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BlizzCon 2023 Thoughts

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Good Morning Folks! I have to be honest… I had every intention of writing a post on BlizzCon this past Friday as the event was going on but that never quite came to fruition. For those who do not follow such things, this past Friday and Saturday was the first in-person BlizzCon since 2019. I know a ton of friends who were very happy about the return of the event and made plans to travel to Anaheim for it. I’ve always wanted to go, but tend to have a fairly fraught relationship with Blizzard games in general. I feel like it is probably a good idea to get this out of the way, but I have not actively played World of Warcraft since December 2020, though I have followed from afar and did some alpha testing for the latest expansion Dragonflight. I’ve grown apart from the fandom and Diablo was really the last vestige that I clung to.

If you are so inclined, you can watch the full uncut presentation for Blizzcon 2023 here.

All of that said… I am shocked to say that I thought this year’s BlizzCon was almost universally positive. I found it extremely interesting that within 10 minutes of the event starting, we had a speech from Microsoft’s Phil Spencer. He said all of the right things, but I find myself wanting to believe them. As someone who has been a Windows programmer for most of my career… I have a fraught relationship with Microsoft as a whole. That said… I can’t see that Microsoft has done wrong by any of the companies they have acquired. They have most definitely been a steadying force for Mojang and Minecraft. The one strike that I could throw against them was Redfall, but who knows precisely how that mess unfolded because it was a game so far out of the comfort zone of that studio. As compared to the reign of Bobby Kotick… I have to imagine that Microsoft will be a positive force for Blizzard as a whole.

Another thing that I have to admit is that there is a lot of presentation that I just did not care about at all. Overwatch is a setting that seems interesting, but I am not going to engage unless they shift gears and turn it into a looter shooter. Hearthstone is something that I did care about for a while… but now that Magic that Gathering Arena exists and is relatively enjoyable… I have a good representation of the game I actually care about and don’t really need the Blizzard clone. Rumble is outside of my wheelhouse especially now that my aging phone seems to have trouble running any modern games that are not the most simplistic of 2D graphics. So essentially for me… BlizzCon was a show about World of Warcraft and Diablo, both of which got some interesting announcements.

Based on the schedules that came out ahead of the show, I fully expected that we would not get a Diablo IV announcement this year. I am pleasantly surprised that we did and it is going to be set in the area of the world from Diablo 2 Act 3 the Torajon Jungles. This should in theory be southwest of Kehjistan in the current Diablo IV areas. They were pretty limited on their information but did drop that we are going to be seeing a new class that has not existed in the Diablo franchise before. Data mining leaks ahead of the show indicated that this was some sort of nature-based class. More important than all of this however is that they released some information about more endgame content going into Diablo IV starting this week and continuing into Season 3 in January. There is also going to be a winter holiday event which might be interesting for a bit. Unfortunately, the new endgame content starting this week is going to be gated behind the season’s journey, which means it is really only for folks who are languishing at level 100 and doesn’t do much to solve the problem of running out of an interesting reason to grind further after about level 80.

In the realm of “why does this exist” we get to World of Warcraft and more specifically “Classic WoW”. Apparently, the classic servers are updating to Cataclysm… which seems really weird to me given that the sweeping changes to the old world that came with Cataclysm were the impetus for many of the unofficial emulator servers that eventually coalesced into the official “Classic” product. Does anyone actually want this? I am hoping that they maintain some Wrath servers for the folks who did not want to move forward into Cataclysm. Maybe there is someone out there who missed out on the first decade of World of Warcraft and is now interested in reliving it at a rapidly increased pace. It is however spawning a number of memes around this having to happen so that they could launch World of Warcraft Classic Classic. I have specific negative feelings towards Cataclysm as this is when I first broke from the game as a whole.

The other classic project however seemed really interesting. “Season of Discovery” is sort of a re-imagining of World of Warcraft with unique talent trees and class changes designed to make playing it wildly different. They specifically name-dropped Tanking Warlocks and Mage Healers as mutations available during this game mode. The irony here is that we absolutely had a Warlock Tank in Ahn’qiraj, and I myself tanked as a PVP geared Boomkin…. so this might be something that interests me in the long run. One of my favorite eras of World of Warcraft is Gladiator Stance and being able to dps with a sword and shield as a Warrior. If they bring this back… then they probably have me at least for a bit.

The big news however was the announcement of a change in practice towards expansions in World of Warcraft and while they did not elaborate on this… a shorter time frame between them. Not only did they announce The War Within which comes out next year, but also Midnight and The Last Titan as a trilogy of expansions with shared themes. We’ve learned that they always worked on multiple expansions at once from the fallout of Battle for Azeroth and Shadowlands… but I do feel like this would probably improve the narrative experiences of the Warcraft universe. Final Fantasy XIV was only as good as it was because it was a cohesive narrative that evolved over a decade rather than what felt like a serialized villain of the week type gameplay that we have had in Warcraft. My hope is however that they can be nimble with the mechanical side of the game because having the narrative be something that is building over time is good… you need to be able to adjust to changes on the ground when the player base is not reacting well to something like the “borrowed power” systems.

