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BlizzCon 2009: WoW Raids & Dungeons

2009-08-22T22:15:34Z

If you're into Raids and Dungeons in WoW (and I sure am!), then you've come to the right place! Blizzard revealed quite a bit about both upcoming dungeons in Cataclysm and upcoming WotLK content patches at today's Raid & Dungeons Panel, so let's get down to business!

Let's start with Cataclysm dungeons and work from there:

Abyssal Maw

Pictured at the top of this article is the concept art for this beautiful new underwater 5 player dungeon located in the Sunken City of Vashj'ir.

Abyssal Maw takes place in the elemental plane of water. Entrance is gained by getting pulled into the vortex that exists at the center of Vashj'ir, which transports you to the elemental plane of water.

One of the main features of this dungeon is some new water technology developed specifically for this area, with wide windows looking out from the dungeon into the sea around it. You'll even be able to see fish and other critters swim by as you play!

Abyssal Maw will be a non-linear dungeon, with a choice of two sides, and a central elevator that takes you up to the final boss.

Story-wise, Abyssal Maw will have you finding out just how the Naga are involved with Deathwing, and the events of the Cataclysm.

For more information on Cataclysm dungeons and raids, Icecrown Citadel, cute whelps, and even the new cross server instance grouping coming in patch 3.3, hit the jump!

]]> Uldum: Halls of Origination

Located in the new Egypt-inspired zone, the Halls of Origination is an interior 5 player dungeon that will have you continue the lore of the Titans that you've seen in the Halls of Lightning and Halls of Stone.

This means, of course, that Brann Bronzebeard will be involved somehow, though Blizzard promises that he'll be a little less wordy this time around.

This dungeon will also be non-linear, with multiple paths available for you to finish the dungeon.

Storywise, the Halls of Origination are the rumoured site of an ultimate weapon designed by the Titans, and of course, everyone from Deathwing to the Horde and Alliance want to get their hands on it!

Blackrock Caverns

Blackrock Caverns will be a brand new dungeon located in Blackrock Mountain, allowing you to go back into an old area for some new experiences!

Here, you will explore one of Deathwing's peripheral bases, and attempt to find out just what the Twilight's Hammer plans to do there in Blackrock Mountain.

One little teaser Blizzard revealed is that you might once again encounter The Beast!

BRC will be a linear dungeon.

Raids

But enough about dungeons, what about raids?!

Icecrown Citadel

Let's start off with the raid coming in the more immediate future: Icecrown Citadel.

Icecrown Citadel will be a 10 & 25 player raid.

Contrary to GhostCrawler's hyperbolic post in the forums, Icecrown will involve *only* 12 epic bosses. The instance will be one of larger instances in the game, so Blizzard will continue to use the teleport technology first introduced in Ulduar in order to ease travel times through Icecrown.

The main architectural feature of Icecrown is the central spire, which will run through all four floors of the dungeon. The first floor houses the entrance and some starting bosses, but it's the second floor where some of the really cool stuff happens!

The second floor of Icecrown will be quite the special event! Here, you and your raid will board an airship, and race the opposing faction's airship to the third floor. As you find your way to the top, you'll have to fend off boarding parties that will attempt to jet over to your airship using rocket packs; you'll be able to retaliate by using your own rocket packs to try and board their airship!

You'll also be able to use cannons to fire on the other ship, and hopefully destroy them before they reach the top!

If you're able to beat the other faction to the third floor, you'll be faced with three different wings, all of which will need to be cleared in order to get access to the Lich King's throne room.

It is here that you will encounter Sindragosa, the ultimate frost wyrm.

Once you gain access to the fourth floor, you will finally go up against the Lich King himself, and send him to a cold, permanent grave! Blizzard shared with us some ideas they have in mind for this encounter, dealing with the platform his throne sits on breaking apart, and part of the fight centered around keeping yourself from falling down the side of the citadel.

As an added bonus, Icecrown will also involve 5 player dungeons, with eight bosses spread across three different dungeon wings that will interact with the Lich King. Access to each wing will be granted via an Epic quest line, giving you access to each one in turn as you advance further in the quest.

