For The Emperor!!!

I am a big fan of Warhammer 40k. For some reason certain people find that unusual. I am not sure why. The 40k Universe is, in my opinion, the best science fiction universe currently established, and far, far superior to any other mainstream sci-fi verse. So of course I am a fan ... what other universe has 8 foot fungi fighting space nuns?

I should clarify that I am more a fan of the books and lore than the tabletop RPG, which is possibly where people get confused. I have over 30 books so far, most involving the Horus Heresy, but some focused on the 40k era proper. Many folks only really consider the tabletop realm when describing 40k to them. This is a shame and something that also confuses me as 40k is so much more than plastic figures and dice rolls on a table. The video games, for example, are a great way to explore both the lore of the game and the glorious and horrifying universe that is 40k.

One such game is Inquisitor Martyr, a B-tier ARPG by a small indie company that I have been playing recently. For what it's worth, its not a bad game, but not quite on par with the likes of Diablo 3 and Path of Exile. It is perhaps more comparable to Wolcen in terms of production value as far as ARPGs are concerned. Nevertheless, Martyr has allowed me to cleanse a pocket of the galaxy of xenos and heretic filth in 40k style, which is more than I can ask for in the current drought of good 40k games. Hopefully Darktide further cures that itch in the near future.

I have been playing as a Crusader, one of 4 types of 'Inquisitors', a word used very lightly in said game. I burn things with a Heavy Flamer, the most zealous and righteous tool for correcting the errors of heretics, mutants and the unclean. The build focuses on crit, vulnerability and area of effect damage. It's all very straightforward work. However, the build I am running is quite unique as I seem to be doing something that no-one else is. I usually build incredibly tanky with good sustain in almost all ARPGs I play, and although that is technically no different in Martyr, I am approaching it from a very different angle.

In Martyr, there are up to 3 health pools you should maintain in order to stay alive. The first two exist by default, Health and Suppression. Health is obvious: if you hit 0 you die. Suppression is not as obvious, as you can technically be completely suppressed (i.e. 0 suppresion) and still stay alive. Suppression acts as a pseudo crowd-control and status effect resistance meter, with multiple game mechanics tied to various stages of it. Keeping it as high as possible in the green or "Protected" state is usually the best strategy. Both health and suppression regenerate out of combat, however you will definetly need to build for both if you want to stay alive IN combat (i.e. sustain).

Energy shield is the third form of "health" pool that you can explore, sitting over/before your health pool and tangential with suppression. It is optional as you can choose to use gear which gives you energy shield on activation, or have (very) small amounts of it accumulate on hit or kill. You can accumulate up to 2x your health pool in energy shield. However, it is generally accepted within the community that energy shield is ... really bad. This is mostly because it does not scale with your defenses at all (i.e. it takes raw damage) and therefore does not last for any reasonable or worthy amount of time. However, it is the backbone of my build's defenses and sustain.

To explain, I will introduce you to one of the many Psalm Doctrines (i.e. think D2 Runewords) currently in the game:

As you can see it gives you health and energy shield based off a portion of the damage you deal. Not too bad, but it absolutely pales in comparison to some of the more powerful damage focused Psalm Doctrines, for example:

Sooo ... no one uses it. This is a grevious mistake, one that I personally cannot blame people for. Prior to using Psalm Doctrines, you are taught that energy shield sucks and you shouldn't pay it any attention, which is mostly true. However, 12% of your damage done going into energy shields is quite considerable ... assuming you are dealing truckloads of damage and SIGNIFICANTLY more than anything else in the game. So, the more damage you do, the tankier you become. However, you can still get suppressed while shielded and occasionally even lose health. You don't always have the potential to maintain 100% energy shield uptime, especially when things get hairy. To counteract this, I will introduce you to two very special relic gear enchants, which again no-one seems to be using:

Yes, that's right. Taking damage to energy shield can completely restore your health AND suppression, and taking higher amounts of energy shield damage (i.e. raw damage) means you only do this faster and more efficiently! That is ridiculous, and results in a build philosophy very much in the vein of "a good defense is a good offense". Essentially, damage=tankiness=sustain. Combined with a reckless playstyle, the build becomes incredibly fun to play with a solid risk vs reward paradigm, dealing and wading into damage as a means of staying alive. Observe...

Inquisitor Martyr has been a good bit of fun during a general drought of interesting games. I will likely be done with it soon, but I can safely say I did enjoy it and definitely got my money's worth (over 110 hours presently). It has also taught me a few things about game design that I was not expecting.

