Warlords of Draenor:

I’ll just say it: I was wrong. The Dark Below was a hoax after all. Yes, wishful thinking clouded my vision. Go ahead and mock me.

So Warlords of Draenor.

I’m trying to be excited. I mean, appealing to my nostalgia for the early Warcraft games is nice, and I must admit part of me is really excited to relive the fall of Draenor.

But a big question occurs to me: Why?

What is the purpose of this expansion? Why couldn’t this have just been a Caverns of Time dungeon? How is this moving the story forward?

The only long-lasting impact I can have this having is somehow changing the past, and if that happens, we risk a Draenei-esque lorestocity.

This really feels like a filler expansion, and Mists of Pandaria was also arguably filler. When do we get to the meat?

I’ve also heard Garrosh escapes and thus sets the expansion in motion. Ugh, we just fought him. Can we please just kill this douche already?

And this pretty much guarantees the only races getting significant lore development are Orcs and Draenei. I like Orcs, but they’ve gotten plenty of attention, and Draenei? Ugh. I’d prefer to forget they even exist.

The new features list looks pretty underwhelming, too. I get to boast that I successfully predicted both player-built fortresses and new player models, but I can’t say I really care about either.

The only other new feature worth mentioning is something about boasting instantly to level 90. I don’t think that’s a good idea myself, but I don’t think it’s game-breaking bad or anything. Kind of indifferent to it overall.

Compare that to how much MoP added: scenarios, pet battles, the first neutral race, a new class…

And I can’t help but see a massive missed opportunity here. If you wanted to bring back the nostalgia for the original Warcraft games, do remastered versions of them.

Sigh.

I’ll wait until I hear more before I get really upset, but I am very underwhelmed right now.

I will say this, though: I can not get mad at Metzen. I may quibble with his choices, but I can’t help but love the guy. His enthusiasm is so infectious. He was so excited during the reveal he could hardly form sentences, and the bit where he was yelling to the Alliance players and slipped into Varian’s voice was just nerdgasmic.

What do you think of WoD? Awesome, or phoning it in?

Heroes of the Storm:

The other interesting part of the opening ceremony was the reveal of the revamped Heroes of the Storm.

I’m a bit lukewarm towards this game — not that I don’t think it will be good, but I’m just not a MOBA guy — but they made it look pretty damn cool. I was very surprised they did a full CG trailer for it, but man, it was a pure nerdgasm from beginning to end.

NOVA VERSUS THE LICH KING. OMGOMGOMGOMGOMG!!!!!11!!!1

The only interesting gameplay tidbit we learned is that there will be a variety of maps, each with unique challenges and mechanics. This seems like a great way to spice up the MOBA genre. I still can’t believe DOTA 2 only has one map.