The War Within Official Cinematic

 

The War Within official cinematic is rather different than most of the previous expansion cinematics. There's no attempt at a narrative, it's more a collection of characters and scenes. In some ways, it harkens back to the Classic and TBC cinematics.

However, the tone is very different. It's darker and more mysterious. A lot of people have said that it's closer to a Diablo cinematic than a Warcraft one. There's a lot of truth there, as there a "lightness' to WoW which is missing here.

Still, though it's pretty interesting trailer. That Arathi shield with a flame is quite neat, and hopefully will show up as an actual item.

Arcadion Light-Heavyweight Raids

This post contains spoilers for the Arcadion raids in FFXIV: Dawntrail.

The 8-man raids in Dawntrail are centred around the Arcadion. They're basically a fun set of wrestling-style raids. This set up allows for the bosses to be themed characters, but essentially unrelated to each other. The only relation is that they use a feral animal soul.

So you end up with bosses like the good-hearted rookie who's a cat, an idol who's a bee, a "heel" (wrestling bad guy) who's a bomb king, and a serious fighter who's a levinbeast (lightning horse).

The fights are all themed well, and are well done. There are some interesting mechanics. The first fight has the boss hit the tiles. Two hits break a tile, but the players can partially control which tiles get hit.

The second fight has a mechanic where if you have to avoid getting 3 stacks. One stack is unavoidable, and half the raid has to take a second stack. But you can choose which players get the second stack, so it can allow you to make life a little easier on weaker players. Having roles like this which vary in difficulty is good, especially in the middle tier of group play.

So far, the raid is a lot of fun. Interesting fights, stylish opponents. The stakes are not too high, though the ending of this part makes the stakes higher. Not world-threatening, which is a welcome change, but still important.

Spiritborn Unveiled

 Diablo IV unveiled the new class in the upcoming Vessel of Hatred expansion: the Spiritborn.

The reactions online are pretty amusing:

It's just a druid. 

It's just a monk. 

It's just a witch doctor. 

It's just an amazon. 

Harambe!

It clearly draws a little from all these classes. The Aztec Jaguar Warrior motif is very neat. It's not something you see in many games. As well, it is a good mix of the familiar (Eagle, Jaguar) and the unusual (Gorilla, Centipede!).

I'm looking forward to Vessel of Hatred, and will probably give Spiritborn a spin in the first season. (Along with 95% of the game's population.)

Stars Reach Reveal

Raph Koster's upcoming MMO has come out of stealth: Stars Reach.

In stark contrast to most other MMOs these days, Stars Reach is unabashedly a "living world" game, rather than a theme park. It's good to see someone trying for this model again.

There do seem to be complaints about the graphics, though I'm not sure precisely why. Stylized graphics usually age better, and these games are aimed for the long haul. As well, they often have better performance, which is very important for an MMO. MMOs should be playable on a household's second computer, not just the first one.

Scattered thoughts and questions:

• There's an emphasis on simulation. How will that interact with immortal players who play at very different rates?
• The idea that "players move fast, goods move slow" is very interesting. Ideally it makes trading and multiple marketplaces and costly arbitrage possible.
• Combat seems to be primarily ranged, which will be interesting. What will the skeleton of combat look like? Threat-based, free-for-all, or maybe cover-based shooting?
• Stars Reach is expected to be Free-2-Play and sell cosmetics. Does that mean that the cosmetics will compete with crafters?
• Having it be based on multiple planets and stars is interesting. It allows the game to shrink or increase for player-size without greatly affecting the player's current planet.
• The biggest thing is that Stars Reach is going all in on player interaction. This is in strong contrast to WoW and FFXIV who are coming up with more and more ways to avoid playing with others.

All in all, Stars Reach looks like it will be very interesting. A throwback to the days before theme parks. 

But I have the feeling that it will be a niche game, and the question is if the niche will be large enough for the game to survive.

FFXIV Dawntrail, Part 3

This post contains significant spoilers for the FFXIV Dawntrail Main Story Quests.

