Because Gabriel is far more tenacious than I am, his scams succeed to a far greater degree than mine. Maybe they aren't even scams, I don't know. Maybe they are completely legitimate requests. But because I think of them as fundamentally tawdry, it probably comes through in my mealy, plausibly deniable demi-asks. Long story short, we have Heroes of the Storm.

It's entirely possible there are too many "mobas" right now, but I'm obsessed with finding and playing new ones. I don't know enough about Dead Island: Epidemic to tell you about it yet, but I can tell you I have a code, the game installed, every intention of figuring it out: it's far more than just a clever TLA. Of the traditional sort, I think Dawngate has a lot to recommend it actually. It thinks there's value in the old ways, but maybe not as much value as the Pillars do.

As a point of comparison, Heroes of the Storm doesn't give a shit about tradition.

I was talking to someone about what became of Real Time Strategy a week or so ago, but it's not super hard to figure it out. As the traditional RPG became deprecated and lost currency, it entered the fruiting phase and the spores entered every other genre. All a "moba" does is collapse the complexity of the genre down to a single unit and add a level curve. It's complexity comes from its economy and the metagame. Pretty much, right?

Hearthstone takes Collectible Card Games, cuts a little too deep, but polishes it in a rock tumbler so long that the result is… smooth. I don't like Secret Cards as a replacement for the complexities of causal chains, but causal chains can be fucking mindbending. I understand why they had to go, but t's not going to satisfy technical players. For most people, though, this game is going to be dangerous. Strictly Schedule One - no known medical use, high potential for abuse. For the broadest group. And I want them to play, too.

But I'm not a technical player of RTS games, or MOBAs. So you can nick an artery on that thing, and I won't give a shit. You can turn Jungling into a headhunting expedition, gathering hirelings for your lane. You can get rid of buy/counterbuy on items by getting rid of items altogether. You can open up mines a few minutes into the game, and have players collect skulls to power a golem or whatever. You can remove player levels and level as a team instead. You can get rid of gold. You can operate an abattoir for Sacred Cows, powered by twenty years of this medium's most beloved characters, and it can operate twenty-four hours a day.

(CW)TB out.