on the subject of reforged... something that I am hopeful for... is that well, more people play online, obviously, but they find a way to make it sticky, so that there's always, let's say, more non-experts playing
so much of WC3 is just map knowledge, and when you play online today, it's so hard to get that because its devastatingly expensive to experiment in maps with creeps and creep routes
so you either have to grind hours offline hypothesizing and memorizing routes, or go online and get 100000% smoked by people who already know all that
so like... I hope that they do something to the ladder to keep less experienced people hooked, so the entry level is fun
short of that... maybe.. just maybe.... randomized creep camps on maps? To take away that institutional advantage
I think I heard originally they only planned to have 3 races per side in WoW and Gnomes and Trolls were late additions, which is why they didn't have their own starting areas.
I mean, there's nothing wrong with gnomes, but let's not pretend they weren't basically a footnote prior to WoW. Even goblins were better presented.
Gnomes were nearly equal in representation to Goblins in WC2. There was one unit difference.
In WC2, you had the following --
Gnomish Flying Machine
Goblin Zeppelins
Gnomish Submarines
Giant Turtles (piloted by Goblins)
Gnomish Sappers
Dwarven Demo Squads
So the only difference is that the Human Alliance had the explosive unit as Dwarves instead. Other than that, it was equal.
So, yes, even goblins are better represented. If I'm remembering correctly, Goblins are actually mentioned in the Horde's background "lore" in Warcraft II, mostly for being particular diabolical, blah blah, more than Gnomes elsewhere in the manual.
They haven't really embraced alternate dimensions or even timelines (outside the few times they have, obviously). But one thing they've gone hog wild on is space. Outer space. Spaceships. Aliens. The evil demon lord was really an alien. The ancient gods are really just some fucked up C++ computer code. I would not be surprised if they went back to that well.
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
They haven't really embraced alternate dimensions or even timelines (outside the few times they have, obviously). But one thing they've gone hog wild on is space. Outer space. Spaceships. Aliens. The evil demon lord was really an alien. The ancient gods are really just some fucked up C++ computer code. I would not be surprised if they went back to that well.
Well, Sargeras, by virtue of predating Azeroth as a world, was always hinted to have extraterrestrial origins as a matter of necessity. Though yes, no mention of spaceships. The Dark Portal from Draenor was described as being through "the twisting nether", not the blackness of space. Beyond the unspoken assumption that both Azeroth and Draenor were terrestrial planets orbiting at least one star each, nothing. Most you got was the big satellite receiver dish inexplicably included on the Gnomish Workshop.
IIRC, the Twisting Nether is like a different plane of existence. Basically a combination of subspace and a chaotic maelstrom of the dead. It never precluded the existence of "space."
I've been out a long time, so the details are most likely fuzzy. But when Draenei became playable in WoW, I'm pretty sure at some point their capital city was overtly called out as being a crashed spaceship.
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
IIRC, the Twisting Nether is like a different plane of existence. Basically a combination of subspace and a chaotic maelstrom of the dead. It never precluded the existence of "space."
No, it did't. They just never call it "space" or "a wormhole". Or at least, they never did back then.
Even Diablo talked about astronomy (or maybe more accurately, astrology). I don't think Warcraft even did that, but then WCIII went big on "demons come down like meteors".
There is space in Warcraft too. It's called the Great Dark Beyond. The Twisting Nether is like The Warp (W40K) or Hyperspace (B5) or the like. There's not really much travel through or mention of the Beyond most of the time. Though I think it's how the Titans usually move around.
Anyway, Space Goats are a horrible retcon that basically revealed they'd forgotten their own lore and pretty basic important parts of it too. They look like they do entirely because people don't like to play races that ugly. They changed basically all the female horde models back during ... I think Alpha but maybe early Beta for the same reason.
Which is kinda sad because WoW Vanilla actually had some good lore stuff and subtle overarcing storytelling going on. At least in the Alliance areas where they had the time to make them properly. The Horde areas were super obviously rushed out the door at the last minute while half-made in order to meet a release date.
