I know it's not easy to catch up on the hundreds of hours required to watch/listen to Critical Role, but damn if this latest episode didn't showcase some of the most phenomenal improv/gameplay.
The show is superlative "actual play" entertainment in large part because the players and DM really take the RP aspect of the game seriously - yes, they make jokes and such, sometimes really silly, meta jokes, but they really commit to their characters in moments where it counts.
For context... let's do a spoiler cut.
Friday, January 31, 2020
Wednesday, January 29, 2020
LFR Wing 1: Ny'alotha, the Waking City
That's right! I actually went in and did LFR. I'm planning on actually seeing this whole raid while people are still running it!
As someone whose computer was new shortly after the launch of Warlords of Draenor, I was very appreciative to see that the first wing of Ny'alotha is made up of immense but rather smooth stone architecture (or cyclopean, to borrow one of Lovecraft's favorite words,) and thus my computer was able to keep things at a perfectly playable clip.
As often happens, however, my co-tank was constantly out-threating me, though after the first boss I got someone who actually knew to ease off on damage after a taunt.
The first three fights are Wrathion, Maut, and The Prophet Skitra.
The raid opens with no trash to start - just Wrathion, apparently gone mad and corrupted as you watch shadows close in on Azeroth in the background.
This fight incorporates a lot of the classic "dragon fight" mechanics that I don't think we've seen since maybe Blackwing Descent. Fire breaths, tail-swipes, etc.
It's not terribly difficult, though it can be scary as I don't know if there are any classes that can actually completely avoid the fire aoe that he drops on the ground (maybe a Demon Hunter or a Windwalker Monk.)
Ultimately, when we defeat him, we discover that this was just an illusion - N'zoth trying to gaslight us into thinking that Wrathion's corruption, and that of Azeroth, is an inevitability.
After this fight, the illusion disappears and we find ourselves in the antechamber of Ny'alotha - a dark and massive vault of stone, with pathways to the two other bosses of the wing.
Maut is a massive Obsidian Destroyer. His main mechanic to look out for is that he periodically shields himself with mana and then starts casting a devastating AoE. You need to burn through the shield asap to do so. He'll also create these void circles that silence you, but also protect you from magic. I think they do damage you, so when he casts his big spell, you want to dip into these right as he's about to finish it.
Finally, because he drains mana from the raid, you'll want to have players intercept the blue balls that shoot toward him (they take a little damage, but not much) and then have them get within range of casters (especially healers) to have the blue mana go back to them.
The third and final (well, could be final or second, as I don't think you need to do the latter two in order) is the Prophet Skitra, which is probably the most interesting fight.
Skitra's major mechanic is that he'll summon illusion copies of himself - but only half the raid sees half of them and the other half sees the other ones. Attacking the illusions will damage the raid, so instead you want to have the tanks (who are always on different sides of the illusion divide) to figure out which version of Skitra they both see - then you can attack that one and end the illusion phase, which we got I think three times on a successful kill. (We just had the other tank go and attack each illusion they saw and when they started hitting something I could actually see, I'd call it out and mark it with a skull.)
Anyway, with those three down, that's the first wing.
So far I love the look of the raid - it feels appropriately ominous, ancient, and apocalyptic. I'm eager to see the rest of it and hopefully not have my computer die when we get out and see a more elaborate skybox!
As someone whose computer was new shortly after the launch of Warlords of Draenor, I was very appreciative to see that the first wing of Ny'alotha is made up of immense but rather smooth stone architecture (or cyclopean, to borrow one of Lovecraft's favorite words,) and thus my computer was able to keep things at a perfectly playable clip.
As often happens, however, my co-tank was constantly out-threating me, though after the first boss I got someone who actually knew to ease off on damage after a taunt.
The first three fights are Wrathion, Maut, and The Prophet Skitra.
The raid opens with no trash to start - just Wrathion, apparently gone mad and corrupted as you watch shadows close in on Azeroth in the background.
This fight incorporates a lot of the classic "dragon fight" mechanics that I don't think we've seen since maybe Blackwing Descent. Fire breaths, tail-swipes, etc.
It's not terribly difficult, though it can be scary as I don't know if there are any classes that can actually completely avoid the fire aoe that he drops on the ground (maybe a Demon Hunter or a Windwalker Monk.)
Ultimately, when we defeat him, we discover that this was just an illusion - N'zoth trying to gaslight us into thinking that Wrathion's corruption, and that of Azeroth, is an inevitability.
After this fight, the illusion disappears and we find ourselves in the antechamber of Ny'alotha - a dark and massive vault of stone, with pathways to the two other bosses of the wing.
Maut is a massive Obsidian Destroyer. His main mechanic to look out for is that he periodically shields himself with mana and then starts casting a devastating AoE. You need to burn through the shield asap to do so. He'll also create these void circles that silence you, but also protect you from magic. I think they do damage you, so when he casts his big spell, you want to dip into these right as he's about to finish it.
Finally, because he drains mana from the raid, you'll want to have players intercept the blue balls that shoot toward him (they take a little damage, but not much) and then have them get within range of casters (especially healers) to have the blue mana go back to them.
The third and final (well, could be final or second, as I don't think you need to do the latter two in order) is the Prophet Skitra, which is probably the most interesting fight.
Skitra's major mechanic is that he'll summon illusion copies of himself - but only half the raid sees half of them and the other half sees the other ones. Attacking the illusions will damage the raid, so instead you want to have the tanks (who are always on different sides of the illusion divide) to figure out which version of Skitra they both see - then you can attack that one and end the illusion phase, which we got I think three times on a successful kill. (We just had the other tank go and attack each illusion they saw and when they started hitting something I could actually see, I'd call it out and mark it with a skull.)
Anyway, with those three down, that's the first wing.
So far I love the look of the raid - it feels appropriately ominous, ancient, and apocalyptic. I'm eager to see the rest of it and hopefully not have my computer die when we get out and see a more elaborate skybox!
Tuesday, January 28, 2020
How Will We Look Back on BFA?
I think it's important to remember that every expansion has its detractors. Back in 2008-2010, I remember tons of people complained about Wrath of the Lich King, saying that the raids were too easy, or that Burning Crusade had more interesting environments, or that the game had been given over to the "casuals." These days, most WoW players would rank it as one of the best expansions, if not the best one. Indeed, I think Legion is the only expansion where it seemed like the majority of players tended to praise more than criticize it while it was live - and there are certainly those who hated it.
BFA is in a weird place right now. I think that a lot of people like the current concepts that came with 8.3 - Horrific Visions, Old God ominousness. Maybe people are much more divided over Corrupted Gear (I think it's cool, personally, but I'm also not a serious razor's edge raider who is getting gear that he can't use yet because of the gating on working on the cloak.)
But BFA nevertheless does not feel like it's going to go down as one of WoW's best expansions. Indeed, some are calling it the game's worst (though I think those people must have amnesia if they think BFA could unseat Warlords of Draenor.)
In fact, let's talk about BFA's problems compared to those of Warlords.
Warlords, to my mind, had three key problems:
The first was that Blizzard had always had this ambition to come out with an expansion every year prior to Warlords, and it was with 6.0 that they attempted to actually do this. Given that, in a typical expansion cycle, the final patch of an expansion tends to come out roughly a year after the expansion came out, for Warlords, they just cut that final patch, giving us two raid tiers in place of the usual three. Blizzard couldn't actually deliver the follow-up in 2015, though (holy crap I feel old) and so, rather than speed up the expansion cycle, we just had a massive content drought. And this is before we even consider the fact that maybe, two years is actually a better interval for expansions, as one-year expansions would make every threat we face feel underdeveloped and gone too soon (not to mention I don't think players want to plop down the cash for a new expansion every year on top of subscription fees.)
Second, the story was convoluted as hell, and then didn't even make use of its most interesting elements. The eponymous Warlords - the original leaders of the Old Horde - were almost all wiped out in the first patch, and the notion that this would be an alternate path for the Horde wound up being undone as they just fell to demonic corruption anyway. The only fun time-travel trope to occur was the production of a new Gul'dan, but you could count the actual long-term impacts of the expansion on a single finger. And while yes, time travel is a hard subject to write, for those of us who love it as a sci-fi/fantasy concept, don't promise it and then totally ignore its potential. Where the Fel was the Infinite Dragonflight in all of this?
Third, Garrisons. Blizzard demonstrated how their "gameplay trumps flavor" preference for design turned what should have been a fun player-housing concept into a joyless ghost town with myriad solutions in search of problems to solve. Garrisons dragged down various systems - including gearing, kind of the most central system in the game - with them.
So let's compare those failings with BFA:
BFA does not lack for content. We got a full three raid tiers (with a starter raid and a bonus mini-raid) even if the elimination of tier gear means they're not "proper" tiers. (Also, can I just take a moment to complain that raid gear this expansion is really underwhelming aesthetically? It all looks at best like blue dungeon gear. Where's the crazy glowing bits? Where's the intricate designs and particle effects? At level 120 I'm a ridiculous battle-god, and I should look like it.) But we've also seen experiments in world content like the more free-form Mechagon world quest, stuff like the Bee mount grind, and stuff like the Nazjatar findable quests. Plus, we've got a totally different leveling story for Alliance versus Horde, and tons of story quests to take us through the War Campaign.
Story-wise, I'm very split here. I think BFA's story was one that I didn't want them to do, but that they told very well - or rather, part of it was. I know that defenders of the expansion keep telling me that Sylvanas was not Garrosh 2.0, but frankly, I disagree. Sylvanas was unexpectedly named Warchief by her more enlightened predecessor, went on to make the Horde more ruthless and expansionist, and then escalated the conflict by attacking a major Alliance settlement and destroying it with many civilian deaths. Her brutality and authoritarian tendencies inspired a celebrated hero of the Horde who had previously been partially complicit in her actions to turn from her and organize a resistance, which ultimately led to a combined force of Alliance and rebel Horde forces to the gates of Orgrimmar. Then, when she was unseated by the actions of this rebellion, she escaped punishment and broke reality in order to usher in the next expansion.
I mean... are you really telling me that this is totally different from what we saw with Garrosh?
But I think the early stuff - showing the outward appearance of Zandalari stability crumble in the face of Zul's actions and deep-delving into Jaina's psychological journey and quest to win back her peoples' trust (guys, we got a pre-rendered cinematic for a dungeon) - were really well-done. Yes, I'm sick of how my characters are forced to forget the lessons they learn every expansion about how Azeroth is safer and better for everyone when the factions learn to work alongside one another instead of murdering one another (a lesson the Horde seems to have a harder time with than the Alliance, I'll note) but the story was told well.
If anything, BFA's problem here is that, rather than not touching on enough (like Warlords ignoring any of the cool time-travel issues,) BFA basically had two major plots, and while I think it gave the faction war story plenty of material, the N'zoth story - one that I think could have underscored an entire expansion - felt short-changed, despite having three of the five raids dedicated to it (arguably four given that Uldir is basically an Old God raid.) Indeed, when you actually take a step back, this definitely was an Old God expansion. So why didn't it feel like one?
That's a genuine question, and one that speaks to the title of this post. Are we going to look back on BFA as the big Old God expansion that, in the end, it actually was? Or were there too many distractions from that plot to make it feel satisfying?
Let's talk gameplay.
If we want to talk about convoluted systems, look ye to Azerite armor.
Let's get this straight:
You have a necklace, and it upgrades with artifact power like the weapons in Legion. Ok. But in this case, the necklace's upgrades are pretty much just item level. Simpler, right?
Ok, but you also have special pieces for your helmet, shoulders, and chest that have, essentially, artifact traits that you can choose from. In the end, epic pieces wind up with two major traits, one medium trait, one minor trait, and a final item level boost, all unlocked based on your Heart of Azeroth level. Sometimes, if you get a higher item level piece, you'll need a higher HoA level to unlock the same trait. But every piece has its own array of options.
Ok, and now you also have Essences that you plug into your Heart of Azeroth that give you one activated ability and one passive one. You have a slot for the activated ability one and can unlock more slots for passives as you level your Heart of Azeroth.
Ok, and now there's corrupted gear. You have a chance to get a piece of gear with a cool effect, but it will add to your corruption level. As your corruption level increases, you get various detriments that can make things harder for you. However, you can do Horrific Visions to upgrade a legendary cloak (there's a cloak now) to increase your corruption resistance, which can negate those effects.
Horrific Visions are not time-gated, but you need to get Coalescing Visions in order to buy a Vessel of Horrific Visions to run them, and the sources for Coalescing Visions are mostly time-gated, though you could, in theory, grind like crazy, getting 3-4 per mob killed to speed you to the 10,000 you need to get a single vessel.
Are you exhausted? I'm exhausted.
There are also Island Expeditions, which are kind of like 3-player scenarios from Mists of Pandaria with a bunch of randomized elements that are designed to be the most efficient way to get Azerite.
Wait, we're not done?
Titan Residuum. Warfronts.
It's a LOT.
And honestly, while new gameplay systems can make an expansion feel different, dear lord what the hell, Blizzard?