Recklessness!

Somewhat recently, I had a laugh and an enjoyable conversation with some old school friends regarding one's sense of humour, inspired mostly by me randomly linking them my first Youtube video ever. This video title 'Warrior and Rogue Live Action PvP' was a video published in 2008, but was actually created the year before I even made a Youtube account. This video is incredibly violent and stupid. It uses footage from Braveheart, audio from Unreal Tournament (though people still think it is from DoTA!) and text from World of Warcraft, composed to be what the title suggests, a live action player versus player video. It was created for the purposes of comedy and I remember having a jolly time editing and releasing it back in the day.

Strangely enough, watching it again 12 years later, it had not lost its charm. It was still as ridiculous and horrible as it was when I was a younger man. The only difference is that I am somewhat embarrassed about it nowadays. The content is something I would never show someone off the cuff as I think it points directly at my still incredibly dark sense of humour, inspired by Ren and Stimpy, Monty Python and other politically incorrect media of the 80s and 90s. My sense of humour is about the last thing that I ever actually reveal to people and this video was much too forward for modern day discourse.

I was also embarrassed because the quality of the video is absolutely rubbish! I am sure at the time both myself and the Youtube Gods thought it was state of the art, but at just 480p and 25fps, I knew this treasure would not age well. So, I had the grand idea of completely recreating it from scratch, being my first ever 'remaster' of an old video. During this process I rediscovered just how much effort went into even this first publication, as it took almost an entire day of straight editing to get it basically 99.9% the same as the original, but this time in glorious 4K (2160p) at 60fps. Behold!!

Something I realised while re-editing this is that the original footage I was using was not at 25fps, meaning I must have forced this during my 2007/8 rendition. This caused a variety of syncing issues that needed immaculate attention lest footage went out of sync with the original (but also remastered) audio sequence. Every 5 seconds I needed to cut frames, increase or decrease playback speed and resync in order to get the new and old footage to roughly line up. This took a long, long time. In addition to this, I decided to render the whole new composition at 60fps using a frame blending technique called Optical Flow. This has a tendency to create artifacts, particularly early on in the video, when the sampling has not had many frames to work with. You can definetly notice this in the opening sequence, but it quickly dissipates. I guess every video will have its quirks, and this is one of them.

Anyways, part of the reason I did this was because the conversation I had with friends was around the idea of whether or not I would ever make something like this video again. The truth was that I actually would, and to prove my point ... I simply remade it again. That probably seems like a waste of time, but for me it immortalizes something about the era I grew up in, what I found funny and honestly still find comical today. In a time where I find myself laughing less and less often (for various reasons), having something like this in my skeleton closet is reassuring. Even if it is quite embarrassing.

The Destroyer of Worlds

I should probably make a blog post about this. Mostly because it is actually quite a significant achievement for me across multiple vectors. Also because I have severely neglected this 'blog' in recent years, so giving it some attention is a nice way to kill time.

I started playing Classic WoW last year like a lot of people, riding the nostalgia train and experiencing the best version of Blizzard's Azeroth once more. Of course I played a warrior, and of course I played Horde ... how could I not? What was different this time though is that instead of my goto Undead choice, I chose Orc, which had its ups and downs. Not having Cannibalize while leveling was significantly limiting. I probably regret this choice overall.

I leveled with a small group of friends and had a grand time on the journey to max level. We mostly ran a 'melee cleave' team through dungeons, though to be honest most of the cleaving was probably done by me. This was significant because I have NEVER had the opportunity to play WoW, in any of its expansions, with a group of people I know. It was a jolly time and fun was had by all, for the most part.

 

Eventually a few patches later, Blizzard historically released the Honor and Battleground system. I was excited for this because I was interested in doing the honor grind again in some manner. Unfortunately, queues for Horde were in excess of 30 mins, which not only killed that idea, but my interest in playing the game further. My group stopped playing it too.

I took a break from it for over 10 months, randomly coming back a couple of months ago. My objective this time was specifically two things:

• Achieve Rank 10, despite BG queue times
• Acquire [Zin'rokh, Destroyer of Worlds] (my favourite weapon)
  

I achieved both of these in due time, but it was one hell of a time and energy commitment. Firstly I needed to not just raid, but I often needed to tank. Being a tank in WoW comes with the most responsibility and pressure of any role, and requires you to have ideal gear and knowledge for the job, lest you die and wipe the raid. Spamming Zulgurub, Molten Core and AQ20 runs for a month straight eventually led to Zin'rokh finally dropping. I was incredibly fortunate enough to win the roll against 2 other warriors and 2 hunters (wtf??). It was probably the most ecstatic I have been playing WoW, ever, and will probably be my most memorable moment playing the game, even after 15 years.

