I always wondered which of my features I would break down and not do first. I have a pretty bad habit of launching a series but only quitting doing it… a month or so later. I like the concept of a day like Media Consumption… but the truth is there are some weeks I don’t really consume much media. This week for example I consumed a lot of Fallout 4 related stuff… because that is pretty much all I have been playing. The problem is… any videos I watched on how to get the most out of electricity or general base building theory… aren’t really all that interesting to talk about. Nor do I feel really compelled to talk about iZombie that we finally caught up with… or last weeks Walking Dead. Literally two episodes of iZombie and a single episode of Walking Dead is pretty much all of the television I consumed this week. So for this week I am cancelling this column, with the option to revive it as soon as I have movies, television or other media worth talking about.
Farwell to Gladiator
This week the previews for the class changes in Legion came out… and for the most part there are two classes that I was really interested in… the Warrior and the Death Knight. Two big things changed in Warlords that caused me to switch priorities a bit… firstly they made Death Knights feel like shit by making pestilence be part of the ability rotation… giving them a caster feel. Secondly they gave me Gladiator stance… which pretty much was the thing I always wanted to do as a warrior… be able to DPS with a sword and shield. As a result I took Belghast my protection warrior off mothballs… and has quite a bit of fun raiding as Gladiator dps for at least part of the expansion. Warlords however just didn’t have enough oomph to keep me going… even though I was playing the best possible player fantasy for me. I guess part of me knew that it simply could not last past this expansion. I watched as Blizzard developers struggled to figure out how to itemize tanking gear… but not making it insanely overpowering for Gladiators. Part of this came from the fact that armor was simply a better dps itemization stat than strength. I gained 1.5 attack power for each point of armor… whereas I gained 1 from strength. So that mean’t for dpsing… I stacked Armor potions rather than Strength potions and did other fiddly things… like looking for +armor gear with crit on it.
It seems as thought my fears have come true and as they talked about the Warrior class changes I saw zero mention of Gladiator spec. Even though I knew deep down in my heart that this was coming… it still feels a bit like a sucker punch to the gut. I liked being able to play Belghast again and enjoy doing so… the problem being… that I still didn’t really feel like DPS. My heart has never been in the DPS rotation… and as a player when it comes to DPS… I don’t want to be last place on the meters, but I have zero burning desire to be first place either. I feel like I am lacking the competitive nature needed to really excel at damage dealing. Tanking however… my deep protective streak over my friends always kicks in and I fight my ass off to hold aggro, or stay alive during this attack or that. Basically tanking feeds off of my instincts in a way that damage dealing never has. So while I hate the thought of not being able to deal silly amounts of damage as gladiator… and have relatively high survival… I am totally see why they are getting rid of it for exactly that reason. Regardless of the fight, I was almost always the last one standing because I had cool-downs a plenty to keep me alive during big problems. There were numerous times where I could temporarily tank while we resurrected a tank, which tells me… Gladiator was just too strong.
Welcome Back Blood
During the Crusaders Coliseum patch cycle in Wrath of the Lich King… I ended up switching mains from the Warrior to the Death Knight in theory… to give up tanking and do damage instead. This didn’t actually work like I planned, and instead of DPSing I quickly found myself pressed into the role of Blood tanking. This was fine by me because from the start of playing a Death Knight I had always been drawn to the high survival nature of blood. As that turned into the official “tanking” stance I adapted quickly and came to love the class and the spec. Through Cataclysm and Pandaria I was all about the Death Knight and it was always the first character I would level. In fact until Pandaria my Warrior sat at level 80… and relatively untouched since I crated him up towards the end of Wrath. When we were able to become Worgen, I race changed from human… and I felt like I was completely happy and set to be playing that class for the rest of my time in World of Warcraft.
Then Warlords came and made the class just “feel” wrong. I have talked about this before… but it is more important how something feels to me rather than how numerically it works out. Death Knights no longer “felt” tanky or even melee in general… but the constant pestilence and death coil usage made it “feel” like a caster… the absolute last thing I would want to play. With the class changes it at least seems like they understand this problem… and with it is a return to mostly melee abilities for at least the Blood Death Knight. So while I am losing Gladiator… it seems like I might be gaining back the Death Knight class as a whole? Admittedly a lot of what harmed my enjoyment of Warlords beta… was how bad the Death Knight felt to play. My hope is that at some point early in the beta cycle I can get my hands on some play time… and get clarification if this fixes the class. I am getting more interested in Legion as a whole… but this is going to be absolutely crucial to my enjoyment. I need my Death Knight back to have fun again.
