Guristas Assault Player Fortizar in Alsavoinon

Are We Ready for Annual Retail WoW Expansions?

Just a quick post because this popped up in my feed this afternoon. In an interview over at Game Developer with Warcraft general manager John Hight and executive producer Holly Longdale, they explained that the WoW team has put structures in place to be able to work on parallel content streams, with two teams working on expansions and a third team acting as the live team, keeping up with patches and updates.

There has been speculation as to whether or not the expansions of the Worldsoul Saga would be traditional “every other year” expansions or might come at a quicker pace.

The World Soul Saga is Coming

Being a pessimist, I assumed we were looking at every other year. Now, however, I am not so sure.

Of course, the flip side of this is some anxiety that Blizz might push out content too quickly, but they had an answer for that:

Hight confirmed the studio has no intention of rushing players toward the next expansion all the time, because that would come to devalue their importance. But he also noted that it wouldn’t be desirable to “drag things out longer than necessary,” an issue players of Destiny 2 would be familiar with.

I am hesitant to lay all of the credit at the feet of Holly, but she did come from a team that managed to put out annual expansions for two MMORPGs, EverQuest and EverQuest II, on an annual basis.

Granted, not every one of those was a winner, but at least you’re never more than a year away from the next expansion.

Game Developer – Blizzard may be ready to annualize World of Warcraft’s expansions

Friday Bullet Points about Financials and Consequences

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It is Friday and a holiday for some of us, being the observed day for Veteran’s Day in the US as well as the birthday of the United States Marine Corps. Happy 248th to them!

Meanwhile, I am tired at the end of the week, so it is another bullet points blog post.

The Overwatch League is Dead

I was complaining about how dull the Overwatch section of the BlizzCon keynote was, and especially the part about the Overwatch League. It would have been much more interesting if they hadn’t shoveled a bunch of boring garbage (if not exactly lies) at us and simply told us it was dead.

Not the Overwatch 2 League? The naming remains confusing

That it is dead isn’t surprising. The whole esports thing was a another hype bubble, unable in the long term to support anything like professional teams. Riot, the leader in the market, freely admits their league is a money loser and serves primarily as marketing to keep their fans engaged.

I am sure some esports backers made out in the hype before moving on to crypto, the metaverse, and AI. But the rest are stuck with the bill unless they can get somebody like the Saudis to buy them out, as happened with the ESL. (And the Saudis won the Overwatch World Cup. Hrmm…) Anyway, there is some coverage of the story to link to, since I’m not getting into details:

PC Gamer – The Overwatch League is officially dead
Massively OP – The Overwatch League appears to be dead after six seasons

Technically, Blizzard says the league is “transitioning,” but they’re paying out some cash to the team owners to get them to go away and the whole thing will become a more normal tournament style activity. The attempt to force esports into a professional sports format was never solid and now we’re in the “finding out” stage of things.

The Escapist is Dead

It is one of those weeks I guess.

I mean, technically it is still there. All the content that was on their site last week is still there this week. Their YouTube channel still has the same stuff. It is just no longer going to have most of the content you might have gone there to view. Like the Overwatch League, it will be “transitioning,” though its eventual destination is less certain.

The Escapist logo… the latest one I think…

The Escapist went from a viable media concern to an archive pretty much over night after firing one of their well liked creative director earlier this week, an act that cause the rest of their creative staff up and quit in solidarity with the fired individual.

Again, other coverage can get you the details.

GamesIndustry.biz – The Escapist staff resign following termination of editor-in-chief Nick Calandra
Forbes – Zero Punctuation Ends As ‘The Escapist’ Faces Mass Resignations After EIC Firing
BBC – Zero Punctuation star Yahtzee Croshaw quits after 16 years

For me, as for many others judging from the headlines, The Escapist was largely just the home of the long running Zero Punctuation video series (at one time that was pretty much their only popular content) and some of Yahtzee Crowshaw‘s other side projects.

They did do that nice EVE Online documentary I mentioned last week. (The one hour one, not the six hour epic Down the Rabbit Hole.) But now The Escapist will be scrambling to find somebody to make something they can put ads around. We will see how that turns out, but even if it succeeds, the old version of the site is dead.

A Second Wind

The other half of The Escapist story is that all of the creative staff that left ran off to form their own new creative concern called Second Wind.

As long as it isn’t breaking wind

The Second Wind crew was very quick to gather up their fans on a Discord server, then they rolled up a Twitter account, Twitch Channel, a YouTube Channel, a subreddit, and a variety of funding points to help support the new venture. As always, details are available in the news… that there are more headlines about the end of Zero Punctuation than the start of Second Wind probably says something about fame and priorities.

Game Developer – Ex-Escapist staff launch new games media website Second Wind
GamesIndustry.biz – The Escapist veterans form Second Wind

The shows now left behind due to ownership of some of the brands on The Escapist will find new forms with Second Wind, including a short form video based game review series by Yahtzee Crowshaw under the name Fully Ramblomatic, a name you may recognize if you’ve dug into what one might call the “Yahtzee-verse” of his projects. Shows will start ramping up to a regular cadence starting next week if all goes well.

Pearl Abyss Q3 2023 Financials

The good news is that PA has returned to profitability. In Q3 2023 the company saw 84.9 billion KWR (approximately 64.8 million USD) in revenue from which they recorded a net profit of 15 billion KWR (approximately 11.5 million USD).

That is good because PA is CCP’s parent company, so the good of EVE Online depend quite a bit on how well the company is doing as a whole.

Less encouraging was the decline in revenue for the EVE Online IP in Q3 2023, though that was blamed on the post-Viridian expansion come down. They could have just gone full Reddit and blamed the usual summer slump I suppose.

Details and summaries are available:

PA Investor Relations – Q3 2023 Earnings Call Webcast
PA Investor Relations – Q3 2023 Supporting Material
TNG – Pearl Abyss Q3 2023 Earnings Call
Massively OP – Pearl Abyss Q3 2023: Black Desert’s Land of the Morning Light pulled PA out of its slump

At the end of the supporting material provided by PA, there is a growth strategy section where the bet is on the long delayed Crimson Desert, which is reported to be far from launch, and expansions on the EVE Online IP, with EVE Vanguard and EVE Galaxy Conquest being mentioned.

