Gaming Round-Up: Heroes, D3, TSW, and Skyforge

Posted on March 29, 2015 by Tyler F.M. Edwards

I had a bunch of gaming topics I wanted to discuss that wouldn’t quite fill up a post on their own, so I decided I’d just jam them all together.

Let’s get to it!

Heroes of the Storm: The two queens

This week saw a big patch for Heroes of the Storm, bringing with it the long-awaited release of Sylvanas Windrunner.

Since the patch also included increased leveling rewards — awarded retroactively to those of us already max level — I had an abundance of gold, and I bought Sylvanas at her starting price of 15K gold, also treating myself to her ranger-general skin.

Initially, I found myself somewhat disappointed with Sylvanas’ incarnation in Heroes. She felt very weak, and I struggled badly.

The problem is that she is incredibly squishy, and while her mobility seems good on paper, it’s often impractical. Her teleport relies on a projectile with a travel time that is hardly any faster than normal hero movement speed, and while Withering Fire can be shot on the move, it needs talents to really be a practical choice for harassment or chasing enemies.

However, I refused to give up, and after getting some practice in and experimenting with different talent builds, I managed to achieve a decent level of success. She’s still significantly weaker than other specialists in a lot of ways — she can’t solo grave golems, for instance — but she does have her advantages. If left uncontested, her push power is incredible, and she’s excellent at countering enemy mercenaries and minion waves

Also, her team fight potential is pretty good by specialist standards, though not really much better than Nazeebo’s and Zagara’s, and she is a bit like Illidan in that she excels at finishing off wounded enemies.

Actually, she reminds me of Illidan a lot of ways. They both require extremely high APM compared to other characters, they’re both obscenely squishy but highly mobile, and they’re both heroes who can be either devastatingly powerful or borderline useless depending on the situation and the person controlling them.

I still think she could maybe use a buff to her survivability, either in the form of more health, more reliable self-healing, or a more practical escape tool. Seriously, Banshee Wave is the least practical teleport ever. You can pull off some incredible stunts with it… but you probably won’t. It’s not a good sign when a hero with a built-in teleport still needs to take Bolt of the Storm at level twenty.

The other big ticket item for this patch is the new map, Tomb of the Spider Queen. It’s not quite as bad as I worried it would be, and it’s definitely not as tedious as Dragonshire, but it is a fairly uninspiring map.

The game isn’t even out of beta yet, so I doubt Blizzard has already run out of ideas for interesting map mechanics, but that’s the impression one gets from Tomb of the Spider Queen. The map objective basically boils down to, “push lanes so that you can periodically push lanes a little harder”. It feels far more like a traditional MOBA than other Heroes maps, and it’s definitely not as exciting as rushing for a tribute on Cursed Hollow or battling over temples on Sky Temple.

There’s also less team fighting, and mercenaries play a much smaller role since any time you’re not in lane is time you’re not gathering crystals from the enemy creeps.

The map could really use some alternative sources for crystals, like merc camps or occasional crystal dumps similar to the treasure chests on Blackheart’s Bay.

I was also a bit disappointed this patch didn’t include the previewed option to permanently mute team chat — not sure if that’s still coming or not. The unending nastiness of people in this game is really starting to drive me up the wall.

Diablo III: Greed is good

I haven’t been playing Diablo III on any kind of a regular basis for quite some time, but I still pop into it once in a while. It’s a great game to just jump into whenever you have some spare time, and it’s good for stress relief.

WHAT RICHES

So I found myself running through the lands of Sanctuary again, and I came across some interesting new additions since the last time I’d played.

Since D3 launched, there have been hints of a mythical realm filled with riches hoarded by the treasure goblins, and of the demon who rules over it: Greed.

Ever since, players have longed to explore this place, and now that’s finally possible. Treasure goblins will now rarely leave behind a portal to Greed’s Vault on death, and I was lucky enough to find one.

It is everything I dreamed of. In twenty minutes, I acquired thirty-one million gold, several hundred blood shards, three legendary items, and a rough estimate of an assload of high level gems.

