We watched this movie during the end of the year holidays and I wish that there would have been snow here in Brussels. Unfortunately, just like every other years, it’s only wind and rain.
However, this movie brought enough snow for one evening as we get to spend 95 minutes with four other people during a blizzard, stranded at an isolated highway rest stop in the mountains. One of them is the owner of a van in which is hidden a kidnapped little girl.
Maybe I haven’t watched enough thrillers in my life (I seriously doubt that), but I didn’t predict half of what happens in the movie. We watched it without reading the novel it is based on but I added it to my read list for next year.
The cinematography and score were surprisingly excellent for a low budget B film. All casting and performances were spot-on, especially Havana Rose who nailed the painful scenes and, believe me, there are quiet a few of those.
These are the kind of movies I wish were being made more often. It is relentlessly fast paced and grounded with twists and a solid R rating that they aren’t afraid to use to its full potential.
We had a very good time with ‘No Exit’. It’s our kind of movie and it’s one I would highly recommend.
A few days ago, we’ve received an email from Blizzard with our statistics from the first season of Diablo 4, it’s a really nice touch and I hope that they’ll continue with the next seasons. We both enjoyed the Season of the Malignant but we didn’t go further than level 80 because we were busy preparing our trip to New-York. We both played a Sever Necromancer and the Malignant hearts were synergising perfectly with it, making our corpse explosions and corpse tendrils auto-casted. We’re now trying different builds for the Season of Blood and we’ve already narrowed it down to Pulverise Druid and Fury/Rapid Fire Rogue.
It’s kind of strange that it took us so long to write something about Diablo 4, especially knowing that Hack’n Slash are our favourite games. This is actually the third version of my Diablo post. Since the first beta, we went through three stages:
The Beta: we didn’t enjoy it;
The release: we enjoyed the campaign but we ended up disappointed by the gameplay;
The first season: amazing!
During the beta, we were quite disappointed by the slower gameplay. We’re used to Diablo 3, Path of Exile and Grim Dawn, where we can destroy an entire map with very little downtime. In Diablo 4, the builder/spender builds are slower and the monster density is very different from what we’re used to. It was very frustrating at the start.
At launch, we actually enjoyed the campaign which is absolutely amazing! Blizzard’s seal of quality is everywhere: the gorgeous cinematics, the huge amount of details and the soundtrack. The scale of the world is also very impressive. Unfortunately, the gameplay of the Barbarian and the Sorceress made us very nervous and, once the campaign was complete, we found it hard to continue. We played very slowly because the weather was very warm and the PCs made it even warmer in the office. So we actually completed the campaign two weeks before the release of the first season.
The launch of the season changed everything. We started with a Necromancer with the sever build from Maxroll and, with the synergies of the malignant powers, the gameplay feels amazing. Since we had completed the campaign before the season, we could skip the story and I was afraid to run out of things to do, but I was wrong. Between the renown, the malignant dungeons, the whispers, uncovering the map, the altars of Lilith and so much more, we never ran out of things to do. We’ve been playing the entire weekend with sessions of 5-6 hours and not once have we felt like we were doing twice the same thing, all that thanks to the variety of activities.
The Team behind Diablo 4 wasn’t afraid to change things and it really pays off, they delivered a superb game and I can’t wait what they’ll come up with for the next seasons.
As I write this post, I’m watching the Exilecon 2023 and the gameplay videos of Path of Exile 2 look fantastic. What a time to be an ARPG fan!
The new expansion releases in less than 2 weeks, so there’s no time to waste.
The Search For A New Main WoW Character
For a few months, we’ve been using all our gaming time trying to decide which class could replace our Hunter as main characters. Here’s a little break down of our research:
Elemental Shaman: You like casting Chain Lightning? Because you have to cast it 12263737 times/hour which makes it very dull.
Balance Druid: The spec we’ve tried the most. It could have been nice, wouldn’t it be for eclipse… We both get very nervous after a few hours keeping track of the short duration dots, full moon/mushrooms, astral energy and being in the right eclipse. I thought that it would all become muscle memory. It doesn’t.
