Board 8 > Anagram Ranks Anything Blizzard Entertainment-related

(+) Yeah! (+)

Diablo (game)

Also I've never actually played any Blizzard game.

Tychus Findlay

Isquen posted...

Suramar questline basically got the Horde flavor of night elves that went all-in on the arcane and fel Kool-aid (because failing to do so got you exiled and turned into a mana-hungry zombie.)

Also: re: War Within- the Void's the initial antagonist this time.
Classic: an Old God did it.
TBC: The Burning Legion did it.
Wrath: The Scourge and another Old God did it.
Cata: Deathwing and the Void did it.
Pandaria: Garrosh and a dead Old God did it.
WoD: A bronze dragon and their timefuckery did it along with the Burning Legion.
Legion: The Burning Legion and a corrupted Titan did it for the final (?) time.
BfA: One and a half Old Gods, plus Azshara, did it.
ShL: The Dreadlords did it. We are ignoring Sylvanas in this house.
Dragonflight: Shamans and Druids did it, but so did the Void.
WarWi: The Void is doing it (at the moment, but an Old God is whispering at us again).

It's insane to me how many expansions this game has now, and how it's always a gigantic existential monster threat.

Raka_Putra posted...

Also I've never actually played any Blizzard game.

Great company until around 2012.

WoW Classic Warriors

Power Overwhelming
User Map Settings
Leroy Jenkins

Jacked Up and Good to Go
True Colors (StarCraft mission): God, I don't know what to put here and what to put in the Kerrigan writeup. Well, the mission itself is whatever, it's a fun little challenge to kill as many enemies as possible before the timer expires and they start fighting back, but that's not what's important. What's important is how this is the exact moment where Kerrigan is unambiguously, 100% the bad guy. Everything up to this point could be rationalized as either mind control or her being in a bad position and having to make some unfortunate choices, but murdering Fenix cannot be read in any other way except that she's the villain. Even her mind controlling Raszagal could be justified with enough mental gymnastics, but this is the moment where there's no going back. This is the definitive Kerrigan moment, the moment when Raynor finally recognizes that she's twisted beyond repair, and that it's no longer the Zerg corruption that's to blame, and there's just enough of the original Kerrigan left that she gets flustered and can't defend herself when he flips out and swears revenge except with a weak and awkward "you don't know what you're talking about." This is the probably the single best and most important moment in Brood War, and it's completely ruined by StarCraft 2. Just infuriating.
Corrupted Blood Incident
Witch Skin (Mercy)
Zeratul

