Even if Blizzard games haven’t had a high note since 2016, I would like to remind everyone that the company still had absurd amounts of goodwill and customer loyalty for a large and corporate studio at the time, with fans owning and actively collecting literal decades of merchendise.
Things only really truly collapsed for Blizzard and saw their goodwill vanish when they openly supported and endorsed the chinese oppression of Hong Kong.
Specifically, the winner of a Hearthstone tournament was interviewed after his win and gave the pro-Hong Kong slogan “free Hong Kong, the revolution of our times”, which there was absolutely no rule or stipulation against. China demanded that the company not endorse that (because authoritarianism), but Blizzard ACTIVELY WENT THE EXTRA MILE to strip the player of his prize money and ban him from all future events alongside other punishments, specifically in the name of appeasing the chinese government.
It wouldn’t be fair to expect a game company to singlehandedly stand up to an authoritarian regime that loves to make people disappear. But it is absolutely fair to recognize that Blizzard’s actions very clearly demonstrated that they weren’t just doing this because they were threatened into it- they were more than happy to actively endorse the chinese government’s oppression of Hong Kong. And THAT is what we should always remember about Blizzard’s morals and principles, or lack thereof.
Same, was just starting wow classic with my partner as she’d never played wow before, that made us both cancel immediately and never give them another cent.
There are a couple of VERY GOOD classic pservers out there which are not only better maintained than the Blizz servers, these have also much less bots and way healthier populations and economies.
I can absolutely recommend Turtle WoW. It is such a good classic+ experience: imagine if there never were any of the wow addons but instead the base game got expanded in a meaningful and in terms of Warcraft 3 lore-friendly way. There are new and very well-done zones which were empty before. There are new items and professions without nullifying the existing ones, there are two new races and new race/class combos (to keep close to WC3 lore), there are new dungeons and raids, tons of new quests and a lot of quality of life improvements. You have many options to play how you want: restrict yourself on how much exp you get and play slow & steady, opt in for a built-in hardcore mode, activate warmode to be flagged for pvp or a combination of those. Also, pretty much all classes got rebalanced (some more than others, though) to make more builds viable without altering the game to much (more balance updates are in the roadmap). The dev team is very active and dedicated.
All the sex pests felt like a “good” reason to quit WoW but I’d say my real reason was it had become a piece of shit that didn’t value my time, and I’d honestly been looking for a reason to quit for a long time.
I might just be too casual, but I remember that half the fun of WoW was traveling. Of course, I never got into raids or pvp anyway, I leveled up and did dungeons lol
Travel (especially in older zones where you would be using portals) consists of:
Mount flying mount, point in the right direction, hit auto-run, wait.
Not really the most exciting game play experience when you’ve already flown over the area a dozen times before. Taxis are also just as bad. Other MMOs (Guldwars 2, FF14) have no problem with players teleporting directly to somewhere close to their destination. They already traveled their once, no need to force them to do it again.
There’s a community at !finalfantasyxiv if you guys have any questions.
I’ll also say that if you are using KB/M to try a controller for a little bit, too. You’ll be surprised at how well it works. I can’t even play this game with a KB/M setup it’s so foreign to me.
I played 2.0-7.0 on KB/M, and now I’m learning to play on Steam Deck (so a controller is mandatory). It is surprising easy for DPS and tanks, but I’m still struggling with Healers.
Steam Deck was how I chose to play it too for my first time yesterday (though I played on the dock with PS3 controller). I chose arcanist, and it’s really smooth sailing for me.
I started with the Arcanist too, then Scholar. I really liked the gameplay.
Then I changed main class almost every expansion, starting with the Dark Knight, then Dancer, Sage, and now back to Dancer. None of the new classes caught my fancy this time 😅.
Healing is definitely its own little animal. My main job is Scholar, so I’ve had to create a couple of mostly healer specific things to help out. (You may already do some of this, so forgive me)
I don’t really use any macros for casting spells or anything like that, but what I have found helpful are three really simple ones that help with targeting.
The first being simply a focusTarget one that lets you set up, well, a focus target: /focustargetSince as a healer you are most oftes worried about the tank, I generally set them as the focus target. By itself that doesn’t do a whole lot, but then…
…I have two others that help. One that when you use it it selects whatever your focus target is: /target <f>So no matter where you are, you can get to the tank (or other focus) super quick for heals.
And the last one is one that jumps to whatever your current target is targeting. Kind of a mouthful, that, but pretty helpful: /target <tt>So in practice if you are doing damage to the boss and just need to quickly swap to whatever the boss is targeting, you can hit this, swap to a party member, heal them, and then press it again to go back to the boss.
Along with these are some settings that you might look into if you haven’t already. Control Settings -> Filters -> Filter Customization. In this section you can filter target groups by hitting LB + [one of the face buttons]. I basically 100% of the time use one that targets only enemies because you can always hit up and down to select party members. That lets me always use right and left for bad guys and there’s no confusion.