Shadow Priest: In dungeons, in raids or in the open world, the game has become an AOE fest. So, having to use Mind Sear as main AOE ability easily becomes easily frustrating. Too bad, we really enjoyed this one.
Destruction Warlock: The lack of mobility, in and out of combat is very frustrating. Burning Rush isn’t enough, if you even talent in it.
All those hours spent trying other classes were kind of hardhat they made us realise how much we enjoy our BM hunters. I guess that using the same rotation (give our take a few minor changes) for a decade becomes a bit old at times, but it remains the most fun for almost every aspect of the game. So, we’ll keep maining our hunters in Dragonflight, without any doubts in our heads.
WoW’s 18th Anniversary
Happy Birthday to the best game ever created! I’ve been playing it for more than 16 years and I can’t imagine a world without it anymore. Sharing the adventure with Soforah is also one of the best thing ever.
Unfortunately, the celebratory event isn’t too fun. It could have been if these damn Dragons would chain stun us until oblivion. So, event complete, let’s move on.
Dragonflight’s Pre-Launch
The first phase was filled with classes and specs experiments (hundred of hours). The new talent trees are great but we’ll only get to experience the real thing when we’ll be 70 and geared.
The second phase got us really hyped for Dragonflight. We’ve created two Drachtyr (even though we don’t plan on playing it) and we went through their starting zone. It gave us a taste of the Dragon Isles which really look awesome! The pre-launch event is also pretty great, we especially enjoy the revisited version of Uldaman and the huge chaos surrounding hundreds of players simultaneously farming the primal invasions. Is it me or it feels less laggy than Shadowland’s pre-launch event?
Soforah and I are having a blast in Shadowlands. Between the Anima hunt, the mushroom quests, Torghast, the covenant upgrades and Korthia, our daily routine is really fun and diverse. However, reading the developer update made us very excited for the things to come. I’m also glad that Blizzard continues to be the kind of developer who listens to the feedback, despite the negative vibe spread by the toxic community.
Well, that’s a lot, but what makes me really happy is:
21 new soul shapes (mostly critters), I wanna be a squirrel and a cat;
Soloable Islands expeditions (we didn’t give it enough love during BFA);
Year after year, World of Warcraft has lost its popularity. There’s always been negative people but their voices were lost in the ocean of positivity that was surrounding the game. Expansion after expansion, the game has lost its identity, trying to satisfy too many different types of gamers. Victim of its own success, WoW entered a slow and painful descent, no king rules forever.
Keeping a good PR when only haters can be heard is a difficult job, especially when your product so heavily depends on its community. So, when a developer publicly calls one of the last big streamer “an a**hole”, it’s time for damage control. It never happened and, ultimately, the streamer left for another game, taking with him hundreds of thousand followers.
As one’s misfortune often benefits another, FF14 reaches now a total of 22 millions accounts. The store even has to place people in a queue, only to purchase the game.
As if it wasn’t enough, California sues Activision Blizzard over a culture of ‘constant sexual harassment’. I’m not gonna quote the entire lawsuit, but we’re talking about lack of support by HR to the victims, encouragement of this behaviour by the CEO, J. Allen Brack, and even Alex Afrasiabi being called the Bill Cosby of Blizzard. It goes as far as the suicide of an employee after a week-end/relationship with her manager and her bullying at a company meeting.
From in-game protests, massive unsubscribes and tons of flaming forums, I can tell you, internet reacted accordingly to the gravity of the situation. There can be no compromise toward this kind of attitude, there’s no place for frat boy culture in this world.
Since the departure of its former CEO, the Californian company has only shown disregard for its community and its employees. I remember the last Blizzcon of Mike Morhaime, when he said about J Allen Brack “You think you know him, but you don’t”. I often wondered what he meant… I think that I know, now.
I know that Blizzard isn’t the only company with an horrible behaviour towards women but, if we want the world to change, examples have to be made and Blizzard prepared its own gallows by first angering its own crowd.