Stay a While and Listen
Jeff Kaplan Dinoflask Videos: Making fun of people by cutting together sequences of them talking to say the opposite of what they meant is always funny. "The best way to play as Sombra is to never pick her at the start of the game. Our goal is not to make Sombra useful in any way, that's not what we're interested in at this time." Yes, this is good, this is a good way to make fun of this awkward dork.
Secret Cow Level: It's fun that they took a rumor in D1 and turned it into an actual level in D2. Man, remember video game playground rumors? Pokmon was the shit for that. Kids these days don't know what they're missing out on, but we can never go back thanks to the internet.
Galvadon (Theme): I don't know anything about music, so all I can tell you is that this song is pretty good. B+ for sure. I could listen to it a few more times, sure.
Roadhog
Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker: There's no way any game can ever recapture that feeling when you first saw someone with a legendary weapon. Being in 2005, seeing someone with all purples was just insane, it was a feeling like "maybe that can be me someday." That was the last gasp of game rumors and the feeling of the unknown, I said this before, but there will never be playground rumors ever again, and the feeling of out-and-out adventure and the unknown is gone. Even back then, you could just quickly look up where to find a random item you needed for whatever reason, and now it's all been so mechanized that much of the adventure is simply lost. I noticed that a lot while playing WoW Classic during covid. Cool-looking, too.
Nukes: They're perfect. It's a perfect design choice to give the Terrans messy, mechanical doodads so that all of the sleek and clean technology belongs to the Protoss. Perfect decision to make the ultimate Terran weapon a real-life thing that the audience already understands, both because it doesn't require any explanation and because it emphasizes how the Terrans are barely removed from real-life humans. The Protoss have teleportation and time dilation technology, and the Terrans come to bear with just really big bombs. Flawless concept. Too bad they're useless in actual gameplay.
Tychus Findlay: This is the last StarCraft character ever introduced who isn't bad. He embodies the grimy, shitty redneck-y future that StarCraft envisions, he's a bad guy who's on your side and acts as the devil on Raynor's shoulder (compared to the angel who is the, uh, whatever that one guy's name is, the straight-laced first officer guy). He's just such an asshole all the time, but he's never actually unreasonable about it, and when Raynor finally has to choose between his waifu and his friend, he finally kills Tychus and moves on. I mean, don't get me wrong, SC2 is bad, but it does have good elements in it, mostly in the early part of the Terran campaign, and Tychus is one of them. He's lucky he dies before the Zerg and especially Protoss campaigns take place, where absolutely everyone still alive is completely ruined.
Tyrael: I like how the angels in Diablo are kind of distant assholes who ARE better than the demons, but not really by that much from a human perspective, and how Tyrael is like the only one who actually cares enough to help and is willing to break the rules to do so. It is weird, though, that the games make a HUGE deal out of how humans are half-demon and half-angel, and then Tyrael just turns himself into a human somehow despite being a full angel, but obviously I should not analyze the logic of Diablo plots. But I can tell you my favorite thing about Diablo angels? Just the faceless hoods are so cool. They really emphasize how the monstrous demons are all scary angry monster guys, while the angels are so removed from humanity that you can't even see their faces, you can just see some glimmering tentacle-wing guys. 11/10 design. Oh, just to be clear, I never played Diablo 4, so if Tyrael has a role in that game, I don't know, I'm just rating him based on his appearances in 2 and 3. I mean, hey, if you're in Diablo 3, and still aren't completely embarrassing, then good for you.
Wrath of the Lich King Opening Cinematic: I think it'll be an uncontroversial statement that WotLK is the last vestige of classic Blizzard. It isn't perfect, it makes a lot of poor decisions, but it mostly sticks the landing on the Arthas storyline. AND THANK GOD ARTHAS NEVER APPEARS IN ANY LATER EXPANSIONS AND GETS RUINED. But honestly, even this cinematic just completely ignores that the Lich King was supposed to be part Ner'zhul. I know WotLK just says "lmao Arthas' mind ate Ner'zhul's, so it's just Arthas now," but c'mon. I think what makes this work is that Arthas was already established in WC3, we already know him and don't need to be introduced to him, and he wasn't completely ruined like Illidan. Like, as a teenager, sure, I loved Illidan, he's cool, but no one gets more ruined in WoW than Illidan except for Kael. I like how the cinematic shows us a corrupted, ruined Arthas ironically thinking about his father's hopeful words, that's really cool, and I appreciate it. This was last the time WoW really tried, and after this, I think it basically lost most of its older fans like me. And that's okay.
Ilios Bottomless Pit: I don't know how many times I've been knocked into this or knocked people into it. It's infuriating, and if you try to avoid "Pharah bounce range," then you basically can't stay on the point. If you try to avoid Roadhog hook range, then you can't attack people on the point unless you're a long range character. A good Roadhog can make the point completely unbearable. I've switched to Pharah just to avoid dealing with enemy Roadhogs camping this thing. And I looooooooooooooove it. This pit to me is the entire map.

Diablo (Game): It's absolutely incredible how simple this game is compared to where the genre is now. D2 completely changed the game forever. Just a little roguelike dungeon explorer where you're a guy running around stabbing monsters, and everyone has the same spells they can learn, and your classes are just "tough guy with low mana," "weak guy with lots of mana," and "girl." I appreciate how the first two games don't compromise on the dark tone where everything is doomed forever and you're just fighting against the inevitable. I hate how the third game retcons the Warrior to be the prince of the land, Blizzard just can't help itself, but I don't hold that against D1.

Systems Functional
Death Blossom: DIE DIE DIE I love Reaper, he's so absurd. It's a shame that the game experienced both power creep and complexity creep, you compare Reaper (a release hero) to anyone from Overwatch 2, and he's just got the simplest kit ever.
Edmund Duke: Duke serves a very specific purpose in the story, representing the old guard of the Confederacy, how they recognize it's falling apart, but some within it are still kind of reasonable, and emphasizing the redneck elements. Like, remember: StarCraft 1 (non-BW) has almost no characters. It's just Raynor, Kerrigan, Mengsk, Duke, the Overmind, Tassadar, Zeratul, Fenix, and Aldaris. It's literally nine characters, ten if you include the Terran robot who tells you what to do. I guess you can include the Cerebrates if you want to bump it up to like thirteen. The fact that they worked this character into the game at all is kind of lucky, given how he doesn't actually do anything important in the game's story. He arrests Raynor, helps you defeat the Confederacy, and is later murdered by Kerrigan, and all of those seem important, but they really aren't. It's actually kind of amazing how much he and Fenix go out like punks. I can tell you exactly how much Blizzard doesn't care about him: when they made their MOBA, they just invented a waifu to be the siege tank unit instead of using Duke.
Warriors (WoW Classic): Uh... I dunno? I never played one. I played a paladin in vanilla WoW and a mage in WoW Classic. It was always a pain looking for a tank in PUGs, that's why I respecced my paladin to be a tank in WotLK. Never had trouble finding a group ever again after that. Too bad warrior specs were just "two-handed, two-weapons, shield." The only class that ever specialized in ranged damage was always hunter.
Mass Carriers
Thrall
Javelin Amazon: I'll level with you: I've never played a javazon, so I can't easily comment, but it does look fun. The amazon was never one of the stronger classes. To me, that game is basically just either playing a smitadin or playing a necromancer skeleton army.
Nazeebo: I like how Diablo 3 actually has two instances where the male version of a class is an old man, and the female version is a sexy girl. Anyway, I appreciate how D3 tried to add new classes instead of just reusing what already existed (barbarian excepted). The witch doctor as a class concept is not bad. It's a cool idea for a class! Curses and zombies are fun! It's more fun than the monk and wizard! I have no idea why this guy got into HotS, though. No one on Earth actually cares about Diablo characters other than Diablo and Deckard Cain, and they actually go out of their way to name the guy, he's not even just "Witch Doctor." Anyway look, the easiest way to tell how popular a character is among players is to check how many skins they have, so let me just check... Seven. Now, let's check Inquisitor Whitemane... Four. Huh. Okay then, I take back what I said, I refuse to believe the waifu is less popular than the crazy old man.

