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BlizzCon discussion thread
The first day of BlizzCon is happening. A lot of trailers popping and news spreading.
What are your thoughts? Ideas? Will you be playing their upcoming new titles?
- Starcraft (New Shooter coming 2030)
- Diablo 4 Expansion + Diablo 5 Teaser (2029)
- Overwatch new Hero
- Heroes of the Storm new Hero
- Hearthstone new Expansion pack (The Black Empire)
- World of Warcraft Midnight Eclipse Update Patch
- World of Warcraft Forever (Classic +)
Heroes of the Storm is getting a Xal'Atath, the first new character for the first time in six years, which is pretty cool. Xal'Atath is from WoW.
I have a personal musing: in 2019 I went to BlizzCon, and I was fairly involved in various Blizzard communities around the internet for a lot of years. This year, I didn't even know that BlizzCon was happening. This isn't a slight on BlizzCon or anything, but more just an observation about how things can change in a few years time; I've changed from someone who was spoiling BlizzCon news live to someone who barely cares about it in seven years.
Guess I'll finally have a reason to open my 247 loot boxes, and/or spend my 191,028 gold!
Although, who am I kidding, I'm probably just gonna keep playing Qhira for now. With the last patch, Revolving Hook is no longer detached on Unstoppable, and the bleed quest no longer has a cap. It's been a lot of fun chasing down Hogger, Sylvanas, Butcher. I even got to take a ride one time on an Illidan who used The Hunt. And my highest bleed quest game was just over 900 stacks.
Ooh what what not dead?? I honestly love MOBAs, I think they're my favorite genre in theory, but the actual upkeep is so all-encompassing. HotS was my favorite by far for being the nicest (no need to carefully CS or manage a shop of 10,000 items), and I was so sad when it got put on life support. But if it's being revived I might have to figure out how to get it running on a steam deck
I'm pretty excited, I never stopped playing HotS, I'm a 10+ year regular player. But I cannot imagine playing HotS on a Steam Deck, and having a good time. My hat is entirely off to you if you're able to and enjoy it. I've been on a Qhira kick the last six months, and there's no way I could imagine landing those skill shots without a mouse/keyboard.
Oh, while there are masochists who would try (and I've been one for other games), I would definitely play it docked with mouse, keyboard, and monitor. I was more meaning I have to figure out how to make it work on SteamOS haha.
That being said, I would be interested in controller -first moba'ing, but that's kind of hard to do without going some kind of hybrid like 3rd person shooter, the wealth of keys on a keyboard and the precision of a mouse are just such core parts of a traditional moba mechanical experience
I have recognized you around for years, "fairly involved" is an understatement! To go from that kind of involvement to barely caring, I'm curious what happened for you?
Nothing really momentous happened, it was just a "death by a thousand cuts" sort of thing. Reddit get worse and worse, I had less and less time for community stuff. Then WoW: Shadowlands finished up and I realized that I wasn't enjoying WoW much at all, and I stopped playing. I gave up other Blizzard games as well because of various things the company was doing that I didn't agree with. I got really into exploring my backlog and realized that instead of spending the bulk of my time on one game, I could play 5 or 6 different games every week.
Sometimes I get a slight nostalgic itch for raiding, but it usually passes pretty quickly. Same for HotS, which is my favourite MOBA of all time. I don't think they'll get me back though.
World of Warcraft: Forever sounds kinda ridiculous in that you have Current, Classic, and now this new version. Plus, Forever makes it sound like they're going to pull a Sword Art Online and suck everyone into the game on launch day.
Hearthstone was my drug, and while they did also announce a Monk Class and a 2v2 format, I'm not sure I'm going to reinstall, but I'm happy for the folks still around. That goes double for the HOTS folks who may have their time again in the sun?
I think Holly even called it "your new forever home!" which to me sounds mildly threatening.
WoW Forever is one of the titles that were leaked and it sounded so stupid to me. I get why that's what they went with, but.. lol
What's in store with it, kind of surprised by how much they seem to be delivering. The monetization might be problematic though, €30 for playing the new race is an insane strategy. Their handling of bots and in-game economy and rmt is the real test though, not high hopes for that. Also cautious to hope anything for the further development. Too many unknowns to feel truly excited at this point.
I have zero faith in this version of Blizzard being able to finally deliver a StarCraft shooter. I hope they prove me wrong.
