The War Within: First Zone

This post may contain spoilers for first two zones of The War Within.

I picked up The War Within on Monday and have been slowly working through it. I decided to try to do as much of the first zone as I could before moving on. So I got to 76 before making my way to the second zone.

There was a minor kerfuffle as Blizzard nerfed levelling a day after launch, giving the people who purchased Early Access a lot more time with the quick levelling. While the optics were bad, it was really necessary. I went Templar on my Retribution Paladin, which gives you a very powerful new ability Hammer of Light, which chains off Wake of Ashes. I was having a really hard time trying out this new ability because Wake of Ashes would kill everything before I could even use Hammer of Light!

In any case, the first part in Dalaran is really well-done. There was this seamless cut from action to in-game cutscene that I don't think I've seen WoW do before. Xal'atath is a great villain so far, just toying with the good guys like a cat. Unlike the humourless Jailer, Xal'atath is having fun, and it just works. Style is everything for a villain.

The Isle of Dorn is a pretty good first zone. The earthen are interesting, though it is a bit weird that this is the second robot-ish race we've seen recently. The first being the mecha-gnomes. They are rather different, but it's still kind of weird.

It does feel like a very Alliance-centric expansion so far, though that may be mostly because of the dwarves.

Also, being called "Outlander" all the time reminds me a lot of The Old Republic.

The Infernal Hordes

The history of Diablo IV is Blizzard trying to make unique and interesting content, and the community yelling that the content needs to be more streamlined. That there's no point in making complicated dungeons, or making the players search for keys, etc. Then Blizzard gives in and smoothes out the rough edges.

And so in Season V, we come to the ultimate expression of this philosophy: The Infernal Hordes.

The Infernal Hordes is basically a large round room. Waves after waves of enemies spawn, and then you kill them and collect aether. After several waves, you go to a new room and fight a council of 3 bosses. Then you can spend your aether on rewards.

I fully expect the community to complain that you have to switch rooms for the boss fight.

On the other hand, the Infernal Hordes is pretty fun. There's also a mechanic after each wave where you can choose a boon/bane combo from a set of 3 options, which can change up how you approach future waves.

The Infernal Hordes is Diablo's combat in its rawest, purest form. Yet, Diablo's combat system is strong enough to make that compelling. But I guess the true test is staying power. Can the Infernal Hordes remain fun after a few weeks?

The War Within Early Access

Early Access for The War Within has started. This time around, Blizzard did something new. Normally, early access is tied to preorders. This time around, early access is tied to the most expensive preorder tier, and not available for the lower tiers.

I don't know if you can really fault Blizzard for this. Early access is often felt to be the most valuable perk of preordering, so they probably sold a lot more of the higher tier preorders than before. And of course, probably spread the load on the servers out.

But I think it's left a bit of sour taste in the mouths of the player base. Blizzard is coming off two big successes in Dragonflight and the Pandaria Remix. I think splitting the current player base this way has dampened the enthusiasm.

Maybe it's just a vibes thing, but it just doesn't feel like a real early access in the community. Looking at Reddit right now, three of the four top posts are about the split.[1] It's not even angry posts, it's more a sense of resignation. But it really should be a sense of excitement. Kind of honestly, I'd even take the traditional "6 hour queue" and "servers on fire" posts.

Oh well, it will probably be forgotten in a few days. I actually haven't preordered, so I'll probably get the expansion after it formally launches sometime. Still, I can't help but feel that Blizzard tripped and squandered some of the momentum from Dragonflight.

[1] The fourth post is about Warbands, and how the poster has so many alts, he should have a Warchestra instead. Honestly, it deserves its spot.

Alleria: Light and Shadow

The second short for The War Within is Alleria: Light and Shadow.

I gather this is a condensed version of a longer audiobook. The artstyle is nice.

Also, I kept thinking that Alleria should have become a Demon Hunter. She's an elf, and she has all the same lines. She even uses her bow as a glaive-style weapon. 

Heh, maybe this is hinting at a third specialization for Demon Hunters: Void. Demon Hunters that are void themed instead of Fel and fire themed.

After all, they gave Evokers a third spec, so maybe Blizzard will do the same for Demon Hunters.

Threads of Destiny

WoW is doing short trailers for the new expansion. Here's the first one, Threads of Destiny.

It's a pretty interesting introduction to one of the antagonist factions in the expansion. It also features everyone's favourite dagger, Xal'atath, doing traditional corruptive villain things.

