Not actually Blizz's logo, but it might as well be.
Due to Blizzard's willingness to not only capitulate with China's censorship and human rights violations, but to enforce those views globally, I'm ceasing all support for their products and services.
As a result, there will be no more Hearthstone streams as I will be uninstalling BattleNet entirely. Additionally, I've removed the link to the Hearthstone page on this blog and will be replacing links to any of their sites or services with a link to "How To Support the Hong Kong Protesters".
To be clear, this is both a boycott and condemnation of Blizzard's actions. In the coming days or weeks, I assume Blizzard may attempt walking back their stance somewhat in the form of some half-hearted apology or other meaningless gesture. This (to me) will not suffice. Even reversing their decision entirely gives no assurance that they won't try it again (or something worse).
To engage in questionable and manipulative business practices for the sake of profit is bad enough, and while I complained about it, I still streamed games made by these companies in the hope that things could change. When Blizzard globally changed Hearthstone card art to comply with Chinese law, I complained about it, but still streamed the game. Now Blizzard is willing to globally enforce China's censorship of speech, and in doing so, tacitly approving of human rights violations in the name of profit. I refuse to support that in any form.
Episode 3 of BETHESDA BLUNDERS! is here, this time with a special appearance by Blizzard! Honestly, way more AAA game publishers could've been in this one. It's like there's a contest recently of which one could be dumber and they all just keep going!
King Togwaggle ignores the significance of Troggzor to his peril!
This particular match really has me wondering a little bit about Blizzard's AI, specifically King Togwaggle's. I've seen dungeon bosses purposely not play minions when there's a Doomsayer on the table, so I know the AI in general is programmed to avoid obviously dangerous plays.
This leaves me wondering what the hell just happened in the above match, as Togwaggle plays spell after spell (including a handful of Coins) with absolutely no regard for the fact that I have Troggzor in play.
It turns out that regardless of the meta, all you really need is a metric ton of removal!
Also, the dark horse pick of the entire run has to be Defias Cleaner. Between Violet Wurm, Voidlord and a number of other nefarious deathrattles, Defias Cleaner can ruin an opponent's day like nobody's business!
This is the most triggering, soul-crushing game of Hearthstone I've ever played. It happened last week in arena, and the full VOD is available in my Twitch highlights.
It turns out that my predictions were true. I was an early naysayer to the "Standard" version of arena, citing that synergy would be too good. Due to arena not having deck restrictions, it would be entirely possible (and now more probable) to draft a deck that was actually better than constructed. Arena has never had deck restrictions, and in the past I've been opposed to even the thought of it. Now, I'm not so sure. Whether it's deck restrictions, more cards on the ban list, reverting to "Wild" arena, or something else entirely, I'm not sure - but something needs to change.
The highlighted game is of course only one of many arena matches I've played since the Un'Goro release. While it's a fairly extreme case of synergy, it's not uncommon to have ridiculous plays. For example, earlier that night an opposing paladin had turn 5 Stand Against Darkness into turn 6 hero power plus Lightfused Stegadon, getting +3 Attack on the adapt. That's +18 damage (15 of which can attack immediately) and a 3/4 beast for 4 mana (6 with the additional hero power). Note that the +3 Attack buff is permanent, making it literally better than Bloodlust here. Keep in mind I'm still talking about arena, where you're largely at the mercy of the draft to determine your success.
The Standard form of Hearthstone arena now is essentially "One-Sided Fist Fights: The Card Game". GG, Blizz.
I'm happy to see Kripp speaking out on behalf of the free (and low investment) players lamenting the importance placed on legendary and epic cards with the release of Journey To Un'Goro. I agree that even the Hall of Fame bonus dust is unlikely to be enough for the majority of players, and perhaps doling out a random quest to everyone that logged in might've helped alleviate the problem somewhat.
However, I feel there's another issue concerning quest cards that's not getting nearly enough attention due to the above complaints, and it's perhaps part of that problem as well as an overall design issue.
I often criticize Blizzard for botched releases, game imbalance and bugs... but today it's time to show some gratitude. As the above video (from Disguised Toast) shows, Blizz has been working to fix bugs and remove inconsistencies in Hearthstone these last couple of weeks. I didn't even realize some of the cards have been reworded to accurately depict the timing of their effects.
In addition, I want to say just how impressed I was with last week's Tavern Brawl - Decks Assemble! While I'm sure a lot of players were confused by the game, any fans of the deckbuilder genre were able to pick it up quite easily, and it was pretty neat. From a programming standpoint, I'm fairly certain that Brawl was one of the hardest to set up. It turned Hearthstone gameplay on its ear, and even cards with potentially problematic effects (like Emperor Thaurissan) worked fairly well. Also, I have to imagine Blizzard had to set up stronger/more servers to handle the craziness of multiple Lorewalker Chos and Nozdormus all in one game!
Kudos, Blizzard, for listening to your audience and putting in a strong effort to keep Hearthstone fun, bug-free, intuitive and fresh!
