Board 8 > Anagram Ranks Anything Blizzard Entertainment-related

(+) Yeah! (+)

radio free zerg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEmnpRSgqQk

(this is in response to a Hearthstone expansion)

Anagram posted...

Cole Cassidy: I mean, honestly, I can't blame them for wanting to distance the character from a sex pest, but the explanation they came up with was... "I didn't want to give you my real name, so I invented a nondescript fake name, but I have suddenly changed my mind and want to use my real name again, prompted by nothing." I don't know how I would have handled this, and I guess it doesn't matter anymore, since no one cares about Overwatch anymore, but to me, he'll always be McCree.

I think it was kinda perfect that it was already hinted at for ages beforehand that McCree wasn't his real name. Worked out well I guess.

The Horde Bias vs Alliance Bias was the constant bickering back and forth between the story focusing too much on one or not enough on another, brought to a head in BfA where Horde was tired of having yet another Snidely Whiplash for a warchief and have the Alliance's WQs having Horde do legit heinous shit like bombing a hospital. And meanwhile Horde keeps losing major racial leaders - Vol'jin, Garrosh, Sylvanas, Thrall (isn't a leader or a shaman anymore), Galliwix (nobody liked him anyway, but still), Rastakhan (I mean, they joined Horde immediately after he died, but I still count it), Saurfang... ugh. Meanwhile Alliance lost Varian *and that's it.* Yes, we're all cozy with each other now with the shared continents and optional War Mode, but I'm irked that I play mainly Horde and the only Horde NPCs I've *seen* in War Within are Thrall (meh), Gazlowe, and Lillian Voss (okay she's cool.) Meanwhile, Alliance has Jaina, Alleria, Anduin, and Moira all hijacking plots and sideplots, on top of the Stormhammer that isn't Falstad and therefore I don't care.

Razzum frackum.

Nomination: "Looking for Baal?"

Archons

I was gonna do Pandaria but I'll just ask for Mists of Pandaria as a whole.

12 Days of Christmas

Arthas

Dota

LinkMarioSamus posted...

12 Days of Christmas

In reference to what Blizzard thing?

Isquen posted...

The Horde Bias vs Alliance Bias was the constant bickering back and forth between the story focusing too much on one or not enough on another, brought to a head in BfA where Horde was tired of having yet another Snidely Whiplash for a warchief and have the Alliance's WQs having Horde do legit heinous s*** like bombing a hospital. And meanwhile Horde keeps losing major racial leaders - Vol'jin, Garrosh, Sylvanas, Thrall (isn't a leader or a shaman anymore), Galliwix (nobody liked him anyway, but still), Rastakhan (I mean, they joined Horde immediately after he died, but I still count it), Saurfang... ugh. Meanwhile Alliance lost Varian *and that's it.* Yes, we're all cozy with each other now with the shared continents and optional War Mode, but I'm irked that I play mainly Horde and the only Horde NPCs I've *seen* in War Within are Thrall (meh), Gazlowe, and Lillian Voss (okay she's cool.) Meanwhile, Alliance has Jaina, Alleria, Anduin, and Moira all hijacking plots and sideplots, on top of the Stormhammer that isn't Falstad and therefore I don't care.

I guess that makes sense. I don't know the details of how the plot has progressed post-WotLK, but I can imagine the Alliance usually coming out on top and not having wackjobs for leaders. But like, the Horde really brought it on itself by not instantly deposing Sylvanas and Garrosh. Especially Garrosh, at least Sylvanas can sit down and pretend to be normal for a bit.

Anagram posted...

In reference to what Blizzard thing?

StarCraft

Tower Defense

SCVs, drones & probes

- Power Overwhelming
Defense of the Ancients: WC3 is a pretty good game, so it's interesting that a random fan made a better game with UMS. Back in the day, DotA was incredible. You could just search for a game and find a thousand open lobbies. Everyone loved it, and for good reason. Focusing solely on controlling a single hero while giving all of the grand strategy elements to the computer even further emphasized the RPG elements of WC3 while losing essentially nothing. And it's one of those rare instances where the guy just got everything right in one try, to the point where modern DOT2 and LoL still use basically the same map. This created an entire genre that we now call MOBAs, but back then was just "DOTA clones." How many knockoffs were there? Sixteen year old me even made his own DOTA clone, and although I've long since lost the map, it WAS functional. It's not even a difficult type of map to program! Even I could do it! Just 11/10 game for the time, completely outmoded WC3 itself. Blizzard still kicks itself for not lawyering up a way to own fan maps at the time, and by the time they did it for SC2, no one cared enough anymore to make any popular maps. The cool and unique abilities, the endless references to other media, this just did everything exactly right. By the way, I've never played DOTA 2, so don't ask me about it.
StarCraft
User Map Settings
Warcraft III
Necromancer (Diablo 2)
Diablo II: It's funny, because although this is unquestionably the definitive roguelike ARPG, it's also completely outmoded. Like, I enjoyed it and everything, I remember my friend Thomas in high school watching me play and calling it a "brainless click game," but let's be clear here: there is nothing this game offers that more modern games like Grim Dawn don't offer. I guess if you really like that classic late 90s pixel art, maybe? I'll admit the atmosphere is strong. But I still have to give it an ultra high ranking because it is a great game that changed the gaming landscape forever.
Leeroy Jenkins
World of Warcraft

