Friday, November 8, 2013

'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.

Thursday, November 7, 2013

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.