Amazon Promises LotR TV series, Delivers Golden Packs For Hearthstone

I’ve been exhausted lately. In the last week, I completed season 12 objectives of Diablo 3, in bed. I can only say this was a satisfying single-player experience. And post a pic.

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Lord of The Rings TV Show

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Amazon announced a LotR TV series today, which is mind-blowing. There is no date set yet, and no cast, but they say they are committing to multiple seasons. This commitment must be a licensing thing.

What stories could they tell? Gandalf and Aragorn were very active between the Hobbit and Fellowship, but I’m not a lore expert. I just hope there are as many hobbits and elves as bearded men with wenches and big swords.

It’s been a while since I really looked forward to a TV show. I’m currently an Amazon Prime subscriber. Amazon now allows monthly subs, which is very cheap for a lot of value.

Sub for a month, watch the shows, order your stuff, unsub, for around $10. Plus right now you get a golden Hearthstone pack in Twitch loot. Not bad.

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Diablo 3

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As a mostly clueless Diablo 3 newbie, the season reset offered a good opportunity to create a new character and learn how to play the game. The difficulty and learning curve were perfect.

So I beat a “Greater Rift” in 15 minutes on difficulty 20 to complete the season, and now I have a level 70, 75 paragon Monk with a shiny gold hero portrait, and a complete Uliana set and build.

I thought I’d like the angel wings reward, but they’re a bit much.

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Hearthstone

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Blizz announced a new expansion, Kobolds and Catacombs. The theme has a nice Disney flavor and introduces a new single-player dungeon game mode.

No one is really sure if the mode will be good, or why Blizzard devoted development resources to this mode, or why people will play this mode, since they say it offers no real rewards.

The introduction of “legendary weapon” class cards in Kobolds is also a little ‘meh’. Just a good excuse to create overpowered cards that people have to have, and craft.

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Gaming Stocks

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Take Two (TTWO) and NVidia (NVDA) were two big winners in the last two weeks of quarterly gaming company earnings reports. Electronic Arts (EA) had the weakest results of the big three developers/publishers in focus on Wall Street.

Activision Blizzard (ATVI) was somewhere in the middle.

Blizzard still soared last week on news of record-breaking release for Call of Duty: WW2, but then sold off again on general market weakness.

I purchased EA and held for a week up to the day of earnings, and sold before earnings for a very slim profit.

I also purchased Disney (DIS) within minutes of the rumor that they were talking to Fox studios about a purchase.

Disney went up, but I was not willing to hold through earnings. I washed out at break even. Earnings ended up bad, as I predicted. But it didn’t matter! The stock kept running anyway based on hopes and the force (Star Wars).

So Disney looks bullish into the movie release, but buying and holding seems a little premature to me. Analysts are predicting intense competition for the video game space. Why not also for entertainment in general.

I finally sold JD (JD.com) at break even, since I am already overweight China e-commerce with a double in Alibaba, and would rather diversify more in emerging markets (EEM) during a downturn. I didn’t realize JD announces earnings this Monday, though.

JD will probably soar immediately now that I sold, of course, but even if it jumped 10%, it would still be the weakest stock in my portfolio.

I am watching ANET (Arista Networks), and wondering if it isn’t too late to get in. I’m watching Z, ALB, APA, and CTRP. Broad market risks right now are very difficult. Since I’m obviously very risk averse, I’m still waiting for another serious dip.

There is speculation that people have been waiting to sell stocks this year, hoping for tax breaks that will be in force next year.

So January could be unusually bearish, but this week Congress suggested legislation maybe closer to 2019, and that’s partly where the market weakness came from in the last few trading days. Then there would be no point in waiting until January to sell.

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Holiday Gaming!

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Holidays. Vacation breaks. Good times. I already pre-purchased the Hearthstone expansion.

I’m very interested in CoD:WW2, since I’ve always preferred historical or diabolical shooters over other kinds, but I really want to buy CoD on the Blizzard launcher. Blizz added an Activision section to their launcher, featuring only Destiny 2, but that’s it.

Players are griping and DansGaming about this, but I’m fine. I really like the Blizzard launcher, except it is a bit of a resource hog. Are they going to add CoD? If so, I would rather have all my games on the Blizz launcher than have to load Steam.

That’s it. I’m trying really hard to get back to work on my game project. Next post will probably be post Kobolds and Catacombs. Happy holidays, and happy gaming.