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ThePantsAssociationA million could-be years on a thousand may-be worldsRegistered Userregular
edited January 2019
There is some talk of other worlds. From the WC2 manual:
Under the tutelage of Kil’jaeden, I realized how limited even my understanding had been. Untold histories of ancient Daemon races and primal magical dimensions were made known to me. I learned that there existed worlds without number, scattered throughout the darkness beyond the sky - worlds to which I might lead the Horde as only one of my abilities could. Though I remained with my people on the dark, red world of the Draenei, I soon learned to project myself into the depths of the Twisting Nether, being driven nearly mad by the whispering chaos contained therein.
No, I definitely remembered references to other worlds in the narrative concerning demons (and by extension, Gul'dan and others).
No space ships though. At least, I thought not. I don't think there's actually a navigable distance, no matter how fast or far one traveled, between Draenor (or the star it orbits) and Azeroth (etc.), that you could use a spaceship for. But there might be now, since that WoW expansion.
War2 manual mentions that numerous worlds scattered through "the darkness beyond the sky", also referred to as "the Great Dark Beyond", though I do not see it being specifically mentioned as being separate from the Twisting Nether. The Nether is described as "swirling chaos" where the spirits of the dead linger on, traveling on "astral winds". (Though whether that's like "astral projection" astral or just plain "space" I dunno.)
Yeah, I thought the Twisting Nether wasn't space but a very unpleasant plane of reality. Maybe in reference to the actual weird and possibly non-vacuum geography of it, which didn't sound like "empty space."
The Emerald Dream, by contrast, is pretty clearly established as terrestrial, and being a mirrored dimension of the world. Or something like that. But they are different if slightly related things.
I'd actually much rather talk about the old polities and political divisions described in the WCII manual ("Team Stromgarde!"), but it's just nice to talk about the old materials from time to time.
Honestly, one of the reason I don't care about WoW lore anymore is because of how much of that old material that I obsessed over (As a kid, admittedly, so there's a big heaping helping of nostalgia there) kinda got thrown out. Like, in skimming the manual just now I was reminded about how the Draenei were just flat out massacred and dead. Not "put up a valiant fight until they were forced to flee off world" They got steamrolled and died. Then they brought them back as ugly monsters, then they retconned those as being mutants of the true Draenei... who wound up also being the Eredar and that whole continuity mess.
Also they truncated the timespan of stuff that made Garona make no sense. Originally it was like 15 years or so inbetween "Orcs arrive" and the star of Warcraft 1, which would give Garona just enough time to be conceived, and grow into roughly a young adult (Factoring in that Orcs grow up faster than humans) so her being half-human worked perfectly fine.
Then, for whatever reason, they truncated that time period from "Orcs arrive" to "Stormwind Falls" to like 5 years total, so she made no sense and they had to do a bunch of retcons to fix it. First she was half "Of a race not dissimilar to humans" but they just made her half-draenei. Woo.
Honestly, one of the reason I don't care about WoW lore anymore is because of how much of that old material that I obsessed over (As a kid, admittedly, so there's a big heaping helping of nostalgia there) kinda got thrown out. Like, in skimming the manual just now I was reminded about how the Draenei were just flat out massacred and dead. Not "put up a valiant fight until they were forced to flee off world" They got steamrolled and died. Then they brought them back as ugly monsters, then they retconned those as being mutants of the true Draenei... who wound up also being the Eredar and that whole continuity mess.
Also they truncated the timespan of stuff that made Garona make no sense. Originally it was like 15 years or so inbetween "Orcs arrive" and the star of Warcraft 1, which would give Garona just enough time to be conceived, and grow into roughly a young adult (Factoring in that Orcs grow up faster than humans) so her being half-human worked perfectly fine.