To wrap up:
It's obviously too early to assess the longterm legacy of BFA. I haven't even touched on Allied Races, for instance, which I think are almost entirely a positive for the game (though I worry for any new player who starts in Shadowlands or later that wants to play a Mechagnome - that'll be a tough grind.) I cannot think we're going to rank this as low as Warlords given that there was, truly, tons to do this expansion. But I also think Blizzard would do well to take a step back and get some perspective on things like gameplay systems and also the sort of story that players want.
Personally, while I'm disappointed we're not getting a Necromancer class with it, I'm really excited about Shadowlands in a way that I was not about BFA. It remains to be seen, of course, whether Covenants will be cool like Artifact Weapons or a convoluted mess like Azerite gear. What I think I'm most excited about is the fact that it looks to be a massive expansion of the lore - bigger than anything we've really seen before, in fact. If this is basically World of Warcraft: Planescape, I'm super in.
BFA is in a weird place right now. I think that a lot of people like the current concepts that came with 8.3 - Horrific Visions, Old God ominousness. Maybe people are much more divided over Corrupted Gear (I think it's cool, personally, but I'm also not a serious razor's edge raider who is getting gear that he can't use yet because of the gating on working on the cloak.)
But BFA nevertheless does not feel like it's going to go down as one of WoW's best expansions. Indeed, some are calling it the game's worst (though I think those people must have amnesia if they think BFA could unseat Warlords of Draenor.)
In fact, let's talk about BFA's problems compared to those of Warlords.
Warlords, to my mind, had three key problems:
The first was that Blizzard had always had this ambition to come out with an expansion every year prior to Warlords, and it was with 6.0 that they attempted to actually do this. Given that, in a typical expansion cycle, the final patch of an expansion tends to come out roughly a year after the expansion came out, for Warlords, they just cut that final patch, giving us two raid tiers in place of the usual three. Blizzard couldn't actually deliver the follow-up in 2015, though (holy crap I feel old) and so, rather than speed up the expansion cycle, we just had a massive content drought. And this is before we even consider the fact that maybe, two years is actually a better interval for expansions, as one-year expansions would make every threat we face feel underdeveloped and gone too soon (not to mention I don't think players want to plop down the cash for a new expansion every year on top of subscription fees.)
Second, the story was convoluted as hell, and then didn't even make use of its most interesting elements. The eponymous Warlords - the original leaders of the Old Horde - were almost all wiped out in the first patch, and the notion that this would be an alternate path for the Horde wound up being undone as they just fell to demonic corruption anyway. The only fun time-travel trope to occur was the production of a new Gul'dan, but you could count the actual long-term impacts of the expansion on a single finger. And while yes, time travel is a hard subject to write, for those of us who love it as a sci-fi/fantasy concept, don't promise it and then totally ignore its potential. Where the Fel was the Infinite Dragonflight in all of this?
Third, Garrisons. Blizzard demonstrated how their "gameplay trumps flavor" preference for design turned what should have been a fun player-housing concept into a joyless ghost town with myriad solutions in search of problems to solve. Garrisons dragged down various systems - including gearing, kind of the most central system in the game - with them.
So let's compare those failings with BFA:
BFA does not lack for content. We got a full three raid tiers (with a starter raid and a bonus mini-raid) even if the elimination of tier gear means they're not "proper" tiers. (Also, can I just take a moment to complain that raid gear this expansion is really underwhelming aesthetically? It all looks at best like blue dungeon gear. Where's the crazy glowing bits? Where's the intricate designs and particle effects? At level 120 I'm a ridiculous battle-god, and I should look like it.) But we've also seen experiments in world content like the more free-form Mechagon world quest, stuff like the Bee mount grind, and stuff like the Nazjatar findable quests. Plus, we've got a totally different leveling story for Alliance versus Horde, and tons of story quests to take us through the War Campaign.
Story-wise, I'm very split here. I think BFA's story was one that I didn't want them to do, but that they told very well - or rather, part of it was. I know that defenders of the expansion keep telling me that Sylvanas was not Garrosh 2.0, but frankly, I disagree. Sylvanas was unexpectedly named Warchief by her more enlightened predecessor, went on to make the Horde more ruthless and expansionist, and then escalated the conflict by attacking a major Alliance settlement and destroying it with many civilian deaths. Her brutality and authoritarian tendencies inspired a celebrated hero of the Horde who had previously been partially complicit in her actions to turn from her and organize a resistance, which ultimately led to a combined force of Alliance and rebel Horde forces to the gates of Orgrimmar. Then, when she was unseated by the actions of this rebellion, she escaped punishment and broke reality in order to usher in the next expansion.
I mean... are you really telling me that this is totally different from what we saw with Garrosh?
But I think the early stuff - showing the outward appearance of Zandalari stability crumble in the face of Zul's actions and deep-delving into Jaina's psychological journey and quest to win back her peoples' trust (guys, we got a pre-rendered cinematic for a dungeon) - were really well-done. Yes, I'm sick of how my characters are forced to forget the lessons they learn every expansion about how Azeroth is safer and better for everyone when the factions learn to work alongside one another instead of murdering one another (a lesson the Horde seems to have a harder time with than the Alliance, I'll note) but the story was told well.
If anything, BFA's problem here is that, rather than not touching on enough (like Warlords ignoring any of the cool time-travel issues,) BFA basically had two major plots, and while I think it gave the faction war story plenty of material, the N'zoth story - one that I think could have underscored an entire expansion - felt short-changed, despite having three of the five raids dedicated to it (arguably four given that Uldir is basically an Old God raid.) Indeed, when you actually take a step back, this definitely was an Old God expansion. So why didn't it feel like one?
That's a genuine question, and one that speaks to the title of this post. Are we going to look back on BFA as the big Old God expansion that, in the end, it actually was? Or were there too many distractions from that plot to make it feel satisfying?
Let's talk gameplay.
If we want to talk about convoluted systems, look ye to Azerite armor.
Let's get this straight:
You have a necklace, and it upgrades with artifact power like the weapons in Legion. Ok. But in this case, the necklace's upgrades are pretty much just item level. Simpler, right?
Ok, but you also have special pieces for your helmet, shoulders, and chest that have, essentially, artifact traits that you can choose from. In the end, epic pieces wind up with two major traits, one medium trait, one minor trait, and a final item level boost, all unlocked based on your Heart of Azeroth level. Sometimes, if you get a higher item level piece, you'll need a higher HoA level to unlock the same trait. But every piece has its own array of options.
Ok, and now you also have Essences that you plug into your Heart of Azeroth that give you one activated ability and one passive one. You have a slot for the activated ability one and can unlock more slots for passives as you level your Heart of Azeroth.
Ok, and now there's corrupted gear. You have a chance to get a piece of gear with a cool effect, but it will add to your corruption level. As your corruption level increases, you get various detriments that can make things harder for you. However, you can do Horrific Visions to upgrade a legendary cloak (there's a cloak now) to increase your corruption resistance, which can negate those effects.
Horrific Visions are not time-gated, but you need to get Coalescing Visions in order to buy a Vessel of Horrific Visions to run them, and the sources for Coalescing Visions are mostly time-gated, though you could, in theory, grind like crazy, getting 3-4 per mob killed to speed you to the 10,000 you need to get a single vessel.
Are you exhausted? I'm exhausted.
There are also Island Expeditions, which are kind of like 3-player scenarios from Mists of Pandaria with a bunch of randomized elements that are designed to be the most efficient way to get Azerite.
Wait, we're not done?
Titan Residuum. Warfronts.
It's a LOT.
And honestly, while new gameplay systems can make an expansion feel different, dear lord what the hell, Blizzard?
To wrap up:
It's obviously too early to assess the longterm legacy of BFA. I haven't even touched on Allied Races, for instance, which I think are almost entirely a positive for the game (though I worry for any new player who starts in Shadowlands or later that wants to play a Mechagnome - that'll be a tough grind.) I cannot think we're going to rank this as low as Warlords given that there was, truly, tons to do this expansion. But I also think Blizzard would do well to take a step back and get some perspective on things like gameplay systems and also the sort of story that players want.
Personally, while I'm disappointed we're not getting a Necromancer class with it, I'm really excited about Shadowlands in a way that I was not about BFA. It remains to be seen, of course, whether Covenants will be cool like Artifact Weapons or a convoluted mess like Azerite gear. What I think I'm most excited about is the fact that it looks to be a massive expansion of the lore - bigger than anything we've really seen before, in fact. If this is basically World of Warcraft: Planescape, I'm super in.
Monday, January 27, 2020
Torn on Gating and Difficulty for Horrific Visions
I've failed Horrific Visions a couple times. It feels real bad.
With the assaults and the major Blacktalon Agent dailies, it seems you can get enough Coalescing Visions to do about three or four Horrific Visions per week, and maybe an extra one about every week or two if you're diligent about doing all the dailies in Uldum and the Vale.
Apparently those dailies initially gave 50 CVs, but now give 250, which is theoretically a good thing - more Visions - but also makes it feel five times worse to skip one of those dailies. You'd still need to do 40 daily quests to get a single additional Horrific Vision, which is why I'm not actually getting too stressed about it, though - but it's that gradual sense of losing out in the long run.
Now, the Visions themselves:
The times I've failed is when I've tried to space out my use of Sanity Restoration Orbs, saving them for when I'm really starting to run low, and then getting into some situation where I'm getting knocked into multiple groups and unable to get out of combat to use the orb (the madness effect that makes you leap from imagined fires is very frustrating.)
So there's a part of me that wishes that we could just run them over and over like the Deaths of Chromie scenario, grinding at it to make our runs more efficient and thus more capable of completing additional objectives.
On the other hand, time gating is a tool Blizzard uses for pacing purposes.
Time gating itself is a controversial tool in Blizzard's arsenal. Cynically, you might think that Blizzard does it to keep players subscribed to the game longer. Yes, you have to wait a week for the raid to reset before you can try again for the loot you want.
I'm not sure I could really put it past them to consider the monetary rewards of time gating, but I don't think it's pure cynicism either.
Gating allows them to pace content. Because WoW is a social game, they want lots of players to be playing at the same time, and that's more likely if players are playing frequently - and for longer stretches. But beyond even that, slowing down the pace allows players to relax - you might only be able to log on for an hour a night, and time gating gives you a chance to keep up with players who can play all day.
It can also make the content feel more substantial. Indeed, in 8.3, they released the raid far earlier than I expected. I'm sure in part this was because it had taken so long to get 8.3 after 8.2, but even then I'm not sure I feel it was the right choice.
Conceptually, I love the idea of Visions of N'zoth. WoW has a tendency to make its supernatural threats ultimate a kind of military engagement. The game is based on the RTS series, after all. And so you have its zombie plague organized as a military force in the Scourge. You have its demonic world-destroyers organized as a military force in the Burning Legion. And, frankly, you typically have its Lovecraftian elder gods organized as a military force in the various Aqir or N'raqi forces.
But N'zoth was never militarily strong like Y'Shaarj, C'thun, or Yogg-Saron were. The notion that N'zoth must attack people through their own perceptions really makes N'zoth very different from other Warcraft villains we've seen before.
And the idea that N'zoth is not invading with some army of Aqir (well, he is, but that's kind of a side project) but is instead doing this reality-warping, alternate-universe-dystopia-overlay strategy is just a super cool fantasy concept. (It reminds me a bit of the Phyrexians' use of the plane of Rath in the Invasion Block of Magic: the Gathering, but while Rath was actually just a physical place that carried the Phyrexian forces, Ny'alotha is a much more psychological, dreamlike realm.)
So, to be honest, I wish we had more of this before we actually got to fight and destroy him.
There's certainly aspects of this that suggest that maybe, perhaps, we should have gotten a whole expansion of this stuff (read: yes, we absolutely should have.)
But also, mechanically, while I really enjoy doing the Horrific Visions, and want to hop in immediately if I fail one, the fact that I can't does make me take it more seriously when I do get to run one.
Of course, that makes it all the more frustrating when I do make an error - pulling one too many mobs when I'm getting low on Sanity, for instance - despite the serious strategic considerations I've made.
With the assaults and the major Blacktalon Agent dailies, it seems you can get enough Coalescing Visions to do about three or four Horrific Visions per week, and maybe an extra one about every week or two if you're diligent about doing all the dailies in Uldum and the Vale.
Apparently those dailies initially gave 50 CVs, but now give 250, which is theoretically a good thing - more Visions - but also makes it feel five times worse to skip one of those dailies. You'd still need to do 40 daily quests to get a single additional Horrific Vision, which is why I'm not actually getting too stressed about it, though - but it's that gradual sense of losing out in the long run.
Now, the Visions themselves:
The times I've failed is when I've tried to space out my use of Sanity Restoration Orbs, saving them for when I'm really starting to run low, and then getting into some situation where I'm getting knocked into multiple groups and unable to get out of combat to use the orb (the madness effect that makes you leap from imagined fires is very frustrating.)
So there's a part of me that wishes that we could just run them over and over like the Deaths of Chromie scenario, grinding at it to make our runs more efficient and thus more capable of completing additional objectives.
On the other hand, time gating is a tool Blizzard uses for pacing purposes.
Time gating itself is a controversial tool in Blizzard's arsenal. Cynically, you might think that Blizzard does it to keep players subscribed to the game longer. Yes, you have to wait a week for the raid to reset before you can try again for the loot you want.
