Addressing Palworld Dev Pocketpair's Recent Announcement on Craftopia

A little over a week ago, Palworld's developer, Pocketpair, announced their intention to fully release Craftopia by 2027. This announcement was made alongside the game's 6th Anniversary Update, so I was able to notice and respond to it quickly. While I didn't say everything I could have, I expressed my skepticism regarding various parts of the announcement, pointed out they had a lot to answer for beyond fully releasing Craftopia, and left it at that while hoping I wouldn't need to write an article about it.

However, some Pocketpair fans are already weaponizing the announcement (I can't link to replies on reviews, so you'll need to scroll down on the second link) to shut down criticism and concerns about Craftopia and its future. Considering the lengthy article I wrote recently about Pocketpair, I could see fans using this announcement as a new counterpoint, even though the counterpoint itself is weak for reasons I'll soon explain. More importantly, it would also be a serious disservice to you readers if I failed to acknowledge Pocketpair's statements when they're addressing a major concern so soon after I thoroughly criticized them.

 

Therefore, I have written this article about the announcement, which will primarily serve as an addendum to the "Addressing Possible Counterpoints" section in my previous article. In this article, I will review Pocketpair's announcement regarding Craftopia's future, explain why I'm skeptical of it, and support that with evidence. I will then conclude by addressing the counterpoint more directly and discussing why a high quality 1.0 release of Craftopia is important for the company.

This Article Is About Pocketpair's Uniquely Questionable Game Dev Practices

Disclaimer: Please read the entire article first, especially the concluding section. You can crucify me afterward if you want, especially for any mistakes I made in the article.

 

Update (9/11/2026): After seeing Pocketpair fans use Pocketpair's recent announcement to shield the company against further criticism and noticing how many people are taking the company's statements at face value, I have reconsidered and am now working on a short article about that recent announcement. I will leave the previous update for posterity and add a link to the article here when it's finished.

 

Update (9/7/2026): Pocketpair announced that they are planning to fully release Craftopia next year. I don't plan to write an article about this, but I wanted to acknowledge that this announcement happened. In terms of what I wanted Pocketpair to do in my Closing Thoughts section, the current 1.0 plan, which is fairly vague and lacks a definitive roadmap, does not fulfill my demand for Pocketpair to "properly finish the development of Craftopia". Their announcement is even harder to take seriously when considering that the 6th anniversary update, which was a great opportunity to start their stated goal of refining and polishing the game, just added a tiny amount of content instead. I left a comment expressing my skepticism at whether they can even achieve what they're planning in a significant, meaningful way by 2027. It's also worrying how many replies simply take the announcement at face value; I wish I had the optimism those posters have. Aside from that, I fixed up this article by addressing some spelling and grammar errors and improving the clarity of some statements to better convey my points.

 

Recently, Palworld received its 1.0 update, officially exiting Early Access after about 2.5 years. The developer, Pocketpair, announced their intention to fully release the game last year and announced a date roughly one month before the full release.

While this release is not surprising and seems to be heavily celebrated based on the reviews and comments on various news announcements for the game, I'm personally a little upset. This is because Pocketpair is also the game developer of Craftopia, a game I naïvely pointed to as a potentially decent open world-esque alternative when discussing the game design issues of Genshin Impact. While some great open world games did fully release (or are at least near full release) later on, Craftopia has instead languished in Early Access for nearly 6 years.

Around when Palworld entered Early Access, I played Craftopia, then I played Palworld itself a few months later. While I had fun playing both games and saw their potential, I was ultimately frustrated and concerned by how much worse off the former game was despite how much longer it had been in development. Because I was aware of Pocketpair's history regarding how they handled their first game, Overdungeon, which I will explain in further detail later, I started to gather information about the company. The results of this research deepened my outrage, but I reasoned that Craftopia's development would surge forward by leaps and bounds with the new revenue from Palworld's success. Therefore, I shelved what I learned in the form of an article draft on this blog and hoped I'd never have to make use of the information.

 

Unfortunately, Palworld has now fully released before Craftopia has even left the alpha state of development by the developer's own admission. Furthermore, Pocketpair has intentions to release more games and while they definitely have the staff to support such projects, it's unusual and concerning that the future of their second oldest game remains uncertain.

 

I believe Pocketpair's game development practices are uniquely questionable to the point that more people should scrutinize and criticize them. This article will attempt to accomplish that by laying out the facts I've gathered along with my interpretations of that evidence. I will then address counterpoints made by fans, including potential future ones, and explain why Pocketpair's practices are problematic, particularly in the broader sense of affecting the gaming industry as a whole.

Granblue Fantasy: Relink Suggestion Compilation, With New Foreword and Afterword

Disclaimer: No, I didn't steal this. Max Depravity is another alias I use. I even took the rare step of posting the Google Doc on Reddit under my usual username.

 

7/10/26: I fixed the Afterword a bit to clarify my points better.