Cataclysm Raids

Cataclysm will be shipping with a full four raids available right away, so raiders will have plenty of content to pick from!

We only got to see two of the new raids today: Blackwing Descent and The Firelands.

Blackwing Descent

Blackwing Descent will be accessible by flying up Blackrock Mountain into Nefarion's Throne Room (which all of you BWL raiders will be *very* familiar with), and entering a portal right there.

BD will have Nefarion making a comeback, with some old friends coming back, and a new raid dungeon inspired by BWL, in order to bring back some fond memories for us old players.

The Firelands

The Firelands will also be a 10 & 25 player raid, taking place in an exterior instance, much like the beginning of Ulduar.

The instance will be located in the elemental plane of fire, and have you facing off once more against Ragnaros, but this time on his home plane and at his full strength!

Onyxia: WoW 5th Year Anniversary!

In order to celebrate WoW's 5th year aniversary, Blizzard will be updating and re-releasing the Onyxia raid encounter, to have you relive the days of Deep Breath terror, now in level 80 flavour!

Slated to be released in November, the new Onyxia will replace the current level 60 Onyxia. She will gain new abilities and spells, but still retain classic mechanics and feel (like Deep Breath and wyrms.)

The loot will be composed of all the old models from both Onyxia and some MC loot as well, newly updated with level 80 appropriate stats for you to wear! For you weapon buffs, Quel'Serrar will also make a return, with updated stats!

All the T2 helms will make a comeback, using their old models and textures, with one available for each spec of your class.

Onyxia will also drop a new epic flying mount that will have you riding one of her brood.

As a bonus 5th anniversary celebration gift, anyone logging in during the celebration will also receive an Onyxia Whelp pet, which is disgustingly cute! Blizzard is very excited about the animation work done on the pet, which will attempt to Deep Breath at random intervals, sometimes failing in a heart-breakingly cute way, resulting in smoke rings!

Cross Server Grouping

New dungeons and raids are all well and good, but none of it does you any good if you can't find a group to do them, and that's where the big announcement at this panel comes in: cross server grouping!

Slated to be released along patch 3.3.0 (though Blizzard admits this is tentative), the new technology will let you search across servers for people to group up with and enter a 5 player dungeon with, similar to how cross realm battlegrounds work now.

In order to encourage people to use the system and make it even easier to find groups to crawl dungeons with, Blizzard is also implementing a reward system: if you flag as a leader of a cross-realm group and successfully take the group through a dungeon, you will get rewards for your leadership and initiative!

The technology for this cross-realm grouping can also scale to raids in the future, though Blizzard will keep it confined to 5 player groups at the offset in order to test the load and work out the kinks.

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Stay tuned right here to GayGamer.net for more BlizzCon 2009 news!

BlizzCon 2009: WoW: Cataclysm - Paths of the Titans and Mastery

2009-08-22T20:30:43Z

With the introduction of WoW: Cataclysm, Blizzard is looking to overhaul both the talent system, and what it means to progress your character when you've already achieved max level.

The two mechanisms for addressing these areas in Cataclysm come in the form of the new Mastery stat and mechanism, and the Paths of the Titans Ancient Glyph system.

Mastery

Mastery is a new stat that will be showing up in gear that will provide a generic bonus to you depending on the talent tree where you have invested the most points.

Why do this?

Blizzard wants to provide more options to players in talent trees, trimming out talents that only provide passive bonuses, simplifying talents that have too many effects, and to let more pve players choose fun and utility talents that do cool situational things (instead of being forced to take a 5% crit bonus talent, for example.)

Mastery passive bonuses will come in three flavours:

Increased damage, healing, tanking.

Stat-like bonuses (e.g. haste, crit)

Something unique for your spec.

It's the last bonus that gets modified by the new Mastery stat that will show up in Cataclysm gear. The unique bonus will be specific to the spec in which you have the most talent points, which means there will be 30 different types of bonuses, one for each possible spec in each class. An example of such a bonus was shown for ret pallies, which would gain a % decrease in ability cooldowns depending on their Mastery rating.