I'm not sure I could really put it past them to consider the monetary rewards of time gating, but I don't think it's pure cynicism either.
Gating allows them to pace content. Because WoW is a social game, they want lots of players to be playing at the same time, and that's more likely if players are playing frequently - and for longer stretches. But beyond even that, slowing down the pace allows players to relax - you might only be able to log on for an hour a night, and time gating gives you a chance to keep up with players who can play all day.
It can also make the content feel more substantial. Indeed, in 8.3, they released the raid far earlier than I expected. I'm sure in part this was because it had taken so long to get 8.3 after 8.2, but even then I'm not sure I feel it was the right choice.
Conceptually, I love the idea of Visions of N'zoth. WoW has a tendency to make its supernatural threats ultimate a kind of military engagement. The game is based on the RTS series, after all. And so you have its zombie plague organized as a military force in the Scourge. You have its demonic world-destroyers organized as a military force in the Burning Legion. And, frankly, you typically have its Lovecraftian elder gods organized as a military force in the various Aqir or N'raqi forces.
But N'zoth was never militarily strong like Y'Shaarj, C'thun, or Yogg-Saron were. The notion that N'zoth must attack people through their own perceptions really makes N'zoth very different from other Warcraft villains we've seen before.
And the idea that N'zoth is not invading with some army of Aqir (well, he is, but that's kind of a side project) but is instead doing this reality-warping, alternate-universe-dystopia-overlay strategy is just a super cool fantasy concept. (It reminds me a bit of the Phyrexians' use of the plane of Rath in the Invasion Block of Magic: the Gathering, but while Rath was actually just a physical place that carried the Phyrexian forces, Ny'alotha is a much more psychological, dreamlike realm.)
So, to be honest, I wish we had more of this before we actually got to fight and destroy him.
There's certainly aspects of this that suggest that maybe, perhaps, we should have gotten a whole expansion of this stuff (read: yes, we absolutely should have.)
But also, mechanically, while I really enjoy doing the Horrific Visions, and want to hop in immediately if I fail one, the fact that I can't does make me take it more seriously when I do get to run one.
Of course, that makes it all the more frustrating when I do make an error - pulling one too many mobs when I'm getting low on Sanity, for instance - despite the serious strategic considerations I've made.
Saturday, January 25, 2020
Ranking the WoW Expansions So Far: 2020
I don't believe I've done this before, despite this blog being now like seven years old. Now that BFA has come out with its final patch, we've got the thing in its entirety to look at.
The following is going to be a totally subjective ranking. If you loved Warlords of Draenor (for some reason) and hated Wrath of the Lich King (for some reason,) I'm not saying your opinion is invalid, but I'll certainly disagree with you. Also, there are factors outside of the game that play into my various feelings about these expansions. For instance, I was going through a very painful period in my life in 2016 and 2017 and having a compelling escape from that was very useful to me.
I think I'm going to go from least favorite to favorite. I'm not going to be including Vanilla here because, while I did start playing before any of the expansions came out, it was only about four months before BC was released, and I don't have a very holistic experience of Vanilla to look back on.
Also, I've been playing this game since 2006, so there's obviously some nostalgia involved here. Some of the expansions really brought new things to the game that, later on, one could take for granted. So let's start:
Warlords of Draenor:
What I still consider the nadir of WoW (so far,) Warlords did have a few positive features. I found many specs fun to play in the post-Mists pruning, and of course we got the new character models for pre-Cataclysm races. Plus, there was finally a focus on the Draenei, possibly my favorite playable race, who had been kind of sidelined even in the expansion that introduced them.
But Warlords had huge problems. First, Garrisons were a total bust - initially set up as some kind of customizable player housing, they instead became a reason to just sit around and run missions without actually going out and playing. You could get very nice gear by doing essentially nothing, which meant doing something felt futile. On top of that, there were only two raid tiers, making it really just two thirds of a full expansion, but Blizzard wasn't able to follow through on the plan to make that work by actually coming out with the next expansion the following year. Thankfully, they abandoned the ridiculous goal (that they had talked about for a long time) of trying to come out with annual expansions, but Warlords suffered for it.
Finally, Warlords' story took what could have been a very cool time-travel/alternate universe-themed expansion and tossed out everything that could have made such a plot interesting, and then didn't even deliver on making the eponymous warlords interesting, killing all but two of them off in the first patch. It didn't work.
Cataclysm:
I'm a bit torn on this one: the remake of the Old World was, I think, a very important modernization of the leveling system. I might be in the minority on that point, given the popularity of Classic. But as someone who found the grinding from the old game far less compelling than the ability to truly quest all the way up to 58, I really needed this change.
The problem with Cataclysm was at the higher levels. There was practically no world content except the Molten Front in the middle of the expansion, and for a good chunk of the expansion, you basically could only run Zul'Aman and Zul'Gurub - both dungeons being retreads of old raids - over and over to progress your character if you weren't raiding. Also, with raid difficulty pushed way harder than its predecessor, Wrath, a lot of the casual raiding guilds that had sprung up were sundered or demoralized in Cataclysm - my guild basically didn't do much serious raiding again until Legion.
Much like Warlords, Cata suffered from a lack of content - but at least Cataclysm had the excuse that the level designers had basically remade the entirety of vanilla on top of the new zones and content.
Battle for Azeroth:
This could go up or down in ranking with time. I was initially going to put it behind Cataclysm, but the thing is, on paper, BFA looks like an awesome expansion. Two continents, all the allied races, a separate leveling experience for the two factions, and tons of in-game cinematics and compelling characters.
So why does it not feel like a good expansion?
First off, Azerite Armor was a terribly designed system. And they were too committed to it as a central expansion feature by the time that was apparent that they were never able to fix it. Essences were a bit better, and I actually think Corrupted gear is a genuinely cool system, but Azerite Armor has actually made the game less fun to play, completely losing all the coolness factors of Artifact Weapons and keeping only the fiddly annoying aspects.
Second, BFA renewed the faction conflict for an audience that had already gotten sick of it by the end of Mists of Pandaria. On top of that, it was yet again an act of horrific destruction committed by the Horde while under the control of an unpopular and divisive Warchief against the Alliance that led to a rebellion within the Horde, making the Alliance feel like background characters... again.
But beyond that, the early focus on the faction conflict meant that its later focus - on N'zoth and Ny'alotha, felt rushed. And on top of that, the two plots didn't actually wind up having much to do with each other at all (given that it was the Jailor, and not N'zoth, who was manipulating the factions into fighting one another.)
The actual content they came out with was good, but the messy story and profoundly convoluted gameplay mechanics really undercut what could have been a fantastic expansion.
Burning Crusade:
This one's a little hard to evaluate, in part because it was so long ago, but also because it sort of established to me what "baseline WoW" was. While it grated with some, I personally loved the science fantasy aspect to it. Clearly, Illidan was done so dirty here that they had to bring him back for Legion (where they did right by him.) But BC also kind of established what it meant to be a WoW expansion.
They certainly got some things wrong, like releasing tiers 4 and 5 with the expansion, and coming out with what was supposed to be the final raid in 2.1. BC seriously shows its age these days, but just making gear that was actually useful and broadening the game to the point where, for example, classes that weren't Warriors could tank, was really great.
Mists of Pandaria:
I know a lot of people view this as the best expansion, but I disagree. Still, Mists did a few things really, really well. It was the first expansion to really truly start focusing on stuff that wasn't from the RTS games - inventing a compelling an interesting group of cultures for Pandaria, and deepening the lore of Azeroth. 5.1's Landfall patch gave us the first really compelling max-level quest narrative.
I will say that this expansion was frustrating to me as someone who loved tanking dungeons. 5-player dungeons became totally irrelevant pretty early on in the expansion, and along with them, Blizzard started to shift away from deterministic gear acquisition, which I think has been a problem ever since they did so.
But the expansion did become much more narrative-driven, which I think was a great direction to take the game.
Wrath of the Lich King:
Given that it was my favorite expansion for the better part of a decade, it almost feels disloyal to put this at #2. There were several factors that made this good: first, I'll say, was the introduction of the Death Knight, which remains one of my favorite classes (I often dream of making my DK my main, but I feel too much loyalty to my Paladin - and his many exalted reputations and other character-specific things.) But it also dialed the difficulty down to make the game accessible to mere mortals. You also had the Scourge, and Arthas, who remain Warcrafts' most iconic villains, and a narrative that kept you invested in fighting Arthas from the beginning of the expansion to the final boss fight.
Toss in Dual-Spec, Ulduar, and a system that would allow you to gear up alts even if they weren't raiding characters, and it makes sense that this expansion basically created the high water mark of WoW subscriptions (even if it didn't technically hit that peak until early Cataclysm.)
It wasn't perfect, of course - there were awkward points in the expansion, like when Trial of the Crusader - a genuinely bad raid - came out so soon after Ulduar - arguably the best raid in all of WoW - or how, yes, technically the Protection Paladin 969 rotation was a pretty dull affair. But still, it was damn good.
Legion:
I think Legion might find some detractors who fault it for having some of the issues the past few expansions have had - like its over-reliance on RNG (especially for Legendaries, dear lord.) But this expansion did so many things so right: not only did it introduce another very cool class in the form of the Demon Hunter, but it also gave you a reason to be excited about your class regardless of which one you were playing thanks to the Class Hall stuff and Artifact weapons.
Legion also gave us Suramar, which I think is probably the best quest-based storytelling they've ever done, and did something that previous max-level zones (Vale of Eternal Blossoms, I'm looking at you) failed to - which was to have a deep and involved story with compelling characters that didn't stop just because you had hit the level cap.
Plus, after the confusing stakes of its predecessor, Warlords of Draenor, Legion had a truly compelling sense of stakes.
I'll confess I think that the expansion seemed to lose a little steam after the first couple patches - The Broken Shore was really dull as a questing zone and while Argus was profoundly cool-looking, I really wish we'd gotten a Suramar level of detailed story there rather than the somewhat standard "handful of quests in the first weeks of the patch" treatment it got. And the Netherlight Crucible was kind of a portent for the crappiness of the Azerite armor system. But this expansion gave us Illidan's Rejection of the Gift, Velen's 25,000-year sigh of relief, and the entire Pantheon - Sargeras included. It was big in a way that WoW deserves to be by this point.
So.
We have Shadowlands coming out this year. Premise-wise, I'm very, very excited for it. But I do wonder where it will stand within these rankings. Historically, a lot of people agree that the even-numbered expansions (Wrath, Mists, and Legion) are usually better than the odd-numbered ones (which is clearly reflected in this list.) But while the expansion looks cool, we still have only a vague sense of its mechanics. And I think a lot of us were disappointed when there was no new class announced with the expansion - breaking the tradition of new classes coming every other expansion. Indeed, this will be the first expansion since Warlords with no new major character types (i.e. race or class.)
I'm hoping it will rank up there with Legion and Wrath, and I'm tempted to imagine it could on the strength of its aesthetics and its narrative ambitions. But it truly remains to be seen.
The following is going to be a totally subjective ranking. If you loved Warlords of Draenor (for some reason) and hated Wrath of the Lich King (for some reason,) I'm not saying your opinion is invalid, but I'll certainly disagree with you. Also, there are factors outside of the game that play into my various feelings about these expansions. For instance, I was going through a very painful period in my life in 2016 and 2017 and having a compelling escape from that was very useful to me.
I think I'm going to go from least favorite to favorite. I'm not going to be including Vanilla here because, while I did start playing before any of the expansions came out, it was only about four months before BC was released, and I don't have a very holistic experience of Vanilla to look back on.
Also, I've been playing this game since 2006, so there's obviously some nostalgia involved here. Some of the expansions really brought new things to the game that, later on, one could take for granted. So let's start:
Warlords of Draenor:
What I still consider the nadir of WoW (so far,) Warlords did have a few positive features. I found many specs fun to play in the post-Mists pruning, and of course we got the new character models for pre-Cataclysm races. Plus, there was finally a focus on the Draenei, possibly my favorite playable race, who had been kind of sidelined even in the expansion that introduced them.
But Warlords had huge problems. First, Garrisons were a total bust - initially set up as some kind of customizable player housing, they instead became a reason to just sit around and run missions without actually going out and playing. You could get very nice gear by doing essentially nothing, which meant doing something felt futile. On top of that, there were only two raid tiers, making it really just two thirds of a full expansion, but Blizzard wasn't able to follow through on the plan to make that work by actually coming out with the next expansion the following year. Thankfully, they abandoned the ridiculous goal (that they had talked about for a long time) of trying to come out with annual expansions, but Warlords suffered for it.
Finally, Warlords' story took what could have been a very cool time-travel/alternate universe-themed expansion and tossed out everything that could have made such a plot interesting, and then didn't even deliver on making the eponymous warlords interesting, killing all but two of them off in the first patch. It didn't work.
Cataclysm:
I'm a bit torn on this one: the remake of the Old World was, I think, a very important modernization of the leveling system. I might be in the minority on that point, given the popularity of Classic. But as someone who found the grinding from the old game far less compelling than the ability to truly quest all the way up to 58, I really needed this change.