Let's ignore Wuk Lamat and discuss the rest of the MSQ. Let's start with the villains:

Bakool Ja Ja - a classic over-the-top bad guy. He gets introduced by stepping on our tacos! But it turns out he has a tragic backstory and eventually joins the heroes. Overall, Bakool Ja Ja was pretty good. The only problem with villains like these is that you can't make them do anything unforgivable, and Bakool Ja Ja came pretty close when he released Valigarmada. Probably a slight tweak to that part, maybe having Bakool Ja Ja releasing it so he could fight it, but he fails, would have been better. But overall, he's an enjoyable character.

Zoraal Ja - The problem with inscrutable villains is that they are, well, inscrutable. The player has to read deeply into their behaviour. I've seen really interesting discussions and theories about him, but they all rely on a level of subtlety that is hard to square with Wuk Lamat and the rest of the MSQ. Maybe the idea of Zoraal Ja is stronger than the actual portrayal. He plays his part well enough, but there's a nagging feeling he could have been done better.

Actually, an interesting alternate story would be your character assisting him in the trials, but he still fails and becomes the bad guy.

Sphene - Sphene would have made a much better villain in the next expansion. Her motivations are too close to Emet-Selch: restoring or preserving her people at the expense of other life. And in form and character, she's very close to Meteion. As a result, there is a very similar feel to Endwalker, and it is too soon for that. But if it wasn't for Endwalker, she would have been a very good villain.

The final half involves Alexandria and the conflict between the Alexandrian system and Eorzea. It's an interesting conflict in some ways because Eorzea puts great importance on the soul, but Alexandria puts the importance on the memories, and treats the soul as mere energy. Of course, Alexandria killing people makes it obvious which the right side is. It might have been more interesting if Alexandria was powered by memories, and the invaders didn't kill anyone, but stole their memories instead. It might even fit better with the concept of the regulators taking the memories of those who die.

Looking at the Dawntrail MSQ again, there are the bones of a great expansion. However, the timing is wrong, the themes are too close to the last expansion. And none of the pieces quite fit together smoothly. Nothing matched the high points of previous expansions.

FFXIV Dawntrail, Part 2

This post contains significant spoilers for the FFXIV Dawntrail Main Story Quests.

As always, the Simpson's did it first:

Homer: Whenever Poochie's not on screen, all the other characters should be asking "Where's Poochie"?

Wuk Lamat is the Poochie of Dawntrail. You can't escape her presence. Out of six zones, she's present in five-and-a-half. The half-zone she wasn't present was blissful, until you find yourself tracking down a bracelet that belonged to her. She's almost always the main character talking. If the group splits up, you always go off with her.

Dawntrail manages to reach the nadir in the final trial. Unlike the previous trials with NPCs, it's back to the previous style where you summon a group of fellow players. The fight itself is excellent. We wiped twice, each time to a different mechanic, then mastered it on the next attempt. The fight was perfect up to the 25% mark. Then--like Jack Nicholson in The Shining--Wuk Lamat breaks into the arena. "Here's Wuk Lamat!". She basically makes the fight about her and kill-steals it. Her presence managed to completely ruin the climax of the story.

Dawntrail made me re-evaluate Stormblood. Stormblood felt like two expansions that only had enough content for 75% of a full expansion, so Square stuck them together to make one expansion. But doing this meant that Lyse and Hien balanced each other, and neither one dominated the whole thing.

I don't even think Wuk Lamat is a bad character.  But by the end, I was completely sick of her. The best part of Dawntrail was that half-zone in the middle where you got to run around with just Erenville.

It's really hard to properly evaluate Dawntrail since Wuk Lamat overshadows the entire thing. There are lots of small points one could make, good and bad. But it all seems pointless besides the elephant in the room.

Dawntrail would have been far better if Square had rotated the main NPC. Maybe Wuk Lamat for the first zones, the Erenville, then Krile. But having a single NPC as the "main character" for an entire expansion was an absolute failure, and ruined the story.

