The Warcraft Movie Trailer Looks Pretty Bad

The trailer for the Warcraft movie came out the other day, and I have to say that it didn't impress. Right from the opening visuals, the thing dripped of fantasy cliche as it showed one sweeping vista after the next, orcs that looked kinda flabby, and humans that had armor made out of plastic. Then it gets even worse, we have to listen to some of the dialogue. As it stands, I'm not sure how many people are going to line up and see what is starting to look like a two hour cut scene. Maybe some of the super diehard fans will go watch it, but this is something that probably should have come out five years ago when the franchise was at the height of its popularity.

Looking at the motifs, the movie comes off as a paint by numbers approach to fantasy in the trailer. If anything, it felt like it was aping Lord of the Rings a little too much. Granted, fantasy, and especially fantasy video games, have been doing this for years, but watching how it is approached in the trailer brings it into sharp focus. There was nothing really striking about the places that they were showing, even if they were hinting at major cities of Azeroth in it. I was just left feeling like I'd been drawn through a montage of very traditional fantasy locales and had a lot of trouble mustering any interest in them.

Even worse is that the visuals seem off. The orcs, while huge, had a strangely doughy look to them as if there was an unusually thick layer of fat and flesh covering their muscles. Meanwhile, the scenes of humans were far from impressive and I was left wondering if the studio was going cheap on the armor because it all looked like it was made from plastic. The whole time I watched the trailer, the more grating it was to look at all of this. It also got me wondering why they couldn't just make a CG movie instead of going the live action route. The cinematics that have come along for each expansion for World of Warcraft have been very good, especially for the last couple. I would have been fine if the movie looked like that. Maybe it would have been expensive and time consuming to do, but it would look far better than what we have now.

I'm also wondering how much they're going to try to squeeze into a single movie because the trailer sure seemed to be trying to cram a lot of people, places, and events into it. The whole thing could turn into a confusing onslaught of lore that doesn't get very well explained. Moreover, the dialogue feels really bad. Granted it has always been bad in the games. I only find Warcraft's lore tolerable if I consume it via Wiki articles. Having to sit through actual cutscenes and listen to the characters talk has been a consistent exercise in patience as it has been one cliche after the next with really corny lines for everyone. Now it would seem that this is being brought straight into the movie, which could make any time someone talks in it pretty darn cringe worthy.

As it stands, I'm thoroughly unimpressed with what I've seen of the Warcraft movie judging by the trailer. This is supposed to be making a first impression, and right now that impression is to stay far away from this thing. Part of me really does wonder if this will turn into Blizzard's Spirits Within, and expensive, over-hyped disaster.

Adventures in Diablo III's Season 4: A Vast Ocean of Exploding Palms

For the first time, I've actually decided to put some effort into a character in a season of Diablo III. Up to this point, I was content just using my demon hunter from when the game first came out and casually futzing around. For the past few weeks, I'd been getting the itch to return to the game, and with the new season starting up it seemed like as good of a time as any to hop back into it. One class that I'd not really spent much time with was the monk, instead gravitating towards ranged characters like the aforementioned demon hunter and a brief stint with a wizard. So, it felt time to change things up and give the punchy kicky class a fair shake.

It didn't take very long to get to level cap and start the loot farming / paragon grinding process, but then again it's been easy to do that for years in this game. Now, with a monk that is half way to being decked out in best-in-slot items, the class is really starting to appeal to me.

On the whole, monks are shaping up to be exceptionally powerful this season. Their Uliana gear set makes the Exploding Palm ability an absolutely devastating area of effect attack that can chain to kill a huge number of baddies at once. They're also doing a fantastic job as healers in group runs. Take someone who has geared for that role and it'll be very difficult to die under most circumstances unless you're pushing the absolute limits of Greater Rifts. Personally, I prefer to play solo, so have been going with the former.

Not only is it very effective, but it's also a lot of fun. There's something very satisfying about seeing a pack of several dozen monsters all with the palm icon hovering over their head, then doing Seven-Sided Strike and watching a huge explosion of bodies ripple across the screen. It makes the approach to a session one of positioning and hoping for dense packs of enemies, applying Exploding Palms, and then blowing them up.

Right now, I'm hindered by missing pieces of gear, especially ones that can be tossed into the Kanai's Cube to have their legendary ability extracted and equipped. Really, it's pretty fantastic that the cube has been implemented into the game. Back in Diablo II, I loved the Horadoric Cube. It was always fun tossing something in and then seeing what it decided to spit out. What's nice about this cube is that we get a fair bit more control, not total control mind you, but at least more than before. Players can now upgrade rare gear to legendary, extract legendary powers, convert a set piece to something else in the set (great if you're getting doubles of certain pieces), convert gems, and so forth.