The problem with Cataclysm was at the higher levels. There was practically no world content except the Molten Front in the middle of the expansion, and for a good chunk of the expansion, you basically could only run Zul'Aman and Zul'Gurub - both dungeons being retreads of old raids - over and over to progress your character if you weren't raiding. Also, with raid difficulty pushed way harder than its predecessor, Wrath, a lot of the casual raiding guilds that had sprung up were sundered or demoralized in Cataclysm - my guild basically didn't do much serious raiding again until Legion.
Much like Warlords, Cata suffered from a lack of content - but at least Cataclysm had the excuse that the level designers had basically remade the entirety of vanilla on top of the new zones and content.
Battle for Azeroth:
This could go up or down in ranking with time. I was initially going to put it behind Cataclysm, but the thing is, on paper, BFA looks like an awesome expansion. Two continents, all the allied races, a separate leveling experience for the two factions, and tons of in-game cinematics and compelling characters.
So why does it not feel like a good expansion?
First off, Azerite Armor was a terribly designed system. And they were too committed to it as a central expansion feature by the time that was apparent that they were never able to fix it. Essences were a bit better, and I actually think Corrupted gear is a genuinely cool system, but Azerite Armor has actually made the game less fun to play, completely losing all the coolness factors of Artifact Weapons and keeping only the fiddly annoying aspects.
Second, BFA renewed the faction conflict for an audience that had already gotten sick of it by the end of Mists of Pandaria. On top of that, it was yet again an act of horrific destruction committed by the Horde while under the control of an unpopular and divisive Warchief against the Alliance that led to a rebellion within the Horde, making the Alliance feel like background characters... again.
But beyond that, the early focus on the faction conflict meant that its later focus - on N'zoth and Ny'alotha, felt rushed. And on top of that, the two plots didn't actually wind up having much to do with each other at all (given that it was the Jailor, and not N'zoth, who was manipulating the factions into fighting one another.)
The actual content they came out with was good, but the messy story and profoundly convoluted gameplay mechanics really undercut what could have been a fantastic expansion.
Burning Crusade:
This one's a little hard to evaluate, in part because it was so long ago, but also because it sort of established to me what "baseline WoW" was. While it grated with some, I personally loved the science fantasy aspect to it. Clearly, Illidan was done so dirty here that they had to bring him back for Legion (where they did right by him.) But BC also kind of established what it meant to be a WoW expansion.
They certainly got some things wrong, like releasing tiers 4 and 5 with the expansion, and coming out with what was supposed to be the final raid in 2.1. BC seriously shows its age these days, but just making gear that was actually useful and broadening the game to the point where, for example, classes that weren't Warriors could tank, was really great.
Mists of Pandaria:
I know a lot of people view this as the best expansion, but I disagree. Still, Mists did a few things really, really well. It was the first expansion to really truly start focusing on stuff that wasn't from the RTS games - inventing a compelling an interesting group of cultures for Pandaria, and deepening the lore of Azeroth. 5.1's Landfall patch gave us the first really compelling max-level quest narrative.
I will say that this expansion was frustrating to me as someone who loved tanking dungeons. 5-player dungeons became totally irrelevant pretty early on in the expansion, and along with them, Blizzard started to shift away from deterministic gear acquisition, which I think has been a problem ever since they did so.
But the expansion did become much more narrative-driven, which I think was a great direction to take the game.
Wrath of the Lich King:
Given that it was my favorite expansion for the better part of a decade, it almost feels disloyal to put this at #2. There were several factors that made this good: first, I'll say, was the introduction of the Death Knight, which remains one of my favorite classes (I often dream of making my DK my main, but I feel too much loyalty to my Paladin - and his many exalted reputations and other character-specific things.) But it also dialed the difficulty down to make the game accessible to mere mortals. You also had the Scourge, and Arthas, who remain Warcrafts' most iconic villains, and a narrative that kept you invested in fighting Arthas from the beginning of the expansion to the final boss fight.
Toss in Dual-Spec, Ulduar, and a system that would allow you to gear up alts even if they weren't raiding characters, and it makes sense that this expansion basically created the high water mark of WoW subscriptions (even if it didn't technically hit that peak until early Cataclysm.)
It wasn't perfect, of course - there were awkward points in the expansion, like when Trial of the Crusader - a genuinely bad raid - came out so soon after Ulduar - arguably the best raid in all of WoW - or how, yes, technically the Protection Paladin 969 rotation was a pretty dull affair. But still, it was damn good.
Legion:
I think Legion might find some detractors who fault it for having some of the issues the past few expansions have had - like its over-reliance on RNG (especially for Legendaries, dear lord.) But this expansion did so many things so right: not only did it introduce another very cool class in the form of the Demon Hunter, but it also gave you a reason to be excited about your class regardless of which one you were playing thanks to the Class Hall stuff and Artifact weapons.
Legion also gave us Suramar, which I think is probably the best quest-based storytelling they've ever done, and did something that previous max-level zones (Vale of Eternal Blossoms, I'm looking at you) failed to - which was to have a deep and involved story with compelling characters that didn't stop just because you had hit the level cap.
Plus, after the confusing stakes of its predecessor, Warlords of Draenor, Legion had a truly compelling sense of stakes.
I'll confess I think that the expansion seemed to lose a little steam after the first couple patches - The Broken Shore was really dull as a questing zone and while Argus was profoundly cool-looking, I really wish we'd gotten a Suramar level of detailed story there rather than the somewhat standard "handful of quests in the first weeks of the patch" treatment it got. And the Netherlight Crucible was kind of a portent for the crappiness of the Azerite armor system. But this expansion gave us Illidan's Rejection of the Gift, Velen's 25,000-year sigh of relief, and the entire Pantheon - Sargeras included. It was big in a way that WoW deserves to be by this point.
So.
We have Shadowlands coming out this year. Premise-wise, I'm very, very excited for it. But I do wonder where it will stand within these rankings. Historically, a lot of people agree that the even-numbered expansions (Wrath, Mists, and Legion) are usually better than the odd-numbered ones (which is clearly reflected in this list.) But while the expansion looks cool, we still have only a vague sense of its mechanics. And I think a lot of us were disappointed when there was no new class announced with the expansion - breaking the tradition of new classes coming every other expansion. Indeed, this will be the first expansion since Warlords with no new major character types (i.e. race or class.)
I'm hoping it will rank up there with Legion and Wrath, and I'm tempted to imagine it could on the strength of its aesthetics and its narrative ambitions. But it truly remains to be seen.
Thursday, January 23, 2020
The Fate of Azeroth, the Titan
There are going to be spoilers here for the end of the Ny'alotha raid, which I have not yet entered (though I'm going to make an effort to actually do it at least on LFR this time, having more or less skipped Dazar'alor and definitely not having done any of the Eternal Palace, which I feel weirdly guilty about.)
The final raid of BFA, Ny'alotha is the alternate-universe created by N'zoth that he wishes to basically overlay onto ours, completing the corruption of Azeroth in one fell swoop. Meanwhile, we've recalibrated the Forge of Reorigination to fire as a weapon, targeting N'zoth himself.
SPOILERS AHOY (likely for the last time - we'll have the old Spoilers Ahead warning for Shadowlands.)
The final raid of BFA, Ny'alotha is the alternate-universe created by N'zoth that he wishes to basically overlay onto ours, completing the corruption of Azeroth in one fell swoop. Meanwhile, we've recalibrated the Forge of Reorigination to fire as a weapon, targeting N'zoth himself.
SPOILERS AHOY (likely for the last time - we'll have the old Spoilers Ahead warning for Shadowlands.)
Wednesday, January 22, 2020
Horrific Visions
Let's get this out of the way:
Horrific Visions, the big non-raid gameplay system they've introduced in 8.3, is a bit convoluted.
You basically need to do Assaults, Daily Quests, and those specific dailies where you go into a different horrific vision in the various assault zones to farm Coalescing Visions.
(Brief aside: I think the quests where you go into the Ny'alotha version of the Vale or Uldum are a little confused, aesthetically. They seem to only pop up when it's the Black Empire assault in that zone, which already makes things dark and filled with gross flesh monsters and floating obelisks.)
Once you get 10,000 Coalescing Visions (an amount that makes the 5-10 you get off a single creature feel negligible) you can trade them in for the key item you need to start a Horrific Vision.
It seems like we'll alternate between Stormwind and Orgrimmar each week.
If you haven't done this yet, here's how it works:
Once you've gotten through the quests to get your legendary cloak, you can brave the visions. While inside, you'll see a sanity meter that slowly depletes over time, capped initially at 1000. Each vision is divided into five areas, with three different levels of corruption.
Cathedral Square and the Valley of Strength are both starting areas for the respective visions. Here, sanity drains at a baseline of 4 per second. Other areas drain it at 8 per second, and then 12 per second. Additionally, each zone has a different "insanity effect," which will generally make things more inconvenient but sometimes also provide an opportunity to get a buff.
You can do these with 1-5 players, though so far I have only done them solo.
You can sort of choose your difficulty by venturing into various areas within the vision. To end it successfully, you'll have to fight the final boss - Alleria in Stormwind or Thrall in Orgrimmar. The first few times you go in, you'll want to stick to the first area and head for the boss more or less immediately.
If you drop to zero sanity or zero hit points, the vision ends early, potentially robbing you of your rewards (I was very sad to mess up on my last one on my paladin today and not get his reward.) I believe that if you play as a team you can revive other players, but the instance scales in health and damage the more players you bring.
Wrathion sends you to collect an item off the various zone-bosses (at first he just has you go after Alleria/Thrall) to upgrade your cloak. There is also a currency you'll earn with each creature you slay in the instance, which then allows you to upgrade a talent-tree to improve your chances in the visions.
So far, I've enjoyed them, though it is a bit frustrating when you screw up and don't get your prize, which feels like a major setback given the timegating on the currency you need to buy the key. In case you couldn't tell from that sentence, it's also quite convoluted.
But I will say that the visions themselves are pretty cool places to explore. The Stormwind one in particular has had some very creepy, nightmarish things. The whole premise is that this is the dark world that N'zoth wants to kind of overlay over the real Azeroth - it's a vision of the dystopian future should N'zoth succeed.
In the visions, not only has Alleria gone mad and sacrificed her son Arator to the Void (and seems to have mortally wounded her husband Turalyon,) but there are also details like all the orphans from the Stromwind Orphanage singing and playing around the dead orphan matron. There's even a rat around the Stormwind canals that, if attacked, cries out for you to stop, but attacks you so you can't. When it dies, it turns into (if I recall correctly) Topper McNabb, a well-known Stormwind citizen to anyone who's hung out in the game. Then a cat comes out, thanks you for killing him, and begins to eat.
I keep thinking about how cool it would have been if this kind of nightmare-version of Azeroth had been a bigger part of BFA. I'll maintain that mechanics have generally been the expansion's biggest issue (I'm so eager to ditch Azerite gear once Shadowlands comes out,) but I also think that the choice to split the narrative between the faction war and the Old God stuff left both halves (well, especially the Old God stuff) unsatisfying.
You almost wonder if they should have made this all about the faction war and then have the big reveal that N'zoth was behind it all along only come at the very end, leading into a Ny'alotha expansion.
Don't get me wrong, I'm very excited for Shadowlands, but it seems like there's the seed of a really great expansion in this patch, but one that will never sprout.
Horrific Visions, the big non-raid gameplay system they've introduced in 8.3, is a bit convoluted.
You basically need to do Assaults, Daily Quests, and those specific dailies where you go into a different horrific vision in the various assault zones to farm Coalescing Visions.
(Brief aside: I think the quests where you go into the Ny'alotha version of the Vale or Uldum are a little confused, aesthetically. They seem to only pop up when it's the Black Empire assault in that zone, which already makes things dark and filled with gross flesh monsters and floating obelisks.)
Once you get 10,000 Coalescing Visions (an amount that makes the 5-10 you get off a single creature feel negligible) you can trade them in for the key item you need to start a Horrific Vision.
It seems like we'll alternate between Stormwind and Orgrimmar each week.
If you haven't done this yet, here's how it works:
Once you've gotten through the quests to get your legendary cloak, you can brave the visions. While inside, you'll see a sanity meter that slowly depletes over time, capped initially at 1000. Each vision is divided into five areas, with three different levels of corruption.
Cathedral Square and the Valley of Strength are both starting areas for the respective visions. Here, sanity drains at a baseline of 4 per second. Other areas drain it at 8 per second, and then 12 per second. Additionally, each zone has a different "insanity effect," which will generally make things more inconvenient but sometimes also provide an opportunity to get a buff.
You can do these with 1-5 players, though so far I have only done them solo.
You can sort of choose your difficulty by venturing into various areas within the vision. To end it successfully, you'll have to fight the final boss - Alleria in Stormwind or Thrall in Orgrimmar. The first few times you go in, you'll want to stick to the first area and head for the boss more or less immediately.
If you drop to zero sanity or zero hit points, the vision ends early, potentially robbing you of your rewards (I was very sad to mess up on my last one on my paladin today and not get his reward.) I believe that if you play as a team you can revive other players, but the instance scales in health and damage the more players you bring.