The Evolution of Diablo IV

The one game I have been playing over the last year is Diablo IV. It's been interesting to see how the game has changed since launch and the four seasons so far.

The best way to look at Diablo IV is the conflict between Diablo II and Diablo III. 

It's pretty clear that during development, Blizzard listened to the internet community lauding D2 and looking down on D3. D4 at launch was much closer to D2 and intentionally rejected a lot of the conveniences and power scaling of D3.

So naturally the story of D4 is listening to the community complain about those missing conveniences, and slowly moving D4 closer and closer to D3. More and more posts in the community are calling for an Auction House, of all things!

Now, there are a lot of good things about D4 at launch. The aesthetic was a lot darker than D3, and the player base is happy with that. The performance of the game is closer to D3. And D4 has avoided the one great mistake of D3: armour sets. Armour sets were too vital, and difference in power between getting a set and not was too large. D4 has a smoother power curve.

Season 4 redid a lot of the loot, making it more relevant, and easier to find and get the pieces that you need for your builds. Even the "uber" uniques (will be tagged as Mythic in the next season) have gotten easier and easier to find. It also introduced the Pit, which is basically D3 Greater Rifts.

(Though, to be fair, I've never gotten an uber, I generally stop before that point.)

The big conflict between Blizzard and the vocal community is endgame. Basically, Blizzard wants players  to do a variety of content during their gameplay sessions. Do a Nightmare Dungeon, do a Pit, then maybe kill a couple of bosses. The community, on the other hand, wants to figure out the single optimal activity to get power and spam it 24/7.

It is also interesting that Blizzard allowed trading once more. Now there are people selling items in chat for billions of gold, with probably a lot of gold farming and shady websites selling items for real money. Ironically, though, the high end community seems happy with this. Again, shades of D2.

I think Blizzard is on the right track with Diablo IV. The aesthetic (and trading?) of D2, the gameplay and power of D3, with a bit smoother scaling, is proving to be quite fun. If Blizzard keeps on this track, I think the upcoming expansion should be quite good.

The hard part, of course, is knowing where the line is and keeping from overstepping. For example, I think  an Auction House or class sets would harm the game more than help it.

FFXIV Dawntrail, Part I

Final Fantasy XIV's latest expansion has just launched in early access. The expansion is called Dawntrail, or has I call the first part, The Excellent Adventures of Wuk Lamat.

The story so far is big step back from the world-ending threats of Endwalker. The first part of the story, up to level 94 or so, is set in the continent across the western ocean, Tural. Which is based on South and Central America. You are helping a young claimant to the throne, Wuk Lamat, in a competition to determine the next leader of Tural.

Wuk Lamat is an interesting archetype. The young, naive, good-hearted, airhead. It's a fairly common archetype in Japanese anime, but I'm not really sure it's very attractive to Western eyes. I think we prefer our main characters to be more serious. For example, Stormblood featured a similar claimant to the throne in Hien, but I think Hien worked better for Western sensibilities. The heir in exile, struggling with the weight of his duties.

Which is not to say that Wuk Lamat is a bad character. Just that the airhead-ness sometimes comes across as flippancy, especially very early in the story.

Mechanics-wise, the first part of Dawntrail is an interesting exercise in what happens when you remove fetch quests. As is tradition for these types of competitions, there's lots of arbitrary fetch quests. Except your character does very little of the fetching. Instead the NPCs you are travelling with do all the work. For example, in a previous expansion, you might have to fetch wood and then hunt some animal for dinner. Here, Alphinaud will fetch the wood, and Alisae will do the hunting.

It feels like a very strong reaction to complaints about having to do menial quests in previous expansions.

However, I'm not sure it was a good idea. It doesn't give you much to do. You're basically running your character from cutscene to cutscene, with relatively little opportunity to actually "play" your character. There's still dungeons and the occasional special duty. But the amount of interaction with the world environment and monsters feels unusually limited.

It's quite possible it's a Main Story Quest thing only, and the side-quests have all the interaction one desires. But the game encourages you to save the side-quests for later. Maybe I should consider going back and doing them on a second class before continuing on.

