I don't care about Hearthstone, Overwatch, or Heroes of the Storm.
Given how both the core Blizzard audience and Blizzard itself treats these games, neither do they. Therefore I haven't paid any attention to their announcements.
Warcraft matters. Starcraft matters. Diablo matters. Those three IPs sit on top--control the Network Effect for--their respective niches (MMO, RTS, ARPG) Everything else does not because it does not (CounterStrike, League of Legends, Magic- those three rule the Effects in those niches).
I implore you--Vidya and Tabletop alike--to stop being fucking retarded faggots about this. You want to know why Blizzard and WOTC signed that deal allying together?
NETWORK EFFECTS, MOTHERFUCKER!
Each recognizes the other as the dominant Network. Only a superior Network can defeat an enemy Network. They both see Fortnite and Roblox as their real enemies, so their alliance allows them to join forces on a long-term plan to defeat those threats by first consuming and assimilating their own also-rans. This is going to be far easier to do on the Tabletop end, and not just with Official DND, as it will be in Vidya but it can be, and will be, done.
Blizzard has AI expertise. WOW is making AI DMs and players. You better believe that Blizzard's expertise will be applied to WOTC's aims.
You Tabletop and Vidya people gainsaying me now are going to be apologizing to me before this is over.
Time for the diggers to dig and find something that can get this cunt punted face-first into a ditch and replaced with a proper writer that respects the property.
The big WOW streamers were at BlizzCon. They took the chance to stream the demo for Forever.
Xaryu showed the new Racials and Class/Race combos; Horde Skyeborne get Shaman instead of Mage but are otherwise the same.
And this new starting zone feels and looks a lot like the High Elf starting zone that Turtle WOW made mixed with some recolored Night Elf assets.
He didn't mess around much in the new zone before doing the demo dungeon, which is another video of his (as he rerolled Undead Mage for that).
But hey, at least Dwarf Hunters aren't totally subpar compared to other Class/Race combos in Forever. The metagame in Forever is going to be sigificantly different than Classic (every iteration thereof) and Retail.
As this is, something things will remain the same:
Humans remains the best Paladins
Night Elves remain best Druids
Trolls are the best for ANY Horde class with defined burst windows in PVE, and contend in PVP if they can get a Swifty macro attack off.
Dwarves are always good for treasure-hunting parties
But there's going to be meta shifts. I can already see some of them coming, but more will be sussed out when the Beta drops.
Yes, they will deliver on what they promised in that panel.
What they didn't tell you is that they are able to do so this fast by taking the code from Turtle WOW, Ascension, Project Epoch, and some other Classic Plus Private Servers when they shut them down and then appropriate it to fit their own Brand Safe version of Classic Plus.
No, unlike Conquest of Azeroth, this will not use all-new classes (I could not die as a Witch Hunter tank by the time I hit 60, and I tried). No, unlike Mysteries of Azeroth, we aren't getting proper High Elves. No, unlike Project Epoch, they aren't putting in low-level transit accelerators (i.e. ground taxis across zones). None of the new zones are those from any PServer and neither are the new dungeons.
But the concepts? Oh yeah. Camping? That's from Ascension. New subzones and their placements? Many are in or near what we saw in those PServers. The remixed classic raids? Totally from Ascension. Hyjal as a zone? Already done in PServers, and as that post-Third War scenario. Adding expansion to existing factions, new Battlegrounds reflecting known flashpoints, etc. are all their versions of what these PServers already proved to work.
It's fitting, after a fashion, that this is Blizzard doing what it was already known for: taking things that work and then polishing them to a Normie-friendly sheen.
And all of it is going to come to Official D&D in the years to come thanks to Universes Beyond. This is the WOW version that is made with Official D&D in mind.
So first you play it virtually, then at your table. Enjoy what Total Memetic Domination looks like.
Blizzard killed Turtle WOW earlier this year, and killed Ascension last weekend (which also killed Project Epoch). That pressaged the arrival of Official Classic Plus, confirmed now.