Then, for whatever reason, they truncated that time period from "Orcs arrive" to "Stormwind Falls" to like 5 years total, so she made no sense and they had to do a bunch of retcons to fix it. First she was half "Of a race not dissimilar to humans" but they just made her half-draenei. Woo.
I'm still annoyed they retconned the assassins who killed Thrall's father from Rend & Maim Blackhand to "I dunno, some guys". Back in Vanilla you had a quest for Thrall to bring him the head of Rend and if you knew the back lore for that it felt extra special, like you were doing him a personal favor as a hero of the Horde. They turned the whole experience into just some regular old dungeon dude you gotta kill because he's a baddo.
Hey, did anyone risk Russian virii and spyware to play that Warcraft Adventures leak from awhile back? I downloaded it, but couldn't work up the nerve to play it.
Hey, did anyone risk Russian virii and spyware to play that Warcraft Adventures leak from awhile back? I downloaded it, but couldn't work up the nerve to play it.
I didn't bother with it myself but I did see it streamed in its entirety a couple years ago(as "entire" as there was of it anyway).
They were right to have cancelled it, it's extremely tonally inconsistent(ironically in a similar fashion that could be levied against WoW nowadays), and if they pushed forward and released it, I do think it could have killed Blizzard.
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Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
Hey, did anyone risk Russian virii and spyware to play that Warcraft Adventures leak from awhile back? I downloaded it, but couldn't work up the nerve to play it.
Yeah it was totally fine. But yeah, um... they were probably right to cancel it...
is warcraft distantly in the future just starcraft though :thinking:
when BC was coming out the publicly stated hack by Blizzard for what to do with their tiny ass map was that every subsequent expansion would just be a different portal from Dreanor, as though this wasn't the first time the Orcs portaled to someone else's world
indeed, if you go around the BC map, there's one or two mini dark portals laying dormant
i always thought that would be extremely cool but then I think they kinda shit themselves at the idea of having to come up with entirely new realms of existence every year and have gone on to just flesh out and then revise every single element of lore that could possibly be exhumed out of the cannon that WC3 established
BC itself was just so weird. Because the clear place to go next was Northrend. It's on the map, it's there, it's a big part of the story and it's literally what we ended Vanilla leading in to. And then suddenly we're off on this map tippy sci-fi crystal magic adventure with space goats and stupid retcons. It feels like the kind of thing you do 4 expansions down the line after you've run out of ideas and have already yanked pandas out of the "brake glass in case of no idea where to go next" case. And then we just immediately pivot back to Northrend and basically ignore everything they introduced.
yeah but.... illidan
yeah I never really thought about it, but ending Vanilla with Naxx and then just putting that entire concept on hold for a year or two was in retrospect pretty weird.
It didn't bother me because I think nearly every aspect of BC was awesome and I miss it.
From the aspect of Warcraft III alone, Northrend (and Arthas) were very obvious as a path--but Draenor was basically introduced in an entire expansion (Beyond the Dark Portal), on top of being featured in Warcraft III's expansion.
There were dumb retcons in the implementation, no doubts there, but the same is true to some extent about Northrend. I mean, do we really need to have a tropical jungle in what is supposed to be a frozen desolate hellscape in Warcraft III? We don't have other jungles that are perfectly suitable? The underground Azjol-Nerub kingdom wouldn't have worked without it?
It felt like BC was a decision the the incomplete state of High Elves/Blood Elves, as an old mainstay of the franchise, had to be corrected (along with their historic region) in the unfinished region north of Loradaeron, and then Draenor spun out of that, before going to an entirely self-contained continent. Not handled well, but some of the content is pretty obviously important.
They could have fleshed out the High Elves and paired them with I dunno Quillboars joining on with the Horde after they resurrected Agamaggan or something. Take one of the existing non-player races, give them better/updated models so players can be them, and give them like an actual story. The Draenei from TBC are almost nothing like the Broken from WC3 and they had to just make up and change SO MUCH lore to justify them and all the changes. There were a lot of better avenues for expansion. Hell, adding the Draenei as Eredar cousins but having them come after the Orcish invasion of Azeroth would have worked better IMO.
