Carbot and Ideas for Diablo II

As we learned last Tuesday, Diablo II Resurrected was pretty much the one bight spot in Blizzard’s Q3 2021, lifting the studio through an otherwise difficult quarter where there wasn’t much else to talk about.

The return of the classic

Unfortunately for Blizzard, D2R is a buy and play game, so the majority of the income they will ever get from it came in one big bubble in September.  They will sell more copies over time, but it won’t have the legs to save Q4 2021.

One obvious thought is basically, gee, could we have some more D2R content?  That probably isn’t viable, at least in the short term.

But they could add a few things to make the game a longer term prospect.  Again, that won’t sell a bunch more copies, but making it a game with even more too it might sustain the remaining sales cycle longer.  And that is where Carbot comes in, because he has a video up about additions he would like to see for D2R.

The video kicked off with a bit of silliness with the first idea, but seems pretty solid from there forward.  I personally like the second idea about mercenaries, or at least having a way to put your mercenary away for a fight because the price of a ress starts getting a bit crazy at higher levels.

I am not sure how much more Blizzard can do with D2R.  But the original Blizzard North team seemed to think that a remaster wasn’t possible, much less porting it to consoles, so you never know what they might come up with.

A Demon Hunter in the Level Squish

Since the big level squish hit last month with the Shadowlands pre-patch, I have been playing a lot more retail WoW than WoW Classic.  It has been something new to explore.

I started with three characters at level 50 after the squish and have managed to work half a dozen more up to that level, giving me a total of nine at the cap now.  I also played around with the new starter area with a few fresh characters just to see it, but haven’t really committed to any of them.  They mostly represent classes I already have at level cap, so there isn’t a lot of pressure to push a duplicate unless there is a second spec I want to try.

So I started looking at what I did not have at level cap and realized that I didn’t even have a Demon Hunter on my character list.

The Demon Hunter class came in with Legion and I know I rolled on up at some point, but I recall never getting out of the starter area.  I must have deleted that character later on during a clean up of barely started alts, because they were gone.

So that became the plan, to start a Demon Hunter in the new squished reality of Azeroth.  Demon Hunters need to be elves, blood or night, due to lore reasons, and I decided to go with a Blood Elf this time around just to expand my Horde character base.

For whatever reason, Demon Hunters start at level 8 now, which is 90 levels shy of their old starting spot.  So goes the squish.  Allied races and Death Knights, which both skip the new starter area kick off at level 10.  But the DH gets 8.

Otherwise, you are in the same starter area as before.  I had vague memories of a few of the quests.  The zone is shared, which means a lot of things have to be available in parallel, so it can seem a bit chaotic as you excuse yourself as you pass through some respawns because you’ve done that bit already.

Quietly waiting for the elevator amidst the chaos

I made it through the core part of the tutorial.  If I am remembering correctly, I must have left off just before I got to the part where you move on to Orgimmar.

The fun bit is that the DH starter area is wired directly into the Legion expansion, so rather than showing up in the Battle for Azeroth timeline, you carry on into the Legion intro where you get to see Sylvannas become the Warchief of the Horde and hang out with her for a bit.

She sounds like Holly Hunter and always looks a bit bored

Then there is Khadgar and watching Dalaran warped off to the Broken Isles, and you are pretty quickly stuck into the Legion expansion.  I was probably level 15 or so when I got there and was immediately sent off for the special class/spec weapon that was the hallmark of the expansion.

I hope they scale like heirlooms, because I need them until 50

You also have to go to your order hall, which for the DH means jumping off the flight point area and gliding down to one of the islands floating nearby Dalaran.  Not as epic as the warrior leap into the heavens, but it gets you used to using your glide skill, which comes in very handy.

The glide to the island with the gate that takes me to the order hall

There is the order hall stuff, which is pretty much the same in each even if the scenery is a bit different, after which you get to pick your starting zone.  But in the running around Dalaran it is possible to skip out.  Over by Khadgar in the Violet Citadel in Dalaran stands Nathanos Blightcaller with a quest.

Nathanos waits

I am pretty sure his quest sends you through the portal to Orgrimmar that sits behind him and starts you off into Battle for Azeroth.  If you like wicked Sylvannas, there is your chance.

I didn’t go find out.  I decided to stick with Legion.

