MMORPG

Exploring Ohn’ahran Plains

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It is quickly becoming a regular thing for me to log into Dragonflight Alpha on Tuesday nights and play the brand new build. You can read the full patch notes here, but this week’s test focuses on the Dracthyr Starter zone and Ohn’ahran Plains. Since I have already played my way through the Dracthyr “all casters all the time” zone twice now… It was onwards to Ohn’ahran Plains for me! Unfortunately, I could not take either of my already level 62 characters into the zone and instead had to create a brand new character and then let the NPC level me and transport me to the appropriate zone. Since I played through as a human I figured I would rock out on my normal Orc Femme Horde Warrior.

The zone itself is very Nagrand adjacent with flourishes of the Draenor version of Shadowmoon Valley. Wild and gorgeous and has some really interesting elements thrown through it. I got to experience the ducks for the first time, and thankfully the quest did not involve me killing them… but instead yanking tail feathers out of them which causes them to run away. This zone also has some of the coolest-looking bears that I think every hunter will probably rush out to go tame as soon as possible.

The best feature however is the phenomenal work that has been done with the zone’s skybox. This is legitimately one of the most painterly zones I have played through since maybe Grizzly Hills? There is nothing about the zone that reminds me of Northrend however and it is basically a blending of some of the better elements from Draenor. Again everything feels a little spartan for my tastes, however, I am greatly missing all of the micro objectives that we had in Legion. I am hoping that we are just seeing an early version of the zone that has yet to be populated with those things. I would really hate to have this expansion be absent of all of the interesting world objectives from the last several expansions. For me, at least those greatly improved the exploration aspect of those zones because I was constantly on the lookout for things to interact with. Once again the named gold and silver elites seem not to have drop tables yet, which I hope is remedied before launch.

We got yet another update to the UI, and while there are some massive LUA errors happening at the moment that require the use of “/console scriptErrors 0” to hide, it seems to be coming along nicely. This time around we were able to move our minimap. I hope that over time each of the different UI elements maybe gets a few more options, like the ability to detach the world buffs window from the map and move it around freely. the only negative is that the UI changes were different enough this time that it wiped my saved UI preset from before. It took me a few minutes to juggle things around back into the orientation I prefer. Legitimately we are on the trail of me not needing to run addons anymore. Again it could use a few more features… but it is getting there and I give massive credit to the team working on this.

The central story of the zone centers around the Centaur packs, but unlike Desolace… they actually seem to be genuinely good people. Like in the previous “friendly Centaurs” scenario… they only really liked us because we were actively killing their enemies. The version we get in Dragonflight is much more akin to the story of the various Highmountain Tauren Tribes from Legion. I did not get anywhere near finished with the story, but so far I am enjoying it greatly. Kudos to the folks who worked on the new models because they are pretty phenomenal. I realize it would be way too much to ask to get them as a playable race… but I am going to ask it anyway. They really are extremely cool, and there is even some subtle variation in the way each of the clans looks.
I’ve said it before… but there is potential greatness in Dragonflight. So far I’ve adventures in four zones, and while they are all in a rough state… the only one that I did not really enjoy was the Dracthyr starter area. The other three I would put up against some of the better World of Warcraft zones from history. It is going to be interesting to see how relevant these zones remain once you reach the new level cap. There is not a single one that I would mind spending more time in, and the design of each feels sufficiently unique while at the same time retaining a sort of general visual language for the Dragon Isles as a whole.

I feel like I am beating a dead horse at this point… but my only concern right now is the fact that we have less than four months left in 2022. If this is going to meet a release date in December of this year, then it will need a lot more work. I am concerned that the zones that feel relatively bare-bones currently… will remain feeling that way at launch. The look, feel, and quest structure is great… but it is missing the little details that made Legion questing feel so freaking good. I hope that given time these details can be added to really flesh things out. If they can’t… then I legitimately hope this release date gets bounced into 2023 because it might need it. I hate to think about the level of crunch that would be required to reasonably get this out the door before the end of the year.