The dungeons and first trial are pretty good. You can actually do the trial with an NPC group this time around, and they've put in some interesting behaviour. For example, the experienced characters always avoid mechanics, but the younger characters get hit the first time they see it.

All in all, the first part of Dawntrail is slower and lighter than previous expansions. It's still pretty good, but I hope it picks up in the next sections.

Overwatch 2

I did play a little of Overwatch 2 when it launched. It's been a long while since I played Overwatch, well before role locks.

I have mixed feelings about the role locks. I pretty much ended playing as a support in all of my games. I kind of feel bad about playing a DPS or tank, and then playing poorly. At least support fewer people want to play.

5v5 is interesting as well. It feels faster-paced than 6v6. I also liked the new Push mode where you have a robot pushing something on both sides of the map. It's a very nice visual representation of progress, especially when you have a game where the robot is flipping from side to side a lot.

Of course, the main topic around Overwatch these days is monetization. Overwatch 2 basically flips the monetization model on its head from Overwatch 1. Overwatch 1 was basically "buy-the-box, earn loot, optionally purchase more loot". Overwatch 2 is "game is free, but you have to buy battle-passes and purchase cosmetics". Probably the various laws against lootboxes from Europe also played a part in this decision. Theoretically you can earn some stuff by playing, but you have to play quite a bit.

To be honest, I think Overwatch 2 should have gone all in. Don't offer the theoretical path, just expect people to pay. Free players get nothing other than the base game, and new heroes only after the season ends. I think that would have at least ended most of the arguments in the community. Rather than the current state where half the community complains about it being too difficult to "earn" rewards, but doesn't want to pay for anything.

I don't know. I'm just tired of people who play for free whining that the game company isn't catering to them enough. Tired of incessant monetization arguments everywhere you look in the game community.

Dragonflight?

So I haven't been writing much lately. I also haven't been playing much either. I haven't bought Dragonflight, or even logged in since the pre-patch. No Jellycat or whatever for me.

I don't know if I will either. Shadowlands was really, really bad story-wise. Mechanically, I thought it was okay, but I think that opinion is out of step with the rest of the community. So I'm not excited in the least for Dragonflight.

Perhaps the real issue is my guild. I like my guild and the people in it. But since I moved to the East coast, I can't really raid with them. I guess I'm not looking forward to trying to find a new guild either.

Or I don't know. I haven't really played any other games in this drought. I got a new job about six months ago, and I think that is taking a lot of my mental energy, though not really my time.

Are you excited for Dragonflight?

Twitter Warcraft Story

Blizzard is running a pretty neat tie-in on Twitter: #WarcraftStory. If you tweet

Character Name 

Realm

Region

#WarcraftStory

@Warcraft

They'll generate a small story and graphic from your armoury and achievements.

Here's mine for Coriel:

It's a pretty nice use of Twitter and social media. Almost perfectly suited for the medium. Well done by the devs and community team.

Canada Day Updates

Happy Canada Day,  everyone!

World of Warcraft

I haven't been playing much. I've pretty much just been logging in to send out missions. My convenant people are level 55/56, and I would like to get them all to 60.

Final Fantasy XIV

I finished leveling Red Mage and Dancer to 90. I did the final Shadowbringers role quests and capstone quest. It was quite good.

I also did the role quests for Endwalker. I really like these quests where the story goes back to the different nations and looks at the challenges of peace, of the repercussions for the changes that happened in the MSQ.

Lost Ark

I've also been playing a little Lost Ark, though I've kind of stopped recently. It's a fun ARPG MMO-style game from Korea. It has a variety of different classes (gender-locked, though). The gameplay is pretty good. The story is more or less what you would expect from a Korean game, but is decent enough.

Server Merges in WoW Classic

It looks like WoW Classic is actually going to do server merges in preparation for Wrath of the Lich King. Shintar has a good post on the changes. It's a pretty big change for Blizzard, as they've always avoided server merges in the past. 

