Falling Behind.

As you can tell, with the frequency of my posts, I am not playing much still.

     But hey, I just finished my Project+ class, meaning that I am taking a little time off of school, which is going to be nice and relaxing before I hop back in and go for my BA.  I may do some Overwatch and Heroes of the Storm as well.

    I have tinkered around on the Broken Isles and so far I am not hating or loving the experience.  I know everyone is in love with this, as it has brought the better mechanics from Tanaan Jungle, and the Timeless Isle together.  It has some good changing world quests tied to it, and the story is progressing nicely through it.  The dungeon it introduced was interesting and had me raising my eyebrows at the end.  By all accounts I should be in love with this...

    However, I do not like the fact that after you build one of the buildings, (My realm had the Mage tower up first) it is only so long before that building falls and you have to start from scratch again.  I would rather have a progressive zone like in Firelands, Suramar, or the Isle of Thunder where you slowly accomplish something and the zone changes to reflect your accomplishments.  I hate the feeling of watching something being built, then going back a couple days later and it's rubble again.  I understand that this is to give us something ongoing, but I feel it kind of shortchanges the area in the long run.  When we are here in two or three months, is anyone going to care enough to work on the buildings, leaving them as permanent rubble eventually.

    I also have not figured out the purpose of a few things.  I get crystals and can create demon portals.  Great!  How does this benefit me?  I can see killing the slog of demons that come out for items, gold nethershards, etc.  Why do I care about this, more than going to one area or another to mow down the mobs there? I am sure the answer is a high rate of nethershards being dropped, but it seems like more headache than it's worth to me.  Maybe I have gotten lazy in my old age, but sitting there smacking mobs as they spawn and hoping they don't overwhelm me is not interesting to me.

     I do like the invasion events.  So far I have been able to do High Mountain and Aszuna.  The feeling of doing four different spots then having a quest/scenerio to top everything off feels good.  My only wonder is with how often they happen, how long will it take to do all of them.  It might be a bit seeing that Blizzard removed doing all four from the Pathfinder II achievement for Legion Flying.

     The mix of world quests on the broken shore have been nice.  I enjoy the fact I end up in all sorts of areas, including in the water, and that it makes me explore the whole area.  I have never wanted Murlocs as a playable class until I saw the fel Murloc with the big bat wings.  That was completely awesome.

     I don't like the fact that both of my weapons classes seem semi-impossible right now.  I checked wowhead.com and it seems very few if any folks are managing to finish these fights.  I do think they should take some work, but the difficulty is kind of crazy right now.  That might be the point though, as you have a weapon appearance gated behind those quests.  If it was easy it wouldn't be as significant.

    How is everyone else feeling though?  Are we enjoying the new content?  What are y'all loving, and what not so much?

    How off base am I on some of this.

Happy playing,
Lag.

If you would like to support Ben Marble and his Love of Burning Murlocs, please consider purchasing one of his short stories at Amazon.com.
 

Blizzcon is Over. I am Underwhelmed this year.

So, I feel like a killjoy here.

     Blizzcon 2016 has come and gone and we were all excited for the big reveals and commotion that comes with this event ever time it is hosted.  We were excited for Diablo, Heroes of the Storm, Overwatch, World of Warcraft, and other Blizzard IP news.  This is where there is a ton of cinematics, news, and upcoming features and games announced.  I honestly feel that it was cool, but not great this year.

     Obviously my first love is for World of Warcraft, this is a WoW blog and it is the only game that Blizzard has that I play on a regular basis.  I hop into Diablo III on rare occasion or Hearthstone but the other games I haven’t gotten into.  Mostly because I have limited time and I don’t want another big time sink pulling me into another direction.

     As someone who has played all three Diablo’s, I was disappointed that there isn’t an expansion or Diablo 4 coming.  I think the idea of going back to old Tristam is cool.  I love the thought of Necromancers, but I only played them a little in Diablo II and getting me to pay for a character pack is not likely to happen.  I think Diablo III needed something bigger this year.  These little tokens are not going to appease folks for long.

     Hearthstone, I will be honest.  New content is cool, but as a casual player I know I’m not going to see the majority of it.  I might hop into the first wing if it is free to see what is happening, but further than that I don’t want to grind the gold or pay the money on an expansion that might last three to four months if it lasts as long as the last expansion.  Which feels like it just barely dropped. 

     Overwatch, let’s be honest.  If you were a fan you knew Sambra was coming.  Now one was surprised at her announcement. Her Cinematic was cool, and I enjoyed it, but as far as everything else goes you would have to talk to someone else on what it means.

     Starcraft, I honestly don’t remember hearing anything.  If I missed it then I am sorry. 

