It has been a long, long time since Deathwing took a deep breath and blasted apart Stormwind's Park. If you're a newer (meaning post 2010) player, you might not realize that rather than a burning, smoking crater that dips into the ocean, the area north of the Mage District and west of the Cathedral Ward in Stormwind used to be its own area.
The Park wouldn't look all that impressive compared to the graphics of today, but it was, essentially, the Night Elf part of Stormwind, where Druid and Hunter trainers could be found (there was another Hunter trailer in the Dwarven District as well, but none in Old Town.)
Well, 7.0 will see Stormwind's construction workers finally get off their behinds (hopefully well-paid this time) and repair that gaping maw of destruction, which will prominently feature a [REDACTED.]
Additionally, and more ephemerally, it looks like Legion will have its own sort of variant on the famous/infamous Zombie Plague from the pre-Wrath event. It appears that going through major cities, players will sometimes encounter "Dark Whispers" with promises of power. This will give you a buff that slowly corrupts you with demonic magic and allows you to spread it to other players, eventually transforming you into a Dreadlord (hostile to the rest of the world.)
It appears that this buff can be clicked-off, so you can opt out, but I'm curious to see if some of the other features of the Zombie Plague make a comeback, such as a gradual ramp-up of sources and virulence, or the ability to team up with members of the other faction.
In addition, there seems to be a pre-launch quest line that involves dealing with cultists who are already taking the "if you can't beat them, join them" attitude toward the Burning Legion.
So it sounds like for the first time since Cataclysm, we might be getting a full-fledged launch event.
Thursday, April 28, 2016
Wednesday, April 27, 2016
Zendikar (Magic: The Gathering Setting) Gets a D&D Sourcebook Online
I've only started doing D&D within the past year, jumping into the deep end as I DM my own home-brew setting. However, the Wizards of the Coast property I've been far more familiar with in Magic: The Gathering. I started playing when I was eight years old, from roughly Fallen Empires to Tempest block, then picked it up again in college (using a Virtual PC emulator to play it online - seriously, would it kill them to make MTGO available for Macs?) for Kamigawa and Ravnica (the latter of which is probably my favorite block I've played.)
While I haven't played actively in quite some time, I have followed the game on occasion, and two of its more recent settings, Innistrad and Zendikar, kind of split the difference for my tastes in fantasy.
Wizards has kept MTG and D&D separated for over twenty years, which is probably wise, preventing them from growing too similar. But they're breaking that rule in a free online sourcebook to accompany some art book coming out thanks to their return to the Zendikar setting.
Zendikar was conceived a bit as the "RPG" block, what with creatures that leveled up and its focus being on small bands of adventurers seeking treasure, so it makes sense that they would adapt the setting to D&D.
The sourcebook (which can be found with this link) adds or modifies playable races, so you can be a Kor, a Vampire, a Goblin, or a Merfolk, in addition to Humans and Elves. It also adds a ton of monsters, largely using existing creatures in the Monster Manual as analogous creatures from Zendikar, with slight tweaks in some cases to make them fit better.
Given that my D&D setting has a lot of Lovecraftian beings and the Monster Manual is pretty limited in that regard, I'm sure that I'll be stealing some of the ideas about Eldrazi creatures.
I'm really happy about this sourcebook, especially given that it's free, as it's a kind of chocolate and peanut-butter of nerdiness. I recommend checking it out if you're looking for a new D&D setting or at least looking for inspiration.
While I haven't played actively in quite some time, I have followed the game on occasion, and two of its more recent settings, Innistrad and Zendikar, kind of split the difference for my tastes in fantasy.
Wizards has kept MTG and D&D separated for over twenty years, which is probably wise, preventing them from growing too similar. But they're breaking that rule in a free online sourcebook to accompany some art book coming out thanks to their return to the Zendikar setting.
Zendikar was conceived a bit as the "RPG" block, what with creatures that leveled up and its focus being on small bands of adventurers seeking treasure, so it makes sense that they would adapt the setting to D&D.