Foreword

 

As I mentioned in my last article, I'm reposting my Granblue Fantasy: Relink suggestion compilation to this blog to better preserve it and I wanted to do it before the upcoming expansion, Endless Ragnarok, releases. I had to paste the content of the entire Google Doc without formatting, then re-add the formatting to properly work with this blog. I fixed some mistakes such as bad grammar and missing words, but the actual suggestions themselves have not been changed. Also, I had the misfortune of learning most header formats don't work properly due to my blog theme, so I'm only using Major Header and resizing text for section and subsection titles like I used to do.

 

As for the suggestions themselves, I think they as a whole are still solid even a couple of years later. However, I should have acknowledged the influence of more games on my suggestions. For example, the Boss Rush suggestion was definitely influenced by Hades and similar roguelite games. Meanwhile, Rogue Mode Exploration and Expeditions also drew inspiration from games such as Risk of Rain 2.

 

What follows is the original contents of my suggestion compilation with the fixes I mentioned. Also, for those who are curious, Cygames was accepting feedback on Relink and I did send them the entire Google Doc as my feedback shortly after posting it on Reddit.

 

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?

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.

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...

My Thoughts on Azerite and its Future

Azerite is one of the few features for Battle for Azeroth that I have yet to formally give my thoughts on. Considering my past thoughts on Artifacts and, more importantly, what I believed should have been done with them in future iterations, one might expect me to think poorly of the Azerite system. To a degree, this expectation is correct but much like with Artifacts, Azerite has changed greatly throughout the expansion to the point I believe it would be a mistake to ruthlessly discard many aspects of the feature during the transition to Shadowlands. This was more or less stated in the Blizzcon interview late last year since Azerite as a system will remain as a leveling feature but will be unusable in Shadowlands content.

Because I think Azerite should have more of a future than planned and also because this article is being published at the conclusion of the Battle for Azeroth expansion, I will be approaching the topic in a different manner. Specifically, I will deconstruct the Azerite system and review its components, such as Azerite gear and Essences, then determine if and how they can be adapted to work with changes made in the Shadowlands expansion so that they are available for Shadowlands content. I will also determine if it's worth keeping various components of the Azerite system at all. Much like previous articles on Battle for Azeroth features, this one will also be rife with (pretentious) suggestions regarding theoretical future iterations that will likely not be considered by the development team, let alone implemented on test or live realms. I hope my musings are enjoyable to read despite this.

Buying Time for Shadowlands

This is a polite reminder that this article was published on the 31st of March. This is a serious article and not an April Fools' joke. I don't intend to publish a joke article this year anyways.

Ever since the Wrath of the Lich King, the period between the last major patch and the next expansion has consisted of a lack of significant updates that lasted about a year. After Mists of Pandaria, attempts were made to address the issue in Warlords of Draenor, when a plan to release expansions yearly was revived and put into action, only to fail miserably almost immediately due to content design problems in the aforementioned expansion. This in turn led to the same lengthy content drought that happened during the previous three expansions though patch 6.2.2 and 6.2.3 were implemented to try to remedy the issue and much like patch 3.3.5, such patches were somewhat effective at best in terms of addressing the content drought.

Legion, much like Mists of Pandaria, staggered content additions with major patches adding story quests and other zone content, then raid availability coming a few months later, usually alongside a minor balance patch. This resulted in the final raid, Antorus, becoming available during late 2017. Patch 7.3.5 came out less than two months later and featured the level scaling mechanic in low level zones, improving the leveling experience somewhat, though I personally considered the addition insufficient for truly improving the leveling experience. The period between the end of Legion and the beginning of Battle for Azeroth was noticeably shorter with a content drought of 7 months at most, though it is worth mentioning the period between the major 7.3 and 8.0 patches was about 10 months.

Unfortunately, this came at the cost of the release iteration of Battle for Azeroth not being received too well. While the release iteration definitely had problems, I personally went on record saying it's not as bad as vocal players, some of whom claimed the expansion was worse than Warlords of Draenor, thought it was. I considered Island Expeditions a decent addition to the game even in its initial iteration because of its application as complementary content especially for leveling, which I believe should be expanded upon by making it available as early as level 10 after the Shadowlands level squish. While I have yet to post an article on Azerite, the initial iteration seemed to fix some problems I had with the Artifact system such as by dampening power-based Paragon progression further and not having Artifact Knowledge cause major numerical inflation.

The biggest problem with the release iteration of Battle for Azeroth in my opinion was Warfronts, which I mentioned in my article reviewing the content. I specifically mentioned a second Warfront being available on release would have helped to address issues with content accessibility since multiple Warfronts would help to reduce the possibility of downtime caused by the unexciting contribution phase. Control phase content could have also been improved to feature content that was added later such as World Quests. Ultimately, delaying Battle for Azeroth by a couple of months to add this second Warfront and refine other content additions, such as by fleshing out Island Expeditions into something similar to its 8.1 iteration, would have made the release iteration of the expansion much more enjoyable.