- Jacked Up and Good to Go
True Colors (StarCraft mission)
Scarlet Monastery
Corrupted Blood Incident
Make Love, Not Warcraft
In Utter Darkness
Witch Skin (Mercy)
Tower Defense: Alongside DotA-clones, this was THE UMS map type. And why not? It's easy to understand, easy to make, you can make a million variations of it, and there's actual strategy to it. So popular was it that even one of the Blood Elf missions was a tower defense game! It's honestly just a really good concept, and a lot of fun.
Battle.net (Original)
Zeratul
Zerg Rush
Red Shirt Guy
Archon: God, these are so cool. As a dumb 10-year-old, these were my favorite unit. I was aware that they aren't actually good, even back then I could tell, but along with Dark Templars, they tick every box for being badass cool guys. Psychic floating aura creatures enlightened by their own intelligence (euphoric), who are just 'above' what is going on around them, but will zap you with psychic lightning anyway? Goddamn, just flawless executed. But I'll be honest, they're cooler the less you can see of them. When they're just vague silhouettes in a burning aura, they're super cool. But in SC2, where you can see that they basically look like WoW air elementals with fancier armor, they lose a lot of their mysterious coolness.
Saviors of Uldum (Hearthstone Trailer)
Auction House (WoW)
Terran Theme 3
Campaign-only Units
Arthas: By default, Arthas is the best "good guy gets corrupted by bad mojo" character in these games. It's between him, Kerrigan, and Sylvanas, and the worst thing to happen to him was being in Shadowlands briefly as a voiceless ball of light, so he's the least ruined automatically. But it's also true that his story is probably the best constructed of them, because he's the only one with a choice in his corruption. Kerrigan gets infested and then just accepts what she is (until SC2), and Sylvanas gets turned into an undead against her will, whereas Arthas has an opportunity to just fuck off at every single step, and everyone he knows keeps telling him to do exactly that. The Culling of Stratholme is probably the single best mission in any Warcraft game, even if Arthas turns out to be absolutely the worst person in any game ever at explaining things. "Uther, they're gonna turn into undead and attack the countryside unless we kill them all right now." But that aside, it's plausible that Uther and Jaina would have left anyway, so it's not that big a deal. Arthas sacrificing and losing everything so he can keep pursuing Mal'ganis, burning his own boats, showing Jaina the importance of listening to others' advice, and slowly losing his mind is actually done very well. There's never a single moment where Arthas takes a hard left turn, every step makes sense at the time. And then he turns into a Death Knight, has an actual friendship with Kel'thuzad, and gets into an anime fight scene with Illidan. Brilliant, perfect. Illidan is yet another foil to Arthas, as the guy who wants something desperately and throws away everything he already has to achieve it. And yeah, Arthas is kind of ruined in WoW, it's true. Like, it is made 100% crystal clear at the end of TFT that Arthas and Ner'zhul melded into a single being, but then in WoW, eh, forget about Ner'zhul, he doesn't matter. But yeah, Arthas had the benefit of being the main antagonist in the best WoW expansion, he had the benefit of actually being set up ahead of time in WC3, and he had the benefit of not being 100% ruined like Illidan... although, it's true that Anub'arak and Kel'thuzad don't get off much better than Vashj and Kel'thuzad. Every single one of the six of them goes out like an absolute punk except for Arthas, so good for him.