Test your wits and reflexes in this classic cinematic platformer from Blizzard!
Blackthorne is a blast from the past, originally released for MS-DOS and the SNES back in 1994. The game features some minor puzzle solving and gunplay alongside the jumping, climbing and rolling you'd expect from a cinematic platformer. You play as the prince of an enslaved kingdom who has returned to free his people and seek revenge on their captors.
Your primary weapon is a shotgun which deals with the basic enemies fairly well, but does little against the larger foes. For that, you'll use a variety of items scattered throughout the game (mostly hover bombs). You (and your enemies) can dodge most attacks by simply hiding against a wall, and combat typically involves patience as you duck in and out of cover trying to score hits. This is a fun idea at first but gets repetitive fairly quickly, though I feel it was probably better than employing a simple shoot'em'up style of play. My biggest complaint here is that you can't draw your weapon while in cover, which doesn't seem like that big of a deal since you can use other items while hidden.
As with most games of the genre, Blackthorne has a few control quirks that can sometimes be annoying to deal with. For example, attempting to take cover while directly under a ledge will instead make your character grab for that ledge (and probably get you shot in the process). While these situations are fairly rare, they are still frustrating when encountered. Taking into account the age of the game though, I feel it's forgivable. In a similar vein, NPCs can stand in spots that force you to talk to them instead of what you were attempting to do, like climbing a ladder or reaching for a ledge. Blizzard provided an interesting answer to this by allowing you to shoot the NPCs if you don't feel like waiting for them to move! This was pretty much unheard of for games made 20+ years ago.
Overall, Blackthorne is a fairly enjoyable title. Fans of cinematic platformers should give it a try, if just for the sake of experiencing a classic in the genre.
Of the five cards shown, Hungry Dragon seems to have the most overall potential to join constructed decks and Dark Iron Skulker will likely be a great utility minion for rogues. Rend Blackhand feels a little clunky due to its low health for a 7-drop, and sadly will never see play as long as Dr. Boom goes unchecked.
While Blackrock Mountain sounds like a load of fun, I'm not quite as excited about it compared to when Naxx was announced. I still feel a long ways off from getting all the GvG cards I really want, and the constructed meta settled down way too fast for such a large influx to the card pool.
I've already mentioned a number of cards that perhaps seem a little strong in previous posts, but that's only part of the problem. Most of the other cards throughout the Goblins vs Gnomes set feel so sub-par in comparison that they're not worth playing. Who really wants to open a pack and find Hemet Nesingwary as their legend? Looking through the GvG set, it's fairly easy to identify most cards as either 'playable' or 'trash'. There's only a handful of cards that fit the 'situationally good' slot such as Kezan Mystic, which is a shame. This unfortunate mix is why the meta already felt stale about a month after GvG's release. I find it hard to believe that the 31 new cards from the next expansion will do much to keep constructed play fresh for long, which is why my excitement level for Blackrock Mountain isn't as high as it could be.
In other happenings, I just got in to the Spellweaver TCG closed beta. This title looks promising and fits somewhere in between Hearthstone and Magic: the Gathering in terms of complexity and mechanics. I'm interested in seeing how Spellweaver ends up, particularly its cash shop model as it will be free-to-play for everyone once it's ready. If they can establish a fair business model while keeping the cards and effects balanced in-game, Dream Reactor may just have a TCG hit on their hands.
Which brings me to a more serious topic - when will Blizzard learn from their years of past launches/releases and finally roll out something correctly? Last week they dropped the GvG cards into the arena mix and everything looked like it was going fine. Now, if you're lucky enough to even login to BattleNet, you might not be able to play... let alone actually buy packs or get to the arena. I can overlook a slight hiccup and a small extended maintenance, but really Blizz, get your act together!
Blizzcon is underway and as expected, there's some news on what we'll see next for World of Warcraft. Here's the announcement trailer:
First things first, this is NOT the full cinematic expansion trailer you may be expecting. That will most assuredly come along at some point in the future. This video is really just a teaser to announce some of the new features being toted for the expansion.
Considering that some features announced for previous expansions still aren't implemented, it may be premature to comment on these... but I'm going to anyway.
Level cap 100
Nothing unexpected here - it was going to either be 95 or 100, not a huge difference either way.
Updated character models/skins
Already announced. Personally not too excited here, though some feel this is necessary.
Level 90 Upgrade
You can make one character instantly level 90 and experience the new content right away. This has it's uses for a quick high-level alt, and possibly even a poor man's realm transfer, so I'm not totally unopposed. Sadly, this looks like it will be instantly abused by gold sellers to farm easier than ever before. I'm also guessing that this will become a purchasable service down the road, because people like instant gratification.
Garrisons
Build your own fortress with tons of bells and whistles. This looks to be Blizzard's answer to the often-requested player housing in WoW. The biggest surprise here is they will exist in the open world. While I vastly prefer the idea of that, I'm unsure of how well it will work in practice. Previous attempts at open world player structures haven't fared well, so it's a gutsy decision by Blizzard. Here's to hoping it works well.
