BlizzCon 2014 Wishlist/Predictions + New Article

Posted on October 5, 2014 by Tyler F.M. Edwards

We’re now a little over a month away from this year’s BlizzCon, so now feels like a good time to go over my predictions for the convention’s reveals, as well as what I’m hoping to see.

Warcraft:

I can’t imagine there will be much to discuss in regards to World of Warcraft at BlizzCon this year, since Warlords of Draenor won’t even be out yet. A surprisingly large number of people are speculating they’ll announce the expansion after WoD, but I think that’s crazy talk.

Time to face facts, people: Blizzard isn’t going to deliver on their promise of faster expansions. They’ve been saying it for half a decade, and we’ve still gotten a year-long content gap every time.

Even putting aside how absurd it is to think they’d have anything to show from 7.0, they wouldn’t want to spoil the hype around WoD, such as it is.

I could see them making some reveals for the first content patch of WoD, but that’s about it.

I don’t think we’ll be lacking news for the rest of the Warcraft franchise, though.

I fully expect to be hearing a lot about the Warcraft movie at BlizzCon. There was a teaser trailer shown at Comic Con this year, so I would be surprised and more than a little disappointed if they didn’t release the first publicly available trailer at BlizzCon.

Something else that we might see is news of remastered versions of the old Warcraft strategy games. It’s already been announced that Blizzard is working on updating them for newer systems, and this year is the twentieth anniversary of the Warcraft franchise, so now seems a good time to release them.

Unfortunately, I suspect all they’ll do is update the code so the games run well on modern operating systems. Heck, Warcraft I was a DOS game.

But what I’d really like to see is full graphical remakes. They can keep the game mechanics the same — maybe better pathing and some quality of life tweaks, but nothing more — but redo them in the StarCraft II engine. That would be nothing short of amazing.

There have been rumours swirling of an HD remake of Warcraft III, but I dare not get my hopes up. Plus, as much as WC3 is my favourite installment of the franchise, and as much as I would love to see it with revamped graphics, I think the earlier games would benefit from that treatment a lot more. WC3 still runs okay on modern systems, and the graphics have aged reasonably well due to their cartoony style. Even in if the earlier games could run on modern systems, they’d look and play rather poorly.

But I don’t see Blizzard wanting to put forth the effort necessary to fully update those games, sadly.

There’s been a lot of talk of another expansion for Hearthstone lately, so I expect an announcement of it at BlizzCon.

StarCraft:

It’s been a while since Heart of the Swarm launched now, even in Blizzard time, so I think it very likely that we’ll be getting a major dump of information on the final expansion, Legacy of the Void.

Protoss have always been my favourite race, so it’s hard to imagine myself not loving LotV. I’m a little nervous since the story for HotS was pretty underwhelming, but it would take some serious effort to make an entire game full of Protoss not be awesome.

I greatly hope they will make Zeratul a Warcraft III style hero as they did for Kerrigan in HotS. It adds such an interesting extra dimension to the gameplay, and Zeratul is such a legendary figure that he deserves to be more than some guy who only shows up every few levels and just hides in your base.

I’m curious what other unique mechanics the campaign will bring. Given the identity of the Protoss, I think it might be interesting if, instead of applying blanket upgrades to unit types, individual units could become veterans based on their kill counts, gaining better stats and new abilities over time. Your strongest veterans would follow you throughout the campaign, becoming ever more powerful.

I’ve heard it said they don’t plan to add any new units to the multiplayer, but I expect them to renege on that. It feels pretty underwhelming if they don’t add anything to half the game, and why would multiplayer fans need to buy the expansion if there are no new units? Doesn’t make good business sense.

As futile as it seems at this point, I’m still hoping they find a way to make carriers actually useful for something.

Diablo:

I fully expect there to be at least one more expansion for Diablo III. It’s been rumoured since before the base game was even released, and the ending to Reaper of Souls had multiple cliffhangers.

It does seem a bit soon after RoS for another expansion to be announced, but one can still hope. Much to my surprise, I’ve come to greatly appreciate Diablo III, and RoS was nothing short of spectacular, so I’m very excited to get my hands on another expansion.

As for what the actual content of the expansion will be, it’s hard to say at this point. Undoubtedly, we’ll be hunting Diablo himself once again, but beyond that, it’s all guesswork.

My hope is that the destruction of the Black Soulstone means Leah’s spirit has also been freed, and that we may see her be redeemed. She did not deserve her dark fate, and I’d like to see her get her happily ever after, or something close to it, at least.