Other examples include increased poison damage for assassination rogues, reduced energy cost for subtlety rogues, increased pet damage for beastmastery hunters, and increased focus regen for marksman hunters.

The new Talent pane, which will show you all three talent trees in their entirety at all times (no more scrolling!) will show you exactly what mastery bonuses you're getting from your invested points in each talent tree, and how your Mastery stat rating is modifying your unique bonus.

To find out the details about the new Path of the Titans progression system, and just what the heck ancient glyphs are, hit the jump!

]]> Path of the Titans

The Path of the Titans system is Blizzard's solution to max level character progression. With only 5 more levels being added to the max level cap in Cataclysm, Blizzard wanted to add a system that would keep players going down a path of character progression without making it feel like a grind, and with a mechanic to gate the progression, keeping players from reaching "max level" within days.

The main way in which your character will progress down a Path of the Titans is through a new, third type of glyph: the Ancient Glyph. This new type of glyph will show up in your glyph panel, and instead of being a single slot, involves a path progression that goes through ten ranks, with one slot in each rank, each progressively further and further down your chosen Path.

How do you choose your path? Cults that serve various different Titans will be located around Azeroth, and you'll be able to align yourself with a particular cult, providing you with a specific ancient glyph path. At release, Blizzard plans on having 5 different paths, with more to come in content patches.

All these paths will be class agnostic, providing benefits useful to every class. For example, an ancient glyph may provide increased healing from bandages, 20% less stun and bleed duration on your character, an activated ability that has allies take 10% less damage for a period of time, etc. Each path will have 2-3 choices of glyphs per rank.

Blizzard also plans on not letting players advance through all 10 ranks of a path at the release of Cataclysm, only opening up new rank levels as content patches are released.

To get the glyphs to put into your ancient glyph slots is where the new secondary skill, Archaeology, comes in: Your discoveries will be able to be traded in to the cult that you've aligned yourself with in order to earn new glyphs.

The ancient glyph system will also be designed to de-stress the grinding aspect and work more in a gated way. There will be a max amount of progression that you can earn down your Path each week, and the goal is that everyone will be able to get all their ancient glyphs, not only the hardcore raiders/pvpers.

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Keep your browsers pointed right here to GayGamer.net, because we'll be bringing you even more fresh news right from the floor of BlizzCon 2009!

BlizzCon 2009: New Battle.net System Is Coming!

2009-08-22T03:44:16Z

For those of you eagerly awaiting news of the brand new Battle.net system being introduced with StarCraft 2, your wait is over!

Blizzard has unveiled not only the reasoning behind some of the changes that they're making to the system, but also a whole revamp that will make Battle.net your central social network for everything Blizzard related.

There was no mistaking throughout Friday's Battle.net panel that Blizzard is aiming to incorporate much of what's made social media sites and systems like Steam and Xbox Live possible into a Blizzard specific system that will best what's currently available.

For the details on the brand new Battle.net that will debut with StarCraft 2, including account wide achievements, Real ID system, and custom map marketplace, hit the jump!

]]> The new Battle.net started with Blizzard contemplating what's good and bad about the Battle.net present in WarCraft 3 (the last time Battle.net has been upgraded). On the good column, they liked the ease with which you could play with friends, the icon advancement system, great matchmaking, and how surprisingly successful random teams turned out to be.

However, the chat was too disorganised, the multiplayer too disconnected from the single player campaign, the ladder system catered only to the elite (leading to new players getting pwned by veterans), and over time, it was hard finding a game that didn't involve Defense of the Ancients.

This led to a trifecta of core values for the new Battle.net: an always connected experience, a competitive arena for everyone, and to connect the entire Blizzard community.

Always Connected

In order to keep you always connected to the Battle.net community, you'll log in everytime you start StarCraft 2, even if you're going to play the single player campaign only (don't worry if you don't have an internet connection - you'll be able to log in as an offline guest, but you won't be able to earn achievements or improve your rankings without logging on.)