There's a prelaunch sale going on right now on the official servers with the usual bonuses that are also usable in Retail and/or Classic servers.
This is what would get me paying Blizzard again. Retail is not only too pozzed, but the system requirements are starting to strain my machine until I can upgrade the graphics card. Classic is worthless past Wrath of the Lich King.
And, once again, Network Effects prove their worth. Blizzard OWNs the MMO Network Effect, especially within its own IP. Private Servers are now tolerated insofar as they (a) keep lapsed subscribers in the Network and (b) do the R&D that Blizzard either can't or won't do anymore because holy shit are so much of Forever's offerings exactly what the dead PServers been known for (Undead Paladins was the tell). Let them figure out what works, what new ideas hit, then C&D and shut them down to get their code to incorporate into the official game.
Wizards of the Coast would do that if they could, hence yet another reason for their pivot.
We got further confirmation that everything I said Wizards of the Coast is doing to Official D&D is happening.
The former WOTC CEO is now back in control, directly running WOTC from Hasbro's C-Suite.
He can, he has, and he will again bulldoze inside opposition to his agenda and will go ahead to implement exactly what I said previously was the objective for the official game.
The AI DMs and player bots are coming. The frictionless convenience of a phone app-based business and gameplay model are coming. The legacy model of business and organization are on borrowed time. The Cargo Cult is Cooked. There is this, and there is the Clubhouse. The Cargo Cult collapses.
Many--as seen in the comments--still don't see what time it is. They can't comprehend second-order effects. They can't comprehend trends and directions. They think that they can just ignore it, not realizing that they've been coping--and failing--for decades at this point in doing so as their pool of prospects shrinks year on year depending on how frictive they are at their table.
These Dexters deserve the destruction falling upon them.
Vidya continues to make the Cargo Cultist offering look as bad as it is.
Light No Fire in particular is a threat to Temu D&D and even to Official D&D because you have a Domain Game.
Better than others like it (Valheim, Enshrouded, Pax Dei, etc.), this threatens the Cargo Cult in particular because of--you guessed it--reduced friction compared to Cargo Cult play and it being full of fake and gay lameness.
Want to play solo? You can. Want to get the boys together? You can. Build up your own domain? You can.
Lots of what makes Vidya in general a superior alternative to Official D&D and Cargo Cultist knockoffs is here, is refined, and is going to be far easier to acquire and play (and get others to play with you) at a cheaper price compared to Cargo Cult non-gaming.
Unlimited L Works, Cargo Cultists. All the Ls. All for you. All the time.
This concept of friction needs to be seen in other contexts to grasp what Wizards of the Coast is after. Let's look next door at Blizzard Entertainment.
You can see that friction is clearly on the mind of the Dangerhairs and Remorseful Trolls at Blizzard.
While what I've embedded above is supposition, it is clearly informed supposition and likely is 80% correct given both present trends and past performance. The Retail game, the one that's all whatever it is coming out of the Political Commissar's Office there this week, is very much a disposable and seasonal game now; you play the patch, not the game, and if it weren't so loaded with Fear Of Missing Out triggers you'd be able to come and go at will (much like FF14).
The argument being made here--that the new Classic rollout is to deliberately silo the legacy audience into their own paypig pen so that Retail can become whatever the Dangerhair Brigade wants it to be without fear or shame (or expectation of shouldering the company, i.e. consequence free if a failure) is mostly correct.
What's wrong is the idea that this is where new players will go. No, that's for Retail.
Why? Retail is being made increasingly frictionless. Normies, Casuals, Tourists- they go where friction doesn't exist. That's why WOTC wants them too. Make your game piss-easy to play--Free To Play, No Scheduling Your Fun, Lots Of Pay For Convenience (that is often Pay To Win in Asian titles; they love to flex like that for some reason)--and Normies (et. al.) swarm you, but are fickle and fair-weather so you need to keep them coming back frequently with new stuff. This is the basis for the Seasonal Model: MAXIMIZED NOVELTY!