- Stay a While and Listen
Jeff Kaplan Dinoflask Videos
Witchwood (Hearthstone Trailer)
Demon Hunter (Diablo)
Galvadon (Theme)
Siege Tanks
Roadhog
Pokmon RPG StarCraft UMS Maps
SCVs, Drones, and Probes: I appreciate that SC makes an attempt to differentiate the worker units. I'll admit, though, that SCVs are much more memorable than the others. Probes are just little robots and drones are gross insect things, and I always hated how you have to lose a drone to make a new building, even if the game is balanced around that. The SCV is the only one that gets personality, it's the only one with a special ability (repair), and it's also the strongest in an actual fight. I mean, obviously the drone has to be a boring insect thing, and the probe being a robot makes sense (the Protoss would logically automate that kind of thing so the individuals can focus on their meditation or whatever), but they're so damn boring. And this holds true in SC2. I like how the SC1 SCV is just a nice, pleasant guy who's happy to do his job, that's what someone in that position would act like, and then the SC2 one is just a gruff redneck. Again, these are good things. Like, you'll hear me complain about SC2 a lot, but never about the worker units! ... That said, I feel like you probably could have found a way to make either the Zerg or Protoss replace their worker unit with some other alien thing to make them more unique, kind of the way Night Elf Wisps were much different from all other WC3 worker units.
Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker
Jaina Proudmoore
Tyrael
Light v Tempest
Stop Poking Me
Nukes
Diablo 1 Recreation Event (Diablo 3)
Sombra ARG
Tychus Findlay
Wrath of the Lich King Opening Cinematic
Winston
Psychopath Mei
Ilios Bottomless Pit
Overwatch SFM Pornography
Mystery Deathmatch
Diablo (Game)
Griefing
Creep (Zerg)

- Systems Functional
Alamo
Un'Goro Crater
World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade
Blizzcon
Yogg-Saron, Hope's End (Card)
Voyage to the Sunken City (Hearthstone Trailer)

Samir Duran: Look, I'm just going to say it. If I'm an ancient shapeshifting alien and I want to infiltrate some rednecks, the absolute last disguise I'm going to use is an African freedom fighter. Duran's brilliant plan to infiltrate an army of rednecks is to become the only black man in the entire galaxy. And don't tell me the SCV pilot is black, that's just weird lighting. Maybe the Firebat is, I don't know. Anyway, in SC1, Duran is secretly a Xel'naga who's working against everyone for mysterious goals, under a mysterious other entity. And you just immediately know that this guy is not to be trusted, and he completely manipulates DuGalle the entire time and completely clowns on everyone, even Kerrigan, and removes the literal only person in the entire game who sees through his shit, Stukov. And then near the end of the game, Zeratul learns that Duran is trying to hybridize the Zerg and Protoss, what a twist, there's this FIFTH player in the game, what's going to happen, who's he working for, what kind of resources does he have?! And then in SC2, you meet a minor character named Emil Narud, who is clearly Duran, still manipulating everyone, who just HAPPENS to be an expert on Protoss and Xel'naga technology. And then Kerrigan kills him, and he shows up in monster alien form again later, and Stukov kills him properly. We never even got a SC2 version of Duran's original portrait. Why is this guy even loyal to Amon? What does he get out of destroying all life in the galaxy and oh my god this is random but I just remembered the Primal Zerg, god, I have to stop. Look, Duran as he is in SC1 is fine, but he's still not some amazing character. He's just setting us up for the next game, which is perfectly acceptable. As a dumbass kid, I didn't get the Duran Duran joke.
Town of Salem
Death Blossom
Vaelastrasz the Corrupt
Darkspear Trolls
Warriors (WoW Classic)
Mass Carriers
Retribution Paladins
Mercy Multi-Rez
Thrall
12 Days of StarCraft: I didn't even know this existed. Well, nice little bonus for players, I guess, but it's not blowing my mind or anything.
Mists of Pandaria: I'll level with you: years after this came out, I used a free demo to try out the starting area, and... it's okay. As far as blatant attempts to appeal to China go, I don't know, this is tolerable. It's bizarre that they took what was clearly just a silly joke in WC3 and turned it into an entire expansion by itself, and I do not like the idea of monks in Warcraft, but it is what it is, and it's not ruinous unto itself. I can stand having a China-inspired culture in WoW, it's fine. I have absolutely no idea what the plot of this expansion is beyond "Pandaria finally opens up to the wider world, and half want to join the Alliance and half want to join the Horde," though. You'd think they'd still be semi-isolationist and view those factions as violent weirdos. Ignoring the issue of this being a joke that got out of hand, I sort of already knew everything you'd see in Pandaria going in. Fantasy China has very specific aesthetics that always get repeated, exactly like Fantasy Europe, and the only twist this time was that the people are pandas. Look, what I'm saying is that this neither excites nor annoys me. I'm completely neutral to this expansion conceptually. It's possible the story went in a bonkers direction that I would have hated, though.
Jaedong
Warsong Gulch
Horde Bias vs Alliance Bias
Bethesda, BioWare, and Blizzard
Heroes of the Storm
Javelin Amazon
WoW Classic
Nazeebo
Bob, do Something!
Overwatch and TF2 Comparisons
Jade Golems
Wings of Liberty
Dr. Boom (Card)
Looking for Baal?: I mean, whatever. To me, this name was completely ruined by Bravely Second, where they make a joke about the girl being a Ba'al Buster like twenty times, it's incredible. That game is not as good as the first, although it's a million times better than the third.

