It seems that everyone, Blizzard blues included, are wishing away the time between now ans Wrath launch. Players are spamming trade chat, guilds chatting away about non nonsensical rubbish and Wow Insider is speed posting pictures and random mutterings. To help keep you entertained, please see the below picture of Ironarm posing in his Paladin Undead Killing plate armor of doom and such.
Showing posts with label Blizzard. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Blizzard. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
A time goes by
Sunday, October 12, 2008
BlizzCon Blog Posts
Thanks to the coverage on Main Event I have written a pile of blog posts over the weekend. You can find links to all of these via this post. They are aranged in the order I wrote them.
Day One
BlizzCon Begins
Mike Morhaime Interview
Class Discussion
Blizzard the Company
Starcraft 2
World of Warcraft World Design Interview - Alex Afrasiabi
Ghost in the System
The Contests
Day Two
World of Warcraft PvP Panel
Jeff Kaplan Interview
Interview with Felica Day
World of Warcraft Dungeons and Raids
World of Warcraft Gameplay Panel
Closing Ceremony
It's a Wrap
Because these posts are based on the Main Event coverage I don't have pictures to associate with the posts so my apologies for the walls of text.
It's a Wrap
Well BlizzCon is over, the coverage anyway. I really enjoyed watching all of the coverage, there was plenty of great information on the World of Warcraft and Direct TV did an excellent job of the coverage. Sure I missed a couple of panels but even if I was there I would have missed tons of stuff. I was also surprised how much I enjoyed hearing about Starcraft and Diablo. I will defiantly be picking up a copy of Diablo 3, it looks like an excellent game. I get the impression that Diablo is like playing through a really good fantasy novel. I don't really understand how it works but it seems that you can play through it with a friend. Perhaps Alassiel will get a copy too and we can play through it together.
Starcraft also looks really worth getting; I used to play a ton of real time strategy games and really enjoyed them. The inclusion of a branching quest system and compelling story might just win me back into that area. Of course the best bit of all gaming is playing with a friend and the same will go for Starcraft so I’ll have to con my old RTS buddy to grab it as well.
The highlight would have to be Warcraft panels, I enjoyed them the most. Only one thing was completely missing, that was the 3v3 Arena competition. Watching professionals in the arena would have been quite a valuable incite. Hopefully I will go to next years BlizzCon then I can get to experience it all first hand.
Closing Ceremony
Paul Sams closed up the evening with a farewell, video highlights reel and thankyous to the Blizzard guys who worked hard to put the convention together. This was followed by Kyle Kinane (comedian) who livened up the crowd with some humour vaguely related to the convention and Blizzard but just generally funny. Patton Oswalt, also a comedian, followed him with more humour. Less amusing, in fact much less amusing more inappropriate and annoying. Patton was the voice of Remmy, surprising because he didn't seem to be able to go for long without swearing or saying something really uncool. How this guy managed to score such a high profile gig is beyond me.
Thankfully the Level 80 Eilete Tauren Chieftains were a lot better, in an amusing kind of way. The band is made up from Blizzard employees; they certainly got an excellent response from the crowd. They played The Power of the Horde, Terran up the Night, Rogues do it From Behind, Night Fall, Diablo(Raise some Hell) and I am Murlock. Their show also had some semi stand up sketch stuff as well. Nice work guys!
To close up the days coverage was Video Games Live. Video Games Live is a live orchestra, band and choir which perform the music from video games. The performance included music from all the Blizzard games past and present and it was all absolutely fantastic. In fact I was taken by how much just the music stirred my emotions. A perfect way to close it all up!
World of Warcraft Gameplay Panel
A star studded line up took on a barrage of player questions. Due to the huge variety of topics I have bulleted some of the most interesting points.
The panel did a good job answering the player questions, they also too some of the crap without breaking a sweat. One question which wasn't answered “why does it cost me $70 to have a tiny authenticator shipped to me?”, I guess I’ll have to ask that on the forums.