Right now, I'm stuck waiting for gear to drop before any further progress can be made. What's needed more than anything else is a specific daibo for its legendary ability, as it will reduce the cooldown on one of my main abilities by 60%, which is huge as the thing is absolutely devastating. In that regard, it does showcase that players now have three more places that they need to worry about best in slot items so to get the most bang for their buck on a character. To that extent it means more farming while being at the mercy of random drops, waiting for just the right items, which has always been a big reason people play these games.

Nonetheless, it's proving to be an entertaining season thus far. While monks, witch doctors, and barbarians seem to be at the top of the heap right now, there's a lot of fun to be had across the board. My personal goal is to get the achievement for beating a level 60+ greater rift solo. The season has just started, so there's still plenty of time, so I'll keep my fingers crossed that I can pull it off.

So, WoW's Next Expansion is Bringing Back the Burning Legion

Looking back, Warlords of Draenor really wasn't a bright spot in the history of World of Warcraft. From the standpoint of subscription numbers alone, the game certainly took a pounding. When it launched, things were looking rosy, but only recently we've learned that those numbers have tanked, and are only a bit over 5 million now. To put that in perspective, WoW hasn't seen its subscriber rate that low since Vanilla. That's eight years ago.

The lore looked alright from my perspective, as I've always been a fan of the Outlands. It was basically an alternate timeline remake of a lot of people's favorite zones from the Burning Crusade. What's not to like about that? Just about every other aspect of the game, it would seem. Lots of dungeons with baddies many didn't seem to care about, the orc leaders didn't impress as much as was hoped, and the whole garrison system did tend to trivialize aspects of the game to the point where people had to ask themselves why they were playing, and it would seem many found the answer to said question given the drop in subs.

Demon Hunter hero class announced

So here we are now with the newest expansion announced, and very quickly at that with Legion. By the looks of things, Blizzard took note of a lot of what they did wrong with WoD and are trying to steer the game away from that. Firstly, they're bringing the biggest of the big bad in the Warcraft universe back with the Burning Legion. I don't think we'll see Sargeras or anything. That would be like fighting the devil, and as strong as characters are made out to be in this game, it's always felt like Blizzard has wanted to keep him just out of reach of players. That doesn't mean we can't smack his armies and lieutenants around, though.

It does open the door for some fun lore with these guys on the scene, and to thicken the plot a bit more we still have Gul'dan running around and we're in a universe where Illidan is still alive, so we'll get to kill him again by the looks of things. So, we'll have some exciting bosses to actually look forward to here. I don't know if Illidan will have a new Black Temple, but it's just nice to see everyone's favorite demon hunter make a return. It does make me wonder if they can find a way to bring back Kael'thas once more just so we can kill him once more for old time's sake. Whatever the case, we're getting a central figure from Warcraft lore once again with Illidan, and even some yet untouched folks like Azshara making an appearance. So, Blizzard seems to be trying to go back to really big name characters that the fanbase cares about.

In terms of gameplay, it looks like the game is trying to make classes feel unique again, at least to some extent. For years, now, there has been a gradual homogenization of the classes in WoW. From giving more and more healers a battle rez, to making tanks feel more and more alike, to giving mages their own Bloodlust there has been a steady shift in classes to make them feel more and more alike. Blizzard's mantra during this time was to, "Bring the player, not the class" which was largely to help prevent certain classes from being sidelined as the meta shifted, but at the same time it also made them feel a lot less special. With the introduction of class halls and artifact weapons, it seems as though they're trying to make classes at least somewhat unique again. I don't know to what extent this will be, and how much players will go along with it (for all we know, everyone may just check online for what the "best" builds are and copy them anyway, eliminating much of the potential uniqueness), but at least it's a step away from the rampant homogeneity that has become prevalent in the game.

Illidan is back!

While we're on the topic of classes, we'll also be seeing the introduction of a new hero class, the demon hunter. So, just as the death knight allowed us to run around and be little Arthuses, now we can run around and be little Illidans. The class will be limited to night and blood elves, so it won't be like so many other classes where just about anyone can do it. There'll also be a number of special aesthetic choices for them like having horns and tattoos, or none if you prefer. It will have two specs to choose from where one is DPS and the other is tank. You'll even be able to double jump with the class, which could be interesting. I'm curious how they can make this meaningful while playing, and not just something for billy goating while exploring areas. In any case, demon hunter actually strikes me as an exciting class to play as.

There's other stuff getting tossed in as well, like a new zone (with Dalaran as a neutral central hub!), increased level cap, and a change to the honor system, but really, the big selling points are the return of the Burning Legion, Illidan, demon hunter class, and the possibility of classes becoming somewhat unique again. Will this be enough to repair any of the losses that WoD suffered? I don't know, but I do think it will certainly get fans to keep an eye on things rather than simply dismiss the expansion out of hand.

