It's ME AGAIN!
I guess I should be all kinds of excited about the fact that we have a release date for Blizzard's next WoW expansion, Warlords of Draenor. (It's November 13, 2014, if you've been living in a cave for the last month.) Blizz is finally delivering something approximating player housing, new (versions of older) zones, and new a new raid difficulty system. The level cap is going up, skills are being changed around...
And honestly, I couldn't care less.
Which probably makes me a bad person. Or at least, a bad player.
All WoD is to me is sixty bucks plus a few months' sub time paid to Blizzard for a ten year old game that can really only claim its legacy as a selling feature. Yes, at one time, WoW was the biggest game out there. By some metrics, it still is, mostly because of people like me who play the game out of habit, or because it's the most recognizable title out there. World of Warcraft hasn't brought anything new to MMOs in ages. Ultimately, innovation doesn't matter if a game is good, but let's face it. WoW is getting tired. Sure, the Vol'jin/Horde Civil War storyline was cool, but the Iron Horde shit? It's all recycled characters and storyline, with some time travel shit pasted on.
And Garrisons. WTF. After ten years, Blizz finally coughs up player housing and it's less interesting than Champions Online's hideouts. (And holy fuck, is that a system that's pasted on and unfinished.) The whole thing is just another time and gold sink, to give players a reason to stick around for an extra month or two after release. Everquest 2, Rift, Lord of the Rings Online, Wildstar... Even City of Heroes. They all produced fairly robust, highly customizable, and mechanically USEFUL housing. The biggest developer in the industry gives us an MMO-ified version of Command and Conquer, or one of those stupid phone games where you build your shit so you can make coins to upgrade the same shit and make more coins.
I know like, nobody in anywhere reads this blog, but holy. Fucking. Shit.
DEVELOPERS. THE NEXT EVOLUTION IN MMORPGS IS NOT GOING TO BE FOUND IN A GODDAMN FACEBOOK GAME.
Stop taking design queues from Zynga.
It's all good, though, because Blizz has given us Diablo 3, patch 2.1. The first post-special edition update. Woooooooo. >.< I act unhappy, but really right now Diablo 3 is my favorite offering from Blizz. Hearthstone is a blatant cash and viewer grab. The best cards only come from sinking cash into the game, and the best competition players probably don't even pay for their packs. But hey, it gives Blizz another feature listing on Twitch, so why not? And Heroes of the Storm could have been totally great, if they'd produced it back when MOBAs first started rising in popularity, and not...what is it now, four years? Five? After League of Legends has teabagged the MMO and MMO PvP playerbase. Hell, the first MOBAs started out as fucking MODS of Blizzard games. DOTA should have been their first clue that there was (a) a market and (b) money to be had there.
D3, though... D3 is the forever game for me. It's mindless fun, with no pressure and no real need to have other people around. I can play for twenty minutes or four hours, and feel rewarded from either session. I'm constantly improving my character, and there are enough variations on gear and skills that I can change things up and tweak endlessly. My biggest complaint was that the game was almost too mindless. I'm not a hardcore player, and I mostly run on the lower Torment difficulties, but with my Wizard I was able to mow through pretty much everything (rifts and bosses included) without much regard for mechanics. Fortunately, giant meteors fell from the sky, bringing double Treasure Goblins, extra gold drops, and NEW SHIT!
Yaaay, new shit!
D3's 2.1 update expanded upon Reaper of Souls Rift mechanics by introducing Greater Rifts. They're harder, they've got better loot, and they just. Keep. Getting. Harder. It's awesome. I've got this whole new challenge to tackle, and I love Blizz for it. And as if that weren't enough, they created seasonal play. Basically, you do a complete reroll, and you unlock awesome gear for achieving milestones in your reroll gameplay. It's like if you were able to earn endgame raid gear while you level a monk on Moonguard. Only better, because it doesn't involve internet herpes. It's like a minmaxing, anti-social bitch's wet dream. And I know from that shit, because I am a minmaxing, anti-social bitch.
So yeah. When Season 1 starts, I'll be rerolling my wizard, and seeing how well I can handle leveling in story mode on Master. I'm too much of a chickenshit to level on anything higher. (And also, I suck.) Depending on loot drops, I'll probably level either frost or fire. I'd go lightning, but I really don't think that build will be any good without a Thunderfury. Please, for the love of Freya...don't join my games randomly. I know Blizz says they fixed the Do Not Disturb setting, but they also said they fixed Windwalker monks, and my DPS sure as shit didn't reflect that, so.. Yeah. You show up, I cut you. That whole anti-social bitch thing again.
And then there was Champions Online. The shitty little game that couldn't. I've ranted time and again about the potential that Cryptic, Atari, and Perfect World squandered with Champions. It's a testing ground for the testing ground of PWE's cash grab games. And yet... I have a lifetime subscription, and I have gotten more than my money's worth out of it. With City of Heroes out of the picture, Champions offers the richest character customization in the market, and if you're willing to take the time to learn the system, some of the coolest buildcraft as well. The main problem Champions has is that once you've designed your awesome hero, written her epic backstory, and perfected her powers... there's nothing to do. They've made some headway in the last year or so with their Rampage (ten man open raids) system, higher tier gear sets, and comic series/task forces. There's still a lot the game needs, though, and from the sounds of things...
We're gonna get it. Finally. Maybe? Do I even want to get my hopes up? I mean... I've been let down so many times before.
...fuck it. EEEEEE! Stuff! >.< Freezing Freya on a Stick, I'm fucking a fangirl of a game the rest of the world thinks is a steaming pile of shit. I have issues.
Anyway, according to reports at Massively, the new story arc is going to involve Mechanon- that weird guy with all the robot cowboy cultists in the desert. And world raids. And an anniversary event. But not the Foundry, which honestly I'm pretty okay about. It's a feature they've used with success in Star Trek Online and Neverwinter, but... meh. I can't get excited over custom dungeons. Been there, done that in EQ2, and I just never got into the system. But... I guess that's what people like, so... whatever.
But content! In Champions! It's like Christmas in September!
Next time, I go in search of the former prom queen turned crack whore that is Star Wars: The Old Republic, and try to decide if Wildstar is doomed to follow in her footsteps.
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