blizzcon

Christmas Spirit

I tend to be a scrooge when it comes to holidays.  I am not sure exactly why I have reached this point, but it wasn’t always that way.  Over time the world seems to have warn me down, and each year that passes I find it harder and harder to get into the right frame of mind.  There are lots of reasons why it might be the case, not the least of which is the fact that my family has gone through far more deaths around Christmas time than I care to recount.  I think in part this is just the way I am, as I don’t really get excited over any of the holidays, or at least have a harder time with each passing year mustering some excitement.  It might also be due to the fact that in general we start seeing Christmas decorations showing up in the stores around July, and by the time the holiday actually shows up I am in full tilt overload mode.

Without a doubt all of this changes the moment I am face to face with a child.  I can see the amazement, excitement and wonder in their eyes as they take in the experiences of whatever holiday it happens to be.  This raises a torch to the little fire inside of me, and causes me to remember just how magical these events used to be before I became a “grown up”.  Ultimately holidays are for the children, and it is only in them that they can be truly appreciated.  Since I don’t spent my time around that many kids, it takes longer and longer for this little flame to be renewed each year.  So while I don’t necessarily want to be a scrooge, that is ultimately what ends up happening.  I am not out on my lawn yelling at the kids, but nonetheless we don’t do much if anything to celebrate holidays on our own.

Blizzard Spirit

So you might be thinking…  Bel… why are you telling me all of this?  Well once upon a time, no matter how forlorn I was about Blizzard as a company, Blizzcon was this magic bullet to relight the fires of wonderment inside of me.  Whether or not I was actually playing anything from Blizzard at the time, when Blizzcon rolled around each year it would hold a torch to the little fire inside of me and stoke my nostalgia to a fever pitch, causing me to renew my subscription.  This has long been referred to as the “Blizzcon bump” and can pretty much be charted on the subscription numbers every single time.  This is part the majesty of Blizzcon itself, and part the fever pitch of excitement that reverberates through the community as a whole.  It becomes contagious as you watch friend after friend succumb to a certain kind of madness and raise their Blizzard fan flags high.

The problem is…  the pilot light deep inside of me keeps flickering and as of yet no amount of fire seems to be stoking it.  I tuned in yesterday to watch the Blizzcon opening ceremonies stream, because I knew more than likely something would get announced that we would probably talk about tonight during the podcast.  I had heard rumors of a big announcement, and honestly I halfway expected that big announcement to be Warcraft 4, since it was the 20th anniversary and all.  Other than that I expected whatever was announced to be on a tablet, since that has been a major growth market for them with Hearthstone.  I was completely wrong in all accounts, and while what announced was awesome looking…  it didn’t really do what I thought it would and reignite the flame.

This is the first Blizzcon since the introduction of the Virtual Ticket, that I have not watched.  While I pre-purchased my copy of Warlords back when I was actually regularly playing the game… this also looks to be potentially the first Warcraft expansion that I will not actually be playing at launch.  I am jealous of the folks like Alternative Chat and Qelric that have kept their fires of nostalgia burning brightly.  Maybe this will be like Christmas, and I will be overcome with the “Blizzard Spirit” days or maybe even minutes before the official launch of Warlords of Draenor.  I am not a person of firm stances, and absolute positions.  I change my mind about at least one long held belief on a nearly daily basis.  So maybe just maybe I will be a late bloomer in my nostalgia and end up happily playing this expansion.  Currently the signs are pointing to no, and while my account is still active I have gone through all the preparations to not be playing at all.  I quietly handed over the reins of House Stalwart to my friend Rylacus during the dark of night.  In any case I will try my damnedest not to be a true Scrooge and ruin anyone’s fun during the launch festivities.