- Fifty DKP Minus
Sombra
Terran Building Flight
Warcraft II
Ana
Lost Vikings II: Norse by Norsewest
Jeff Kaplan Videos
Stratholme
Sarah Kerrigan
Radio Free Zerg: I'm gonna level with you: I never really liked this that much. But I'm glad they had a sense of humor back in the day. God, I love how StarCraft's box art is three faces, where one is a random Hydralisk, one is a human who's not in the game, and the third is a Protoss face that looks like no character we ever see. I remember seeing that box all the time at stores as a kid and wondering if that's supposed to be Zeratul. "Serve the Hive, feel the groove / I control the way you move" is pretty good as far as lyrics go, but the actual song itself is kind of shitty.
Mike Morhaime
Lost Vikings
Un'Goro: The Journey: I want 2 minutes and 50 seconds of my life back. I guess it's kind of funny that he bothered to make this after people complained about the lack of a song to go along with the trailer and made a reddit petition for him to do it, that's kind of amusing I guess. But the song itself is awful.
Warcraft I
Murky
Legacy of the Void Opening Cinematic
Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans
Hero Shooter (Genre)
StarCraft II
Warcraft (Film)
Silicon & Synapse
Blackthorne (Game)
Flying (WoW)
Goldshire Inn (Moonguard)
Call of Duty on Battle.net
Symmetra's Shield Generator Ult: God, I forgot about this. Did you know that literally nothing in Symmetra's original character video is true anymore? Every single one of her abilities has been altered. She is easily the character Blizzard had the least idea what to do with in gameplay terms. In story terms, it's Lucio, that guy is a "freedom fighter," but it's never clear what he's fighting against. Symmetra's company, maybe? Who even knows. Anyway, it's very obvious why this was invented and then quickly replaced: they wanted Symmetra to be the shield hero, they wanted that to be her 'thing,' but then they realized that she was really boring to play and difficult to balance, so they just sort of gave up and changed every single ability she had. Remember how she was originally supposed to be a support hero, and Blizzard was like "support means more than healing," but it's like, no one wants Symmetra on their team instead of another healer. The only thing she did back then that was useful was zap Tracers and Genjis to death with trapped doorways, which yes I admit was hilarious.
Scepter of the Shifting Sands Quest Chain: Wait, is this the giant server-wide thing to gather a million pieces of cloth? ... Okay, no, it's just a crazy-long quest chain. Yeah, I have mixed feelings about these. No one wants to deal with super long quest chains like these, like it's cool once, but only once. BRD also had problems with this.

- You Are Not Prepared
Diablo III: Reaper of Souls
6 Bastion Team
StarCraft 64
Microsoft Acquisition
Auction House (Diablo 3)
7v1 comp stomp no noob no bs
Ready Player One
Cole Cassidy
Do You Guys Not Have Phones?
No Mercy TikTok Trend: I lost 3 minutes and 56 seconds of my life watching a video about this. This is stupid. TikTok is stupid. Too bad Trump didn't actually manage to ban it.
World of Warcraft: Shadowlands
Bobby Kotick
Always Online
Nova
Activision
Being Corrupted into a Being Raid Boss

- Not Even Death Can Save You
Sylvanas Windrunner
Warcraft III: Reforged
BlitzChung Incident
Overwatch 2's PvE Cancellation
Blizzard (Weather)
Cosby Suite

Alterac Valley

Big Game Hunters

Nomination: Meat Hook

(With regards to Pudge, and it subsequently appearing in WoW itself/every Moba under the sun/on Roadhog)

What is the best modern D2 clone? Is it Grim Dawn?

Prison Break

wow quests

Tassadar

Aldaris

Diablo III

Wrath of the Lich King

redrocket posted...

What is the best modern D2 clone? Is it Grim Dawn?