It will be interesting to see how they handle names, especially for the people still playing on the smaller servers. It's quite likely that their names will already be taken on the larger server that they will be transferred to, possibly by a character who is no longer subscribed.

Hopefully they do something like the subscriber keeps the name if a non-subscriber has it. Still, for the subscriber vs subscriber case, I bet there will be a lot of complaints.

I'm generally in favour of experiments, so good for Blizzard for trying something different.

One experiment I'd like to see--maybe with the next Season of Mastery--is very strong faction and server balance restrictions. If the Horde or Alliance gets more than 1% larger, lock the larger faction, preventing new players to the server from making characters. Similarly keep the server populations in lockstep, and prevent mega-servers from forming. Disallow faction transfers. Have these restrictions be based on the number of accounts that played in the last week or so.

Blizzard has always shied away from things like this, except when a server is truly overloaded. They've felt that it's better to live with unbalanced servers than have friends be unable to play with each other. But I think Classic has shown that the playerbase will actively make balance problems worse. So I think it's worth experimenting and seeing what happens if balance is enforced, and mega-servers are prevented from coming into being.

First Impressions of Diablo: Immortal

First off, I'm not going to discuss monetization in this post. I've observed before that F2P ends up poisoning the conversation around the game, and I'd like to to discuss the game itself. As well, I'm still pretty low level, and haven't reached a point where the monetization actually impacts me.

Diablo: Immortal is a Free-2-Play mobile phone/tablet game, though it does have a PC version. The PC version is technically a beta, but as character data is shared between mobile and PC, it's live for all intents and purposes.

Now, I don't actually play any games on my phone. But I decided to try D:I on the phone given that it's the native environment. I have an iPhone X, so a couple generations behind the very latest. The game ran pretty well. Controls are fairly straightforward and easy to use. Your left thumb controls a "joystick" for movement, and your right thumb presses the attack and ability buttons.

However, after about 5-10 minutes, my phone got uncomfortably hot. I'm not sure if this is normal, or if it's just a little too old, or if I should have turned down the settings. But in any case, I removed D:I from my phone and installed it on PC. Everything carried over, so I picked up where I left off.

Diablo: Immortal is a somewhat simplified Diablo III. Most of the classes and abilities are very similar to D3 abilities. However, there's only one primary attack, and 4 extra abilities, plus one ultimate ability. No runes modifying abilities so far. Abilities appear to be cooldown-based so far.

I'm playing a Crusader. Barbarian, Demon Hunter, Monk, Wizard, and Necromancer are also available.

The story is very Diablo, featuring many characters from the series. It's also rather grim, maybe aiming a little more towards Diablo II. It's pretty standard, you're chasing down and trying to destroy Shards of the Worldstone, which are being used by a variety of bad guys. For now I'm just following the main questline, but there are dungeons, bounties and a couple types of rifts you can also do.

D:I is kind of an MMO, but one where playing with others is very optional (at least so far). For example, you see other people when running around in the world, and you can opt to do dungeons and rifts with others using automated match-making. But if you don't want to play with others, you can do the dungeons and rifts solo.

The UI is interesting. It's obviously meant for mobile. So for example, there's no right-click or drag-and-drop in the UI. Everything is button-based. It does have a nice feature where gear and menu items have a red gem on them if you can do something with them.

You can upgrade rare items and gems. In a nice twist, if you equip a new item, you can automatically "transfer" the upgraded level and gems.

Diablo: Immortal is clearly a mobile game. The graphics are decent enough, but obviously meant for mobile. It's lacking a lot of the bells and whistles that a PC game would have. For example, it doesn't have destructible barrels and jars, which is pretty traditional for Diablo.

If you feel like playing more Diablo, give Diablo:Immortal a whirl.

The Creation Catalyst

This tier, Blizzard introduced a mechanic to help with Tier gear: the Creation Catalyst.

Previously, the problem with Tier sets was that you could be unlucky and never get Tier to drop for you. Or perhaps worse, you have Tier shoulders, and a higher item-level non-Tier shoulders drop, and you have to choose between the set bonus or discarding the higher level item.

