Arenas, Empire: Total War

Well, I'll have to amend my Empire: Total War score of 6/10 and knock it up to a 7.5/10. The replay ability is there. There's a large number of broken issues, but the combat aspect of the game is slowly getting a little more fun as I play it more. I haven't played too many games where one of the key features was so unnecessarily messy to work with. That's probably a lie. I haven't played many games that were like that Recently. I was kind of expecting a game released in 2009 to not have the same issues as games I used to play back in 1995.

Can't wait for Diablo 3, just because it's been too long. I probably won't even play it for more than 2 weeks once it comes out. I was never one of those hard core people to actually hit level 99.

Did 2v2's today. It's rather ridiculous out there. The new concept from Blizzard as "earning" your way higher? Complete fail. It feels like a deluge of worthlessness. And it only feels worse because I'm not even to 1000 yet despite our MMR going up with the number of wins we've had over 60+ games. MMR used to be about 1700, it's wavering around 1800 now, but our rating is still just a measly 700.

I thought that games were going to get slower in season 6, but boy was I wrong. They've gotten faster. In TBC you could spend 6 to 10 seconds thinking about what to do next and come out okay. In S5 you could spend about 3 to 5 seconds. In S6... you have about 1 to 2 seconds. Otherwise you just lost. It doesn't really feel like I'm playing a game that involves any ingenuity or thought anymore. It feels like arenas are a game of wrote and memorization. Yes, heavy strategy, but it's all strategy that is applied outside of the arena. You don't think up strategy on the spot. You might get some crazy idea and try to pull it off, and it might work, but that's not strategy, that's more like deciding to turn left instead of right. So far this is probably one of the most disappointing seasons I've played in. I didn't think Blizz could make it worse, but they managed.