Grim Dawn's the best I've played, though I know a lot of people swear by PoE.

Mei's Snowball Offensive

Junkenstein's Revenge

modern D2 clones

WoW Onyxia Wipe animation

Anagram posted...

Scepter of the Shifting Sands Quest Chain: Wait, is this the giant server-wide thing to gather a million pieces of cloth? ... Okay, no

I have a very specific love for this quest because it got me a free run through Molten Core and all the loot from it I wanted.

Anyways, Ulduar

Artanis

redrocket posted...

What is the best modern D2 clone? Is it Grim Dawn?

Assuming you care nothing for Path of Exile, probably.

What about Torchlight?

- Power Overwhelming
Defense of the Ancients
StarCraft
User Map Settings
Warcraft III
Necromancer (Diablo 2)
Diablo II
Oynxia Wipe Video: I couldn't find anything, so I assume you mean the famous Minus Fiftty DKP video, right? This is my personal favorite WoW video, higher even than Leeroy Jenkins, because it's actually real. The sheer rage this guy is feeling at every single second of his life is amazing and super relatable. Having to coordinate 40 people is very difficult, and his constant cursing and screaming and MINUS FIFTY DKP shouts are a perfect representation of what it's like to realize you're about to wipe because someone fucked up, and there's nothing you can do to stop it. The very specific instructions he gives "EVEN GROUPS GO RIGHT," "MANY WHELPS HANDLE IT," are wonderful. I love how people turned this guy into a soundboard and actually played him during Ony raids to direct people, because his instructions are good. I think my favorite part might be the girl in the background calmly talking the entire time about unrelated nonsense to her friend and not caring about the wipe, God, it's just such a perfect representation of what raiding in 2005 was like. I don't even know if there's a modern game that still has 40-man PvE battles, I know WoW lowered it forever ago to just 15. For me, this even tops Leeroy Jenkins and the infamous funeral attack videos.
Leeroy Jenkins
World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King: I think everyone will agree that this was the height of WoW as far as gameplay, story, and aesthetics are concerned. Yes, there were retcons about Arthas, and we'd already dealt with the BC retcons. But there was still JUST enough of the unknown adventure of the original game left before you could instantly look up everything in one second. The Death Knight class wasn't even a bad addition! I kind of liked them! The Viking aesthetics of the Vrykul, the Inuit Tuskarr, the magical blue dragon palaces, the Titan creations, the weird and sort of pointless crystal forest, Dalaran and the last of the high elves, the Scourge, and the fact that Blizzard now had enough experience to know to make the armor sort of match so that you didn't get ridiculous PCs like that one infamous orc shaman, all of this combined to have by far the most visually coherent setting WoW ever achieved. This was when WoW still had enough of the original devs to know what they were doing, who'd had years of experience to know what not to do. I looked up the Dracthyr once and laughed at how awful they look, it's incredible. WotLK is the last gasp of what Warcraft once was, even if it's still very different from the RTS days. This is the last substantial plot line set up during WC3 (I know that Azshara later shows up and there are time-traveling orcs from the second game, whatever), and if you can forgive Anub'arak and Kel'thuzad going out like punks and some questionable writing with Arthas, then everything finally comes together. The instances are all really good, too! Maybe I shouldn't say "all," I don't remember every single one perfectly, but I don't remember any of them being "that" instance that you want to avoid. This is where they introduced the idea of teleporting to an instance with a group finder, which completely negates the adventure and PUG aspects of the game but was certainly a good decision from a gameplay perspective, and the idea of setting a lower-level instance to be max level for better gear. This is even the last time Sylvanas does anything that I don't hate, where she enslaves Valkyries and kills them and revives them so she can learn if she's fucked in the afterlife, the answer to which is shockingly reasonable: yes. Bolvar Fordragon's "there must always be a lich kingggggggggggggg" isn't even bad in context! And I personally benefitted from this being when paladins were at their most useful and powerful, I remember frequently doing more damage as a tank than the DPS and them getting snippy about it. I guess you can argue that Legion is actually the expansion pack that finishes WC3's storyline, but let's not even go there, I hate that entire expansion pack (that I never played) just because of one thing it establishes about the lore. Oh, and here's the orc shaman from all the way back in the day:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/7/7dbc0f1f.jpg
This was when WoW finally had enough knowledge of how to avoid this, which is good.
World of Warcraft