I opted for Stormheim, one of my favorite zones in the expansion, and was flown out there.  But when I arrived there wasn’t a quest to be seen.  I think there might be an issue here.  I rode around for a bit, straying into Highmountain.  There I picked up the started quest for that zone instead.  I like Highmountain too, so I carried on with that.

Now I am moving along there, closing in on 30.  We’ll see if I make it all the way to 50, but this will keep me busy for a bit.

Quote of the Day for WoW Classic Fans

World of Warcraft^® Classic drove the biggest quarterly increase to subscription plans in franchise history, in both the West and East.

-Activision-Blizzard Q3 2019 earnings report

WoW Classic brings another ray of sunshine.

Given what SuperData told us about WoW Classic previously, this was not unexpected.

This ray of sunshine however comes amidst some cloudy skies at A-B.

The company took a lot of heat at the start of the year when it announced layoffs in practically the same breath in which it announced record financial performances.  While people were outraged, the 2019 financial reports have supported the company’s pessimism.  Blizzard was especially hard hit with its margins dropping from 30% to 16% in Q1 2019 as Battle for Azeroth shed players while the company had nothing else new to attract people.  And things have remained down.  The charts show that Blizz has recovered a bit on margins, but now Activision is was down.

Activision Blizzard Q3 2019 Financial Results Presentation – Slide 9

And the talk at the presentation was largely about the long term tent pole products, Call of Duty and World of Warcraft.  Even as they try to diversify their stable of titles, the old champions have to carry water for everybody.  Even the up part of company, King and its mobile games, the emphasis was on the Candy Crush franchise.

This is a very common problem, creating a popular and very profitable product then never being able to create something that could match, much less surpass, that product.

There was even mention of possibly beefing up the WoW team.  And, it was recognized that WoW Classic gave the company a boost during an “off” year when WoW did not have an expansion set to go.  There was some uncertainty about how sustainable WoW Classic would be over the long term.  And certainly, if they don’t do anything else with it, it will dwindle off to a much smaller population.

Finally, Q3 ended on September 30, 2019.  The Hong Kong debacle did not come to pass until mid-October, so that may put something of a damper on Blizzard numbers for Q4.  Opening up pre-orders for Shadowlands during BlizzCon may offset that somewhat, but that is a short term solution for a long term problem.

You can find all of the quarterly result information at the Activision Blizzard investor relations site.

Comparing Four MMO Expansions

I originally sat down to write about pre-orders being available for the next EverQuest II expansion, Blood of Luclin.  However, aside from the addition of the Friends & Family option, it isn’t all that different from the last few times I’ve written about EQII pre-orders.  And even the new F&F bit is similar enough to the EverQuest version that I was feeling little dull.  Also, I am sick right now and going through that chart in detail was making my headache worse.  You can check out the details here, but I won’t be going through them with a fine tooth comb.  I’ll probably regret that in a year, but I’ll live.

You can buy it today

Instead I started listing out different aspects of some expansions.

We have a few expansions that have been at least announced.  Minas Morgul just went live for LOTRO, EverQuest and EverQuest II both have expansions in the offing, and at BlizzCon we heard about Shadowlands, the next WoW expansion.  In laying out some details for comparison I don’t have any real key points to highlight, but sometimes just the comparison is enough to make you think about what is going on.

How far in advance did they announce an expansion?

• WoW – Maybe as much as a year in advance
• LOTRO – About two months
• EQ – About three month
• EQII – About three month

WoW has a tradition of getting a lot of details announced at BlizzCon about nine months ahead of when an expansion will ship.  Way more details than we got for the other three just months before their planned launch.  However, EQ and EQII do yearly expansion, so a year in advance they’d still be patching the current expansion rather than the next.

LOTRO though… I guess SSG just doesn’t like to spill the beans too far ahead.

When were pre-orders available?

• WoW – Maybe as much as a year in advance… like now for Shadowlands
• LOTRO – About two months ahead of launch
• EQ – About a month ahead launch
• EQII – About a month ahead launch

With SSG and Daybreak, pre-orders seem to be offered pretty close to the official expansion announcement.  With Blizz there used to be a fair gap between the expansion being announced and pre-orders being available, but at this past BlizzCon we saw pre-orders go live coincident with the expansion announcement.