Jeff Kaplan Interview
This interview was more of a recap of some of the panel information and information released during the beta. He also discussed upcoming content patches, of which there will be plenty relating to Wrath of the Lich King and that we could expect siege weapons in PvE. They have also started planning work on the next expansion. He also gave a very clear indication of how fast the levelling from 60 to 70 would be, currently it takes about 5 zones to get to 70. When the level change is put in place on Tuesday it will take only 2-3 zones. For players still fighting through the last few level this will really help them make it before November 13th (14th for us). I have mentioned Jyade and Bhoni before, well they are in their mid 60s at the moment so this change is for you guys, you can make it!
Read Full ArticleWorld of Warcraft PvP Panel
This panel launched straight into it showing off the new arenas. There are two new arenas in Wrath of the Lich King both of which have some very different elements from the arenas we see at the moment. To begin with both have dynamic elements. The Ring of Valor will have four moving pillars which will block line of sight and can be stood on to get out of melee combat. There is also two fire strips which damage you breaking up the arena floor into three sections. The Dalaran Sewers also has dynamic element, a pillar of water in the centre of the arena. A few people expressed concern about these dynamic events when this was originally announced. However a lot of the concern related to the randomness of them triggering, which has been changed to a static timer. I think it will be interesting even if it is somewhat tricky. Dalaran Sewers had a couple of other points, it's really quite small and the majority of the arena is on a platform accessible from two points, that could make it tricky for melee who get knocked off. Additionally you can't mount in this arena, although you can use travel and ghost wolf form. Both of these arena are also interesting as they will force players out into the arena. The Ring of Valor, via the lift which drops the teams really close to each other and in the Dalaran Sewers if you try to stay in the starting pipes you will get knocked out on to the floor.
The coverage stopped right after the arenas section but Strand of the Ancients was discussed in the following short interview. In response to player feedback it will be a 15v15, as opposed to 10v10, battle field with an assault and defend scenario.
There was another later interview about PvP, Cory Stockton talked about the new content for PvP. Lake Wintergrasp will offer a raid instance for when you win the zone and the rewards have been improved from the BC world PvP rewards. The improved rewards and the raid instance are designed so that players will continue to return to Lake Wintergrasp. Rewards includes mounts, gems and items you can hand down to your alts. The raid boss will drop a piece from any of the armour sets excluding head and shoulder items. Lake Wintergrasp will also include NPC aspects similar to Alterac Valley and daily quests.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Starcraft 2
I know this is a Warcraft blog but I feel it would be valuable to mention one of the other major announcements from BlizzCon. The Starcraft game play panel began with some nice game cinematic and story background. This was followed by a short game play demonstration. The game looks quite nice and fun to play from the small amount I saw and it is backed up by an excellent storyline. They have also steered away from a linear sequence of missions toward a system where you have choice of different missions which can be taken in your own order.
The big announcement is that Starcraft 2 will in fact be a trilogy of games. Each will have a campaign for one of the factions and each campaign will be an epic story line.
Oh and they showed a new cinematic! I like Blizzard's cinematics.
The Contests
At BlizzCon they have several fun stage contests, costume, dance and/silly. To begin there was the costume contest. There were some stunning and extravagant costumes, obviously a lot of people have spent a great deal of time working on them. Some of the Draenei costumes were very effective also by picking a simple armour participants were able to craft them really well. There were some very cleaver costumes such as a paladin bubble hearthing and a tauren hocky player and a few good double entries such as a hunter and their pet.
The entries were overwhelmingly Warcraft related, with only a couple of Starcraft and Diablo entries. Additionally most of the entrants were female.
My favourite and the winner was the female Draenei shaman in season three arena gear on a full size animatronics riding turtle complete with shield and weapon.
Original song and movie contest presentations were also made. Neither the songs nor movies were shown so I can't judge them. The only exception was the over all winner Snacky's Journal 4. I have seen some of the Snacky's Journal episodes and they are quite good. Hopefully they post all the songs and movies on the Blizzard site for us to see.
Sorry I was enjoying the jokes too much to dictate them into this blog. Well except this one “what class in World of Warcraft do women like the most... male enhancement shaman”.
