What about those predictions, then?

It's normal human behaviour when making predictions, to celebrate your brilliance when you got it right, and rationalize away your mistakes as not really a failure of prediction, more of a failure of others to behave rationally. I'm working on that, but meanwhile, let's look at the predictions I made last week and see what became of them. So here they are repeated in quotation marks, and my comment on whether I was brilliant or Blizzard were idiots following the quote.

• "I already mentioned that I thought Blizzard would be announcing the next expansion at Gamescom. That was the first part of my guarantee." - I don't care what you think, Wilhelm, I'm counting it!
• "The release date will  tie in with the World of Warcraft movie. That was the second part (oh, yeah, sure it seems obvious now, but it wasn't even obvious to most people that there would even be a expansion announcement back when I guaranteed it)." - The jury is still out, though it seems likely still.
• "The next expansion will be set in Draenor, still: in Farahlon and other parts." - My genius outstripped Blizzard's here.
• "The Burning Legion, who have hardly shown their face this expansion, will be out in force." - I'm so hot I'm sizzling.
• "That also means we get to meet Medivh and Kil'jaedan." - I admit Blizzard's greatness in fetching Illidan back from the grave was so greatly great that I feel stupid not having thought of it first; but the jury is still out on Medivh and Kil'jaedan.
• "Gul'dan will finally get his come-uppance. Please let it not be as Garrosh finally got his." He isn't getting out of the Suramar Palace alive.
• "More people with pointless apostrophes in their names will turn up". I think that's a given. Blizzard's names department has an apostrophe where the space bar should be.
• "The gold price of WoW tokens will skyrocket." - We'll only know in the months to come. I will of course count any uptick as proof positive of my magely brilliance.

So that's one wrong, four right (though even the furbolg could have predicted the excess of apostrophes), and three more about which we must wait and see.

Blaugust, day 7.

Archimonde and other nobodies

Raiding in Draenor feels like a pastiche of the good ol' days of raiding during the days of the Burning Crusade. The problem, for me, is that the developers don't seem all that interested in telling stories. Not that they've skipped it altogether: the main story, of the struggle between Gul'dan, Grommash and Khadgar is well told. But the problem is that there is not much story that prompts us to enter the various raid and dungeon instances around Draenor. It seems that the developers are simply asked to produce a fun instance, with challenging fights, and not bother too much about how it fits into the story.

The dungeons are at a double disadvantage in that one now normally enters them through the dungeon finder while levelling, long before discovering their entrances. That leads to a story-telling problem. As a designer, you don't want to introduce a breadcrumb quest before the adventurers are at the level to enter the dungeon, but once they are, they've probably already seen it before they got the breadcrumb quest. Or else the quest is offered out of thin air, by the GUI rather than by any individual (my least favourite form of questing).

There was a solution, back in the days of Wrath of the Lich King, that I thought was very good: Jaina offered a breadcrumb quest and before you had got the quest off her, you simply couldn't queue for that particular instance. Later versions of the dungeon finder didn't allow queuing for dungeons whose entrances you had not found. But for whatever reason, these ideas were scrapped, and now dungeons seem like separate games, where the real world of Draenor or Azeroth is just a waiting-room or lobby.

The raids in WoD particularly bother me, though. I can think of no good reason for wandering into Highmaul, except to exercise my lust for death and gear. Kargath Bladefist, at least, has a story we all know from Draenor. We've seen him at Bladefist Hold in the Spires of Arak. I believe he has also been seen in the company of Grommash and the other Warlords. Kargath Bladefist is a bona-fide boss with a back-story. But Tectus? Brackenspore? Even Imperator Mar'gok seems to have no story*. Why do I care about these monsters?

Frankly, the bosses in the other two raids are not much more interesting, although at least Blackrock Foundry itself has a worthwhile storyline. But in Hellfire Citadel, bosses are name-checked and killed with no story attached to them, nor reason for their presence. You're supposed to just remember the good times you had with them in Outland. Even Archimonde only turns up in order to get killed.

Without  stories*, it's hard to remain interested in the goings-on in Draenor. Perhaps it's time to return home to Stormwind. Beneath the sands of Silithus, in the cold vastnesses of Northrend, and in the dread wastes of Pandaria, qiraji silithid nerubian mantid toil endlessly in the darkness, extending their underground empires.

Blaugust, Day 5

*I exclude stories written in novels in another universe that our adventurers cannot enter.

More Warcraft Predictions

I wasn't clear enough for Wilhelm in my predictions for what Blizzard would announce at Gamescom. Wilhelm is usually correct, and I can quite see his point, so I will attempt to be clearer, with no links you have to follow to understand what I'm trying to say this time.

• I already mentioned that I thought Blizzard would be announcing the next expansion at Gamescom. That was the first part of my guarantee.
• The release date will  tie in with the World of Warcraft movie. That was the second part (oh, yeah, sure it seems obvious now, but it wasn't even obvious to most people that there would even be a expansion announcement back when I guaranteed it).
• The next expansion will be set in Draenor, still: in Farahlon and other parts.
• The Burning Legion, who have hardly shown their face this expansion, will be out in force.
• That also means we get to meet Medivh and Kil'jaedan.
• Gul'dan will finally get his come-uppance. Please let it not be as Garrosh finally got his.
• More people with pointless apostrophes in their names will turn up.
• The gold price of WoW tokens will skyrocket.

Blaugust, day 3.

After 6.2?

Blizzard have told us that 6.2 will be the last patch in this expansion, and so the Isle of Farahlon (Netherstorm) won't be developed as they planned for this expansion.  Also, Hellfire Citadel is the last raid? Gul'dan still at large? That has all set my antennae twitching like a Nerubian. Let's see. They haven't time to implement their vision for Draenor in this expansion, they have a tie-in film coming out in the autumn, and now www.mamytwink.com has given notice of a press conference promising "de nouvelles annonces croustillantes" (thanks for the heads-up from Alternative Chat)

My take on all this is that Blizzard will be announcing a new expansion to release at the same time as the film. I guarantee it. And the new expansion will bring us to Farahlon. And we'll hunt down Gul'dan, wherever that may take us. Perhaps Azeroth in an alternative timeline where Lordaeron is in the ascendant? I don't guarantee that.

Edit: mamytwink's promise of "spicy-hot new announcements" from Blizzard at Gamescom has proven to be correct, and as I predicted, those announcements are of a new expansion for WoW. So that's the first part of my prediction, but it has yet to be seen if it will be released in time for a film tie-in, and we are still far from knowing if it involves Farahlon or Gul'dan.