The sourcebook (which can be found with this link) adds or modifies playable races, so you can be a Kor, a Vampire, a Goblin, or a Merfolk, in addition to Humans and Elves. It also adds a ton of monsters, largely using existing creatures in the Monster Manual as analogous creatures from Zendikar, with slight tweaks in some cases to make them fit better.
Given that my D&D setting has a lot of Lovecraftian beings and the Monster Manual is pretty limited in that regard, I'm sure that I'll be stealing some of the ideas about Eldrazi creatures.
I'm really happy about this sourcebook, especially given that it's free, as it's a kind of chocolate and peanut-butter of nerdiness. I recommend checking it out if you're looking for a new D&D setting or at least looking for inspiration.
Nintendo NX Coming out Next March, Along with New Zelda
The Wii U had a ton of potential - I bought one a few months after it came out, and I was excited that Nintendo was planning to try to get back into the top-line gaming that it had ceded to Microsoft and Sony during the Gamecube and Wii era.
It did not succeed at this.
The Wii U has some fantastic games. I think its version of Smash Bros. might be the best yet (though I'd bet most people still consider Melee to be the pinnacle.) The problem is that there really just aren't that many games for it.
As someone who's approaching 30 pretty soon, it's also true that my taste in games has shifted over time. I'm more interested in complex stories and mechanics, and of course novelty. I love Mario games, but I'll admit that Super Mario 3D World and New Super Mario Bros. U kind of melt together in my mind even though they're not even in the same number of dimensions.
But given that I invested in the Wii U, I do feel like I got burned.
For one thing, a general rule with Nintendo is that you can expect one and a half Zelda games per generation. Two for the NES, one for the SNES, two for the N64, and then practically one and a half for the Gamecube (Wind Waker and Twilight Princess) and again for the Wii (Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword.) Now, the new Zelda game will not be launching until the NX does, which means that you can be certain it will come out on the NX, likely with a Wii U version, meaning the Wii U only gets, effectively, half a Zelda.
There's also the fact that it will have been only four years since the Wii U came out, with very little produced during the time.
It's a real shame, because I felt that the return to traditional controls might have meant more 3rd-party titles. But this is the big problem for Nintendo:
I grew up primarily with the SNES and N64 era, and at that time, Nintendo was a place for 3rd-party studios to show off their stuff. Now, however, for technical and also business-politics reasons, Nintendo is treated more like the American Politics version of a third party - people forget they exist.
What keeps me buying Nintendo consoles has been their 1st party games, but maybe it's me or maybe it's Nintendo, but I don't really see that many exciting things coming out from them these days.
The Wii U didn't have a Metroid game, it will only just barely have a Zelda game.
I'm assuming the strategy here is to cut their losses, hoping that the NX will be at least on a technical level on par with the PS4 and the Xbox One, but I'm going to be a lot more cautious about buying this new console than I was with the Wii U, given how recently I did so.
It did not succeed at this.
The Wii U has some fantastic games. I think its version of Smash Bros. might be the best yet (though I'd bet most people still consider Melee to be the pinnacle.) The problem is that there really just aren't that many games for it.
As someone who's approaching 30 pretty soon, it's also true that my taste in games has shifted over time. I'm more interested in complex stories and mechanics, and of course novelty. I love Mario games, but I'll admit that Super Mario 3D World and New Super Mario Bros. U kind of melt together in my mind even though they're not even in the same number of dimensions.
But given that I invested in the Wii U, I do feel like I got burned.
For one thing, a general rule with Nintendo is that you can expect one and a half Zelda games per generation. Two for the NES, one for the SNES, two for the N64, and then practically one and a half for the Gamecube (Wind Waker and Twilight Princess) and again for the Wii (Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword.) Now, the new Zelda game will not be launching until the NX does, which means that you can be certain it will come out on the NX, likely with a Wii U version, meaning the Wii U only gets, effectively, half a Zelda.
There's also the fact that it will have been only four years since the Wii U came out, with very little produced during the time.