Yeah, I think it came down no one would want to "roll" a Broken Draenei, and Blizzard knew it, ergo they wouldn't work as a faction. The fact that the game launched without High Elves or Blood Elves--I mean, that was a big fucking deal in WCIII:FT--was kind of flawed though not unforgivable. High Elves were always a prominent feature in the franchise, and even in WC3 (more so than Dwarves, frankly). And there was an obvious role for them: counterpart to the Horde's Troll as an Alliance race. And I'm saying that as someone who likes the political shift of the Blood Elves for mixing things up.
Plus, the early high elf models kind of sucked. Even by the standards of when they came out. That's a "Why is Sylvannas a night elf in a dress?" issue though.
I mean, there's nothing wrong with gnomes, but let's not pretend they weren't basically a footnote prior to WoW. Even goblins were better presented.
And I am honestly totally shocked that Akama has never yet found his way into HotS, especially considering he was such a staple of DotA All-Stars and one of the original stealth assassins.
Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. fell by a similar amount Wednesday after forecasting sales this quarter that were $100 million below Wall Street forecasts. The results were a reminder that video games are still a hit-driven business, rising and falling based on unpredictable consumers.
This part sucks. It’s never the company’s fault for abandoning balance, ignoring dedicated fan feedback, predatory loot boxes, oversaturation, or any other dumb thing... and totally reasonable to expect players to stay interested and invested in one game/series for several years as it gradually costs the player more but rewards less.
I feel for all the workers who will suffer because execs got 2 yachts instead of 3.
Honestly wall street has seemingly been fucking with otherwise successful studios because they aren't making ridiculous amounts of money that no one could make. Like I've heard activision got rocked by stock losses, ea, and now take two. Shit I bet Epic will all of a sudden have a stock loss because apex had a couple good weeks.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
Honestly wall street has seemingly been fucking with otherwise successful studios because they aren't making ridiculous amounts of money that no one could make.
I mean... that's just a truism of Capitalism turning its gears as usual, it's not necessarily specifically because video games.
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AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. fell by a similar amount Wednesday after forecasting sales this quarter that were $100 million below Wall Street forecasts. The results were a reminder that video games are still a hit-driven business, rising and falling based on unpredictable consumers.
This part sucks. It’s never the company’s fault for abandoning balance, ignoring dedicated fan feedback, predatory loot boxes, oversaturation, or any other dumb thing... and totally reasonable to expect players to stay interested and invested in one game/series for several years as it gradually costs the player more but rewards less.
I feel for all the workers who will suffer because execs got 2 yachts instead of 3.
According to Activision EA the problem with Battlefield was that it had a single player campaign and no battle royale.
Honestly wall street has seemingly been fucking with otherwise successful studios because they aren't making ridiculous amounts of money that no one could make.
I mean... that's just a truism of Capitalism turning its gears as usual, it's not necessarily specifically because video games.
There are a lot of publicly traded companies out there that aren't nearly as dumb.
Hell look at Hollywood. Movie studios pretty regularly dump hundreds of millions of dollars on movies that literally lose the company money and they're like, 'Eh, whatevs" and turn around and give hundreds of millions more to the same director.
On the other end of the spectrum a AAA game can sell like gangbusters, break records, make a ridiculous amount of money in profit and still be labeled a disappointment because. . . it didn't make literally all the money? I guess. And then a bunch of people lose their job.
The publicly traded game industry is really fucking weird and is really more of an outlier on how Wall Street works than it is an example.
Honestly, right now, it looks way more like the fucking bitcoin craze that crashed and burned than the stock market.
Axen on
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
Honestly wall street has seemingly been fucking with otherwise successful studios because they aren't making ridiculous amounts of money that no one could make.
I mean... that's just a truism of Capitalism turning its gears as usual, it's not necessarily specifically because video games.