Wrathion sends you to collect an item off the various zone-bosses (at first he just has you go after Alleria/Thrall) to upgrade your cloak. There is also a currency you'll earn with each creature you slay in the instance, which then allows you to upgrade a talent-tree to improve your chances in the visions.
So far, I've enjoyed them, though it is a bit frustrating when you screw up and don't get your prize, which feels like a major setback given the timegating on the currency you need to buy the key. In case you couldn't tell from that sentence, it's also quite convoluted.
But I will say that the visions themselves are pretty cool places to explore. The Stormwind one in particular has had some very creepy, nightmarish things. The whole premise is that this is the dark world that N'zoth wants to kind of overlay over the real Azeroth - it's a vision of the dystopian future should N'zoth succeed.
In the visions, not only has Alleria gone mad and sacrificed her son Arator to the Void (and seems to have mortally wounded her husband Turalyon,) but there are also details like all the orphans from the Stromwind Orphanage singing and playing around the dead orphan matron. There's even a rat around the Stormwind canals that, if attacked, cries out for you to stop, but attacks you so you can't. When it dies, it turns into (if I recall correctly) Topper McNabb, a well-known Stormwind citizen to anyone who's hung out in the game. Then a cat comes out, thanks you for killing him, and begins to eat.
I keep thinking about how cool it would have been if this kind of nightmare-version of Azeroth had been a bigger part of BFA. I'll maintain that mechanics have generally been the expansion's biggest issue (I'm so eager to ditch Azerite gear once Shadowlands comes out,) but I also think that the choice to split the narrative between the faction war and the Old God stuff left both halves (well, especially the Old God stuff) unsatisfying.
You almost wonder if they should have made this all about the faction war and then have the big reveal that N'zoth was behind it all along only come at the very end, leading into a Ny'alotha expansion.
Don't get me wrong, I'm very excited for Shadowlands, but it seems like there's the seed of a really great expansion in this patch, but one that will never sprout.
Tuesday, January 21, 2020
Smiting on Crits: Beginning Curse of Strahd
Well, we finally started the Curse of Strahd game that we'd been planning for months.
I'm playing a Fallen Aasimar Paladin, and planning to go with Oath of Vengeance at level 3 (we're doing the Death House starting dungeon.)
Sadly, even after months of trying to fit everyones' schedules, two of our six players had to bow out tonight (we recorded the session so they'd be caught up) including one whose character my character knew prior to the campaign.
Anyway, as always, level 1 is pretty dull, but we got far enough into Death House that we're all level 2, and we got to fight a pack of ghouls.
3 ghouls is actually quite a bit for four level 2 adventurers, and our Fighter/Warlock (assuming I guessed his build correctly) got knocked unconscious. Thankfully, we also have a Grave Cleric, which I suspect will be very good to have during this adventure, who was able to get him back up without too much trouble.
At level 2, Paladins get their most interesting ability: Divine Smite.
For those unfamiliar with the mechanics of this:
When you hit with a melee weapon attack, you can spend one of your spell slots to deal additional radiant damage. When you spend a 1st level spell slot, you deal 2d8 additional radiant damage, plus an additional 1d8 if the target is undead. If you spend higher-level spell slots, you gain an additional 1d8 for each slot level above 1, to a maximum of 5d8, or 6d8 if the target is undead or a fiend. (Essentially, I think that this means that a 5th level slot will do the same as a 4th level slot because of that cap, and if you're multiclassed, you aren't going to be able to do ridiculous 9th level smites.)
What makes this really cool is that, because you wait until you know whether you hit or not, you can choose to wait until you know if you've landed a critical hit before smiting, and because this damage is part of that same attack, you get to double the smite damage as well.
When the Paladin in the campaign I run first did this, I was sure it had to be a misreading of the rules, but I looked it over several times and realized: nope! That's totally how it works.
So naturally, in the first combat at level 2, we're fighting undead, my party member is unconscious, and I'm worried that we might be screwed.
And I crit on a ghoul. So, with a maul (the paladin's going Polearm Master at level 4, but for now is using a maul,) that's 2d6+3d8+4 (the latter for my strength modifier - I rolled well for three stats and crap for the other three) plus, with Great Weapon Fighting I get to re-roll 1s and 2s, which means that that's 8 1/3 + 15 3/4 + 4 damage on an average hit, and thus on a crit it's 16 2/3 + 31 1/2 + 4, or 48 1/6 average damage (which I think I roughly got - I don't recall off the top of my head.)
The ghoul only had 10 hit points left.
So I vaporized it. Actually, I got the killing blows on two of the three ghouls, which seems appropriate for a monster-hunter paladin.
Anyway, this isn't really a bit theory, lore, or speculation post. This is just a post to say that smiting on a crit (especially against undead) is really, really fun.
I'm playing a Fallen Aasimar Paladin, and planning to go with Oath of Vengeance at level 3 (we're doing the Death House starting dungeon.)
Sadly, even after months of trying to fit everyones' schedules, two of our six players had to bow out tonight (we recorded the session so they'd be caught up) including one whose character my character knew prior to the campaign.
Anyway, as always, level 1 is pretty dull, but we got far enough into Death House that we're all level 2, and we got to fight a pack of ghouls.
3 ghouls is actually quite a bit for four level 2 adventurers, and our Fighter/Warlock (assuming I guessed his build correctly) got knocked unconscious. Thankfully, we also have a Grave Cleric, which I suspect will be very good to have during this adventure, who was able to get him back up without too much trouble.
At level 2, Paladins get their most interesting ability: Divine Smite.
For those unfamiliar with the mechanics of this:
When you hit with a melee weapon attack, you can spend one of your spell slots to deal additional radiant damage. When you spend a 1st level spell slot, you deal 2d8 additional radiant damage, plus an additional 1d8 if the target is undead. If you spend higher-level spell slots, you gain an additional 1d8 for each slot level above 1, to a maximum of 5d8, or 6d8 if the target is undead or a fiend. (Essentially, I think that this means that a 5th level slot will do the same as a 4th level slot because of that cap, and if you're multiclassed, you aren't going to be able to do ridiculous 9th level smites.)
What makes this really cool is that, because you wait until you know whether you hit or not, you can choose to wait until you know if you've landed a critical hit before smiting, and because this damage is part of that same attack, you get to double the smite damage as well.
When the Paladin in the campaign I run first did this, I was sure it had to be a misreading of the rules, but I looked it over several times and realized: nope! That's totally how it works.
So naturally, in the first combat at level 2, we're fighting undead, my party member is unconscious, and I'm worried that we might be screwed.
And I crit on a ghoul. So, with a maul (the paladin's going Polearm Master at level 4, but for now is using a maul,) that's 2d6+3d8+4 (the latter for my strength modifier - I rolled well for three stats and crap for the other three) plus, with Great Weapon Fighting I get to re-roll 1s and 2s, which means that that's 8 1/3 + 15 3/4 + 4 damage on an average hit, and thus on a crit it's 16 2/3 + 31 1/2 + 4, or 48 1/6 average damage (which I think I roughly got - I don't recall off the top of my head.)
The ghoul only had 10 hit points left.
So I vaporized it. Actually, I got the killing blows on two of the three ghouls, which seems appropriate for a monster-hunter paladin.
Anyway, this isn't really a bit theory, lore, or speculation post. This is just a post to say that smiting on a crit (especially against undead) is really, really fun.
Thursday, January 16, 2020
All of a Sudden, the Black Empire Expansion
There is a lot of stuff to do in 8.3.
Naturally, the heart of the patch is the invasion of Ny'alotha into our reality as N'zoth attempts to reestablish the Black Empire and complete the corruption of Azeroth.
So far it's pretty cool, and I love the creepy, Lovecraftian monsters and such that we've been seeing. Tentacles coming out of the hills of the Vale of Eternal Blossoms? Cyclopian obelisks floating in the air covered in profane runes? It's all good stuff.
The thing is, I wish this had been the whole expansion.
Other expansions have had multiple major storylines. Wrath of the Lich King had a pretty lengthy and involved story that involved Ulduar and the machinations of another Old God, Yogg-Saron.
The thing is, I think that it's been handled better in the past because there's been a clear sense of which of these stories is the focus.
In Wrath, the Yogg-Saron plotline was always clearly going to be a secondary plot, even if it was important and introduced a lot of big plot elements to the game. Wrath was always the Scourge expansion.
In BFA, it feels as if there's been this kind of identity crisis. It's the Alliance versus Horde battle expansion, but it's also the N'zoth/Old God expansion. As it turns out, N'zoth gets to be the only Old God to ever be its expansion's final boss (C'thun kind of retroactively got to be that for vanilla after the original Naxxramas was removed, but Kel'thuzad is really the final boss of vanilla.)
What I find sort of surprising is how the two plots easily could have been closely related, but they weren't.
N'zoth is infamous for his ability to manipulate matters behind the scenes. As such, it would have made perfect sense if he had been orchestrating the war all along. He's seen two of his fellow Old Gods fall to the Alliance and Horde, and any bad guy worth their salt knows that things start to go badly for them once the two factions team up.
While the war does, in fact, turn out to be (it seems, at least) the machinations of an otherworldly figure outside of the two factions, it is instead the Jailor, whom we know next to zero about (though I expect we'll learn a bit more in Shadowlands, given that he's probably the final boss.)
There is a bit of a villain one-upsmanship here, with the unfortunate effect that each successive villain feels a less threatening than it should. Sargeras, after all, was the big bad of the entire franchise, and while we didn't get to fight him personally, it undercuts how scary a bad guy he was that he could be manipulated into opening the way for N'zoth to escape (we need to go pretty far back to see this, but if the Old Gods saw to it that Garrosh could escape and go to Draenor B, that ultimately led to the Legion's invasion and subsequently, Sargeras' big stab that put in motion the events that led to N'zoth's escape in Azshara's defeat.)
Now, maybe it's just that I'm getting older and after seeing so many expansions, a single expansion doesn't feel like enough time to build up to a threat like this, which legitimately could be my issue here. And likewise, perhaps for mechanical reasons (I can't honestly say, exactly,) I haven't been playing as much this expansion, and so the individual moments of it have felt more like just a series of blips every couple months instead of a massive crescendo build to the finale.
But I guess it feels weird that we're finally getting this massive, creepy Old God-focused content, only for it to be contained within a single patch.
To be fair, BFA has had plenty of Old God stuff, between Uldir, the Crucible of Storms, and The Eternal Palace, it's really only the Battle for Dazar'alor among the raids that isn't in some way connected to the Old Gods. And I think that some quest lines - like the main story in Stormsong Valley - have felt pretty appropriate in tone for an Old God expansion.
And you could argue that if N'zoth is the subtlest of the Old Gods, it makes sense that he's sort of coming out of the blue.
But I suppose it feels as if it would have been nice to get a little more focus on this stuff.
Let's be honest: while I do like the idea of using existing zones and telling new stories within them, I'm also very disappointed that we're not going to get Ny'alotha as a full zone. What we've seen of the raid itself looks very cool, but I'd have loved to see it either as an Argus-like final patch mega-zone, or even as an Icecrown-like "clearly the location of the final raid, but we can't get in there yet" sort of zone.
I don't really think it was necessary for us to go into an Alliance/Horde plot so relatively soon after we had finished the previous one in Mists of Pandaria. And naturally, that gets me wondering what BFA could have been like if the focus had been very strongly on the Old Gods, with perhaps a focus on the way that they've influenced the people and cultures of Azeroth from the very beginning.
Naturally, the announcement of any expansion before the final patch of the current one comes out does create a sense of conflicted stakes. I'll be curious to see how and if the in-game plot develops to make the confrontation with N'zoth feel crucial and big, as it should. I am so in to go planes-hopping in Shadowlands, but I also really hope that N'zoth (certainly the most interesting of the Old Gods) gets a satisfying ending.
Naturally, the heart of the patch is the invasion of Ny'alotha into our reality as N'zoth attempts to reestablish the Black Empire and complete the corruption of Azeroth.
So far it's pretty cool, and I love the creepy, Lovecraftian monsters and such that we've been seeing. Tentacles coming out of the hills of the Vale of Eternal Blossoms? Cyclopian obelisks floating in the air covered in profane runes? It's all good stuff.
The thing is, I wish this had been the whole expansion.
Other expansions have had multiple major storylines. Wrath of the Lich King had a pretty lengthy and involved story that involved Ulduar and the machinations of another Old God, Yogg-Saron.
The thing is, I think that it's been handled better in the past because there's been a clear sense of which of these stories is the focus.
In Wrath, the Yogg-Saron plotline was always clearly going to be a secondary plot, even if it was important and introduced a lot of big plot elements to the game. Wrath was always the Scourge expansion.
In BFA, it feels as if there's been this kind of identity crisis. It's the Alliance versus Horde battle expansion, but it's also the N'zoth/Old God expansion. As it turns out, N'zoth gets to be the only Old God to ever be its expansion's final boss (C'thun kind of retroactively got to be that for vanilla after the original Naxxramas was removed, but Kel'thuzad is really the final boss of vanilla.)
What I find sort of surprising is how the two plots easily could have been closely related, but they weren't.
N'zoth is infamous for his ability to manipulate matters behind the scenes. As such, it would have made perfect sense if he had been orchestrating the war all along. He's seen two of his fellow Old Gods fall to the Alliance and Horde, and any bad guy worth their salt knows that things start to go badly for them once the two factions team up.