It's a real shame, because I felt that the return to traditional controls might have meant more 3rd-party titles. But this is the big problem for Nintendo:
I grew up primarily with the SNES and N64 era, and at that time, Nintendo was a place for 3rd-party studios to show off their stuff. Now, however, for technical and also business-politics reasons, Nintendo is treated more like the American Politics version of a third party - people forget they exist.
What keeps me buying Nintendo consoles has been their 1st party games, but maybe it's me or maybe it's Nintendo, but I don't really see that many exciting things coming out from them these days.
The Wii U didn't have a Metroid game, it will only just barely have a Zelda game.
I'm assuming the strategy here is to cut their losses, hoping that the NX will be at least on a technical level on par with the PS4 and the Xbox One, but I'm going to be a lot more cautious about buying this new console than I was with the Wii U, given how recently I did so.
Tuesday, April 26, 2016
Whispers of the Old Gods Live in Hearthstone
The latest Hearthstone expansion is now live, and with it comes some very nice quests to help you get started into the expansion, a free copy of C'thun and two of his cultist buff cards, and also the new Standard/Wild format distinction.
Moving forward, we'll be getting a new season of cards each year that eliminates some of the older cards from being available. If you love your old decks, though, you can play in the Wild Format, but for those of you more interested in stepping into a new meta-game, Standard is the way to play.
This is a very similar thing to the way that Magic: The Gathering works - there Standard allows the latest Core Set and the last two expansion blocks. You'll still be able to play Wild if you want to have all of Hearthstone's history available for deck-building, but the idea here is to keep the game fresh by mixing up the meta-game, and allowing Blizzard to force out old overpowered strategies and cards without fully removing them from the game.
Notably, Hearthstone's Standard will always allow Classic and Basic cards, so the things that have been in-game since the game launched will always be available for play (though the recent patch nerfed and/or buffed a few of them to keep them in line.)
The current Standard excludes cards gained from the Naxxramas solo adventure and the Goblins and Gnomes expansion, but Classic/Basic card, Grand Tournament, Blackrock Mountain, League of Explorers, and of course the new Whispers of the Old Gods cards are all available.
To promote Standard, there will be a couple new quests that you'll get that reward several packs of Whispers of the Old Gods cards.
This expansion, I splurged and got the fifty-pack pre-order. It really shows you how rare Legendary cards are, as I only got two, and they were both Ragnaros the Lightlord - after opening all the packs, I managed to more than double the amount of crafting dust I had, which is considerable as I have crafted a grand total of two rare cards in all my time playing the game.
Given that C'thun is provided to all players, I naturally first created a C'thun-focused deck. While some C'thun cultists cards are class-specific, many are not, so I just dumped all the ones I had into the deck that fit with a Warlock and then picked out a few others that I liked.
One of my favorite new cards is Darkshire Councilor (maybe Councilmember or Councilman?) which is a Warlock card. It's 3 mana and is a 1/5 minion, but every time you summon a minion, he gets +1 attack. This is pretty great for any small-minion-heavy deck (it also triggers when minions are created by spells and effects,) and the 5-health body means he can actually fight a few times before he dies.
The C'thun cultists are often decent on their own, and I've won a few games without seeing C'thun at all. But there's something immensely satisfying about getting him out there after being pumped up to high health and blasting the crap out of the opponent's side of the table. If you have him, Brann Bronzebeard is a pretty fantastic complement to him, as many of the cultist cards buff C'thun with a Battlecry, and C'thun's burst of damage is also a Battlecry, meaning that with a 16/16 C'thun, you can wind up doing 32 points of damage when you drop him on the table. (And it's split damage, so Divine Shield minions are not going to have much of an advantage against him.)
Of course, the trick to any of the Old God-based decks is that getting up to 10 mana is going to require some finesse, not to mention drawing the card. There is a minion that will put a 10-cost minion from your deck into your hand if it survives a turn, which should help with this.
My strategy is largely using lots of taunt creatures and death rattle creatures that either buff fellow minions or generate additional minions to keep my board active. I can often survive long enough to cast C'thun if I get him into my hand.