This login system will enable Blizzard to keep your game updated with all the latest patches, as well as always keeping you connected to all your friends, regardless of what Blizzard game they're playing.

When you login, different widgets provide information on different aspects of the game you're playing and the Blizzard community, from news and your friends list, to your stats in StarCraft 2, as well as single player and multiplayer game options.

Much like Xbox Live and PSN, you'll be able to always see your friends list, even if you're in the single player campaign, and be able to chat across games, coordinating a heroic dungeon run with friends that are signed on WoW while playing StarCraft 2.

Each person on Battle.net will also have their own customisable profile page, with privacy controls to let you adjust your information's availability depending on their relation to you (Real ID friend, character friend, etc.), much like Facebook's privacy controls. The profile page also shows gameplay stats, achievements, and rankings.

The new Battle.net system will also incorporate WoW style achievements, but with some improvements. When your friends earn achievements in any Blizzard games, Battle.net will notify you.

Your own achievement progression will earn you custom avatars, as well as decals to use in the new decal system. These decals can be used to customise the actual in game units, giving your own StarCraft forces a personal look based on the achievements you've earned!

Achievements will also be account wide and portable between characters, meaning that if you roll a new character (for example, in WoW) you will not have to re-earn the achievements you've already gotten on your old character.

Another advantage to always having you online is that Blizzard will take advantage of cloud architecture to always keep your save files synced to the cloud, meaning that if you save mid-campaign and sign on at a friend's house, you'll be able to pick up right where you left off without manually transferring any files. It'll all happen automatically in the background.

Competitive Arena for Everyone

Blizzard was extremely unhappy with the ladder system that exists in previous Battle.net games, and wanted a way to let players that weren't professionals still enjoy themselves online competing against others, and to partake of the ranking and ladder systems.

Their solution? A league system that groups you with players of similar skill level to you, and organises ladders and rankings within your skill peers.

Within the first 10 or so games that you play, the system will automatically assign you a league ranking, ranging from Practice League, through Copper, Silver, Gold, etc. and culminating in Professional League.

This means you will always be ranked against 100 players of your skill level within your league, giving everyone a chance to win their division. There will even be end of season tournaments within each league.

Practice League is special in that it comes with special rules to help ease players into the game, including slower game speed, anti-rush maps, and simplified rules.

Blizzard will also be implementing a party system to Battle.net. This means you'll be able to form a group with your friends, allowing you to communicate more easily, and to enter games as a group. You'll even be able to set up games privately as a group, and open them up to the public once it's set up to add extra players to the game (eliminating the need to kick people until your friends are able to join the game you're hosting.)

The interface for joining games is getting a major revamp. All games taking place on a specific map will be consolidated under a single title that you can expand if you wish (reducing the "all I can see is DotA maps" syndrome.)

You'll also be able to filter by map type, game type, and a load of other options, making it much easier to find a game to play that fits your liking.

Blizzard also claims that the new system will reduce cheating and lead to fairer games, since your game key will be attached to your Battle.net account, meaning that if your account is banned, you'll have to buy a whole new copy of the game to make another account and play (making the penalty much higher than the previous Battle.net accounts which were free to make, allowing cheaters to merely make another account when banned.)

This will also minimise "smurfing", where a pro level player purposefully makes a new account that is ranked a lower level in order to play games against low ranked levels and stomping them with glee.

Connecting the Blizzard Community

The new system is designed to keep players informed about all the Blizzard games you have, with news regarding all the games you own on a widget when you log in, much like the WoW Launcher displays news now.

The chat system will be more IM style, with different windows for chats involving different people, allowing you to manage multiple channels and chats with more ease than the previous single-stream solution.

Blizzard also thought about who people wanted to play games with: people usually like to play with real life friends, they make real life friendships based on in game relationships, and people like to play with the same friends as they move from game to game.

To address these, Blizzard is implement a new system that complements the current character based friend system, called Battle.net Real ID.

The Real ID system works much the same way as social networking sites do: friend requests must be mutual in order to add each other to your friend lists, and your friends show up with their real life names on your list.