During the midst of the BlizzCon festivities I tweeted the above statement… and at the time I thought this would be a brilliant idea. BlizzCon brings up feelings in me at least that I didn’t even realize were still there about a game I have not been actively playing for six months. So yeah… it seemed like if they would just automagically make it so everyone can log in and play during BlizzCon and the two weeks after… they would probably re-hook a lot of players on the game or at least get them to stick around for a few months. The problem being… two weeks is probably long enough to make someone come to their senses. I phrase it like that because I am going through a bout of momentary insanity myself. Every instinct in my body tells me that I really want to play some World of Warcraft, which is odd because nothing really seemed that amazing while the presentations were going on. There is just something about the BlizzCon buzz that is real and tangible and makes you want to sift through your past characters and revisit old haunts that you had long forgotten.
I am having these desires to log in and run Icecrown Citadel or Naxxramas… or even Ulduar. Basically this is 100% nostalgia attacking me and making me want to go experience what I considered to be the best era of the game. I am fighting the urge with every fiber of my being because I know as soon as Tuesday happens… I will be devoting my life to Fallout… and thinking “Warcraft who?”. I know I could log in and play sub level 20 characters, and I have considered that… but have not been certain if that would make the desire better or just worse. The problem is… I don’t REALLY want to play World of Warcraft… I want to play the game circa 2009 when we were still in love with the Wrath of the Lich King patch cycle. Some of the Legion content seems like it could be really cool, and I do hope with every fiber of my being I somehow find my way into Beta, but I know all that waits for me on the live game is the same stuff that lead me to finally cancel my account again. Yes I am rationalizing the hell out of this because I am just trying to hold out until I am safely in a Vault Wednesday.
Closer to Sleeper
The above image was me yesterday morning while I wrapped up the AggroChat podcast and made my own blog post, waiting and hoping and praying to see a Warsat drop. Part of the time I spent trying to make Destiny Event Tracker work… which it does… but it feels like there is a paragraph of explanation text that needs to go with it that simply does not exist. It seems like this is a timer that shows when an event MAY spawn, and some of the spawn zones are not exactly active. For example I really do think that the Warsat simply no longer drops in Skywatch because of all of the other events that are happening there now. I waited that timer out for a significant amount of time and never saw one. However once I switched over to checking the Mothyard on earth, aka the location in the above image… I quickly got a Warsat and was able to move on. Similarly quickly I was able to get both the Mars and Moon Warsat drops which were pretty much accurate according to the timers listed above. That only left the archives mission on Venus, which I know I MUST have done at some point…. but damned if I can remember doing it at any point in the past. Maybe there is a special version if you are on the sleeper stimulant quest chain, but I do not remember something quite like that.
I have now finished powering up the Ikelos core, and have turned it in to the Gunsmith. In theory tomorrow with the reset he should offer me a new quest to go do a 280 light version of the Saber-2 strike. If I can cobble together a group for that, I should be able to loot the sleeper stimulant frame, which at least based on what I am reading will turn in at the Gunsmith for my finished 290 Sleeper Stimulant heavy pulse rifle. This will be the first of the exotic weapon quests that I have really completed… not counting the one you get from the gunsmith at rank 4. It definitely feels less arbitrary than the exotic bounties used to in year one. In all of the bounties I completed I only ever got the bounty for the last word. This at least gives me a ladder that I can climb, with more importantly a starting rung of that ladder that is clear…. well clear based on using external sources. I am not sure how the hell people figured these things out the first time… it seems like pure madness since the game doesn’t really give you much information to go on. I guess Bungie is accounting for the fact that the internet and YouTube is pretty much ubiquitous and someone somewhere would upload a video on how to do pretty much everything you can think of. I still at some point need to get the Cult Ghost from Paradox so I can eventually get No Time to Explain. Since my hunter is my Future War Cult devotee, I am thinking maybe I should try for it on them because at this point they should have all of the faction needed to complete the quest.
This week we have Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra and Tamrielo with Thalen once again travelling. Over the course of the week we had a discussion about an Extra Credits video calling Destiny the Law and Order of gaming. This spawned a further discussion about what ended up getting termed as “Junk Food Gaming”, aka those gaming experiences that you play because they are enjoyable but also don’t require much thought for you to consume. This week we spawn a continuance of this discussion, and we find out why Tam is not on board with this concept. Additionally we have a lengthy discussion about all of the latest announcements from BlizzCon and several other subjects. Things we talked about…
Last week I had this grand plan of hanging out at home and watching BlizzCon 2015, so I took the day off work. Then as we got closer to the day, it suddenly filled up with other things I needed to do. Our house looked like madness yesterday with three vehicles of the contractors working on the siding and minor renovations, and another truck for the heating and air company. All of this while my wife and I were being forced to park in the next door neighbors driveway. Thankfully they were not here the last few days, otherwise I have no clue what we would be doing for parking. I am sure the neighbors are wondering what manner of insanity we are up to… as at one point yesterday we had a guy stop and gawk for a few minutes without asking anything. I guess that is the benefit of not actually knowing half of your neighbors is that you don’t have to make the same small talk over and over when something like this happens. This morning in honor of BlizzCon however I am going to talk about the things that interested me.