Fifty DKP Minus
Sombra: Boop. It's a fun concept, to have a villainous character who isn't part of the main villain organization and is just doing her own thing out of greed, but that's about all she has as a character. And I hate that stupid side haircut, whatever it's called, I have no idea. Behead whoever gave her that haircut. I like how she has those little Day of the Dead skulls as an aesthetic. But the thing about Sombra is that she either feels horribly overpowered, as she ruins your entire team with expertly-placed hacks, or completely useless, as she has to run up to your face and shoot you with her no-range SMG. I can't recall ever feeling like this character was ever balanced. But she is definitely more fun to play than Ana.
Ana: This is the single healer I've played the least. I've played a ton of every other healer, but I suck at sniping, so my Ana playtime is much lower. I'm not a fan of her, I'm not a fan of blind sleep darts zooming across the stage, I AM a fan of her ability to disable healing for a while, I don't know. I like how she's an old lady, that's kind of amusing, and I like her young skin version. I just don't like actually playing as her at all. It's a shame Overwatch 2 dropped the PvE maps it promised, because it might've been fun to get a little more lore on her.
Lost Vikings II: Norse by Norsewest
Jeff Kaplan Videos

Sarah Kerrigan: I'm going to just do all of Kerrigan at once, despite your nomination. Kerrigan in SC1 is fantastic. I love her, everyone loves her. She's the girl who gets mistreated by everyone except Raynor, gets corrupted by bad mojo, and then turns evil. And all throughout the Zerg campaign, you can argue that, oh, she's being mind-controlled, it's not really Kerrigan. And then in BW, no, it is absolutely Kerrigan. Maybe she got betrayed by Mengsk, maybe she got forced into being evil by the Overmind, but she chooses not to stop. She chooses to keep going because she likes it and she likes being the most powerful person in the room and she likes being in control. It's not the corruption anymore, it's Kerrigan herself. Something in her is broken, and Raynor finally realizes it and curses her and swears to avenge Fenix, and her last moment of humanity is to let him go, and her horrific actions leave her with all the power in the universe and nothing else. She has the most powerful force in the galaxy, the Zerg, and that is all she has. Everyone else has abandoned her, but she finally has her unlimited power and no one can ever betray her again. Perfect. 10/10, everything is great, I love it. And then SC2 rolls around. There are a lot of people who will tell you "oh, Wings of Liberty is still good, it's just the Zerg and Protoss campaigns that are bad," and while I agree that WoL is the best one, it's still bad, and much of that is down to Kerrigan. Here, it's revealed that no, actually Kerrigan was never evil. She was never corrupted by power and betrayed everyone. It was just mind control after all, and she psychically begs Raynor to rescue her using a Xel'naga bad mojo remover. The REAL Kerrigan is still a good girl, and the evil sarcastic Kerrigan from the first game is just a construct of the Overmind I guess, she's literally a different person, so Kerrigan isn't responsible for all of the evil actions she took. Like, it is so insulting and bad and stupid. You can correctly claim that it's not a plot hole, it does make sense that the evil version of Kerrigan would claim to Raynor that she's still the same person, but what is the narrative purpose of all of the scenes in SC1 where Infested Kerrigan reaffirms who she is, then? And for what? So that the Zerg don't have to be evil anymore in the SC2 campaign? We've already had SEVEN evil campaigns by this point (Orcs, Orcs, Undead, Undead, Zerg, UED, Zerg), so you can't tell me that it's impossible to write the perspective of the villains. And, God, that Zerg campaign in SC2. Kerrigan spends the ENTIRE TIME talking about how much she wants revenge on Mengsk for betraying her. She spends the ENTIRE GAME saying "I want to kill Mengsk because he got me corrupted by bad mojo." And it's like, yes this is Infested Kerrigan again, but she didn't give two shits about that in the first game. She's happy to work with Mengsk in BW, Kerrigan is completely goal-motivated and doesn't care about grudges at all. It makes so little sense. And this is more of a Raynor thing, but the fact in WoL that Zeratul shows up and tells him "if you kill Kerrigan, the universe will explode" completely takes away from any kind of moral choice Raynor has to make. God, I forgot about the ancient prophecy about Kerrigan being the savior of the universe and the Overmind secretly being a good guy who just wanted to help, Jesus Christ. Anyway, all of this culminates in Kerrigan turning into a ninety foot tall naked fire angel and shooting DBZ energy beams at aliens. I took nothing out of context, by the way, that's the culmination of her story, that's how she saves the universe. Then she and Raynor ride off into the sunset and are never seen again. So, how do I rank Kerrigan? I love her in the first game, I hate her in the second, so she ends up somewhere in the middle, sorry.
Lost Vikings
Warcraft: Orcs and Humans: I'm sorry, guys, but StarCraft is the first good RTS. WC1 and 2 suck. They are unplayable. The technology just wasn't there at the time. Having to individually select each unit and then give it commands and then select another unit, argh. It is so, soooooo slow and unbearable. I would say that SC is superior to this game in literally every single way. I won't fault the story, I mean, it's a step above an excuse plot, but I can't think of anything about this game I actually like that isn't also in the sequels. Obviously, bad games still exist, but I'd say the average quality of game in 2024 is much higher than in 1994. And this isn't even a minor game! This was one of the big, important games of the year!
Murky: This is some post-WotLK thing, isn't it? I never really got the love for Murlocs. They're just little fish guys you're supposed to kill by the dozen, who cares?
Warcraft (Film): It's just not very good, is it? It tries to retell the first two games' worth of plot in one movie while adding things from WoW, like the Draenei, and I just cannot imagine watching this without having already playing the games. There was a time when "the movie" was the highest thing your fictional property could aspire to, when that meant you hit the big time, and slowly that has ceased to be true. Like, honestly, even by the standards of video game movies, there's nothing here. Street Fighter has silly acting, Mortal Kombat has a rocking song, and Warcraft has... what, exactly? At best, it avoids embarrassing itself.