NCsoft Q3 2023 Financials

NCsoft also has their quarterly financials out and things there are not so rosy. The mobile gaming segment continued its downward slide, with Q3 hitting a new low for the segment since Lineage M hit devices. Some details here:

NCsoft – Q3 2023 Financial Statement Presentation
MMO Bomb – NCSoft Financials Continue Their Downward Trend In Q3 2023

For so long Lineage, released back in 1998, was the foundation of the company’s revenue and the dominant title in their portfolio. They seemed to have hit a sweet spot in moving it to mobile as Lineage M, where it continues to shine. But other titles on mobile, while opening strong, haven’t been able to maintain their initial following.

Meanwhile, on the PC side of the house things remain stable, though I do wonder that Guild Wars 2 didn’t see a bigger rise in revenue given the Secrets of the Obscure expansion landed back in August.

Epic Fail Store

And, last on the list is just a note that news has come out that five years into taking on Steam for the good of… well, let’s be honest, it has always been for Tim Sweeney’s ego and wallet first and foremost… the good of Epic’s bottom line, the store remains unprofitable. The headlines are all out there.

Game Developer – Epic Games says its titular store remains unprofitable
Forbes – Tim Sweeney’s Epic Games Store Is Still Losing Money After Five Years
Game Rant – Epic Games Store Still Dealing With Big Problem After 5 Years
Rock, Paper, Shotgun – Five years after it took on Steam, Epic Games Store is yet to make a penny of profit

There are probably more than a few reasons for this. For openers, Tim getting out there and paying developers up front to make their games exclusive to his store no doubt plays into this, both as a cost and a way of pissing off some gamers. Or him giving away titles for free to try and attract customers while still paying the developers. Nice gig for the devs, not so much for Epic.

And, of course, I have yet to hear anybody favorably compare the Epic Game Store to Steam when it comes to… well… anything besides the occasional free stuff. And then there is Tim himself, who has apparently taken the tech billionaire oath to be a noxious hypocrite. Also, support for crypto, just to spice that stew up.

All of which probably makes it seem like I have given the Epic Game Store more thought than I actually have in the nearly five years since it launched. In reality, as I said back then, I don’t see a reason to use the Epic Game Store. There has been literally no tangible incentive to make it worth having ANOTHER digital storefront control my video games.

It isn’t that I love Steam, but it just isn’t worth the bother to go someplace else, even without Tim’s baggage. GoG.com is the only exception for me, and because they cater to a specific need. So I am not particularly surprised that the Epic Game Store venture hasn’t paid off for him so far.

Anyway, that is all I have for this Friday.

The Corsairs of Umbar Expansion Arrives in LOTRO

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Lord of the Rings Online launched their 2023 expansion, the Corsairs of Umbar, yesterday afternoon. It was originally supposed to be last week when it was announced a while back, but things get delayed.

Corsairs of Umbar

Umbar is a somewhat undocumented area of Middle-earth, primarily remembered as a waypoint for Aragon, Legolas, and Gimili between the Paths of the Dead and the

So LOTRO is going to take us there. From the update notes:

Face the Rising Tide of the Kindred’s Power! Unfurl the sails and brace yourself for the intoxicating rush of adventure as you approach the enigmatic shores of Umbar! Feel the sea’s salt kiss your face and the promise of untold tales beckon from the horizon. Here, in the heart of the City of the Corsairs, dark-bannered vessels whisper of legendary raids alongside the Kindred of the Coin’s power plays. With King Elessar’s mandate in your heart, rally a crew of old friends and newfound allies. Dive headfirst into the dangerous shores of Umbar, find your sea legs with the new innovative Mariner class, and reclaim the spirit of discovery in lands that LOTRO has never ventured before!

Are there really palm trees in Umbar? I guess we will find out. And what does the expansion bring with it?

Find Your Sea-legs With The Mariner
- Chart your own course with the Mariner, slashing through foes with slick swordplay, belting out rousing sea-shanties, and pulling off crafty moves that’ll have enemies spinning in confusion.
Explore the Shores of Umbar
- Discover the bustling Corsair haven, where sun-kissed shores meet the shadows of dark-bannered ships, and tales of legendary raids echo through its vibrant ports.
Fight Fierce New Enemies
- From the striking coastlines of Outer Gondor to the sandy stretches of The Shield Isles, untold dangers and formidable adversaries lie in wait!
Over 350 Unique Quests
- Venture deep into Umbar’s heart, navigating political intrigues and ancient mysteries, as the formidable Kindred of the Coins rise, threatening the fragile peace King Elessar and Queen Arwen have fought so hard to achieve.
Unique End Game Content
- Charge into an increased level 150 cap, dive into pulse-pounding instances, and gain access to an exciting new raid; prepare for an adventure like no other!

So a new class, new zones, and a boost of the level cap to 150. That feels like a pretty full expansion. There is even a launch trailer to go with this all.

There isn’t much information in that trailer, save for the giving people a sense of what Tropical Tolkien might look like.

But there are a lot of class and other changes listed out in the patch notes.

Actually getting all those updates… well, we are still waiting for an updated patcher. I hadn’t logged on for a couple of months, so was likely behind a bit, so it took over an hour for the client to update on my machine.

Lots of files, one at a time

My patching up was more ritual than anything. I do not plan on playing the new expansion. I have no characters capable of getting to the new content and I find the aging UI unusable on my 34″ monitor. And we know that there is no update coming for 4K usability any time soon. They said about a month back that they would like to update things for larger monitors, but it is a big job as everything from 2007 is a bitmap that doesn’t scale so has to be completely redone.

Of course, if they started on that sort of thing back in 2016 when they first started addressing the 4K monitor issue all of that might have been accomplished by now. Certainly wishing it was done and still putting it off until another day hasn’t gotten us any closer to that reality.