While the war does, in fact, turn out to be (it seems, at least) the machinations of an otherworldly figure outside of the two factions, it is instead the Jailor, whom we know next to zero about (though I expect we'll learn a bit more in Shadowlands, given that he's probably the final boss.)
There is a bit of a villain one-upsmanship here, with the unfortunate effect that each successive villain feels a less threatening than it should. Sargeras, after all, was the big bad of the entire franchise, and while we didn't get to fight him personally, it undercuts how scary a bad guy he was that he could be manipulated into opening the way for N'zoth to escape (we need to go pretty far back to see this, but if the Old Gods saw to it that Garrosh could escape and go to Draenor B, that ultimately led to the Legion's invasion and subsequently, Sargeras' big stab that put in motion the events that led to N'zoth's escape in Azshara's defeat.)
Now, maybe it's just that I'm getting older and after seeing so many expansions, a single expansion doesn't feel like enough time to build up to a threat like this, which legitimately could be my issue here. And likewise, perhaps for mechanical reasons (I can't honestly say, exactly,) I haven't been playing as much this expansion, and so the individual moments of it have felt more like just a series of blips every couple months instead of a massive crescendo build to the finale.
But I guess it feels weird that we're finally getting this massive, creepy Old God-focused content, only for it to be contained within a single patch.
To be fair, BFA has had plenty of Old God stuff, between Uldir, the Crucible of Storms, and The Eternal Palace, it's really only the Battle for Dazar'alor among the raids that isn't in some way connected to the Old Gods. And I think that some quest lines - like the main story in Stormsong Valley - have felt pretty appropriate in tone for an Old God expansion.
And you could argue that if N'zoth is the subtlest of the Old Gods, it makes sense that he's sort of coming out of the blue.
But I suppose it feels as if it would have been nice to get a little more focus on this stuff.
Let's be honest: while I do like the idea of using existing zones and telling new stories within them, I'm also very disappointed that we're not going to get Ny'alotha as a full zone. What we've seen of the raid itself looks very cool, but I'd have loved to see it either as an Argus-like final patch mega-zone, or even as an Icecrown-like "clearly the location of the final raid, but we can't get in there yet" sort of zone.
I don't really think it was necessary for us to go into an Alliance/Horde plot so relatively soon after we had finished the previous one in Mists of Pandaria. And naturally, that gets me wondering what BFA could have been like if the focus had been very strongly on the Old Gods, with perhaps a focus on the way that they've influenced the people and cultures of Azeroth from the very beginning.
Naturally, the announcement of any expansion before the final patch of the current one comes out does create a sense of conflicted stakes. I'll be curious to see how and if the in-game plot develops to make the confrontation with N'zoth feel crucial and big, as it should. I am so in to go planes-hopping in Shadowlands, but I also really hope that N'zoth (certainly the most interesting of the Old Gods) gets a satisfying ending.
Wednesday, January 15, 2020
Visions of N'Zoth
Yesterday, the final major patch of Battle for Azeroth dropped. Our conflict with the Old God N'zoth is coming to a head, as the nightmarish alternate realm of Ny'alotha threatens to invade and overwrite Azeroth.
The patch story starts with a very long series of quests that take you to the two zones most affected by the invasions: Uldum and the Vale of Eternal Blossoms.
These quests will take a good chunk of time (and I'm nervous about taking all my alts through them) but you unlock the following features:
Uldum and the Vale are each attacked by various forces - both get hit by the Black Empire sometimes, or another faction. The Amanhet in Uldum are a group of radical Tol'vir who seek to trigger the Halls of Origination and wipe out the entire planet, considering anyone with the Curse of Flesh too corrupt to save, and willing to die if it means stopping the corruption. There is also a Mogu faction that I may have to do more quests to learn about that is attacking in the Vale when it's not the Black Empire.
In these zones, you can also go into a smaller region of a horrific vision in order to get Coalescing Visions which you can then trade for an item that allows you to do the Horrific Vision content - a 1-5 scenario where you can earn things to upgrade the legendary cloak that Wrathion gives you.
Additionally, Vulpera and Mechagnomes are now unlockable if you've done the requisite quests and have hit exalted with the appropriate factions (I hadn't run Mechagon yet, so I did so on heroic and got my a robo-gnome.)
Worgen and Goblins also now have heritage armor.
Likewise, you can now make Pandaren and Allied Race Death Knights, with a much quicker starting experience (I haven't tried, but I think the old one might just not exist anymore, which is a shame, because even if it does show its age after 12 years, I always thought that was one of the best quest lines they ever did.) Anyway, I have a female Void Elf Frost Death Knight ready to go now.
There is a ton of content to do. I'm a little concerned that it will take so long to unlock some of it on each character, but if you've been waiting to have more to do in WoW, well, here you go!
The raid, Ny'altoha, the Waking City, doesn't open for a while (as tends to be the case these days) but you can get some decent catch-up gear by fighting N'zoth's invasions.
The patch story starts with a very long series of quests that take you to the two zones most affected by the invasions: Uldum and the Vale of Eternal Blossoms.
These quests will take a good chunk of time (and I'm nervous about taking all my alts through them) but you unlock the following features:
Uldum and the Vale are each attacked by various forces - both get hit by the Black Empire sometimes, or another faction. The Amanhet in Uldum are a group of radical Tol'vir who seek to trigger the Halls of Origination and wipe out the entire planet, considering anyone with the Curse of Flesh too corrupt to save, and willing to die if it means stopping the corruption. There is also a Mogu faction that I may have to do more quests to learn about that is attacking in the Vale when it's not the Black Empire.
In these zones, you can also go into a smaller region of a horrific vision in order to get Coalescing Visions which you can then trade for an item that allows you to do the Horrific Vision content - a 1-5 scenario where you can earn things to upgrade the legendary cloak that Wrathion gives you.
Additionally, Vulpera and Mechagnomes are now unlockable if you've done the requisite quests and have hit exalted with the appropriate factions (I hadn't run Mechagon yet, so I did so on heroic and got my a robo-gnome.)
Worgen and Goblins also now have heritage armor.
Likewise, you can now make Pandaren and Allied Race Death Knights, with a much quicker starting experience (I haven't tried, but I think the old one might just not exist anymore, which is a shame, because even if it does show its age after 12 years, I always thought that was one of the best quest lines they ever did.) Anyway, I have a female Void Elf Frost Death Knight ready to go now.
There is a ton of content to do. I'm a little concerned that it will take so long to unlock some of it on each character, but if you've been waiting to have more to do in WoW, well, here you go!
The raid, Ny'altoha, the Waking City, doesn't open for a while (as tends to be the case these days) but you can get some decent catch-up gear by fighting N'zoth's invasions.
Tuesday, January 14, 2020
Four New Subclasses in Unearthed Arcana for Barbarians, Monks, Paladins, and Warlocks
I know a lot of people were hoping for something akin to Xanathar's Guide to Everything this week, but I wouldn't rule out such an announcement coming in a few months, given all the subclasses they've been testing.
Today's UA brings us the Path of the Beast for Barbarians, the Way of Mercy for Monks, the Oath of the Watchers for Paladins, and the Noble Genie Patron for Warlocks.
Path of the Beast essentially lets you play as some kind of lycanthrope. I've often thought that it would be fun to skin a Barbarian character as a werewolf, whose Rage represents him transforming into his lycanthropic form. This subclass is built along similar lines - allowing you to take on bestial aspects in your rage, including growing natural weapons like a toothy maw, claws, or a spiked tail.
The Way of Mercy is another take on Monks as a healing class (the Monk in my primary campaign uses an older UA subclass called Way of Tranquility.) But this subclass really plays them up as being both a bringer of life and a bringer of death, with the ability inflict necrotic damage and even summon a miasma of death around them, while also allowing them to, of course, heal. There's also a cool table for flavor - monks of this way tend to wear masks that obscure their faces, and there's a table of creepy masks for you to wear.
Oath of the Watchers is really freaking cool, and is basically a Paladin Oath built around defending the world from otherworldly threats. Focusing on vigilance, you can help allies on their mental saving throws, turn fey, fiends, elementals, and aberrations, and punish spellcasters when their spells fail. I really like the idea of playing a paladin as a UFO conspiracy nut.
The Noble Genie patron is built around the idea of genies always wanting to collect things - the terms of the pact are sort of reflected in the mechanics, as you get various ways for your patron to sort of claim ownership of things and people, banishing foes to the genie's menagerie on the elemental planes, and carrying around a vessel that allows you to create a tether to yourself and your patron's menagerie to a willing creature for various benefits.
I like all of these subclasses and am just feeling more and more excited for these to all come out in some new book later in the year.
Today's UA brings us the Path of the Beast for Barbarians, the Way of Mercy for Monks, the Oath of the Watchers for Paladins, and the Noble Genie Patron for Warlocks.
Path of the Beast essentially lets you play as some kind of lycanthrope. I've often thought that it would be fun to skin a Barbarian character as a werewolf, whose Rage represents him transforming into his lycanthropic form. This subclass is built along similar lines - allowing you to take on bestial aspects in your rage, including growing natural weapons like a toothy maw, claws, or a spiked tail.
The Way of Mercy is another take on Monks as a healing class (the Monk in my primary campaign uses an older UA subclass called Way of Tranquility.) But this subclass really plays them up as being both a bringer of life and a bringer of death, with the ability inflict necrotic damage and even summon a miasma of death around them, while also allowing them to, of course, heal. There's also a cool table for flavor - monks of this way tend to wear masks that obscure their faces, and there's a table of creepy masks for you to wear.
Oath of the Watchers is really freaking cool, and is basically a Paladin Oath built around defending the world from otherworldly threats. Focusing on vigilance, you can help allies on their mental saving throws, turn fey, fiends, elementals, and aberrations, and punish spellcasters when their spells fail. I really like the idea of playing a paladin as a UFO conspiracy nut.
The Noble Genie patron is built around the idea of genies always wanting to collect things - the terms of the pact are sort of reflected in the mechanics, as you get various ways for your patron to sort of claim ownership of things and people, banishing foes to the genie's menagerie on the elemental planes, and carrying around a vessel that allows you to create a tether to yourself and your patron's menagerie to a willing creature for various benefits.
I like all of these subclasses and am just feeling more and more excited for these to all come out in some new book later in the year.
Monday, January 13, 2020
Explorer's Guide to Wildemount
The next official D&D 5E release from Wizards of the Coast is Explorer's Guide to Wildemount.
Like Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica and Eberron: Rising From the Last War (and, I guess, Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide,) this is a campaign setting book, which introduces a new world in which to set adventures and campaigns.
Wildemount is a major continent on the world of Exandria, which is the world in which the beloved and popular streamed D&D show Critical Role takes place. The setting of Critical Role's current campaign (its second,) Wildemount is a continent on the brink of a massive war between the predominantly human Dwendalian Empire - a stable but oppressive regime that, for instance, only allows the worship of certain gods - and the largely drow-led coalition of "monstrous" races known as the Kryn Dynasty, which rules over the cursed and blasted lands of Xhorhas and is united in worship of a mysterious entity or perhaps even cosmic force known as the Luxon, which the Kryn have turned to after rejecting the evil "betrayer gods."
Critical Role fans will recognize locations like Rexxentrom, Nicodranas, Rosonna, Zidash (and there's a very good chance I'm getting the spelling of all these wrong, as my familiarity with them is primarily from hearing Matt Mercer say the names.)
Additionally, there are three new subclasses - the Echo Knight, the Chronurgist, and the Graviturgist - which presumably are all based in the Xhorasian magic known as dunamancy. As of yet, I don't actually know which classes these go with, but I'd suspect maybe Fighter and two Wizard ones? (If Chronurgist is a time-manipulaiton-based Wizard subclass I might have to make my Eldritch Knight multiclass given that his backstory involves some kind of time-travel manipulations.)
There will also be a guide to dunamantic magic, complete with new spells (some of which Liam O'Brien's character Caleb Widogast has used.)
Like Eberron, it looks like this book is going to be a real tome, with over 300 pages, including a number of monsters.
Anyway, I'm very happy to see Critical Role get added to the canon of D&D. They've earned a place there!
As a side note: I know some people are disappointed, much as they were when the Ravnica book was released, that there's no official 5th Edition release of an older setting like Planescape or Dragonlance. To me, however, I'm encouraged by the fact that WotC seems to be doing more of these setting releases - with Ravnica, Eberron, and Exandria all coming out within a span of two years, I suspect that there will be a greater focus on these releases.
Some people, and to be honest, myself included, probably wanted to see something more like Xanathar's Guide to Everything - just a big expansion of character options and rules systems. I don't know that WotC has a strict quota of books it can release per year - I know they've emphasized quality over quantity in 5th Edition, but I could also imagine that if they have good things to put out, they'll do it (a lot of us will happily fork over the 50 bucks for each book they release.)