One thing I particularly liked about the cinematic is that Xal'atath set things up so she wins both ways. The queen accepts, the princess supports the queen, Xal wins. The queen declines, the princess dethrones the queen, Xal wins.

If The War Within is just one crazy Xanatos Gambit from Xal'atath, I'll be pretty happy.

Dragonflight Catch-Up: Patch 10.1

I've been going through the Dragonflight story quests for each patch. Since WoW throws all the quests at you once you hit max level, it's very easy to do them out of order. I've been following this guide on Reddit.

So far, I've done the 10.1 quests, which focused mainly on the Black and Blue dragonflights. I quite liked both of them. For the Black dragonflight, I liked the triad of Ebyssian, Sabellian, and Wrathion. I thought their story was well done. It's pretty rare for WoW to focus on the flaws of the heroes in this fashion, and it was a nice change of pace. Compare it to the Blue dragons, where all the dragons had quirks, but no real flaws as such (well, maybe Azuregos).

The Blue dragonflight were also good, but very different in tone. I liked that Blizzard used the old world and history, taking players back to previously-visited locations.

All in all, the 10.1 quests were quite good and interesting. I'm looking forward to the next set of quests, which look to be focused on the Bronze and Green flights.

Radiant Echos

The WoW pre-patch event, Radiant Echos, is currently active. I caved during the free weekend and downloaded WoW again. I haven't played since launch.

First thing I noticed is that the UI feels slightly off. They didn't do a full overall, but Blizzard changed enough icons such that it's a bit unfamiliar. I still haven't figured out what the hourglass next to people's names in guild chat means.

The event itself is pretty fun. You go to three zones, do events based on quests and bosses from previous expansions, and then kill the memory of a major boss like Arthas. Then the cycle repeats, though the bulk of the reward comes from killing the boss once. It's a pretty good rhythm, and the quests are fun callbacks. There's also a nice variety of quest types. Sometimes it's killing a named character, sometimes it's collecting pages from Stranglethorn, and sometimes it's trying to get the perfect boar liver to drop.

I gather the original incarnation was much stricter. The event didn't repeat and only did one cycle, so it was easy to miss the boss kill. Also, I think the time between events was longer. Blizzard has tweaked it so that you can keep going consistently, and also have several chances to get the boss kill.

There's also a quest line, though I don't think it is complete. I imagine the second half will activate closer to the expansion launch.

Heuristics for Building a Diablo IV Character

Diablo IV's next season is coming up, so I thought I'd lay out some heuristics and strategies for getting a semi-decent build. Now, none of these will compare to a true pre-made build from the various websites, but I think they're a good skeleton for a player to experiment with.

1. Diablo IV is built around builder-spender gameplay. Generally only take 1 builder and 1 spender.
2. One of your abilities (usually the spender) will be your main source of damage. Only put multiple ranks into this ability. Just take 1 rank of the other abilities you want to use. Other than your main ability, focus on passives.
3. The legendary aspects you put on your gear are your "set". The priority for the early game is figuring what your "set" looks like and assembling the necessary aspects. After that, just keep imprinting your set on new gear.
4. Put your best aspect on a 2H weapon (2x effective) if you are using one, otherwise on your amulet (1.5x effect). 
5. While levelling, temper your gear with the basic stats. The more exotic stats generally need a full build to take advantage of.
6. As for gear, just upgrade whenever you can. You can worry about specific stats once you hit Ancestral gear.
7. Unique items are powerful, but don't use too many. Much of your power comes from your "set" of legendary aspects, and each unique you use causes you to lose one of your set pieces.
8. What sort of abilities and special effects you focus on depend mostly on your build (i.e. crowd control, burning, overpower, etc.). But you need an easy, regular source of Vulnerable, be it ability, aspect, paragon glyph, etc. You should have it by the time you hit Tier IV.
9. For the paragon board, your first priority is glyph sockets, and enough ability points to activate the secondary power of the glyph. Then paragon nodes if they are good for your build. You should aim for at least 5 sockets. Pick up rare and magic nodes if they are close by, but focus on the path between sockets and paragon nodes.
10. Personally, I think D4 works best when you do a wide variety of content. Mix things up.

Obviously, these tips will only take you so far. The meta-builds on the various websites will most likely be stronger. But these heuristics will give you some direction if you want to try a home-brew on your own.

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.