- Jacked Up and Good to Go
True Colors (StarCraft mission)
Scarlet Monastery
Corrupted Blood Incident
Make Love, Not Warcraft
In Utter Darkness
Witch Skin (Mercy)
Tower Defense
Battle.net (Original)
Zeratul
Zerg Rush
Red Shirt Guy
Archon
Saviors of Uldum (Hearthstone Trailer)
Ulduar: Alright, listen, listen, listen. Listen. The best stuff in WoW's storyline is about the Titans' creations surviving without them, which is part of why WotLK is the best expansion. The Vrykul, Earthen, and even Mechagnome stuff is all good. Even the GNOMES are good in WotLK! There are some bad parts, but they are MOSTLY solid. Going around seeing the crumbling remains of the turbogods from space is cool! Seeing their creations gone awry and having to fight them is cool! The entire questline about the Dwarven Archeology Society is awesome, it is actually insane that no one made a story about dwarves being archeologists before, because it makes complete sense that the people who live underground and like digging would also be into archeology. And having to fight Algalon the Observer as the final boss instead of that stupid Old God, as he tries to summon the Titans to scourge the world of life and just reset it, is a cool idea. Just a well-handled instance all around. Have a song. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBtMb_4KnAo
Auction House (WoW)
Terran Theme 3
Campaign-only Units
Arthas Menethil
Aldaris: Aldaris is great. He's just such an unreasonable asshole who refuses to ever consider the other side's point of view, and interprets every failure as meaning that you're incompetent. Like, if you were writing this as a proper story, what you'd do is you'd have the entire Conclave on screen a few times and have them debating about what to do with the Dark Templar and Tassadar, you have the semi-reasonable ones be reluctant and then the hardliners, led by Aldaris, just be constantly pissed off. The fact that he's the Protoss narrator during gameplay is also funny, it makes sense for the Terran adjutant and the Overmind, but why Akdaris of all people? But in the end, you have to give it to him. He is the one and only person in the entire galaxy who immediately sees through Kerrigan, immediately recognizes the scale of threat she presents, and turns on her at the first opportunity. Everyone else thought she could be reasoned with or whatever, he's the only person who sees her for what she is, and he deserves respect for that. Too bad the mission where you fight him doesn't randomize which position he spawns in, so once you've played it once, you know exactly which holograms to ignore.
Junkenstein's Revenge: The original Overwatch event, and honestly, still the best. The idea of casting Overwatch characters as monster hunters in the 19th century is genius, it makes complete sense for Junkrat and Roadhog to be Frankenstein and his monster, and the twist that the villain is actually Mercy is great. It also has the strongest event skins on average, though that's because it's benefitting from Halloween having the strongest aesthetic of any holiday. I was never able to finish the highest difficulty, we'd always get close and then fail, but that's the way it goes.

- Stay a While and Listen
Jeff Kaplan Dinoflask Videos
Witchwood (Hearthstone Trailer)
Demon Hunter (Diablo)
Galvadon (Theme)
Siege Tanks
Roadhog
Pokmon RPG StarCraft UMS Maps
SCVs, Drones, and Probes
Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker
Jaina Proudmoore
Tyrael
Light v Tempest
Stop Poking Me
Meat Hook: Oh god, I don't remember this from DotA at all. AT ALL. But the idea of pulling a target to you is just so simple and so powerful. It completely changes the geometry of the battlefield, it forces your enemies to play way more defensively, and everyone understands everything about it after seeing it in action once. To me, this is just one of those classic video game moves, like charging in a straight line to do extra damage at the cost of being able to turn or stop.
Nukes
Diablo 1 Recreation Event (Diablo 3)
Sombra ARG
Tychus Findlay
Wrath of the Lich King Opening Cinematic
Winston
Psychopath Mei
Ilios Bottomless Pit
Overwatch SFM Pornography
Mystery Deathmatch
Modern D2 Clones: I don't blame people for reheating leftovers in the microwave, but let's not pretend they're doing anything else.
Tassadar: In terms of screen time:ruinedness, Tassadar definitely has the greatest inverse ratio in StarCraft. It is incredible how quickly SC2 manages to ruin him in the like forty seconds of screen time he has. So, in SC1, Tassadar is a cool guy. Not the coolest, but cool. He's the only mainline Protoss who immediately recognizes the threat of the Overmind for what it is, who immediately knows exactly what to do, who is immediately willing to put aside his ego, and who treats the Terrans with some respect. He suffers for it, and eventually he has to sacrifice himself to bring down the Overmind, and the game ends with his heroic death, and everyone in BW is like "Man, Tassadar was awesome, I wish he was still around," and it makes complete sense. Then in SC2, Zeratul finds the Overmind's corpse, and Tassadar's ghost shows up, and Zeratul's like "dude how are you here when you're dead." And what does Tassadar respond with? "I have never tasted death, Zeratul, nor shall I, but that is a tale for another time." That's right, SC2 ripped off ancient prophecies about chosen ones from the Star Wars prequels, and the Star Wars sequels ripped off "but that's a tale for another time" from it. Incredible. Then Tassadar spends the rest of his screen time explaining that the Overmind is a misunderstood good guy who did nothing wrong and that the Zerg were never evil, but you should watch out for this new bad guy no one ever mentioned before named Amon, he's the real threat. Ah well, at least Tassadar is lucky enough to just disappear after that, he doesn't get a completely humiliating and pointless death like Duran.
Diablo (Game)
Alterac Valley: I'll level with you: I have never won AV literally ever, vanilla or classic. I never got the Ice-Barbed Spear on my paladin, even though I really wanted it. In vanilla, I played on Deathwing, and the Horde was way better than the Alliance. AV also takes absolutely FOREVER to finish. There were games where I logged on before school, hoping to quickly win, had to log off, logged on after school, and the same game was going on. The nearest comparison I can think of is 2Fort in TF2, but even that you could end on your own if you were fast and clever. And when AV did actually end? The Horde won every time. I guess not every time, because I did other people with Ice-Barbed Spears, but every time I ever saw. The closest I ever came to winning was when we made it to the Horde base, we were actually inside and fighting Drek'thar, but the Horde still managed to push us out and extend the game long enough that I had to log off. It was infuriating. The idea of this gigantic battlefield where 80 people fight is good, but man, Alliance players on my sever just weren't up to par.
Griefing
Creep (Zerg)