The Creation Catalyst pretty much solves all the issues with Tier. Once a week, you can transform a non-Tier item into the Tier item of the same item level. It's pretty much the equivalent of allowing you to purchase a Tier item of any slot at the rate of one per week.

So the first couple of times you use the Creation Catalyst, it's to finish off your 4-piece set bonus. Then after that, you can start transforming upgrades, always keeping your set bonus.

It even allows solo-players or non-raiders to get their Tier set bonus. You can transform the Zerith Mortis rewards into Tier, so you should get your set bonus in 4 weeks.

All in all, the Creation Catalyst was an excellent mechanic that solves many of the issues with Tier set bonuses. I hope it is carried forward for future content.

The Return of Master Loot?

In an interview, Game Director Ion Hazzikostas said that the Dev Team is interested in bringing back Master Loot. He specifically called out the problems around clarity which items are actually tradable. 

I'll be honest, I have zero idea how trading Tier tokens actually works in this tier. I just look for the blue text on the item if I don't want it.

In any case, I've long held that the current iteration of Personal Loot is a corrupted system. It was created to reduce drama in automatic group content, and then adapted for premade group content. I've posted my ideal loot system suite before, but it might be a little complex.

What I think Blizzard should work towards is the following:

• Two systems: Personal Loot and Master Loot.
• Personal Loot cannot be traded at all.
• Master Loot has the standard "Tradable for 2 hours to people in the group"
  
• Automatic Group Content uses Personal Loot and it cannot be changed.
• Premade Groups can choose between Personal Loot and Master Loot.
• Switching the Loot System requires everyone in the group to agree to the change. You can do a Ready Check style thing, where everyone has to click Yes for the switch to happen. (Maybe change the look/feel of the popup so people don't mistake it for a Ready Check.)
• Master Loot is deactivated in new raids/dungeons for the first month. This is mostly to cut down the degeneracy of split runs in the World First race.

I think that would be good enough. Personal Loot is for no-drama Automatic Group Runs. Master Loot is for when you create the group from scratch and want control over how loot is handed out.

Ya Boy Kongming!

For some reason, Google is not letting me sign in and reply to comments. Not sure what's going on there.

In any case, there's a pretty good anime airing this season: Ya Boy Kongming! The ancient Chinese strategist Zhuge Liang (also called Kongming) reincarnates in modern Japan and decides to help a young singer achieve stardom.

I rather enjoy these shows that start with a wacky concept and and then commit to it. Additionally, Ya Boy Kongming is actually a decent show, and uses its conceit well.

Also, it has an amazing opening! The really weird part is that the opening is actually a good reflection of the show.

Dungeon Finder in Classic

Blizzard announced that there would be no Dungeon Finder in Wrath of the Lich King Classic. The Classic community promptly exploded into a state of civil war.

In the end, this is really vindication for J. Allen Brack when he said that "You think you do, but you don't". For better or worse, Dungeon Finder is the dividing line between Classic and Retail. Now basically we have the Retail audience plus a significant minority (maybe even a majority) of the Classic audience wanting to go down the same path that the Retail devs took a decade ago.

A reader reminded me of the posts I wrote when Dungeon Finder first came out. I've always been reasonably happy with Dungeon Finder. I like running dungeons, especially at low levels. And my groups have not been particularly toxic. Though these days I do lend more credence to the idea that healers are drama-prone, which I don't see since I heal.

I generally like the Dungeon Finder, but at the same time, I'm a Retail player, not really a Classic player. I pretty much only dabble in Soul of Iron in Classic Season of Mastery. I'm not really sure it would be fair to apply my preferences to the Classic audience who really want something different than Retail. After all, if you want to play WoW with Dungeon Finder, you can always play Retail. There's something to be said for the idea that two different games should offer two different experiences.