Oh totally, but it seems like people are assuming these wall street mechanations say anything about the studios health and that just seems crazy. Like there was an article about how Patreon had to do something more because consistent growth wasn't explosive growth and that's bad. It's just insane.
Now obviously having to lay off employees is a bad sign for a company, on top of as a WoW player a feeling of lack luster additions to WoW since BFA has come out either fixing stuff they broke in the expansion or adding more grinds for grind sake.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. fell by a similar amount Wednesday after forecasting sales this quarter that were $100 million below Wall Street forecasts. The results were a reminder that video games are still a hit-driven business, rising and falling based on unpredictable consumers.
This part sucks. It’s never the company’s fault for abandoning balance, ignoring dedicated fan feedback, predatory loot boxes, oversaturation, or any other dumb thing... and totally reasonable to expect players to stay interested and invested in one game/series for several years as it gradually costs the player more but rewards less.
I feel for all the workers who will suffer because execs got 2 yachts instead of 3.
According to Activision the problem with Battlefield was that it had a single player campaign and no battle royale.
Which is just, ugh.
Battlefield is EA
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AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. fell by a similar amount Wednesday after forecasting sales this quarter that were $100 million below Wall Street forecasts. The results were a reminder that video games are still a hit-driven business, rising and falling based on unpredictable consumers.
This part sucks. It’s never the company’s fault for abandoning balance, ignoring dedicated fan feedback, predatory loot boxes, oversaturation, or any other dumb thing... and totally reasonable to expect players to stay interested and invested in one game/series for several years as it gradually costs the player more but rewards less.
I feel for all the workers who will suffer because execs got 2 yachts instead of 3.
According to Activision the problem with Battlefield was that it had a single player campaign and no battle royale.
Which is just, ugh.
Battlefield is EA
Ugh the two companies so so damn similar to me. Fixed it.
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. fell by a similar amount Wednesday after forecasting sales this quarter that were $100 million below Wall Street forecasts. The results were a reminder that video games are still a hit-driven business, rising and falling based on unpredictable consumers.
This part sucks. It’s never the company’s fault for abandoning balance, ignoring dedicated fan feedback, predatory loot boxes, oversaturation, or any other dumb thing... and totally reasonable to expect players to stay interested and invested in one game/series for several years as it gradually costs the player more but rewards less.
I feel for all the workers who will suffer because execs got 2 yachts instead of 3.
According to Activision EA the problem with Battlefield was that it had a single player campaign and no battle royale.
Honestly wall street has seemingly been fucking with otherwise successful studios because they aren't making ridiculous amounts of money that no one could make.
I mean... that's just a truism of Capitalism turning its gears as usual, it's not necessarily specifically because video games.
There are a lot of publicly traded companies out there that aren't nearly as dumb.
Hell look at Hollywood. Movie studios pretty regularly dump hundreds of millions of dollars on movies that literally lose the company money and they're like, 'Eh, whatevs" and turn around and give hundreds of millions more to the same director.
On the other end of the spectrum a AAA game can sell like gangbusters, break records, make a ridiculous amount of money in profit and still be labeled a disappointment because. . . it didn't make literally all the money? I guess. And then a bunch of people lose their job.
The publicly traded game industry is really fucking weird and is really more of an outlier on how Wall Street works than it is an example.
Honestly, right now, it looks way more like the fucking bitcoin craze that crashed and burned than the stock market.
What movie studios are publicly traded? Like, Hollywood accounting is a thing, and one of the ways it is a thing is that they keep everything they do with money obfuscated and opaque, which you aren't allowed to do with publicly traded companies
Fencingsax on
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AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. fell by a similar amount Wednesday after forecasting sales this quarter that were $100 million below Wall Street forecasts. The results were a reminder that video games are still a hit-driven business, rising and falling based on unpredictable consumers.