If Retail WOW goes this route, all of the things legacy players claim to hate (but, via Revealed Preferences, show that they do not) are going to be maxed out and present trends (such as AI party members) will be fully standardized such as by making their use mandatory for a first-time through an instanced content option (and it will be sold as "The Story Mode"). Crafting, gathering, etc. will be depreciated in favor of doubling-down further on Doing Stuff (dungeons, Delves, raids, PVP, etc.) that can take no more than an hour- and that's for clearing a raid, so for everything else it 30 minutes or less- often a lot less.
In Tabletop, this translates to WOTC pivoting iteratively (drawing it out over years, not all at once via an edition change) to the things I mentioned: AI DMs and party members, gameplay being based on the Encounter and not Adventures or Campaigns (and Encounters being timed at 5-10 minutes so you can do them on a smoke break at work on your phone), paid enhancements for convenience (e.g. pay to Never Fail Saving Throws), and plenty of Branded tie-ins (oh look the Ninja archetype got a new subtype thanks to the Naruto/Boruto collab, and you can adventure out of the Hidden Leaf Village now) to keep drawing in new (and luring back lapsed) players.
Frictionless Convenince means that All Content Is Always Available on the player's side. You want to play using the Newtype rules for the Psion class, have a background with the Swordmasters of Ginaz, be the daughter of Storm Shadow, and fight with a lightsaber? You can, because Restrictions Are Friction and Big Gaming doesn't want to scare the Normies.
Frictionless Convenience on the Referee's side doesn't exist because WOTC's taken the Referee out back, shoved him into the ditch, and shot him in the head. The bots do that now, and so long as what the players want is Brand Safe it's AOK! Sure, the bots can only do what WOTC allows, but most Normies won't go beyond that anyway (and never have) so this is no drawback for WOTC.
This also means that WOTC is, within a decade (maybe within five years), going to be like Blizzard in the hunting down of alternatives.
Unlike Blizzard, WOTC won't be siccing Attack Lawyers on Your Temu D&D. What they will sic them on is attempts to breach their Walled Garden, in the form of trying to make content for The Only Game That Matters, and the Temu D&D crowd will do it because with the gates to the garden being shut and a gatekeeper installed it'll be like USAID money drying up: lots of people who front like they matter are going to start closing shop or lashing out because they can't suck off WOTC's teats or eat WOTC's scraps anymore. They are also going to find out how badly they needed WOTC for acquiring customers because this new Universes Beyond scheme kills their core offering: We Have The Fantasy WOTC Doesn't.
Which brings me back to Ryan Dancey and his 1999 revelation of Network Effects.
Part-and-parcel of that revelation is that Normies don't want to waste time relearning How To D&D. That's because they see ALL of Tabletop as D&D, and every Cargo Cultist pretending to be a publisher knows it- the more honest ones confess it. (Yes, MMOs are still the same way; all of them are WOW.)
Every single difference is a point of friction. Points of friction add up to Quit Moments VERY FAST for Normies. That's why they never take up alternatives, but instead kitbash D&D into what they want- assuming they bother at all, and very few do. They instead just quit the hobby entirely, something that happened with increasing frequency over the last 50 years as competing media began being able to give them the less-frictive alternative media offerings that they wanted out of D&D but did not get. They didn't see any other Tabletop product as something other than a D&D knockoff, so they assumed that they were all the same and thus a waste of time. Oldfags did not do jack shit to dispel this mistaken notion. (They say they did, but their actions proved that they did not.)
This is why WOTC's gambit will succeed if they can figure the tech end out. Now that vibe-coding is a thing, that's far more likely to happen such that I can count on it being the case; the Dangerhairs can vibe-code to Minimum Viable Product state, hand it off to someone who knows what he's doing with code (and it will be a man, since we know there is no woman or Jeet with the skills needed available over there) to finish it as Work For Hire, and then be on call when the H-1B maintaining it inevitably fucks it up (usually by subcontracing it to his cousins back home on the downlow against company regulations and in return for kickbacks).