I also hope to see more conflict with the angels. One of the most interesting aspects of Reaper of Souls was realizing that the High Heavens were as much a threat to humanity as the Burning Hells. And Imperius really needs to be taken down a peg.

We’ve also got to help Shen track down Dirgest, and we have to solve the murder of Lyndon’s brother.

The setting is a big question mark. For some reason, I get the feeling we might end up in jungles of Kurast, but I have no real basis for that. The Dreadlands also seem a likely prospect, being a hotbed of demonic corruption.

Personally, I’d like to go to Xiansai. A far northern land with Asian inspirations? Hell yeah. Plus, it’s the homeland of two of my favourite characters: Covetous Shen and Li-Ming.

I also expect another new class in the inevitable second expansion, whenever it comes around. Necromancer is probably the most commonly requested one, but I think it might be too close to the witch doctor.

Mind you, I said the same thing about monks and paladins, and then we got the crusader. And it is worth noting that a lot of people — myself included — enjoyed the necromancer in Diablo II and do not feel the witch doctor is at all a valid substitute.

But I think my money is going to be on druid. It’s the only class from Diablo II whose archetype does not seem to be at all represented by any of the D3 classes. I’m not sure exactly how a druid would play out in D3, partly because I’m not sure how they worked in Lord of Destruction, but I think it could be interesting, particularly if shape-shifting is involved.

Heroes of the Storm:

With the final stage of technical alpha before us and the last account wipe behind us, I expect we’ll see an announcement of an imminent beta for Heroes of the Storm at BlizzCon.

I think it will either be an open beta, or a closed beta with the option to buy access through founder’s packs. Either way, I expect this will be another case where “beta” means “soft launch.” The alpha is already surprisingly polished, and the game feels almost ready for primetime to me.

I’m predicting an official release in early 2015.

I hope to see a bunch of new hero announcements at BlizzCon, as well. Hopefully some of the more iconic heroes. It feels very strange to me that they’re already putting out ultra obscure heroes like Rehgar Earthfury and completely new creations like Brightwing when major icons like Thrall, Jaina Proudmoore, Sylvanas Windrunner, Fenix, Mephisto, and Baal are still nowhere to be found.

Would be nice to see a new map or two, as well. I really want to see a StarCraft-inspired space platform map. So far, every map has been fantasy-based. Let’s get some sci-fi in there for flavour.

Other:

Sadly, it was recently announced that the upcoming MMO known only as “Project Titan” has been cancelled. Not that it was likely to be discussed at this year’s BlizzCon anyway, but it’s still a bit disappointing.

That said, there’s still the chance Blizzard might surprise us. There have been rumours of another unannounced game aside from Titan, possibly a shooter similar to the Left 4 Dead series. The term “Overwatch” was supposedly trademarked by Blizzard aways back, so that might be related.

I wouldn’t mind seeing a shooter set in the StarCraft universe, especially if I can play as a ghost. On the other hand, it might be nice to see Blizzard take a chance with a new IP. They haven’t done that since literally last century.

* * *

What about you? What are you expecting to see at this year’s BlizzCon? What are you hoping to see? Share your thoughts.

New article:

In my latest published article, I delve into the darkest mysteries of the World of Warcraft and seek to uncover the truth behind the enigma of the Old Gods.

MMOs Have Group Content All Wrong

Posted on September 29, 2014 by Tyler F.M. Edwards

One of those unwritten rules of MMO design seems to be that group content should always be the most challenging content, and that the most challenging content should always be group content. There’s even a progression where the larger the group, the harder the content becomes, with raids inevitably being the toughest challenge there is. To that, I have just one question:

Why?

That’s not a question I can recall ever seeing asked, let alone answered. It only occurred to me recently, and thinking about it, I’m not sure I can find any compelling reason why group content and the hardest content must be one and the same. But I can think of a lot of reasons why they shouldn’t be.

The wrong priorities:

Since I seem to be interrogating my readers today, let me ask you another question: What is the purpose of group content in an MMO?

I’d wager most people would answer something along the lines of supporting the multiplayer aspect of the game. Group content encourages people to work together, and supports socialization. That’s a good thing in a social genre like MMOs.

I don’t think many people would answer that question with, “To provide the hardest challenges.”

But yet, that seems to be the overriding priority for MMO developers. Not to provide opportunities for socializing, but to make players sweat as they struggle with content of the highest difficulty.

Not only does making group content and hard content synonymous not aid socialization, it actively harms it.