At the time of this writing, the only thing that is known about the release date of Shadowlands is that it will happen sometime in 2020. Considering patch 8.3 came out at the beginning of this year and the legendary cloak's Corruption Resistance upgrades cap out at 125 by early September, it is likely that the expansion will release around early fall of this year. However, I believe it would be more prudent to release later than that if only to refine content such as Torghast, the roguelike dungeon I am personally looking forward to, further.

Regardless, unless the highly unlikely possibility of the next expansion releasing in the next two or three months occurs, there will likely be a content drought that, while not as long as some previous expansions, is still quite lengthy. While this period should be strongly devoted to developing the next expansion, I believe there should also be more of an effort at keeping players entertained. Therefore, I have a number of suggestions to make for a theoretical minor patch that could be implemented a few months from now, preferably around early summer, to accomplish the goal that the title of this article states: buy time for Shadowlands.

My Thoughts on Patch 8.3 Solo Content

As of this writing, others have been busy getting outraged over Warcraft 3 Reforged. Whether it's due to the definitively subpar rerelease of a game that was in a glitchy state that desperately needed fixing or the legalese that, while questionable in my eyes, has little power considering the current state of copyright law and previous court decisions regarding game ideas. Meanwhile, other aspects such as provisions that are intended to improve the Custom Game experience for both players and map makers are casually ignored, further proving that there are people out there trying to discover or manufacture controversy relating to Blizzard to fuel a cycle of hatred that seems to have no end.

In the face of what I consider to be yet another overblown outrage that overshadows legitimate criticism, I believe it's important to properly critique Blizzard's development practices. This is because in my eyes said practices are a major source of many issues relating to their operation including some of the issues relating to Warcraft 3 Reforged. As the title of this article states, I believe the recent patch for WoW is a good place to determine what can be improved.

Patch 8.3 is the last major content patch for the Battle for Azeroth expansion and with the faction conflict story concluded in the previous patch series, what is left is to address the threat of N'Zoth, which has been hinted at constantly throughout the expansion. In fact, I personally anticipated this possibility even before the expansion was announced considering the high presence of the Void in 7.3 along with what transpired story-wise during that patch series.

In any case, the battle to save Azeroth from N'Zoth has resulted in the addition of a significant amount of solo content and features related to it. Much of this has built upon previous iterations of content, including solo content introduced in 8.2 that I thought of reviewing in article form but decided against doing. After spending the better part of the last several weeks experiencing what patch 8.3 has to offer for a solo player and because I am so obsessed with solo content, this article will be devoted to reviewing said solo content and some related features.

My Ratings for Every Vanilla Rimworld Trait (Version 1.0)

10/1/21 - Really late on adding this note, but this article is for the 1.0 version of Rimworld. While some points still hold true even in later versions such as 1.1 and 1.3, I have updated the article to reflect this (and fixed some grammar issues).

Rimworld is a game I've been playing on and off for about a year, often bingeing for days at a time before getting bored of the colony I'm managing and moving on. I especially enjoy the game for the numerous details that encourage strategic thinking, though new players may find themselves overwhelmed even after playing through the tutorial. One aspect of the numerous details within the game are the traits that colonists may have up to three of. Traits can provide a wide variety of effects that are beneficial or detrimental, though often they have both. Furthermore, specific situations may determine how useful or harmful the effects are.

Having played Rimworld for a fair amount of time and also because I feel like it, in this article I will rate all the traits available in the latest version 1.0 version of unmodded Rimworld while playing one of the preset scenarios with explanations for my ratings. A higher rating generally indicates that in my opinion, assuming all other factors are equal, a colonist with this trait is more desirable to have in my colony. Traits will be ordered from the highest rated to the lowest.

My Thoughts on Blizzard Punishing Blitzchung

6/24/25 Update: It's been nearly 6 years and first of all, yes I am still alive. In addition, my views have changed a bit, especially on geopolitics. This article in particular poorly reflects those views to the point I made some revisions to reflect the changes in my views (it seriously reeked of American exceptionalism). I still think Blizzard's punishment was disagreeable because it was excessive punishment and a blatant marketing power move, among other reasons.