An Ancient Evil Returns
Do You Guys Not Have Phones?: This is the ultimate example of not reading a room. Clearly, anyone who cares enough to physically come to Blizzcon is going to be a huge video game nerd and not a casual phone game player. Nothing against phone game enjoyers, you're great and everything, but if you traveled to a video game con to learn about upcoming Diablo games thirty seconds before the news gets onto the internet, clearly you don't give two shits about phone games. Completely bizarre that no one at Blizzard anticipated that the people who come to Blizzcon are unlikely to care about their simplified phone version of Diablo and that their speaker was so flustered that he said this in response to the simple question of "is there any plan to make this playable on PC," as if that's a completely unpredictable question when talking about a series that, until this point, had been exclusively on PC.
World of Warcraft: Shadowlands

Bobby Kotick: The man who created Activision Blizzard. Responsible for acquiring Candy Crush, the Overwatch League, and Call of Duty. He's had some legal sexual harassment stuff, but the thing I think people probably care about him for is his desire to make "exploitable" properties to make money over a long period of time for, rather than singular titles that might not guarantee sequels. I don't know, honestly, he seems like a good CEO who made the company a lot of money at the price of making shittier games over time.
Always Online: No one likes this. I remember when some SimCity game claimed it had to be online because the game just needed it to be, then they just released an offline console version. It's always just a lie because they always just want to stop piracy, which, fair enough, but it's always annoying for people who just want to play the game.
Activision: The Devourer of Gaming's Soul. They do nothing but buy smaller companies and run them into the ground. What have they even made, I'll just google it... Call of Duty, some Crash Bandicoot games, Skylanders, Guitar Hero... Gross. All of these games suck balls.

