A Strange Week!

Well its been a crazy week, Announcements Announcements and more so I'm just going to sift through it all today and give some of my perspective on all that gone down in the world of Blizzcraft.


Reaper of Souls!!! Oh hell yes D3 maybe returning to its darker roots, i have played through all the D3 franchise and one of the largest changes has been the move form a Horror game with limited sight to a larger open worldish game. I remember crawling though the Catacombs in D1 literally afraid of what was around the next corner as i could only see 2 yards infront of my face. But i could still hear those weird demon cat things crawling around. Also the Paladin sorry i mean Crusader looks awesome, while i do find the Barbarian a cool class to play it just doesn't replace the Paladin or Warrior from previous Diablo games. From what i have seen from gamesconn so far and the interviews with the makers, Reaper of Souls should go a long way to addressing some of the fundamental issues with Diablo. If i read things correctly several of the new features will be available around November time in a pre expac patch similar to how Wow does things. (i may ramble some more in D3 if i have the times some time soon)

Secondly some mixed news this week Hearthstone Beta is here ish.......................... well for those lucky enough to have a invite and to live in America. This has lead to some interesting fallout on the web with some very pissed off people. It seems as always Blizzard has underestimated just how many people are eagerly awaiting the beta. So people have been getting a bit shirty with the fact that it "appears" mainly to be people from Fansites etc who have keys. Someone made a awesome counter argument to this last week, if most of the people you follow on twitter/the web are fansites then of course it will seem that only they have Beta access, after all it is there job to " promote" and review and this is what they are doing. However i would argue that nowadays there are very few proper reviews, most just stick to showering a game with 5/5 and 10 stars, until the game collapses under the weight of all those glowing reviews.  Or it resembles a pile of fanboy dribble that is not even worth the time to read, see any Consol review for those though it is beginning to slip into PC games as well. Though i do have some concerns the level of information that is available is a little disheartening, the net is full of 'look at me stream x vs y' or 'X deck is OP vs Y deck'. Or worse guide on how to play, and how to compile decks. It is all information that i want to learn for myself while playing, not have broken down into step by step idiots guides. Complexity is nice in games and its fun to be able to solve problem, even if you fail twenty times its rewarding when you eventually find a solution.(Streaming game content is something that divides my opinion, I'm not sure if i enjoy all the streams if im being 100% honest)

Ok sometimes i read things that just make me laugh, i will roughly quote what i read this week to do with the Impending Item Squish. The crux of the point is when are items get squished older content becomes harder as we are less powerful. I laughed so hard i swear i ruptured my spleen at this. Its a opinion that surfaces from time to time now. Its like people have failed to grasp the core concept, its not just your items that will get squished. Its literally every number in game HP, Mana, AP, Boss HP etc etc Its not surprising that Blizz have been cautious when it comes to item squishing, its this feeling we will be less powerful. It the same as whether you have 5 new levels per new expac or 10, it doesn't matter its all the same. For example A boss has 100000HP and you hit it for 1000HP per attack is the same as a boss having 100HP and you hitting it for 1HP per attack. The numbers don't matter..................... if anything having smaller numbers should make it slightly easier for More people to theorycraft and work out Plateaus for stats etc.

Moving on Tom Chilton dropped some news on F2P Wow this week and stirred the mire a wee bit. So here's my ten pence worth on F2P Wow, of course it WILL happen. One day the player base will dwindle to a level were there is no longer a point in releasing loads of content all the time in many patch's, therefore there Will be less people working on the game and less hardware in the background ie servers. Simply there wont be a need for a subscription as the game wont have the same production/running cost it does now. In relation to this if we look at the other F2P MMORPG's, it seem that most of them sit around the 1-2 million player base or smaller mark. (Roughly) Currently Wow has 7 million, say for example it loses 500k players a year. At that rate it would take 8 years for Wow to diminish to a level that would allow for F2P, of course if it was losing 1mill a year it would be 4 years. Either way it is still a significant amount of time remembering that each expac/patch also steadies the numbers for a while upon release.

600ilvls and it looks cool Win win

Finally the 5.4 trailer.............................. wow that was sick! Blizzard have a habit of impressing with there trailers and Vids the recent Shahao Vids were awesome as well and don't get me started on the Reaper of Souls cinematic. (i am filled with a lot hope for the wow movie, if its as good as the SC2/D3 cinematics it will look awesome) However sadly my Joy at seeing Taran Zhu die was rather short lived. Don't get me wrong i do not hate him , i like the Shado-Pan after they are just NINJAS!! However they fall into the terrible cliched pit of Neutral Factions/Characters, ie Kirin Tor, Argent Crusade and the Guardians of Hyal. Its this high and mighty all fighting is wrong dont kill that horde that begins to nark me, it turns what would be interesting factions into boring repetitions of themselves. Neutral factions have to exist for gameplay. However to make it work they need a realistic angle ie Wrathion or the Klaxxi. We all new from questing with the Klaxxi one day we would be wiping them out, hey they even showed us were they store there elite warriors and told us they serve the old golds. But hell at the time we needed there help to remove the Empress and stop the Swarm, it worked we used them they used us. It makes sense in a similar way that Wrathion does. He plays each faction off against each other, supposedly helping save Azeroth yet when we stole the Heart of the Lei Shen. He Ate it. IE he did what Lei did when he stole Ra Dens power. I work for Wrathion he pays me well (600 ilvl Cloaks!!) but i cant shake the feeling one day i shall have to drive a spear through his skull.

Bit or ramble today been a while since i wrote anything, I have a interesting theory on old Wrathion which i may share next time out, if i remember or if nothing else springs up that distracts me from it. I plan many blogs but write few they get replaced by new ideas before i have even drafted the first idea. :) peace out y'all.