Honest Game Trailers Hits Warcraft III Reforged Hard

I mentioned at the end of January that Warcraft III Reforged had finally been released by Blizzard, linking out to some of the early problems with the work that people were complaining about.  I had pre-ordered it back after BlizzCon 2018 and was going to wait a while before tackling it because I figured Blizzard might have a plan to fix things.

Meanwhile, the heat on the game just kept getting hotter, and now it is the turn of Honest Game Trailers.

Honest Game Trailers has a tradition at hitting at the weak spots of titles in a way that is often light and doesn’t make you feel bad if you’re a fan.  For example, every video about a Pokemon game reminds us how close to the path GameFreak stays.  But we like it that way and can laugh at ourselves for our devotion.

And then there is their new video about Warcraft III Reforged… but I suspect that it might be tough to find fans of the remake give the tally of issues that have been discovered since it launched.  Have you seen its score on Metacritic?

I was surprised the user score dropped below 1

Ouch.  So instead of a self-deprecating chuckle that fans can have at their own expense, this episode runs more like an indictment.

Compare to that, the look back to the Warcraft RTS franchise they did about four years back is practically a love letter.

I don’t want to say that Warcraft III Reforged necessarily should have been a slam dunk for Blizz… though they still had a lot of goodwill and nostalgia going for them… but they set expectations back at BlizzCon 2018 that they not only didn’t meet, but features that were kind of expected were removed.  Oh, and to keep everything in sync, they were also removed from that copy of Warcraft III you own if you updated it to play online.  Not a good look for what SynCaine is calling the “New Blizzard.”

As for a plan, as reported elsewhere, Blizzard is offering “no questions asked refunds.”

That is less of a plan and more or a mea culpa I suppose, but it is something I guess.  And since this apparently being my month for disillusionment and refunds, I applied for the latter (having experience the former) and it was approved within a few minutes.  There are a series of options to choose from when you request a refund, but for this one “Regret” seemed to be pretty much on the nose.  I am sure that applies to Blizzard’s feelings as well at this point.

My credit card hasn’t been reimbursed yet.  The messaging is a bit muddled, with various responses telling me I’ll have my refund in 3, 7, or possibly 15 days.  But I expect it will come through eventually. (Edit: Just checked and I have been refunded within the 3 day estimate, so high marks for Blizz on that I guess.)

Maybe I should stop pining for a Diablo II remaster and just keep hoping they don’t mess up WoW Classic.  I am still enjoying that.

The Revolt in Gloomingdeep

Following on from the previous EverQuest post, I arrived in the main area of the tutorial.  It was time for it to teach me a few more things about the game.  There was a list of people to speak to… to hail, in the parlance of the game… who would in turn instruct me in some aspect of world.

A list of people to speak to…

But before I could start on that, I was told about the Find option, which you can invoke with Control-F or via the Find button that is placed on your hot bar by default.  This present you with a list of NPCs in the zone, with a description of each.  You just select the NPC you need to find and a glowing wisp trail appears to guide you to them.

Follow the wisp

For whatever reason I feel that EQ does this better than most games.  That includes EverQuest II, which has pretty much the identical wisp mechanic.  But the wisp in EQII seems to spend a lot more time confused as to which way you should be going.  It also seems more likely to send you towards impassible terrain before changing its mind.  In EQ, at least in the early zones where I have used it, the wisp is solid in its directions.

You end up visiting somebody to upgrade your weapon.  Base EQ weapons have basically two stats, damage and delay.  You want a big damage number and a small delay number, which together you can use to figure out DPS.   The upgrade actually just made my club slightly faster.

My polished club

You also learn some basics about spells from another NPC, which generally includes a spell to add to your spellbook.  The spell system was definitely influenced by TorilMUD, yet ended up as kind of its own thing.  It is still over complicated though, and I still have to go look at Allahkazam or some other site online to figure out what spells I need to buy when I level up as they’re all just at a vendor listed by name.

Another NPC tells you about the map, which is another item that came in after my time in the game.

The map of the tutorial safe area

The map is primitive, but better than nothing.  And it is community driven, as you can add and edit maps.  The game provides some basic maps, but the community does the rest.  You have to go download the collected maps if you want to know where things are.

Also, just to roll up a pair of items, one of the reason the wisp is superior in EQ is that the route it sends you down also shows up on the map.  That is a surprisingly useful aspect of the wisp at times.

I also talked to the NPC about mercenaries.  You can hire a mercenary to heal for you or tank for you.  While I have used the mercenaries in EQII, I have tended to stay away from them in EQ, mostly because my EQII characters have a lot of cash while I tend to be dirt poor in EQ and mercs cost in game money to keep around.  You have to fork over some in-game cash every 15 minutes for your merc.  However, the in-game economy is focused on richer, high level characters.  In the tutorial I was looting stuff that sold to the vendor for some copper or a few silver, yet the vendor is now scaled to display prices in platinum coins.  Hard to get there on loot, though a couple of the quests did give out plat coins.  So I gave that a pass for the time being.

