'Warlords of Draenor' Fun

Its finally arrived. The opening day of Blizzcon. Its an event that has been two years in the making. I expect a lot of announcements, even in the opening ceremony.

We all know that they are preparing to announce the next WoW expansion. Its been speculated that a recent trademark 'Warlords of Draenor' is the subtitle of the expansion.

While there have been some very speculative unconfirmed leaks concerning the backstory, nothing is really known. This gives us a chance to speculate and speculate we shall!

Let's start with Draenor. What is it? It is the original name of the world we now know as Outland. After Ner'zhul blew up the world in his nefarious plan, the name was changed to Outland to imply that it was a wasteland.

So if the next expansion will take place on Draenor, that implies that it would take place in the Warcraft 1 or 2 era.

So if the expansion takes place in the Warcraft 1 or Warcraft 2 era, how will we get there? That implies that we will travel back in time or there will be a parallel universe where Draenor was never destroyed.

What would be the purpose and role of the player in a parallel universe? Any changes wouldn't impact our original world. So what's the point?

Since a parallel universes does not appear to make sense, it can be determined that 'Warlords of Draenor' will be a time travel expansion where the player goes back in time to old Draenor.

How we go, why we go and all those fun elements, I'll leave that to Blizzard.

Since we are only a few hours away at this point; we are some quick hit things I want to see.

• Any final expansion boss but Garrosh
• Classic Warcraft characters as NPCs or raid bosses
• Redesigned Vengeance so its more equitable to all tanks.
• Redesigned Valor and rewards system
• Classic Raid Scaling
• Redesigned LFR so it the atmosphere is not as toxic
• Polish pass on Talents and Glyphs to fix some of the existing problems.

Starcraft 2 WCS Grand Finals Predictions

Here we are. The Starcraft 2 WCS Grand Finals.

Its been a different year for Starcraft 2 e-sports and despite all the problems and issues of the World Championship Series, there is one indisputable fact about this weekend's tournament. It contains the 16 best players in the world, duking it out for 100,000 dollars.

There have been some amazing games and moments this year. Here are some of the highlights that I'll remember.

• Soulkey's amazing come back win in the WCS Korea S1 Final
• Mvp's deep run in the Season 1 Finals.
• Polt's back to back WCS America wins.
• Bomber overcoming Bomber's Law to win the WCS Season 2 Championship
• MC proving that he's still one of the Protoss' in the world.

All of these moments and more have lead to this point, the WCS Grand Finals.

It would be unfair to say that every player has an equal chance to win this tournament. While they are the best players, some of the skill and experience gaps between the players themselves are really large.

Let's review the lower end of the players on this scale:

Naniwa,

duckdeok

sOs

aLive

These are solid players who can make deep runs in a tournament, whiling pulling an occasional upset, they are not proven championship players.

Given all that's happened this year and the match-ups and possible match-ups this weekend, here are my picks for this tournament.

Round of 16:

Soulkey beats Naniwa, 3-0
Bomber beats MMA 3-1
sOs beats HerO, 3-2
aLive beats Polt 3-2
Taeja beats Dear 3-2
Mvp beats Jaedong 3-1
Maru beats MC 3-2
Innovation beats duckdeok 3-0

Round of 8:

Soulkey beats Bomber 3-1
sOs beats aLive, 3-1
Mvp beats Taeja, 3-2
Maru beats Innovation, 3-1

Semi-Finals:

Soulkey beats sOs: 3-2
Mvp beats Maru 3-1

Finals:

Mvp beats Soulkey 4-3

I am picking IM.Mvp to win the 2013 World Championship of Starcraft 2.

I will be doing live predictions and comments on Twitter. You can follow me @Pennyrush.

Mists of Pandaria: What worked and What Didn't.

On the eve of another expansion announcement and the giant reveal on what the official judgment on Mists of Pandaria. I think it would be interesting to write up a short list of what I think worked and didn't work in MoP.

What worked:

• MOAR Content - Cataclysm didn't have any of it, so they made up for it with new stuff.
• Flex Raiding - The more people that raid, the better.
• Talents and Glyphs - There are some issues to iron out but overall its going in the right direction.
• Item Upgrades - Keeps Valor always valuable.

What didn't::

• Lesser Charms - No, they were not optional and they didn't have enough ways to get them
• Vengeance - Needs to be redesigned badly.

I know its short but I don't think a lot needs to be said here.

Next up: 5.0 Protection Warrior Analysis.

1 Month till Blizzcon!

With one month till Blizzcon, we will soon learn about the future of the Warcraft, Diablo, Starcraft and Hearthstone franchises. They always announce some unexpected products or services and I expect this year to be no different.

But in the meantime, its going to be fun to speculate and speculate we will!!

Just from basic guessing, they are going to announce the World of Warcraft expansion, go in-depth about Reaper of Souls (and maybe even dole out some beta information), announce a Hearthstone release date, and changes to the WCS system. I don't expect them to announce or discuss Legacy of the Void or Titan until next year.

We know for sure that they are going to talk about the future of World of Warcraft and the new lands that we will get to explore as players.

While I am looking forward to the story, lore and all of the information about the new questlines, etc I think that Mists of Pandaria made significant design changes to WoW that will be need to be revisited in the next expansion. Some of these were across the board, some of them are class specific and some of them are even narrower.

Over the course of the next month, I hope to express my thoughts on these subjects and the areas of improvement that I believe exist for the next expansion.

First up will be a Mists of Pandaria - Post Mortem. Here I'll review how Mists of Pandaria moved the ball forward, where it was stagnant and where it took a step backwards. Be on look out for that in the next week.

2013 NFL Picks

NFC:

East: Redskins

North: Packers

South: Falcons

West: Seahawks

Wild Card #1: 49ers

Wild Card #2: Bears

AFC:

East: Dolphins

North: Steelers

South: Colts

West: Broncos

Wild Card #1: Texans

Wild Card #2: Patriots

NFC Champion: Washington Redskins

AFC Champion: Denver Broncos

Super Bowl Winner: Denver Broncos

2013 MLB Picks

We are finally here. The start of another baseball season. I will keep this short and sweet. Here are my picks for this season.

American League:

East: Yankees

Central: Tigers

West: Rangers

Wild Card 1: Angels

Wild Card 2: Royals

National League:

East: Nationals

Central: Reds

West: Giants

Wild Card 1: Cardinals

Wild Card 2: Phillies

WC:

Angels over the Royals

Phillies over the Cardinals 

LDS:

Tigers over the Angels

Yankees over the Rangers

Nationals over the Phillies

Giants over the Reds

LCS:

Tigers over the Yankees
Nationals over the Giants

World Series:

Nationals over the Tigers

MVP:

American League: Mike Trout (Angels)

National League: Bryce Harper (Nationals)

Cy Young:

American League: Chris Sale (White Sox)

National League: Matt Cain (Giants)

Manager of the Year:

American League: Tie between Ned Yost (Royals) and Joe Girardi (Yankees)

National League: Charlie Manual (Phillies)

First Manager to be Fired:

Don Mattingly