While it feels like only yesterday that Goblins and Gnomes launched (or even was announced,) I'll say this: I am so happy not to have to deal with Doctor Boom or the freaking Healbot anymore. Priest decks are still a thing (and will probably continue to be,) but at least until people figure out the most annoying cards in this new expansion, I'm loving Standard as a format.
The new board is an Old-God corrupted version of the Stormwind board, which is sadly not terribly interactive (though I've been playing on my phone, so there might be more interesting stuff int he upper left and lower right that I'm missing.) I love the aesthetic of the expansion - the even-more-cartoony look of Hearthstone (as compared to WoW) helps transform the Lovecraftian horror of the Old Gods into something more Halloweeny and fun.
UPDATE:
It shouldn't come as a surprise that the Old God cards themselves sort of demand to have a deck built around them. My own Warlock deck, "Cult of C'thun," feels awesome when it goes off well, but if I cast C'thun and either through bad luck or just not enough buffing by Cultists the match is not over (or over on the next turn,) the deck deflates really fast.
I haven't seen anyone play the other Old Gods, but it does look like there are a few "cultist" equivalents. N'zoth summons back dead Deathrattle cards, so obviously you'd want to have a bunch of those in your deck (sadly Baron Rivendare is no longer in Standard, as he'd be a pretty obvious piece for such a deck.) Yogg-Saron casts spells, and given the random nature of his spell fire-off, he's a bit of a gamble. Y'Shaarj summons your big minions, so I really see him working best in a Druid deck with lots of mana-gain and big, expensive minions.
The trick, of course, will be building decks that also work on an effective theme. My deck could use some work, as I think it does a decent job of building up to C'thun's summoning, but once I've pulled that trigger, there aren't really any rounds left in the gun.
I haven't seen or thought much about other themes to build around using Whispers of the Old Gods cards that don't include the OGs themselves, but I'm sure those will surface over time.
Moving forward, we'll be getting a new season of cards each year that eliminates some of the older cards from being available. If you love your old decks, though, you can play in the Wild Format, but for those of you more interested in stepping into a new meta-game, Standard is the way to play.
This is a very similar thing to the way that Magic: The Gathering works - there Standard allows the latest Core Set and the last two expansion blocks. You'll still be able to play Wild if you want to have all of Hearthstone's history available for deck-building, but the idea here is to keep the game fresh by mixing up the meta-game, and allowing Blizzard to force out old overpowered strategies and cards without fully removing them from the game.
Notably, Hearthstone's Standard will always allow Classic and Basic cards, so the things that have been in-game since the game launched will always be available for play (though the recent patch nerfed and/or buffed a few of them to keep them in line.)
The current Standard excludes cards gained from the Naxxramas solo adventure and the Goblins and Gnomes expansion, but Classic/Basic card, Grand Tournament, Blackrock Mountain, League of Explorers, and of course the new Whispers of the Old Gods cards are all available.
To promote Standard, there will be a couple new quests that you'll get that reward several packs of Whispers of the Old Gods cards.
This expansion, I splurged and got the fifty-pack pre-order. It really shows you how rare Legendary cards are, as I only got two, and they were both Ragnaros the Lightlord - after opening all the packs, I managed to more than double the amount of crafting dust I had, which is considerable as I have crafted a grand total of two rare cards in all my time playing the game.
Given that C'thun is provided to all players, I naturally first created a C'thun-focused deck. While some C'thun cultists cards are class-specific, many are not, so I just dumped all the ones I had into the deck that fit with a Warlock and then picked out a few others that I liked.
One of my favorite new cards is Darkshire Councilor (maybe Councilmember or Councilman?) which is a Warlock card. It's 3 mana and is a 1/5 minion, but every time you summon a minion, he gets +1 attack. This is pretty great for any small-minion-heavy deck (it also triggers when minions are created by spells and effects,) and the 5-health body means he can actually fight a few times before he dies.
The C'thun cultists are often decent on their own, and I've won a few games without seeing C'thun at all. But there's something immensely satisfying about getting him out there after being pumped up to high health and blasting the crap out of the opponent's side of the table. If you have him, Brann Bronzebeard is a pretty fantastic complement to him, as many of the cultist cards buff C'thun with a Battlecry, and C'thun's burst of damage is also a Battlecry, meaning that with a 16/16 C'thun, you can wind up doing 32 points of damage when you drop him on the table. (And it's split damage, so Divine Shield minions are not going to have much of an advantage against him.)
