#Though I know about EA and their lootboxes/expansion packs

[oh-cool-a-burning-sword]

Okay can someone explain to me WHY some people are jumping to the conclusion that Engage is going to be a Gacha game despite there being (as of this moment) zero evidence of that being the case? Because I'm really confused about this.

Is it because old characters are returning? Since this is FAR from the first time an FE game brought back old characters. Granted this is the one of the biggest ways they've done this, but that alone isn't enough evidence that Engage will be a Gacha.

To me, it feels like we'll be collecting the Emblems as we play through the game. Especially since in the announcement trailer Alear says that Mystery Girl tasked them to collecting all the Emblem. With that in mind, it's more likely that we'll get a sort of sub plot about collecting the rings since they seem to be important for the story.

So I just don't get why some of y'all are looking at Engage and going 'That's gonna be a Gacha'. I'm even looking through some of the leaks and there's not even a single mention of any Gacha features. The closest thing that could hint to that is someone saying that there's a Gimmick to summon heroes from the past. But it seems more likely that it meant the rings as a whole and not that you have to actually pay money/actually summon in oder to gain them.

[ilvatu]

Blizzard is dead.

Hopefully this will be my first and last Blizzard post. At least until they release and/or publish another dumpster fire of a game, gift wrapped and adored by their fanboys. 

Blizzard is the undisputed king of MMOs. Or at least their Daddy. Not grandfather, Daddy. The aged, drunk, smoked 2 packs a day step father that beats their children daddy of a company. A company that is the smoking shadow of its former self. 

Blizzard hasn’t made a good game since Starcraft 2. There. I said it.  And even then it only really enjoyed as much success as it did because it was Starcraft and published by Blizzard. I really only enjoyed it because I was trying to relive the days of yore. Maybe it wasn’t good either. 

Blizzard has survived because of their brand alone. Their fans believe the publisher is incapable of releasing a bad game. The problem is that Blizzard is still able to sell them bad games because it seems to me like their fans haven’t played much else. They are still clinging to titles like Final Fantasy 14, which is just a WoW clone. While they wait for the next big Blizzard MMO or WoW expansion to come out. They keep playing dead genres and IPs because it’s what is familiar. What they fell in love with but are too stuck up to divorce. 

What about Diablo 3? I hated it. Maybe it’s because I never played Diablo 2. But this game has very little content, like. I played through the story. Then I played through it again. Upgraded some gear here and there. Kill some monsters. Play through the story again. Keep grinding. It just seems like a grindfest loot festival of a shitshow. I don’t get it and I probably never will. If you enjoy this game I hope you never complain about any game being either too grindy or not having enough content. I hated D3 and I will never understand the people who don’t. 

Overwatch? It’s TF2 if it were published in 2016 using assets from the failed creation of a new IP “Titan.” The gameplay was stripped straight away from TF2 and in traditional Blizzard fashion the game has no semblance of balance. Anything that seems too fun gets the axe. I put an embarrassing number of hours into Overwatch, mostly because my friends were playing it, and at this point I don’t see a reason to put any more. It’s stale, boring, and barely still under post-release development.  

Blizzard decided that they would also include lootboxes, another idea they stole from Valve. This time, a big middle finger to their fans. While the rewards are purely cosmetic, it doesn’t stop the fanboys from spending hundreds of dollars on events. Reinforcing the idea that giving your fans a way to give you money is good. Loot boxes are a cheap cash grab from a company that already wipes it’s ass with $100 bills. 

$100 bills earned from WoW. WoW was a good game for 2004. It is not a good game for 2017. We expect more than a level cap increase, a few zones we’ll never visit again after we finish leveling, and a grind fest of a dungeon queue and a raid dungeon. The last three expansions have been so lackluster that the only reason it makes sense to me that Blizzard is still supporting the game at this point is because it just makes economic sense to do so. WoW may have been a great game in it’s past, but for 2017 it isn’t graphically good enough, nor is the gameplay they’ve padded around their dungeons and boss fights enough to keep an adult interested. 

Maybe after playing Eve for several years after WoW I was disillusioned. An MMO with a design philosophy so inherently different from WoW I am surprised people consider them the same genre. I am not saying Eve is good and WoW is not, especially in 2017. But Eve was such a different design that to me that I can’t really go back to another WoW-esque MMO. I can’t really go back to Eve either, but I now expect something else from my games. Maybe it’s why I am so obsessed with the development of Star Citizen. I digress. 

Heroes of the Storm was DOA as far as I’m concerned. It was a MOBA aimed at a casual audience after MOBAs were going out of style. And the games still take 20-30 minutes to complete. Mechanically the game was interesting on it’s own, but it was just a game you played a few times, shrugged, and moved on with. They keep forcing promotions with their other games to keep people coming back, and even had to give away 50 heroes just for logging in just to keep their shit MOBA with enough players. Too little, too late here Blizzard. 

Hearthstone? It’s just watered down Magic: The Gathering. Was it for people who don’t understand the concept of the stack? Maybe I didn’t play it long enough to “get it” like with Diablo. I didn’t feel like there was too much strategy to it. I can’t declare blockers. I can’t play spells on my opponent’s turn. Half the people you play are AFK or just taking the full amount of time to piss you off. “Well Played” Blizzard. I can’t say enough bad things about Hearthstone. 