- Systems Functional
Alamo
Un'Goro Crater
World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade
Blizzcon
Big Game Hunters: THE StarCraft multiplayer map, all others need not apply. I never actually played a full 8-man FFA, but I did play some 3v3s. I remember as a kid, I wanted to have every variation downloaded, even though I knew you could just make new ones whenever you wanted, so I would join games exclusively to download a version I didn't already have. And I suck balls at StarCraft. Just to be clear, in case this was ever ambiguous: I am terrible at RTSes.
Yogg-Saron, Hope's End (Card)
Voyage to the Sunken City (Hearthstone Trailer)
Samir Duran
Town of Salem
Death Blossom
Vaelastrasz the Corrupt
Darkspear Trolls
Warriors (WoW Classic)
Mass Carriers
Retribution Paladins
Mercy Multi-Rez
Thrall
12 Days of StarCraft
Mists of Pandaria
Jaedong
Warsong Gulch
Horde Bias vs Alliance Bias
Bethesda, BioWare, and Blizzard
Quests (WoW): I mean, they're okay? Sometimes they're okay. Sometimes they're not. "The quest" is such a staple of fantasy, when really you can argue that every genre has them, since every narrative ever has to have the protagonist have a goal. But saying "quest" just sounds so fantasy-y.
Heroes of the Storm
Javelin Amazon
WoW Classic
Nazeebo
Bob, do Something!
Overwatch and TF2 Comparisons
Jade Golems
Wings of Liberty
Dr. Boom (Card)
Looking for Baal?
Artanis: It might sound like I hate Artanis, but the truth is that he's just really boring. I understand exactly why he exists. After Tassadar dies, the only other Templar PoV characters left are Fenix, who's like a weird Worf character in a robot, and Aldaris, so you need to introduce a new one. And it's a good idea to make him visibly and audibly younger than all of the other Protoss heroes, who in SC1, they all sound like they're at least 60, Artanis is the only 'younger generation' one. So the idea of this hotblooded young blood hero taking over as Executor and leading the Protoss isn't bad... but he just has nothing going on. He is JUST a good guy. Even Raynor has doubts and regrets over what happened to Kerrigan and his spite toward Mengsk, even Tassadar at least has to deal with obnoxious Conclave dictates that make no sense, Artanis is JUST a guy. You'd think SC2 would do something new with him, but it doesn't! He is still JUST a guy.