Expansion tiers and pricing

• WoW – Base $40, Heroic $60, Epic $80
• LOTRO – Standard $40, Collectors $80, Ultimate $130
• EQ – Standard $35, Collectors $90, Premium $140, F&F $250
• EQII – Standard $35, Collectors $90, Premium $140, F&F $250

The new “Friends &  Family” packages are outliers.  But even if we leave those out it does strike me as a bit odd that WoW is not the most expensive in any category save for the base expansion, and there it is tied with LOTRO.

Should the base expansion include a level booster?

• WoW – No
• LOTRO – No
• EQ – No
• EQII – Yes

I am a bit surprised that EQII is the outlier here with its level 110 boost.  LOTRO offers a level 120 booster with the two higher tier packages, as does WoW.  EQ though… as I noted previously, it is in a strange place.  It offers a booster with its more expansive packages, but it is still the now more than five years old level 85 boost.  This, for an expansion where the level cap is going from 110 to 115.  My “WTF Daybreak?” opinion of that remains.

Key items from upgraded packages

• WoW – Mount, pet, cosmetics
• LOTRO – Mount, pet, cosmetics, titles, various booster potions
• EQ – Mount, pet, mercenary, cosmetics, house item, bag, various booster potions
• EQII – Mount, pet, mercenary, cosmetics, cosmetic house item, teleporter to new expansion house item, various booster potions, and an trade skill insta-level boost to 110

I left out the level boost obviously, as it was covered above, and ignore the F&F packs, as they are strange new beasts.

EQII is really the standout in piling things on here, including even a level booster for trade skills, though EQII trade skills have the same level cap as adventure levels, and are earned more like adventure levels than the skill point upgrades in the other crafting systems.

WoW effectively gives you a boost into trade skills since they split trade skills up per expansion with BFA.  But you get that no matter what.

As I have said before, if I were a dedicated EQII player, I could see being very tempted by one of the more expensive packages… relative to EQ especially, which has the same price points… despite the high prices.

Anyway, I thought that comparison was mildly informative.  You can find all the order pages below.  I’d be curious as to how these four games compare to other MMORPG expansion, though I don’t keep a close enough eye on anything else to even know who still sells expansions like this anymore.

• World of Warcraft Shadowlands pre-order here
• Lord of the Rings Online Minas Morgul order here
• EverQuest Torment of Velious pre-order here
• EverQuest II Blood of Luclin pre-order here

Fantasy Movie League – Mercury Rising

Week nine of our Fantasy Movie League has now flown by.

The options for week nine were as follows:

Bohemian Rhapsody       $510
The Nutcracker          $260
Halloween               $201
Nobody's Fool           $180
A Star is Born          $127
Venom                   $80
Goosebumps 2            $62
The Hate U Give         $42
Smallfoot               $42
Hunter Killer           $39
First Man               $35
Suspiria                $31
Night School            $24
Mid 90s                 $23
The Old Man and the Gun $17

And I have to admit it was probably foolish for me to bet against the only film on the list that I had any intention of seeing last weekend, Bohemian Rhapsody.

On Monday I was still on board with Freddie Mercury, going with 1x Bohemian Rhapsody , 1x Halloween, 1x Nobody’s Fool, 1x First Man, 1x Mid 90s, and 3x The Old Man and the Gun.  A scattered lineup if ever there was one.

But then I started to let the news and reviews get to me.  And the hard core fans.

The reviews were not great.  There was lots of carping about what the movie could have been, how story was change to make things a nice little package, and how seemingly essential events were omitted.

What I failed to detect was the problem of the connoisseur in play.  This wasn’t the story hard core fans wanted.  This was not what those in the know could go along with.  Bohemian Rhapsody was pretty much a Greatest Hits album that visited some key points but mostly just gave the posers and bystanders what they wanted without too much to think about.  Boy finds band.  Boy and band reach wonderful heights.  Boy gets bored, leaves band.  Boy feels regret.  Boy and band reunite.  Sprinkle on a little pathos and social commentary and bake at 350 degrees for 134 minutes and you’re set.

The thing is, record labels don’t keep cranking out Greatest Hits albums because they are bad sellers.  It turns out most people aren’t as into your favorite band as you are.  They don’t want to hear the B-side songs or the creative experiments or that soulful ballad you love but which never got any air time.  They want to hear the hits that they’ve heard on the radio, the songs they know just enough of the words to that they sing along aloud.

Which is all wonderful hindsight, but I was reading all the negatives, with forecasts as low as $30 million being predicted.  With that in mind I got as far away from Bohemian Rhapsody as I could, deciding to throw in my lot with Tyler Perry, who tends to blindside me with the popularity of his films.