This part sucks. It’s never the company’s fault for abandoning balance, ignoring dedicated fan feedback, predatory loot boxes, oversaturation, or any other dumb thing... and totally reasonable to expect players to stay interested and invested in one game/series for several years as it gradually costs the player more but rewards less.
I feel for all the workers who will suffer because execs got 2 yachts instead of 3.
According to Activision EA the problem with Battlefield was that it had a single player campaign and no battle royale.
Honestly wall street has seemingly been fucking with otherwise successful studios because they aren't making ridiculous amounts of money that no one could make.
I mean... that's just a truism of Capitalism turning its gears as usual, it's not necessarily specifically because video games.
There are a lot of publicly traded companies out there that aren't nearly as dumb.
Hell look at Hollywood. Movie studios pretty regularly dump hundreds of millions of dollars on movies that literally lose the company money and they're like, 'Eh, whatevs" and turn around and give hundreds of millions more to the same director.
On the other end of the spectrum a AAA game can sell like gangbusters, break records, make a ridiculous amount of money in profit and still be labeled a disappointment because. . . it didn't make literally all the money? I guess. And then a bunch of people lose their job.
The publicly traded game industry is really fucking weird and is really more of an outlier on how Wall Street works than it is an example.
Honestly, right now, it looks way more like the fucking bitcoin craze that crashed and burned than the stock market.
What movie studios are publicly traded? Like, Hollywood accounting is a thing, and one of the ways it is a thing is that they keep everything they do with money obfuscated and opaque, which you aren't allowed to do with publicly traded companies
Almost all of them.
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
Yeah I have a hard time believing that Hollywood shrugs it's shoulders at profit loss. Everything about Hollywood is calculated and they will beat a dead horse until they stop making money and then switch immediately to something else they can beat. Superhero films are in now so we'll see a hundred more of them crammed down our throats.
The whole point of the stock market is that you invest your money in exchange for making a profit after the company has grown bigger and more successful. Nobody would ever buy stocks in a company that they know isn't growing. If that happens the stock prices crash, until they reach the point where people start saying "wait a minute, I think they're worth more than THAT," and the cycle continues.
Still, mass layoffs are never a sign of a healthy business. I'm reluctant to blame Activision for all of it, Blizzard has made a bunch of missteps lately.
Then the stock market is inherently unstable because infinitely growing profits are impossible.
Individual investments are unstable, especially ones in entertainment. But you can see how the wealthy have captured nearly all economic growth in the last 50+ years, so its working overall (for them).
rahkeesh2000 on
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3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
Yeah I have a hard time believing that Hollywood shrugs it's shoulders at profit loss. Everything about Hollywood is calculated and they will beat a dead horse until they stop making money and then switch immediately to something else they can beat. Superhero films are in now so we'll see a hundred more of them crammed down our throats.
They do it all the time. I mean they must be getting something out of it but a profit isn't one of them.
You have Oscar bait movies. Movies they produce that they know will be very unlikely to make money back, but might win them an award.
Another type are movies done as, basically, a payment to a director/writer/actor in exchange for doing X. Like, "Hey if you do this big tentpole movie we'll let you do your art-house passion project / big-budget high-concept sci-fi thriller / classic horror movie / what-have-you" regardless of how well that tentpole movie preforms. Deadpool would be a very good example of this. That movie was a hit and it did make a bunch of money, but the studio execs weren't expecting it to.
Then there are just random movies they dump hundreds of millions on even though it is pretty obvious by all involved it isn't going to do well at all. I assume these are purely for tax purposes, contract reason and/or to retain a license.
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. fell by a similar amount Wednesday after forecasting sales this quarter that were $100 million below Wall Street forecasts. The results were a reminder that video games are still a hit-driven business, rising and falling based on unpredictable consumers.
This part sucks. It’s never the company’s fault for abandoning balance, ignoring dedicated fan feedback, predatory loot boxes, oversaturation, or any other dumb thing... and totally reasonable to expect players to stay interested and invested in one game/series for several years as it gradually costs the player more but rewards less.