I think this is going to be the World of Warcraft expansion that wins me back. Almost everything about it seems to specifically cater to my interests. I love underground areas and this seems to be an entire expansion where we are diving deeper below the surface. I am very much dwarven-influenced, and I am all about tunneling through the earth to find interesting things. When I plan Minecraft I almost always start by digging a giant shaft to bedrock and see what I find along that path. I am also super interested in the Warband system as I have always wanted to be able to share more benefits from my Alts, given that I tend to be an Altaholic by nature. Almost everything that they announced seemed universally good and I am super interested in the Delve system which seems to be a dungeon-like experience that scales between 1 and 5 players.

I think more than anything… there was just a different energy in the air for this show. Gone was the “we know better ” attitude that surrounded a lot of the discussions from past BlizzCons and it was replaced by what seemed like a genuine unbridled excitement over what they were showing off. The vibe was just better than it has been in probably a decade or maybe even longer. Blizzard felt like a different company, and while we had the return of Metzen… he didn’t necessarily overshadow the other folks who were presenting things to the players. I want to see Blizzard thrive under Microsoft not in small part because I still know more than a handful of folks who work there. I want to play these games without having a bad taste in my mouth and feel like I am betraying my core principles.

This is the first time in a very long time that I have had hope for World of Warcraft as a franchise, and Blizzard as a company. I watched Diablo IV evolve from a complete shit show at launch to being a rather enjoyable if not somewhat temporary game with Season 2. Blizzard seems to be saying the right things and I just hope that they can back up those words with actions over the next few years. In the new year, I am probably even going to poke my head into the Dragonflight expansion and see what it has to offer. This is the best I have felt coming out of BlizzCon weekend in a very long time. Good job all… now keep that momentum going into the next few major launches.

AggroChat #454 – World of Wonder

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Screen Card for Episode #454 of the AggroChat podcast showing Ashgar, Belghast, Kodra, Tamrielo, and Thalen with a screenshot of Super Mario Wonder in the background featuring Elephant Mario.

Featuring: Ashgar, Belghast, Kodra, Tamrielo, and Thalen

Hey Folks! We are back but still down several members of our crew.  This week we start off with some discussion about Diablo IV Season 2 and whether or not the game is good now.  From there we talk a lot about the events of the Star Citizen CitizenCon.  Super Mario Wonder has come out and we talk about the experiences with the game so far.  Tam talks a bit about Endless Dungeon and how it might actually be fun in multiplayer.  Kodra shares some news about an upcoming SudokuCon Fundraiser stream he is going to be part of this week.  Finally, we talk a bit about Cities: Skylines 2 and the changes it brings to the genre.

Topics Discussed:

  • Diablo IV is Good Now?
    • Season of Blood Review
  • CitizenCon
    • Did you hold the line?
  • Super Mario Wonder
  • Endless Dungeon
  • SudokuCon Fundraiser Stream
  • Cities: Skylines 2

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

An Evening with the Scions

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I’ve most definitely reached this place in Diablo IV where my only real progression comes in the form of lucky drops from the World Boss. At this point, I have item level 925 items in every slot but my Chestpiece and Two-Handed Hammer weapon and it is all up to the luck of the draw when I finally replace those. I am using a unique main weapon that is going to be a bit harder to replace than your average hammer. Given that I am getting zero benefit from Whispers Caches and the Bloodtide event… I am guessing that means I would have to grind up to high levels of Nightmare Dungeons to actually find some viable drops again. As a result, I am mostly only logging in for World Boss kills.

I could always fall back on playing some Path of Exile, but I do not really want to burn myself out further knowing that I really want to play next Friday when the Sentinel/Kalandra event starts. At the moment I think I am going to try out leveling a Righteous Fire Chieftain as an alternative for when we start “Bel League” at the beginning of 3.23 in December. Mostly I want to test that out as an alternative to Juggernaut because it is so much easier to get maximum resistances on and we won’t likely have access to Legacy of Fury boots for quite some time. Hinekora’s Wrath gives a nice big explosion that is actually better than the Maven Boots but I will be missing a lot of the bonuses that you get as a Juggernaut for survival purposes. It won’t be as sturdy, but hopefully, the big explosions will make up for it.

What I did instead last night was poke my head back into Final Fantasy XIV and do something more than playing the daily cactpot and reset the demolition timer on my house. I’ve been in this weird place with FFXIV for a while now because I leveled a Paladin through Endwalker. Playing a tank is not really conducive to easing back into a game in a low-pressure manner. I did not last long enough in Endwalker to actually get to the point of leveling a DPS alt, which has made it a bit hard for me to summon the desire to come back in earnest.

