The reveal that most folks are still talking about is World of Warcraft Dragonflight, but yesterday brought us another reveal trailer that I personally had been waiting for. Outriders is a game that I still very much have a burning candle for, and while I am not actively playing it I still very much enjoy popping in to make some earthquakes. When People Can Fly announced the New Horizon changes last November, they also announced that we would be getting a new expansion in 2022. Yesterday we got some more information about what exactly that is going to entail. Unfortunately there is still not a ton of detail but we do have a release date of 6/30/2022 or… the end of Q2 pushing it as far out as you possibly can while still counting it in the first half of 2022. I have no clue what fiscal year Square uses, but it is entirely possible that 7/1 is the beginning of a brand new fiscal year as well.
Essentially all we really have to go on right now is two trailers:
In both cases there is pretty scant details about specifics but we know that we are going to be getting the following features that were discussed.
New Story Campaign
New Zones – Ice Themed
Talent Tree Expansion System
New Apocalypse Challenge Tier System which unifies story and expeditions
With this a new Apocalypse Tier of gear that features an extra perk slot
Alternate Advancement System – allowing you to gain stat points after you finish leveling
New Legendary Gear – Class Sets, Shared Sets, and Weapons
“Endgame” – They name drop something called the Trial of Tarya Gratar that sounds like maybe a raid but uncertain
Pre-Order head start – 10% discount and 48 hour early access
All of this sounds great, but honestly the core problem that I had with Outriders is that I never really fell into a regular group that was playing it. The game is fun solo, but I struggled with trying to push myself forward much further by myself. At launch I really hated the Expeditions mechanic because it was timed, and I HATE being timed in a game. There are some seriously mental issues that I have over that that I am likely never going to get over… very deep scars. When New Horizon released they removed the timers and as a result Expeditions got immediately better. I spent some time hanging out with Warenwolf, and Thalen started leveling… but we never really connected as a proper trio to do serious content. Maybe with the release of Worldslayer I can convince them both to give it a shot as well.
I think the thing that I like the most about Outriders is that it really takes so many of the things I loved about building characters in Diablo 3, and carries them forward to the looter shooter genre. When this game released so much press was focused on how this was not a live service game, and I have to say… maybe it should have been. Square does a phenomenally poor job at creating live service games in general, but Outriders is one that I think could have been improved by having a regular feed of new content. I would likely bought some cash shop cosmetics to fund additional development work. Instead what we have is a game that is going to seemingly go long periods of time with no updates and be extremely easy to sit back down on the shelf in those lull periods. That is not a bad thing either, but since gaming seems to be dominated by MAU counts it harms a game like this in the long run.
I am absolutely going to be poking my head into this when it releases late in June. I am going to pretend that the date is a late birthday present even rather than probably bumping up against some fiscal deadline. I am curious, are any of you also looking forward to this? The thing I still really want to see is cross save support because I would probably even pick up a copy for Xbox Series X to play with friends over there, but I have no interest in leveling another set of characters or collecting a new set of gear.
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Friends on April 19th the first part of Living World Season 1 dropped called Flame and Frost. I was so exceptionally excited to be able to experience this, and for me at least it did not disappoint. Some weeks back I covered what I considered to be the biggest challenges facing someone trying to get into Guild Wars 2, and the one that I highlighted as being the biggest was the huge hole in the story. The personal story of the core game is essentially one of saying goodbye to Destiny’s Edge and the rising if your own legend. By the time Living World Season 2 comes along you have an entire cast of characters that have been caught up in your wake and are given no introduction to them. This felt exceptionally jarring as I needed to understand where all of these people suddenly came from, and the answer is… Living World Season 1 was that introduction. In fact it seems to almost entirely be built around giving us the backstories of this new cast of companions that would ultimately be known as Dragon’s Watch.
What Living World Season 1 Episode 1 offers is about two or three hours worth of gameplay in total if you are pushing through it quickly. There were I believe four combat focused story instances, a few of them being rather lengthy. This is then combined with a good deal of story asides like this scene in Rytlock’s office. Then there is of course what I understand to be the original vehicle for a lot of the interaction… a series of email messages sent to the player that trigger progression in the story. I am not sure how much this version differs from the original version, but I feel like the team has done a pretty good job of taking what was ultimately a temporary event and packaging it up in the Living World format we are used to. For a moment however… can we just stop and marvel at how wide eyed and young Rox looks in this model? I knew the characters aged and changed over time, but going back like this it is staggering how many subtle changes have been made along the way. Rox has always been one of my favorite characters and I’ve loved every moment of her interactions during this story so far.
I’m also please as can be at just how many players are out in the world doing this content, or were doing this when the servers came back up on Tuesday. I popped in over lunch and did part of it, and then finished things up that evening. There is a tangible excitement in the community right now and it is infectious. Good things are happening and Arena Net has been nailing the communications with their new series of blog posts. Having a regular channel of information to the players is extremely important, the Destiny 2 community would not be nearly as cohesive as it is without the “TWAB” or “This Week at Bungie” a series of blog posts that come out on Thursdays. Seeing meaningful updates and forward momentum every few weeks is exceptionally important and I have to say I am enjoying watching this sleeping giant waking up. The faltering of World of Warcraft has caused a chain of events that I am not sure can really be stopped. So many players got disillusioned and branched out to explore the other games that were available in the genre… and it feels like ALL communities benefited by this not just Final Fantasy XIV.