These were followed up by the 'profession' comedian Jeff Lewis also know as Vork from 'The Guild', You Tube, TV show. Finally the day was closed off by the MC presenting the winners of the /silly (the shaman joke got 2nd). The only contest remaining is the dances; the footage appeared to cut off as though there was more about to happen so I can only assume that will be broadcasted tomorrow.
1:30pm
EDIT: A very short dance contest package was aired Sunday morning, a girl doing the undead dance won but there was plenty of other great entries.
EDIT 2: Snacky's Journal was show later on the second day of coverage, it's very well put together, amusing and very deserving of it's overall winner status.
World of Warcraft World Design Interview - Alex Afrasiabi
Questing has evolved from Burning Crusade. In Northrend there is more involvement from the big bad (Arthas) so even if you never get to raid you should still be very aware of his presence. They have learnt from their mistakes in the Classic and Burning Crusade games. The use of phasing is also making a difference to the world and to quests. This is most visible in the Death Knight starting zone. Some things to do with changing the environment are now possible thanks to this revolutionary technology and we should start to see these in Northrend. However they have had to be very careful with this as bad use of phasing could really confuse players. For example if players on different steps of a group quest chain can't see each other they would be very annoyed.
An interesting note which arose from viewer question was that there are no world bosses in Northrend because of some of the player collision (PvP and Griefing) issues that have arisen with them in Azeroth and the Outlands.
Alex also revealed that there will be a world event attached the patch next Tuesday. In Alex's own words “All kinds of craziness is going to happen... your going to have a reason to go to Northrend”.
Blizzard the Company
Something I noticed from the walk through of the offices, sure they are showing off on international TV, but they look fantastic. The look and feel of the complex was wonderful and it had a strong sence of branding. There was plenty of pictures on the walls, statues relating to their games and it was obvious the staff loved their jobs.
Blizzard now have nearly 3,000 staff, for having that many people Blizzard do a pretty impressive job keeping secrets. That’s says something about the commitment and loyalty of their staff something that would be the envy of many other companies.
An addition motivation to stay with Blizzard is their 5 year service award a sword, ten year service award a Lordaeron shield and fifteen year service award a ring. From an HR perspective Blizzard's massive popularity and peoples desire to work there is a double edged sword, they must get some excellent applicants for every job but they probably have to sift through thousands of applications.
Class Discussion
The class discussion, conducted by Greg Street (Ghost Crawler) and Tom Chilton, for the World of Warcraft started with Death Knights. Some explanation about where the class has evolved from and touching upon runes and runic power. The starting zone for Death Knights will be a zone worth playing through just for the experience, even if you don't want to level all the way to 80. Something that was very interesting is that the talent trees are less task specific. Apparently you can use any tree for either DPS or tanking.
Greg then started to go through some changes to the classes. There were some excellent explanations about how and why they had made certain changes; i'm not going to detail everything as there was a lot of information. He touched upon shadow priest DPS, discipline healing ability in raids and the removal of racial talents for priests. Mind sear is apparently a popular new ability among Blizzard staff. Moonkin were covered, discussing mana and crowd control and DPS issues. This brought a smile to Alassiel's face. There was a huge reaction to Paladins by the audience; in fact they got their own slide in the presentation.
Warriors have been the main tank for a long time, they wanted to make sure that warriors were still desired, but not the exclusive tank, after the removal of crushing blows. They also wanted to make sure that there were “fun things” to take in the protection tree in addition to the mitigation abilities. A desire was expressed by the designed to maintain a very clear difference between the different tanking classes while ensuring they all have the tools they need.
In terms of groups, flexibility was addressed. Ensuring that more different class/talents were viable in raids, focusing on the idea that you were bringing the player not the class. They didn't want the game to be about buffs and potions but gear and skill. Player skill will be the most important reason to chose someone for a group. The implementation of spell power will make life easier for healers when soloing. The same goes for threat generation based more on damage, for tanks, as opposed to high threat abilities.
