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.

My Life As A Gamer: Bellular Talks Blizzard

Bellular Gaming is a solid Blizzard news channel, with a focus upon World of Warcraft. Today's video is on what's leaking out from the inside, and it's not good news.

Well, we got screwed even harder than we thought. The Diablo team got hammered with Executive Meddling good and hard. The mobile side clearly comes from a lust for Chinese cash, which I am certain is going to turn out to be a bubble no less artificial and fragile that the Housing and IT bubbles of previous years, because if you pay attention to indie reporting on China you get how fake that country's economy is.

The insanity of constant growth or bust shows itself here. The only thing in biology that does this is cancer, so it's no surprise that corporate craziness is also cancerous; the time to kill this duty to be cancerous, and it is a legally-mandated duty, has come and soon the opportunity will arise to make doing so viable in our various law-making bodies around the world.

It's clear that Blizzard specifically, and the industry generally, needs to reform. When you're better off doing database bitchwork than pursuing your passion, that's a very bad sign and it has to stop. If it can't be done organically from within, then it must be done legislatively from without; we regulate workplaces in other ways, to good effect and for good reasons, so this won't be out of line or without precedent. These companies using compensation to create cult-like campus conditions has to stop.

Imperial Overreach: Not Just For Governments

Raging Golden Eagle shows us yet another erosion of Freedom of Association. It's not just Blizzard doing this, or other big groups; the smaller ones do it too, and for the same stupid reasons.

As with the Mike Mearls messup, Roll20 fails to consider that they can't actually achieve their stated objective. Tabletop gaming, even done online, doesn't need their platform. All you need is some way to communicate and a random number generator. The rest, while desirable to differing degrees, is not required. You can do without Roll20, Fantasy Grounds, Discord/Twitch, and run a tabletop game online just fine; play-by-email has been a thing for years, and play-by-mail before that.

More important is that convergence by one party always opens opportunity for a competitor to steal the converged's audience and put the converged out of business entirely. Go on, Roll20, slurp the poz and serve the Narrative. You just ensure your own demise, and it cannot come fast enough. Unlike Blizzard's overreach with Overwatch, you don't have billions of dollars and decades of goodwill to burn through before collapsing, so it comes sooner than later for you.

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!)

Narrative Warfare: Virtual BattleMechs Have No Sex. Hustling Crooks Do.

Tracer is not gay. Tracer is not straight. Tracer is not female, British, or even alive. Tracer is a fictional avatar controlled by a player in game about objective-focused arena combat. Tracer is nothing more than a virtual BattleMech.

That's what I find most bothersome of this non-news about the sexuality of a character in a first-person shooter, a genre of game wherein most players could not--and do not--give a shit about anything that does not directly impact gameplay. They aren't reading comics. They aren't watch lore videos. They aren't reading threads about anything but playing the game because the game matters and everything else does not.

So, I'm with the others rolling my eyes over SocJus cultists jonesing for another hit of the Outrage drug. I don't care because Tracer is a robot, and all I care about with my robots is that they do the job that they are designed to execute. There's no story in a combat arena shooter, so all the lore is pointless bullshit; it's as relevant as it is in DOTA 2 or League of Legends (i.e. not at all)- and man, Tracer's been shipped with Widowmaker since at least the Beta, so where the fuck have these shitstains been?

Thus, I find that there is something else at work here: building a brand.

@stillgray @Blaugast Hell, I doubt that they think so. They just say so, but that's just another lie. Spot on about the brand building.

— Bradford C. Walker (@MrBCWalker) December 21, 2016

Tracer is gay, and *suddenly* nobody finds her pose problematic. Why was it a problem when you thought she was straight?

— Mark Kern (@Grummz) December 21, 2016

We've been on this wild ride to know long enough when someone's lying and when someone's blathering like they've seen Cthulhu. When it comes to the crooks fraudulently passing as "journalists" and "critics", they're lying. Yes, even #FullMcIntosh. It's never enough for them because they've built a brand upon being outraged, so they can't ever be satisfied or it damages their brand and thus their ability to function. (It also damages their identity, but that's part of the issue in tying your brand to your identity; don't do that.) That's why the ride doesn't end; they need to be outraged or everything about their lives collapses.

The narrative push here is to gaslight people into thinking that something that doesn't matter actually does. The pushback is to point out the bullshit and then show by example that this is irrelevant. Meme Masters and Shitlords, you know what to do. Have at it.