You don’t really need a merc to start with anyway.  You’re just going to go kill some rats.

I am savagely beating this cave rat

The quests start off easy enough.  But eventually you hit some that are flagged as being for a group.  While the tutorial was more populated than I expected… I saw maybe a dozen people running around at any given time… it was a quiet bunch and grouping didn’t seem to be their thing.  So I went back and rented a tank mercenary.

Despite reading the intro, I rented the tier I apprentice tank, who is about as useful as a third nipple.  After having to flee from Spider Tamer Gugan, I went back and got the journeyman tank.  After that, things went much more smoothly.

The demise of the spider queen

From there, supported by my mercenary companion, I continued on through the tutorial, trying to do all of the quest.  The mercenary is free for a while, and then it starts charging you every 15 minutes.  First one gold coin, then two, then three.  I kept him on since he was effective, but when it is 10g to 1p, and I had about a dozen plat all told, that was starting to seem expensive.

On the quest hunt I found one I had missed previously.  But I am also sure I missed a couple.  The meta quest ends when you speak to Arias at one point, even when there are some sub-quests still available.  But you will hit level 10, which overall doesn’t take too long, and you’re all dressed up in the blue armor set that you acquire from the quests along the way.

I’m now a blue meanie

At that point the game sends you off to the Plane of Knowledge, the hub of Norrath.

Off you go then…

Of course, first you have to get there.  My memory of leaving the tutorial is pretty vague.  I think you can hang around until level 15, at which point you’ll get kicked out to the PoK, but if you want to leave earlier, you must take direct action.

Avoid the obvious cave.

Obvious cave is obvious

There is a sign next to it that moves… for reasons I do not recall… but you get a message about the slaves having dug a way out.  You can go through the cave to exit Gloomingdeep, but you end up in Crescent Reach.  That is a whole different experience that came in with The Serprent’s Spine expansion where you can level up to… I forget how far, but pretty far… in a series of purpose built zones with quests and the like.

Wait, this isn’t the Plane of Knowledge

That’s not horrible, but it starts at level one and is an alternative to the tutorial.  If you’re already at level 10 or beyond, and if you want to do the PoK armor quests, going there won’t help you. (Unless you go find the PoK teleport book, which you will probably only be able to do if you’ve downloaded and installed all those maps.  It used to be in dangerous territory, but I think they moved it.)

I got back to the tutorial by camping out and selecting the “Tutorial” button from the character select screen, since I was too lazy to go find the teleport book.

Back in the tutorial you have to go find Arias one last time, select him, and say “I am ready to leave” to get out.  The tutorial tells you that at some point I am sure, but like so much of the information, it is in small text in various windows and easy to miss or forget.

Saying that to Arias will teleport you immediately to the PoK where you can run over and bind your soul… basically set your respawn on death point, just select the NPC and click on the “bind my soul” link in chat… and be ready to work on the armor quests.

I hear you are into bindage

The next set of quests, at least on a live server, will get you well along to level 20 or so.  That is what I seem to recall anyway, the evidence being the other characters I created on the server, which all seem to be level 20-ish.  After that, the game has tended to get a bit less directed in its help.

Of course, the last time I played was a while back.  Since then some new things have come along.  There are a whole series of achievements for going places and slaying particular mobs.  That might even be an interesting way to tour the game.  And then there is the Hero’s Journey, which the game popped up a window to tell me about.

Joseph Campbell would be… something

I’m not sure how deep that is… at level 10 it seems to just point me at an achievement in my level range… but it might be something to look into.

Now to see if I carry on in Norrath.  I’ve warmed up with the tutorial.  The anniversary events are about three weeks away.  I could wait for that or I could go do the armor quests and see where that leads me.

Winter Movie League – Always Bet on Black Panther

The penultimate week of the winter round of our Fantasy Movie League has come and gone.

The question of the week wasn’t whether or not Black Panther was going to dominate the box office, but rather which day would be optimum to play.  With the opening of a blockbuster on a holiday weekend (President’s Day in the US) there ended up being four different ways to play Black Panther, one for each day.

Black Panther (FRI)  $501
Black Panther (SAT)  $451
Black Panther (SUN)  $348
Black Panther (MON)  $220
Peter Rabbit         $186
Fifty Shades Freed   $155
Jumanji              $87
The 15:17 to Paris   $68
The Greatest Showman $51
Early Man            $49
The Maze Runner      $39
Samson               $32
Winchester           $31
The Post             $26
The Shape of Water   $25

I bounced around with a few possible variations, with Friday generally as my anchor.  My past reluctance to back Friday night on split weeks was tempered when I found out that Thursday night previews get included in that number.  It still isn’t an automatic choice, but it is definitely in the running.