Since the Real ID is complementary to the normal friend system, your Real ID friends will show at the top of your friends list, with the normal character based friends showing below them.

There will also be a new system called "Toast" that will let users broadcast a message to their friends, showing the message as a popup on the friends list (e.g. "anyone up for some heroics later in WoW?")

Because of the level of information contained in your Real ID, there will be privacy and parental controls, making the system even more like a Blizzard version of Facebook.

This system will ensure that your friends network stays intact across present and future Blizzard games.

Custom Maps and the Map Marketplace

In recognising that the custom map community has contributed much to Blizzard games (e.g. DotA), Blizzard is providing the most powerful map editor yet with StarCraft 2.

They're also making map sharing easier with a central map repository, letting you search and rate maps, and download them without having to join a game featuring the map.

To encourage even more top notch custom map work, and more original works in the maps, Blizzard also intends to debut a map marketplace. This marketplace will allow custom map makers to develop premium maps and sell them for a price, with part of the revenue going to the map creator.

Mapmakers can also release their maps for free if they wish in the marketplace, emulating a model like the iPhone App store.

If your map gets popular, Blizzard will even add custom matchmaking and achievements to it!

While there was a lot of information regarding Battle.net to digest at this panel, I'm sure we'll encounter even more as we attend the StarCraft 2 gameplay panel, so stay tuned right here to GayGamer.net for all the latest news!

BlizzCon 2009: WoW: Cataclysm Announced!

2009-08-21T20:30:04Z

Blizzard has certainly started out this year's BlizzCon with a bang by announcing WoW's next expansion, Cataclysm, right in the opening ceremonies!

The next (and most likely final) expansion to WoW includes quite a few features for fans of WoW, and has verified most of the rumours that have been floating around the Internet lately.

The main story regarding Cataclysm has to do with the return of Deathwing, dragon lord of the earth elemental plane, at the coaxing of the Twilight's Hammer. His return has brought the elemental planes to bear on the land of Azeroth, tearing the land asunder and changing every single zone that you're currently familiar with.

The elementals that have been locked away for millions of years in the elemental planes are now back with a vengeance and have changed the land, and Blizzard will be making full use of the phasing system they debuted in WotLK in order to change classic Azeroth zones even further, with train phasing changing the land in gradations as you complete quest lines.

But enough about the story, what about the new features? Hit the jump to find out what's in store, including new playable races, character progression, pvp info, and even guild leveling!

]]> New Races

Worgen

The Alliance has a new race among its ranks: the Worgen. Blizzard admitted they wanted to have a more monstrous race in the Alliance, and the Worgen are the perfect solution.

The Worgen will be defined by their internal struggle as they battle their bestial nature inside to control it and use it for the good of the Alliance. The starting area for the Worgen will beat even that of the Death Knights, taking you through the history of the Worgen, from the start of the curse of the Worgen, through its spread in society, and culminating in their joining the Alliance.

As far as classes go, Worgen will be able to play all but Paladins and Priests.

The Blizzard panelists on stage tantalised us with hints that an overarching question of the Worgen will be: "are they from somewhere, or some*when* else?"

Goblins

The horde will also get a new race in their ranks: the Goblins.

While goblins have traditionally been a neutral race in Azeroth, the Goblins that eventually join the horde are a specific cartel that is pushed to joining the Horde by the events of the Cataclysm. The panel was unspecific about just what pushes them to join, but promised that the starting area will show us the story.

The goblins will be defined by their affinity for technology, sporting a rocket belt that will be part of their racial abilities.

And their racial mount? A buggy!

New Features

Level cap raised to 85
All level 1-60 zones will be redone, with new leveling progression and quests
7 new zones
An underwater zone with new underwater combat system
Guild Advancement System, encompassing 20 levels gained through raiding, quests, dailies, pvp that will grant your guild special abilities via a talent tree (cheaper repairs, mass resurrection, etc.)
New race/class combos, including tauren paladins, gnome priests, and dwarf shamans
New secondary profession: Archaeology, that will let you create artifacts to take to different titan groups in the world to advance you in the brand new leveling system, Path of the Titans
Mastery system that will provide you passive bonuses for investing your talents in specific talent trees.