That, however, is my problem. And I’ll probably still spend my LOTRO points on it once it becomes available in the in-game store. If nothing else it gets some LOTRO points off the books, and the accountants love that.

But for others, this expansion is available for purchase now in the usual range of editions.

Standard Edition – $40
Collector’s Edition – $80
Ultimate Fan Edition – $130

The most faithful recreation of Middle-earth we’re all ever likely to know got a little bit bigger.

LOTRO – Expansion Notes
LOTRO – Expansion Purchase Page
Laurel’s LOTRO Den – Corsairs of Umbar

Reflections on Retail WoW and The War Within

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It could be a three-parter, called ‘The Ruler of the Worldsoul’. The first part would be called ‘The Warband of THAT sword’, followed by ‘A Couple of Sin’dorei’, with the climactic ending called ‘Hey, the Titan’s Back!’

-My interpretation of the Worldsoul Saga

You either get that or you don’t. Also, it is clearly WoW week here, though that is to be expected after that BlizzCon.

BlizzCon felt to me like it was very much a success for World of Warcraft franchise. Having to endure the OverWatch 2 team taking way too much time to deliver way too little information I was longing for the old days when BlizzCon was pretty much ALL about WoW. But once we got past that, it did feel like we were in the old days again because WoW did get the meat of the panels and announcements.

In addition to Cataclysm Classic, which I covered yesterday, and WoW Classic Age of Discovery, covered here on Monday, there was also the retail WoW plan for The Worldsoul Saga and the first expansion in that trilogy, The War Within.

The War Within

As I said in my keynote gut reaction post, I was pretty engaged by the overall plan for retail WoW and some of what they were speaking about with the first expansion certainly hit the right buttons for me. Content and progression aside, warbands and delves were both points of interest.

But is it enough to get me to buy the expansion? I mean, I could. They are up and listed for pre-purchase and have been since the first evening of BlizzCon. The promised release during the presentations were “Fall of 2024,” though when you look at the fine print on the pre-orders it says by “December 31, 2024.”

Technically, due to the conspiracy of calendar makers, autumn ends on December 21st of 2024, while the term “Fall of 2024” tends to invoke images of September and October in many people.

That tidbit aside, here is what is up on offer.

The Enemy Within Options

On the actual expansion site the details are spelled out in a chart that compares the packs, but the images definitely give you a sense of that you’re getting more.

The first thing you get is, of course, access to The War Within when it ships. Easy peasy.

Everybody also gets another expansion with their purchase, Dragonflight.

That seems like a “well, duh!” kind of inclusions. I mean, how can you play the next expansion if you haven’t played through the current one, at least in the hierarchical content structure that is World of Warcraft? They could get away with making you buy The Burning Crusade when Wrath of the Lich King was up for sale, but after a few expansions that ceases to be a viable option and you have to give people the previous expansion.

That said, I do find it at least a bit telling due to the established fact that Dragonflight never got a big “best expansion launch ever by some random metric” press release unlike every single WoW expansion before it, up to and including Shadowlands. That and the fact that Dragonflight was available for a free demo then a discounted price within a month of launch seems to at least suggest that some significant portion of the likely customer base does not have the expansion.

I seem to recall that maybe they did this before with Legion, offering up Warlords of Draenor if you pre-purchased, but I could be on which expansion that happened with. I think they did it before, explicitly mentioning that the pre-order included the previous expansion, but I cannot put my finger on the example. They have cleaned up all the past pre-orders on the site, including Dragonflight, which is still available solo for $30… if you want it but are somehow dead set against The War Within.

Anyway, you get Dragonflight and you can take that for whatever it is worth.

You also get a level 70 boost with any of the packs. They stopped giving out level boost with expansions at least with Shadowlands… though they do seem to be charging an additional $10 for the privilege of skipping Dragonflight content.

Getting both the expansion AND a level boost feels a bit like there was, as has been suggested by other evidence, a shortfall in expected sales when it came to Dragonflight. I blame Shadowlands for that to some extent, the initial sales of any expansion tending to be something of a referendum on the previous expansion.

That seems to be the bid to get those of us who skipped out when Shadowlands failed to deliver.

To get the Dragonflight players on board there are things like Trader’s Tender, which sounds like a store brand chicken nugget, but which are some sort of cosmetic currency that Blizz put in the game. You get more chicken… or tenders… or whatever… the more expensive the pack you buy.

And then there are mounts and pets and transmogs for those who pay more.

Finally, if you go with the full boat $90 Epic Edition you get the usual 30 days of game time sop that they throw in with all top packs to sweeten the deal every so slightly, as well as both beta access and early access.

Beta access… well, it wouldn’t be the first time a company has sold the right to find bug to people.

But early access is kind of a new thing for Blizz. They have been big on the whole unified world wide coordinated launch time for a while now. Now, however, if you buy the big pack you get to start playing the new content 3 days early.

If that isn’t a FOMO test for those wanting to get some sort of world first, I don’t know what is. Not strictly paying for advantage, unless you’re in a race to be first for something. So if you’re a top tier raiding guild… or a stream looking for an audience edge… that will probably be on the must buy list.

But not on my buy list. Not yet anyway.

I have no interest in Dragonflight. Ironically, the increased rate of content delivery makes me less likely to be interested in it as an expansion, since it is just a reminder I am behind and, in being late to the party I might as well wait for the next. And I swear every time I do log into retail it is bizarro world confusing. But that is for another post.

But mostly it is the fact that there is still WoW Classic: Season of Discovery and Cataclysm Classic still on the way long before The War Within ships.

Coming to Grips with Cataclysm Classic in 2024

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As I said previously, the announcement of Cataclysm Classic was easily the most obvious and predictable announcement at BlizzCon, and I say that in a world where Hearthstone gets a new expansion announcement at all of these events so is such a gimme that it ought to be the center, free square on the bingo card.

Can you re-run a cataclysm?

