December Tide

The hype I felt for Diablo 4 after its trailer launch was transcendent to say the least. After all, Diablo 3 was a disaster from a lore and gameplay perspective and the gameplay redeemed itself with the Reaper of the Souls expansion. Yet there were mighty shoes to fill for Diablo 4 after the standards set by D1 and D2. Now that I have finished every portion of the game's content, I'll cover the good bits first. Pros + Breathtaking Cutscenes + The dark fantasy setting is something straight out of Game of Thrones, they've definitely outdone themselves from a game design perspective. + The leveling experience is simple for a new ARPG player to pick up and get started with 2 standard difficulties + There's plenty of options to level - campaign, world events, side quests, etc. however, the campaign completion is a requirement to unlock perks like mounting, and end game tiers + The renewed Paragon systen is definitely my favorite aspect of the game. Each board improves player power drastically. + Many mini patches have rolled out so it looks like the dev team is listening and overseeing the game unlike the initial launch of D3 Cons - There is absolutely no Quality of Life. Games from the 90s like Runescape had more QoL. No search function, 4 stash tab limit, clunky riding, no loot filters, no map overlay, no event tracker, and the list goes on. - The game honestly has one extremely flawed endgame content - Nightmare Dungeons. More on Nightmare dungeons below. The other 2 endgame content - Grim Favors and Helltides aren't really endgame. Grim favors don't provide any meaningful rewards or don't offer any way to farm chase items like the Bounty system allowed in D3. Helltides are fun the first few times but once you've amassed hundreds of Forgotten Souls, this becomes redundant. - Nightmare dungeons are unnecessarily more complex versions of Greater Rifts from D3 . Every time you open a Nightmare portal, the dungeon spawns randomly, and you'll have to get on your clunky horse and make your way there physically. Not only is this exhausting and completely unnecessary, but sometimes your dungeons magically disappear. The nightmare dungeons have affixes that have been ripped straight off from Blizzard's other big game - World of Warcraft. What works in an MMO doesn't necessarily work in an ARPG. The Mythic + affixes of WoW are added into the nightmare dungeons of D4. None of the affixes are challenging but are straight out extremely annoying such as a giant rock that follows you around and pulsates waves of damage or the Lightning storm that casts a barrier and if you aren't in it, you get whacked by a painful bolt of lightning. All of this becomes mundane and tiring by your 5th run. - There is absolutely no build diversity. This game is governed by a meta trinity of - Unstoppable + Vulnerable + Crit Damage across classes. - The dungeons always follow the same layout making things extremely monotonous. - The grind to get Altars and Renown is the most boring gameplay I have ever come across. - The world bosses are a joke and create a Fear of Missing Out element when doing other content. This belongs in MMOs not in ARPGs. - The game is heavily group dominant for efficiency. The bigger your group, the quicker you grind those last levels. Overall, the game is a complete mess in its current iteration. The devs have clearly copied content from WoW and created a fusion of Diablo + WoW. It's a sad reality that we await season 1 to fix most of these atrocities starting with the much-needed QoL.

World of Warcraft is a fond game that I cherished for a long time up until Wrath of the Lich King. After which, a lot of change took place and even though I played the latest expansions - Shadowlands, Dragonflight, etc. I have noticed the soul of what made WoW is non-existant. The game is definitely fun with its raids, mythic+, and pvp content and it can give hours of fun to the average casual. At the same time, the game is extremely toxic and the learning curve for new players to bypass the veteran threshold is limited. I am a professional wow player that has achieved AOTC and consistent M+ KSM for years now. And I can vouch that the game is miserable in the higher levels of play. Here's an incident for a reference - I was doing a high M+ key and joined a guild group. No where did the group mention it was a completion key yet once the key started, I was forced to endure 4 wipes at the very 1st trash pack. At this point, I type "Guys, we aren't going to get this, GG", to which the guildies piled on me stating "We will report if you don't complete". I left the key despite their threats and within hours, I was silenced for a week. Despite never having a single ban since 2004, I was now officially silenced for a week where I couldn't message my friends, guildies or anyone and it kinda was a humiliating experience. Could be a mistake right? I mean surely 4 guildies from a group mass reporting me can't trigger a ban. But that's exactly what happens when you're mass reported in this game for no fault of yours and it's been proven countless times on YouTube by popular streamers. Fast forward, I send an appeal to them, they never answer for over 4 days and finally, send me an automated message stating they can't revert it. Yes, an automated message stating they had reviewed it. When I requested them to provide proof of abuse (as that's the reason I was banned). Being an automated message, they didn't and marked it as resolved. This is the current standards of Blizzard that I've faced and it isn't just the community but it's the brains and team behind the game itself that is extremely ignorant of the pleas of the community. Rewind back to 2004-2012, when you had a ticket open, a friendly GM would pop up within 15 minutes and resolve your issue. I do miss those days and I can see why this game has garnered such hatred from long-time fans. But ofcourse, I wouldn't say the game isn't fun in its current state, it definitely is, or I wouldn't find myself playing it. But I don't see myself pushing through their ignorance for too long and this might finally be the last expansion and a swansong to end this great franchise with. Thank you for the memories, and hopefully you guys improve for the sake of the casual players.