So by lock time my picks were 5x Nobody’s Fool, 1x Smallfoot, 1x First Man, and 1x Mid 90s.

And then Bohemian Rhapsody did $51 million, exceeding the highest forecast I saw by a good $10 million, becoming the best performer and the winning anchor.  Greatest Hits album wins.

Also, as an aside, Rami Malek looks so much like young Omar Sharif at times in that movie… just put a gap in those front teeth and you’re there… that they need to make a bio-pic about Omar next, before Rami gets much older.  Do it!  Omar Sharif lived a fascinating life.

The perfect pick was 1x Bohemian Rhapsody, 5x Venom, and 2x Smallfoot, leaving the week’s scores looking like this:

1. Ben’s X-Wing Exp(r)ess – $105,170,333
2. Paks’ Pancakes & Pics – $94,427,321
3. Goat Water Picture Palace – $93,238,640
4. Miniature Giant Space Hamsterplex – $93,238,640
5. I HAS BAD TASTE – $91,704,872
6. Too Orangey For Crows – $89,460,183
7. Joanie’s Joint – $87,943,399
8. Darren’s Unwatched Cineplex – $87,062,016
9. Corr’s Carefully Curated Cineplex – $78,042,410
10. grannanj’s Cineplex – $77,382,648

Ben got the perfect pick, which boosted his fortunes greatly.  Otherwise, if you anchored on Bohemian Rhapsody, you were in above the $80 million mark.  Below that were two people who went all-in on the Nutcracker.  Tyler Perry only got me into 11th place, and Po into 12th.  You can’t make the top ten every week I guess.  Halloween was the disappointing anchor.  I guess people don’t go to seasonal movies after the season has passed.

That left the overall scores for the season looking like:

1. Wilhelm’s Kul Tiras Kino – $656,388,528
2. Goat Water Picture Palace – $642,913,881
3. Too Orangey For Crows – $630,234,013
4. I HAS BAD TASTE – $623,232,202
5. Corr’s Carefully Curated Cineplex – $622,193,961
6. Ben’s X-Wing Exp(r)ess – $593,230,983
7. Po Huit’s Sweet Movie Suite – $587,634,041
8. Darren’s Unwatched Cineplex – $585,890,989
9. Cyanbane’s Neuticles Viewing Party – $584,789,242
10. grannanj’s Cineplex – $583,842,796

Inertia from previous weeks kept me on top, but Goat is not far behind me.  Ben’s perfect pick, along with Vigo missing his pick and SynCaine betting on Halloween as an anchor, jumped him from 11th to 6th place overall.  Corr, who nearly missed out when his picks failed to copy (you get a free, one time petition to fix that I hear), fell back a couple of places as well.

As for the alternate scoring, this is how it fell out:

1. Wilhelm’s Kul Tiras Kino – 49
2. Goat Water Picture Palace – 48
3. Corr’s Carefully Curated Cineplex – 47
4. Too Orangey For Crows – 44
5. I HAS BAD TASTE – 37
6. Vigo Grimborne’s Medieval Screening Complex – 36
7. Darren’s Unwatched Cineplex – 34
8. Po Huit’s Sweet Movie Suite – 33
9. Cyanbane’s Neuticles Viewing Party – 28
10. SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights – 24

Not getting in the top ten let everybody catch up to me.  We now effectively have a tie race between myself, Goat, Corr, and possibly Bhagpuss.  Ben’s big finish for the week still only got him into 11th place.  He will need to swing some more first place finishes to catch up.

And there we stand after nine week.  Just four more to go.  And the week ten options look like this:

The Grinch                   $800
Bohemian Rhapsody            $372
The Girl in the Spider's Web $150
The Nutcracker               $126
Overlord                     $107
A Star is Born               $100
Nobody's Fool                $80
Venom                        $65
Halloween                    $59
Thugs of Hindostan           $40
Goosebumps 2                 $22
The Hate U Give              $25
Smallfoot                    $26
Hunter Killer                $25
Can You Ever Forgive Me?     $21

Gone this week are First Man, Suspiria, Night School, Mid 90s, and The Old Man and the Gun.

Replacing them are The Grinch, The Girl in the Spider’s Web, Overlord, Thugs of Hindostan, and Can You Ever Forgive.