 Armed with the Destroyer of Worlds, I decided that now was the best time to push towards Rank 10 in PvP. Back in the day I achieved Rank 11, Lieutenant General, on my Undead Warlock, probably my most memorable achievement in the game. I knew it was going to be an enormous grind, but that it would also be a fantastic opportunity to but Zin'rokh to great use and collect some ridiculous footage. I ran solo, lone-wolf, without a team, healer or any support, which I cannot recommend as a warrior.

After a solid month of PvP I hit Rank 10, being at a consistent ~50-100th standing on my server every week, while still doing full-time work. This is actually quite surprising, considering I did not have a premade team to PUG stomp with and was in competition against the horde premades for honor on my server. The old vanilla ranking system was more about competing against your own faction than the enemy.

The footage I collected was absolutely absurd. Even in my ok-ish blues and epics I would frequently 3 shot or even 2 shot opponents. I made a video and it has many of these moments in relatively quick succession. A month of recording results in a LOT of footage, after all.

The video also contains a couple of sections where I square off against other Warriors in much better gear than I using either [Dark Edge of Insanity] or [Ashkandi, Greatsword of the Brotherhood], two of the best weapons in the game (at this time). These were special moments as even though Zin'rokh and my gear do not compare to these powerhouses, you can still take opponents down with enough skill and luck. It's times like these where vanilla WoW's PvP mechanics shine through, something modern day WoW severely lacks with its constant normalization.

The last 2 months have been probably some of the most fun and rewarding WoW experiences I have had. It's strange that I have basically done it solo, once again, like I have always done. Perhaps that says something about my character more than anything. I will finish this post by leaving my equipped gear listed. It's by far not in any way the best in the game, but for me it has definitely been the most memorable.

First Final Fantasy

Final Fantasy VII Remake is the first Final Fantasy game I have really sat down and played. Sure, I have dabbled with the demos and small segments of the older VI, VII, VIII and IX before, but only to become familiar with the tried and true Active Time Battle (ATB) combat system. I never played them for the story, nor did I care much for the lore or background of these games, despite their cultural significance. I guess I always thought the FF games were not dark and gritty enough for my liking.

I'm not sure what got me interested in the remake of VII, but I downloaded the demo and quite enjoyed the combat system. However, what struck me was the amount of effort the creators have gone into crafting an actually decent narrative, something I am generally quite critical of in games. Story has never been something I found overly compelling in the games I play, preferring to watch movies or read a good book for my fix of that. However, even in the demo you could tell the creators both love and respect this game quite dearly and have gone to great lengths to make in a legitimate expositional experience.

Finishing the game left me in an awkward, alien state - I've never been depressed about completing a game before. The desire to continue the journey (even though I know vaguely what happens) was strong with this game and having to put it down from a narrative standpoint was sad and disheartening. If this is what FF fans or story game players feel and look for in games then I can safely say that I get it now. I wouldn't say its the healthiest state to be in constantly, but the fact that a video game has the capacity to do that is remarkable to me. It truly is the best entertainment medium.

Visually the game is impressive too, pushing PS4 technology to the limits with the latest Unreal Engine tech. Although its capped at 30fps on the console (hopefully this improves) the level of detail in the environments in certain places is beyond ridiculous. I would say the term 'overkill' is both appropriate and accurate to describe the detail the creators have put into sections of this game, particularly from a visual standpoint. My PS4 is audibly struggling (i.e. fans cooling) to the point where I have put my old laptop cooler underneath it to not stress it too much. On PC this game is going to look gorgeous, and play even better!

Gameplay wise it is also a blast and would have had to be for me to stick around playing it at all. It is a good mix of real-time and ATB modes that requires you to employ both to have any degree of success. You can control any member of your party, but while doing so, other party members wont do much more than attack (occasionally) and guard (thankfully). Sometimes the AI here is a little frustrating, having characters run off and even face the wrong way at times. Tifa I found was especially bad at this for some reason. I would have personally tweaked this to not have to babysit non-active members so much - doing nothing is fine, but doing less than nothing is cancer. However, when things work, the combat is chunky and visually impressive with the damage numbers during staggers (enemy incapacitation) feeling rewarding almost every time.