Matt Mercer made a really eloquent statement on Reddit that addressed some of these concerns (as always reinforcing my sense that he's a really kind and thoughtful person) and pointed out that this book can be mined for content in others' homebrew settings. I know some have disparaged his homebrewing abilities for mechanics, which I can't comment too intelligently on, but given that this is an official 5E release, I'm sure it's getting the playtesting and editorial review that will help balance things - rather than just the ideas that a very busy voice actor who's also now helping to run the Critical Role company is trying to find time to work on for what is essentially just his home game that has a lot of people following it.
I'm excited for this, and I'm about 98% sure I'll have pre-ordered it by the end of the day.
Like Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica and Eberron: Rising From the Last War (and, I guess, Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide,) this is a campaign setting book, which introduces a new world in which to set adventures and campaigns.
Wildemount is a major continent on the world of Exandria, which is the world in which the beloved and popular streamed D&D show Critical Role takes place. The setting of Critical Role's current campaign (its second,) Wildemount is a continent on the brink of a massive war between the predominantly human Dwendalian Empire - a stable but oppressive regime that, for instance, only allows the worship of certain gods - and the largely drow-led coalition of "monstrous" races known as the Kryn Dynasty, which rules over the cursed and blasted lands of Xhorhas and is united in worship of a mysterious entity or perhaps even cosmic force known as the Luxon, which the Kryn have turned to after rejecting the evil "betrayer gods."
Critical Role fans will recognize locations like Rexxentrom, Nicodranas, Rosonna, Zidash (and there's a very good chance I'm getting the spelling of all these wrong, as my familiarity with them is primarily from hearing Matt Mercer say the names.)
Additionally, there are three new subclasses - the Echo Knight, the Chronurgist, and the Graviturgist - which presumably are all based in the Xhorasian magic known as dunamancy. As of yet, I don't actually know which classes these go with, but I'd suspect maybe Fighter and two Wizard ones? (If Chronurgist is a time-manipulaiton-based Wizard subclass I might have to make my Eldritch Knight multiclass given that his backstory involves some kind of time-travel manipulations.)
There will also be a guide to dunamantic magic, complete with new spells (some of which Liam O'Brien's character Caleb Widogast has used.)
Like Eberron, it looks like this book is going to be a real tome, with over 300 pages, including a number of monsters.
Anyway, I'm very happy to see Critical Role get added to the canon of D&D. They've earned a place there!
As a side note: I know some people are disappointed, much as they were when the Ravnica book was released, that there's no official 5th Edition release of an older setting like Planescape or Dragonlance. To me, however, I'm encouraged by the fact that WotC seems to be doing more of these setting releases - with Ravnica, Eberron, and Exandria all coming out within a span of two years, I suspect that there will be a greater focus on these releases.
Some people, and to be honest, myself included, probably wanted to see something more like Xanathar's Guide to Everything - just a big expansion of character options and rules systems. I don't know that WotC has a strict quota of books it can release per year - I know they've emphasized quality over quantity in 5th Edition, but I could also imagine that if they have good things to put out, they'll do it (a lot of us will happily fork over the 50 bucks for each book they release.)
Matt Mercer made a really eloquent statement on Reddit that addressed some of these concerns (as always reinforcing my sense that he's a really kind and thoughtful person) and pointed out that this book can be mined for content in others' homebrew settings. I know some have disparaged his homebrewing abilities for mechanics, which I can't comment too intelligently on, but given that this is an official 5E release, I'm sure it's getting the playtesting and editorial review that will help balance things - rather than just the ideas that a very busy voice actor who's also now helping to run the Critical Role company is trying to find time to work on for what is essentially just his home game that has a lot of people following it.
I'm excited for this, and I'm about 98% sure I'll have pre-ordered it by the end of the day.
Sunday, January 12, 2020
Wildemount Campaign Setting Coming Soon?
With an impending D&D announcement coming soon, it looks like Amazon might have spilled the beans. Surprisingly, given that the last big release was a campaign setting book (Eberron: Rising from the Last War) this appears to be one as well: an apparent Wildemount Campaign Setting book.
If that name doesn't sound familiar to you: Wildemount is the continent on which most of the action of Critical Role's campaign 2 has taken place. Matt Mercer, the series dungeon master, created the world of Exandria for his home game, which then became the setting for Critical Role (given that his home game simply turned into the first "season" of the show.)
The first campaign primarily took place on the continent of Tal'dorei, in the mostly benevolent Empire of Emon. A Tal'dorei Campaign Setting guide book was released in 2017 as a 3rd party release, describing many of the people and organizations that were touched upon in that first campaign.
Wildemount, the setting of the second campaign, is across the ocean from Tal'dorei. In Wildemount, the oppressive but livable Dwendalian Empire dominates much of the continent, while the blasted and cursed lands of Xhorhas to the east are under the control of the Kryn Dynasty - an alliance of "monstrous" races that have been threatening war with the Empire. To the west is a loose confederation of city-states along the Menagerie Coast.
While the Tal'dorei guide (written by James Haeck and Matthew Mercer) was not an official Wizards release, it looks as if the Wildemount one might. Exandria and the Critical Role campaign is already official D&D canon, as events that happen at the end of the campaign are mentioned in Descent into Avernus, but this would truly bring it in as a fully-fledged official D&D setting.
I'm sure Matt Mercer and his players are overjoyed at the notion that it's all official now, but, given how influential Critical Role has been in getting people into D&D, it's hardly surprising that they would be folded into the canon fully.
So with Acquisitions Incorporated and Critical Role now looking pretty official, does that just leave the Adventure Zone?
If that name doesn't sound familiar to you: Wildemount is the continent on which most of the action of Critical Role's campaign 2 has taken place. Matt Mercer, the series dungeon master, created the world of Exandria for his home game, which then became the setting for Critical Role (given that his home game simply turned into the first "season" of the show.)
The first campaign primarily took place on the continent of Tal'dorei, in the mostly benevolent Empire of Emon. A Tal'dorei Campaign Setting guide book was released in 2017 as a 3rd party release, describing many of the people and organizations that were touched upon in that first campaign.
Wildemount, the setting of the second campaign, is across the ocean from Tal'dorei. In Wildemount, the oppressive but livable Dwendalian Empire dominates much of the continent, while the blasted and cursed lands of Xhorhas to the east are under the control of the Kryn Dynasty - an alliance of "monstrous" races that have been threatening war with the Empire. To the west is a loose confederation of city-states along the Menagerie Coast.
While the Tal'dorei guide (written by James Haeck and Matthew Mercer) was not an official Wizards release, it looks as if the Wildemount one might. Exandria and the Critical Role campaign is already official D&D canon, as events that happen at the end of the campaign are mentioned in Descent into Avernus, but this would truly bring it in as a fully-fledged official D&D setting.
I'm sure Matt Mercer and his players are overjoyed at the notion that it's all official now, but, given how influential Critical Role has been in getting people into D&D, it's hardly surprising that they would be folded into the canon fully.
So with Acquisitions Incorporated and Critical Role now looking pretty official, does that just leave the Adventure Zone?
Saturday, January 11, 2020
More Planning of My Ravnica Campaign
The first time I DM'd, it was my first time playing D&D. There were things I didn't know - like that you had to divide XP between the players. I didn't know much about what made for a balanced combat encounter, and I did a fair bit of railroading (to be fair, I still do that a bit - sometimes it's best if the players have a strong sense of where to go.)
For this campaign, I've done a ton of prep work - figuring out not just my main villains, but also an entire cast of side-villains. I'm also having players work on their characters while the first session is still over a month away.
Now, there is the old expression: Man plans, God laughs. A lot could go wrong and change here. The adventure I wrote for my original campaign in 2017 is one we have only just started (and that campaign has seriously stalled - to be honest, I feel a lot of guilt about starting a new campaign while that one's still going, but I think this is the best way for me to actually get to run a long-term campaign in any consistent manner, which is what I want to do.)
At this point, I have six players who have given me at least a rough idea of their characters (race, class, and guild,) but the group is large, which means I still have plenty who have yet to tell me their ideas (my roommate has suggested potentially de-leveling his Rakdos Goblin Bard from a one-shot I ran last year, but he hasn't committed to that concept yet - in part because he's worried that it might be harder to maintain a character who's essentially a rock star serial killer long term if there are any good-aligned members of the party.)
Here's one challenge I've given myself for this campaign:
There are only three recurring NPCs that I'm going to use that aren't being created by the players. One is Jace Beleren (the campaign is called Jace's Irregulars, as it's a group of people sent by the ten guilds to work for the Office of the Guildpact,) another is Arrester Lavinia (who doesn't seem to have a last name?) and the last is Elder Filidon, a Selesnya Loxodon I've invented who also works for the Guildpact and is basically the group's primary administrator.
I'm leaning on the players to come up with their Contacts. In Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica, you come up with, essentially, three NPCs associated with your character - an ally and a rival from your guild, and an acquaintance from another guild (if you're Dimir, you instead come up with an ally and rival from the guild you've infiltrated and then your Dimir handler, whom you might not even meet.)
The intention is that these contacts are going to make up, essentially, the entire extended cast of the campaign. There will, for sure, be some additional NPCs who pop up to prompt quests, and of course there are going to be recurring villains, but for the innocuous "supporting" characters, it's going to, ideally, be all player-created.
As an example, one player's Azorius Order Cleric has an ally who is a golem bartender that runs "Form 2B-Delta," a bar for members of the Azorius Senate that has a two-drink minimum as well as a two-drink limit (though those in the know can order their drinks "Polite" and get them just half-full) and has a little open-mic stage where people can come and give lectures and seminars on various matters of political philosophy and argue about legislation and regulations. (The name, Form 2B-Delta, is an inside joke that only Azorius Functionaries would get, or find funny. We're really playing up the Azorius as awkward nerds here.)
I don't know where I'm going to use this golem (imagining him as basically a Warforged, with speech and, like, a soul) but I know he'll put in an appearance.
Anyway, I'm profoundly excited to run this campaign, and but I'm also kind of excited about how much time I have for players to figure out their characters.
For this campaign, I've done a ton of prep work - figuring out not just my main villains, but also an entire cast of side-villains. I'm also having players work on their characters while the first session is still over a month away.
Now, there is the old expression: Man plans, God laughs. A lot could go wrong and change here. The adventure I wrote for my original campaign in 2017 is one we have only just started (and that campaign has seriously stalled - to be honest, I feel a lot of guilt about starting a new campaign while that one's still going, but I think this is the best way for me to actually get to run a long-term campaign in any consistent manner, which is what I want to do.)
At this point, I have six players who have given me at least a rough idea of their characters (race, class, and guild,) but the group is large, which means I still have plenty who have yet to tell me their ideas (my roommate has suggested potentially de-leveling his Rakdos Goblin Bard from a one-shot I ran last year, but he hasn't committed to that concept yet - in part because he's worried that it might be harder to maintain a character who's essentially a rock star serial killer long term if there are any good-aligned members of the party.)
Here's one challenge I've given myself for this campaign:
There are only three recurring NPCs that I'm going to use that aren't being created by the players. One is Jace Beleren (the campaign is called Jace's Irregulars, as it's a group of people sent by the ten guilds to work for the Office of the Guildpact,) another is Arrester Lavinia (who doesn't seem to have a last name?) and the last is Elder Filidon, a Selesnya Loxodon I've invented who also works for the Guildpact and is basically the group's primary administrator.
I'm leaning on the players to come up with their Contacts. In Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica, you come up with, essentially, three NPCs associated with your character - an ally and a rival from your guild, and an acquaintance from another guild (if you're Dimir, you instead come up with an ally and rival from the guild you've infiltrated and then your Dimir handler, whom you might not even meet.)
The intention is that these contacts are going to make up, essentially, the entire extended cast of the campaign. There will, for sure, be some additional NPCs who pop up to prompt quests, and of course there are going to be recurring villains, but for the innocuous "supporting" characters, it's going to, ideally, be all player-created.
As an example, one player's Azorius Order Cleric has an ally who is a golem bartender that runs "Form 2B-Delta," a bar for members of the Azorius Senate that has a two-drink minimum as well as a two-drink limit (though those in the know can order their drinks "Polite" and get them just half-full) and has a little open-mic stage where people can come and give lectures and seminars on various matters of political philosophy and argue about legislation and regulations. (The name, Form 2B-Delta, is an inside joke that only Azorius Functionaries would get, or find funny. We're really playing up the Azorius as awkward nerds here.)
I don't know where I'm going to use this golem (imagining him as basically a Warforged, with speech and, like, a soul) but I know he'll put in an appearance.
Anyway, I'm profoundly excited to run this campaign, and but I'm also kind of excited about how much time I have for players to figure out their characters.
Friday, January 3, 2020
Giving Myself Time to Prep for a New Campaign
I have a new D&D campaign starting soon. By soon, I mean the beginning of March. As you're likely well aware, it is the third (well, fourth by the time I post this) of January, which might mean that this definition of "soon" is rather generous.
I love my original campaign, and while it's been much less frequent in the last year, I do not intend to give up on it. But I think there's a lot of potential to apply lessons I've learned running that game toward this one.
First off, I want to really give the players time to come up with characters. There is something to be said for distinguishing between "Backstory" and "Frontstory," the latter being the story that develops for a character over the course of a campaign. Naturally, the relationship between characters that evolves is important, but I do think that, as a DM, I can more effectively delight the players by incorporating their characters' existing stories into the narrative as a whole.
