воскресенье, 23 октября 2011 г.

Blizzcon News

Now that Blizzcon info is more or less finalized, it's time to see what I think about news we're given.

1. Pandas - I don't consider pandas childish and am perfectly ok with panda-themed expansion. I guess they are saving Emerald Dream for next one.

2. Monk - makes sense with pandas. One more tank class to level, always fun. At least it's something new, and is likely to be op for a while.

3. Minipetmon - neutral. It might be fun, or it might be not, and since it's unlikely to be given enough focus to make it perfect, and i don't remember any Pokemon-like games by Blizzard to draw upon previous experience, it has high chance of being vaporware like Path of Titans, or activity that quickly falls by wayside like Archaeology.

4. Dungeon Challenge Modes - putting a number on arbitrary activity that i do enjoy is unlikely to make it more fun long-term, but it might help grouping with like-minded individuals. And there are definite problems with some bits of information that they presented about how it would work - while gear or monster scaling is OK, arbitrary -5% damage/healing/tanking debuffs for next attempt to increase challenge will either fragment LFD way too much (if everyone has to be on same stage of debuff) or hamstring some groups too much (by having people with higher debuff in mostly low-debuff groups). And they would need separate "max time" for each stage of debuff if they want to keep that leaderboard, otherwise it will be utterly meaningless.

5. Annual Pass - thought about it for a bit:
- I do feel signs of interest loss
- D3 was definite "buy" from me
- I will definitely stick around long enough to enjoy 4.3
- and I just had my 6 month subscription renewed in September, so a bit less then half of subscription is already paid out.
So i went and signed up. Definite "impulse buy", but it's not like i'm losing much anyway even in worst case. WoW is pretty cheap "per hour of actual fun" overall.

6. Talent overhaul - this doesn't look good at all to me. The preview talents for some classes seem to be really... uninspired. Way too much "work in progress". But even from that you can see some directions, and i don't like them at all.

In case of Paladins, they are giving a choice between snare (finally!) that lowers your dps (ugh) and crowd control - one that is currently baseline, and the other being reworked Ret ability that would still be required for Ret to function in pvp, even with snare available. This feels like a choice that shouldn't be there at all, not a valid "interesting decision". More like mockery - "Here is hammer, nails, board, choose ONE to fix that hole in the wall!"

In case of Rogues, they are making shadowstep/prep a CHOICE, when it's staple of current rogue pvp. Actually, whole rogue package feels like something that was whipped up quickly by ripping abilities out of talent trees and/or not given much thought at all. Paralytic Poison? On same DR as Kidney Shot? Or maybe it's that old "random stun" separate DR category? Random stuns were problem before, and they removed pretty much all of them in balancing efforts, i don't see what exactly changed now.

It would all make sense it they are totally overhauling melee gameplay, but nothing else points that way so far.