After completing the campaign, playing the game in Hard mode and attempting the endgame VR Arenas has been a solid challenge. Some of the VR battles contain monsters that are not seen anywhere else in the campaign, and the rewards for defeating them are basically best in slot. Not being able to use items means you need to consider how much Mana Points (MP) you are using as you can't just spam spells and brute force your way through. Even simple monsters hit like a truck, so making a build with some solid defences and sustain efficiency is also critical. You don't do any damage when you are dead, as they say.





I do hope they continue releasing content for remake and not just work solely on the second chapter. A few more difficult arenas to conquer would cater towards crazies like myself for awhile yet, and be minimal work at best. Here's hoping Square Enix realises this and finds the time. Otherwise, solid game, easy recommendation, 10/10.

Rip and Tear

I should probably make this post, mostly so I have a reference for it later when I upgrade my PC again 8 years from now.

Conveniently before the Caronavirus nuked the PC component economy (not to mention the rest of the economy), I decided to buy a new PC. This is different from the minor upgrades and part replacements over the last 9 years (i.e. the last time I did this), as this is, of course, a completely new build in a completely new case. I still have my old computer which actually works fine for the most part.

So why did I upgrade? Well, there is a host of reasons, one of them being I liked the old model of having a back-up PC and a reliable machine for folks to use at LANs. But more realistically, it was honestly just time to. There were parts in my old PC that were going on 9 years old (e.g. the power supply) that could give out at any moment. Plus, PC performance was becoming a slight issue.

So, the new PC. It's not bad, probably the most powerful machine I have constructed to date, even using the price:performance ratio I opt for (i.e. slightly above medium range). Coming in at just under $2000, I have built a machine that runs everything I currently play at ultra high settings - not a statement I have been able to say for awhile now. The build consists of the following parts (again, more for my own reference/keepsake):

GPU - Asus Geforce RTX 2060 6GB
Case - Cooler Master MasterBox MB520
PSU - Cooler Master MWE Gold 550w PSU
CPU - Intel Core i7 9700KF 3.6Ghz
CPU Cooler - Cooler Master Hyper 212 LED Turbo CPU Cooler
Thermal Grease - Artic Silver 5
Memory - G.Skill 32GB 2666Mhz RAM
Mobo - Asus ROG Strix B365-G LGA1151 ATX Motherboard
Storage - Western Digital Black 500GB m.2 NVMe SSD
OS - Windows 10 Professional OEM

Somewhat satisfyingly, the build was an incredibly smooth construction process, with no mistakes and everything working without unnecessary configuration. I did do extensive research in advance, so I was expecting this, however. I am quite happy with the build and case, being an anti-dust setup with lots of space and cable management, for once. The 'new' component, that being the use of an m.2 SSD was also a joy to figure out, and the speed of booting the system is definitely noticeable. I am very happy with the results.

Performance in Monster Hunter World: Iceborne is phenomenal, running at 120+ frames the majority of the time with maxed settings. I feel like I am playing a completely different game when I do. More importantly, Doom Eternal has been a visual treat and definitely a good stress test for the build overall. No complaints, basically.

Speaking of Doom Eternal - great game. While initially I was not sold on the adjusted game play mechanics (a departure from Doom 2016), requiring you to play a very specific way, you eventually get used to it and the flow of the experience comes to the fore. Having mastered the play style to some extent, playing on Ultra-Violence or Nightmare difficulty is really the only time the game can be challenging for me now, which is good. One addition to the standard campaign of particular mention is the introduction of Slayer Gates, which are considered some of the hardest content in the game presently. I will let you decide how difficult they are...



Overall though, its nice knowing that even this old, bitter man can still find some joy in upgrading his PC and playing the latest games at high performance settings, just like I did in the past. While I will say the excitement is certainly diminished, overall it is pleasantly nostalgic to feel like I am in my early 20s again. Something to look forward to, once in a blue moon.

Speaking of once in a blue moon, this dropped in Diablo III:

I can probably stop playing the game now, I think.

Weebmaster 9000

I haven't posted in a long, long time. Strangely I have been playing and making games, just haven't felt the need to discuss it. I feel I am becoming more humble and stoic with age, and happy to keep to myself. Times continue to change.

I guess something I could add is the fact that I have (had?) been playing the new Iceborne expansion for Monster Hunter World on PC. For the duration of the campaign and for some of endgame I took up the Longsword, a surprisingly difficult weapon to master that requires extreme precision and timing in order for it to be most effective. It also makes you feel like some kind of samurai, drawing and sheathing your sword over and over during combat, which is novel and fun.