The new campaign will be set in Ravnica. And it's a bit different than usual.
The biggest thing is that I have a massive number of players. There are now a full 10 players signed up to play in the first session. While having a large playerbase will be very useful in order to keep the game going, and my policy will be that as long as I can get at least three players involved, I'm going to go forward with a session, it also means that as a DM, I'll need to take extra care to make sure that every character - and more importantly, every player - gets content that speaks to their character.
The Guild-membership structure of Ravnica does aid with that - anyone who's a member of the Golgari Swarm is likely to perk up when we're doing stuff involving sewers, undead, and fungus. But I think the challenge I'm setting up for myself is to really ensure that each player feels like this is their story.
I do know who the prominent villains of the campaign will be (not saying so here on the off chance a player stumbles across it) but I also want to allow for a more diverse and branched narrative, and one that hopefully allows the players to direct it to an extent.
I've outlined the first two major adventures, both of which are designed to both be completed in single sessions and also introduce two guilds apiece - I want to spend tier 1 really showing off the various guilds so everyone feels situated in the setting.
But I'm exercising some restraint in not really putting that much thought into subsequent adventures, as I really want to get a sense of the player characters and their contacts, which could inspire future adventures.
Happily, I'm seeing people mostly picking different guilds. Ideally, I'm hoping that we have at least one player character in each guild (Dimir characters, who have their true guild and then another they've infiltrated, do allow us to sort of get a two-for-one) though I can definitely say that the Dimir and Izzet so far feel like the most popular ones.
Part of my preparation is creating music playlists for each guild. It's not super easy - I only use video game music for D&D playlists, and I'm really disappointed that the Darkmoon Faire music from World of Warcraft doesn't seem to exist on Spotify, as I think that would be absolutely perfect for the Cult of Rakdos (instead I've used a lot of Cuphead music for both the Rakdos and the Izzet.) Hey, anyone know good video game carnival/circus music?
Anyway, while there's certainly some overlap between some guilds, a couple do well with particular games or series. I've gotten a fair amount of Metroid music into the Simic Combine playlist. The Dishonored series works fantastically for House Dimir. As you might guess from this blog, I tend to use a lot of World of Warcraft music. Both Human and Orc-themed music works well for the Boros Legion, while Tauren and Night Elf stuff often fits well into the Selesnya Conclave. And creepy Scourge/Forsaken music works for just about all the black-mana guilds.
I'm hoping that I can really get the players excited knowing that they can level up so quickly. In my first campaign, despite being about four years into it, the players are only at about 9 due to a mix of RP-focused play and, of course, irregular meeting. Players are going to be level 4 after just four sessions in this one, and I can actually imagine everyone getting into tier 4 without a decade of play to get there.
Of course, level 4, 10, and 16 (and 20 if we get there) are going to be bigger ones than the others, as the level cap comes into play at those levels until we are ready to move onto the next tier. I intend to make these moments big, main-plot events that make the transition into a new tier feel like a big deal - and that means that we'll probably see at least 2-3 sessions at each cap (I might make the tier 1-2 transition a bit faster because I think tier 2 is when the game really starts to get good.)
I love my original campaign, and while it's been much less frequent in the last year, I do not intend to give up on it. But I think there's a lot of potential to apply lessons I've learned running that game toward this one.
First off, I want to really give the players time to come up with characters. There is something to be said for distinguishing between "Backstory" and "Frontstory," the latter being the story that develops for a character over the course of a campaign. Naturally, the relationship between characters that evolves is important, but I do think that, as a DM, I can more effectively delight the players by incorporating their characters' existing stories into the narrative as a whole.
The new campaign will be set in Ravnica. And it's a bit different than usual.
The biggest thing is that I have a massive number of players. There are now a full 10 players signed up to play in the first session. While having a large playerbase will be very useful in order to keep the game going, and my policy will be that as long as I can get at least three players involved, I'm going to go forward with a session, it also means that as a DM, I'll need to take extra care to make sure that every character - and more importantly, every player - gets content that speaks to their character.
The Guild-membership structure of Ravnica does aid with that - anyone who's a member of the Golgari Swarm is likely to perk up when we're doing stuff involving sewers, undead, and fungus. But I think the challenge I'm setting up for myself is to really ensure that each player feels like this is their story.
I do know who the prominent villains of the campaign will be (not saying so here on the off chance a player stumbles across it) but I also want to allow for a more diverse and branched narrative, and one that hopefully allows the players to direct it to an extent.
I've outlined the first two major adventures, both of which are designed to both be completed in single sessions and also introduce two guilds apiece - I want to spend tier 1 really showing off the various guilds so everyone feels situated in the setting.
But I'm exercising some restraint in not really putting that much thought into subsequent adventures, as I really want to get a sense of the player characters and their contacts, which could inspire future adventures.
Happily, I'm seeing people mostly picking different guilds. Ideally, I'm hoping that we have at least one player character in each guild (Dimir characters, who have their true guild and then another they've infiltrated, do allow us to sort of get a two-for-one) though I can definitely say that the Dimir and Izzet so far feel like the most popular ones.
Part of my preparation is creating music playlists for each guild. It's not super easy - I only use video game music for D&D playlists, and I'm really disappointed that the Darkmoon Faire music from World of Warcraft doesn't seem to exist on Spotify, as I think that would be absolutely perfect for the Cult of Rakdos (instead I've used a lot of Cuphead music for both the Rakdos and the Izzet.) Hey, anyone know good video game carnival/circus music?
Anyway, while there's certainly some overlap between some guilds, a couple do well with particular games or series. I've gotten a fair amount of Metroid music into the Simic Combine playlist. The Dishonored series works fantastically for House Dimir. As you might guess from this blog, I tend to use a lot of World of Warcraft music. Both Human and Orc-themed music works well for the Boros Legion, while Tauren and Night Elf stuff often fits well into the Selesnya Conclave. And creepy Scourge/Forsaken music works for just about all the black-mana guilds.
I'm hoping that I can really get the players excited knowing that they can level up so quickly. In my first campaign, despite being about four years into it, the players are only at about 9 due to a mix of RP-focused play and, of course, irregular meeting. Players are going to be level 4 after just four sessions in this one, and I can actually imagine everyone getting into tier 4 without a decade of play to get there.
Of course, level 4, 10, and 16 (and 20 if we get there) are going to be bigger ones than the others, as the level cap comes into play at those levels until we are ready to move onto the next tier. I intend to make these moments big, main-plot events that make the transition into a new tier feel like a big deal - and that means that we'll probably see at least 2-3 sessions at each cap (I might make the tier 1-2 transition a bit faster because I think tier 2 is when the game really starts to get good.)
Wednesday, January 1, 2020
Secret of Mana
For Christmas, I got the Collection of Mana - a... collection of games from the "Mana" series, all playable on the Switch. Of these games, the only one I had ever played was Secret of Mana, the 1993 SNES release.
While it was, by that point, a few years old, one of my best friends and I used to play that game a great deal in Middle School (which was otherwise very much the N64 era.) What made the game great was that you could play it in co-op, so the two of us could fight our way through monsters and such together.
Given that I finished Middle School... 20 years ago (Jesus) it's been kind of fun to return to the game.
I hadn't ever really thought much about the context of the game's release. I generally consider it to be part of the Squaresoft Golden Age - grouping it with games like Final Fantasy VI (released as III in the US,) Chrono Trigger, and Super Mario RPG: The Legend of the Seven Stars. In fact, this predates all of those games.
Playing the game again, a few things strike me: First, the story is far more bare-bones than how I remembered it. Apparently the reason for this is that Secret of Mana was initially intended to be one of the first games to take advantage of a CD-ROM system for the SNES, which would have allowed it to be a much larger game. This system never came about (it wouldn't be until the Gamecube that Nintendo used optical disks) and that led to big upheaval in the middle of Secret of Mana's production.
In true classic video game fashion, one of the elements of the game has you traveling to various palaces where world-preserving Mana Seeds are kept, each tied to an element (with resident elementals that grant two of the three playable characters magic powers) and sealing the magical power of those seeds. While the first few of these have fairly involved stories and build-up, many of the latter ones fly by in a quick series of excursions, and this is apparently because of the massive changes that had to be made in the middle of production to account for less data capacity.
The script was also apparently all translated by one guy over the course of like a month (the translator, Ted Woolsey, has his own trope on TV Tropes) and elements like Squaresoft's choice of fonts meant he had to condense the dialogue significantly.
When I initially played the game, it was largely out of context. I didn't know, for example, that the game was part of a series (the first in the series was for the Gameboy, called Final Fantasy Adventure in the U.S. - which is also part of this collection.) I think there were also elements that didn't even occur to me - like the interpretation that the game's final boss, which is ultimately a sort of innocent manifestation of nature that could inadvertently bring about the apocalypse, might actually be your own trusted draconic companion who flies you around the world in the latter half of the game.
2018 saw a remake of the game that updated it with modern graphics and I believe expanded its storytelling, but I also recall that reviews for it were quite horrible, so I've never checked it out.
Secret of Mana's gameplay, of course, felt quite different from the usual turn-based combat of other Squaresoft classics. I do think some of the "roll to hit" mechanics you find in turn-based games can feel a little unsatisfying in a real-time action RPG - swinging your sword at certain enemies at certain levels in Secret of Mana sometimes just completely whiffs, and there is a little recovery meter that strongly encourages you to time your attacks rather than just spamming.
I'm really curious to see Trials of Mana, which is the last game in the collection, which has previously not seen a release in the U.S., as I'd like to see how they iterated on the game's formula.
I think it's always interesting to return to some old game. There's a bit of an uncanny feeling, sparks of recognition but also, often, discovering the sequence of the game isn't quite like you remember, or how, in your meandering style of play when you were a kid, you might have thought of certain locations as being central to the game, when in fact it was just a place you'd go to often.
Really, it's just funny to come back to this game, which feels sort of small and not terribly long (I played through the whole thing in a week) when it was such a big thing in my childhood. I think I appreciate different aspects of it than I did back then.
While it was, by that point, a few years old, one of my best friends and I used to play that game a great deal in Middle School (which was otherwise very much the N64 era.) What made the game great was that you could play it in co-op, so the two of us could fight our way through monsters and such together.
Given that I finished Middle School... 20 years ago (Jesus) it's been kind of fun to return to the game.
I hadn't ever really thought much about the context of the game's release. I generally consider it to be part of the Squaresoft Golden Age - grouping it with games like Final Fantasy VI (released as III in the US,) Chrono Trigger, and Super Mario RPG: The Legend of the Seven Stars. In fact, this predates all of those games.
Playing the game again, a few things strike me: First, the story is far more bare-bones than how I remembered it. Apparently the reason for this is that Secret of Mana was initially intended to be one of the first games to take advantage of a CD-ROM system for the SNES, which would have allowed it to be a much larger game. This system never came about (it wouldn't be until the Gamecube that Nintendo used optical disks) and that led to big upheaval in the middle of Secret of Mana's production.
In true classic video game fashion, one of the elements of the game has you traveling to various palaces where world-preserving Mana Seeds are kept, each tied to an element (with resident elementals that grant two of the three playable characters magic powers) and sealing the magical power of those seeds. While the first few of these have fairly involved stories and build-up, many of the latter ones fly by in a quick series of excursions, and this is apparently because of the massive changes that had to be made in the middle of production to account for less data capacity.
The script was also apparently all translated by one guy over the course of like a month (the translator, Ted Woolsey, has his own trope on TV Tropes) and elements like Squaresoft's choice of fonts meant he had to condense the dialogue significantly.
When I initially played the game, it was largely out of context. I didn't know, for example, that the game was part of a series (the first in the series was for the Gameboy, called Final Fantasy Adventure in the U.S. - which is also part of this collection.) I think there were also elements that didn't even occur to me - like the interpretation that the game's final boss, which is ultimately a sort of innocent manifestation of nature that could inadvertently bring about the apocalypse, might actually be your own trusted draconic companion who flies you around the world in the latter half of the game.
2018 saw a remake of the game that updated it with modern graphics and I believe expanded its storytelling, but I also recall that reviews for it were quite horrible, so I've never checked it out.
Secret of Mana's gameplay, of course, felt quite different from the usual turn-based combat of other Squaresoft classics. I do think some of the "roll to hit" mechanics you find in turn-based games can feel a little unsatisfying in a real-time action RPG - swinging your sword at certain enemies at certain levels in Secret of Mana sometimes just completely whiffs, and there is a little recovery meter that strongly encourages you to time your attacks rather than just spamming.
I'm really curious to see Trials of Mana, which is the last game in the collection, which has previously not seen a release in the U.S., as I'd like to see how they iterated on the game's formula.
I think it's always interesting to return to some old game. There's a bit of an uncanny feeling, sparks of recognition but also, often, discovering the sequence of the game isn't quite like you remember, or how, in your meandering style of play when you were a kid, you might have thought of certain locations as being central to the game, when in fact it was just a place you'd go to often.
Really, it's just funny to come back to this game, which feels sort of small and not terribly long (I played through the whole thing in a week) when it was such a big thing in my childhood. I think I appreciate different aspects of it than I did back then.
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