Blizzard keeps trying to shove the competitive gaming down our throats for all their games. I don’t give a shit about what “professional” Overwatch team comps are. No, I don’t care what the top guild in WoW does in this fight. No, I don’t care about the new season of Diablo 3. No, I don’t want to watch Korean Starcraft. Are there competitive HOTS players? Probably, I wouldn’t doubt it. I am of the opinion not every game needs a competitive or professional scene. Blizzard creates casual games and then tries to develop a competitive scene around it. It’s the most backwards of logic.Or creates their patented bronze -> silver -> gold -> platinum -> diamond -> master rankings, and then wonders why their game has such a toxic atmosphere to new or casual players. 

I won’t talk about MMR here, this blog is too fresh at this point to get that dirty. 

In the past few years Blizzard has pulled every cheap trick to retain players and strip them of their cash. Lootboxes, Seasons in D3. HOTS gave away 50 free heroes for logging in their dead, shit MOBA. Gametime for gold in WoW. Then you can use the WoW gold money to buy the other games of theirs you don’t give a shit about. 

I half expect to find a Blizzard game at the arcade. Begging me to put a quarter in every time I die in Overwatch. Giving us minerals in Starcraft in exchange for dollars. To find Jeff Kaplan at the local strip joint busting open lootboxes for singles. Showering his fans in glitter and cheap skins. At this point their games feel and look so cheap, and have had every marketing gimmick pulled.Every time someone plays it’s like they keep trying to capitalize on that hype by offering to let you buy cosmetics.  I can’t help but think that they are just searching for a way to nickel and dime us but can’t figure out how do do that in a free-to-play model that includes a grindfest, gear progression, and premium skins. The Blizzard wet-dream. 

Overwatch, at least, demonstrates that there still may be some hope for Blizzard in the future. It was their first FPS and a new IP. I think this shows that they may  try to create something new and different in the future. Or at least that they might have the courage to. I hope it shows more promise and originality than Overwatch did. But then again Overwatch was a failed game called “Titan.” I have no idea what they thought it would be, but I would guess that it was extremely bad, even by Blizzard’s standards, so they decided to take their assets, cut their losses and create Overwatch.  

Was Overwatch a success? Yes. Was it good? I don’t think so. It expanded on TF2′s class based system slightly, but also incorporated nothing new about TF2′s gameplay. I mean, half the characters were cheap ripoffs of TF2 classes. It isn’t hard to see a similarity between Demo and Junkrat. Sniper and Widow. Mercy and the Medic. Pyro and ... you get the idea. Throw in some originals as well and there’s enough that it isn’t a total clone. The ultimates varied wildly from gamebreaking to minor annoyance. And don’t give me that “situationally good” argument, but that’s a topic for an entire separate post. 

Furthermore, Overwatch has had very little implemented into it since launch. Seriously, 3 new playable characters since launch? A map or two? Nobody really gave a shit about your co-op events, Mei’s snowball adventure, or Capture the Flag. They still haven’t admitted that CTF is a valid game mode. I guess they just can’t figure out how to balance the game around it because they would have to actually fix some of their horseshit characters or disable half of them just to make it fun. 

And with the release of Starcraft Remastered we have completely regressed any of the progress made with Overwatch. I mean, you re-skinned your most popular game ever released. Did you get tired of seeing decades old assets on GOM TV? Did you think it would get people to use the Blizzard launcher or try HOTS? I don’t know why they did this, honestly. Unless there is a UMS that is literally sex I won’t even bother. It’s Starcraft. The same shit you played when you were home from school sick in the 2000′s. 

And I guess this brings us to Destiny. Why am I talking about Destiny? Because Blizzard is the publisher. Does that mean it’s a Blizzard game? Kinda. It is going to be on b.net. I never played the first Destiny, and I won’t play this one either. It does give us a clue where Blizzard is on the spectrum though. Destiny may be a proof-of-concept to other outside developers that want to publish their game, don’t have the infrastructure to do so and don’t want to deal with Valve (Steam), EA (Origin) or GoG. It could also be that Activision is evaluating their options with Blizzard’s brand. A sign that while they aren’t desperate yet, their cash cow (WoW) is dying of old age and they are looking for other sources of income to continue development. Hopefully that development isn’t into dead IP’s and games that cling to cultural relevance in an era that has moved beyond Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo. 

Why do I say Blizzard is dead? Because they can’t create something that isn’t in one of their dead old IPs. Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo are living history. They shouldn’t be getting used as much as they are. WoW is a living relic of the past. Go ahead, log in. All your old shit is still there. It’s like an old photo album of shame, except the last few pages are blank, and you can still fill them in ... for a price. 

I think choosing to publish Destiny is a glimpse into Blizzard’s future. Perhaps they will continue to develop some games under their dead IP’s and choose to publish premium games from other developers. I think the future of Blizzard is in publishing, and I see them to be more like Valve in the future, but expecting a higher quality from developers.  

In any case, I won’t be buying or playing anything Blizzard develops or publishes for quite some time. I think that they are in a rut as a company and they haven’t created anything that appeals to me for a long time. I think my best memories of Blizzard are in the past.