We will have to wait until May 24th before we get to experience Episode 2, but given how fast time moves right now… that will be here before we know it. I have never played through content in Guild Wars 2 more than once on a single character, but I am honestly contemplating playing through LW1E1 again just to soak it in a little more deeply. I have to say the battles were extremely fun and I have some deep feelings about characters and their origins that I never had before. For years I have never quite understood why Braham as much of a dick as he ended up being at times. Now I know without a doubt that he had good reason and honestly it is probably a miracle that he is as functional as he is currently. It also is doing nothing to improve my opinions of Destiny’s Edge so far, but they were kind of awful to begin with.
If you never got to experience Living World Season 1, and also always struggled to get engaged with the story and characters of the game… then I highly suggest you check this out. It is providing the context behind actions that I really needed. It is providing a patch for the gaping hole in the story that the game desperately needed. This is a good call on the part of Arena Net and I am hoping that when we finally reach the end of this sequence that we get a glorious launch of Guild Wars 2 on Steam to christen the arrival at the end. If my math is correct we will be getting the final piece of the season around the time of the 10th anniversary of the game. I really think that would be the ideal time to welcome brand new players from Steam. Having a clear story progression is key, because your average player is not going to crawl through the wiki to try and piece together the details.
I am so freaking engaged right now, and seemingly picked the ideal time to get back into this game. I am still slowly catching up with Living World Season 5 and looking forward to starting Cantha with a clean conscience. I however was more than happy to take a quick break to get those missing bits of story. What are your thoughts about Living World Season 1 if you are playing through it? Did you also feel it was a rousing success, or did you find issues with it? Drop me a line below.
The post Basking in Flame and Frost appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Good Morning Friends. I am going to admit this is probably going to be a bit of a melancholy post, and I want to give you a heads up as not to deflate your enjoyment. There are many riding the hype train from yesterdays announcement of the Dragonflight expansion for World of Warcraft, and I don’t want to do anything to diminish your joy. Lord knows that Blizzard gamers right now need a little bit of joy in their life given everything that has happened with the company and their flagship game over the last several years. Lets start off with just the facts. If you did not catch any of the coverage yesterday there is a slew of videos to watch on the official World of Warcraft channel.
For your viewing enjoyment and ease of use I am going to link them all here:
At a high level a brand new expansion was announced set in the Dragon Isles, and area that the player has not visited since Warcraft II (and even that was likely non-canonical). With it comes a brand new race for those who really like scalesonas, the Dracthyr. This is going to create a bit of a weird balancing situation because with them comes a brand new class that is locked to that race as well. The Evoker can be a DPS or a healer and blends the magic of the various dragonflights into its spells. I’m personally not terribly interested in playing a dragon and have had more than my fair share of opportunities be it the actual dragons in Horizon, or the Sarnak in Everquest II. Before I get into more editorialization, lets go with a quick rundown of everything that was discussed.
New Expansion, Level Cap bumps up to 70
New Race/Class combo of Dracthyr/Evoker
2 Specs – Healing and DPS
Hero Class – Starts at 58
Wears Mail Armor
Dragon Isles – 4 leveling zones, 1 new starter zone for Dracthyr
Dragonriding
Dragon mount that levels up over time and gains new abilities
Customizable with collectable bits of armor and such
Talent Tree Rework – Time will tell if it is freedom of choice or just the illusion
UI Overhaul – More customizable and cleaner
Profession Revamp
Ability to create an order to have something crafted by another player
That folks is World of Warcraft Dragonflight in a nutshell. Now I guess it is time for me to talk about my reaction to it. I will admit that I found myself looking forward to this reveal yesterday. World of Warcraft is much like a bad breakup that never really goes away, and I wanted to see a glimmer of hope. I’ve talked before about how Blizzcon is this concentration of nostalgia and joy that ultimately makes me resub to the game almost every single time. This is especially true when it comes with the announcement of a new expansion. I have this history of coming back in at the tail end of an expansion and coasting on the good vibes until the launch of the new content. Prior to Legion I leveled everything to the then cap of 100, and did something similar at the tail end of legion with my horde characters preparing them for Battle For Azeroth.
The weird thing is… it isn’t that ANYTHING I saw was bad. In fact I think Dragonflight is probably going to be a universally good expansion. There is a part of me that would have been super excited by this reveal. The problem is as I watched it yesterday felt nothing. It summoned forth the same amount of emotional attachment that I would have while watching the evening news. I have no clue what changed but I am starting to fear that I am too far gone to be revived. I know there are a lot of people who poured their hearts and souls into this expansion reveal and I think for the most part they did a good job. I expected SOME reaction to the news… but I just sort of feel hollow about it. This is in part why I tried to give the warning at the beginning of this post, because I do not want to suck the joy out of the room.