Diablo 3
I am leading off what was I originally thought going to be the big disappointment of the day. Blizzard did what they always do and rolled out everything that was new and shiny in their opening ceremony. The problem being… they said absolutely nothing about Diablo 3 which has turned out to be probably the game in their lineup that I care the most about. I had hoped they would announce another expansion this year, but alas that didn’t happen. However I am completely fine with this because the Diablo 3 panel later in the evening pretty much showed me that the team is quietly doing awesome stuff, in spite of apparently being ignored by Blizzard as a whole. The presentation was essentially a rapid fire series of announcements of new features. The one nearest and dearest to my heart surrounds the season play functionality. They have essentially sorted out that they are going to make seasons three months long, meaning at the end of that three months there will be new content leading into the next season. They said this gives players enough time to really deeply experience it… and also fits players like myself that swoop in… play enough to get the easy rewards and stop playing for a bit.
The biggest announcement as far as I am concerned is the “Rebirth” feature, which will allow you to essentially reboot a previous character and turn it into a new seasonal character. All of the gear that was on the character gets mailed to the account, and that character gets dialed back to level 1… but keeps achievements, hours played etc. It sounded like maybe there would be a special set of achievements for reboots, but essentially it solves the problem I always have of feeling like I have to create something brand new to be able to play along in the season again. They are also adding additional stash space… and the ability to earn slots by completing the seasonal journey on a character, up to 10 slots total. This all honestly would have been enough for me, but they are revising the buff system, changing the way damage is shown… adding a whole item set dungeon functionality where specific dungeons will require you have an item set equipped and then have challenges based on the strength of that set. On top of all of this… new zone and some expanded areas which makes 2.4 pretty damned awesome and it apparently goes up on the PTR next week.
Heroes of the Storm
The highlight of the Heroes discussion is the fact that we are getting Genn Greymane as a playable champion. This is absolutely hands down my favorite Alliance leader… that isn’t given the respect of having his own damned town to govern. I am still a little sore that Gilneas never became someplace we could actually use as a capitol city. I would seriously bank in that town all of the damned time if they allowed me to. All the same however it is awesome to have him as a champion and it looks like the gameplay is going to be based around changing in and out of Worgen form. The other interesting tidbit is that it seems like they are introducing ARAM for Heroes of the Storm. The details were pretty scant and I have not watched any of the panels for Heroes yet… but from the sounds of it, the mode seemed to put a random group of champions against another random group of champions just like “All Random All Middle” mode in League of Legends.
I am honestly all about that because ARAM is probably my favorite mode to play in League. Mostly because it takes all of the pressure off in that if you are getting randomly assigned a champion… no one can complain too much about you not being able to play it terribly well. I’ve found it a great way to get my feet wet and get used to how a champion performs under actual combat situations. The other interesting thing from the show was the introduction of Cho’Gall the two headed ogre. This is a champion that is literally played by two different players. I am assuming that one controls the movement and the other controls the combat at least to some extent. Everyone with a BlizzCon virtual ticket will be getting it added to their account… and then they can play matches with other players to pass the character on. After two matches a player will earn their own copy of Cho’gall and after I think they said four matches the original player gets a sack of gold for spreading the madness. It sounds cool and it is awesome to see this game thriving.
Hearthstone
The highlight of this announcement was awesome new Brann Bronzebeard artwork. Hearthstone is one of those games that I like, but rarely actually boot up to play. I am not sure what it is about the game, but essentially I keep playing the same deck over and over without changing it up much. It is like this game requires too much of me to actually get in and sort out the decks I might want to build. I am happy that it seems to be doing well, and I am happy that it has a meta that is very much alive. That said I felt generally meh when listening to them talk about the gameplay. I feel like maybe if it ran for shit on my iPad I would play it more, but I struggle with this game in the same way that I struggle with so many mobile games. It requires too much of me to pop into it while waiting on something… but it just isn’t sticky enough to make me choose to play it over literally any other game I have installed on my computer or consoles. There just is rarely ever a situation where I am going to pick this over an MMO or a single player game experience. I have so many other games to play… and honestly most of the time too damned many. The hearthstone fans seemed to be really happy, so I am never going to rain on their parade with my own “meh”.