Questing System
Lots of buzz words here like "refined and flexible" with little to explain what that means. Quests can now reward random rare or epic loot, which might be okay. One of my biggest complaints about WoW is that it has a huge world that people can mostly ignore if they choose (get to level 10, set hearth to capital, queue LFD and never look back), and the chance at better rewards for questing may alleviate that.
A "New" World
This all takes place on Draenor, which is now known as Outland. Time travel is obviously a major theme of the expansion, and it sounds like someone is attempting to mess with past events (a repeating theme in WoW already). I have mixed feelings here. Seeing the original Draenor sounds pretty cool, but time travel can easily create lore inconsistencies. Speaking of lore, the actual reason as to why this is happening in the past is still unknown. That's intentional so as to generate speculation, which keeps people talking about it.
Not Mentioned in the Video
Level scaling and number squish. I can see not talking about the impending squish, because while necessary at some point, most players won't like it (mah big nmbrz r gon, wtf blizz). Scaling players/instances to match the other is a great feature used by a number of games, and helps to strengthen player cooperation. They're both coming to WoW at some point, perhaps before this expansion is even released (which may actually be the reason they're not part of the trailer).
Final Thoughts
Some are going to see Draenor and immediately think, "oh boy, a return to TBC! That must mean things are going to be like old times!" only to have their hopes quickly dashed. Face it, that style of play is never coming back to WoW (for better or for worse).
The announced features are a bit of a mixed bag, and I'm sure many are wondering if new races/classes/professions are even going to be added. It's still too early to tell, but I'd think if they were certain on adding any of these it would've been in the announcement. Warlords of Draenor seems more about improving what's already in-game, with garrisons being the major new feature.
That said, I don't see anything that makes me want to return yet. Garrisons would've been nice when more of my friends were playing - it's a great idea for current subscribers, though (which is an important demographic to please).
Perhaps the focus isn't to necessarily bring in new or returning players, but to keep the current ones happy. WoW may be past it's peak, but with millions of active accounts it's still very far from dead. At this point, I think the numbers have pretty much stabilized and Blizzard is left with a strong title that continues to be their major source of revenue. From this standpoint, it only makes sense to add engaging content that keeps those players entertained.
If you haven't already heard, Blizzard is releasing a new online collectible card game called Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft. While the flavor of the game is pretty well-established, the gameplay is kind of new territory for the developer. Blizzard's past successes with titles like Diablo II, Starcraft, and World of Warcraft (to name a few) set the bar for their genres - so I think a lot of people are going to have high expectations for Hearthstone.
Will it live up to those expectations? It's too early to tell, but they already have some tough competition. Magic: the Gathering Online has been around for a while now, and Mojang (of Minecraft fame) has Scrolls, which is starting to gain a following. This isn't a new situation for Blizzard though - the MMORPG genre was already going strong with titles like EverQuest when they released World of Warcraft... and we know how that turned out (it was a massive success).
I've watched a few Hearthstone gameplay videos, and it looks like a lot of fun. Here, see for yourself.
It's fast-paced, exciting, and strategic, and that's going to make for a good launch. In the long term, they've got to come up with a way to keep the game fresh and exciting after players have built and played decks thousands of times. With Magic, the answer to that is new card sets featuring new mechanics. While that's a great way to add to the game, I've come to really dislike the release schedule of Magic sets. They add 3-4 sets a year with each set ranging between 150 and 300 cards, along with a number of extra products that add twists to the game.
I played my first game of Magic right before The Dark was released, and I've gone through selling my collection and coming back to the game a number of times. I haven't had interest in Magic for several years now, mainly due to the feeling of being inundated with so many cards. I just can't keep up with that pace. Knowing that the digital equivalent is now on the same release schedule as the paper one, I wouldn't play MTGO if I was given an account full of goodies because I know a year down the road there will be hundreds of new cards to chase - and this will happen continually as long as the game exists.
This is what I hope Blizzard will be able to avoid with Hearthstone, somehow. Now, I'm not against expansions - I enjoy new toys to play with as much as the next guy - I'm against expansion overload. If they can keep away from that and still provide new play experiences once in a while, I'd be happy. Another difference between Hearthstone and MTGO will be the ability to actually win new cards via standard gameplay. Hearthstone is announced as being a Free-to-Play game where you can buy new cards for real money (like MTGO), but you can also win new cards as you play games. Realistically speaking, I'm sure you'll have to play a ton of games to earn cards after a while, but it's at least an option.
The other important thing to note about Hearthstone is that this is also Blizzard's first game using the Free-to-Play model. It's already been announced that World of Warcraft will ultimately go F2P sometime down the line, but they want to make sure their timing and business model is right. Hearthstone is going to be Blizzard's way to learn what will work for them in the F2P market, and that alone makes it an important title for them.
