[Heroes of the Storm] Free to spend $40

Today Blizzard announced the Heroes of the Storm Founder's Pack, finally granting eager fans a means to get into the Heroes of the Storm beta if they weren't lucky enough in the lottery, a popular streamer, press, or the friend of a Blizz employee.

Phantasms of Commercialization

Edit: The post has been edited to clarify my point and remove confusing statements.

So while I was ranting about a quote from Jim Sterling's video about Evolve's DLC the insightful Talarian asked:

@0utofBeta @ctmurfy Question then. What's the difference between "shit we wanted to do, but don't have time" vs. planning to add it later?
— Talarian (@Talarianjs) January 19, 2015

Sadly the question requires more than 140 characters to answer so I delayed for time and scrambled over here to hash something out. The question makes a good point, it's difficult to say when something was cut because the developer ran out of time because theoretically the developer would throw everything in if time and money weren't a factor and when it was a feature that was simply planned to be added later.

[WoW] Veteran rewards controversy

Today I read on MMO-Champion that apparently Blizzard has decided to send "Veteran Rewards" to eligible World of Warcraft accounts that are ten years old. I've been playing since a few days after release so theoretically my account qualifies, but as I did not receive an email I am assuming that one has to have subscribed for the entire duration which rules me out. Naturally this created controversy. On one side we have the people who think it's a great idea and I'd imagine the "People eligible" and "People for it" circles on the Venn diagram of this opinion have a lot of overlap, but not necessarily. On the other side are players unhappy with this decision, and I'd imagine that side has a disproportionate amount of overlap with "Ineligible players."

[Dragon Age Inquisition] Origins gave me a character, Inquisition gave me a husk

One of the key differences I've encountered when playing Dragon Age Inquisition was the feeling that my character was just a stand-in for myself rather than me stepping into the shoes of some figure in Thedas. In Dragon Age: Origins the player experienced a brief tutorial/backstory event, determined by their race/class, that explained how your character ended up in the Gray Wardens. The experience primed me on how my character might view the world.

Card Game Review: Sentinels of the Multiverse

This weekend I had the pleasant opportunity to play Sentinels of the Multiverse by Greater Than Games, a kickstarted, co-op, superhero themed card game. I admit that when I first heard about it I was weary, I am pretty much a card game carebear and the game looked dauntingly complicated from afar. That said, I'll be questioning my gut more in the future because my group played at least eight hours of Sentinels over the weekend and I would have happily played another eight.

[WoW] A "daily" adjustment

A new player to Warlords (do those exist?) would have to be forgiven for having absolutely no idea what Daily Quests are. At level 100 I see at most a handful a day and most of those are optional quests from the Garrison. This fictional new player would have no idea that at one point in WoW's history (amusingly enough, when WoW was taking place in Draenor's alternate history predecessor, Outland) a player could expect to _FILL_ their quest log with dailies during any particular day. Expansions since Cataclysm have pared down the bloat. Truth be told I like not having an entire quest log to grind through every day; the fewer daily quests feel like they give me more meaningful and open-ended, "Do whatever the #$%@ I want" sense of accomplishment. There's just one more tweak I wish Blizzard would make.

[WoW] When one wrong thing sticks out

Somewhere in the blur between Thanksgiving rolling by and December starting I gave in to peer pressure and bought Warlords of Draenor.* I'll grant that despite my general apathy regarding the expansion I am impressed. What surprised me is just how impressed I was. Pandaria was the typical step up in quality, but Warlords feels like more of a leap. Putting my finger on exact why it feels so much better is difficult, but it seems to be something to do with the Garrison, how quests are laid out, rate of progression, etc. In Pandaria, the gap between 88-90 felt positively massive. The Dread Wastes seemed to go on FOREVER making the final push between 89 and 90 feel like a slog. Warlords doesn't have this problem, perhaps because there are ten levels so the "power up" sort of reward comes more readily, but even with that in mind the last few zones of Warlords seem to fly by when compared to their Pandaria equivalents.