Granted, this was while the community buff with double gold find was active, but still. Talk about a goody room.

This also feels like a good time to mention that my wizard has a legendary item which grants her experience equal to any gold she picks up.

It culminates with a boss fight against Greed herself, who has the absolute best death animation of any boss ever. I must have spent a good ten minutes just opening and closing the chest on her head purely for the juicy sound effect.

Shortly thereafter, I encountered another new addition: a rainbow treasure goblin whose death opened a portal to a version of the infamous pony level. Although I’ve never visited the original Whimsyshire, I have encountered Nephalem Rift levels based on it before, so the joy of butchering rainbow ponies was not entirely new to me, but I still couldn’t resist pausing my bounty farming to explore the full map. Was a nice break from the usual grind.

I’m really impressed that Blizzard continues adding meaningful new content to D3 post launch. Sure, these aren’t huge additions, but this is a game that has absolutely no monetization beyond box sales. Blizzard doesn’t get much, if anything, from adding these new Easter eggs. It’s just a gift to the players.

Whatever issues D3 may have had at launch, it has earned a lot of respect from me.

TSW shoves its bag in our face:

This week has also seen a return of the golden golem event in The Secret World. Between a certain degree of burnout and still being a little unhappy with recent events, I haven’t participated all that much, but I did log in long off to buy the latest loot party bag.

Yes, yet another.

It’s starting to feel like Funcom has gone a little mad with power with these things. They started as a special holiday thing, but now they’re taking any excuse to churn them out.

A lot of people are getting fed-up, and there’s a big backlash from certain members of the community. For my part, I am a bit fatigued on the bags myself, but mostly just because they don’t feel exciting or special anymore.

I’m certainly not as bothered as some others. As far as ways to monetize the game goes, this one is relatively harmless. All the rewards are cosmetic, most can be traded, and it can create fun social events. I’m in the habit of running to Kingsmouth and dumping the loot on newbies — seems like they’d enjoy it the most, and I figure if I can give them a positive experience early on, it might encourage them to keep going with the game.

And I do really love the /dance_rockabilly emote from this most recent one.

“Gatecrasher, know that you stand before one charged by Amaterasu and blessed by Gaia!”

…It’s funny how Firefox’s spell check is lacking all kinds of everyday words, but it has “Amaterasu.”

Anyway, on the whole, I don’t think the loot bags are a problem for TSW, but I can sympathize with feeling a bit fatigued by them.

Skyforge’s class reveal:

I’m still not sure what to make of Skyforge, but a recent reveal of their full list of launch classes nudged me back towards the “excitement” category.

Firstly, there are a lot of them. Thirteen to be precise, which is a pretty huge number, especially for a new MMO. World of Warcraft only has eleven, and it’s ten years old.

There’s also a very interesting mix of standard archetypes — paladin, cryomancer, archer — along with more unusual concepts. There’s an alchemist class, which is a very rare archetype that intrigues me. They’re also launching with a monk class, which is an archetype I feel deserves much more attention than it gets.

But by far the most interesting one to me is the kinetic, which uses special gloves to manipulate gravity, hurl boulders, and generally wreak havoc.

That sounds awesome.

I’m still wary of getting excited about Skyforge, though. Word of mouth from the beta is decidedly mixed, and supposedly the developer’s parent companies has ties to the Kremlin, which is rather unnerving given recent world events. I’m not sure I want to support something like that… though I’m sure it wouldn’t be the first product with a shady pedigree I’ve supported. Nobody’s hands are totally clean in this day and age.

Sigh… I’m so conflicted.

BlizzCon 2014: Overwatch’s Diversity, StarCraft’s New Units, and More

Posted on November 9, 2014 by Tyler F.M. Edwards

BlizzCon 2014 is now behind us, but it provided us with a monstrous amount of info and some big surprises, and if you’re anything like me, you’re still still digesting it all.

There’s a lot to discuss, so let’s get to it, shall we?

Overwatch: An intriguing conundrum

I’m still struggling to decide what I think about Overwatch.

