Narrative Warfare: A Suggestion For BlizzCon 2019

For those people who shall attend BlizzCon this year, and want a deniable means of protest, consider the following. I'm aware it's short notice, but I suggest that you engage in some cosplay and LARPing. Specifically, cosplay as Pandaren.

And your LARP scenario is that you're protesting the imperialism of the Mogu. That's these guys.

It's deniable. You're LARPing something that actually happened in-game, and would again if the Mogu could do it. Add some additional Horde characters, especially Zandarlari Trolls, for additional deniability. When challenged, refer to Mogu incursions into Zuldazar and the attempt to reunify under the Thunder King; they can't kick you out so long as you stay on message. Nonetheless, all present will get the message; you'll know you're seen properly if the Virtual Ticket crew goes out of their way to cut you out of the feed and you're cut off at Q&A panels.

BlizzCon 2017: Of Course There's a New Expansion

BlizzCon 2017 began today. Being primarily a World of Warcraft player, I expected a new expansion announcement and I was not disappointed. For nuts and bolts and pictures galore, I refer you to WOWHead and its many posts made about as fast as the word got said in various panels this afternoon. (Have your adblocks up.) So I will just talk about the notable stuff mentioned today. HERE BE SPOILERS!

Battle For Azeroth is the title. The expansion goes over a Total World War between the Alliance and the Horde. The Horde loses the Undercity to an Alliance military invasion of Lordaeron that razes to the ground, while the Alliance loses Teldrassil to a Horde military assault that burns the failed World Tress to ash. Both losing fronts are pushed by to their rumps, which forms the first of the Warfront battle lines in this expansion.

The war quickly escalates, requiring not only a global search for resources (and the territory it requires), but also the need for new allies to rally to the banner and join the fight. These are Allied Races, and each side gains three at launch; more are going to be added down the road. The Horde gain the Highmountain Tauren and Nightborne Elves of the Broken Isles as well as the Zandalari Trolls of Zandalar. The Alliance gain the Lightforged Draenei and Void Elves that appeared during the Argus campaign against the Burning Legion, and the Dark Iron Dwarves are fully rehabilitated into the Alliance.

As the presence of the Zandalari implies, the search for allies brings heretofore unseen lands into the game. The Horde begin their expansion in Zandalar, having to aid the trolls there against their enemies to secure the allegience thereof. The Alliance goes to Kul Tiras and must do likewise to return that nation to the fold. Using both states' powerful navies, they scour the seas for strategic locations to secure or plunder.

These are the Island Expeditions, three-man Scenarios where Role is irrelevant. Three PVE difficulties and one PVP option. Meant to farm the new Artifact Power (Azurite, the crystallized blood of the World Soul Azeroth), which is used to empower the one new Artifact we gain (Heart of Azeroth, given at the start by Speaker Magni Bronzebeard on Azeroth's behalf) to make up for those we lose going out of Legion. We slowly gain powerup options on the armor pieces we gain (which are NEVER random in what options they offer).

Those Warfronts? They are 20-man PVE Scenarios, modeled on the play experience of Warcraft 1 & 2- you start at a Town Hall and have to build out a tech tree in order to build up an army and get into their base to kill their mans and gank their general. The first one in the Eastern Kingdoms is Stromgarde in the Arathi Highlands and the map is an all-new HD remake of the live zone map. None for Kalimdor announced yet, but we can expect it to be near the Exodar and Darkshire.

Yes, the level cap got raised 120. No, leveling won't be the chore it is now; a lot of tech rolled out specifically for Legion, as many expected, is going to be applied to the rest of the game: level scaling, zone-agnosticism (level where you like), World Quests and Emissaries, and so on. Dungeons get this too. This will be nice, because once you unlock an Allied Race via its specific quest chain (an account-wide unlock) your new man starts at Level 20 and can go wherever to adventure. If you get that man to 110, you unlock (account-wide) a unique appearance set called "Heritage Armor" and it is NOT locked to armor types.

And that's what's documented.

Undocumented, but seen in the demo available on the floor: a massive stat squish (back to Wrath levels), a massive Item Level squish (ditto), the return of castable buffs (Mark of the Wild, we missed you.), and graphics that mean you ought to upgrade your PC if you want a decent framerate. Potato people, start banking for a new PC now.

