Warcraft | Superior Realities

The alpha for Heroes of the Storm, Blizzard’s new MOBA, is upon us… though I suppose this is really more of a closed beta.

Honestly, the meanings of these things have become so muddled that I don’t what anything means anymore. Alpha is now beta. Beta is now soft launch. I suppose by traditional terms, Heroes would be in closed beta. But they’re already accepting real money payments!

I’m so confused.

But I’m already off-topic. My point is that Heroes* has been in the news and on my mind a lot lately. I’ve been combing Heroes Nexus for news, dutifully checking my email for an alpha invite that may never come, and watching HuskyStarCraft play matches. Through it all, I find myself filled with excitement, but it’s clouded by a lot of worry.

*(I can’t bring myself to call it HotS, because that still means “Heart of the Swarm” in my mind.)

I’m not worried because it isn’t shaping up to be a good game. Quite the opposite. It looks to be a major improvement over past MOBAs. Many of the heroes look fun to play, the map objectives make battles much more varied and interesting, and I much prefer the talent system to items.

There are a few areas it could probably be improved — the matches still look to be pretty damn long — but on the whole, it’s looking to be a very fun game.

But all throughout, there’s this nagging voice in my head saying, “Tyler, you don’t like these kind of games. You never have, and you never will.”

It’s true. Competitive gaming has never really been able to hold my attention. I consider this a personality flaw on my part.

In the abstract, I love the idea of competitive gaming. It’s a test of wits and reflexes between even opponents. It’s a contest of the mind. I have great admiration for what competitive gamers are capable of, and it’s one of the main reasons I enjoy watching professional StarCraft matches.

But when I try it myself, it quickly becomes more stressful than anything. I tend to be pretty bad at such things, and I lack the patience to wade through loss after loss and improve. Even if I did get good, these things are designed so you always lose at least half the time, and I find that pretty demoralizing.

Competing against other people adds an extra layer of humiliation, as well, and being on a team makes it even worse. It feels terrible to drag down your team with your noobishness — or to have someone else drag you down.

Then there are issues more specific to the MOBA genre. Their communities are infamously toxic and unforgiving. I didn’t find the community in DOTA 2 any worse than what you’d find in your average MMO battleground, but that still puts it somewhere between “terrible” and “I don’t want to live on this planet anymore.”

And World of Warcraft has clearly shown that Blizzard doesn’t really care about the quality of their in-game communities, so I doubt they’ll do much to curtail such behaviour.

There’s no real story, either. It’s not even remotely canon for the lore of any of Blizzard’s universes, and nearly the entire game revolves around PvP. Recent history has shown that it’s all but impossible for me to maintain long-term interest in a game without a story to keep me hooked in.

If this were any other game, I’d have already written it off as not to my taste, as I do all other MOBAs.

But damn it, it just seems so cool. I’ve been a Blizzard fan all my life, and throwing all of the greatest heroes and villains from all their games into a ring and forcing them to fight is the stuff of my darkest, nerdiest dreams. It’s like an even more ridiculously awesome version of Stadium Love.

The idea of Illidan plying his demon-hunting skills on Diablo, of Tassadar laying the psionic smackdown on Arthas, of Nova sniping Tyrael… It just fills me with child-like glee.

I love the art style, too. It makes me painfully nostalgic for Warcraft III, and I wish more than ever that Blizzard would get to work on Warcraft IV.

So I’m filled with excitement for Heroes of the Storm, and I can’t wait to get my hands on it, but I fear I’m only setting myself up for disappointment. This is exactly the sort of game I don’t like. Maybe Heroes will be good enough to force me out of my comfort zone, but somehow, I doubt it.

New article:

My latest article for ADANAI takes a look at how Warcraft and Mass Effect may be the first in a new generation of quality films based on video games.

I know I couldn’t be more excited for the Warcraft movie. Having watched Vikings, I’ve come to the conclusion Travis Fimmel is a great actor, and I think he’ll do very well in the film. His intensity is well-suited to the Warcraft universe.

Damn it, Blizzard.

I’ve gone on record before as saying that Hearthstone is the first Blizzard game since pretty much ever that I have absolutely zero interest in. But they finally managed to rope me in with their Hearthsteed promotion.

It’s simple enough. Win three games versus other players in Hearthstone and get a fancy mount in World of Warcraft. I figured, how hard can three wins be? I may not be playing WoW at the moment, but I’ll be back sooner or later, and that mount looks pretty sweet.

So I ended up trying Hearthstone after all.

It turned out to be more fun than I expected, but considering how low my expectations were set, that isn’t saying a whole lot.

I will say that I like how accessible it is. The learning curve is almost non-existant, as it throws you into a tutorial immediately upon logging in and does a very good job of introducing you to the basic mechanics. It’s all very easy to digest, and this is a rare case of Blizzard effectively delivering on its “easy to learn, difficult to master” motto.

I cruised through my tutorial matches and started taking on players. I chose the rogue deck, largely because it’s the only one represented by a Blood Elf, and I always liked Valeera in the comics.

I did enjoy being a rogue, though. Lots of “make your opponent hate you” cards. Oh, you just played the best minion in your deck and spent all your mana buffing it? Yeah, I’ll just assassinate that.

I got my three wins quite easily and decided to keep playing for a bit, if only because I’ve had a rough week and didn’t have the energy to play anything more strenuous. I went on a massive loosing streak after my three wins, but eventually leveled out to a more even win/loss ratio. I made it up to rank twenty, whatever that means.

Even though the gameplay and mechanics are utterly different, it did feel surprisingly like WoW in some ways. Mages are over-powered, and all the noobs play hunters.

It’s also got WoW’s feeling of being just interesting enough to keep you playing. It’s never terribly exciting, but it engages you enough that you keep queueing up for one more match. I’m sure Blizzard has delved disturbingly deep into human psychology to create this effect.

I tried a few other classes, as well. Priest was sort of interesting. All the healing spells were very helpful. I liked druid, as well, but it seemed to lack offensive punch, and I lost badly whenever I tried it.

That Dwarf announcer is still unbelievably annoying, though. Thankfully, you don’t have to hear him very often, but the rest of the audio is little better. Discounting the characters who have the same voice actors they do in WoW, the voice-overs in Hearthstone are just horrific. I mean, Blizzard’s voice-acting is always a tad hit and miss, but this is just as bad as it gets.

I also disliked how luck-dependent the game is. At the risk of passing the buck, I feel around half my losses were just down to get really bad card draws. And I’m sure a lot of my wins were because of my opponent getting bad draws.

And I still struggle to see the point of online card game. For me, the whole appeal of Magic was actually being able to hold and collect the cards yourself, to admire their artwork when you’re not playing, and to have an excuse to get together with friends. A digital card game just feels kind of empty.

Hearthstone was an interesting diversion for a day or two, but I don’t plan to stick with it. It’s just not that interesting of a game.

But hey, at least I got a free sparkle pony out of it.

Superior Realities

Tag Archives: Warcraft

Heroes of the Storm: Where Anticipation Meets Concern + New Article

Hearthstoned Out of My Mind

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