The success of WoW Classic, and there is no doubt that it was wildly successful, meant the need to find a way to keep the party going. And, sure, they are exploring ideas with some special servers like Hardcore and Season of Discovery, but the main thread of WoW Classic has been going through the old content with a fresh re-launch of each expansion and even though Blizz has run out of expansions that one might legitimately call “classic,” there are still at least another five to go that didn’t completely tank the franchise so they might as well just keep running them out.

I have personally declared on a number of occasions that “classic” ends as an era of WoW somewhere between the introduction of Dungeon Finder and the launch of Cataclysm.

Even so, I am looking forward to the launch of Cataclysm Classic. Yes, it is easy to hate Cataclysm… but when you go back and look at those subscription numbers, it didn’t tank things nearly as much as any subsequent expansion. I have a lot of love for Mists of Pandaria, but whoo boy, that didn’t reverse any trends. And Warlords of Draenor… started strong, ended badly. There are a lot of down times between Wrath and Legion.

Dragging out an old chart from 2015

Was Legion even a big boost then? I don’t know. By that point Blizzard had traded declining subscriptions for declining MAUs as their metric of choice.

And since Legion… what can you say other than boy, did Battle for Azeroth look good once Shadowlands hit. There are a lot of low cards in that hand. Blizz has a third as many expansions as EverQuest, yet seems to have more Gates of Discord moments.

So I’m willing to give Cataclysm a chance. I’ll go there.

Part of that is because I, like Blizzard, am on the classic party bus and just want the tunes to keep on coming. There isn’t another title right now that I an keen to go visit and nothing new on the horizon save maybe Tarisland that has my attention… and that is largely because I am enjoying the classic progression. At this point it feels like I might keep going until we hit Shadowlands again.

Basically, the inertia of fun.

But another part of me wants to give Cataclysm another fresh shot because the way things played out 13 years ago… that did not go as planned for us. And because of that I want to start anew in that expansion.

What went wrong back in 2010? In retrospect, a lot of smaller things combined to make us bounce off of Cataclsym and not return to WoW until the back half of Mists of Pandaria.

To start with, there was the hype… or, more accurately, my investment in that hype.

Every expansion gets a long lead in and lots of hype, but Cataclysm feels like it was especially subject to that. For me, personally, Wrath of the Lich King was so good that I was invested in what Blizz had lined up next with my expectations set very high.

And Blizz had the hype machine going on all fronts.

Who remembers the Official World of Warcraft Magazine? It was a quarterly publication and ran for all of five issues. The first issue featured the Lich King on the cover, but after that the whole thing was pretty much dedicated to the coming Cataclysm expansion. I have all five issues on my book shelf still.

I was reading that, watching the updates on the site, I played in the beta to try out the new classes. I spent a lot more time focused on that expansion’s arrival than any other WoW expansion before or since. I always keep an eye on things and know some of the high level details, but for Cata I was really delving into it.

And all of that kind of spoiled the surprise of the new expansion, took the edge off of the excitement.

Then, we as a group, decided to play the new 1-60 content as a group, rolling new characters in order to see the old world reformed… and it was a let down. Since we wanted to do the dungeons, we had to skip a lot of the overland content as we would outlevel it too quickly. Meanwhile, the dungeon content was all stuff we had done, only now we were seeing it having been sliced and diced to meet the Dungeon Finder template, where every instance has to be tuned so that a group can beat it if completely under geared and barely able to play their class… and in 30 minutes or less.

People rightly complain about the loss of the original overland world of Azeroth, but for me it was the commoditization of the dungeons that really hit me.

It was all to fast and easy and we were bored with it before we had gotten very far and so we left as dissatisfied customers.

What we should have done is grabbed our old team and jumped straight into the new content and done those new dungeons. That, in hindsight, was the correct play.

And that is what we plan to do this time around. We’ll wrap up Wrath Classic, spend a bit of time in Season of Discovery as a diversion… because why not… and then be ready to go for Cataclysm Classic. We might switch up the group a bit, but we’re not starting from scratch or any of the mistakes of the past. Then maybe I will think more highly of Cata.

Of course, I am a little confused as to some of what Cataclysm Classic will have to offer… or what is really a change from the original. Looking at the press release site once again, the first item listed on the the Cataclysm Classic press release is:

REIGNITE THE FIRE – Classic players can tackle this milestone expansion again with faster content cadence, improvements to leveling, expanded Collections UI, a new difficulty level for Dungeon Group Finder after launch, and more!

Faster content cadence… that is part and parcel of the classic experience. There is not so much waiting around for the next content drop or the next expansion.

Likewise, the expanded Collections UI is going to include transmog if I heard the presentation correctly. And new difficulty levels for heroic dungeons, alpha, beta, and gamma, were all done in Wrath Classic.

But what is improvements to leveling?

I mean, I heard this during the presentation, but I am still not quite sure what it really means. Every new expansion includes “improvements” to leveling, which is usually code from reducing the experience requirements to get to the level cap. But does Cataclysm Classic need any more of that than we got back in 2010? As noted, it you do even a few of the dungeons you will out level the overland content and end up skipping zones, and I seem to recall the quest zones themselves being pretty easy to out level if you went in with much blue bar.

So I am a bit of a loss as to what we’re getting here and how it will be better. Or maybe I missed something and they’re going to make getting through Outland and Northrend easier… though I remember those being easy enough by just using Dungeon Finder.

I suppose we shall see as the date gets closer.

Everything else in the press release just described Cataclysm from 2010.

PERMANENT CHANGES TO THE LANDS OF AZEROTH – Classic zones have been altered, bringing new life to once-desolate environments, gaping chasms of molten lava to formerly serene inland areas, and raging floods and elemental forces that linger in the coastal areas.
RECONNECT WITH GILNEAS OR RESCUE THE SHIPWRECKED BILGEWATER GOBLINS – The once-isolated kingdom of Gilneas is now open to players in a new starting level experience, where they can learn of the curse that plagues its people as the Worgen join the Alliance. The Bilgewater Cartel Goblins join the Horde as they seek a new home in the wake of Deathwing’s destruction of their island nation.
EXPLORE AND EXPAND YOUR CLASS FANTASY – New race/class combos give players additional ways to play the classes they love with a different perspective, such as a Gnome Priest, Tauren Paladin, Night Elf Mage, and more.
EXAMINE THE RICH HISTORY OF AZEROTH WITH A NEW PROFESSION – WoW Classic’s newest profession, Archaeology, allows players to explore digsites across Azeroth to learn more about the history of the world’s storied races while earning rewards in the process.