The Grinch.  It is November, time for Christmas movies, so let’s re-pillage a classic.  I guess we should feel lucky it isn’t another version of A Christmas Carol. (My favorite version of that stars Mr. Magoo, though Bill Murray’s Scrooged doesn’t displease me.)

The original TV special has its flaws, but it also has freakin’ Boris Karloff.  How to you top that?  Not with Jim Carrey, that is for sure.  But that was 18 years ago, so I guess we’re probably overdue at this point.

What can I say?  Name recognition is through the roof on this one, and most people will have forgotten the 2000 film by now.  Long range tracking puts it at $70 million.  What else are you going to take the kids to see this weekend?

The Girl in the Spider’s Web is the next installment in the English language remakes of the Stieg Larsson Millennium trilogy about what Swedes are really like.  No wonder 20% of the country got up and moved to America a century or so back, some ancestors of mine included.  I made it through the books, but wouldn’t bother reading them again.  I tried watching the Swedish versions of the films, but subtitles break me out of the movie too often, so I didn’t enjoy them.  And then there was the first film back in 2011, which I enjoyed, but which didn’t do well enough to continue on right away.

But now we’re back, with Claire Foy as Lisbeth Salander, which would have been a lot easier to swallow if I hadn’t enjoyed her in first two seasons of The Crown.  Now, in the back of my head, it is going to be young Elizabeth Regina kicking ass and taking names… which honestly wouldn’t be a bad idea for an action adventure comic or film.  The secret crime fighting life of Queen Elizabeth.  We’d get a chance to see what is really in that purse… or under those hats!  Faster corgi! Kill! Kill!

Has nobody done this yet?

Instead we have the middle novel, made into a film sequel, when most people have forgotten the first one by now.  You can get away with that if you’re The Incredibles, not if you’re a goth Swedish avenger.  Reviews are down, recognition is low, and long range forecasts were calling it at $12 million.

Then we have Overlord, which I rightly assumed would be about the allied landings in Normandy in 1944.  What I did not expect was for it to me a zombie horror film about secret Nazi experiments directed by J. J. Abrams.  I kind of want to see that.  But I might not be in a big crowd with that, as the last forecast has it at $8 million.  It needed to be out in August, not in November.

Thugs of Hindostan is, to quote directly from Wikipedia, an “…Indian Hindi-language epic action-adventure film.”  It looks pretty cool.  A pity I don’t speak Hindi.  And that will be the problem in the US.  Though we have a sizable Hindi speaking population in some areas… like here in Silicon Valley… it isn’t enough to break any box office records.  No estimates yet, but pricing seems to indicate maybe $3 million.

And, finally, there is Can You Ever Forgive Me? starring Melissa McCarthy in a serious role in the story of Lee Israel, who forged letters from deceased actors and writers when her own literary career had ended.  An art house film that has been out for a few weeks, it is getting an expansion in theaters this week.  Pricing seems to put it at about $1.4 million.

So there we go.  With all of that I let the Cineplex Builder make my Monday Hot Takes picks, and it gave me 1x The Grinch, 1x Venom, 1x The Hate U Give, and 4x Goosebumps 2.  We shall see.

Panadar’s Massive Minecraft Monuments

I haven’t been much into our Minecraft server of late.  No great project has gotten me interested.  I have spent some time laying rails along the route to the mansion I found almost a year back, but supply and logistics started to wear me down.  Building the road, which takes an hour to ride on a good horse, was a long haul.  Laying mine cart track… and making the track and hauling it to the end of the line… turned into an effort I wasn’t up to finishing just yet.

Which isn’t to say the server has been empty.  Somebody went out and scouted out another mansion.  I am not sure who went out there… and that much further than the 20km I went… and back.  But that is our third mansion, the mystery mansion.

That is a long loop to the southeast

Also, I figured out how to get the map renderer working again.  It requires grabbing the binaries and replacing them in my current install, but that is pretty easy.  I am happy to have a current map again.  It lets me see what has been going on.

A couple of corp mates from EVE Online have been on the server some this year, Panadar (Hir) and Bob.

Panadar has been on for quite a while and established his own spot in the world, building a very nice castle not too far from one of my own monstrosities.

Panadar’s Castle

This does not include the amount of tunnel he had done under the castle.  His excavations joined up with the ones below my own outpost which, in turn, linked up with some of Aaron’s that happen to link up with some of mine further down the line, so that we have a pretty extensive underground highway.

