The Queue: Garrisons, CoT illusions, and loot boxes

In writing the Queue today it got me thinking about loot boxes … and in the answer below I’m only scratching the surface I think. Look for a bit more detailed editorial on the subject from me in the future; there’s something to be said for the good, and not-so-good, ways that Blizzard is handling them.

I do! Sorta. I use it for some achievements that I haven’t gotten yet, and I’m slowly making my way through things bit by bit. It’s not automatically something I go to every day though and I don’t suspect ever will be again, but it is worth at least having the teleport stone take up a space in my bag.

I’m still quite disappointed in how the garrisons turned out in the end. They were so fun at first, but then ended up separating out the players so much that the expansion lost a core element of WoW — the multiplayer and community feeling. Sure the NPCs were cool and treated you with more warmth than you’d get from some rando in a major city, but that’s not the same thing as seeing a half naked gnome running circles around a mailbox.

Come to think of it … maybe garrisons were the better choice.

Heh. Well, I’d suspect that a lot of people would not like this. Part of the draw of creating a new character in the new models is to actually see them though in their gameplay. In some regards from a strict story perspective you are right, it doesn’t totally make sense. But then there’s the opposite too — all the NPCs will still address you with something like “What do you want, Worgen?” when you interact with them (if that’s part of their original script). This alone somewhat gets around it.

The Caverns of Time makes sense though; the dark portal hadn’t opened up yet and it would be very very odd for a orc to be walking around on the wrong side of things. Keep in mind that you’re also there to protect the time stream, so not disrupting it with a Orc would be a wise thing.

Interesting. But no, I don’t think that’s a fair assessment. Random loot from boxes, whether purchased or not, has been around forever and a day.

The concept of buying a box of something you like, and hoping that you get something out of it that’s good/rare, well… that’s been done since the baseball trading card days. More recently it was done to extreme success in the CCG area in games like Magic the Gathering and Star Trek (yes, that was me as a kid all the way, and I still have the cards).

Fast forward to the digital age, and there were games like Star Wars: The Old Republic doing loot boxes (or crates, in their lingo) long before Overwatch came around. No matter what you think of SWTOR, it definitely was (still is?) a AAA game.

I do think Overwatch has found a very good balance of buying a pack to open and not having it impact the game negatively. Overwatch is not pay to win (the same cannot be said of Hearthstone, however, I’d argue). Keep in mind too that while this idea has been around for a very long time, its digital version is still very much in its infancy, as the backlash against EA demonstrates. I have my own feelings on how hive-mind that whole situation got, but that’s for another time…