The Longsword has 4 unique moves that offer the player a short window of invincibility frames, allowing someone with foresight to punch through dangerous monster abilities with confidence. However, these moves are all very different, and are used at varying times during combat. Learning to most effectively employ them against various monster moves has been both a frustrating but educational journey, teaching me to be patient but also supremely aware of what is occurring. You can't just roll your face and expect to win.



I would post information regarding my build but it's not really important for progression in the game. The way MHW works is that you can basically make anything work if you try hard enough, and the endgame doesn't lock you into farming specific things forever. It's nice to play a game that is more about execution and awareness than it is about balancing a spreadsheet (e.g. Diablo III). Although, to be fair, I enjoy doing that too 😏

Anyways, I look forward to both Doom Eternal and a much needed full PC upgrade on the horizon. I guess I can post something about that too. Soon(tm). Maybe.

No mercy for the wicked...

More Diablo. Yep. Sif not.

So I randomly decided to play Season 17 of Diablo III for a few weeks. Gives me something to do while I watch podcasts and random Youtube nonsense. The culture war in America is amusing to witness in a horrific, can’t-look-away while it collapses kind of way. It is also interesting transitioning back to a ranged character after so many years focusing on melee. Not bad, just different. I actually died several times while leveling. That’s certainly different!

Anyways, the first thing I have noticed about playing a Demon Hunter in season is that their set multipliers are just better. Shadow Impale is an absolute monster and insanely strong for killing Rift Guardians. So high is their single target damage that you actually need to think about killing trash more effectively, which is just unnatural for me. After a bit of survival horror (i.e. lack of specific gear), I managed to find a level of tankiness and sustain that I am comfortable with. Currently I am as resilient as I ever was playing a Barb or Crusader, so performing optimally as Shadow Impale is quite easy. Translation: stand inside the monster’s asshole at point blank melee and let your numbers do the work. I was already good at that.

Secondly, the Demon Hunter community is surprisingly competitive. While the Barb and Crusader communities are certainly better at theory-crafting, more demon hunters push harder and faster on the leaderboards. I think the class attracts a slightly more bloodthirsty demographic, lone-wolves who really enjoy the hunt/push, but don’t have much to say. Their top 100 leaderboard competitors are all geared to the teeth with smart rolls and optimized builds. They seem like a veteran crew and I appreciated the challenge, especially when this thing dropped:

perfection...

Speaking of which, I still managed to push into their top 25 with my inexperienced Demon Hunter. I really shouldn’t say this as I have played Diablo for a long time now and understand the ins and outs of the game, even on a different class. There is an optimal way to play and an even more optimal way to build which seemingly translates to multiple classes in subtle ways.



A few things I did work out as Shadow Impale is that you really have to maximise your positioning, even more so than say HoTA. Impaling trash is useless if you cannot get to the elites behind, and needing to vault too much causes your Travellers Pledge damage buff to become useless. You also need to rotate between using Vault and Shadow Power, not just to stand your ground as often as possible, but to allow diminishing returns on knockback (for Strongarms) to wear off. It’s a bit more to keep track of and creates an interesting branch of options every few seconds for optimal play.

I probably won’t push any further than this as I have new and more interesting games on the horizon. 2019 is shaping up to be a fun year for casual gaming. Doom Eternal inbound….

Too easy!

I have not made a blog post in quite a while. Again, a combination of playing fewer games lately or playing games that do not really necessitate any kind of discussion. Additionally I find myself doing other things in my spare time, including a general desire to stay in better shape. Doing weights will do wonders for your mental and physical well-being. Highly recommended.

So, Diablo, again. After the incredibly disappointing announcement of Diablo Immortal at 2018’s Blizzcon, I must admit that my skepticism for Blizzard’s handling of the franchise has peaked. I certainly feel for the many Diablo fans who attended last year’s event, hyped up for the “major Diablo news” only to be hung drawn and quartered by the announcement of a mobile game. Why they did not have even a small amount of content for Diablo III, even a new patch announcement, is completely beyond me. It is sad to see a developer so out of touch with their own community.
Anyways, Season 16 of Diablo III has rolled around. Nothing really new, just buffed sets and native Ring of Royal Grandeur (translation: ~20% more damage). Having accrued a library of podcasts and material that can be listen-watched, I decided it was a good time to jump in and remind myself of how things are. I initially started as a Crusader, but another Clan member also had the same idea, including running Roland’s Sweep, so I jumped ship to a Barbarian as soon as it was sensible. Most folk who were non-committal had stopped at this point too.