I had forgotten about archaeology. I think you can get a couple of pets and a mount out of it, right? Otherwise it was a pretty forgettable profession… and given how Blizz spent a few expansions making professions largely irrelevant, that is saying something.

Anyway, we’ll be good to go for Cata Classic when it lands next year. If nothing else, getting through that will get us closer to Mists of Pandaria Classic, which I am a bit more hyped for.

Of course, you don’t have to wait until next year to spend some money on Cata Classic! the last line in the press brief is how this all comes with your current subscription, but if you WANT to donate to the cause, here is how you can give Blizz money.

There are, of course, the enhancement packs with a pet, a mount, and a transmog for 30 bucks or, throw in a level 80 character boost and 30 days of game time and it can all be yours for $80. You can find those here. I’ve already seen people riding around on the obnoxious new mount.

Pick your price point

They put out a survey asking specifically if people would pay $80 for a pack with a boost and I answered “No” on mine… but I guess others were fine with it. Or Blizzard ignored the results… or totally misinterpreted them. That last is quite possible because the survey itself was badly put together to the point that when I was taking it I said aloud that the results from it will have no validity besides counting how many people took the survey. It is what you get when you let amateurs do polling.

What if you don’t like those packs? What if you just want the character boost alone? That is available for $60 ala carte, though that much for a character boost has always struck me as way too expensive.

For that price I’ll just use the Dungeon Finder path

It seems a bit crazy that all of that is available for a launch they couldn’t narrow down to something more specific than the first half of 2024. It doesn’t even argue for an early second half launch, while the next retail expansion, The War Within, is also available for pre-order and it is likely a year away from launch. Who knows.

So there you go, my views on Cata Classic and why we’ll be playing.

Priest with a Cause –Musings on Classic Cataclysm

WoW Classic Season of Discovery and the Classic Plus Dream

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I will say that one of the unexpected portions of BlizzCon was the announcement for WoW Classic: Season of Discovery. And there are definitely some interesting things going on with that announcement.

Discover this!

For me, personally, it has a lot of things going for it, not the least of which it could quite possibly bridge the gap between the end of Wrath Classic and the coming of Cataclysm Classic. (I have thoughts about Cata Classic, but that is for another post. I’ll get there.)

And, even in addition to Season of Discovery showing up conveniently on November 30th, but which time I should have my 6th and final level 80 character in Wrath Classic, it has other things.

Primarily, it is the whole rune thing that is driving my interest, and the ability to change up how the vanilla classes play. From the press release over at the Blizzard press center:

A WORLD OF POSSIBILTY – Hidden throughout Azeroth, special runes will be discoverable that augment player kits in new and interesting ways by providing access to abilities never before available in WoW Classic. Some runes will be in plain sight, others will be tucked away, and a few will require teamwork to access.
EXPERIMENTATION WITH NO FRICTION – Rune engraving will allow players to apply and remove abilities at will as they experiment with different builds to create a truly unique play experience.

The combo of low friction and expanded capabilities… well, as somebody who played a paladin… twice… in vanilla, seeing something like Crusader Strike or an actual taunt being available practically brought a tear to my eye. I mean, in retrospect… and especially after dipping into Classic Hardcore recently… one of the understated downsides of vanilla was the spec suck that some classes had to deal with.

So we’re going to break the character molds and be able to run around vanilla content with classes that can feel very different. That is kind of exciting.

And I know that inside of two weeks WoW Head and Icy Veins will have whole pages devoted to the runes for each class, where to find them, and optimum builds. Whatever, that is fine. It will help the rest of us discover the options.

I am less enthusiastic about the Season of Discovery plan for end game. Again, from the press release.

A NEW APPROACH TO ENDGAME – Season of Discovery will start with an initial level cap of 25 and will be incrementally increased over time offering a more progressive endgame experience that will shift with each level band as new abilities become available for players during level-up.
CLASSIC DUNGEONS REIMAGINED – Each phase’s level cap will provide new content for players to experience, starting with the level 25 Blackfathom Deeps 10-man raid: formerly a level-up 5-player dungeon, it has been reworked with redesigned boss encounters to offer exciting challenges that will put players’ builds to the test.

The level 25 cap is… interesting. I guess I am good with there being less of a climb to get to whatever the end game is, and the whole idea of raising that cap in small increments in order to meter out each chunk of planned content. You won’t level out of dungeons immediately, so re-running them, even getting to know them or farm them for the right drops is intriguing.

But the intrusion of the Blizzard philosophy that all end game MUST be raiding and if you haven’t got a guild or circle of friends to hand to fill out a ten person raid group on demand then it sucks to be you has grown old for me.

I mean, good for the raiders. I don’t want to discount their needs. And at least it isn’t a 40 person event.

But would it have killed Blizzard to have gone down to five person content? I mean, just before they announced the whole Season of Discovery thing we heard about how retail WoW and The War Within was going to be introducing “delves,” which are going to be small group content for 1-5 players. I don’t know if they’ll be any good or worth the effort, but it is honestly just refreshing to have Blizz thinking about something besides Mythic++++ raiding being the only end goal in an expansion worth releasing.

And then there is the PvP thing.

TEST YOUR METTLE AGAINST OTHERS – For players more interested in testing their builds and skills against others, there will be an outdoor world player-versus-player (PvP) event in Ashenvale. Additionally, the Honor system and Battlegrounds will be available from day one.

Sure, sounds good. I’m not all that invested, but somebody will be and I guess they can’t do Tarren Mill yet because we’ll only be level 25, but I expect that will come with a later update.

