After a fairly long break, the Warcraft itch returned recently. I haven’t played at all for months, having been dabbling around in Uncharted I (fun, quick, entertaining), play-by-email Civ VI (thanks to the genius behind Play Your Damn Turn), and Overwatch (still, though a lot less).

It become obvious the MMO urge was back when I started patching GW2, SWtoR, and even LotRO recently (without really playing any of them). I eventually admitted to myself that Warcraft was what I was really hankering for. In some ways this seemed kind of regressive, as Jeromai at Why I Game recently pondered - why do we continually return to the comfort of what we know when there is so much new to play out there? But then I think that comfort is part of the point - having invested enough time to really deeply understand a game, especially an MMO, makes playing it that much more satisfying.

The best answer is to balance your ‘main’ game with others, though sometimes an MMO makes that difficult, particularly if you’re raiding. If it was going to be Warcraft, I figured I wanted to start again (yet again). That seems to be a common pattern - come back and level 3 or 4 Tauren through Mulgore. I must have done that zone 100s of times. I love the feeling of openness, the rolling plains, Tallstriders, and wandering Kodo (never to be killed). I also love low level levelling, it’s so satisfying seeing new skills arrive that radically change your play style, as your character takes shape. Bhagpuss wrote it best in a lovely treatise on the joy of low level play:

There really is nothing to match the satisfaction, the involvement, yes, the immersion. Stepping out in rags with a rusty sword or a knobbled stick, making your way in a hard, harsh world, being useful, helpful and always, of course, violent. Learning a craft, finding a path, seeing your rags turn to riches or at least to leathers. Taming pets, earning mounts, flourishing your first cloak. Seeing your reputation rise. Watching the world open up around you. Making space to stash the treasures you find. Paying the rent on your first home and laying down the pelt of that great bear you slew, in front of a roaring fire you made all on your own.

As has been extensively discussed, one problem with low level play is that you quickly outzone the content, especially when decked out in heirloom gear. The ‘vanilla’ discussion is as lively as ever, but still seems unlikely to ever really happen (though the advent of Starcraft Remastered might be a glimmer of hope for the olde skool WoW fans).

So I decided to create my own vanilla, by creating a new account and playing the free level 1-20 Starter Edition. No heirlooms, no money, no bags, no speed running. And it was fun! The level progression is slower, though surprisingly not by much. Blizzard did to a revamp of low level quest pacing back in mid 2016, and it seems to work if you’re not over geared. I was right around the correct level for everything I was doing in Mulgore, even having to go and pick a few random herbs at one point to get high enough level to tame Mazzranache (though gosh the guilt at leaving little Hazzranache, Razzranache, Jazzranache, and Spazzranache orphaned is pretty bad). could not find image

There was still no challenge, everything dropping like flies (albeit with a few more hits than normal), but it was more fun having to watch every copper and celebrate every 6 slot bag drop (tip: kill the rares - except the sacred Kodo Arra’chea of course). Having no resources also made professions more interesting, and starting fishing from scratch was entertaining in a sadistic kind of way.

As usual I got to Thunder Bluff, and promptly found the idea of going any further kind of overwhelming. It’s a long path ahead, and some of the levelling zones have worn out their welcome. At this point I usually abandon my best intentions of zone and quest levelling and just dive into dungeons as a Tank, getting to Outland in no time by chain dungeoning. But this time that seemed wrong, these toons are not speed levellers[^1], they should stay the course, or just make a home in the Tauren capital and go no further.

So I’ve settled my well rounded level 15s in Thunder Bluff, and stopped again. The next decision is whether to resubscribe and get some toons to level 110 - mainly my Hunter and Rogue (the Rogue being my very first WoW character, still going). I’m sorely tempted, but then The Secret World Legends is intriguing, Dishonored 2 sits in the queue, and finishing Geralt’s journey in Witcher 3 is also a possibility. But I think getting at least someone at 110 is a good plan, and after all, more than one game at a time should be possible - or twelve, if you’re Syp!

[^1] Plus I’d have to make a financial commitment to get these characters past 20.

Thanks to a handy infographic published by Blizzard, we know that the two week PvE Uprising brawl in Overwatch racked up 145 million games during its stay. That’s a big number. Let’s break down the numbers.

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First of all we learn that the bad guys won more often than the goodies. That came as a surprise I think, but the reason is revealed a bit further down. Meanwhile:

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That’s an even bigger number. I almost feel sorry for the robots. But not for the confounded Bastion tanks in the last room - reason one for the Omnic’s racking up 11 million more victories. Next:

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And there’s reason two. Legendary mode had a staggeringly low win-rate of 0.6%. This is the most interesting graphic of the whole thing, revealing that Blizzard aren’t afraid to completely stomp even their best players. The 50% drop off from Normal to Hard is also worth noting - it was a much more difficult ramp up than say the Normal/Heroic switch in Warcraft. After one success in Hard mode my random group of strangers stuck together to try Expert and we were completely annihilated, so I now understand why players screamed with triumph when they beat Legendary. Like winning ye olde Stranglethorn Fishing comp, but harder.

And finally:

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If my shaky maths is right, that’s over two billion minutes played. 2,415,405,127 to be precise¹. 40 million hours. 1.5 million days. My brain is hurting. Fair to say Uprising was a success then. Time to go look at some nature. After just one more game.

The new MMO hotness - at least until the next Kickstarter - is Ashes of Creation, which has surpassed $1.5m in funding from hungry fans. That’s a lot of faith in an unseen digital product, especially when compared to something like the Weta Workshop Heavy Hitters Kickstarter which raised $935k for a very impressive looking boardgame.