Overwatch
I won’t lie the highlight of the Overwatch presentation for me was seeing just how awesome the Mercy Wings are in Diablo 3. Other than that I loved the Mei reveal, because she was freaking adorable… and also looked like a really fun zone control champion to play. Similarly I thought D.Va was a pretty cool concept, but I doubt I could ever see myself playing her. The boot up sequence of her HUD was awesome, in that it showed a cute bunny icon while it was loading. I really don’t care for the design of her Mech, which is my main problem with her as a champion. There is just something wrong looking about it… I get they were going for a jet with legs after the reboot that allows her to fly… but a Guardian Mode Veritech is a better version of what they were trying to accomplish. Though I think the design they came up with was largely a compromise to save space on the screen.
I have to admit I was largely tempted when they announced this would be coming to PS4. The problem there is that the Xbox and PS4 Blizard games are disconnected from Battle.net. That is my biggest problem with playing Diablo 3 on the PS4 is that I am stuck with only having access to my PSN friends… which are in no way as long of a list of Blizzard fans as the Battle.net account. So even though I am going through a bit of a renaissance of console gaming… I am ultimately going to go with the mouse and keyboard of the PC and essentially have to reacquaint myself with that sort of game play. I agree with Kodra in his belief that playing with a controller on a PC is a trap when it comes to a competitive FPS. There are times I have even considered picking up a XIM4 for my PS4 so I have the option of playing with a keyboard and mouse there as well. The PS4 natively supports USB and Bluetooth keyboards and mice… but very few games actually support that. Mostly right now I just want to get into the Overwatch beta… and I am hoping that will be a thing that happens soon.
Warcraft Movie
I have to admit on this one that before this trailer I had not really given much of a shit about the Warcraft movie. But man… those feels while I watched this. I have just been burned in the past when a franchise that I love was turned into a movie… at least from the gaming side of things. Does anyone remember how horrible the Dungeons and Dragons movie was? or Doom? This however…. looks like it is going to be a really good movie and revitalize the Warcraft franchise for a whole new generation. Maybe it is just the hype I am feeling about Star Wars spilling over into Warcraft… but I am feeling like now is the time to set aside old grudges and just embrace any fandom wholeheartedly. Both Durotar and Lothar were awesome in the trailer, and I think they were probably right to make this a Warcraft movie… and not a World of Warcraft movie. My hope is that along with this we maybe see a rebooted version of the original Warcraft RTS franchise. In any case regardless I know what I will be doing next June… sitting in the theater and watching this movie.
Legion Expansion
Now we finally get to the low point of Blizzcon… which I guess tells you how far my tastes have changed. I was completely amped about most of the above announcements other than maybe Hearthstone. I wholeheartedly love Blizzard games… but I have just reached the point where World of Warcraft is my least favorite of them. The cinematic trailer was nice… but I honestly had hoped that maybe we would have seen Varian die during it… or at least I thought that was what we were going to see for a bit. For years Varian was supposed to be “our thrall” but he has always been this paper thin super one dimensional character. His son on the other hand… Anduin has gone through some actually interesting changes especially during Pandaria. So my hope was that we would see Varian dying during this siege and passing the banner to his son who is more than likely far more capable a leader. The trailer also gave me hope that maybe just maybe they would finally be retiring the tired old shtick of Alliance versus Horde and giving us the ability to play with friends from both factions. Look… it is a dream that I am not going to let go of ever… I hate faction bullshit.
For the most part there is a lot of interesting things at work here… but I lack the faith that they are going to be carried out in a fashion I am going to like. It is my honest hope that I get into the beta testing process so I can see if I like it or not. I big nail in the coffin for Warlords was how badly they made the Deathknights feel… so I guess there are a lot of things that sound good on paper but never quite work right when you put them into practice. I am absolutely willing to give this game a shot, but I want to know that I will actually like it before I plunk down that pre-order. The new zones do look absoultely amazing however. They are pushing this aging engine for every ounce of oomph that it can muster, and I love that. The way WoW looks right now, reminds me of the way late in a generation console games look… when they have really figured out how to make the most of the resources they have to work with. This expansion is a bunch of really good ideas, that just don’t seem to be connected by enough tissue to hold them together. My disappointment largely was that the game didn’t really give me that moment of “fuck yeah!” that I have had in previous expansions. It did however give me a lot of moments of “that sounds cool”, especially when it comes to the non-linear leveling process for the new content. Unfortunately that same level scaling won’t apply to the rest of the world… so we are again creating this walled garden of “good” content and everything older will feel like crap as a result.
