It's been a while since I've felt like hating something enough to post about it, and you can see my last post here was back on Halloween 2014, but now even though I'm encroaching the final week of a deadline, I find myself in the need to talk shit.
Thanks to Nazmi295 on Twitter for the inspiration. <3
Right so, I haven't played Heroes of the Storm, so my opinion will be very surface level, that said I've been keeping up with it on MMO-champion, and from what I've seen it's babbies first Moba, like LoL or Dota2 except without any mechanical depth. A lot of this can be forgiven since it's still a blooming beta child and has room to grow. However anyone who defends it at its current state may as well be defending a product named after liquid waste extraction.
For me the honest fear is the games longstanding effects if it stay in this state, firstly if it appeals to the DotA / LoL communities you've only furthered your mission to acquire the most toxic unflinchingly repuslvie userbase that exists, so GG Blizzard you monster. If it doesn't appeal to them then it's going to rope in casuals who can't compete in competitive moba's, which isn't particularly a bad thing, not for me anyway, the MoBA scene is one I intentionally avoid so for me it's of little personal concern, the only worry is the feed off from WoW and back, Warlords of Draenor has been a thoroughly amazing expansion, definitely one of the best along with Wrath and BC, I'd almost say it's the best. But anyway, my point is that Heroes of the Storm is basically a moneygrab, it's bltatnly a MoBA for people who may want to get into them but don't have the backbone to wager through the effort required to git gud. Now there's nothing wrong with that, in fact I may play it myself since i don't have the time to devote to WoW anymore let alone a MoBA, I just don't like it because I'm virtually certain Bobby Kotick is behind it. Dark lord of the Sith of the video games industry, virtually the most detestably money-minded games manager I've ever had the displeasure of reading articles from.
Now, of things to hate on, there is so much, especially recently, but you know what, now that's out of my system I want to praise something, I confess, despite it being a TF2 clone, I'm looking forward to see where Overwatch goes, unlike Brink which was a game I cared little about before it released and cared even less about after that point, Overwatch seems to recognize the silhouette factor that Brink failed to, every character so far has a very unique silhouette, and the art direction is very similar to the ratchet and clank games, and that alone is a huge leap in it's favor for me. The weapons and character classes all look very promising, too. It's the first new IP Blizzard have made since Starcraft and I'm looking genuinely forward to it, the undeniably awesome presence of a simian may have had something to do with it but dear god, I hope this game ends up being good. It shows promise, the same kind of promise Warlords of Draenor did (and followed through on), I'm looking forward to trying out the frankly absurd amount of character classes. I'm hoping they'll keep microtransactions to cosmetic items, and reward gear upgrades and what have you with playing good, this is Blizzard, they know how to pilot the carrot on a stick. They recognize that if you make a game pay to win it'll lose all interest very fast, and WoW to this day is a game where you must play and play good to progress, so I'm hoping Overwatch will do the same.
I'd be hopeful they don't have cosmetic items at all since the characters are already stunning in their design, but hey they gotta make money somewhere and it just means I personally won't have to spend much.
Oh god, if weapons level up as you use them like in Ratchet and Clank?? PLEASE YES!
So cheers Blizzard, I hope it goes well.