Not Even Death Can Save You
Sylvanas Windrunner: It's a hard time choosing which character is the most ruined by WoW. It's not Sylvanas, it has to be Kael and then Illidan, but she's down there. In WC3, she's so unimportant that she doesn't even have a unique undead model, she's just a ghost after Arthas kills her, and she's never seen again after that mission. Then she's in TFT, and she IMMEDIATELY establishes that she's the villain when she murders Garithos and declares that she'll be the new queen of Lordaeron. I don't know who at Blizzard fell in love with her, but she's just so embarrassing. She's always involved in every major plotline, and she's just so pants-on-head stupid it's insane. I remember arguing about the undead back in the day, and others would say "no they're just misunderstood," and I'd be like, every single thing they do is evil. They make evil plagues, they do evil lobotomies, they do evil tortures, they murder random farmers, they are not the dark antiheroes who are misunderstood, they are just out-and-out villains, and the Scarlet Crusade is wrong only because it attacks people besides them. And Sylvanas is the worst. She's just the absolute worst. She's the stupidest character ever, she gets betrayed constantly by her underlings, she betrays everyone constantly and is just instantly forgiven, and there's a part in Shadowlands where she tells Arthas to just disappear and be forgotten, and it's like, you are as evil as Arthas was. Arthas did more damage simply because he was in a better circumstance to do damage. You are as cruel and evil as him, and it'd be one thing if this was framed as an irony, as like Sylvanas being unable to accept how far she's fallen, but she's consistently shown as being sympathetic when she is absolutely not sympathetic at all. I guess she eventually loses her position as the leader of the Horde when Saurfang gets sick of shit, but that's it. I just hate this character. At least she destroys Teldrassil, that was always the worst of the original racial capitals. I just wish that Blizzard would go all the way and make her a raid boss, and then I can kill her and steal her +agility pants or whatever, and we can all just move on. The absolute only thing in WoW that Sylvanas ever did that I liked was her crazy plan in WotLK to kill Valkyries and then revive them so she could learn if she's fucked in the afterlife, the answer to which at least turned out to be yes. Blizzard loves "hero gets corrupted by bad mojo and turns evil" storylines, and Sylvanas' is easily the worst one... though again, Arthas has the advantage of dying too early to be as ruined as her. Although again again, Kerrigan's finale in SC2 is maybe the worst moment any of them ever have. But you'll notice that I rank her lower than Kerrigan, that's because although they both get ruined in their second appearance, Kerrigan had a much stronger first appearance.
Warcraft III: Reforged: lol. lmao. Say what you want about the StarCraft Remastered release, it at least lets you click a button to use the original graphics. The fact that Blizzard disabled the ability to use the original version of WC3 is just incredible, and even disabled the original launcher to force you to migrate to Reforged even if you owned the originals on CD. The fact that it doesn't include ladder, ranked play, and automated tournaments is insane. The graphics and art direction completely suck all soul out of the game. I don't like using vague words like soul, but you look at Arthas's portrait in the original game and Arthas' portrait in this game, and it legit looks like a cheapo Chinese phone game. Like, I'm sorry, but the awkward, cartoony, "barely better than an N64" art direction of the original was an artistic choice. They WANTED it to look that way, that wasn't how games normally looked even in 2002. And they replaced all of that with an attempt at realism, but without the effort necessary to make it look good. At least StarCraft Remastered kept the original intent of all the art design! Everything is still grimy and shitty, just like I like it. Just so bad.
Free Hong Kong Incident: This is especially weird. I can see punishing the guy who actually said "Free Hong Kong," even though it's a very weak case and it's clearly just kowtowing to China (boo), but punishing the announcers for interviewing him? Even though they immediately ducked under their desk to avoid being associated with his speech? "Against China's national dignity," give me a break. This is just so clearly Blizzard sucking Xi Jinping's cock it's ridiculous. This was so absurd that US Congressmen sent letters to Blizzard over it. Even fucking Fortnite condemned the situation, and it's owned 40% by China. Just so outrageous.

Light vs. Tempest
(MST Group 12, Set 1 - January, 2009)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzPiDOh9430&ab_channel=VioleTAK

Yogg-Saron, Hope's End (Hearthstone Card)

Blackthorne

Mercy multi-rez

Auction house

The Cosby Suite

Anagram posted...

Always Online: No one likes this. I remember when some SimCity game claimed it had to be online because the game just needed it to be, then they just released an offline console version. It's always just a lie because they always just want to stop piracy, which, fair enough, but it's always annoying for people who just want to play the game.

TBF, I was drawing a distinction between D3 where you had to be connected to bnet, but you could at least play a game by yourself, and D4, where you're stuck on some monstrously fast-respawning public server, and other people are constantly driving past you on their horse, and the game doesn't even pretend like it's possible to play alone.

Nominate: Jade Golems

Zerg rush

azuarc posted...

TBF, I was drawing a distinction between D3 where you had to be connected to bnet, but you could at least play a game by yourself, and D4, where you're stuck on some monstrously fast-respawning public server, and other people are constantly driving past you on their horse, and the game doesn't even pretend like it's possible to play alone.

I didn't even know that was the case.

Raynor's vow to Kerrigan at the end of True Colors was so badass and it was the thing I was most excited about when it came to SC2. And then the game opened with Jim sad in a bar looking longingly at a photo of Kerrigan and it just completely deflated me. I still played the game to the end, but seeing Kerrigan turned back to human at the campaign's conclusion guaranteed that I wouldn't be purchasing anything after WoL.

Hero Shooter (genre)

Vaelastrasz the Corrupt

Starcraft 2 Mafia

Heroes of the Storm

This music: https://youtu.be/xcEHDqji74A?si=gO9Gpf48bwmm8L7B

Microsoft acquision

I remember Duke being a surprisingly good character in one of the novels I read, way back when.

Nova (the character)

The original Battle.net

Anagram posted...