Lastly for targeting, pressing LB + up/down will select just enemies on your enemies list (this is obviously super handy for tanks). And LB + right/left will target Alliance members on other parties. So if you see that some healers are down on another team, that’s the shortcut to cycle through those members to help.
And then lastly lastly: there are some extra crossbars you can put up on the screen at all times under the Custom tab of Hotbar Settings. You may already know about these at this point, though.
So anyway, again, if you already know these things, then obviously feel free to ignore. But I hope at least some part of that helps a little.
I ended up choosing to play with a PS3 controller for my first time. My friends all say I’m crazy, but honestly I love the controls more than the standard MMO “Hit this numpad key and then switch hotbar, then hit this key”
Review bombs and “boycotts” are frustrating because it seems like the average player has the willpower of a hungry toddler. “Hey, don’t buy this game. They make their developers work 20 hour days.” -> “Oh yeah fuck them! …ooh, but there’s a shiny angel wing skin if I preorder? Well mmmmmmm well sure it’s just $90 what does it hurt”
But I don’t know. I’m kind of in a mood lately where I feel like I’m surrounded by overgrown toddlers.
CDPR? admittedly they’re really good at gaining it back again, kinda homer simpsons vibes where they repeatedly fuck up but then make an honest attempt to make things right only to repeat the cycle all over again.
CDPR mistakes can be corrected, but blizzard games are designed from the ground up, with purpose, to be fuckup games in order to milk as much money as possible from it players. There is no correcting the boat for blizzard because for the managers of blizzard the boat IS correct
Hopefully their transition to unreal engine 5 gets away with a lot of their launch issues I genuinely love all of their games but their release dates being “game launch +1-2 years” hurts me.
CDPR is still on my “probably pass” list after cyber punk. I read the launch news, stayed faraway. I picked it up this year, after all the patches and work and… yeah it’s still fundamentally broken.
Not in terms of balance or bugs, but it didn’t have the magic. To start, I really don’t like fantasy games. They’re just not my thing. Witcher 3 had bad combat mechanics, could be terribly grindy and YET is one of my top five games. The story telling, from the plot itself the tiny immersive details in the world, hooked you. They nailed the big things, but it was the little things like sometimes you’d free someone, and realize they murdered a bunch of dudes who were minding their own business, and none of this was mentioned in or affected any other plot line, it was just a random detail in the universe.
Cyberpunk has a semblance of the big stuff, but exactly none of the soul. I cared about some of the main characters (emphasis on “some”) but exactly none about the world. It never felt like more than a backdrop.
A loss and misstep is ok, particularly given a growing studio, the problem with CDPR is they think they fixed cyberpunk. With that mentality I’m giving their next game a huge berth.
And if you liked cyberpunk, enjoy. There are parts to be enjoyed. There are some neat plot threads, some nifty side quests, if you enjoy it don’t let people ruin it for you.
They lied about Cyberpunk. They knew it was bad on release and maliciously made decisions so that people would still buy it. That’s not some minor thing, that’s a crime. “We leave greed to others”, yeah, right. And this problem was never addressed by CDPR, like it’s a normal thing to do, they think it’s okay.
Man, Cyberpunk was not a Homer-like fuckup. They were promising features which were nowhere near ready, while their whole game hardly ran at all. That’s a crime, at least in my country. Homer doesn’t do crimes…
Blizzard is dead. At the time they were Activision. Now they are Microsoft. The blizzard that existed to make StarCraft, warcraft and diablo only exists in name.
I don’t know, the World of Warcraft dev team recently unionized and got Chris Metzen to return as creative director. And, personally, as a current WoW player (War Within is great so far btw) the whole feel of the studio is so much better than during Shadowlands when things were bad and I quit the game. I think that Warcraft at least is having a bit of a comeback now.
I don’t really know details about who does what at Blizzard, but isn’t he the guy responsible for the utter train wreck of Diablo3’s writing? Whoever wrote and approved “How tastes your fear, Nephalem?” did a bad job.
He wrote the setting for Diablo, Warcraft and Starcraft. He developed the story for Diablo 1 - 3 as well as most of the lore for the first 3 Warcraft games I believe.
There was no story for Diablo 1. At exile con the creators of Diablo talk about how there was no story and the execs at Blizzard tacked one on. Chris Metzen had nothing to do with it.
What? I played Diablo 1, it literally had a story? Chris Metzen co-created the setting for the franchise with David Brevik and Bill Roper in 1996. The changes Blizzard wanted made from the original concept of Diablo was to make it real-time rather than turn based and to add multiplayer as part of the publishing agreement. I don’t see anything about a storyline being “forced” on the developers.
Basically David brevik said that there was no story and the cut scene on the end was added by blizzard south. They had no intent to add that.
