Blog update

Alrighty! I'm finally back from Suriname and I survived the intial wave of business I had to take care of upon returning.

First thing is first: a big Thank You! to the NBI for awarding me for the Most Interesting Content prize. I'm pretty surprised the jury awarded me this. I will do my best to respect the interest my blog concept has sparked and write regularly. I'm thrilled at the thought that even a few people are interested in these subjects.

The plan

 I'm going to shoot for about three posts a week. I'm looking to get the jazz part of the blog introduced this week or the next, with my Final Fantasy cover upload being delayed due to issues with the video and audio; I've decided to just rerecord the whole thing so that will take another week or so.

I thought about posting about Blizzcon but I'd rather wait and really get my head wrapped around the things they've announced, rewatching some of the VoDs available with the virtual ticket. But I'd like to do a quick run down on some things.

WoW

• New Raid Structure: Had this come around in Cataclysm I'd probably still be raiding today. And with more people that I've known since the beginning or close to it. The flex tech is apparently fabulous and it's great to see their drive behind using it to fix what is essentially a social problem. Very stoked!
• Draenor, the story, etc: A bit bummed that we're not done with Garrosh yet. I hope that we won't be fighting Orcs and Ogres during the entire expansion. Nor do I want to see an entire raid tier with some level of dedication to trolls again. But something tells me the Burning Legion will get some focus, perhaps in the second raid tier (6.1 or 6.2) before moving on to whatever it is we fight at the end. At least we've been assured that it's not Garrosh that awaits us at the end of the expansion. Phew!
• I can't get excited about the zones. At least not yet. The premise of exploring Draenor before it all went to crap is cool though. I had no idea Black Temple had that kind of history (spoiler: It wasn't such an evil place) and I always love a good snow zone.
• Lots of little things like bag management, (auto distribution, no more quest loot, heirloom UI etc) item overhaul, item squish and the fact that they're not adding lots of new buttons!
• Garrisons a.k.a player housing! Some cool ideas there that once again can expand on what they already have.
• I'm skeptical of the insta level 90 thing. Hopefully the flood of people that have no idea how to play their class will be somewhat limited and/or mitigated after a while.

D3: RoS

• I was rather underwhelmed. A lot of the info was old news from Gamescom earlier this year.

  • It was clear that the audience was very hard to get super excited for Diablo 3 anymore. If you compare the enthusiasm for things demonstrated back before the game had orginally come out you can feel the difference. Even as someone who wasn't there! If someone was there and this wasn't the case though, let me know! 

  •  I'm still hopeful for D3 though. The basic gameplay is fun; I've spent countless hours as a teenager playing D2 and I managed to get my money's worth out of its sequel. They're on the right track, but as I'm sure everyone else feels, we have to really see the finished product to believe it. The brand is quite damaged. 

     

      I still have to let Heroes sink in; see more of it. Nothing really to talk about as far as Hearthstone is concerned. It's an awesome game and it's fantastic that they're moving to open beta by the end of January along with the announcement of an Android release.