I just wish that Blizzard would go all the way and make her a raid boss, and then I can kill her and steal her +agility pants or whatever, and we can all just move on.

Anagram posted...

there's a part in Shadowlands where she tells Arthas to just disappear and be forgotten, and it's like, you are as evil as Arthas was.

It's funny 'cuz she does this *after* she gets removed from her mind control - as a final boss of a raid - and fan-canon is now that she's stuck in super-hell doing dailies for atonement because the living realm won't accept her back (and her valkyr are now all double plus dead so she's getting soul-ash'd if she perishes again.) Still, fuck everything she pulled between MoP and Shadowlands.

Anagram posted...

This is some post-WotLK thing, isn't it? I never really got the love for Murlocs. They're just little fish guys you're supposed to kill by the dozen, who cares?

He's the murloc representative in Heroes of the Storm, whose whole thing is being frail as hell but being only worth a quarter of a kill (unless you kill his egg, which he can place wherever on the map, and it's where he respawns from.) He *did* get absorbed into Warcraft though, eventually - just like Reno Jackson/Elise Starseeker and such from Hearthstone.

...Speaking of which:

Dr. Boom (Hearthstone card)

Tastosis

Isquen posted...

It's funny 'cuz she does this *after* she gets removed from her mind control - as a final boss of a raid - and fan-canon is now that she's stuck in super-hell doing dailies for atonement because the living realm won't accept her back (and her valkyr are now all double plus dead so she's getting soul-ash'd if she perishes again.) Still, f*** everything she pulled between MoP and Shadowlands.

I don't know anyone who still likes her.

ZaziGuado posted...

Raynor's vow to Kerrigan at the end of True Colors was so badass and it was the thing I was most excited about when it came to SC2. And then the game opened with Jim sad in a bar looking longingly at a photo of Kerrigan and it just completely deflated me. I still played the game to the end, but seeing Kerrigan turned back to human at the campaign's conclusion guaranteed that I wouldn't be purchasing anything after WoL.

It's extra weird, because WoL makes ONE reference to BW the entire game (the description of a mercenary unit you can buy), and otherwise it's like it never happened, then suddenly the events of BW matter in the Zerg campaign, but only very vaguely. It's a shame they took the series in the "ancient prophecy" direction instead of just building on what already existed, like the UED or something.

Blizzards, like, the weather

Power Overwhelming
User Map Settings
Leeroy Jenkins

Jacked Up and Good to Go
True Colors (StarCraft mission)
Corrupted Blood Incident
Witch Skin (Mercy)
Battle.net (Original): God, back in the day, I made so many throwaway accounts because you didn't need an email to make them. Then I did things that got myself banned, and just made more throwaways. What did I do? I'll never tell. I remember typing random words into the server search bar to see if I'd find anything interesting, and occasionally I did, like a server with a bot that pours you tea if you ask. This is just peak 1998 nostalgia here. It reminds me of Pokmon, where I wonder how much they understood at the time that so much appeal will come from battling your friends vs the main game itself.
Zeratul
Zerg Rush: A giant swarm of individually weak creatures overwhelming you is both conceptually fun and visually spectacular, and I've seen people who don't know anything about StarCraft still use the term without understanding its origin. I appreciate that StarCraft allows for these kinds of silly tactics. That's something that Warcraft never really allowed for, because it's slower and kind of more balanced, and thus less fun? Sorry, Warcraft fans, but StarCraft was always the better game.
Auction House (WoW): If we're talking about WoW, it's a great idea. It really creates an interesting, dynamic, breathing economy for every server. Every player knows exactly what it's like to just stand in front of the auctioneers for minutes at a time, to the point when I was seventeen, I made a point of occasionally riding into Orgrimmar and killing all of the auctioneers in order to annoy people. But if we're talking about Diablo 3, lol. lmao. What a fucking embarrassing disaster. Was D4 smart enough to not include an auction house? Oh screw it, I'll just two rankings, one for WoW and one for Diablo 3.
Terran Theme 3: Unffffffffffffff so good. It's the exact perfect blend of country redneck, sci-fi space, and slow and methodical RTS. At 1:10, it changes to be faster and more dynamic, which maybe they chose that moment to be arbitrary, but it's still a good lead-in. I'll say this for SC2, too: for all of its flaws, it did get the music right. Not as good as the first game's, but still mostly right.