E3 has come and gone. All over internet, gamers were going crazy with anticipation, begging for their yearly fix of hype. And, as usual, the developers threw us scraps. I went back to my cave with my tail shaking, but uncertain whether I should feel excited or disappointed. Between ridiculous announcements like Mario Rabid (lol) and a new BMX game from Ubisoft (there is still a public for that kind of crap in 2021? I’m baffled!), not much happened.
Starfield’s teaser looks good but I was more excited about the Elder Scrolls 6 Easter egg it contained. I’m also happy for Outer Worlds 2 but, once again, the trailer had absolutely no gameplay shooting.
Meanwhile, Blizzard revealed the release date of Diablo 2 Resurrected (23.09.2021). Finally, something concrete came out of that week.
I’m in Heaven right now and I’ll probably be for a few years. Yes, you read well: YEARS! Diablo 2, the game that ruined my first university years but made the rest of my life better is about to be “resurrected”. Even better, it’ll be released on or before December 2021, which instantly makes this year a great one, filled with news, hype and a huge countdown.
We’ve watched the Diablo II: Resurrected Deep Dive panel and it seems that the remaster is in very capable hands. The folks at Vicarious Visions are very committed to bring Diablo 2 to modern days graphics while keeping the experience as close as possible to the original. Also, we get a shared stash!
The new Diablo 4 class, the Rogue, was announced and it looks amazing, with a mix of range and melee attacks. The trailer is pretty dark, which is a good thing. Diablo 4 development is moving on and it feels great to know that there are so many great things ahead for the Diablo fans.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=b0k0dOBEeZs
As if it wasn’t great enough, Blizzard had Metallica perform “For Whom the Bell Tolls” in a studio version exclusively recorded for the Blizzcon.
Oh, I almost forgot, something was said about Diablo Immortal but I didn’t really pay attention. While My initial attitude toward it was pure hate, I think that I’ll probably give it a try anyway but, even if it’s amazing, I doubt that it’ll change my attitude toward phone games.
We’ve spent the morning listening to Metallica and we’ll probably spend the rest of the day playing Diablo 3 and watching all the Diablo panels from the Blizzcon. Life is better than good!
Cataclysm was the first time I was disappointed by Blizzard. So many of my favourite zones were ruined by Deathwing and the new zones were not as great as Storm Peaks, Teldrassil or Shadowmoon Valley… By wanting to do too much, they had lost something.
Diablo 3 was released and it was crippled by the real money auction house. Instead of giving more love to the games that I was playing, they started creating more franchises that I didn’t care about. That’s when I’ve lost the connection I had with the company.
Their fanbase changed and I had less and less the feeling to belong in the community, only to a small part of it.
Those criticisms come from my own experience with their products. Unlike the criticisms that are turned against their behaviour as a company.
People got mad over the layoffs at Blizzard, then they were angry at them for banning a Hearthstone player who broke the rules of his contract.
First, I find it not my place to judge the behaviour of the company regarding the way they handle their management. If they need to do cuts in the staff, it’s their duty to do so.
Second, regarding the Hearthstone player, why is there a rule in the contract that says that players cannot state political opinions? Not because we should all hold hands together and sing songs, but specifically to avoid the kind of situations where you force a company to pick side, at the eventual expense of a part of their market.
Why do people get so mad? I believe that the backlash is very emotional because Blizzard build its success on creating a community of fans. They were the good guys, the geeks making games for the geeks.
It’s not because Blizzard is now seen as a corporation instead of a bunch a cool dudes making games that there are no more cool dudes at Blizzard. They are still there and they probably have the same opinions as us, but they also know when to leave the business aside and focus on the real reason why we are all here: live epic adventures.
Diablo remains the Hack’n Slash franchise I’ve played the most in my life and is only second to World of Warcraft when it comes to the amount of hours I already spent in a game. To me, that’s what matters and that’s why I’ll continue playing Blizzard games as long as I have fun.