The trailer was definitely on-par with their high production tier, enough to give me some hope. But four years is a long time, we'll see what happens. And despite the "gritty intense" posture of the trailer,
I found the ending to be mildly hilarious:
At a cost of only 50 minerals, you are utterly disposableMeh, I guess. I get what they were going for, but it just feels over produced like so many of their recent trailers. Why even announce a game that's 4 years out unless you are desperate?
There's a rumour going around that Nexon will be developing it. I can't tell if that's better or worse...
Yeah, I saw that article and it at least implies that the Nexon game is separate from Blizzard making their own game.
This at least makes sense. SC is still huge in Korea, so letting a Korean company take on an RTS that Blizzard seems to have no interest in doing themselves.
Then I guess what, you roll some people over from Overwatch to make a SC shooter? Sounds like a very Microsoft approach to me.
And they just released a new Warcraft 3 campaign.
I'll be honest, at $30 it's rather steep.. especially after the overall fiasco that Reforged was. It's tempting, even though I have little faith in the storytelling of current day Blizzard employees.
lmfao, Blizzard will do everything except give Alliance players high elves
WoW Forever looks great. The Skyborne Elves are an odd choice to add for a neutral race but I'll let Blizzard cook.
Some of the things they revealed in their deep dive panel seem really solid too. They're not straight-up copying Retail with their planned Paladin rework, for example. Holy Strike is basically that game's version of Crusader Strike, and it appears that Retribution will be designed around Seal Twisting.
Yeah I am hyped for WoW Forever. Lots of great improvements have been made from what I can tell.
A lot of controversy online regarding the Skyborne but honestly I don't really mind them, and my friend group seems unbothered about them as well.
I liked the dark tone of the StarCraft trailer but not interested in open world stuff. Also 2030 lol. They also better come up with a proper name for it.
Yeah that's insane to release a trailer 4 years before release. Especially cause I would expect that much time to develop the game which means theyre announcing before development even begins. Just insane. Make the game first then announce it ~6 months before release
There's two reasons. One is for investors. Investors are part of the general public, so there's no way to only give information to shareholders. Blizzard needs to say, "hey, we're actually doing things".
Second is as recruitment. It's much easier to hire people for a project when it's not "unnamed sci fi shooter", it's "starcraft" with a trailer.
I thought it was going to be named Starcraft: Dominion, since they kept mentioning that in the trailer. Alas, just Starcraft for now as a working title I guess.
sc2:
The winner of the Rogue (Z) vs. Serral (Z) RSL finals is...
Serral with a dominant 4-0 result!Not surprised. Serral is an absolute monster.
If anything, Korean SC2 died when KeSPA pulled out of the esport. There are still strong Korean players but the gap has narrowed considerably.
They are still absolutely dominant in Brood War though. And that's largely because few people outside of the country are interested in playing a game so clunky that it's a one-way ticket to severe carpal tunnel.
When did KeSPA pull out? I read that things were rocky from the very beginning.
They were rocky from the start.
Blizzard and KeSPA had been in a legal dispute over broadcasting rights with Blizzard demanding they pay royalties on broadcasting professional matches of their game. When negotiations went poorly, they decided to give GomTV exclusive broadcasting rights just months before SC2 was set to launch.
That is why SC2 had LAN multiplayer support gutted out mid-development, so that if KeSPA tried to transition towards that game without agreeing to pay royalties, their IPs could be blacklisted from Blizzard's servers. Proleague, MSL and OSL did resume as normal until 2012 when the dispute was resolved. KeSPA not joining until two years later definitely affected the game's success in Korea.
What hurt things more was Blizzard aping Riot Games by announcing the WCS and imposing their esports league upon their stakeholders at extremely short notice. WCS was a shitshow from its inception, and this was especially the case in Korea. Ongamenet hosted one season and decided they wanted out, leaving GomTV as the sole tournament organiser. After 2013, WCS Korea was retired and the GSL brand was brought back, but by then the damage was already done.
Proleague went on for another four years as a SC2 team tournament until 2016 when dwindling viewership and balance issues in Legacy of the Void ended it for good. All the KeSPA teams disbanded, except for Jin Air Green Wings, who stayed active until late 2020.
Classic WoW/Warcraft fans are eating good. WoW D&D, WoW Forever, and the new WC3 campaign. All built around WC3 and vanilla WoW era lore. Man I hope they don't drop the ball.
Out of curiosity, I decided to check out the requirements for WoW and installed the Battle NET app. It crashes any time I try to log in, so I yeeted it. M4 Mac mini should be supported, but honestly I'll probably try again on my Linux box later.