Stay a While and Listen
Jeff Kaplan Dinoflask Videos
Galvadon (Theme)
Roadhog
Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker
Tyrael
Light v Tempest: I watched the entire game. It has been probably over a decade since I watched a professional StarCraft game, and I watched like three ever, is it even still played? God, early aggressive barracks cheese, I remember this kind of stuff. Oh, that part where the probe almost reaches the barracks while scouting and then turns the other way is just heartbreaking. The advanced probe and dragoon defense against the aggressive bunker, I love the cutaway to a random woman clapping, amazing. God, I was never good enough at StarCraft to fight people capable of these kinds of moves, this is great. This insane dragoon range micro counter, this comeback, amazing. I've never cared about competitive StarCraft, but this sure does make it seem worth getting into. HE HAS TWO GOONS HE HAS TWO GOONS
Nukes
Tychus Findlay
Wrath of the Lich King Opening Cinematic
Ilios Bottomless Pit
Diablo (Game)

Systems Functional
Yogg-Saron, Hope's End (Card): Good enough art, it's nothing spectacular, but fine. "Cast a random spell for each spell you've cast this game (targets chosen randomly)." Man, tell me you're a video game card instead of a real TCG card without telling me, right? I'm interpreting this as just pure chaos, right? There's no way you can play this strategically and expect to win, at best you're expecting this to be in your favor. I'm basically thinking of this as like metronome from Pokemon, where MAYBE something good will come of it, but you're mostly in this for the lulz. And that's okay, sometimes you need joke cards. But Yogg-Saron? Who cares about this low-rent Cthulhu knockoff. I can imagine this being very hype when used in a tournament, right? Let me just check the wiki... yeah, I'm right, okay. And Blizzard had to nerf the card because it was messing up tournaments, I see that.
Death Blossom
Vaelastrasz the Corrupt: I don't care about anything else, I just want to know why Notepad underlines "Sylvanas" as misspelled, but does not underline Vaelastrasz. Anyway, it's a cool idea to have a fight where you have a strict timer, but unlimited resources. It's a cool idea to have a fight where you're up against a mind-controlled guy who's trying to help you defeat himself. It's a cool idea to see how powerful Nefarian is by how effortlessly he defeats another powerful dragon. Just cool all around, I'm onboard with this.
Warriors (WoW Classic)
Mass Carriers
Mercy Multi-Rez: It's very hype. Too bad they retooled how it works to make this impossible, but I don't blame them. Mercy used to build up charge so quickly that I would just spam this at every opportunity anyway, knowing that I'd have another one up before I needed it anyway, so I didn't even see it that often. And even then, like, just because you CAN rez five people at once doesn't mean it's actually going to turn the battle. Those people lost the first time for a reason.
Thrall
Heroes of the Storm: I'll level with you, I've never played this game. I have looked through the Wiki a few times to see who's in it and what skin ideas they have. I'll tell you this, it is a cool idea to make a more casualized MOBA, but like, the genre already has a very wide appeal, so it would need to be VERY casualized, and people who are into that are probably not into the deep lore of StarCraft and Diablo, so you basically have two different ideas for your game that are at odds with each other. And just looking at the list of heroes, this is the most unbalanced distribution I've ever seen. 30 ranged assassin characters, next highest category is 17 bruisers, and then FOUR (4) supports... though I don't know the difference between support and healer, which has 16. Completely bizarre choices. I'll say this, though: whatever this game's flaws might be, it actually does nail having a wide variety of characters. This isn't JUST the big ones, it really does have weird fan favorites like Whitemane and Hogger in addition to the garbage like Yrel. Too bad they felt compelled to add OCs (do not steal) like... Quira, Lt. Morales, Sgt. Hammer, Probeus, Lunara, Blaze, and Orphea, the little girl magical daughter of "the Raven Lord," which is something you'd make up as a joke. And who names a moon-themed character Lunara, give me a break. But do you get what I'm saying here? It's a shocking amount of effort for a game that basically no one cared about. Even fucking Chromie is here. Trying to enter the MOBA space when LoL and DOTA 2 already sucked up all of the air was a truly doomed decision. At least when Overwatch did it, the only competition was TF2, a game from the Jurassic era.

Javelin Amazon
Nazeebo
Bob, do Something!: I like how Ashe's voice is annoyed and gruff while she says it. Funny how she's the only character introduced in a cinematic where she completely fails and is a total joke. Like, she doesn't quite seem equal to the task as the others? The other characters are all basically low-level superheroes, and Ashe is just a girl with a gun. McCree is also just a guy with a gun, but he's also got the "I'm just that good" shtick going for him, while Ashe comes across as a little more incompetent? Anyway, summoning a minion is a cool idea for an ult, even if Bob is not very useful most of the time. I don't know how often I've seen Bob turn a battle, not often, he requires way too many things to go right, and is way to easy to shut down.
Jade Golems: I had to look this up, because I sure haven't played Hearthstone. Okay, so they're just summons you get from playing other cards? I... don't know why this was nominated. Maybe these are a big meme in the Hearthstone community?
Dr. Boom (Card): Alright, lemme just look this up... Just a generically efficient card that does its job well and slots into many decks, based off an extremely obscure minor boss in WoW. Well, okay. I don't know what you expect here.