Yes, there will be the legacy game we know. It will be depreciated in perpetuity, siloed into its own paypig pen (because that's what buying PDFs and PODs on Drivethru is), in favor of the mobile-friendly game where you play by the Encounter and may or may not have other players in your party- like you will know or care, as you're in it for Phat Loot and whatever else counts as high status play by then and they will never listen to your pitches because they're moving between one-shotting Storm Shadow to farm for his sword, doing Ranked in Apex with the boys, stream-sniping Dr. Disrespect in Warzone for lulz, and having Netflix on a second monitor playing at 2x speed- and you want that guy (or gal, or whatever they think they are this week) to show up at a specific time and place to do the same fundamental activity, but slower? Bitch are you high?
No, you Cargo Cultists get Unlimited L Works now due to this.
There is a way out, but that means admitting Jeffro Johnson and the Bros were right about everything and you are nowhere near ready for that ego-death yet.
I keep telling you that WOW and D&D are analogous due to occupying the apex of their respective media and market niches.
We see these private servers keeping coming despite Blizzard going after them because ONLY WORLD OF WARCRAFT MATTERS (as much as FF14 wishes otherwise; they had their chance to usurp WOW and MISSED- that's never happening again).
Look at what they consistently offer: giving the target audience what they want, with superior convience- same as what WOTC did and does, but no Tabletop competitor even thinks to offer. Only that Project Aurora guy has even broached the question- that's how deep in the sauce Cargo Cultists are. If this Russian-based private server can deliver half of what it promises, it will CLOWN on Blizzard hard.
This is how competition within a Network Effect works. You only win if you can deliver what the target audience wants better than the big dog. This can be done in Vidya; Tabletop should be easier, but it's not because Oldfags are retards who can't think past their nose or they'd be doing this sort of thing to WOTC on a regular basis.
This is how Blizzard deals with it: shut them down, then steal their best ideas (and code) to incorporate (in a watered down manner) on Retail and/or Classic servers.
WOTC could have done the same thing; they will not need to going forward because there will be sweet fuck-all to steal.
Pain--the whip, the stick, the brick--is far more likely to get the desired results than the carrot when dealing with midwit and worse quality people.
Arch didn't get into it, but those familiar with how Jeets in power operate are not surprised; they are always eager whip-wielders when placed in power over others, willing to enforce whatever they are told by their masters and patrons, and women are not only no less likely they are often more hair-triggered when they do. Thus Queen Jeet of XBox doing this surprised no one aware of this.
She serves the shareholders. The shareholders want Number Go Up. Whipping the studios producing the products that drive that number, when they have been indolent and incompetent for years on end, is going to produce positive results for now. Given the cultures of those rotting in their chairs there, that is the only way to get results out of these losers.
It's a mixed bag; the shareholders are not our friends, and there is no guarantee that the games produced will be any good, but for now this is a net-positive development. The question that remains is if the public--us--have any leverage over the shareholders, ideally by just Not Buying Shit and (just as important) Not Talking About Shit.
That includes a certain movie currently in theaters.
While made about Vidya, this applies to Tabletop also.
The details vary, but the general state of Tabletop being in a state of collapse is the same.
As usual, Network Effects means that only The Only Game That Matters is going to be a viable commercial enterprise after the collapse concludes. More Tabletop "companies" are actually glorified buskers begging on Kickstarter for their money instead of forming a proper business plan, gathering operating capital (via a bank loan, from family/friends, etc.), and executing that plan in the hopes that it works out.
That's not a business sector. That's a mass psychosis pretending to be a cottage industry.
We're seeing more of the same in Vidya, with more and more "indies" and "AA" going cap-in-hand via crowdfunding instead of doing the smart thing and just plugging away slowly in your time away from your day job until you have enough to go for Early Access on Steam.
More people pretending to be commercial operators need to be forced out of the scene, one way or the other, and that's going to be done by hook or by crook because the economy is no longer willing or able to accomodate this mass delusion in either Tabletop or Vidya- nor should it. More people need to go back to productive day jobs and stop pretending to be Muh Creatives. Their enablers on YouTube need to follow them.
