. Right now Protection Warriors feel more on the god-tier spectrum and I had more than enough interesting choices to be made while building out my character. Sadly Gladiator Stance is not bad and my daydreams of returning to being a sword and board dps character have flown out the window. I do however seem to have some of the trappings of that era at least in the form of Shield Charge. Reportedly some of the abilities are currently not replacing other abilities, so I am wondering what the final form will end up feeling like. Right now it feels like I need way more Hotbars than I currently have easy keybind access to. Essentially I had to spend quite a bit of time setting up macros to put shield charge and charge on the same button or to have a modifier swap between thunderclap and shockwave. That is maybe not optimal because I firmly believe that the core of every class should be able to function on a single Hotbar. Maybe this is my great experience with action RPG-style combat flavoring my opinions, but it would be great if your spec narrowed the number of buttons you needed more than it currently does. Essentially I want one Hotbar for active abilities and maybe a second Hotbar for cooldowns… and that is it.
Have you ever heard about a sculptor talking about being able to see the outline of their figure buried deep within the stone? I feel like that with the Dragonflight expansion. There is a lot of rough here currently because it is in this “very alpha” state, but I can see greatness lying there just under the surface. The Thaldraszus zone is legitimately great. I mean I would stack this zone up with some of the better zones that the World of Warcraft team has ever created in the past. I really enjoyed the story… or what I got to see of it in its very unfinished form. I think this is setting up some interesting conflicts for this expansion.
It also seems to be doing a better job of teeing up the first raid than most final zones have done to this point. Sadly there was no party with Captain Placeholder and a bunch of monkeys… but instead, the Thaldraszus quest just sorta died out at the gates of the first raid area. I am very interested in seeing how these zones play out with full cutscenes and dialog included. Right now we are in a state where you are essentially having to talk to Captain Exposition each time you finish a major quest chain that would have had a cutscene sequence in order to get the necessary quest flags to move on to the next step. Like I said “very alpha” but the raw stuff that I am seeing and what I can imagine being there in the final polished version… looks promising.
December is not a very long way off, and that is still the piece of this equation that concerns me. There is so much work that will have to be finished before this expansion ships. However after two “bad” expansions… it feels like maybe just maybe Blizzard is going to pull this one off. If things continue to progress along at the pace that they seem to be… I think Dragonflight might be ushering in a new era for World of Warcraft. I’ve said it before that I was honestly surprised that I was in this alpha given that I have been pretty hard on this game in the past. However, I do think this is a step in the right direction and might be something heralded as the next great expansion. There is so much work to be done but for the first time in a very long time, I have hope about this game. The post Warriors Are Good appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.