Farewell to WoW Mobile

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For a while now we have known that Blizzard was working on a game with Net Ease that would translate the World of Warcraft experience to the mobile platform. I think many of us became deeply concerned about what this might look like when Diablo Immortal launched and turned out to be the egregious money grab that it was. Yesterday Bloomberg broke the news that it seems like the partnership between Netease and Blizzard is strained and the World of Warcraft mobile project has been canceled. This game had reportedly been in development for three years and the only reason reported was a “conflict about financial terms”. So this leaves us to speculate exactly what happened and given that I like theorizing things I can see three paths that might have taken place. I have no knowledge if what I am about to say is true, but I am just theory-crafting the downfall of this game.

The Backlash from Diablo Immortal

Giving Blizzard the benefit of the doubt, it is entirely possible that they were caught off guard by the negative reaction towards Diablo Immortal by the traditional gaming audience. It is possible that they thought they were releasing a game that would play by mobile gaming practices and it would have no blowback on their existing franchise. This was wrong and Diablo as a brand has been deeply tarnished by this game. So for theory number one, it could be that folks inside of Blizzard realize this and do not want to do anything to harm the recovery trajectory of World of Warcraft. Interest in Diablo 4 has seemingly fallen as a result of Diablo Immortal, and there is no way that the Warcraft brand can sustain another hit to the player base. So it is entirely possible that WoW Mobile has had the plug pulled on it to stem the bleeding and signal a shift in direction.

NetEase in Hot Water

Anytime you talk about Chinese politics, things get confusing quickly. Right now both NetEase and Tencent seem to be singled out by China as “problem children”. There have been several stories indicating this including one from June where those two publishers were specifically excluded from getting games approved by the regulatory bodies. Video Games in general is getting caught up in a sweep of things being deemed harmful to “cultural unity”, and I do not have enough time to really address this point today. However, if you are curious look up the Tang Ping aka “lying flat” movement, and Bai Lan or “let it rot” movement. Essentially there is a group of disaffected youth that are actively rebelling against the “996” culture or 9 am to 9 pm 6 days a week. As a result video games, take-out food, and social media are being blamed… and the Chinese government has been actively targeting these sectors.

Diablo Immortal was clearly banking on the mobile game spending habits of the Chinese market for success and in order to bring a game into that market, you need to partner with a Chinese company. Generally speaking, this is required to navigate the regulatory red tape in order to get a green light. However, with NetEase already being shunned by these regulators, it is entirely possible that Blizzard is considering this a risky proposition and actively chopping for another company to collaborate with that is not being actively targeted.

Doing It On Their Own

I am certain that part of the equation with NetEase is also that they acted as a springboard to develop a mobile title. Diablo Immortal for example was built using the existing NetEase Messiah engine which likely sped up the development time considerably. Blizzard had released a few mobile apps but never anything to the level of a fully 3D action RPG, and as such, they were able to lean on a company that had released several. In the meantime, Blizzard has seemingly been actively building ArcLight Rumble, which itself is rather impressive graphically and by all accounts runs beautifully on various mobile devices. This appears to either be their own engine or leaning heavily on some tech from King, but whatever the case is not tied to NetEase.

So this makes me wonder if the canceling of WoW Mobile is a signal that they feel like they can do this on their own now. Granted this does nothing to help with the Chinese regulatory hurdles, but it seems as though as a company they are feeling like they may have mastered mobile development. With some experience in building a mobile title, maybe the company views it as a little less daunting. Maybe there are even direct assets that they would want to reuse given that ArcLight Rumble is set in the Warcraft universe. I’ve not personally had a chance to play the game but from what I have heard from friends it really is a solid outing.

Bits and Pieces of the Above

It could be bits and pieces of everything that I just talked about. I would love to think that Diablo Immortal was a bit of a wake-up call that while it quite literally is a machine for printing money, it is also damaging the company as a brand. I do not think Blizzard could survive another fiasco this time centered around the, even more, beloved brand of World of Warcraft. Even if you are not actively playing the game you have nostalgia for it, and that nostalgia can be weaponized if it is handled improperly. I also think that the current state of NetEase in Chinese politics is probably a non-starter as well. There is significant cultural turmoil happening and video games are getting caught up in the mix. Finally, I do think that after ArcLight Rumble, Blizzard as a whole is in a better state to take on their own mobile development. As a result, I would probably bank that it is a little bit of each of the above topics wrapped up into one mix that lead to the cancellation of this project.