Fifty DKP Minus
Sombra
Ana
Lost Vikings II: Norse by Norsewest
Jeff Kaplan Videos
Sarah Kerrigan
Lost Vikings
Warcraft: Orcs and Humans
Murky
Hero Shooter (Genre): I guess TF2 is the first one, but the characters don't really have special abilities beyond the spy's disguise and cloak and the medic's uber. This genre really kicked off with Overwatch, which to me is the perfect "game to play while talking on Discord with your friends about unrelated stuff." I stopped playing Overwatch years ago, I'll talk more about that when someone nominates it, but like, what else is even in this genre? I have zero interest in Apex Legends or that Marvel game, Concord is literally the biggest bomb ever, Hyenas didn't even release, and that leaves... Deadlock? Boy oh boy do I not care about Deadlock. The entire lore and concept of that game is just boring as shit. I would actually go so far as to call this a bad genre, despite the embarrassing amount of the time I've put into Overwatch.
Warcraft (Film)
Blackthorne (Game): I initially rated the obscure WC3 bandit lord Sylvanas mind controls before I realized he was named in reference to a game. I've sure never played this game before. This is just peak 1993. I love how if an orc shoots you, rather than keep firing, he'll laugh, giving you a chance to fire back. God, I will never play this game. I'm sorry, Blackthorne fans, it just doesn't look interesting at all.

An Ancient Evil Returns
Microsoft Acquisition: I made this joke in high school, and it didn't come true, that within twenty years, everything in America would be owned by a combination of Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Disney. It's not true YET, but we'll see if teenage me is ever vindicated.
Auction House (Diablo 3)
Do You Guys Not Have Phones?
World of Warcraft: Shadowlands
Bobby Kotick
Always Online
Nova: There is no character in any form of media where the creators fell more in love with their creation, who didn't actually ever get a release. Nova has no games, but Blizzard trots her out all the time as if she's a real character, like she's one of the StarCraft mainstays alongside Raynor and Zeratul. Like, it cannot be emphasized enough how much they planned to make a game in 2000, never did, but then made a statue of the protagonist of that game that never released. And like I'm sorry! She's just blond Kerrigan! That's her entire design, is blond Kerrigan! And don't get me wrong, it's a good design, but it's all she is. And when you finally meet her, when she's finally in a game as a minor character in SC2, she's just an evil minion. She's just a Dominion clown who briefly works with you and then doesn't and then leaves. She has no depth to her, she just obeys her orders and then goes away. This is the most 'not a character' character ever, and Blizzard really thinks it has something with her. Completely bizarre, completely impossible to explain. This low ranking isn't even reflecting Nova, by the way, it's reflecting how Blizzard cares about Nova as if she was a real character. At least StarCraft as a series is dead now, so she can only butt into crossovers and show up as skins for Widowmaker or whatever.
Activision

Not Even Death Can Save You
Sylvanas Windrunner
Warcraft III: Reforged
Blizzard (Weather): I live in LA, so I don't really know about 'weather.' It seems like this would be unpleasant, though. I know people sometimes die from these.
Free Hong Kong Incident
Cosby Suite: lol, lmao even.

Veto
StarCraft 2 Mafia: Never played it!
Tastosis: This is some deep nerd lore shit right here. I'm a nerd, but even I don't know about StarCraft 2 commentary duos.

Anagram posted...

Those people lost the first time for a reason.

To be fair, a good amount of the time that reason is because the Mercy was hiding to get the 5 rez.

Town of Salem

Canceling the main PVE selling point of Overwatch 2 a year after it came out

hombad46 posted...

To be fair, a good amount of the time that reason is because the Mercy was hiding to get the 5 rez.

That actually is a good counterargument that I forgot to consider.

Warcraft II

Reaper of Souls

Anagram posted...

It has been probably over a decade since I watched a professional StarCraft game, and I watched like three ever, is it even still played?

It is, but it's on life support. Bad Blizzard decisions + MOBAs really killed the scene. It's a sad story really.

Anagram posted...

Tastosis: This is some deep nerd lore shit right here. I'm a nerd, but even I don't know about StarCraft 2 commentary duos.

I guess this makes sense if you never really watched pro StarCraft. Tastosis is the English duo for high level events.

Overwatch 3D porn

Ready Player One

Johnbobb posted...

Canceling the main PVE selling point of Overwatch 2 a year after it came out

This is what made me quit Overwatch for good. Haven't played it since

Overwatch and TF2 comparisons

The Sombra ARG

Warsong Gulch

The BlitzChung controversy

Anagram posted...

This was last the time WoW really tried, and after this, I think it basically lost most of its older fans like me. And that's okay.

Its back now apparently. Havent gone back to play due to lack of PC but its tempting.

hombad46 posted...

This is what made me quit Overwatch for good. Haven't played it since

Yep same here

Well that and the ridiculous battlepass nonsense

LightningStrikes posted...

The BlitzChung controversy

Its back now apparently. Havent gone back to play due to lack of PC but its tempting.

I cant be the only one who finds it interesting Blizzard games continue to sell well despite everything?