Which brings me, at last, to the whole idea of Classic Plus that I introduced in the title of this post. Some people are already declaring that this is all the intro to Classic Plus, the first step on the journey that will get us to a new content path for classic that won’t go through Cataclysm but off into some alternate version of the post Wrath game.

And I totally don’t see that in what we heard.

Yes, there was some mention of using unfinished bits of the vanilla world for special things. But that struck me as more window dressing, something to spice things up, but not anything that would change the future path of classic in any meaningful way.

However, I will confess that my context on this is going to be different than a lot of WoW players, and especially those wish casting a new classic story line. They all see this as the door opening to a bright new future.

I see this as a predicable variation on the theme of recycling the content they already have, a change of rules and settings and specs rather than any sort of fundamental narrative shift.

And I see that because I spent a decade watching World of Warcraft Executive Producer Holly Longdale run through special server variations with EverQuest and EverQuest II. There, at Daybreak, she took a small team with a much more restricted budget and played with special server rules in order to keep reinventing reasons and ways for players to experience content that had already been delivered and left far behind on the live servers.

Don’t think for a second that I am saying that is in any way bad. That kept players engaged and subscriptions up so that the team maintaining EQ and EQII could continue to put out new content at the rate of one expansion and one major update every single year. That is an operation to be envied, not despised.

But now Holly Longdale is overseeing World of Warcraft and I have no doubt in my mind at all that she got that job in part because of her driving the culture of special servers at Daybreak. So when we see that for WoW, we can thank her. (Or curse her, if you don’t like that sort of thing. But don’t forget that classic was responsible for those times where there was just a single set of footsteps on the beach, because that was when classic was carrying the franchise during Shadowlands.)

The track record at Daybreak with EQ and EQII special servers was entirely based on what they could do with server settings and similar details.

Now, at Blizzard, with a much bigger team and a budget to match, she has the resources to do things like turn Blackfathom Deeps into a 10 person raid and add runes that can change up classes. But all of that is borrowing from current content. Yeah, I want Crusader Strike on my vanilla ret pally, but let’s not pretend Crusader Strike is something conjured out of thin air. The ability, and even its icon, are based on stuff introduced later in the life of WoW. All of this is.

I don’t want to be Debbie Downer on this, but that doesn’t feel like the start of a new content path to me. That feels like creative recycling. I applaud it and can appreciate it for what it is, but I don’t want to kid myself that it is anything more than that.

I could be wrong. That happens a lot. Just look at my BlizzCon predictions. But I have yet to see anything that makes me think I am, though I am open to other opinions on the topic.

Collapse in the North: B2 Joins the Imperium after 18 Months Under Attack

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But once again, there were four major powers in the game. We had PanFam. We had Winter Coalition, we had Imperium, and we had B2. After that, PanFam and Frat decided to try to force B2 to bend the knee to them, and then began what would be a year and a half long campaign against them.

-Asher Elias, Imperium Fireside Nov. 4, 2023

Saturday saw announcements in multiple corp and alliance meetings that B2 coalition was no longer able to keep resisting the now 18 month attack by Fraternity and its PanFam allies and would effectively be dissolving.

While I do not know the disposition of all groups within B2, many of them will be joining the Imperium, which acted as an ally during the struggle against Fraternity and PanFam.

B2, which was the youngest of the large null sec coalitions, was supported by the Imperium in an attempt to keep null sec from becoming a strictly bipolar proposition yet again. This desire for a more diverse set of alignments in null sec was also the stated reason for The Initiative leaving the the Imperium back in June.

Asher Elias, leader of the Imperium, said on Saturday’s fireside that he had felt is was important to try to help B2 establish itself, but it had barely had time to settle after the end of World War Bee/Beeitnam in 2021 before Fraternity set upon it.

While the war in the north did see some epic fights… the peak for me was when we destroyed Fraternity’s Keepstar in X47, which required the attackers to win the armor timer through the downtime outage, even if they did just anchor a new one… much of the war was prosecuted by the attackers in what Asher described as “the most boring way possible.”

I know this was meant as a dig at Fraternity and PanFam, pointing out that they were not interested in fun or good fights. And there is the whole time zone effect of Frat being heavily in Chinese time while much of the Imperium and B2 live in EU and US time zones.

For me though it is really more of an indictment of CCP’s Aegis sovereignty system, which has historically been so tedious that the way to win wars is to be able to endure things like six hour see-saw ihub fights ,chasing nodes back and forth across a constellation hoping to simply outlast your opponent. Maybe they’ll finally get tired and go to bed and we’ll win… says both sides as they work on hacking the next node. If you want to win a sov war, you have to weaponize the tedium. We’ve done it, they’ve done it, and we’ll all likely do it again.

B2 hung on and managed to defend its space for well over a year without losing one of those grinding ihub fights. But every tank has its limits and the last couple of weeks saw Fraternity and PanFam start to make headway against B2 in Deklein. Things were starting to come apart for B2.

It wasn’t what The Mittani used to like to call a “failure cascade” yet, but the writing was on the wall. B2 was tired of the war and Fraternity, sensing the inevitability of their victory, would only offer extremely bad terms for peace. Fraternity was reported to be demanding that B2 pay reparations, give up territory, and forswear any cooperation with the Imperium, in return for which Fraternity said they would stop the war for now without even the most superficial guarantees on their own future behavior, such as a non-invasion pact. It was an offer to become Fraternity’s pet in the most degrading fashion. They would be required to respect and obey Frat, but not be an actual ally so they would be open to being farmed for content by Frat and PanFam whenever either was bored.

B2 chose to leave their space, and much of the coalition will fold into the Imperium.

Brave, Severance, We Form Blob, Scumlords, and Fanatic Legion will be joining the Imperium as alliances, or as corporations to be part of the Goonswarm Federation.

Having destroyed their former PAPI ally FI.RE in the south earlier this year, some of which joined B2, Fraternity and PanFam have now secured a bipolar null sec once more, where all the major powers stand on one side or the other. There are, of course, the usual complaints about null sec devolving into a dual opposing coalition situation once more, with the recent round summed up nicely in this cartoon posted to Reddit.