Of course, the trick to any of the Old God-based decks is that getting up to 10 mana is going to require some finesse, not to mention drawing the card. There is a minion that will put a 10-cost minion from your deck into your hand if it survives a turn, which should help with this.
My strategy is largely using lots of taunt creatures and death rattle creatures that either buff fellow minions or generate additional minions to keep my board active. I can often survive long enough to cast C'thun if I get him into my hand.
While it feels like only yesterday that Goblins and Gnomes launched (or even was announced,) I'll say this: I am so happy not to have to deal with Doctor Boom or the freaking Healbot anymore. Priest decks are still a thing (and will probably continue to be,) but at least until people figure out the most annoying cards in this new expansion, I'm loving Standard as a format.
The new board is an Old-God corrupted version of the Stormwind board, which is sadly not terribly interactive (though I've been playing on my phone, so there might be more interesting stuff int he upper left and lower right that I'm missing.) I love the aesthetic of the expansion - the even-more-cartoony look of Hearthstone (as compared to WoW) helps transform the Lovecraftian horror of the Old Gods into something more Halloweeny and fun.
UPDATE:
It shouldn't come as a surprise that the Old God cards themselves sort of demand to have a deck built around them. My own Warlock deck, "Cult of C'thun," feels awesome when it goes off well, but if I cast C'thun and either through bad luck or just not enough buffing by Cultists the match is not over (or over on the next turn,) the deck deflates really fast.
I haven't seen anyone play the other Old Gods, but it does look like there are a few "cultist" equivalents. N'zoth summons back dead Deathrattle cards, so obviously you'd want to have a bunch of those in your deck (sadly Baron Rivendare is no longer in Standard, as he'd be a pretty obvious piece for such a deck.) Yogg-Saron casts spells, and given the random nature of his spell fire-off, he's a bit of a gamble. Y'Shaarj summons your big minions, so I really see him working best in a Druid deck with lots of mana-gain and big, expensive minions.
The trick, of course, will be building decks that also work on an effective theme. My deck could use some work, as I think it does a decent job of building up to C'thun's summoning, but once I've pulled that trigger, there aren't really any rounds left in the gun.
I haven't seen or thought much about other themes to build around using Whispers of the Old Gods cards that don't include the OGs themselves, but I'm sure those will surface over time.
Monday, April 25, 2016
The Shadowlands, The Undead, and Revival in World of Warcraft
World of Warcraft Chronicles Vol. 1 Spoilers to Follow.
At this point, the statute of limitations on the spoilers for the books I think has passed - if you haven't gotten the book by now, you'll probably just want to find out these things through gameplay and internet osmosis.
I'm almost hesitant to keep marking these as spoilers, but just out of courtesy, I'll do it again this time.
At this point, the statute of limitations on the spoilers for the books I think has passed - if you haven't gotten the book by now, you'll probably just want to find out these things through gameplay and internet osmosis.
I'm almost hesitant to keep marking these as spoilers, but just out of courtesy, I'll do it again this time.
Thursday, April 21, 2016
New Alpha Build Brings New Dungeon and Suramar, Along With Other Things
While I'm still a bit peeved at how long it will be before Legion comes out, I'm still quite excited about the expansion, and the latest patch is filling it out in a few ways.
First off: Suramar, the highest-level zone is now open for testing. While the other four leveling zones will be available to do in any order, scaling to the level of the player, Suramar will be handled last. I don't know if that means it's a level-cap zone or if it will be for players level 108-110, but I'd guess the latter, as it would allow players to do two levels per zone.
The other nice bit of news is that there's another dungeon for testing: the Court of Stars, which I assume was the "Suramar City" dungeon. I'd actually despaired of seeing more 5-player dungeons being opened up, thinking that The Arcway (once called Suramar Catacombs) would be our only Suramar dungeon.