While I was not personally feeling it, I do think that the way in which the information was delivered was probably a good call. Blizzard had this bombastic rockstar persona built up over so many years… and we have learned that with that came a lot of exceptionally bad behavior within the company. It is sobering to see what a Blizzard reveal looks like when it isn’t trying to borrow the energy from a Jolt Cola ad from the 80s. I get the general feeling that the Dragon Isles are going to feel a bit like Northrend, which admittedly was one of my favorite expansions. It is a time of expeditions instead of military conquest, and it sounds like the scientists and archeologists are going to be leading the way. This is all really good, and a positive step forward for the game. I just wish that I felt something about all of this.
I signed up for beta like I have always done, and if I get access I will try it out and see if maybe the reality can sway me where the marketing material has not. The panel format does give the impression that the reigns of Blizzard are being taken over by the competent adults in the room and being taken away from the abusive aspects. I am really hoping that this is true behind the scenes because I have so many friends who work for this company in one aspect or another that I want to see it succeed. I am just uncertain if the fate of this company and my desires still align. I don’t want to give the impression that anything about Dragonflight was bad, just that for whatever reason I am not feeling it. That is not to say that will not change over time, but I do wonder if the magic is gone for me.
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Good Morning Friends! Thanks so much for all the comments yesterday. I always feel weird talking about “milestones”, like I am being overly self congratulatory. I honestly got up yesterday and struggled a bit as to whether or not to make that post or throw out a new Mixtape Monday, which incidentally will be released next Monday. I am still very deep into Guild Wars 2 and enjoying the heck out of it. I’ve wrapped up Living World Season 4 and am now chipping away at Living World Season 5 aka the Icebrood Saga. This season definitely feels like more than your average Living World Season, but not quite an expansion. It does make me wonder if there was a conversation happening at the studio about maybe just doing seasonal content going forward rather than expansion drops.
In other news I have finished crafting my Perfected Nightsword and am on to the third Twilight collection. This now involves me doing a bunch of content that I do not love… jumping puzzles and gimmicky mini-dungeons and then collecting “Gloom” in specific places. So far I have only collected Gloom from Tequatl’s lair, Shadow Behemoth, and one darkness themed mini-dungeon in Dredgehaunt Cliffs. So I have much work to go before I can craft my Dusk and begin trying to sort out what I have left to do before I can turn it into Twilight. Huge thanks to both Nogmara and Tamrielo for helping me with the Mithril because in total it came in just under 4000 ingots to finish the second step of this process. The expensive part of it was buying all of the Deldrimor Steel Ingots that I needed, but at least this part is done. The last step is more labor intensive but should not have near the gold cost associated with it.
The other day I happened to be running Tequatl early in the morning, because happenstance had made me miss the reset run the evening before. Low and behold I happened to notice that both Ammo and Sol were running it as well. I snapped a photo of me with Ammo because it honestly is not super often that we are both in the same area at the same time. I am getting super anxious to share with you her latest creation. As is often the case I have been getting periodic updates showing off progress… and I kinda griefed her this time with the inclusion of the raven mantle. However she has made short work of that challenge and it looks freaking awesome in drawn form. This is maybe going to be my favorite “Bel” that she has drawn.
Lastly I started tooling around on a Sylvari Engineer. There is something I found humorous about a plant person that is a gearhead. Originally I had a Charr Engineer, but honestly… I have to admit that as much as I like them as a people… I don’t love playing as one. Charr have the whole Tauren problem for me where they feel extremely bulky and slow. This is probably ironic considering I am playing the “Big Human” as my primary character, but Norn at least have Human motions that feel quick and nimble for their size. Sylvari is something that I am coming to appreciate the longer I have played Guild Wars 2. At first I pegged them as “Plant Elves” and you know me and my general dislike of most Elves… but they are way more interesting than that. Maybe the interesting story arc of Caithe has turned me around on my feelings about them.
The weird thing about the World Boss teleport trinket from the Black Lion shop, is that it takes you to places you don’t really have any business being yet. One of these places is to fight Drakkar, an ice dragon deep in the Bjora Marches. It is interesting seeing how this story unfolds and I feel like I am on the cusp of finally reaching this fight on the narration. There are so many excellent touches with this content, like when I met the Wolf Spirit the game acknowledged that as a Norn I was pledged to the Bear spirit and that he is proud of me. I’ve also really enjoyed the Charr homeland zone and all of the weird stuff that the various Legions get up to there. Bjora Marches has lasted much longer than I originally expected it would, so I am very interesting to see what the next zone brings with it.
Lastly today is the date that the next World of Warcraft expansion is going to be revealed. While it has been sixteen months since I last played the game, I still find myself interested in what comes next. I have a feeling that it won’t be enough to draw me back to the fold, but I also feel like I have said that before many times. I did not love Battle for Azeroth and I bounced in less than a month from Shadowlands, so I am wondering if I am just done with this game. We will see if what comes next interests me at all.
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