Overwatch Looks Awesome

All of this said, is not to take anything away from the fact that Overwatch does indeed look like a really awesome game.  When it was first announced I had mixed emotions about it.  It felt very much like “Blizzard Does Team Fortress 2”, and I didn’t quite understand why this was going to be a ground breaking thing.  Then again in truth nothing that Blizzard does is really ground breaking.  They have this way of taking an existing genre and polishing it to a mirror shine, improving the playability and accessibility during the process and making the gameplay itself infectious.  I have no doubt at all that when we actually get our hands on Overwatch all of these adjectives will be true, and it will be yet another blockbuster game in the crown of a company that is known for them.  We still don’t know a lot of details about the game but my general theory is this will be “MOBA” like in that we will more than likely have a rotation of free characters that we can play, with the option to purchase them permanently and also purchase nifty skins for them.

What made me excited about the game was when I watched the above video of an actual match.  I am not your traditional FPS player, in that I don’t really enjoy twitchy deathmatch back and forth gameplay.  As such I have always favored games with hard fought objectives be it capture and hold or capture the flag.  My all time favorite competitive FPS is Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory because it gave me something to focus on other than just my kill count.  Watching the above video… feels like Wolfenstein.  I love that the maps have tight corners, because the last few generations of shooters just feel too open to me.  I prefer to play run and gun, and wide open maps pretty much mean certain death from above for my particular style.  Though from the looks of it these maps seem like they will provide adequate places for folks who like to ambush like snipers as well.  The focus on the objective tightens the focus of the map, since everyone will be swarming that one location, and the six versus six group size makes for more intimate play.

So while I am not just enraptured by the Blizzcon conference as a whole, that does not mean that I am not absolutely looking forward to this game.  Right now the champions that I am looking forward to playing the most are Reinhardt because he is tanky and melee, and Winston… because he is an gentleman ape.  Another champion that looks really awesome is Torbjorn because if you have followed me for long, you will know my love of Dwarves.  Additionally when it comes to Enemy Territory games I almost always play the engineer, so that pretty much seems to fit right down his alley.  Another champion that looks interesting is Symmetra for her awesome mini turret placing mechanics.  The champion that I am not sure if I will like or not is Bastion, because he seems really quirky… but often times quirky is also interesting.

It has been over a decade since Blizzard launched a new IP, and I have to say so far I approve.  The cinematic trailer is great, when it started I was like “Blizzard does Super Heroes?  Sign me up!”.  I really want to play an MMO in this universe because I have not given up hope on a really good super hero MMO.  DC Universe Online is fun enough, but it feels really limited in scope, but it is still the best we have.  City of Heroes was a long time favorite of mine, and I miss it quite a bit at times…  that said it had been years since I had actively played it when it shut down.  Champions Online on the other hand has been a barely playable abomination… which is sad because I had so much hope for it.  If project Titan was in fact going to be Overwatch the MMO…  I mourn its loss.  However the game that rose from its ashes looks amazingly fun.  At the end of the day… I just really want to see a full length movie dedicated to the adventures of Winston and Tracer.  Hopefully I can manage to get into beta because I am very interested in seeing how this game progresses.

Open-mindedness

This one is going to be a bit of an odd one, but in part it syncs up with what I have said today.  I am thankful that my upbringing has instilled in me a sense of curiosity towards new ideas.  I can’t really say how it happened, but I have a pretty malleable sense of self, and as such I’ve always been hungry for new viewpoints on different subjects.  I gobble up as much information as I can, and each piece of information could potentially “upgrade” one of my existing views, or cause me to trash a “rough draft” and start over.  There are very few things in me that are not open to discussion, other than a core barometer of justice and basic human decency.  So at this very moment I can’t tell you how I will feel about something next week, or a year from now… because I am constantly evolving.

I think this is a strength and not a weakness, and it has allowed me to adapt to the line of work that I do and the ever changing cavalcade of new technologies and programming practices that I have to evaluate.  All the while I try my best to keep a firm sense of all of my experiences, and the history behind them… while still putting myself out there and looking to take the best bits of knowledge that I happen to find along my journey.  So Mom, Dad, Priests, Scout Leaders, Teachers…  all are to be thanked for somehow instilling in me this sense of willingness to pick up new ideas and abandon the ones that no longer make sense.

#Blizzcon #Overwatch