On the tentative eve of 3.2, I am sitting here with my plush murloc, gnashing my teeth about the changes to the game. I don’t get it, it seems as if the Blizz-elites over in Irvine got together in one of their boardrooms (more than likely with a view of the badass “Orc on Wolf” statue from WETA Workshop) and drew up a plan. A plan so revolutionary to game design, only Blizzard would be capable of pulling it off. They came in with a 8 x 5 white board, an eight pack of dry-erase markers, a 12-pack of Frescas, and a vision. After a period of six minutes (four of which consisted of a thumb-war tournament… the dry-erase board was used to make the brackets) the members convened and they left the room, shaking their head and mumbling “there’s no way people will fall for this.”
It was a simple dream, born from a simple idea: Make 3.2 so bad that no matter what came out in 3.3, it would seem like a gigantic fucking leap forward in gaming. Truly revolutionary in scope, the designers toasted each other and poured their sweet draught of Fresca over their silver tongues as their minds did likewise with the nascent plan that was being executed throughout the halls of Blizzard’s B Team.
It was the perfect crime… throw in a large amount of half-assed designed armor and instances, sprinkle in a touch of NON-EXISTENT storyline, and cover it all over with inane Class Q&A’s in the forums that make it look like their actually attempting to accomplish some semblance of interest in the gameplay while answering completely nothing. All the while nerfing almost every class so as to make the instances harder so that we’re hung up on some bug for two months until we can finally stop wiping on what would have been a loot piñata in 3.1 and finally taking our rag-tag asses into Arthas’ crib where we w
ill be forced to mount a steed and… joust.
I know they haven’t come out and said that we’re going to have to joust, but the signs are pointing to the inevitability of having to actually give a fuck about that bullshit. I would rather watch a fucking Sam Raimi movie than joust one more time in this game.
I have to say, their gall is rather epic. Their formula for destroying our expectations will, more than likely, give a computer science major a topic for his undergraduate thesis appropriately entitled “Blizzard’s Design Triumph and the Fuckwits that Bought into it.” The paper will discuss the logic dreamt up in that Fresca-induced sugar high many moons before and how they successfully lowered their audience’s expectations while maintaining an outward appearance of giving a shit. It will then go into detail about how the Fuckwits (a.k.a – people who are defending Blizzard in this patch) and how, even amongst growing evidence pointing to Blizzard not giving a fuck, they fought on. “It’s uniforms!” They shouted in cool indignation to those few skeptics. “It’s going to be awesome! You just wait and see!” Yes, we will see, but I’m not holding my breath.
Throughout the last couple of weeks I have had this image in my head of what the Blizzard employees are doing when they see us trying to come up with an excuse for their laziness, and I imagine them laughing so hard that their sides are cramping and tears are rolling down their cheeks. “Can you believe these chumps bought this? We made a couple circles to fight in, copy and pasted some armor sets, and people are actually excited about it!”
I haven’t really discussed these changes at length, stay with me a touch longer while I delve into my reasoning behind my explitive-laced tirade against everything that Blizzard is currently doing with the Warcraft franchise…
Dumb Ar
mor Sets
The announcement was first made that they were going to go with faction-specific armor sets and I may have SQUEE!’d like a school girl… I’m not saying I did, but it is a definite possibility. This is the fictionalized account of my conversation with Blizzard personified upon hearing the news and subsequent learnings that the classes in each faction would look exactly the same:
- Me: “What a great idea Blizzard! Finally some real customization, now me and a troll priest are going to look nothing alike! What a great idea, man… you guys are so-“
- Blizzard [wearing some sort of beer helmet packed with Fresca instead of the suggested drink]: “Not so fast hombre!”
- Me: “What do you mean? This is great! Finally, I will be able to show myself as an Alliance Priest!”
- Blizzard: “Well… you will definitely be Alliance…”
- Me: “Whatever do you mean? Surely I will be wearing priest tier 9. No one else will be except other priests, yes?”
- Blizzard: “Erm, well, no. We’re going to dress you up in exactly the same shit as mages and warlocks too.”
- Me: “But I have nothing to do with mages and warlocks. My skills are vastly different and just because we all wear cloth? I think that seems rather lame and possibly even racist.”
- Blizzard: “Just listen to some people in our forums or something. They came up with the idea that it’s a uniform… we’re running with that. Anyway Kenny, great talk, but we’re going to go bask in a tub of dollar bills… of which 250 is yours.”
- Me: “But… but…”
But it was too late. They were already gone. (These last two sentences should be set to Natalie Imbruglia’s 1997 smash hit: Torn)
I hope that one of them dove into the deep end and choked on a nickel.
It’s not even so much that the designs are ugly… it’s that they didn’t make them any different from each other. My logic is that I would rather have armor similar to a troll priest than to have armor in common with a human warlock. In the world I live in, this kind of shit doesn’t happen and priests can be priests without being designated to a role of being a “caster.”
NOTE: Not that it matters I guess, but you know Figureprints can’t be happy right now. Who’s going to buy a 3d printed object of their character looking just like another class? I would imagine they’re getting ready for a drought.
Some Stupid-Shit Hogger Dungeon
Original, Blizz. Let’s take an idea that was kind of fun in Fable 2 and spruce it up for World of Warcraft. We’ll have the same kind of scoring system where the better that you do the more stuff you get and also we’ll use bosses that we have already had before… just maybe with a new move or two. Oh shit! I just discovered their secret… I wouldn’t be surprised to see this article down in a matter of hours and my name completely wiped off of every single database on the planet. Metzen’s cronies will probably be coming after me as soon as I hit the word “Publish.” But for those few of you that do manage to see my diatribe before it is removed from the powers-that-be take heed in these words.
Before I start, let me say that the new way that they’re doing the lock-outs is a great idea. OK, now that that is out of the way… Blizzard has somehow managed to create a world where creatures that have been killed thousands if not millions of times have arisen from their graves and are here to fight us again. I’ve looked and haven’t found a lore reason for this. It just seems to have happened. And they all somehow got to the Coliseum. Sound fishy? Sounds like they didn’t give two flips about making this dungeon anything more than filler content until 3.3 comes out. Get ready for mindless grinding in THE SAME ROOM. You thought Ulduar was getting boring? You are NOT prepared.
Oh, and because this will be dropping higher level badges and all the other instances (including five mans) will be dropping what Ulduar 25 dropped, Blizzard has effectively destroyed any reason to go into Ulduar. Get in as much of it as you can, especially if the patch doesn’t go live today. This will be your last chance before you never see that content again.
It’s Not All Bad…
It’s hard to find a silver lining in this maelstrom of shit (a veritable “fecalstrom” if you will) but as any good blogger, I must attempt to find some sort of redeeming quality about the patch and I will attempt to do that… somehow.
The patch will be good for alts. I really can’t think of anything else. If you’re currently playing another class you can more than likely get an alt geared in time for the battle against Arthas (were you will joust) and that’s good, I guess.
I’m kind of losing steam now. This has been a particularly long rant, but I do have some questions for those readers who have made it this far: Are you looking forward to the Coliseum? Will you ever go back to Ulduar once you can get the same badges in Naxx or even 5-mans? Have you even completed Ulduar?
Let me know in the comments section.
-Kenny D
headed for an overhaul come Cataclysm, so the idea of making a decision like race when racials can change seems overly analytical. Don’t misunderstand me, I think racials can be important to game play, but they are not so critical that all decisions should be based on them.
The following is the last entry from a small journal found in a field in West Texas. Scattered around the journal was the remains of a microwave, refrigerator, drying machine, and the lonely empty husk of an old satellite dish.
