Tag Archives: Starcraft

Blizzcon: Starcraft, Diablo, and More Mists of Pandaria

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Blizzcon:

Yesterday, I posted about the announcement of Mists of Pandaria as the next WoW expansion. Today, I’ll cover some of the other highlights coming out of Blizzcon, as well as elaborate on a few points about the pandas.

Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm:

I may mostly discuss WoW on this blog, but I’m also a big Starcraft fan. Blizzard owns all of my soul, not just some of it. So I was quite interested in the new Starcraft info at Blizzcon.

First, we got a nice new trailer. It doesn’t really tell us anything we didn’t already know in terms of plot or gameplay, but it looks pretty, and it was quite nerdgasmic to see Kerrigan in all her rage-fueled glory. I’m a big Battlestar Galactica fan, and I love Tricia Helfer as Kerrigan.

Next, the new multiplayer units were revealed. They sound cool now, but if there’s one thing we learned from Wings of Liberty, it’s that the cool units will be nerfed into oblivion for the sake of balance. I know they have to do it, but it puts a damper on these things.

The Zerg gain two units, the viper and the swarm host. The viper is an aerial caster to replace overseers. Its most entertaining ability is probably “abduct,” which allows it to grab enemies and pull them out of unit balls so that the zerglings can nom on them. The swarm host is a burrowed siege unit that continually spawns mini-units to attack nearby enemies. Swarmtacular.

The Terrans get two new units, the warhound and the shredder, as well as a tougher “battle mode” for Hellions. The warhound is analogous to a small thor; if you played the original Starcraft, they’ll greatly remind you of goliaths. The shredder is an odd kind of mobile, area of effect defense structure. Sounds hard to balance. Terran doesn’t lose any units per se, but you will now only be able to have one thor at a time, similar to Protoss motherships now, so it’s likely no one will bother using them.

Protoss loses both the mothership and the carrier (sad face) and gains three units. The tempest is a capitol ship that has an AoE attack for use against other air units and a single target attack for ground. Sounds cool, but I’d rather they just find a way to make carriers useful. The oracle is a flying caster/harassment unit. It doesn’t actually do any damage, but it can shut down buildings and interfere with economies. Finally, the replicant is a unit capable of duplicating any other non-massive unit, complete with all their abilities and attributes. (“Hmm, nice siege tank; I think I’ll take it.”) This seems like a gimmick unit that will be impossible to balance.

There will also be many changes to and new abilities for existing units. For example, ultralisks now have an underground charge ability. I’m honestly more excited about the upgrades to old units than the new units. After the mothership fiasco, I refuse to get excited about cool new units.

Diablo III:

A quick piece of backstory: I played Diablo II many years ago and despised the one-dimensional, grindy gameplay, but Diablo III intrigued me a little. Then Blizzard came out with an offer where I could get it for free for signing up for a year of WoW.

I care about Diablo now.

I haven’t been following the game too closely, so I don’t know much about it, but I can tell you there was a lovely new trailer at Blizzcon. I don’t even really know what’s going on in this trailer, but holy crap the CG is beautiful.

Mists of Pandaria: After the dust settles:

After the frenzied pandemonium of yesterday (no, I won’t stop making these jokes; sorry), I’ve had time to think about the expansion. There are a few things I’d like to elaborate on.

The design philosophy: I love it. They seem to be embracing choice and casual play over the hardcore, raid-centric endgame of the previous expansions. The idea seems to be to do what you want, when you want. This is what the game needs.

The lore: This really worries me. I don’t want another pretty expansion with no real story. *Glares at Burning Crusade.* But it seems like that’s what we’re getting. Warcraft is supposed to be about epic story-telling. Running around DrunkenPandaLand with no real goal in mind is not epic.

There’s a theory going around that we, the Horde and the Alliance, may be the villains of Mists of Pandaria. One of the new monster types is going to be the sha, a kind of negative spirit that are drawn to violence and conflict. The theory goes that us bringing our war to Pandaria will begin summoning massive numbers of sha, threatening to destroy Pandaria. We will be forced to reexamine our old hatreds, lest our foolhardy wars consume all of Azeroth.

This would be a lovely return to the morality play style of storytelling we saw in Warcraft III, and I’d love for it to be true, but I don’t think Blizzard is clever enough for this anymore.

The talent changes: Very mixed feelings here. I love the customization that comes with the talents being mostly utility with no direct impact on your damage, healing, or tanking. I’m sure theorycrafters will still find the “right” choices, but the penalty for choosing “wrong” choices should be much lower.

Also, SHADOWSTEP FOR ALL ROGUES SHADOWSTEP FOR ALL ROGUES SHADOWSTEP FOR ALL ROGUES!!!!11!1!