10/12 Update: Blizzard has issued an official statement on the matter. Here are my updated thoughts on the situation, which might save reading through the paragraphs of text below:

• I do not think the punishment on Blitzchung and the casters were fair to begin with and believe the revised punishments are still too harsh. I can respect Blizzard trying to keep politics out of their broadcasts, however.
• Like various past outrages, there is a lot of misinformation going around and a lot of malformed assumptions being made based on circumstantial evidence and the like. For example, a statement from NetEase, while concerning because of their partnership with Blizzard, does not necessarily represent the Blizzard official opinion.
• Needless to say, harassment, especially of Blizzard employees who may be in support of opposing Blizzard's official actions, is also unacceptable. Insulting people for what sounds like a dissenting opinion is also unacceptable.
• Based on the above two points among other observations, I am having increasing difficulty believing that some of the people participating in the outrage care about what's happening in Hong Kong and instead want an excuse to be angry with Blizzard or spread bigotry. Spreading misinformation and harassing people is detrimental to winning support for the protests.
• The latest WAN Show is a good example of this problem in action as the hosts Linus and Luke end up arguing with those participating in the outrage in their stream chat, some of whom claim the two are pro-China for the opinions they expressed. Incidentally, I largely agree with what the two of them said. In particular, "Lawful Evil" is a good way to describe what Blizzard did.

---

Less than a year ago, Blizzard made an announcement that was considered to be highly controversial and sparked major outrage within the gaming community. At that time, I personally considered the outrage to be understandable but also extreme in its negativity and lack of reasoning. Since then, I was expecting any sort of major controversy relating to Blizzard to happen about a month from now at the next Blizzcon assuming they failed to meet customer expectations again despite the optimism in their recent earnings report. However, recent actions by Blizzard against Blitzchung, a pro Hearthstone player who expressed opinions in favor of the protests in Hong Kong (which is an opinion I share, for the record) have caused another immense outrage among many people even outside of the gaming community and this time, I find myself in agreement with decrying Blizzard's actions. In this article, I will briefly explain my thoughts on the situation as it's unfolded so far.

One of the first things that I noticed when I read through initial news articles is that not everyone at Blizzard supports this action. This is not only something that's great to hear but some seem to be well aware of this internal conflict. However, others have once again lost themselves to their outrage and are lashing out against anyone who remotely involved with Blizzard's actions, whether they are fellow forum users, Blizzard employees, or the like. I do not approve of this incivility because it willfully harms other people and in my opinion makes the message of decrying Blizzard's actions easier to dismiss as toxic commentary from a vocal minority.

What I considered next was how Blizzard could have handled the situation. While I may be a critic of how they enforce the rules and empower their customers to do so, I can understand that Blitzchung did indeed break the rule that was cited in Blizzard's official statement. However, I am entirely in agreement with comments like this and remarks from Brian Kibler stating that the punishment issued to Blitzchung was far too heavy-handed. Furthermore, I do not believe Blizzard is utilizing some highly intelligent strategy by drawing more attention to the Hong Kong protests while sacrificing their reputation. This is because while their earnings from the Asia Pacific region are only 12% of their total as of last quarter, of which a fraction is actually China (because of countries such as South Korea and Australia contributing substantially to those earnings), there is great potential to grow that and Blizzard would almost certainly want to beyond supposedly releasing mobile games. Therefore, Blizzard has a motive for not ruining their chances to expand the Chinese market.

I conclude by saying that I wholly disapprove of Blizzard's actions here because it seems excessive for a first time violation, among other reasons. Ending my support of them is as easy as not buying another 6 months of WoW subscription since I purchase game time manually. At the same time, I also disapprove of the more negative aspects of those who are outraged because while some may actually care about what's happening in Hong Kong as opposed to hate circlejerking, such individuals don't express themselves in anything resembling a civil or reasonable manner.

Despite my condemnation, I am patiently waiting for an official statement in response to the outrage. This is because I believe there are ways for Blizzard to redeem themselves in this situation, even if others casually dismiss it as a pathetic attempt at damage control. For example, issuing a humble public apology and revising Blitzchung's punishment to a slap on the wrist or removing it entirely would make me a little more content.

 
Finally, when it comes to this blog and its articles, many Blizzard-related articles I post tend to be critique or theoretical discussion that often take the form of a suggestion that I know is unlikely to be considered, so it's fairly likely I will continue to publish such articles. I have also considered branching out into articles on other games for a while and may pursue that path more strongly.

My Thoughts on Warfronts

Much like Island Expeditions, Warfronts are another feature that was added in Battle for Azeroth as a new form of content. Also much like Island Expeditions, it offers scenarios that can be queued for with no regard for role. While I wasn't as excited about them as I was with Island Expeditions, I was interested in the idea of what appeared to be raid scenarios and zones that would change faction control much like Wintergrasp and Tol Barad did.

When they finally became available, I personally found some of the content highly enjoyable but had mixed feelings because of other aspects. This opinion improved as Warfronts were added to and improved upon, though some flaws remain and I wish to see various related additions in the near and distant future. In this article, I will summarize my experience with Warfronts up to the 8.2 patch series iteration, then give my thoughts on the current state of Warfronts and what in future iterations that relates to them.

I Probably Won't Be Playing Classic WoW

Classic WoW is coming soon and there's a fair amount of hype going into it. Those eager to play may be doing so out of nostalgia, curiosity, community, because they believe the overall experience to be superior to live WoW, and so on. Among those looking forward to Classic WoW are a few of my friends who have also asked me if I was going to play. While I was tentative at first, I have thought more about why I would want to play Classic WoW by taking external factors and information regarding the release into account. This has led me to a more definitive answer in line with this article's title: It is highly unlikely I will play.