Put on the hardhat and go do your factory shift; it's what you're actually good for, and thanks to Trump reviving Hamilton's economy policy you'll actually have one to work at sooner than later. (Including printing, fuck you Glickner.)
The old days are done, and with it are the priors presumed as true (but never were).
Remember what I said about the private server scene being the MMO equivalent of Tabletop's Retroclone movement?
Well, we just saw yet another expression of that being the case. Yesterday, Project Ascension launched their latest game mode: Conquest of Azeroth.
Since a lot of you are neither current nor former World of Warcraft players, I'll spare you the details. Suffice it to say that I'm playing Ranger and Witch Hunter right now and enjoying it. I tried Barbarian during the pre-launch Stress Test, which took a bit to figure out but also turned out fine. Trying the new Support role with the Ranger class. Can't say about the rest.
What I want to explain to you is this:
There are Vidya analogies to Tabletop issues.
World of Warcraft is the D&D of MMOs.
Due to long-running antagonism to its legacy audience, there's been splintering that lead to cloning of past editions; this would lead to official Classic realms, but that was not enough, and neither did the recent Remix limited-time servers do that either, but rather a "Classic Plus" (Vanilla with different decisions implemented, and more content added) is what folks want.
Private servers fulfill this demand- as retroclones do for people who want their specific flavor of B/X (etc.) put into a single plug-and-play product. This is mostly a WOW thing, but private servers are also how dead MMOs carry on (e.g. Star Wars Galaxies).
Blizzard has become more hostile to this over time, and operators are becoming more savvy about protecting their operations- and not just in immediately rebranding and relaunching after a shutdown (as Turtle WOW did, twice). Other corpos are no friendlier.
Network Effects dominate MMOs harder than they do Tabletop, as Josh Strife Hayes proved a while back, so the only viable way to compete is to fight WITHIN the Network Effect.
Therefore, only WOW can kill WOW- and thus a superior private server is a threat to Blizzard.
Due to the nature of the medium, and the specific game, something like the Bros happening is going to take a different form than it did in Tabletop.
Instead you're seeing OSR, not BROSR, insurgencies; they're doing the retroclone thing because that's what works. Some wipe their asses with IP law (like Ascension), some pretend it's real and do the "legally distinct" thing, but both of them are doing clones of MMOs with proven audiences because the risk calculation of MMO launching for anyone that is not Le Big Corpo now is too high to be acceptable- and recently failures only doubled-down on that perception (Ashes of Creation also being outed as a scam).
That's why the real expansion is in competing with the dominant Networks from the inside, and as private servers have already proven to work they're going to keep working.
The next step will be to find a way to make a WOW server that finds a way to do Braunstein style play--which, in this context, means somewhere between EVE Online, Warhammer Online, Dark Age of Camelot by way of Guild Wars and its sequels--as was done in many a MUD before that.
And the crazy thing is, I bet some guy--and it's going to be a guy--is going to be the one to take things like Winning Secrets and find a way to make that happen.
The week before this past one, and over last weekend, we had the annual Summer Games hypefest with the Dorito Pope and others.
Of those on the PC Gaming Show showcase, this caught my attention.
Valheim has been around in Early Access for years. It is one of the best alteratives to Fake D&D that Vidya has which scratches the itch, and it's less than the cost of most Tabletop rulebooks worth having- certainly less than The Only Game That Matters.
Look at the Steam page. Most PCs rigs are able to play this game now. It's $20 at full price. You can play along or with others, and your deeds can have persistent results.
This is what Fake D&D has to fight with to stay relevant. It doesn't fight with lesser knockoffs. It fights with superior products, and it fights with superior hobby forms (e.g. the Clubhouse and Braunstein).
And for many prospects,Valheim is the better value proposition! Only the Clubhouse competes.
And yes, Videogames do EVERY LAST FUCKING THING that Cargo Cultists insist as Dogma BETTER THAN THEY DO!