But given the hype around Black Panther Friday did seem like a decent choice.  I started out with that, Peter Rabbit, and six screens of Early Man.  I wasn’t sold on that, with the main question being whether or not Peter Rabbit would out-do Black Panther’s Sunday take.  Things often slow down come Sunday for a new release, with the truly interested having gotten in on the first few nights.

However, as the week went along the estimates for Black Panther kept creeping up, so I started looking into how to get more of that into my lineup.  I played with various combos of Saturday and Sunday, but steered clear of Monday believing, as the pricing indicated, that interest would have slackened some even on a holiday weekend.

As often happens, I didn’t settle on my final pick until Friday morning.  I waited to see what they were saying about the Thursday night previews.  Those were strong enough that I wanted Friday in my pick along with at least one additional day.  I ended up with Friday, Sunday, and six screens of The Shape of Water which was not only a selection mentioned in TAGN chatter but the same pick my wife made for our home league the night before.

My Winter Week Twelve Picks

Then the time was up, picks were locked, and I could see what everybody else went with.  I shared my pick with two other people, I HAS BAD TASTE and Logan, and was off by one screen from Corr, but there was some variety in picks especially in the TAGN league where all four days of Black Panther were anchors for somebody.

Then as the weekend passed the estimates started to roll in.  On Saturday it looked like Friday was the good choice for anchor.  On Sunday it was mixed.  By Monday the Sunday box office looked to make that day the best performer.  Then there was the question as to how well Monday would do.  I wrote in the chatter for the TAGN league that if Monday went crazy and hit $40 million then Darren, who anchored on four screens of Monday, would have a great week.

And, of course, Monday turned in a box office of $40.15 million, making it the anchor for the perfect pick of the week, which was four screens of Monday, one screen of The 15:17 to Paris, two screens of The Post, and one empty screen.

Winter Week Twelve Perfect Pick

To show how wild the week was, the summary says that only four people got the perfect pick, and I only see three people with that pick in the overall FML League.  This was a tough week to forecast compared to a few weeks back when nearly a thousand people got the perfect pick.

Darren had four screens of Monday and four screens of The Shape of Water, so did not get perfect, but it was enough for him to dominate the Meta League scores for the week.

1. Darren’s Unwatched Cineplex (T) – $176,827,124
2. Joanie’s Joint (T) – $156,901,972
3. Po Huit’s Sweet Movie Suite (T) – $155,650,217
4. Dan’s Decadent Decaplex (M) – $154,765,562
5. Corr’s Carefully Curated Cineplex (M) – $148,721,837
6. I HAS BAD TASTE (T) – $148,338,897
7. Logan’s Luxurious Thaumatrope (M) – $148,338,897
8. Wilhelm’s Broken Isles Bijou (T/M) – $148,338,897
9. Ben’s X-Wing Express (M) – $145,695,766
10. Vigo Grimborne’s Medieval Screening Complex (T) – $145,695,766
11. Elly’s Elemental E-Plex (M) – $145,695,766
12. Paks’ Pancakes & Pics (T) – $145,695,766
13. Aure’s Astonishingly Amateur Amphitheatre (M) – $141,649,479
14. SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights (T) – $133,748,148
15. Kraut Screens (T) – $132,982,268
16. Biyondios! Kabuki & Cinema (T) – $124,884,965

The Meta League Legend:

• TAGN Movie Obsession – players from it marked with a (T)
• MCats Multiplex – players from it marked with an (M)

Darren was almost $20 million out in front of the pack, followed up by a group of three in the $155 million range, who all steered clear of the dead weight that Friday turned out to be.  And then things taper down, with the last three being people who only picked a single screen of Black Panther.  Basically, the more Black Panther you had, the better you did.

That led to a bit of change in the overall season rankings.

1. Ben’s X-Wing Express (M) – $1,270,679,042
2. Corr’s Carefully Curated Cineplex (M) – $1,262,788,453
3. Wilhelm’s Broken Isles Bijou (T/M) – $1,214,022,737
4. Paks’ Pancakes & Pics (T) – $1,197,218,790
5. Biyondios! Kabuki & Cinema (T) – $1,192,403,275
6. Dan’s Decadent Decaplex (M) – $1,178,278,619
7. Aure’s Astonishingly Amateur Amphitheatre (M) – $1,168,880,531
8. Darren’s Unwatched Cineplex (T) – $1,135,310,164
9. Po Huit’s Sweet Movie Suite (T) – $1,113,047,984
10. SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights (T) – $1,102,001,841
11. I HAS BAD TASTE (T) – $1,044,004,547
12. Vigo Grimborne’s Medieval Screening Complex (T) – $1,043,456,510
13. Kraut Screens (T) – $1,019,676,291
14. Logan’s Luxurious Thaumatrope (M) – $1,002,940,883
15. Elly’s Elemental E-Plex (M) – $997,039,452
16. Joanie’s Joint (T) – $981,098,524

Corr managed to edge up a bit closer to Ben, so the race for first place is still on with less than an $8 million gap between the two of them.