This doesn't necessarily I will never play Classic WoW ever, but I have come up with many reasons as to why I'm not that interested. If the game, by some slim chance, were to change like Old School Runescape has over the years, then my opinion may also change. At the same time, I may also question why such theoretical changes weren't applied to the live version of WoW since I stand by my stance that all versions of WoW are surprisingly similar to each other and, at the very least, not horrendously blemished by fundamental gameplay overhauls or detrimental pay-to-win microtransactions.

In any case, this article will at least serve as a way to respond to my friends looking to get me into Classic WoW by explaining why I personally won't find the game all that enjoyable. This article is not meant to drive other players away from Classic WoW.

My Thoughts on Island Expeditions

Island Expeditions were one of the features added in Battle for Azeroth that I thought had great potential. After years of the game being free of group scenarios after the Mists of Pandaria expansion, Blizzard saw fit to experiment with the idea again in the form of exploring to gather more Azerite than an opposing force. It also appeared to feature some form of procedural generation since NPC and object spawns were said to be different every time the player entered the scenario. While I was concerned about the strong ties the content had to gathering Azerite, which I anticipated would end up lasting for only the Battle for Azeroth expansion much like Artifacts did in Legion, I at least had hope Island Expeditions may inspire some similar interesting content in the future.

However, one quick Google search shows that there are some fairly negative opinions among players who take the time to post on a forum regarding Island Expeditions. While I can understand where these opinions are coming from, I personally think Island Expeditions are much better than players give it credit for, especially considering it delivered fairly well on how it was described in the Developer Insights video. There were also some unexpected details that give me some hope for the future of group scenarios, which I have believed for a while should be utilized more.

In this article I will briefly summarize my personal experience with Island Expeditions on release and after the 8.1 patch series changes, then offer my own thoughts on the release, current, and possible future iterations of this content.

Content Summary

Island Expeditions require level 116 on one character to unlock. This is because one has to complete at least two foothold quests, after which the tutorial quest for Island Expeditions becomes available. Once unlocked, it can be done on any character of level 110 or below on the account.

As mentioned before, Island Expeditions are a scenario, meaning there are no specific role requirements needed to fill the groups of three needed to run the content. As the name suggests, players explore an island, defeating enemies and gathering items that have been placed somewhat randomly primarily to earn Azerite. Players race against a team from the opposing faction to acquire enough Azerite after which the scenario is completed is players earn a reward. There are multiple difficulty levels that dictate how much Azerite need to be collected along with a PvP mode where players of opposing factions race against each other instead of teams of NPCs.

When it comes to rewards, Azerite and experience serve as the primary rewards, making it an option for leveling up to 120 while providing an option for Azerite farming at level cap. There is also a large weekly Azerite reward if a player earns enough Azerite during Island Expeditions during that week. Players can also earn various cosmetics such as uncommon BoE gear that supposedly sells well to other players, pets, and mounts. Finally, Seafarer's Dubloons are a currency exclusive to Island Expeditions that at the time of release was primarily used to buy consumable items that can only be used on Island Expeditions.

In 8.1, Island Expeditions were updated to be more procedural through the addition of more enemy types, static event spawns, and random invasions from one of many hostile factions. Vendors that primarily sell cosmetics in exchange for the Seafarer's Dubloon currency were also added. An additional reward was also added in the form of a treasure map that unlocks a lucrative mission for followers to be sent on. Finally, various quality of life changes were made to improve the playability of the content such as an adjustment of the Azerite needed for the weekly reward, an adjustment of how additional rewards are awarded, and mob placement.

8.1.5 didn't add much to Island Expeditions themselves, but it improved upon its reward system once more by adding uncommon quality Account-bound gear that can be purchased with Seafarer's Dubloons. Personally, I think this helps to account for a distinct weakness relating to Island Expeditions in that they lack gear rewards. These gear rewards are not that strong since they top out at item level 282 at level 120 (though they can randomly upgrade further), but arguably suffice as leveling gear and starting gear for fresh level 120 characters.

Thoughts on the Present Iteration

I personally think of Island Expeditions to be side content for players to do at level cap, though it isn't without rewards to grind for. It's also a decent way to level from 110 to 120 on alts because of the fast queue times and fairly good experience rates from the mobs and completing a run. I personally appreciate that the developers tried very hard to dampen the monotony of doing the same objectives repeatedly without resorting to lockouts by varying the experience with many different islands to explore, each of which will be a bit different every visit. Furthermore, the enemies players face during an Island Expedition feature a variety of mechanics of varying strengths depending on the power level of the mobs compared to most other leveling content, providing an opportunity for players to hone their skills.