- Fifty DKP Minus
Sombra
Diablo III: I'm not going to lie and pretend this is the worst thing ever. It's a functional game. It's not as good as D2, it's a step down in most ways, but it functions as a video game. Worst launch of any video game ever until Concord, though, I remember you basically just couldn't play it for days because Blizzard insisted it be always online, and then didn't prepare its servers for the launch day. I don't know, I feel that by this point we'd earned some hope despite the setting being so dour. Leah's death is just so cruel, Deckard Cain dies for nothing, and Diablo is just back. He's just back again! At least D4 knew not to bring him back. It's shocking that they realized they shouldn't have him return a fourth time, but they finally learned their lesson. But for a game that predicates everything on hopelessness, there isn't as much gore and horror as there should be, D2 looks WAY grosser and more horror-y than this game. I remember laughing when the "twist" that the little boy king is a demon is revealed, and your character just knows without evidence because it's obvious. From a gameplay-perspective, the game is FUNCTIONAL, but it designs everything so that all stats are pointless except vitality and one other based on your class, so gear with higher levels is always better than low-level gear, as opposed to D2, where some low level gear was better on some builds. And let's not even go into the blatantly evil thing that was the AH. I remember there were people who literally tried to make a career out of farming and AH manipulation. What an embarrassing thing to want to do with your life. Oh God, and I just remembered the final level of the base game, where Diablo keeps calling you on your cell phone and telling you that he's totally gonna kill you just you wait, it's just so embarrassingly bad for your villain to act that way.
Terran Building Flight
Warcraft II
Ana
Lost Vikings II: Norse by Norsewest
Prison Break (World of Warcraft): ... I must be misunderstanding you, you can't mean this utterly meaningless and forgettable WoW quest, can you? Where you just click a button on a box five feet away from the guy who gives you the quest, and then the quest is finished?
Jeff Kaplan Videos
Stratholme
Sarah Kerrigan
Radio Free Zerg
Mike Morhaime
Lost Vikings
Un'Goro: The Journey
Warcraft I
Mei's Snowball Offensive: I never liked this one as much as the other events. I like that they made an entire new map for it with new aesthetics, though, that was genuine effort. No one likes Mei, do they? I can't remember anyone ever giving a shit about Mei other than when people drew her supporting Hong Kong after the BlitzChung thing.
Murky
Legacy of the Void Opening Cinematic
Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans
Hero Shooter (Genre)
StarCraft II
Warcraft (Film)
Silicon & Synapse
Blackthorne (Game)
Flying (WoW)
Goldshire Inn (Moonguard)
Call of Duty on Battle.net
Symmetra's Shield Generator Ult
Scepter of the Shifting Sands Quest Chain

- You Are Not Prepared
Diablo III: Reaper of Souls
6 Bastion Team
StarCraft 64
Microsoft Acquisition
Auction House (Diablo 3)
7v1 comp stomp no noob no bs
Ready Player One
Cole Cassidy
Do You Guys Not Have Phones?
No Mercy TikTok Trend
World of Warcraft: Shadowlands
Bobby Kotick
Always Online
Nova
Activision
Being Corrupted into a Being Raid Boss

- Not Even Death Can Save You
Sylvanas Windrunner
Warcraft III: Reforged
BlitzChung Incident
Overwatch 2's PvE Cancellation
Blizzard (Weather)
Cosby Suite

redrocket posted...

What about Torchlight?

Played the first, it was okay, couldn't get through the second. I think Torchlight 1 was the last game I ever bought a physical copy of other than Switch games.

Glad you liked Ulduar, that was always my favorite raid. Getting that 310% speed dragon made me feel like a king.

nom: The Horde

Hearthstone (game)

Warcraft III having a heavy focus on heroes

Anagram posted...

Prison Break (World of Warcraft): ... I must be misunderstanding you, you can't mean this utterly meaningless and forgettable WoW quest, can you? Where you just click a button on a box five feet away from the guy who gives you the quest, and then the quest is finished?

I'm talking about rescuing the dude from Blackrock Depths for the Onyxia key. It's called something different if you're Horde or Alliance. I thought "prison break" would be enough to identify it.

For that matter, nominate Blackrock Depths

kek

The Scourge of Lordaeron (WC3 campaign)

Vicarious Visions

Infestor

Anagram posted...

Oh god, I don't remember this from DotA at all. AT ALL. But the idea of pulling a target to you is just so simple and so powerful. It completely changes the geometry of the battlefield, it forces your enemies to play way more defensively, and everyone understands everything about it after seeing it in action once. To me, this is just one of those classic video game moves, like charging in a straight line to do extra damage at the cost of being able to turn or stop.

It's funny that it's also relevant in current WoW, because Necrotic Wake is in the dungeon rotation again (puke) and you have to have the flunky hook his boss over to make the boss vulnerable (double puke.)

Nomination: Rogue (Diablo 1)

Mengsk