I feel for all the workers who will suffer because execs got 2 yachts instead of 3.
Well, Bloomberg is the source so everything is spun as business positive. But it's pretty crazy to think that 2% lower than expected forecasts can cause such an uproar, it's insane. The markets are driven by insanity.
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so much of WC3 is just map knowledge, and when you play online today, it's so hard to get that because its devastatingly expensive to experiment in maps with creeps and creep routes
so you either have to grind hours offline hypothesizing and memorizing routes, or go online and get 100000% smoked by people who already know all that
so like... I hope that they do something to the ladder to keep less experienced people hooked, so the entry level is fun
short of that... maybe.. just maybe.... randomized creep camps on maps? To take away that institutional advantage
Gnomes were nearly equal in representation to Goblins in WC2. There was one unit difference.
In WC2, you had the following --
Gnomish Flying Machine
Goblin Zeppelins
Gnomish Submarines
Giant Turtles (piloted by Goblins)
Gnomish Sappers
Dwarven Demo Squads
So the only difference is that the Human Alliance had the explosive unit as Dwarves instead. Other than that, it was equal.
So, yes, even goblins are better represented. If I'm remembering correctly, Goblins are actually mentioned in the Horde's background "lore" in Warcraft II, mostly for being particular diabolical, blah blah, more than Gnomes elsewhere in the manual.
You're right about the unit counterparts though.
Well, Sargeras, by virtue of predating Azeroth as a world, was always hinted to have extraterrestrial origins as a matter of necessity. Though yes, no mention of spaceships. The Dark Portal from Draenor was described as being through "the twisting nether", not the blackness of space. Beyond the unspoken assumption that both Azeroth and Draenor were terrestrial planets orbiting at least one star each, nothing. Most you got was the big satellite receiver dish inexplicably included on the Gnomish Workshop.
No, it did't. They just never call it "space" or "a wormhole". Or at least, they never did back then.
Even Diablo talked about astronomy (or maybe more accurately, astrology). I don't think Warcraft even did that, but then WCIII went big on "demons come down like meteors".
Which is kinda sad because WoW Vanilla actually had some good lore stuff and subtle overarcing storytelling going on. At least in the Alliance areas where they had the time to make them properly. The Horde areas were super obviously rushed out the door at the last minute while half-made in order to meet a release date.
No space ships though. At least, I thought not. I don't think there's actually a navigable distance, no matter how fast or far one traveled, between Draenor (or the star it orbits) and Azeroth (etc.), that you could use a spaceship for. But there might be now, since that WoW expansion.
The Emerald Dream, by contrast, is pretty clearly established as terrestrial, and being a mirrored dimension of the world. Or something like that. But they are different if slightly related things.
I'd actually much rather talk about the old polities and political divisions described in the WCII manual ("Team Stromgarde!"), but it's just nice to talk about the old materials from time to time.
Also they truncated the timespan of stuff that made Garona make no sense. Originally it was like 15 years or so inbetween "Orcs arrive" and the star of Warcraft 1, which would give Garona just enough time to be conceived, and grow into roughly a young adult (Factoring in that Orcs grow up faster than humans) so her being half-human worked perfectly fine.
Then, for whatever reason, they truncated that time period from "Orcs arrive" to "Stormwind Falls" to like 5 years total, so she made no sense and they had to do a bunch of retcons to fix it. First she was half "Of a race not dissimilar to humans" but they just made her half-draenei. Woo.
I'm still annoyed they retconned the assassins who killed Thrall's father from Rend & Maim Blackhand to "I dunno, some guys". Back in Vanilla you had a quest for Thrall to bring him the head of Rend and if you knew the back lore for that it felt extra special, like you were doing him a personal favor as a hero of the Horde. They turned the whole experience into just some regular old dungeon dude you gotta kill because he's a baddo.
I didn't bother with it myself but I did see it streamed in its entirety a couple years ago(as "entire" as there was of it anyway).