This is why I have neither patience nor tolerance for that faggotry anymore. Vidya does the Cargo Cult model better, so fuck that on Tabletop. Therefore I will only do Braunstein--the Real Game--in Tabletop because that's how the game is structurally built to be played.
As for Muh Narrative, write books you Theater Kid wankers. You'd actually enjoy yourselves by doing the thing you actually want to do.
In the name of making it easier for the dads on the dev team, Blizzard permanently broke the game and thus the entire product category.
The correct response was to do the following:
Make dungeons harder, but make the loot better- both in potency and in acquisition. "Fuck You, Pay Me" always applies. Loot must drop for everyone involved, and be immediately useful; you should always get either an upgrade or (if none are to be had) the gold equivalent. If you put in work, you get paid GUARANTEED.
Make certain that all mans of a given role can perform necessary functions. Tanks and healers should not be doing interrupts or crowd control; that's the DPS' job, and fulfilling such utility cannot be a DPS loss or they won't do it. Healers should be situationally aware, not locked on the healthbars; either healing happens while doing utility or DPS work, or they have off-OCDs that light up to be instant nukes after doing enough GCD heals whose net effect is DPS neutral.
Mobs should always have something that requires CC on pain of either instant death or loss of control- not just bosses.
Bosses should require Tank mitigation to endure being hit at all; against Healers and DPS, squish.
Instant spec-change/gear-change upon entrance to the required group role, assuming that you are foolish enough to not hard-lock classes into them in the first place. This is one place where FF14 is correct in its design.
Design dungeons to be completable in 10 minutes or less on average. That means cutting bosses to one, and reducing trash to a handful of packs at most. Winged dungeon complexes should be the norm. This is the core problem, not the grouping issue. The reason for pre-DF being a pain was due to the time required; cut it down to something you'd see in a Scenario out of MOP and you'd see participation skyrocket. Going with a winged complex approach means that you can turn one area into three or more distinct dungeons to run, and each run would actually feel like a proper delve and not a reckless roller coaster ride.
In short, increase the friction in the content, reduce the time commitment, and spread around the tools to handle the friction..
My Vidya brothers, I feel you, and I join you in praising Gaben.
You should take note of this and use it for your benefit.
With Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft all shooting themselves in the foot you had better believe that Steam giving you the tools to clearly see if your rig can run it is yet another customer-friendly element that everyone else somehow fails to understand or care about.
Want something that's going to work? Have your rig be at least as good as a Steam Deck, then look for Deck OK labelling. Later on Steam Machine labelling will work. Only buy what gets the Green Check.
Or buy from GOG. Those games are so old that you can run it on Grandma's email checker.
This is another place where Indies and AA are rooking AAA across the board; design for the low-end specs of your target audience. This is why World of Warcraft worked- you could run it on the basic bitch machines of the day and do fine, as I know from personal experience.
Blizzard isn't the only one. Square Enix, via Creative Unit 3 (the FF14 crew) had this going on since Dawntrail hit its own pre-launch hype.
SE just began its own new hype cycle after years of shitting the bed with the current expansion and letting Troons and Death Cultists ruin it for everyone- led by Chief Commie Kate Cywhateverthiscuntsnameis. They got to run wild while Yoshi-P and his man Koji Fox did their best to salvage FF16, which is how the EN version in particular shat the bed so hard that everyone else got smeared by association.
It is hoped that this will be fixed with the new stuff coming, announced over last weekend at the North American FanFest.
(No, Lanse here isn't a fan; he hates Kate and the Troon Squad, but doesn't spare Yoshi-P for letting them do it.)
AAA Gaming across the board has been shitting the bed due to both Death Cult and Mammon Mob fuckery, mostly in the West but Japan isn't immune.
Meanwhile, AA Gaming and Indies on both sides of the Pacific keep delivering. I'm far more hyped for this than the just-announced Evercold.
There's more I'm looking for--Light No Fire for example--but AAA? Not really. Not until there's some serious purging of the ranks.
In a related note, I am available for hatchetman work.