The single screen of Black Panther picked for Biyondios! Kabuki & Cinema let me pull back into third place and, while my position is not unassailable, my next pick has to be bad, or Pak has to ace his pick, for me to lose it.  As we saw this week, a $20 million margin isn’t impossible.

Two people were dropped from the scoring totals, Liore and the Filthy Fleapit due to both having failed to pick for three weeks over the course of the season.

All of which leads us to the final week of the season.

Black Panther (SAT)  $534
Black Panther (SUN)  $395
Black Panther (FRI)  $334
Game Night           $201
Peter Rabbit         $167
Annihilation         $154
Fifty Shades Freed   $100
Jumanji              $87
The 15:17 to Paris   $62
The Greatest Showman $55 
Every Day            $45
Early Man            $26
The Maze Runner      $17 
The Post             $16
The Shape of Water   $15

This week Winchester, Samson, and the Monday option for Black Panther fell off of the list.

Replacing those are three new films on the list, Game Night, Annihilation, and Every Day.  But none of them are going to be big enough to assail Black Panther this weekend or, looking at that pricing, even a single day of Black Panther this weekend.  That means Black Panther remains split into three days.

Friday, being a work day and lacking the bonus of Thursday night previews this time around, is the lowest priced on the list.  Saturday is expected to be the big day, so you can only have one screen of that, with Sunday expected to be closer to Friday in take.  So it again looks like a question of how many screens of Black Panther can you get?

This being the last week of the season, next week’s post will be the final scores.  My plan has been to then skip the Spring season and come back with a series of posts for the roller coaster of the Summer blockbuster season.  However, I thought I would take a poll about it.  Doing the posts themselves every week isn’t a big deal.  I know I am writing them every week and it can be very much a template to fill out with some commentary around it.  But I am not sure that makes for exciting reading week after week.  So, a poll!

Either way I will still pick every week for Spring, so the TAGN League will be alive.  I will put a link in the comments after this post goes live that will let you join the league.  You do need to go create an account at Fantasy Movie League to play and, as I recall, it is marginally easier if you do that first, then join the league.

At Loose Ends on the Fantasy Front

I seem to have fallen off the fantasy MMORPG wagon once again.  This seems to happen every so often.

I stopped playing WoW a couple months after the Legion expansion hit.  My Winter foray into EverQuest II kept my interest for about a month, which seems to about par for the course.  I poked my nose into Lord of the Rings Online long enough to buy the level 95 Blessing of the Valar upgrade.

Two blessings, depending on your need

That got me a pile of stuff and whisked me off into a different place where I met up with Eowyn.

Yeah, about you and Strider… he’s not that into you

However I soon lost interest there.  Well, “lost interest” might imply I logged in again after that, and I did not.  Of course, I might have been influenced by wanting to start out on something only to be hamstrung by the legendary weapon system.  I had to choose a weapon, which I then received.  But you cannot just use the weapon yet.  You have to find the special NPC to identify it and then choose a bonus and then something else.  I forget.  I am sure, as with every aspect of every MMO, that legendary weapons are somebody’s favorite part of LOTRO.  But it ain’t mine. I just wanted to grab it and run not worry about reforging.

So that fell apart.  I might go back, but the fact that I haven’t felt any need to do so for a couple weeks is pretty telling.

At some point in the last few weeks… erm, months… I also made a RuneScape account, played for a couple of hours, then never went back.

The fantasy MMORPG thing just isn’t holding me at the moment.  But the habit of at least the last decade and a half… or more if you count the TorilMUD, in which case we start to reach back past 20 years… makes something inside of me think something is missing if I am not playing one.

So my eye wanders down the list of possible other choices.  Do I try out The Elder Scrolls Online, which just added in housing and seems to be doing well enough to be secure?  Do I give GuildWars 2 another try?  Is there something still in Rift that I might enjoy?  Is it time to start digging into Project: Gorgon yet?  What titles on my 2017 MMO Outlook post are even live yet?

But should I bother.

EVE Online doesn’t fill that niche for me certainly.  But I continue to play Minecraft, which does much to fill the world and building and housing drive I might have.  And right now Pokemon Sun seems to have a lock on the RPG… or maybe just the collecting and achievement… aspect.

And there is also something I will call “virtual world weariness” in me that feels the essential sameness of all of these games so that they blur together into a gray, uninteresting mass.  It might be time for a longer break from such games.