     Heroes of the Storm, the Varian Wrynn/Ragnoros reveal was awesome, and it tempts me to dip my toe into that game a little.  At the same time, the rest of the game you would have to ask someone who plays a lot more.

     And that brings us home to World of Warcraft.  (Yes, I know there are other announcements etc. in other IPs, but like I said, unless I delve deeper they don’t mean a lot to me.)

     In Wow we got a little preview of things coming up.  We now know that flying will be available in 7.2.  We know that we will get a new raid at that time as well.  Oh, and the biggest announcement was that we will be going to Argus in 7.3. 

    Thank you Blizzard for not making Legion a two raid tier expansion, I would have been seriously disappointed.

     We are getting a new set of dungeons in 7.2.  Arcway and Court of stars will become Queue able. Artifact weapons will have further story line to them.  Dungeons gear and difficulty will rise with the raid level to keep them relevant.  Not sure how I feel about that last one.  Another make a wish pet for those who like to donate and get a digital cutie.  And other announcements like that.

     So, a bit of news on World of Warcraft side, but nothing that blew me away.  I feel that it was all very standard information that wasn’t a big surprise.  There was no wow factor for Wow this time around.  Even Argus I was guessing from the information given at the beginning of the expansion and the book Illidan.  Honestly given his history and goals, it would be strange to get Illidan back and not go to Argus.  That is his main goal at this point.  Go to demon home world; destroy demons in a place where they can’t come back.  My guess is that we won’t Armageddon it, and simply throw a bomb into Argus to blow up the planet. 

     Am I off base here though? Was there anything amazing at Blizzcon this year I am overlooking or undervaluing? What is everyone else thoughts on this?

Lag.

     As always, if you want to support my shark surfing exhibitions consider purchasing one of my short stories at Amazon.com for your kindle or e-reading device.

Blizzcon 2014. It's on.

Really not much Wow to talk about.

      Are you surprised? Well you shouldn't be.  With a week left before the next Xpack launches I doubt that blizzard had much to say.  I mean there were a couple of live blogs, I read through them.  Not much revealed there we haven't seen before.  As far as Blizzcon's go this one was kind of Wow light and for once I am glad I am not in a position to go.  As much as I love Blizzard, I would want to go to a Blizzcon where my favorite game was the focus.

      Not that there wasn't some focus.  There was a Warcraft movie panel with some cool art.  Depending on what you want to do, you can got to fightforthehorde.com or fightforthealliance.com and get signed up for news on the upcoming movie.  So far they sent some artwork for tablets, facebook, and/or computers.  I imagine as things move on they will have more stuff to promote what they are doing.

     The question then comes, what does this mean for the announcement of the next Wow expansion.  Traditionally this happens during Blizzcon, and Blizzcon, if it happens wont' be until another year from now.  Traditionally.  Does this mean we will be looking at two years of Warlords of Draenor?
Or the expansion being dropped within a couple months of being announced?

     The second is a thought I don't like.  Since I normally have to budget in two expansions, one for me and one for my wife, I like having some time to figure when to buy in.   I would rather have two years of Draenor, and have them spread the content out a little more efficiently.  If they had waited an extra month, month and a half for each major patch of Mists we wouldn't feel like we were in the middle of a downtime at this point.  (Not that I can say much since we only killed Garrosh a couple weeks ago.)  Dragon Soul was nicer to us as we had Deathwing on Farm for a couple months before Mists dropped.

      In my opinion if we are going to see the next expansion in a year Blizzard will have to make the announcement in July or August. at the latest.  The timing on this would have to be critical since if they make it too early, we are pushing through this expansion looking at what comes next and that doesn't feel good.  Too late and people are scrambling to get the resources to buy the new expansion if you have to budget like most of us.

     The other danger, and I can't remember where I read it, is the thought that if Blizzard cuts down the expansions to two raid tiers instead of the traditional three, topped with the price increase, people will start to complain they are getting less for paying more money.  I think after ten years of no price increase on the monthly subscription for us Americans, that ten dollars is not much to complain about.  I do think, looking at the fact that the price has increased elsewhere that eventually we will see our monthly subscriptions go up.  Not by much, but enough to drive some people off of the game.  Let's be honest.  If they raised the monthly subscription by one cent, people would yell foul and jump ship.
   
     There were some awesome things though, Overwatch looks cool.  I think this won't be the last IP we see Blizzard introduce in the next couple of years.  The best way for them to grow their business at this point I think is sideways into other area's they normally haven't touched.  And they are doing it.  Heroes of the Storm, and Hearthstone was only the beginning.  Overwatch won't be the last.  I expect to see a lot of cool new things coming from Blizzard.

That's it for now, see you in game.
Lag/Lazyeye