With that said, I think the objective of Island Expeditions is one of its biggest issues because of how exclusive to the expansion's theme it is, not to mention it gives little room for players to immerse themselves by exploring the entire island. I believe this detracts from the Island Expedition experience and encourages players to rush and otherwise try to optimize their play instead of finding other ways to have fun. These are detriments I was hoping to escape when it comes to WoW's group content.

The reward system for Island Expeditions is not too bad, especially for leveling players who benefit from the experience reward. The Azerite reward may either lead players to grind the content or ignore the content if they are interested in increasing the power of their Heart of Azeroth depending on how much is awarded. Seafarer's Dubloons in their current state are a decent reward currency for players who are interested in the cosmetic rewards or need to fill gear slots that heirlooms won't on their alts. However, I think Seafarer's Dubloons need to be more consistently awarded from completing an Island Expedition.

The additional cosmetic rewards all add a bit more reason to do Island Expeditions, though they are a bit rare to get and if one desires a specific randomly earned reward, they're probably going to have a bad time. For players who aren't as interested in them, some of the cosmetics can be sold to other players for money, which makes Island Expeditions somewhat profitable, though not a great way to earn gold from my experience especially if you're on a quiet realm. Finally, I have mixed feelings about the Treasure Maps. I think they're a great way to do mission content since players have to actively play the game before doing a highly rewarding mission, not to mention such lucrative rewards can only be earned once a week per character. However, I am also a little disappointed since I was hoping the player would be doing the treasure hunt in a manner similar to Runescape's clue scrolls, even if such an idea is unreasonable to ask for so soon.

Overall, while Island Expeditions may lack in appeal, I think it's a decent enough addition to the game that at least doesn't particularly hurt the state of the game and at best provides yet another activity for players to do while waiting for lockouts to expire. Also, changes related to it helped to improve the experience along with the reward system.

Thoughts On Future Iterations

In the short term, I think Island Expeditions need additional consistent rewards to make it worthwhile content beyond farming experience and Azerite, both of which become much less meaningful as players progress further. To that end, as I mentioned before, Seafarer's Dubloons should always be awarded upon completing an Island Expedition and it should be made clear this is the case, with at least one awarded at Normal difficulty and scaling up from that. I also think War Resources should be always awarded in small amounts for completing an Island Expedition, though this has more to do with the fact War Resources can only be acquired in a few ways much like Order Resources were and I would like to see that issue addressed this time around, even if missions, the primary War Resource sink, are less impactful this expansion.

While there are plans for Island Expeditions in the upcoming patch and there will probably be further additions throughout the expansion, I have doubts about the long-term health of Island Expeditions. Much like Artifacts before it, I don't see the Azerite system lasting all that long in its current state and, more importantly, it seems like the game's story will move on from its emphasis on how impactful Azerite is as a resource.

Personally, as someone who supports a more robust leveling experience with a variety of content to make the adventure of progressing more enjoyable, the seemingly inevitable loss of Island Expeditions would be tragic without some sort of equivalent to replace it. I also think it would be nice to expand upon ideas introduced by Island Expeditions anyways since I believe it would improve how enjoyable the game is especially when leveling. To that end, I think it's a good idea to retain the concept of Island Expeditions primarily in the form of leveling content. Specifically, I think Island Expeditions bring three ideas to the table in regards to leveling content:

• Firstly, There could be more group scenarios available while leveling. This would provide a more accessible alternative to dungeon content especially for players of the damage dealing role and, with the right objectives, may even provide a less competitive, toxic environment.
• For example, I think it would be better to implement more scenarios with objectives that don't come at the expense of immersion or a player's ability to pace themselves, such as racing to earn enough points like one currently has to do in Island Expeditions.
• Secondly, there could be more content that has significant variance to improve upon its replayability such as by altering mob spawns and the types of events that can occur. This would help address how repetitive leveling can feel especially for players who create many characters. The idea can also be applied to level cap content for the purpose of reducing the tedium of repetition.
• Thirdly, there could be more content that provides a wide variety of mechanical challenge that is suitable for players of a wide range of skill levels. Needless to say, having content that both tutors and challenges players, such as my Proving Grounds rejuvenation suggestion, at the same time is something I strongly approve of and this especially is needed for leveling players.

I hope that group scenarios will at least be kept around in some form. It's one of the features that was abandoned after Mists of Pandaria and in my opinion, doing so detracted from the game's content design. It's good to see group scenarios back and being expound upon in ways that make the Mists of Pandaria scenarios look simplistic by comparison. Now I have to hope that the negative remarks made about the feature(s) in question and the expansion it's a part of don't lead to another bout of reckless abandonment of features as shown by the transition from Mists of Pandaria to Warlords of Draenor.

How to Not Screw Up Diablo Immortal (and Future Mobile Titles)

Update (12/20/19): I really should have mentioned this when writing the article, but many other high-profile gaming industry companies such as Nintendo have gotten away with releasing mobile games with far less outrage than Blizzard got, even though some of these games feature many of the problems mobile games have. Hope this adds some further perspective.