News: World of Warcraft Loses 1.3 Million Subscribers

Activision Blizzard recently announced their most recent financials, and one of the more interesting things to stand out in this onslaught of very big numbers was that one of their most important games, World of Warcraft, has shed 1.3 million subscribers. That brings the game's subscription base down to a "paltry" 8.3 million people.

Reasons given for this decline include free to play games starting to become a major competitor, especially in Asia, as well as content not coming out quick enough to satisfy players. These are certainly plausible, but there could be plenty of other reasons as well. People who got the free one year subscription for pre-ordering Diablo 3 are likely seeing their free subscriptions expiring and taking the opportunity to leave the game. Also, the game is just getting old. It wasn't going to be a 10 million+ subscriber juggernaut forever. Frankly, I'm surprised it still has as many subscribers as it does all these years later.

News: More Problems with Diablo III's Auction House

After hammering away on the latest patch for Diablo III, it looks like Blizzard is still having trouble with the game. A bug has made it past testing and into the live game whereby people who make an auction to sell some gold will be refunded double what they were actually trying to sell should they cancel the auction. Oops! Auctions have been shut down until Blizzard is able to sort out the mess, and it sounds like there won't be too many rollbacks to cancel out all of the gold that has been given out because of the bug. The only exception appears to be for people who really tried hard to exploit the bug. Almost a year on, and still the auction house that meant so much to Activision and Blizzard continues having problems.

The Weekly Checkpoint

We've got another news round-up for you all.  Today we talk about the recent security breach at Battle.net, DayZ going standalone, possible problems with Bioshock Infinite, and Steam selling non-gaming software in the future, among other things.

The Weekly Checkpoint 18

It's the end of the week, and with that it's time for another news round-up.  This week we discuss Gabe Newell and Rob Pardo's concerns regarding Windows 8, Yoichi Wada confirming that Final Fantasy XIII Versus is still in production, and Nintendo's latest batch of financials.

The Weekly Checkpoint 17

It's once again time for our weekly gaming news round-up, and this go around we're talking about Borderlands 2 which just got sent for the console approval process, Ubisoft UPlay problems that cropped up this week, Awesomenauts heading to PC, the Vita struggling in Japan, Mike Morhaime speaking up on the state of Diablo III, and Dead Space 3 coop mode, among other things.  Enjoy! ^_^

Raving Rant: The Outsider

It sits there on Metacritic's page like a baleful and accusing eye.  It's the only one of its kind on that page, as of the time of this writing, a red square with a number "45" on it, and the name "Armchair Empire" next to that.  It is the review I submitted for Diablo III.  Right now, it's probably the most viewed page on our site.  I remember the email that Jeff Nash sent me after the review went up while I was at E3.  "Should be interesting to see how people react to the score. I suspect some hilarious comments will be forthcoming."

In this respect, our fearless leader was not wrong.

News: Blizzard Restricts New Diablo III Digital Purchases for 72 Hours

According to the official Diablo III website, as of patch 1.0.3, anybody purchasing the game electronically through the Blizzard Store is now going to be restricted to Starter Editions for the first 72 hours after the purchase.  The details of what this means are below:

News: Activision-Blizzard Going Up for Sale?

So, Bloomberg is reporting that Vivendi will be looking at selling off Activision-Blizzard.  Apparently the reasoning for this has something to do with "unlocking asset value".  I'm not going to pretend to be some big business analyst that knows what he's talking about, so let's speculate away and make baseless accusations in the comments section!  Surely the sale of such a big game publisher means the sky is falling, we're all doomed, or some such. ;)

Review: Diablo III (PC)

After StarCraft II, it's no stretch at all to say that Diablo III has been the most anticipated sequel in Blizzard's long history of game franchises. It is a title whose development has taken several years, with details dribbled out with the precision of the Chinese water torture. It has courted controversy practically from the first announcement of its existence. And now, it has finally come out. Was it worth the wait? Did the naysayers have a point? Was the hype and the controversy overblown and unfounded?

News: Diablo III Sells an Absurd Number of Copies

To be filed under "Super Popular Series' Sequel Sells Super Well".  Blizzard sends word that their latest loot fest has sold a gargantuan 3.5 million copies within the first 24 hours that it was available.  These are actual new sales, and do not take into account all of the people who got a free copy of the game for subscribing to WoW for a year, which account for another 1.2 million owners.  Also, by Blizzard's reckoning, Diablo III has sold about 6.3 million copies in its first week.

News: Diablo III Stricken by Hacking Onslaught

So, it looks like the problems just keep on coming for Blizzard's latest installment in their Clicky Mc Loots-a-lot series, as the company is now acknowledging that Diablo III is getting hit by a number of hacking issues.  Many players have reported gold, items, and even characters disappearing because of this, and only now has Blizz acknowledged that this is an issue.