Then again… as I said before I know nothing about this situation other than what I have read in the reporting so it could genuinely be none of the above. It could simply be as simple as what was stated that it was a “conflict about financial terms”. Maybe NetEase simply demanded a bigger cut of profits and that was enough to sever the relationship on this project.

Warriors Are Good

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Yesterday I really did not have any firm plans for my evening, so when I saw that there was a new Alpha update for Dragonflight I thought I would spend my night testing that. With this update brought the Warrior talent trees, which shifted my focus to spending the evening on a Warrior trying out the current state of protection. At this point I have played through the Dracthyr starter area twice and then Waking Shores twice: Once as a Blood Deathknight and once as a Protection Paladin. As I have said before the game is in a very rough alpha state but I have enjoyed my experiences so far. With the opening of Thaldraszus I also got to spend some time in Valdrakken, the new hub city of the expansion. The above screenshot is from the central area of the city staring up at the seat of the aspects.

As far as cities go, this one feels like a blending of the Shrines from Pandaria and the Guardian Faction Capitol from Rift in that you have a central tower with a bunch of other buildings spread around it forming a larger campus. As far as scale goes think of something about the area of Zuldazar, but this time Dragon Flying helps you zip around various destinations rather quickly. The central tower is accessed through a portal/lift and then can be used as a launchpad to easily use dragon flying to get out to the other zones. So far it seems like a really great hub city, with more than enough room to keep it from feeling terribly cramped as players flood into it.

As far as Warriors go, each expansion seems to be a gamble. There are some times they feel great and other times they feel less so as they sort of vacillating between feeling like a god and feeling like a puny mortal. Right now Protection Warriors feel more on the god-tier spectrum and I had more than enough interesting choices to be made while building out my character. Sadly Gladiator Stance is not bad and my daydreams of returning to being a sword and board dps character have flown out the window. I do however seem to have some of the trappings of that era at least in the form of Shield Charge. Reportedly some of the abilities are currently not replacing other abilities, so I am wondering what the final form will end up feeling like.

Right now it feels like I need way more Hotbars than I currently have easy keybind access to. Essentially I had to spend quite a bit of time setting up macros to put shield charge and charge on the same button or to have a modifier swap between thunderclap and shockwave. That is maybe not optimal because I firmly believe that the core of every class should be able to function on a single Hotbar. Maybe this is my great experience with action RPG-style combat flavoring my opinions, but it would be great if your spec narrowed the number of buttons you needed more than it currently does. Essentially I want one Hotbar for active abilities and maybe a second Hotbar for cooldowns… and that is it.

Have you ever heard about a sculptor talking about being able to see the outline of their figure buried deep within the stone? I feel like that with the Dragonflight expansion. There is a lot of rough here currently because it is in this “very alpha” state, but I can see greatness lying there just under the surface. The Thaldraszus zone is legitimately great. I mean I would stack this zone up with some of the better zones that the World of Warcraft team has ever created in the past. I really enjoyed the story… or what I got to see of it in its very unfinished form. I think this is setting up some interesting conflicts for this expansion.

It also seems to be doing a better job of teeing up the first raid than most final zones have done to this point. Sadly there was no party with Captain Placeholder and a bunch of monkeys… but instead, the Thaldraszus quest just sorta died out at the gates of the first raid area. I am very interested in seeing how these zones play out with full cutscenes and dialog included. Right now we are in a state where you are essentially having to talk to Captain Exposition each time you finish a major quest chain that would have had a cutscene sequence in order to get the necessary quest flags to move on to the next step. Like I said “very alpha” but the raw stuff that I am seeing and what I can imagine being there in the final polished version… looks promising.