Yes, they are working on a dual spec system. They want you do be able to swap talent spec mid raid but they don't seem to have too many details yet. Obviously not a system where you can swap from arms to prot and back again I the middle of an arena battle but they don't want you to have to head into town every time you need to swap. On top of that they want to improve the UI to support different gear sets. Implementing something like outfitter or item rack where switching gear sets easily while still keeping these sets in your bags.
Mages, rogues and warlocks were the source of the most questions. Lots of points were mentioned, I started tuneing out sorry, making mages do more DPS isn't at the top of my priority list. Sadly no questions were asked about warriors or priests.
Mike Morhaime Interview
Direct TV interviewed Mike shortly after the opening speech. A fair amount of focus was placed on Diablo 3, but there was also some discussion of the upcoming film, apparently there is a script. Mike gave no strong confirmation to anything, which isn't too surprising. There will be another BlizzCon at some stage and yes there is another MMO in development but, apparently, we won't be hearing much about it for a while. We can also expect more ads along the lines of the ones staring Mr T and William Shatner, one of the celebrities has the initials OO, could that be Ozzy Osbourne? There was also a video of his office; it was touching to hear how the company was founded on a loan from his grandmother.
Read Full ArticleBlizzCon Begins
Time counts down, fifteen minutes to go. It is 4:45am and I haven't really slept all that well. The excitement builds as the coverage hosts banter back and forth about the upcoming day. It seems like this weekend should be a coffee drinking, sleep lacking, marathon.
Finally the opening ceremony begins, and a humble Mike Morhaime apologises about the ticket debacle, apparently they sold 15,000 tickets in 15 minutes, and welcomes the audience. Its a tough crowd and even getting a sentence out is tricky with repeated interjections of cheering. After his opening spiel there is a highlights reel from WWI earlier in the year in Paris. This is followed with a replay of the Wrath cinematic. Then some Diablo news, another class is announced for the third game, The Wizard.
Mike did a great job, gamers are a tough crowd and without a massive ground breaking announcement he was somewhat unarmed. Sure a new class for Diablo 3 is nice but that only satisfies a portion of the crowd. This is however only the introduction perhaps the panels later in the day will hold more Warcraft information.
Friday, October 10, 2008
Welcome to BlizzCon
“BlizzCon is a celebration of the Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo franchises and the communities that surround them. This two-day event will contain Q&A panels featuring Blizzard Entertainment developers, social events for players and developers to meet one another, and hands-on gameplay featuring your favorite Blizzard Entertainment games.”
This weekend BlizzCon will be held Anaheim California. In fact as I write this Blizzard fans are swarming around the area collecting entry badges, checking into hotels and stocking up on energy drink. I was shocked to discover last night that not everyone knows what BlizzCon is, well, it’s the place I wish I was right now. There will inevitably be major announcements, excellent displays and most of all, thousands of people who share my passion. All entrants will also receive goody bags with some excellent items in them. Sadly BlizzCon didn’t coincide with when I was in the US so it will have to wait until next year before I get to go.
However, I am lucky enough to be able to watch the live coverage on Main Event (Pay TV) thanks to Alassiel’s mother. There is no internet connection there but I will be writing posts to put up as soon as I get home. Expect to read about all the major announcements as you brew your coffee Monday morning. Read Full Article
Ask a Question Rules
So there is a competition at Blizz Con to have your question asked to the developers. 20 people will get their question answered as well as a cool prize. However there are some weird restrictions as to who is eligible to enter. Normally it is restricted to only the US, so to see Australia listed at all was nice. However if you live in the sates of Queensland, Victoria or ACT you are not eligible. Firstly who ever wrote this need to revisit their geography, the ACT is a territory not a state. Second why are Qld, Vic and Act not eligible. It just makes no sense!
There is a reason I’m annoyed about this. Alassiel and I have purchased the Blizz Con coverage on Main event (pay TV) and I wouldn’t have minded getting a question answered. Also the purchase of this coverage is supposed to entitle you with a cool in game mount and I am worried this will set a precedent of my state not getting our mounts.
If you are wondering my question is “What is the next gen MMO you are working on?”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