When I was last working on the road he was going after an ocean monument, the laborious process of clearing it, sealing it up, and removing all the water, which leaves a nice aqua blue underground base. (Not as insane as Aaron’s guardian farm, but still more work than you want to think about.)  The south end of the incomplete rail line to the north mansion runs under water through that base now.

Running into Panadar along the rail line

As I sort of faded from the server for long stretches I got a ping from Panadar saying that I should go look at the world, that there might be some new things there.  Eventually I stumbled back onto the server and with a couple of hints… at that point I wasn’t able to render maps so could just scan the terrain to find things… I ran across the first of his monumental creations.  It was a giant dwarf with an axe.

The dwarf from a map render

This sat atop a large hill through which the great rail loop ran, close to his castle.

Seeing the dwarf at night from the rail line

It was visible from the top of a nearby mountain where I had built a tower as well.

The dwarf across the valley

This was late in the summer and, by all signs, the dwarf had been there for a while.

Literally, a sign

Panadar said I should look other places along the rail line and, sure enough, as I traveled northward and hit the north end of the mesa biome, from which we have all farmed so many colored blocks that you can see it on the map, I found another work facing one of the stations on the line. (What I called Desert Temple Station on the rail loop post.)

A dragon is watching

It was actually hard to get a decent screen shot of the dragon because it is so tall that it sticks up above the cloud layer, so clouds continually pass by and obscure parts of it.  Even in this shot there is a small cloud over the base of one giant wing and another was just about to hit a chunk of the other wing. (Clouds were moving left to right.)

As I discover this he was getting ready to start on his next project, a giant version of the Egyptian god Anibus just up the rail line from the dragon.

Anibus astride the rails

Anibus sits not too far down the tracks from the dragon so that, on the overviewer map, they appear to face each other.

Anibus and the Dragon, with the desert temple station in between

You cannot actually see one from another in the game.  One of the aspects of using the Minecraft Realms server is that, in order to keep the load down, they restrict how far you can see, which equates to the number of terrain chunks the game needs to load.  If that Mineserver project had ever come to fruition would have been able to control that setting.  On a Realms server you are stuck with what they let you have.  But it is still so cheap compared to other hosting solutions that it is worth the sacrifice.

I got to see Panadar build some of Anibus and learned that he wasn’t building these from scratch but working from plans he found on the web.  That does not diminish the level of his work.  On a survival server where you have to go get your own materials, haul them to the build site, build scaffolding or other ways to work high up in the sky, and deal with the day/night cycle with the zombies, skeletons, spiders, and creepers coming to get you, being able to create such works is a challenge even if you have your idea mapped out in advance.

And then there is falling off of high places while you’re working.  You die and you have to run back to grab your stuff, but if you just got back from a supply run and last slept in a bed far away, you may not respawn where you want to.

Anibus was actually built in short order.  If you visit it you can see ladders going up inside of it and can still climb up into it.

It was at that point that Panadar decided to go all out on his biggest project yet, a giant dragon astride one of my bridges.  Just south of the mesa biome, he began working away.  I logged on once in a while during this build… and heard from him on Discord now and again… and it was a huge and trying effort.  The resource count was huge.  The build site was awkward.  And falling to his death seemed to happen just about every time I logged on.  Still, the end result is magnificent and enormous.  It is big enough that I can’t get a decent in-game screen shot of it… again, clouds, along with the bridge in the way and the limited view distance.  It comes across okay on the overviewer map.

The giant dragon astride the bridge

The wings are filled in with gray glass… one of the resource constraints, making huge amounts of gray glass which requires ink sacs from squids which had him off and building a squid farm at one point… which do not cast a shadow, so you see only the spines of the wings in shadow form on the terrain.

And the whole thing dwarfs the scenery as you roll up in a mine cart from the south.

I think that project wore Panadar out on Minecraft for a while.  But it is another magnificent work in our little online world.

Scoring My BlizzCon Projections

The tenth BlizzCon has come and gone.  It always seems short at just two days.  Even wee EVE Vegas ran into Sunday.  But Blizzard knows how to pack a bunch of stuff into two days.

Granted, most of what was packed into those two days wasn’t of interest to me.  If you got the Virtual Ticket as I did you found out pretty quickly that four of the six available streams were devoted exclusively to “esports.”