Last I checked sequels were standalone games. The customers paid to buy product A only to be later changed to product B forcefully. Everything about Overwatch 2 is forcefed. The whole single tank gimmick fails miserably. Many of the tanks have become redundant like Roadhog and Wreckingball. Picking these heroes ends up raging your team as they don't honestly have a way to consistently block damage being offtanks. These have now officially become troll picks. Neither did they bother to remake the tank setup for them. Previously, when a tank died, the team had hope that they could regroup with 1 tank alive and if a team played well, they'd do it. Now if the tank blows up, any assaulting team can push through. There was so much strategy involved with the old 6v6 setup. Zarya + Rein, Orissa + Roadhog, Sigma + Roadhog, etc. All of this is now redundant due to a single tank mode and the game feels terrible. A favorite of many, Doomfist, was in a goodspot in Overwatch 1 and rewarded dps classes for exceptional gameplay. In about 50 games, I saw him probably once only to be quickly switched after he was blown up. The standard of the game is heavily depleted. Previously, it was about breaking through an entire team, now its bumrushing the tank of either teams and picking out the survivors. The result is extremely predictable. If a player wants to play their favorite tank and ignores the favorable scenario for their team - i.e. - picking a tank with shields/barriers in a team composition consisting of heavy fire power - bastion/soldier etc. the game is lost. The group had somewhat of a chance with a dual tank setup. Atleast, there were no troll picks even if you picked 2 offtanks before. Also, I don't understand how this can be called a sequel when a majority of the game is absolutely the same. A few extra maps, a few major game changes, some interface changes, and new OSTs isn't even worth being called an expansion. At best, this is a DLC and a poorly done one at that. Blizzard is joining the ranks of EA and Ubisoft in terms of gameplay changes. My only hope, is they bring back classic Overwatch at some point like they did with classic WoW. I can't even begin to play the game in its current state. I can guarantee, that if they open OW1 servers and do a comparision count, they'll have more players on their original game over the so-called sequel. It just feels like a cashgrab just like all their other products. IF they want to kill off Overwatch as a franchise, this is the best way to do it. I had a friendlist of atleast 20 people online playing OW1. Currently, there are less than 3-4 people online, at any given time. That's how many people have quit playing. The whole battlepass system stinks, hope they remove it for their future releases.

As a LOL player from back in the beta, I had several limited edition skins and plenty of legacy skins on my account. All of these skins and unlocking characters took effort and time. Once Riot rolled out their account modification, I was thrown into a brand new level 1 account and no amount of tickets or requests led to gaining access back to my account. A fair warning to new players, while the game is fun, if it lacks the support when you need it - the question to ask yourself is - is it worth your time and more importantly, your effort? The game itself is a pool of toxicity and new players will be forced to deal with moments of rage. The game is designed to make you feel like reporting the toxic elements makes a difference, in reality, it does not. In fact, it rewards toxic players to endlessly troll people looking to have a good time. Another disturbing aspect is the fact that plenty of games have bots and matchmaking has no anti-bot detection which makes the game-play tedious and repulsive. Needless to say, I'll no longer play any game designed by Riot due to their terrible and atrocious support system in place, if it can be called that.

Right from the install I encountered my very first problem. A simple verification email wasn't sent even after 48 hours had gone by. After installing the game, and adding my friend's referral code, the game didn't register the referral link and we were forced to play without the referral rewards. Next when I tried to write a support ticket, their website for the support section fails with an error. I suppose this has to do with my unverified account. I had sent them an email and not a reply so far. This has to be the first game I played that gave me more problems before my playtime had even begun. Once the game was afoot, however, I enjoyed the first 6 levels of the PvE with the gods and gameplay, then began the nightmare of having to go through the matchmaking. I spent 90% of my time watching the death timer due to being matched with an expert playerbase. With that I'd like to conclude this game isn't everyone's cup of tea while the god gameplay was the only reason I enjoyed Smite, the entire system is bits and pieces and quite clearly, the company doesn't care to respond back either. That's my reason for exit out of it.