Matthew Rossi

When we talk about big content patches -- and based on what we know, World of Warcraft's patch 8.2 is a big one -- it helps to know what kind of content players make the most use of.

Sometimes it hits me how even when Jack Kirby didn't create a big Marvel character, that character wouldn't exist without him.

One of the things Heroes of the Storm is great at is giving us whole new skins and backstories for said skins.

We will likely be getting the patch 8.2 PTR soon (patent pending) according to a new interview PC Gamer just published with Ion Hazzikostas, the game director of World of Warcraft.  That's big enough on its own, but the interview covers a lot of ground: also Ion talks about lessons learned from Battle for Azeroth, how the Heart of Azeroth will change in patch 8.2, how Blizzard designs big open world content zones in the wake of the Timeless Isle and Argus, and a lot more.

Dinosaurs were big.

So yesterday Mitch wrote a pretty interesting Breakfast Topic about how Blizzard could add more individual flair to characters based on race or faction, and it got me thinking. It’s an idea a few of us have bandied about before — what if there were cosmetic and tooltip changes available so that, as an example, Forsaken Warriors got an attack called Ghoul Frenzy instead of Rampage? And while the ability did the exact same thing as Rampage mechanically (because it is Rampage under the hood) it would have a different tooltip and a different animation making it look less like a series of weapon strikes and more like the Forsaken just lost their cool and decided to try and eat someone’s brain?

I’m not saying they have to go with that, but there could be all sorts of options here — Tauren Paladins could get Sunwalker’s Stride instead of Divine Steed, where they still get the 100% movement speed but they just get a holy version of Plainsrunning instead, while Gnome Monks could get Skip instead of Roll. Making these options entirely voluntary, so that you don’t have to switch them if you don’t want to but the flavor is there would make them pretty cool, I think. A Blood Elf with a Spellbreaker Strike instead of Spell Reflection that does basically the same thing but looks more like a weapon attack than a shield use would fit their general motif without being overpowered or unbalancing — you’d have the ability whether or not you chose the option with the racial flair.

Anyway, this is the Queue, I’m doing this one, let’s talk.

One of my favorite pairs of MMOs was City of Heroes and its sister game, City of Villains.

Yes.

One of the first books I ever bought for the Third Edition of the Dungeons and Dragons RPG was, of all things, a Diablo themed sourcebook, named Diablerie.

This is an interesting use of machine learning, and compared to what I'm always afraid they'll do with it -- namely, create a super AI that will realize how awful our species is and wipe us all out like the plague we are -- making Diablo 2 cutscenes sharper is a pretty good one.