A schedule snippet – smaller dives into products not streamed

I was also mildly amused at the confusion over this being the tenth BlizzCon, as announcers kept saying “ten years of BlizzCon,” which is incorrect.  The first BlizzCon was in 2005, but they skipped 2006 and 2012.  So ten BlizzCons, not ten years.

However I was not amused at all to find out that the “Weird Al” concert at the closing ceremony was only viewable live with the Virtual Ticket.  We were out when th concert kicked off, but I figured I could watch it the replay the next day.  Blizzard makes a point of saying that we get to view replays for 14 days.

The concert appears to be an exception though, as it is not available in the video archive.  Since that was one of the key reasons I bought the damn virtual ticket, I am pretty unhappy with that.  I am sure it says something about the concert in the fine print somewhere, but if it had been more obvious I would only have the one chance to see it, I would have made an effort to be home for it.

Anyway, enough carping about that I guess.  Did Blizzard cover what I thought they would?

World of Warcraft

There was a time when BlizzCon could have been called “WoWCon.”  A decade back World of Warcraft was pretty much their only going concern, the company having been practically swallowed by the overwhelming success of the game.  The next release after WoW was StarCraft II, six years later.

For long time observers of BlizzCon, the event has gone from WoW being the only story to now having to share the stage with five siblings.  And since WoW is clearly past its peak, it is in Blizzard’s interest to promote other titles.  The Azeroth gravy train isn’t dead yet, but some alternative revenue streams are clearly part of the plan.

So WoW, which just got an expansion (along with a movie) recently, did not get much attention at the keynote.  I saw some bitter comments on Twitter about Blizz passing over WoW, but it is to be expected.  You had to get into the “Legion – What’s Next” panel to get any details about the game.  Here is what I thought Blizz was going to talk about when it came to WoW:

expect to see:

• How great the Legion expansion is doing
• Some hint about the next content drop
• WoW in other media (film, TV, graphic novels, etc.)

want to see:

• Details about the plan for 7.2, 7.3, and, one would hope, 7.4
• When we will get flying in the Broken Isles
• Something about retro/nostalgia/legacy servers – Yes, I know, the have already explicitly said they will NOT talk about this, but a man can dream right?
• Nothing whatsoever about Mark Kern, who is still trying to inject himself into the legacy server thing so he can disrupt BlizzCon with it
• Tom Chilton saying something he shouldn’t about WoW just one more time

We got a bit of the “woo hoo! Legion!” at the keynote (fastest selling blah blah), along with a mention that Blizz would continue delivering content for the expansion, and a plug for the film (now available on DVD and Blu-Ray).

At the Legion panel they went much deeper and covered what will come before 7.2, 7.2 itself, and and eye to what 7.3 will bring.

Coming soon-ish

So what I would consider the minimum was pretty well covered.  I do wish that Blizz was still announcing subscriber numbers, if only to see if a constant stream of content really does make a difference.  After all, Warlords of Draenor may have left people high and dry for a year, but the big dive in subscriber numbers started well before we hit the 6.2 patch that opened up new content and, eventually, flying.

Speaking of flying, 7.2 patch is also supposed to bring us to the point where we will be able to unlock flying in the expansion.  That will give us all something to work on when it hits.  I doubt I will move a single alt in the Broken Isles until I unlock that with my main.  So that point was covered.

I saw nothing about any special, nostalgia, or retro servers, so pretty much as expected.  This did not sit well with the Nostalrius crew, which vowed to return.  I don’t think they understand how slowly (and conservatively) the wheels grind at Blizzard.

And I didn’t hear any Tom Chilton quotes, regrettable or not, so I guess Blizz kept him busy elsewhere.

All in all, not a ton of news about WoW, but about the minimum amount of news that Blizz needed to provide to keep fans going.

Diablo

Here is where I had high expectations.  With the 20th anniversary of the franchise just weeks away, I expected the announcement of Diablo IV or, at a minimum, a new expansion for Diablo III.  Diablo III is well past the four year mark, and the Reaper of Souls expansion is 2.5 years old now.  As a franchise that makes money by selling boxes, it sounds like it needs a new box on the market.  Anyway, this was what I put down:

expect to see:

• Positive but vague words about how popular the game remains
• The Diablo 20th anniversary plan
• MEUs and China
• Something new coming for Diablo III seasons

want to see:

• Diablo IV announced… Reaper of Souls setup the next game
• A new expansion for Diablo III announced… if not a new game, at least this
• Something about that remastered version of Diablo II they were talking about a year ago
• The original Diablo either remastered or on iOS and Android… I would throw money at the screen for a good remaster of the original

We didn’t get anything about MEUs or China, but the Diablo 20th anniversary was covered and we are getting something new.

