I’m slow on the followup this time around! I want to reflect on some of what we saw at Blizzcon as it pertains to my thoughts pre-con.
Legion
So I went with an April prediction just to be extreme and different, admitting in my predictions/wants post itself that I know full and well we won’t see it until August+ because of ‘Overhype’. That came true. No shock at all. Now… wtf to do in WoW until then? I have absolutely no idea. As I speak I’m in the queue for LFR Archimonde. Once I kill him that will mean I have seen everything in WoD. That was my goal. I’m done at this point. Believe it or not, some of the most fun I’ve had is managing my Garrison. I wish it was more like farmville/harvest moon.
Ten (10) months until new content in WoW — Okay, more like 8-9 but that is incredible. I’m pretty much riding out my last 20 days on this sub then calling it there. No reason to keep paying when I have seen EVERYTHING I want to in the game. ::cough:: I don’t really want to keep saying I told you so, but is this not the epitome of winding down WoW to ramp up / hype up their next wave of potentially more profitable/more revenue per player games? Of course it is.
Legion continues to look amazing. Yes, I’m going to buy it. Yes, I’m going to play all of the story and quit when I ultimately run into the same situation I have in WoD. That, ladies and gentlemen, is WoW.
Overwatch
The hype levels are dangerous here. We already call it ‘Overhype’ and people are already saying it’s dangling from the precipice of mediocrity and genericness. I have yet to play it myself, and I withhold the right to pass my own judgment. Overwatch LOOKS fun. I like shooters of this style and calibre. I can’t say this is hte kind of game I’ll play for years, though. Their release date is exactly as I would expect.
Starcraft
What shocked me here was the DLC. I don’t know why I let it come as a surprise that they would go from taking one game, and making three full games out of it, to making mission packs. I probably won’t buy them. To be quite honest, I simply don’t see the value. If I have absolutely NOTHING else to play… I might be tempted. Otherwise, I’m somehow not the market — which really makes no sense because I’m the guy who buys SC to play the single-player…
Hearthstone
Yep.
Heroes of the Storm
I was completely wrong here. HotS was a huge emphasis. Cho’gall seems awesome, albeit a little outrageous. That’s the HotS model, though. “No one else would or could, so we did.” That’s the HotS model. Arena mode reminds me of those gladiator maps from the glorious WC3 custom map days. Those were amazing.
Diablo
Womp womp.
Overall
Blizzard played it very safe. Nothing about bringing back the classic games, and no major surprises or announcements that truly shocked me. Yet, without fail, Blizzard remains stable and proving that they are going to be putting out a heck of a 2016.
I have no idea about any of this, except that wow is probably like your ex girlfriend (before you got married) it won’t end well.
I’d basically pay you though for a take on star citizen. I don’t have a dog in the hunt. Nothing contributed, and probably won’t play. But they’ve raked in about $100m of other people’s money doing whatever it is they are doing. That alone makes it interesting. Probably like in the same way a car hitting a moose is interesting. But who knows.
And no, I have no idea why stuff like that interests me.
I’ll probably give Star Citizen a try in the future when it becomes available to the public without having to back it via some sort of crowdfunding. Has that happened yet?
Or they could give me access and I’ll write about it! 😛
I was pretty happy with the emphasis on Heroes. I know there are tons of haters out there on this game, but in IMO it’s the best MOBA out there. I’ve played close to 400 hours of DOTA and DOTA is a great game, but for my more casual game play HoTS is where it’s at. The different maps, lack of items, and solid graphics make it a great alternative to LoL and DOTA. I too am pumped about the Arena mode.
The fact that Overwatch isn’t F2P makes me uneasy. I enjoyed the heck out of TF2, so I am interested in the game, but it seems like this could be a money grab. Especially when TF2 has proven to be very profitable with all its microtransactions.
Keen I think you would really like mythic dungeons. They’re actually pretty hard despite the level of gear they give. Similar to how TBC heroics were but maybe a little or lot less forgiving to DPS standing in the bad.
There was a little bit about Diablo http://blizzardwatch.com/2015/11/08/blizzcon-2015-future-diablo-3-patch-2-4/ but perhaps the bigger news are all the Diablo systems they are basically copying verbatim into WoW. All the zones scaling up is basically adventure mode and the new challenge dungeons are basically rifts.
I liked the scaling and challenge dungeon ideas. I think there are some neat ideas to explore there.
As for WoW mythic dungeons, I don’t know if I care enough about them to gear up to the point of doing them. Tanaan left me with a sour taste in my mouth this past weekend. I was ganked over and over (probably 13x) one day, and couldn’t even do my quest the next day. Took me forever to get my Apexis dailies done. Feels like there’s easily 2-3x more alliance always around.
My sub has 20 more days. I really, really like my Garrison. I like sending my followers on missions. That is lots of fun to me. I wish it was developed even more, and I’m a little sad to hear it is being downscaled/removed a lot in Legion.
I enjoy Heroes of the Storm. That said, it really has nothing on LoL as far as strategy/depth/tactics are concerned.
But that can be nice every once in a while. What I DO think it does better is giving supports more to do. Actually being able to REALLY HEAL, like for real, not just some ult sometime or whatever… that is great.
It is good fun. The Hero pool is a bit shallow so far, but that’s just a time issue.
I am quite impressed with the new Adventure coming out this week for Hearthstone. They’re really getting their turnaround time down between announcements for HS content and release.