I stand corrected though. Metzen is credited as a writer on Diablo. But not Diablo 2.
I suspect Metzen wrote the ending that was tacked on according to Brevik, since at that time blizzard north was a completely different team at the time.
One game was all it took for Big Red to turn from an epic “Not even death can save you from me” into a cartoon villain. Fucker wouldn’t shut up throughout Act 4…
I miss the Warcraft II and StarCraft days. You could tell they were serious by their cutscenes, but also knew they were having fun, and wanted the player to as well, by the gameplay and Easter eggs. “Line must go up” took over, now it’s all cash grabs. I will not buy a game from them at full price again.
Yeah, pretty much. A lot of their games appear on a 80% sale half the time, and even then it’s still not worth it. It’s not even about the money, it’s about being disrespected by the dogshit they continue to release.
I would rather give my time to a passionate indie studio, where the people put together a genuinely unique experience
It’s a shame, I liked OW1, even with the tired meta and 6v6 more than I liked OW2.
The loot boxes weren’t predatory, allowing unlocking of skins and content without spending anything extra was a nice balance in my opinion that I wish more games did.
They took OW1 and bastardized it, it deserves the rating it has. It used to be that new versions of games were better.
It used to be that new versions of games were better.
I for one am very interested to see the quality differences between worker owned game studios and corporate studios. But last I heard they had only just started unionizing.
And a programmer friend I talked to couldn’t comprehend why he would want to be in a union.
Tech workers in general have been finally making baby steps with unions trying to form at goog and maybe a couple others. I think kickstarter got a union a couple years ago as well… There are some other examples too which is a big change from just a few years ago
unions are a harder sell in an industry like tech where it’s common to have a diverse skill set spanning work that could arguable each be it’s own union. does a full stack dev have to join the database admin union before they can write sql queries?
those diverse skill sets also make the individual value of workers fluctuate a lot more as well.
I still like the idea of unions but I just don’t know how you can make them work for tech;if anyone has any good resources on the subject I’d love to read more about it
And a programmer friend I talked to couldn’t comprehend why he would want to be in a union.
I also had a programmer friend that was anti-union. He was like “If the place I’m working at sucks, I’ll just find another place.” Very short sighted and optimistic.
Ehhh, they were basically the same thing as a slot machine. The battlepass is certainly worse, as it just encourages rampant (not so) microtransactions, but just because the current battlepass system is really predatory, doesn’t mean the old loot box system wasn’t predatory at all. It was just less predatory.
I have 3,400 hours in this game. What I enjoy is that I’m not expected to dedicate my life to it. I pay for 30 days at a time and play when new content is released every 3 months.
I know the last expansion Dawntrail is being slated on Steam reviews, but gameplay wise it was great. The music was solid as always, the Arcadion content was fun and the new zones looked great. Given how good the story has been in the past expansions I can understand how hard it must be to write a whole new story arc and make everyone happy. Some people want something entirely new, while others want to keep it all the same.
I can understand how people can sink 3,400 hours into it. I alone sank 14 hours into it yesterday. I will say I personally don’t like the idea of paying a subscription for my time after buying the standard edition, but I do understand they need to make income somehow and for live service games like this that is hard without a subscription.
The subscription fee imo is warranted given they release new content every 3 months, which includes voice acting, new dungeons, and new raid content. If it was a monthly sub with nothing released between expansions it wouldn’t be acceptable imo. Highly recommend not having a recurring sub
I’m playing since the 2.0 days, I almost grew up with this game and its characters. Top tier game, be it as an MMO or a single player game, it is worth it.
I was dating a girl that sold me on 1.0, and I was going to play it with her. We broke up, and 1.0 released, and I just said fuck it. It wasn’t until Heavensward that I came back. It kills me that in that time I lost my original key, so I don’t even have my swanky 1.0 survivor rewards.
I’m so glad I came back, though. It’s been my only MMO since then, and it just gets better with every new release.
I still have my 1.0 disc, given how useful it is now, it horrifies my friends when they find out I’m using it as a coaster. I stopped playing before I could get the rewards too, so seeing people with the tattoos always makes me sigh.
My friends and I started with the 2.0 beta, and it’s wild to me that I’ve now played one game in three decades of my life (started when I was 29 and we are now into year 11).
Gonna be in a retirement home grinding to level 250 or whatever.
I’ve got family members that have loyally progressed through this game over the course of years and they absolutely love it still. Great music throughout.
After playing it I went through the soundtrack and added a few songs to my “Background Music” playlist I use when trying to focus. It has a ton of great tracks.
I haven’t seen the shining, so this probably isn’t my bag, but I’m commenting to bump you up in the ranking for top posts of x period of time. Whatever that may be.
I hope it does well for you man! I hope the launch is spectacular; whatever you are hoping for and then some ^_^
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