Tuesday, June 9, 2026

What I've Been Up To And Why I Might Start Posting Again

...It's been over 5 years since I stopped posting here.

Because this blog was primarily about WoW stuff, the fact that I stopped playing right before the Shadowlands expansion dropped guaranteed that I wouldn't be posting as much as I used to. In fact, I ended up posting only a couple more lengthy articles before moving on.
 
Now that I'm (tentatively) back, I should at least answer the following questions: 
1. What have I been up to since I stopped posting?
 
2. Why am I posting here again after over 5 years? 
 
3. What's the future of this blog going to be?

Tuesday, March 16, 2021

My Thoughts on Diablo Immortal's Monetization Plans

It has been over 2 years since the disastrous Diablo Immortal announcement that in my opinion resulted in a overreaction from the community, though it's an understandable reaction. Within that time period, there's been little in the way of announcements for this game beyond some trailers and other tidbits of info. However, near the end of 2020, Blizzard made a news post about how they were planning to monetize Diablo Immortal. Since I was busy with other projects at the time, I wasn't able to give my thoughts on it immediately and in fact, I only learned about this news post relatively recently.

Personally, I don't strongly like or dislike Blizzard's current monetization strategy. This is probably better than what some others may think, if only because they are unwilling to give the game a chance due to reasons such as the platform the game is releasing on or the fact NetEase or Blizzard are involved. However, the fact that I have a neutral opinion does mean I have some concerns and critique to offer that may be useful for improving the release version of the game or at least giving those who are undecided about the game more information to consider. In this article, I will convey why I have a neutral reception to the news post by highlighting certain parts of it and offering my opinion on them.

Tuesday, March 9, 2021

Improving Genshin Impact, Master's Thesis Edition

About a year and a half ago, an upcoming game caught my interest due to comparisons being made between it and Breath of the Wild. As someone who liked that game but recognized that it was far from perfect and could be improved upon in many ways, I wondered what this game would be like and how it would improve upon the game that clearly served as its source of inspiration. As I've already made clear in past articles, the fact that the game was releasing on mobile was not an issue for me. Such a concern was also dampened by the fact that the game was also going to be released on PC and as it turns out, the game eventually released on mobile, PC, and PS4.

However, while the game made a solid first impression, I rapidly noticed potential content design issues that made the Warlords of Draenor expansion for World of Warcraft seem good by comparison. Unfortunately, as I progressed through the game, these concerns were sadly confirmed and I became annoyed that yet another game fell into the trap of using what I consider to be flawed game design philosophy since it tries to make player miserable to generate profit more than it tries to make players happy to generate profit. Such concerns, which I will go into more detail on below, were echoed by critics and players alike.

Many months and numerous arguments with fellow players later, it has become apparent that miHoYo, the company behind the game, seems more or less content with how their game is designed. While some meaningful content has been developed and released, much of it is rife with arbitrary limitations. In fact, the repeatable content that the game has to offer, especially for endgame players, has largely remained unchanged and still involves waiting for at least a few hours or the expenditure of money to meaningfully engage in. This factor among others has me worried about this game that I want to like, but clearly needs improvements. Therefore, in this article I will be providing an extensive list of suggestions to resolve what I believe to be problematic about the game.

However, before getting into the meat of the article, I want to address why I'm suddenly writing a Genshin Impact article instead of writing more articles on World of Warcraft. To put it simply, I'm on a break from World of Warcraft and I'm unsure if I'll be playing the game again any time soon. The reasons why are largely similar to the ones I made in the article on why I wouldn't be playing Classic WoW. However, I still have topics I want to write articles on and an article about a game that has content design issues similar to some past iterations of World of Warcraft seems like a good place to start, so without further ado...