On the other hand, only getting one talent per fifteen levels is going to really suck the fun out of leveling, and I really don’t relish having to wait 90 levels for the best toys.

Furthermore, while I know the talents aren’t set in stone, they sound pretty lame for most classes right now, with a few major exceptions, such as death knights. AoE death grip that does damage, Remorseless Winter… Holy crap; can you say overpowered?

I know, I know. None of it’s final yet.

So, yeah, I still don’t know how I feel about these talents.

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So, what do you think? How are you liking this year’s Blizzcon announcements? Pro-panda or anti-panda? Looking forward to new talents or hating them? Excited for Diablo? Mourning the carrier or hoping to roflstomp mutalisks with your tempests?

Review: “Devils’ Due” + Writerly Woes

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Lately I’ve been getting a great deal of “job offers” that are interested in hiring me, but want me to do some “test assignment” first. Now, I’m an extremely paranoid person by nature, so whenever I get one of those, I can’t help but worry that it’s just an elaborate scam to get me to write something for them for free.

But even if they’re not scams, I really hate the idea of these test assignments. Why should I put a few hours of work when there’s an excellent chance (based solely on the huge number of submissions these jobs surely get) I’ll simply be rejected? Why should I be expected to work for free? When you apply for a job in an office, do they expect you to work a shift or two without being paid just to see if you’re the right fit? I realize I’m relatively new to the writing game, but I’ve given you my portfolio, my resume, and a link to this here blog. How many examples of my writing do you need?

I don’t think this is right. But at the same time, I’m not really in the financial situation to be turning down any opportunity for work. So I may have to swallow my pride and just do these things. And that’s probably why companies are sending them out–they know saps like me are desperate enough to do them. They know they can get away with it.

This blog’s hits have also taken a nose dive in the last week or so, and I can’t figure out why, and that is also distressing me.

But anyway, enough ranting. It’s reviewing time!

It hasn’t much come up here yet, but I’m not just a WoW fan. I’m also a big fan of the Starcraft franchise; Blizzard owns all of my soul, not just some of it.

So I was happy to dive into the newest Starcraft novel, “Devils’ Due” by Christie Golden. It’s a sequel to (and improvement over) William C. Dietz’s somewhat bland “Heaven’s Devils,” and both are prequels to the Starcraft games, telling the story of James Raynor’s early life.

Christie Golden’s strength has always been characters, and this is once again true in “Devils’ Due.” The book focuses pretty much exclusively on Jim Raynor and Tychus Fyndlay, but both are richly represented and so true to their in-game versions that you can easily hear the voice actors in your head when you read the dialogue. The Tychus of the book is actually a lot more interesting than the one-dimensional waste of pixels he was in SCII.

The first few scenes promise a light-hearted, alcohol-fueled romp through the cosmos, with Jimmy and Tychus always one step ahead of the law, but the book quickly takes a much, much darker turn. I’m on the fence about whether or not this is a good thing, as at times it honestly got a little too intense even for my morbid tastes. But at the same time, Starcraft has always been a very dark universe, so perhaps this is as it should be. There is one character that I’m never, ever going to forgive her for killing off, though.

There are two villains in this book, but unfortunately, neither was all that interesting. One was a cliche sadist, and the other, his shadowy puppet master, was also a little shallow and was given far too little backstory. It would have helped to know more of his history and how he came to command such impressive resources. Alas, this is not the case, and the villains become little more than–exceptionally scary–plot devices to get Jim and Tychus where they needed to be. That said, it doesn’t come off quite as forced as I’m making it sound, and the story does flow well and is enjoyable.

One final complaint is quite nit-picky, and that’s that it rushes the timeline quite a lot. Jim doesn’t meet his wife until the very last scene in the book, and this means that the actual time they were together would be remarkably small. This is confirmed (and made worse) but an official Starcraft universe timeline in the back of the book, which shows that they had their son almost as soon as they met (must’ve been a quick courtship), and that he was abducted a mere three years later. Honestly, I find it hard to believe even the Confederates were crazy enough to start training a ghost at age three. I realize this is fantasy, so complaining about a lack of realism may be pointless, but I find it hard to believe a child’s psionic powers would even be noticeable at that age. Hell, Nova Terra’s psionic powers border on the god-like, and hers didn’t manifest in any strong manner until she was fifteen.

But despite these complaints, “Devils’ Due” was a pretty good read. When you get right down to it, anything with Jim Raynor is automatically good.

Overall rating: 7.9/10.

“Devils’ Due” is available on my Amazon Affiliate, along with “Heaven’s Devils” and several other good Starcraft books. Hint: “Liberty’s Crusade” and “The Dark Templar Saga” will rock your world.