December is not a very long way off, and that is still the piece of this equation that concerns me. There is so much work that will have to be finished before this expansion ships. However after two “bad” expansions… it feels like maybe just maybe Blizzard is going to pull this one off. If things continue to progress along at the pace that they seem to be… I think Dragonflight might be ushering in a new era for World of Warcraft. I’ve said it before that I was honestly surprised that I was in this alpha given that I have been pretty hard on this game in the past. However, I do think this is a step in the right direction and might be something heralded as the next great expansion. There is so much work to be done but for the first time in a very long time, I have hope about this game.

The Waking Shores

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Last night I took a break from my Path of Exile Inquisitor shenanigans and played around in Dragonflight Alpha for most of the evening. Up until this point, the testing had been entirely focused on the Dracthyr and their starting area. As I had said before neither the Dracthyr themselves nor the Evoker class was really my jam and nothing that I could see myself playing seriously. I generally crave playing melee classes, and unless I am doing that… it doesn’t really feel like “WoW” to me. So starting yesterday the Alpha testers had access to a new zone and all of the other classes to test it with. So as a result I took my Death Knight that I created last week to play with the talents and ventured forth into The Waking Shores.

The Waking Shores is pretty large. If I had to give an example of scale I would say something in the range of Draenor’s version of Nagrand. The scale of the zone also feels very large and epic, in part because so much of the architecture was designed for dragons. With the introduction of Dragon Flying as a mechanic, it also has way more verticality than I am used to. The only weird thing I have noticed is that the world feels really spartan. Starting with the Timeless Isle, I am used to WoW maps being populated with a staggering amount of little detail to be discovered in the forms of what I am going to refer to as micro-objectives. There were mini-bosses to kill and chests to loot for interesting baubles, collectibles, and gear. This seems to largely be missing from the design of Dragonflight, or at the very least there has not been a pass of development to populate these doodads and widgets.

The world feels way more “Alpha” than I have come to expect from a Blizzard game some five months from release. I’ve been in a number of alpha testing processes for World of Warcraft and just as an example at this point in Warlords of Draenor all of the classes were effectively complete, and the zones felt more or less “finished”. We still have a number of classes without new Talent trees for example, so I have not been able to check out the Warrior and am leaning back on my Death Knight as a result. Granted if the entire studio does a full-court press, they can get this game across the finished line, but it does feel like it is going to be way more tentative than I am used to. I do wonder if we are going to see an impending delay of Dragonflight into 2024. That would honestly probably not be a bad thing given that I am not sure anyone actually expected this game to be released in 2023 prior to the announcement of the release date.

With this update saw another release of the new UI. This time added to the interface are the player and target frames and some additional options for the existing hotbars. I really like that we can turn on a visible grid while editing the UI. I am hoping that means at some point in the near future we will be able to turn on snapping to the grid. It is amazing how much of a difference having these few additions improve the experience. I’ve said it before but if the WoW UI can get to a point where it is at least as detailed as the FFXIV UI, then it is highly unlikely I will install addons in the future. For me the key things I need are the ability to move my player frame and target frame to the center of the screen, and also have hotbars that are slightly below them. Then finally the main addon that I installed every time was one that unified all of my bags into a single pane… all of which are features now of the default UI. Massive kudos to the team working on this.

There is still quite a bit of placeholder text, for example, I ran a quest and the two NPCs were named Left and Right, and were on the left side and right side of an objective. I laughed entirely too much from this giant dialog of menu options as to WHY we are visiting the Dragon Isles. I specifically like “You tell me. I don’t read quests. I just complete them!” because it clearly sounds like a quest developer taking out some frustrations. I really have not spent enough time with the content to get a feel as to how it stacks up against other expansions. So far it very much feels like a WoW Expansion, and honestly feels a bit more like something like Northrend than it does like one of the more modern expansions like Legion. I am not sure if this was the intent, but I do miss a lot of the small zone details that were added starting with Pandaria. Again I am not sure if this is just a case of it being “very alpha” and not finished, or if this is more of a minimalistic design decision.

Right now we are level capped at 62 and I will probably finish out the zone on the Death Knight and then maybe start it again on Paladin so I can test out Protection talents. All in all, it does not feel bad and I am interested to see how this evolves.