Somewhat to my surprise, there’s a lot I find compelling about it. From what I’ve seen, they’ve built a pretty rich history and mythology around the setting — as with all their games — and of course that intrigues me. Despite the “Saturday morning cartoon” vibe, there is also something intangible about the Overwatch setting that I find appealing.

I think a lot of it may boil down to the fact that — like many Blizzard games, but even more so in this case — the developers were clearly very passionate about Overwatch, and they poured all that love and enthusiasm into the game. They told a story about the pitch meeting for Overwatch, where Chris Metzen (jokingly?) threatened to quit the company if they didn’t greenlight it.

I’m also intrigued by the obvious push towards diversity in Overwatch’s cast. It’s still not perfect — I mentioned Widowmaker in my last post as a stereotypical femme fatale, and while the character’s official name may be Mercy, I can’t think of her as anything but “generic healer girl” — but on the whole, Overwatch is tickling my IDIC feels something fierce, and there’s a lot to commend.

We’ve got one character who’s a Middle Eastern woman with a lawful good personality and practical, badass armour. We’ve got an Indian scientist. The poster character for the game is a sensibly dressed tomboyish lady.

This is certainly not something I ever expected from Blizzard, but it’s a most pleasant surprise.

Even putting aside the obvious ethnic diversity and strong push for representation of female characters, it’s very multicultural. It has occurred to me that none of the currently announced characters are American. Tracer is British, Mercy is Swiss, Reinhardt is German…

As someone thoroughly sick of sci-fi treating the future as the sole domain of the United States, I find this incredibly refreshing.

But every time I get myself jazzed up about all that, I then remind myself this is a purely competitive first person shooter, and then I feel sad.

I’m not pathologically opposed to shooters or PvP — I have dabbled in both and enjoyed them — but they’re both way down the list of my gaming interests, and a game that focuses exclusively on them isn’t terribly inspiring.

If Overwatch had a single player campaign, I’d be on it like stink on a monkey. As it stands, I’m feeling pretty conflicted about the game.

There may be some hope on that front, though. They did mention there has been talk of some sort of story mode, though it’s still just an idea. Metzen is apparently very keen on the concept, but has not yet succeeded in convincing the rest of the team.

Let’s hope.

If nothing else, I look forward to playing the Overwatch characters in Heroes of the Storm. I can imagine Tracer and Hanzo being a blast to play.

Legacy of the Void: New units and game modes

The other big news comes courtesy of StarCraft II, as Blizzard offered previews of the new units and game modes for Legacy of the Void.

Terran gain the herc, an awkwardly named melee infantry with a grappling hook and high health, and the cyclone, a highly mobile tank with strong single target damage.

Zerg gain the lurker, which is the lurker, and the ravager, which are basically those artillery bugs from Starship Troopers.

Protoss gain only one new unit, though another may be added later: the disruptor, a mobile bomb that enters an energy form to gain brief invulnerability before exploding for massive area of effect damage. It’s not a suicide unit; it can be detonated many times.

I’d say all these new units fit into the category of interesting, but not terribly exciting. They’re all solid concepts, but there’s not a lot of wow factor to them.

Several units have also received redesigns, some of them so radical as to make them virtually new units. Swarm hosts, for instance, have gone from being siege units to harassment units. Battlecruisers and carriers have finally gotten some buffs, as well, so hopefully we’ll start to see them used more seriously.

On the downside, immortals have lost their iconic hardened shield in favour of an activated defense buff. I can see the logic in this, but there was something so wonderfully Protossy about just shrugging off siege tanks blasts like they’re nothing. I’m really going to miss that.

They also announced three new game modes.

Automated tournaments are pretty self-explanatory. This isn’t a feature I see myself using a lot, but it’s been on many fans’ wishlists for years, and I think it will be very popular.

Archon mode is bizarre. This allows two players to control a single base/army in a 1v1 setting. I guess the idea is to make the game more approachable by splitting the responsibility between two people, but it still seems like it’ll lead to a lot of “too many cooks in the kitchen” issues.

Allied Commanders sounds the most interesting. I’ve had trouble finding details on it, but it’s apparently some sort of never-ending online campaign played cooperatively with fellow players. You have a character that will continually progress between matches (like home cities in Age of Empires III), and from what I understand, each match is an objective-based scenario versus AI like the campaign.