Just not a new game or an expansion.  Well, “sort of” on the expansion front, but I’ll get to that.  And there will be new zone content coming to appease the people doing season runs.

Instead, to feed the nostalgia hungry, they are remaking the original Diablo in Diablo III.

I think this is something I actually put forth as an option in a previous post.  Yes, here it is… “Diablo and/or Diablo II being ported to the Diablo III engine.”

So that sounds pretty interesting, especially since they are attempting to simulate the more primitive graphical style, movements, and sounds of the original.  I am very interested to see how this ends up playing.

The downside is that they are going to make this a special event called “The Darkening of Tristram.”  This event will only be available every January in order to mark the launch of the series.  So I hope you are in the mood for nostalgia then, because you won’t get to play it for the rest of the year.

The other big announcement was the addition of a Diablo II class to Diablo III, the necromancer.  Blizzard has a post here about it.  Interesting, and a clear nostalgia play, but the necromancer was never a big deal for me.  This will be part of a Rise of the Necromancer “pack” which will be available at some future date with some unspecified amount of content (or not) for some unspecified price.

So you can say they announced an expansion… they just didn’t tell us enough about it to get a feel for what it will really be.  If it is just a “buy a new class” thing that they have announced so far, then it doesn’t really count as much of an expansion in my opinion.  If it ends up including more levels (which will be awkward after paragon levels and all that) or a new story line, then we are there.

Finally, we did not hear anything about the Diablo II remaster that they were advertising for last year though.

StarCraft

My interest starts to wane about here.  I like StarCraft for nostalgia reasons, I played a lot of the original back in the day.  But I don’t even own StarCraft II, much less any of the expansions, so my opinions here are dubious at best.  All I know is what I heard at the keynote.  What I said:

expect:

• General “Woo, StarCraft!” stuff
• Reassurance about the third part of Nova Covert Ops shipping
• A DLC pack for 2017
• Tournament play

want:

• Remastered original StarCraft because, honestly, I would much rather play the old version if it wasn’t locked into 640×480 resolution (because this)

There was a firm date announced for Nova Covert Ops part III.  Previously listed as “before December 1” it will be available on November 22.  There was also something about StarCraft II being used in conjunction with AI research, a new story line, new maps, and “War Chests” coming to the game.

There was also plenty of tournament play.  There was, however, no mention of the original StarCraft being remastered.

Other Titles

And then we get to the three Blizzard titles where I have no investment.

expect:

• Everything is Awesome playing on continuous loop, at least metaphorically
• New hero and/or map for Overwatch
• Positive Overwatch play time stats
• A new card pack for Hearthstone that will make all previous packs obsolete
• Some over the top stats for how many games of Hearthstone have been played
• Some new play mode for Heroes of the Storm to try and make it at least visible in the market after League of Legends and DOTA2
• Tournament plans or some such that make it sound like a lot of people play Heroes of the Storm
• A mobile game from Candy Crush Saga division using Blizzard IP; Manic Murloc Melodrama or some such

want:

• Overwatch on MacOS so my daughter will stop complaining about Blizzard betraying her
• Any mention of the original Warcraft RTS games being remastered
• Report on how that Cho’gall plan from last year turned out for Heroes of the Storm
• A “Weird Al” song about any Blizzard product

No Manic Murloc Melodrama mobile app.  No Overwatch on MacOS either.

On the other hand, SynCaine’s suggestion that Blizz might not mention Heroes of the Storm was totally unfounded.  They are still fully behind the game and, as you can see by the schedule snippet I have at the top, it had a whole channel dedicate to league play.  They even mentioned the Cho’gall unit from last year, though they did not say if it ended up being all that popular or not.

In fact, most of the keynote seemed to be devoted to these three titles and all of the new stuff they are getting, with Overwatch even getting a new league devoted to it, and how much Blizzard has been paying out in prize money over the last year.  None of that interested me as I am not an “esportsball” fan.

And, of course, I may never know if “Weird Al” had a song about a Blizzard product.

So that was that.  It was interesting to see the keynote and a couple of the panels, but without the concert I feel like I wasted $40 as I could have gleaned all that information and more by just reading the gaming news.

Remind me of that in a year when BlizzCon returns.