For one thing, difficult content immediately excludes players who lack the skills to complete it. You might say that they don’t deserve to complete it if their skills aren’t up to snuff, and arguably, you’re right, but that’s exactly my point: It divides players based on skill level, when the whole point of group content is to bring people together.

One of the reasons I tend to prefer soloing in MMOs is because I don’t enjoy putting social stress on top of content-induced stress. I’m perfectly okay with a challenge — I think the time I’ve spent in StarCraft II and The Secret World proves that — but when you also add that to the stress of potentially letting your friends down, or being let down by your friends, it’s just too much.

When people in a group are of differing skill levels — which is pretty much always going to the case to some extent — it invariable starts to feel awkward. Perhaps a friend is under-performing, causing wipes. You’re forced to choose between hurting their feelings or hobbling your own progression. If someone is far more skilled than their friends, they will inevitably become frustrated and may have to abandon their in-game social circle entirely. Or maybe you’re the weak link. Even if your friends are understanding, you still may feel ashamed for holding them back.

None of these situations are fun.

It’s also worth noting that playing as a group is innately more challenging than doing solo content, all other things being equal. Even putting aside issues of logistics and getting everyone to actually show up — which I do not consider to be true difficulty — it is a fact that the more moving parts there are, the more that can go wrong. The more people there are in your group, the more it becomes inevitable that at least one person will screw up. So why does group content need to be innately more challenging even on top of that?

Group content isn’t even a good measuring stick for skill because of the potential for being carried. There are people in WoW right now who are buying full gold challenge mode runs for massive amounts of gold. They’re earning rewards meant for the most skilled without displaying any skill at all.

The only rationale I can think of for why difficulty and group size should be equated is that developers wanted to encourage people to group by putting all the best rewards behind it, but felt that they then had to crank up the difficulty, because it doesn’t feel right to give the best rewards for easy content. But if that’s the case, it’s a pretty tortured logic.

Group content is for socializing:

Currently, most if not all MMOs put their effort into finding new and creative ways to make group content challenging. What they should instead be doing is finding new and creative ways to make group content a welcoming environment for groups of all sizes and skill levels.

Even Guild Wars 2, a game with incredibly laid-back and inclusive design philosophies, decided its only organized group content, dungeons, should be intensely difficult and require rigid party sizes.

I would much prefer it if group content was designed with the idea of being relatively low stress. I would rather see the greatest challenges come in the form of solo content, so each player is judged solely on their own merits, while group content is made for relaxing with friends.

Developers should instead put their effort into scaling technology that can accommodate any and all group sizes and other such tools to ensure everyone has a place. Group content should be a social feature first and foremost, not something that exists purely to test one’s skills and determine who the most uber-leet gamers are.

That’s not to say that group content can’t or shouldn’t ever be challenging. Indeed, I think a variety of difficulties to suit all skill levels — including the best of the best — is one of the things that would promote socialization.

But it shouldn’t be the overriding goal for group content, to the exclusion of all else.

The Secret World does a better job on this front than most games, though it’s still far from where it should be. The primary source of group content, nightmare dungeons, are brutally hard, and the lack of any decent tools for finding groups rather hobbles the game’s socialization potential.

But it has plenty of challenging solo content, so it’s not a stark divide between easy soloing and hard group content, and scenarios are a step in the right direction. They feature numerous difficulty settings and group sizes to suit the needs of most anyone, and interestingly, group sizes are not actually enforced on most difficulty settings. This means you can do a group scenario with less than five players, or do a solo scenario with all your friends.

In scenarios, it also tends to be true that doing them solo is more difficult than doing them as a group. This has been decried by many for being a departure from the norm, but if you ask me, it’s a welcome concession to what should be common sense.

I’m told that City of Heroes had a very flexible stance on grouping that put socialization first, but since I never played that game, I cannot comment on it further.

World of Warcraft has had an odd and inconsistent history on the matter. These days, it does offer a lot of easy group content that is good for socializing without stress, but it still tends to obey the logic that the larger the group, the harder things should be, and Blizzard has been systematically stripping any significant rewards from most everything but organized raiding so us casual scrubs never forget that we’re not real players.

For whatever reason, MMO developers have decided that if you want a challenge, you must group, and if you want to group, you must be ready for a challenge. I am left baffled as to why this is, as it seems to only hurt the social connections that should be the focus of group content, but it’s not a policy we’re likely to see changing any time soon.

I’m afraid I shall be left with my confusion and disappointment over the matter for a long time to come.

Superior Realities

Category Archives: Games

BlizzCon 2014 Wishlist/Predictions + New Article

MMOs Have Group Content All Wrong