Yesterday however I remembered that Duty Support exists, and is no longer the massive pain in the ass that leveling the trust system was. This has allowed me to pick up where I left off on my Machinist and run some low-key chill dungeons with my Scion friends. Sure it is a bit boring to keep running the same dungeon over and over… but that is probably what I would be doing anyway with a pack of random strangers. I might as well ease back into the game with friendly bots that are not going to hassle me over dumb mistakes I make while I get used to the game again.

It has to be said that right now Final Fantasy XIV feels really odd. It has been a very long time since I have played a purely hotbar combat MMORPG. Over the last few years, I have either been playing ARPGs or Guild Wars 2 and New World… both of which are way more closely related to an Action MMO than their earlier hotbar cousins. The first time I needed to get out of an AOE I instinctively tried to hit my usual dodge roll button… and was really sad when I remembered that Final Fantasy XIV does not have something like that. The game feels very “old” when it comes to design… but again I think it is more something that I will have to get used to.

Largely I want to get to the point where I can catch up in the story, and grind out some gear so that I can get ready for the next expansion. I am going to give it a shot even though I largely felt like FFXIV storywise wrapped up in a good place with Endwalker. I think Guild Wars 2 might be more my speed as far as MMORPGs go, because I have gotten used to more active combat but by the end of the evening I did finally start to hit my stride. I know FFXIV is probably never going to be my main game again because my tastes have changed a bit but I do want to get back to a point where I can have fun with it again.

Sad Little Totems

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I am exceptionally groggy this morning, which makes little sense considering how much I slept last night. Yesterday I got up around 3 a.m. so that I could run my wife to the airport. She is on business in the D.C. metro and was sending me photos from her adventures throughout the day. My personal favorites were some of the ones she sent me from one of the Smithsonian museums. There was a cool Rosie the Riveter Lego set but unfortunately, the glass was super polished and I did not feel like sharing a photo that had my wife’s reflection in it without her knowledge. Basically, yesterday was a bit of a blur. It is not often that I feel my age, but trying to survive on caffeine and very little sleep throughout the day is not something that I have done since my days in the Late Night Raiders in Vanilla WoW. I went to bed around 8 pm last night and as far as I am aware slept all the way through until 4 am ish and then even then managed to eek my way to 5:30 before actually getting up.

Before finally calling it a night, I did spend some time in Path of Exile and wrapped up the seasonal challenge associated with Ritual. I had completely respecced my Atlas to go hard into Ritual nodes, so now I have to figure out what I want to do instead. Getting 19 of 40 seasonal challenges rewards a stubby little totem and it has been a minor point of pride that I have managed to get one for the last three leagues. Granted this is not actually a major achievement, but it is one for me on a personal level. I went from completely floundering in Path of Exile, to being able to complete my Atlas, to being able to actually do enough achievements to get a totem for my hideout. I would have finished up sooner but unfortunately, the Vaal boss down in Delve did not drop a Doriani’s Machinarium Map and I have been unwilling to pay the 6.5 divines that they are currently going for.

I also attempted to play a few alts in Diablo IV at which point I was struck by how generally alt-unfriendly this game is. The seasonal abilities are on a character-by-character basis… which makes little sense given that all of the abilities cap out a level 3, and you can pretty much max them out on a single character. One of the nice things about Diablo III was how easy it was to twink out your alts, so that when you started your next character you got to keep all of your paragon points from the first. Similarly, gear was easily applied in specific bands. Right now gear drops are based on the level at which you got them dropped regardless of how low item level an item is. Diablo 4 tends to set equippable levels in a loose relation to the level in which you acquired the item. So you can tend up with items that are dropping and make no sense to be using them… because they are either not Sacred or not Ancestral… that have a higher item level equipped than the range for which those items are useful.

One of the things that I think would be cool is have something associated with the season’s blessing that as you level up… you lower the equippable levels of all items by a percentage until when you hit level 100 it removes ALL equipment restrictions. One of the biggest joys of alting in an ARPG is twinking out your secondary lineup of characters. It would be nice if this were possible in Diablo IV, but in its current state… it really isn’t. Not that there is a lot of crossover between gear items to even make that viable, but still something would be better than the current state of the game. The XP boost is at least noticeable though which I guess is still rather nice.

I am honestly not sure what my focus is going to be next. I popped into New World and tried to get back into the swing of things there… but honestly, I have been gone just long enough to make a lot of things unintelligible. It seems as though with the new expansion they have removed the ability to level up gear which sorta sucks. It also seems like they have increased the caps of a lot of the crafting professions… which also somewhat sucks because I had fought so hard to cap out a few of them before to be done with it. When new levels are added into a game… it makes me appreciate things like Guild Wars 2 where there is a fixed level cap and then horizontal progression with systems. I do really like the flail though as far as weapons go.

Anyways… I am rambling. I hope you are all having a great week and hopefully, by tonight I will have sorted out what direction I am going game-wise for a bit. I am going to need something to distract me from how empty the house feels for the moment with my Wife traveling.