Still, it's possible that there are two ideas in play here, both true at the same time:

1. Dungeon Finder makes it easier for players to run dungeons.
2. Dungeon Finder destroys the server community.

I do believe that Dungeon Finder hurts the server community. I once defined social fabric as "the bonds created by repeated, positive interactions between the same set of people." Dungeon Finder cuts directly against this. You no longer do the most common repeatable action with the same set of people. You don't see the same people or the same guilds regularly.

But maybe being able to do content whenever you want is more important than server community. Maybe Classic is really about the content and class systems that was lost with Cataclysm than about nebulous notions like community.

The real irony here is that Retail sees far less use of the Dungeon Finder than Classic would. Mythic and Mythic Keystone dungeons don't use the Dungeon Finder and automatic group creation, they use the Premade Group Finder. So really, the only people using the Dungeon Finder are people levelling, people doing dungeons to finish quests, or people gearing up a little at the very start of an expansion. Otherwise everyone is doing dungeons the old-fashioned way, even having to travel to the instance entrance in the world.

So should Classic Wrath have the Dungeon Finder? I don't really know. I do think that it would worth experimenting with the Premade Group Finder first. See if being able to post and apply to groups in a nice format with requirements listed where you can see what roles are needed. Getting notified when someone applies to your group instead of having to post advertisements in an LFG channel every minute or so.

Perhaps that would end up balancing the ability to run dungeons with server community better than the Dungeon Finder did.

Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty Trailer

In 2004, Wizards of the Coast released the Kamigawa block, sets inspired by traditional Japanese mythology. By every measure, they were a failure.

The original Kamigawa was a "deep cut" into Japanese mythology and spirit lore. Too deep, it turns out. Most of the audience didn't get the references and concepts. It didn't help that it was much less powerful than the sets immediately before.

This year, WotC took another crack at Kamigawa. 

I do admire this about Wizards of the Coast, they are willing to revisit their failed mechanics and settings. They even brought back phasing in the last couple of years, which stunned old-timers. It's now something you can do temporarily to targets, to remove a threat, or save one of your creatures. "Target creature phases out." 

In the intervening years, manga and anime has become much more popular, especially in Magic's target demographic. So the new Kamigawa set, Neon Dynasty, jumped forward in time, and leaned heavily into a lot of recognizable anime/manga tropes.

And naturally enough, WotC made an anime trailer for the set, featuring two of their new planeswalkers, Kaito and the Wanderer:

Dracthyr Evoker

The one element of Dragonflight which going over very poorly is the new race-class combo Dracthyr Evoker.

It's a ranged DPS or healer class. Only Dracthyr can be Evokers, and only Evokers can be Dracythr. Perhaps a little bit like demon hunters only being elves.

The class part seems to be okay, but a lot of people don't really like the look. It's seen as very scrawny, more lizard than dragon. Apparently people really wanted more bulky D&D dragonborne types of dragons. Something which exudes power.

I kind of see Blizzard's thought process here, though. These are caster dragons. There are a lot of complaints about the human (and draenei) male mages being overly buff. Muscle wizards. If Dracthyr were bulky, I rather think that people would be complaining that they were a ranged class. There would be a huge volume of calls for Dracthyr Warriors and Paladins. Buff Dragon Paladins would be amazing, now that I think about it!

On the other hand, I still agree that the current Dracthyr aren't a particularly exciting or inspiring race.

Perhaps Blizzard should have swung for the fences here, and done something really outside the box. Imagine if the new race was basically a dragon whelp, or maybe a slightly bigger but still draconic form of a whelp (a dragonet?). They would still be casters, because whelps and dragonets are always casters in WoW. But it would be more like Bear form for druids.

Maybe that would be too much, not being able to see armor. But bears and cats are still moderately popular in WoW, and the current Dracthyr don't look like they wear all the armor. Then have the whelps get a humanoid form, either at the start or as part of the starting area. Alliance dragons could shift into human or gnome forms, Horde dragons into blood elves or tauren, with a few light draconic customizations.

I think the "must be able to see armor" directive is too restricting, and there's room for a little experimentation outside that.