They were right to have cancelled it, it's extremely tonally inconsistent(ironically in a similar fashion that could be levied against WoW nowadays), and if they pushed forward and released it, I do think it could have killed Blizzard.
Yeah it was totally fine. But yeah, um... they were probably right to cancel it...
I would have totally rolled a broken dranei
And I am honestly totally shocked that Akama has never yet found his way into HotS, especially considering he was such a staple of DotA All-Stars and one of the original stealth assassins.
Sounds a bit more severe than previously described.
Edit:
This part sucks. It’s never the company’s fault for abandoning balance, ignoring dedicated fan feedback, predatory loot boxes, oversaturation, or any other dumb thing... and totally reasonable to expect players to stay interested and invested in one game/series for several years as it gradually costs the player more but rewards less.
I feel for all the workers who will suffer because execs got 2 yachts instead of 3.
pleasepaypreacher.net
I mean... that's just a truism of Capitalism turning its gears as usual, it's not necessarily specifically because video games.
According to Activision EA the problem with Battlefield was that it had a single player campaign and no battle royale.
Which is just, ugh.
There are a lot of publicly traded companies out there that aren't nearly as dumb.
Hell look at Hollywood. Movie studios pretty regularly dump hundreds of millions of dollars on movies that literally lose the company money and they're like, 'Eh, whatevs" and turn around and give hundreds of millions more to the same director.
On the other end of the spectrum a AAA game can sell like gangbusters, break records, make a ridiculous amount of money in profit and still be labeled a disappointment because. . . it didn't make literally all the money? I guess. And then a bunch of people lose their job.
The publicly traded game industry is really fucking weird and is really more of an outlier on how Wall Street works than it is an example.
Honestly, right now, it looks way more like the fucking bitcoin craze that crashed and burned than the stock market.
Oh totally, but it seems like people are assuming these wall street mechanations say anything about the studios health and that just seems crazy. Like there was an article about how Patreon had to do something more because consistent growth wasn't explosive growth and that's bad. It's just insane.
Now obviously having to lay off employees is a bad sign for a company, on top of as a WoW player a feeling of lack luster additions to WoW since BFA has come out either fixing stuff they broke in the expansion or adding more grinds for grind sake.
pleasepaypreacher.net
Battlefield is EA
Ugh the two companies so so damn similar to me. Fixed it.
What movie studios are publicly traded? Like, Hollywood accounting is a thing, and one of the ways it is a thing is that they keep everything they do with money obfuscated and opaque, which you aren't allowed to do with publicly traded companies
Almost all of them.
Still, mass layoffs are never a sign of a healthy business. I'm reluctant to blame Activision for all of it, Blizzard has made a bunch of missteps lately.
Individual investments are unstable, especially ones in entertainment. But you can see how the wealthy have captured nearly all economic growth in the last 50+ years, so its working overall (for them).
And hey, turns out history bears out this conclusion in a cyclical manner that we have yet to learn from!
They do it all the time. I mean they must be getting something out of it but a profit isn't one of them.
You have Oscar bait movies. Movies they produce that they know will be very unlikely to make money back, but might win them an award.
Another type are movies done as, basically, a payment to a director/writer/actor in exchange for doing X. Like, "Hey if you do this big tentpole movie we'll let you do your art-house passion project / big-budget high-concept sci-fi thriller / classic horror movie / what-have-you" regardless of how well that tentpole movie preforms. Deadpool would be a very good example of this. That movie was a hit and it did make a bunch of money, but the studio execs weren't expecting it to.
Then there are just random movies they dump hundreds of millions on even though it is pretty obvious by all involved it isn't going to do well at all. I assume these are purely for tax purposes, contract reason and/or to retain a license.
"....There are words here, but I don't understand the ordering." - Investors
Well, Bloomberg is the source so everything is spun as business positive. But it's pretty crazy to think that 2% lower than expected forecasts can cause such an uproar, it's insane. The markets are driven by insanity.