Posted to /r/eve by AMD_Best_D

Looking at the sov map, the only truly unaligned space in null sec right now is in the the southeast, in FI.RE’s former territory, which was left open by an agreement between the major null sec powers in order to be a place where new alliances could try their hand at null sec… oh, and Providence, where CVA and Provibloc have once again established themselves. Good for them.

Null Sec Sov – Nov 4, 2023

Now the evacuation begins.

For those of us in the Imperium the matter is fairly straightforward. We have been stages in a Brave Keepstar in DO6H-Q in Fade for quite a while now. We need to collect up our belongings and bring them back to Delve. After a quiet time we had ramped up our participation up north, bringing capital ships into play again, so there is a lot to move.

Dreads undocking for the first jump from DO6

Getting back to Cloud Ring and the front line of Imperium space is the first step. As always seems to happen, a couple weeks after I decided to commit some more ships up north it is now time to bring them back home.

A move op fleet landing at our front line Keepstar in Cloud Ring

For the B2 coalition members, the effort will be much greater. They have to pack up their lives and move them out of the space that is being abandoned. Structures will end up being lost and there will be piles of stuff moving to asset safety as stuff gets left behind. People taking a break from the game will find their stuff in a low sec station at some future date. While better than having it all locked in a station deep in null sec, the way it used to be, having to reclaim a mountain of goods from asset safety can be demoralizing in its own way.

Though, who knows, maybe Fraternity will pull The Initiative’s play and let the fuel run out on some of them to create loot pinatas… though Frat would at least not be doing that to their allies.

There is a lot of work to be done, both by the attackers and those leaving the war zone. That will keep everybody busy for some time. But the new front lines have been drawn.

After things have settled, after our old and new friends have gotten themselves set up in the coalition (Brave might have a choice of old stomping grounds to choose from for a home in Imperium space) the friction between to the two major blocs will begin again.

Maybe conflict will resume in the north where the two blocs are face to face. Maybe the unaligned space in the southeast will become the next battleground. Or maybe we’ll go back to trying to take down what is now the PanFam trading tower consortium in the systems around Jita.

People often proclaim in times like this that null sec is dead, that war is over, that hegemony has set in. (There are half a dozen new posts on r/eve right now with that theme.) Bad historical analogies are trotted out. EVE Online is declared, once more, to be dying.

First known occurrence of “EVE is Dying”

But no situation remains static forever. We have been forced into these situations before. At the end of the Halloween war, after the collapse of the Russians, it was the Imperium and PanFam/NCDot rental empire. The Moneybadger Coalition unified much of null sec during the Casino War, only to turn and eat its own. Back in 2018 Fraternity pushed Legacy Coalition to ally with the Imperium, creating another bipolar null sec which eventually changed up. And that change up was when almost the whole of null sec blued up as PAPI to make a costly and eventually unsuccessful run at driving the Imperium out of null sec.

All of these situations passed. War always finds a way.

One thing is different though. In years past I would have linked out to a few blogs and a couple of EVE Online focused news sites for other perspectives. Amusingly, I saw in the Down the Rabbit Hole documentary (which I posted about on Friday) a quote complaining that consolidated New Eden news sites like what is now Imperium News killed EVE blogging. A bad take even when it was made (if nothing else, such sites pre-dated TheMittani.com), it would be nice if we actually had posts from Imperium News, New Eden Post, and EN24 to compare and contrast.

These days, a few threads on Reddit is all one can count on. That is where the news and the propaganda war collide for New Eden these days. The real worry, for me, is that the player infrastructure around EVE Online, is wasting away. That, more than any momentary situation in null sec, is a far more dire sign in my book.

Addendum: No doubt that B2 and the Imperium starting to move out of the north contributed to Sunday, Nov 5, being the peak concurrent day for players in 2023 so far.

Reddit – Sev3rance takes the severance package after 17 years
Reddit – Asher Imperium Update

BlizzCon 2023 Keynote Gut Reaction Post

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BlizzCon 2023 is still under way as I write this. I have really only had a chance to watch the keynote, as I watched that live while I took an extended lunch break yesterday.

But I think the tone of any event is set by the keynote. For somebody watching from home, the keynote can really set the level of interest and excitement. So, with just the keynote in mind I want to go down the list of what I saw in that initial broadcast, stacked from best to worst.

1 – WoW Retail

I will say, right off the bat, that I am not dead set on returning to retail WoW after seeing the keynote, but I was seriously considering it in large part due to the strength of the presentation.

And I am going to admit that Chris Metzen helped sell it. I have ebbed and flowed on him over the years and was kind of “meh” when his return to Blizzard and the franchise was announced… but the man has a stage presence that is hard to beat. I mean, most everybody else faded out to a bunch of bland nerds when Metzen was up there, and I am not just talking about the opening routine. Even in the most mundane part of the presentation he lent emotion and vigor to the whole thing.

Respect where it is due. He could be screwing everything up back at the office, be he is very good on stage in front of an audience.

Second, I have to admire the ambition of announcing not one, but the next three expansions in one go as part of the World of Warcraft: Worldsoul Saga. Ballsy move. That is taking the big leap. I mean, they might be selling themselves out on some future press headlines, but that is commitment to a franchise.

The World Soul Saga is Coming

The Worldsoul Saga will comprise three expansions:

The War Within
Midnight
The Last Titan

That is what we’ll be looking at for basically the next six years… maybe less if this also means a faster expansion cadence. I am most excited for the third of the trio, The Last Titan, as it will feature a return to Northrend and Ulduar. About time they went back there frankly.

The expectation is that the first of those, The War Within, will arrive in Fall of 2024. Pre-orders are already available.

The War Within

The focus is back on Azeroth with a new location and a new allied race and some of the usual stuff. Ten more levels will bring the level cap to 80. But there are also features like better cross-character sharing on your account for things like reputation and transmog options under the warband flag as well as delves, which will be small group content for 1-5 players. That is all of interest.