I'm done with this cult. Time to bake them like we do the Clams.

My Life as a Gamer: Overwatch Open Beta

This picture of Tracer is by Taiwanese artist MonoriRogue

Overwatch, Blizzard Entertainment's new game, is now in Open Beta and will be until it goes live at the end of the month. The company was wise to accept Tracer as the game's mascot, and the fake controversy over a now-removed pose that prominently presented Tracer's fantastic ass trolled the SJWs good and hard when the replacement turned out to be a flat-out tracing (HAH!) of a classic pin-up pose.

I'm not playing yet--this six-year old laptop ain't taking it well--but I'm enjoying the game as a spectator for now, and that spells good fortune down the road if the pro scene picks up for this game as we see high-profile professional play. I'll catch up when I have a rig that can do it justice.

So, enjoy the hell out of this game, and throw MonoriRogue a few silver pieces if you can. (Put that thing on a shirt, and watch that money roll in.)

Social Justice Cult Hits Overwatch

So, some cunt who doesn't even play Overwatch pulled for "For Muh Babies!" whine and now Tracer's getting her best shot patched out.

Kaplan had to sign off on this. Stop being a fucking cuck, Kaplan. If someone advised you to do it, toss them out a window and tell HR to bring in a replacement. If you did it, man the fuck up and revert it. The majority of the audience is adults, not pre-pubescent children, and therefore "For The Children" cries need not be considered.

God forbid that chicks have some sassy sex appeal. (Or are you going patch out Widowmaker's fantastic ass also?) The Tumblrinas have Zarya, so stop coddling the crusty cunts and punt them to the curb already- especially those fake "journalists" who lie about their gamer cred when they do this Social Justice bullshit.

Here, let me show you how it's done: "Fuck off, loser. We like Tracer's fine ass, and you can choke on my fuck."

Not hard, is it?

No one respects doormats.
This will not end well, and I expect some backpedaling to come soon (along with the restoration of that fabulous ass).

My Life as a Gamer: BlizzCon 2015 Hype

It's Saturday. By this time next weekend, I'll be watching BlizzCon remotely because I won a Virtual Ticket in a giveaway a few weeks ago.

Yeah, I'm excited. Specifically, I'm keen on World of Warcraft: Legion and the Warcraft movie followed by Overwatch. The other games I can catch up with later as my interests direct me (likely via my friends, acquaintances, and associates), and I'll follow the Twitter feed alongside the panel video feeds hoping for the bombshells to drop good and hard.

In the meantime, I'm relying on the aforementioned folks to fill in the blanks that the official coverage will inevitably leave, and I look forward to weeks and weeks of podcasts and live streams yammering on about how this is cool and that sucks harder than a black hole and yadda yadda yadda.

Until BlizzCon then, LOK'TAR OGAR! FOR THE HORDE!

(Note: This was meant to be posted on this date, but due to an unforeseen access outage was delayed until the 3rd of November, 2015.)

My Life as a Gamer: Overwatch Hype

So, Blizzard started the Closed Beta for their First-Person Shooter, Overwatch. As of this post, I do not have access to the Beta, but I know people who have and I watch plenty of streamers who did. I like what I see so far, but I am disappointed that those playing the game have been slow to comprehend one fundamental fact: that you can change your Hero whenever you're in the Spawn Room, without any limit to numbers per side or numbers per game. (You can have multiples of the same Hero on both sides at the same time.)

Instead, I see a lot of people thinking that they have to fulfill a specific role throughout a match as if this were Heroes of the Storm (or some other MOBA) or speak of "main" and "alt" Heroes as if this were World of Warcraft. That's not the correct approach to Overwatch.

You are expected to swap Heroes to meet the tactical demands at hand.
Heroes have distinct suites of abilities. Accurately reading the tactical situation, and then swapping to the Hero that best meets that situation, is something that players are expected to do to win consistently.

Starting with one team composition and stubbornly insisting upon it will lose to a team composition that flexes along with the evolving gameplay state. That is why this Beta has a native voice chat client (ala Destiny), so groups can coordinate in real-time using the most efficient means (voice) at hand.

You are expected to coordinate actions, including Hero swaps, to win the match.
As the Beta goes forward, and successive waves of players join the fun, I expect this to become the best practice that the community promotes once the idea achieves critical mass and becomes widely accepted.

(Note: This was meant to be posted on this date, but due to an unforseen access outage, it was not posted until the 3rd of November, 2015.)