Interestingly, for the first time in the longest time, I actually experienced playing Diablo with another individual who has a very similar build and play-style focus as me. As a HOTA Barb, grouping with a Sweep Crusader is just magic. Without the need to communicate, it is very obvious where we should go, where we should stand and when we should move on during difficult rifts. Indeed, pushing above GR100 has been a pleasant and smooth experience, with two builds that are functionally similar and derived from near identical play-style philosophies. It’s intense, but the casualties are incredibly low and group pushing is a joy. Additionally, the group buffs (Warcry & Laws of Valor) and clustering mechanics (Bloodshed, Provoke/Condemn & Sweep Dot) are absolutely game changing. If we somehow had a monk, any monk, I think the team would be completely devastating. Dream Team right there.

Additionally I undertook further investigation and experimentation regarding sustain. Life on Hit no longer uses proc coefficients, and as long as you hit something per ability, you will get the full life return back. This scales with attack speed, but not the number of targets hit. This ... is surprisingly good. Not great, but definitely worth considering, as the amount you can roll on Ancients is huge, and the attack speed you can obtain is utterly ridiculous! For the longest time I was undecided whether to go with Life on Hit this time, or run with the tried and true Life on Resource spent. Eventually I came to the following conclusion…

The results are absurd. Even in my non-optimized gear, I can restore around 200k HP per second. That is 25% of my health, on average. At over a billion toughness when rolling, that is a LOT of EHP. I won’t beat this dead horse any more than I have in the past, but if you are still building without any consideration for sustain in Diablo III as melee, you are doing it wrong, plain and simple. I will rarely dip below half health, and even if I did, I would become near invincible with Esoteric Alteration. There is a reason I completely ignore most damage in the game: math.

Anyways, I did not push as hard as I usually would this season, mostly because the Immortal King set was not buffed as much as others and it is unlikely I will get much higher. The build still works for what it is and its nice being the 2nd highest HOTA Barbarian on US seasonal servers. Observe:

Battle for Azeroth, apparently

I was pretty excited for the new World of Warcraft expansion, Battle for Azeroth. Excited so much that I started playing a month in advance during the last month of Legion. I put my three mains at 110, farmed gold and generally just waited for its release. Hopefully the new content would bring back some of the spark of not just the PvP content in WoW, but from the Warcraft RTS series as well.

My review of the new expansion can be best summed up as the following: Where?

Where is this alleged battle for Azeroth? It does not exist, from what I can tell. Besides a couple of PvE quests in the vein of fighting the opposing faction, and the somewhat poorly implemented Warfronts (i.e. a PvE raid) there is nothing in the game suggesting a battle for the future of the world.

Additionally, what a horrifically missed chance and exploitative bait and switch by Blizzard. If the intro CG trailer and follow up gameplay videos were anything to go by, you would have mistaken the expansion for being focused on the concept of War, for once. Because ... you know ... it is Warcraft, after all, right? They have to actually bring back Warcraft at some point, surely?

More dungeons, more raids (released at a drip pace), more zones to level. That's basically it. Admittedly the new zones are really quite nice, a huge improvement over the abomination that was the stupid island horror in Legion. Warfronts are sort of fun for rather stupid/broken reasons, and island expeditions can be amusing at times. Otherwise, same old formula for a game that has really not followed up on its heritage. At least in my opinion.

Having said that though, I did manage to do what I always do. Do some PvP, record it, make an interesting video. I actually really enjoyed editing this one, with a lot of thought and deliberation into an editing style, with a track I have had on the back of my mind for a couple of years now. It has come together quite well, so there is that at least.



Not gonna lie, sometimes the things I edit worry me slightly. I might just be a bit darker and malevolent that I like to believe. I am surprisingly ok with this...

Anyways, I have been really disappointed with Blizzard games lately. Overwatch seems ok (despite being a bit too childish for me lately) but a severely neglected Diablo franchise and a very unconvincing WoW universe is ... really disappointing. What frustrates me, is that for folks like myself (and I a certainly not alone in this), addressing the war/battle/pvp element of WoW's universe would be so easy. The game already has a host of interesting battlegrounds, arenas and events. You could modify them ever so slightly (Warsong Gulch CTF with teams of 15, 10v10 arena, AV with no tower caps etc.), make them worth double honour/conquest, and make all BGs contribute to warfront and raid access. Done.

There's your Battle for Azeroth, and you didn't even need to add a thing.