From the question at the title screen.... The version number is likely made out of a changelist number from their version control - every time someone makes a change to content or code, they submit that to a version control system and the number goes up by one. It's to keep track of what goes into any given build at a glance, both on the client and on the server, probably.
@odinreborn: read what I said. I've been playing it for more than 10 years, I played Vanilla -> Legion. I don't have any illusions about what they've done to the game - I consider Legion to have been the best expac they put out. I got into game dev professionally because of how much Blizzard and Warcraft was a part of my life.
But the lead creatives left during Legion, and it shows - halfway through they really ran aground, and it hasn't recovered. What they've done to the game in terms of lore, which was a strength of the game at least enough to keep some people feeling like it was a worthwhile use of time, is forever there and ruinous - a giant ridiculous Mary Sue and inconsistent storytelling. Warcraft's never been a good story, but it had a consistency and process that was hard broken when the creative vision holders of the team left.
Even during Legion they've just been rehashing the pinnacle of class designs, and then taking them away each expac. The game really stopped getting new interesting things in MoP - they've added new systems, but the core combat for most classes stopped changing around then.
None of this is to even touch on what a horror show Blizzard is now in general. Anyone still supporting them out of what they used to be or because it's a comforting thing to not think about should DEFINITELY spend that money somewhere else.
My heart breaks every time they talk about WoW because it's so much worse a game than deserves those numbers but momentum carries them through. I played it for over 10 years since Vanilla, and I loved it, but they really drove it into the ground and I left - Legion was the true ending of that game. The story, design, and mechanics are so pathetic now and the people that care about it at all have left the dev team, but it still gets those half-hearted "yeah, it's good I guess..." that tricks people into buying it. It's the same game being cut up and served for the past few years, for an expansion fee and a sub fee no less. BfA should've killed it but people looking for comfort keep it afloat and keep bringing people into the mediocre fold.
Glad Rorie mentioned it... the stuff Wizards of the Coast is doing with Magic is heinous, greedy, and destructive, lol. Here's hoping Larian polishes the shit out of this over this year, because it looks awesome
Man, the Hollow Knight hate is mind boggling... it is easily the best game I've played in the past 10 years from world-building and feeling like it was a creative, original thing. I hated the look of it originally, but it wasn't the twee-goth thing I thought it was going to be - it consumed me in a way I haven't experienced in forever. Hating it because you had to buy a map, just.... k.
The animations are just SO gawdy... I played League for a number of years before Dota (it's more my speed and I am not a fan of all humans vs. humans), and knowing all the scummy stuff Riot's been up to, I just can't get over how loved this game is already (I'm also bitter about how Artifact tried a unique thing, its take on a marketplace, but got written into "PAY TO WIN" instead, and now is just a meme...). It doesn't seem to have a real "killer" design feature aside from "it's like game X but with League!".
Ah well, not every game is meant for everyone.
Edit: Sad GB got rid of Worst Trend... "Beta" but still has a fully implemented cash store, or chat system through emotes, can't figure out which I hate more :'(
@impatientandy: IIRC the Dota Autochess mod came out of a WC3 mod pokemon autobattler. People keep saying "it should go pokemon" and it cracks me up XD
I like the implementation of interest and showing it physically instead of in a tooltip. Aside from that, I don't think I like anything about TFT... all the League characters look too similar (and having to choose them in a carousel seems nuts given that, which they encounter in the Quicklook), and the item RNG is still here from the DAC mod and is the most unbalanced, bullshit thing about the genre... going to stick to Underlords. Because it's League, it will probably get more people, which is unfortunate, but I do like the competitive explosion around the genre.
Man... a video game came out that was bad and lied about and disappointing and there was a data breach, but that's a hotter mess than sexual discrimination, mass layoffs, targeted harassment? The fact that industry practices ranked anything less than first in that category is part of the problem with this industry and why it won't change.
I get that this is a subjective list, Giant Bomb isn't aiming for objective journalism, and all that hedging, but holy crap... as someone working in this industry this is the worst feeling I've had in months, and that includes recent crunch time. It's revealing how all this lip service being paid to working conditions is just that, and from one of the few forces (the media and public opinion) that could actually force the industry to make changes. This kinda stuff is why the burnout rate in the industry is so high, no support. Condemning it, saying how bad it is... but then ranking it less than a release debacle.
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