And there was a hint, an implication, that there would be some direct path to get people who have stayed away for the last couple of expansions. I will be interested to see if that develops into anything beyond a level boost.

2 – WoW Cataclysm Classic

There is certainly no mere coincidence here, that the two most interesting things in the keynote for me also happened to be related to the one Blizzard title I play… if we lump retail and classic into one basket. Still, they could have screwed that up.

Holly Longdale was up on stage for this, as well as some of the retail presentation, and while Metzen looms larger than everybody, Holly still felt more engaged and genuine that most everybody else who was on that keynote stage.

Cataclysm Classic was totally expected. That was likely the prediction I was most sure about. And, honestly, I am kind of down with it being next up. I will explore that in a few posts.

Can you re-run a cataclysm?

Likewise, that it was slated for the first half of 2024 was no big surprise. I said by March 15th, and that could still end up the case. We shall see.

I am, however, intrigued by the idea of Cataclysm with “changes” that Holly mentioned. The keynote did not explore that, but I am willing to listen to what they have in mind on that front. I am also willing to bet we’ll be seeing a column from the usual suspect about how “classic” is incompatible with “changes” without a blink of irony about becoming the gate keeper, a term that always seems to apply to opinions besides their own.

I am good to go for Cataclysm Classic and, absent any other distraction, the group will be there. We’re already exploring the idea of changing up characters/roles.

3 – WoW Classic: Season of Discovery

Less interesting to me than Cataclysm Classic, and not exactly what people are talking about when they mention WoW Classic+, but still a new way to play classic.

Discover this!

The initial level cap will be 25. There will be class altering abilities, with examples of healing mages or tanking warlocks being thrown out there.

The big advantage here is that Season of Discovery will become available November 30th.

So there is a possibility there if we’re done with Northrend and Cataclysm isn’t available yet. We spent some time in Classic Hardcore, why not some time in Season of Discovery? I suppose it depends somewhat on how steep the level curve to that initial 25 cap will be, but we might as well give it a shot.

4 – Diablo IV: Vessel of Hatred

Down the list primarily because the events of Diablo IV since launch haven’t exactly inspired me to jump on the bandwagon. But I will once again give credit where it is due, they showed up and had new content coming including an expansion slated for late 2024 called Vessel of Hatered, with new content and a new class.

Is that a nuclear wessil?

I’m not going to run out and buy Diablo IV… though that is in part because Blizz is dangling so much WoW content in front of us that I am not sure I would have the time… but I considered it. Not as strongly as I considered retail WoW, but still.

I did find it a little bit comic that the presentation included the brag that they have delivered three new Diablo titles in three years, when one was made by NetEase and one was a remake of Diablo II that was done by another studio in the company. But whatever. They’re probably still not over the fan backlash from the epic nerf after launch.

5 – Hearthstone Expansion Time

At this point were past the titles that I am going to actually play. I mean, I HAVE played Hearthstone in the past when I could earn something from it in another Blizz game. And I would play it again for a similar incentive. But it isn’t a title that appeals to me, and I am somebody who would be prime for a title I could sit on the couch and play idly while watching TV.

That said, I will admit I respect their commitment to their niche.

But the best part of their presentation was when they were talking about getting lapsed players back into the game with “catch up packs” and my mind immediately summoned up an image of ketchup packets.

How this helps you with deck building I don’t know…

So, in addition to their persistence and their dedication to cranking out expansions, they left a memorable impression on me with that turn of phrase.

6 – Warcraft Rumble

Warcraft Rumble is the new mobile title.

Rumble This

And, as predicted, the pitch up on stage was that it was available to download right then and there and please go play our new app with little, phone sized bits of Azeroth scenery.

I am kind of neutral on it. I don’t reject it and the pitch didn’t bore me, but neither am I thrilled.

7 – Overwatch 2

So the big, big deal, the absolute cornerstone, and 99% of the content, of the OW2 presentation was the fact that there was a new hero being introduced, a Samoan named Mauga who dual wields a pair of mini-guns, each of which also has a name which I forgot about 12 seconds after they were mentioned.

Mauga is shooting things

So we got the intro, we got the deets on what he did, we got a couple of fun clips of Mauga doing his thing and I was like, “That’s neat, what’s next?”

But nothing was next for far too long. Just more and more of Mauga clips over and over. I mean, I know I have low interest in anything OW2, but that just dragged on for so long that I have to think even the most keen OW2 fan must have been, “Okay, we get it, he is a big guy with two guns, can we move on to something else?”

And OW2 was the first product on the keynote parade and Mauga just dragged on for what felt like far too long. People more generally more polite than I were expressing the desire for a fast forward option to get past this demo. I walked away and made lunch during these clips and came back and it was still more Mauga. When they were finally done with Mauga I was tempted to go join in on the Steam review bombing just out of annoyance.

But done meant they went on to ramble about the OW2 esports league for another too many minutes. It was like they had to find something even less interesting to cap things off. This was not opening the keynote on the best foot… though at least it did all get better by comparison.

8 – The Bosses

I cannot recall if I have ever heard Mike Ybarra speak at BlizzCon or any other event in the past, but he is pretty bland. I mean, there have been some uninspired heads of Blizzard in the past. J. Allen Brack was not, for example, a top pick by me as a public speaker, but he had more feeling than Ybarra.

But maybe Ybarra was instructed to be human lite mayo on camera so as not to upstage Phil Spencer, the head of the XBox division of Microsoft and the new lord and master over Blizzard, who himself did not exactly deliver a gripping, emotive performance.

Sure, you don’t have to be a dynamic public speaker to be the boss. But if you’re not maybe you should keep it brief and let others who are take over. Spencer at least kept it brief, so kudos to him on that front, but Ybarra… I could have done with less of him as well.

Anyway, that is my gut response to the opening of BlizzCon 2023. They have put some of it up on YouTube… though I think it might be telling that they only included the World of Warcraft portion of the show. Better for all around probably.

I’ll be back to explore more of the details and go over my predictions this coming week. There seems like more than enough to milk out of what we saw and I am not in a big hurry to get to it all like the news sites.