The Kickstarter is pretty standard, offering beta access and various levels of shiny limited pixels for getting on board. Nothing terribly compelling, though two people have taken up the $10k ‘Avatar of the Phoenix’ pledge, so I guess a launch party in Vegas works for them. I’m not that interested in beta play, something I discovered once receiving the Crowfall beta invite. I dutifully installed, logged on, made a mighty minotaur, found an entirely empty world, and logged out again. Haven’t been back, but I like the idea being able to once things get a bit more interesting.

Having become intrigued by AoC based on their node hype videos, it was surprising to find that the Kickstarter actually made me less inclined to support the game. Which I’m sure wasn’t the intended effect. The main problem is the incredibly boring race options. Bhagpuss sums it up perfectly:

There’s quite a lot of new information (or at least new to me) on the game itself. It details the eight races and the eight class archetypes for a start. Boy, do they look bland. When I heard they were starting with eight races I was hoping for the chance to play something other than the usual: human, human with pointy ears, ugly human or short human. Ashes of Creation gives you Human, Elf, Orc and Dwarf. So much for that, then. Also, splitting your four races in two does not give you eight races. Just sayin'.

Precisely. Like SWtoR before it, AoC has taken a fantasy world that could be populated with literally any kind of creature, and given us a choice of four humans. So dull! Our only hope for something different comes from the just revealed $2.5m stretch goal, which teases of a mysterious ‘beast like’ Underrealm race.

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Less worrying, but still kind of blah, are the character classes, which fit every archetype like a glove, with little imagination. They even go so far as to name the tank class a…‘Tank’. I only wish they had gone the whole hog and called the healer ‘Heals’. I’m kind of hoping they are reverting to some kind of vanilla MMO basics in order to reinvent the whole paradigm. The pedigree of the team would support that admittedly hopeful hypothesis.

Speaking of the team, it’s a little concerning to see the 13 person team includes all of one woman, and she is (of course) the Community Manager. Which is a vitally important role, but it reeks of the (still sadly true) corporate cliche of the only woman on the management team being from HR.

Despite all that, I happily jumped on board at the second lowest tier. Friends asked what was the point of Kickstarting (and Syp asked himself the same question, and that’s a valid question given the sub model. For me it’s worth backing these things just for the gentle entertainment of seeing progress and updates and vaguely participating in the entire process of making a game. Once the inevitable mid-development malaise sets in, I’ll just be skimming - or more like ignoring (hi, Crowfall) - the email spam.

But then will come that magical day when we can logon to a brand new world and see what wonders and mysteries it reveals. Worth $40, easy.

In a not-quite-surprising but also quite-suprising move, the Overwatch team has introduced a PVE mode called ‘Uprising’ for the latest limited time patch. It’s not-surprising because they’ve done it before (with ‘Junkenstein’s Revenge’), but what is surprising is how they’ve suddenly made an Overwatch PVE game - dare we say an Overwatch MMO¹ - seem possible.

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Uprising is basically an MMO dungeon, rendered in the high-pace high-colour Overwatch universe. If you’ve ever played an MMO you’ll instantly be at home: there’s mini-bosses, routes, timers, tactics, and hard-modes. It even introduces and demands the (accursed?) trinity - tank/healer/DPS - to the game. It’s a nice change of pace to the more chaotic PVP play and has been extremely well received.

Funnily enough it also introduces some of the same problems MMO dungeons have. The first time I played it was several days after launch, and by then it seemed like most players already knew exactly what routes to take, what shortcuts, where the trash would spawn, and when to burn cooldowns. So coming in cold was instantly difficult as the expectation was go-go-go, the bane of MMO dungeon running if you prefer a more measured approach. Being Blizzard they were obviously expecting this, and have countered it a little by making four difficulty modes similar to the Normal/Heroic/Mythic steps in Warcraft et al, including a final ‘Legendary’ mode that has even hardcore players struggling.

Even the first step up from Easy to Hard mode makes it clear that the go-go-go approach won’t work for long, and that a little caution and communication is required.

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Which is all very smart stuff if you’re preparing/training/testing your player base to see how a PVE game might work. Jeff Kaplan has hinted at more games in recent interviews, including this quote buried in an article about Overwatch character diversity on Polygon:

We think of Overwatch as being beyond the 6v6 shooter. We think of it as a universe we hope to build many games in some day.

Of course he would say that, and it’s also fairly flimsy ‘evidence’², but there is obviously the possibility that Titan will raise phoenix-like from the incredible success of Overwatch. Which would make for an amazing story in itself given that title’s fraught history.

In Reinhardt’s words, bring it on.

In between tackling bigger games I’m still dabbling in Overwatch, and have recently stumbled upon some good resources for learning more about playing better.

First, and maybe surprisingly given it’s rep, there’s a pretty good Reddit group called Overwatch University. The name says it all, but one of the nice things seems to be the encouragement of positive feedback to even simple questions.

The second, and best, is a YouTube channel run by Skyline. This is a great resource full of educational stuff about heroes, maps, strategies, etc. Skyline is an extremely good communicator and teacher, but most of all he’s also pushing the positivity barrow. When he’s analysing VODs submitted by players, he takes a good humoured and encouraging line on everything he talks about, no matter how un-optimal some of the submissions are. It’s super refreshing - his ‘highlighted’ video is basically a recommendation that ‘having fun’ is the best way to get better. Wise words for any game.

Finally there was a good spontaneous Reddit AMA from Overwatch boss Jeff Kaplan, who has emerged as the Ghostcrawler of the OW team. He’s very open, communicates often, and the AMA is a good example of why the game maintains popularity despite nerfs, buffs, and loot box controversy. Plus, you learn excellent facts like:

The first hero we implemented was Tracer. We did not have any animations or gun models. So she shot laser beams from her eyes.

LASER BEAM EYE TRACER. YES!