And that's about all I have to say for now. Tomorrow I'll get more information (I hope), and I will talk about the other games and features that I think will seriously change the Blizzard end of videogaming (Hint: Overwatch's voice chat will come to Heroes, WOW, and the Blizzard App making outside VOIP apps irrelevant and unnecessary because Overwatch's chat is GOOD!)

The BlizzCon 2016 Rundown

Okay, so the BlizzCon Virtual Ticket isn't worth $40 (no, not even for all the digital goodies in the games). What, if anything, was worthwhile out of this year's event?

Well, if you're not at all concerned about the videogame business then why are you reading this post? Come back later. That sorted, what value you get out of BlizzCon is pretty tightly tied to how into one or more Blizzard games you are. As there were no new games announced this year, all we got were Coming Soons and Retrospectives.

• World of Warcraft: Patch 7.1.5 comming Soon (should be on the PTR tomorrow), which bring in Pandaria Timewalking; Patch 7.2 next year, which is when Tomb of Sargeras hits and Legion Flight becomes achievable. Patch 7.2.5 and 7.3 are a thing, but time to release To Be Determined.
  
• Diablo 3: D1 celebration event Soon. Necromancer comes back as a playable class. New zones for Adventure Mode and Quality of Life changes.
  
• Starcraft 2: Not much. Bumpkiss, really.
  
• Overwatch: Sombra (looks like it'll shake up the meta), new maps, new modes, and Overwatch Pro League (Blizzard wants to be the NFL of Esports.) That last one, if it works, is a serious game-changer for the competitive side of the gaming business.
  
• Hearthstone: Mean Streets of Gadgetzan changes the game with multi-class cards. Unfortunately, the cancer of cards that create more cards from nothing will only get worse. RIP strict F2P.
  

You can go watch all of the tournaments on Twitch or YouTube, so I won't recap other than to say South Korea dominated as they usually do. (Lost only the Hearthstone tournament.)

But then there was Closing Ceremonies. Nothing odd until Weird Al took the stage. If you've never seen a Weird Al live show, know this: that man, and his band, do a LOT of costume changes over the course of a show. While live audiences just make do, that's bad for TV (and thus for live streaming) so someone decided to tack on host segments to cover up the changes and prevent Dead Air. Still nothing odd, until you see some twat pretending to be "Jerry" Assange and some cunt pretending to be a vapid pop star do improv bits inviting people to Tweet at Wikileaks and gamedropped Gamergate on the regular as a deliberate insult to Blizzard's customers and BlizzCon's audience.

Someone done goofed. Badly.

No one who saw those segments liked them, seeing them--rightly--as a tone-deaf and incompetent attempt to be funny by injecting politics into a situation where they did not belong. Total Biscuit didn't like it. Jesse Cox did not like it. Users at /r/wow at Reddit did not like it. Attendees did not like it. But the real kicker was dragging Wikileaks into something that they were not associated with, and inciting people to go at them; that's illegal and someone at either Blizzard or DirectTV's Legal Department (or Watcher himself, being a lawyer), should've read the Riot Act to them and whomever else is responsible for it for exposing them to such liability in a reckless manner.

And there you have it, a decent convention with lots of good competitive play (seriously; that shit was GOOD), ending with a decent show (Weird Al delivered) but marred by that tone-deaf bullshit. Expect that to NOT happen again next year.

Podcast Recommendation: The Core Report

One of the streamers I follow is a Canadian expatriate who goes by the name of "Lauralania", and she is a massive fangirl for all things Blizzard. Her game of choice is Heroes of the Storm, and I've watched her go from derptastic fangirl to an up-and-coming figure in the nascent Heroes e-sports scene. In addition to her Twitch channel, she is now the Heroes Team Manager for eLevate, and she just got into podcasting. I am please to see her growth, and I wish that you give her a chance to show you her worth.

It's this new venture that got me to make this post. It's called The Core Report, and it's a Heroes podcast. It's new, so the show is still inchoate as it finds its footing, so if you want to get in on the ground floor and help a fledgling gaming podcast find its niche and flourish now is the time. I'm embedding the first two episodes below, and I recommend giving this a shot. Send useful, actionable feedback on how to improve the show, and help your fellow gamers make their own media as part of developing a healthy community.