There also plenty of revisions to specs, talents, and other such things.
One curious thing is the addition of Order Hall armor sets. Not sure how those will be acquired, but they seem to be epic quality with set bonuses.
Also, it appears that there's a new souped-up PvP mount, which looks like it's the Goblin Trike. I'm curious about what the Alliance will get, given that the Worgen don't really have a unique mount (other than the "Mountain Horses" which old models there purely to avoid giving Horde players an advantage on mount collection achievements.)
There are still systems to implement, and the World Quests and Order Campaigns likely require a lot of implementation. Ultimately, though, there's already a release date. I can only hope that if they have things in good order months before the expansion releases that they'll be hard at work on post-launch patches.
First off: Suramar, the highest-level zone is now open for testing. While the other four leveling zones will be available to do in any order, scaling to the level of the player, Suramar will be handled last. I don't know if that means it's a level-cap zone or if it will be for players level 108-110, but I'd guess the latter, as it would allow players to do two levels per zone.
The other nice bit of news is that there's another dungeon for testing: the Court of Stars, which I assume was the "Suramar City" dungeon. I'd actually despaired of seeing more 5-player dungeons being opened up, thinking that The Arcway (once called Suramar Catacombs) would be our only Suramar dungeon.
There also plenty of revisions to specs, talents, and other such things.
One curious thing is the addition of Order Hall armor sets. Not sure how those will be acquired, but they seem to be epic quality with set bonuses.
Also, it appears that there's a new souped-up PvP mount, which looks like it's the Goblin Trike. I'm curious about what the Alliance will get, given that the Worgen don't really have a unique mount (other than the "Mountain Horses" which old models there purely to avoid giving Horde players an advantage on mount collection achievements.)
There are still systems to implement, and the World Quests and Order Campaigns likely require a lot of implementation. Ultimately, though, there's already a release date. I can only hope that if they have things in good order months before the expansion releases that they'll be hard at work on post-launch patches.
Tuesday, April 19, 2016
Legion Launches 8/30/16 - Two Raid-Tier Expansions Officially a Bad Idea
So there's good news and there's bad news: The good news is that Legion's release date has been officially announced, which means that we can now purchase it in good conscience, knowing when said purchase will actually be available. The bad news is that it's way the hell over at the end of August, which means a few things:
First, even with the rather thorough Alpha testing we've seen, there is actually enough time for a whole Beta test between then and now. Second, it means that the whole "advantage" of having only two raid tiers for Warlords of Draenor (something which I wouldn't even consider an advantage, given that even if the expansion were coming out now, we'd still have had a pretty damn long content drought) is utterly null, because this means we're still going for something like thirteen months between major patches (only one less than the post-Mists drought.)
For most games, this wouldn't be too much of a problem - in fact, taking a little longer to come out with the next Assassin's Creed is probably a good thing - but WoW is A: subscription based, meaning that we're paying for all those months of non-content and B: it's multiplayer, so the more people who give up and stop playing, the less enjoyable the game is for the players who are online.
I've been on a WoW-hiatus for a while, and I was looking forward to getting back into the game soon. But apparently it'll be another four months (maybe slightly less, given the pre-patch.)
First, even with the rather thorough Alpha testing we've seen, there is actually enough time for a whole Beta test between then and now. Second, it means that the whole "advantage" of having only two raid tiers for Warlords of Draenor (something which I wouldn't even consider an advantage, given that even if the expansion were coming out now, we'd still have had a pretty damn long content drought) is utterly null, because this means we're still going for something like thirteen months between major patches (only one less than the post-Mists drought.)
For most games, this wouldn't be too much of a problem - in fact, taking a little longer to come out with the next Assassin's Creed is probably a good thing - but WoW is A: subscription based, meaning that we're paying for all those months of non-content and B: it's multiplayer, so the more people who give up and stop playing, the less enjoyable the game is for the players who are online.
I've been on a WoW-hiatus for a while, and I was looking forward to getting back into the game soon. But apparently it'll be another four months (maybe slightly less, given the pre-patch.)
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