Update (3/9/19): Because I am very behind on the times, it has come to my attention that Nintendo ended their Creators Program, which is a large part of why I disliked them as a company even though that program didn't personally affect me. I have revised one of the closing paragraphs to reflect this. Also, I added a cut because I forgot. Oops.

With reactions to Diablo Immortal dying down, along with my desire to condemn the vocal minority of the gaming community, I think it is fair to say that while the outcry was extreme, there is some wisdom to be gleaned from it. Specifically, mobile gaming has a negative reputation and considering some of the awful games I discover through TapJoy, some of which seem to gross very well, that reputation is entirely justified. At the same time, I can understand why Blizzard would want to get into the mobile market due to the high amount of potential customers and revenue so therefore I'm not surprised they're planning more mobile games beyond Diablo Immortal.

However, instead of getting angry about it, and also because Diablo Immortal has yet to be released, I find this to be a good time to offer some meaningful suggestions regarding what can be done when it comes to Blizzard releasing mobile games that don't end up angering their fans, as well as the gaming community, even further. This is something I already briefly mentioned in the previous article, but I think it's important to go in-depth on the off chance a Blizzard employee discovers this article and forwards its contents to their superiors or the article somehow gains widespread visibility.

I would go as far as to say if these suggestions are followed, that it would redeem Blizzard's error of announcing Diablo Immortal at Blizzcon and make people a little more comfortable about the idea of Blizzard releasing mobile games. Note that these suggestions are intended to improve reputation and fandom security and won't necessarily result in a financial success. This also won't fix Blizzard's reputation in regards to other issues, whether they are erroneous or not.

I want to stress this advice applies to all future mobile releases by Blizzard even though I will often be referring specifically to Diablo Immortal. I wouldn't mind if other developers considered these suggestions too if for some reason they happen to come across this article because I would like more options for good gaming experiences.

My Thoughts on Diablo Immortal (and the Reactions to it)

The Diablo Immortal announcement at Blizzcon has caused a significant stir, mostly of ire, within the gaming community. Controversy of this magnitude compares to the ongoing discussion regarding loot boxes, which I weighed in on a while ago. After seeing what others have to say on the game's announcement and what came after, I thought I might weigh in a bit sooner this time especially since I would like to think I've learned a bit about mobile gaming since I last wrote articles regarding that medium in particular.

My Brief Thoughts on Battle For Azeroth

TL;DR version of this article: Perceptibly underwhelming != Bad

Several months ago, I took a hiatus from writing articles, citing reasons such as moving on to other projects and being critical of the state of World of Warcraft. Now that Battle for Azeroth is here and people have had plenty of time to form thoughts on the expansion, I can't say I'm surprised to see a lot of negativity. However, I'm also disappointed in how wildly negative some views and it doesn't help that there's meme phrases going around like "Beta for Azeroth" that convey such viewpoints. While I could go and address some of the longer posts, particularly on the subreddit, that's time I could be spending writing other articles or, more importantly, working on other projects. Therefore, I'll summarize my thoughts briefly in this article and follow up later with my thoughts on some of the game's content and suggestions regarding reward systems. Take it for what you will and for the double digit amount of viewers who read this article, feel free to ask me for more nuanced thoughts on various aspects of the state of the game.

To start, I largely stand by what I said regarding the expansion in the aforementioned article. I find myself in disagreement with some of Blizzard's design philosophy and believe they didn't address certain issues like the consequences of removing Legion's Artifacts or improving the game's leveling gameplay sufficiently. However, as I also anticipated, Battle for Azeroth turned out to not be a bad idea to play rather casually, which to me translates to focusing on solo content to make gold rather than doing group content.

Battle for Azeroth's start feels remarkably like Legion's in many ways, especially in terms of the content available. There's plenty of World Quests to do and as before they're fairly hit or miss. There's Mythic+ dungeons for players who want to do group content without the potential stress of raiding with many other players. There's a medium-sized raid with a new, larger raid on the horizon. There's a fairly lengthy, reputation-gated questline at level cap for players who wanted some story they can experience solo (and it's not as ridiculous as the Nightfallen questline in terms of reputation requirements or gated by missions, which are big plusses in my book). Other extraneous activities, such as Pet Battles and cosmetic hunting, also got some new content with this expansion, though it never hurts to have more.

In addition to this, there's some new things to do that were introduced with this expansion. Island Expeditions could use polish (shrine buffs seem kind of rare, etc) but are quick to group for and a nice way to blow off some steam. Warfronts can be fun and rewarding especially during the Battle Phase, but only when that phase is available. War Mode seems to have brought back a lot of world PvP and I also enjoy the risk-reward aspect because of the strength of many of the PvP Talents that would probably destroy competitive PvE. All of these activities are also rather extraneous and in the case of Island Expeditions and Warfronts, could use some improvement. I have plans to write articles on both of those features in the future.