It’s hard to imagine what Allied Commanders will be like based on what little information is at hand, but I’m very intrigued. If they can balance the difficulty well and provide more variety than the standard skirmishes versus AI, I could see playing this a lot.

Finally, they also announced some pretty big changes to the core economy of StarCraft II: More workers to start, fewer workers per base, fewer resources per base. Seems they want to speed up the early game, an idea I whole-heartedly support.

Overall, Legacy of the Void looks to be making SC2 much faster and more micro-intensive. Though this may steepen it’s already harsh learning curve, I think these are positive changes on the whole.

Heroes of the Storm: New characters and maps

Rather than any big reveals, Heroes had a lot of little pieces of news at BlizzCon, mostly centered on new hero and battleground previews.

Most of the attention was given to three long-awaited new heroes: Thrall, Jaina, Proudmoore, and the Lost Vikings.

To my surprise, Thrall is a melee damage-dealer. I was expecting him to be a caster, and maybe a support. But he does have some of his iconic abilities, like chain lightning and earthquake.

Jaina is pretty much your standard frost mage. She focuses on crowd control and very high burst damage. Lot of people are going to hate playing against her.

The stars of one of Blizzard’s pre-Warcraft games from more than twenty years ago, the Lost Vikings seem ready to replace Abathur as the game’s most mechanically unique and challenging hero. Each is a completely separate unit that can be controlled, or killed, individually. I foresee that they will either be completely useless or brokenly overpowered depending on who’s playing them.

They also had some teases for other upcoming heroes. Sylvanas got quite a bit of attention. From the sounds of it, she may actually be a specialist rather than an assassin, which I find very surprising but also intriguing. Her current design has her able to stunlock anything that isn’t a player. Definitely looking forward to learning more about her.

Most surprising of all, her in-game model appears to be fully clothed.

Miracle of miracles.

Several more in-the-works heroes were mentioned and/or appeared in the background of the trailer shown at the convention: Rexxar, the Butcher, the Skeleton King, the Warcraft III blademaster, Zul’jin, and the Diablo III crusader. It looks like they’re using the female version of the crusader, which I find mildly disappointing purely because I have a man crush on Gideon Emery.

The two new maps are on an Egyptian theme. Details on their mechanics are still a little sketchy, but Sky Temple is supposed to have some kind of PvPvE capture points to unleash fiery blasts on the enemy base. Sounds a bit like Cursed Hollow and Blackheart’s Bay had a baby. I like.

They also showed off concept art for a new map based on the Diablo universe, where one half is styled after the High Heavens and the other after the Burning Hells. Looks very cool.

The rest: Trailer rage and the barbarian capitol

There wasn’t a lot of news for Warcraft or Diablo fans at this BlizzCon, perhaps not surprisingly.

The most interesting thing for Diablo was that they will be adding a new zone in an upcoming patch: Ruins of Sescheron. This will be in act III, and is the remains of the barbarian capitol.

The impression I get is that this will only be in adventure mode, though I’m not sure of that. I don’t see them adding new story to the campaign for it. It’s a neat-looking zone, though: snowy ruins. I like it.

The only Warcraft news of note surrounded the movie. To the great anguish of myself and countless others, there was a trailer at BlizzCon, but it will not be released to the public.

Son of a…

In the end, the most interesting tidbit to reach the public was our first glimpse of the film’s Orcs, which are created using motion capture like Gollum in Lord of the Rings. Looks very good — exactly like in WoW’s cinematics.

* * *

All in all, this was a very interesting BlizzCon with a lot of surprises. I still would have liked some news on the idea of revamped Warcraft strategy games, as well as a trailer for the movie, but otherwise, I can’t complain.

What say you? What do you make of the revelations from BlizzCon 2014?

Superior Realities

Tag Archives: Diablo

Gaming Round-Up: Heroes, D3, TSW, and Skyforge

BlizzCon 2014: Overwatch’s Diversity, StarCraft’s New Units, and More

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