However, much like in Legion, the reward systems need serious improvement. Titanforging and other random elements of gearing outside of getting gear to drop are still criticized heavily and I have suggested improvements to address player feedback. The currencies introduced in this expansion (War Resources and Seafarer's Dubloons) are about as useful as Legion's introductory currencies, making me wish once again the game had Justice Points. Character progression especially in later stages of the game could use improvement, not just in regards to the Azerite system, but I find myself in agreement with critique that players don't gain much character power outside of equipment after about level 90 or so. Furthermore, I find myself in strong want of more rewards that are eternally relevant, such as a Paragon Level system. If there's one thing of interest so far in this expansion though, it is Scrapping since it provides an alternative to vendoring useless gear since players can salvage raw materials instead.

To conclude, despite some treating Battle for Azeroth like it's a dumpster fire (un)worthy of comparing to expansions such as Warlords of Draenor or Cataclysm, I think the expansion is better than both and overall okay, but in need serious improvement. Patch 8.1 and 8.2 look fairly promising and assuming Blizzard doesn't do what they did in Cataclysm and cut content or downsize upcoming patch content (e.g. Abyssal Maw and War of the Ancient raids), what players are currently perceiving as an underwhelming start to an expansion may make the expansion more enjoyable.

...In the worst case, Classic WoW is coming soon and there's always similar options available (now if only Final Fantasy 14 actually had a WoW Token equivalent).

If Survival Hunter Was Ranged Again

Survival is the Hunter specialization that has probably seen the most change out of the three specializations for that class. It started as an underwhelming melee spec, but eventually developed its own identity as a ranged specialization that liked to use traps and deal elemental damage, especially in the form of damage-over-time effects. After many expansions of this, it was abandoned in Legion in favor of trying to make it a melee spec again. Personally, I am in disagreement with how readily Blizzard abandoned much of their old design as they shoddily attempted to push its remnants into Marksmanship.

Instead, I thought Survival could've gone much further with the aforementioned thematic of elemental damage and trap usage and it helped that there were some concepts in Warlords of Draenor that could've served as inspiration. Specifically, I am referring to Exotic Munitions. While it wasn't a great talent in terms of sheer power, it did explore the idea of enhancing ammunition much like with Rogue Poisons and Paladin Seals. Unfortunately, Exotic Munitions was also discarded in Legion and the source of inspiration was largely lost.

This article will attempt to portray how ammo enhancements could've been expounded upon alongside the previous ranged version of Survival that emphasized traps usage and elemental damage. What I ultimately came up with is a survivalist that uses innovation, whether it be technology or strategy, to make the most of the situations they may find themselves in.

Demotivation and Future Articles

For several years, I've been publishing articles at a relatively consistent rate. While it's slowed over time in favor of attempting to improve quality, I've at least tried to get out something every week or two weeks. Given my view count and general lack of regular readers over the entire lifespan of this blog (feel free to comment and prove me wrong if you are a regular reader), I'm not sure if there's anyone who particularly cares that out of seeming nowhere, I haven't published anything for nearly a month. Despite that, I think I owe an explanation for the sudden, extreme decline and this article will provide that explanation.

Leveling Quick Fixes: Elite Subzones

This article is part of a series. Click here to go to the intro article where a table of contents is available.

Some of my early experiences of playing World of Warcraft involved wandering into areas crawling with elite mobs that more often than not were beyond what I was able to defeat. They often congregated around the entrance to instances but there were also subzones dedicated entirely to them such as Pyrewood Village and Jintha'Alor. The novelty of them was nerfed shortly after I started playing the game however since in patch 2.3, elites in many of these areas were changed to non-elites in an attempt to improve the game's leveling experience. I can understand the reasoning of the nerf since grouping up to quest in one or more of the areas was often necessary to ensure a smooth leveling experience due to a lack of non-grindy leveling content.

Elite areas were then rarely utilized in a meaningful way for a few expansions until Isle of Giants was released in 5.2, which was a zone full of elite mobs that were able to be farmed solo or in a group. Timeless Isle expounded on the idea and featured elite mobs that could be farmed for benefits such as Emperor Shaohao reputation and Lesser Charms of Excessive Good Fortune. Warlords of Draenor also featured some elite zones that the player entered as part of daily quests. Finally, Legion had a quest chain for the Nightfallen that involved entering an area full of elites and featured many elite World Quests that players could attempt solo if they wanted a bit of a challenge.

The reason I bring this all up is because it seems Blizzard is comfortable with making their overworld dangerous to players again by making use of elite areas or what I'll call what I consider to be the more appropriate term of "subzones." In fact, I think it's possible to return elite subzones to lower level zones while maintaining the idea behind the leveling improvements made in patch 2.3. If done well, such areas will provide a place for players to challenge themselves without disrupting other leveling content such as questing like elite subzones in the past did.