Paths of the Titans

The Paths of the Titans is a new character progression system that will be introduced that lets you customise your character. Throughout the world different groups representing different titan factions will be found that will allow you to advance down certain Paths of the Titans that will grant your character powerful abilities.

No matter what your class, you will be able to progress along any of the Paths of the Titans.

Mastery System

The mastery system is designed with taking some of the complexity of the talent trees down a notch.

In Cataclysm, the talent trees will NOT be expanding, so no new talents will be available, although you will receive 5 more talent points to invest as you level to 85.

What the Mastery System will do is provide your character with passive bonuses depending on how many points you invest in a specific talent tree. These may include increased crit rates, higher poison damage, etc.

The New World

The main new feature in the redesign of Azeroth in Cataclysm is that you will be able to fly everywhere in Azeroth, including the old zones. This means that underground cities like the Undercity will now be above ground.

The level flow will change, with new quest progressions, providing a brand new 1-60 experience, with all new terrain as the result of the events of the Cataclysm.

The Sunken City of Vashj'ir, the new underwater zone, is also prompting the introduction of new underwater mounts, that will allow you to have fly speed in water.

Many new dungeons and raids will also find their way to Azeroth, and we'll bring you details later when we attend the Dungeon & Raids panel.

PvP

There will also be new PvP features, including a new PvP zone: Tol Barad.

New arena maps are also on their way, with details to be announced soon.

Another major new PvP feature: rated battlegrounds. Arena haters rejoice! Now you'll be able to get access to the same gear as Arena players by doing battlegrounds!

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And that's a quick rundown of some of the new features that were announced this morning/afternoon regarding the new WoW expansion, stay tuned right here to GayGamer.net for more news as it arrives!

BlizzCon 2009 Is Open!

2009-08-21T17:30:44Z

The doors to BlizzCon 2009 at the Anaheim Convention Center are open and the crowd is streaming in!

You can definitely tell by the size of the line that this year's convention is the biggest ever!

I wanted to give all of you a quick update that a Blizzard staffer let slip as I was walking into the convention floor: when I asked for the collectible programme promised in the goody bag they gave us, his partner promptly reminded him they weren't handing out the programs "because of Cataclysm." He turned to me and told me "we're not handing them out until after the opening ceremony, they contain information we haven't released yet."

Is this final confirmation that we'll be seeing the Cataclysm expansion for WoW that the rumour mills have been talking about? We have another hour to wait for the news!

The opening ceremonies begin at 11:30AM PST, so tune in right here at GayGamer.net for all the news!

BlizzCon 2008: World of Warcraft Raid & Dungeon Design

2008-10-17T20:30:28Z

Wrath of the Lich King is bringing some big changes to raids and dungeons. From the 10/25 man option on all raid instances to the shift in focus from an exponential difficulty curve (aka the "Sunwell Plateau" effect) to a focus on making content accessible to as many players as possible, these changes will have some deep ramifications for how groups will experience World of Warcraft come November 13th.

Join Cory Stockton, Lead Level Designer, as he leads us through some of the new raid and dungeon experiences we'll be encountering in Wrath of the Lich King!

5-Man Dungeons

"We wanted the dungeons in LK to be filled with lore, to be shorter and faster with a more epic feel." The new dungeons in LK have a more expansive art style, but smaller play areas to create that "epic, but faster" feel. Blizzard has achieved this by placing many of the dungeon spaces within vast expansive caves or outside environments.

Halls of Lightning

Cory then guided us through the Halls of Lightning, a 5 man dungeon in Northrend, to show off this new focus in dungeon design. The Halls of Lightning deal with the story of the Titans, powerful beings who created all the worlds you visit. The whole dungeon has a retro-techno-mechanical feel to it that's very attractive.

Hit the jump to continue reading about The Halls of Lightning, Ahn'kahet, raid instance design in LK, item balance, and more!

]]> As he panned out to an area of the dungeon crisscrossed with connected platforms, we saw a named boss making his rounds through the platforms. "We wanted to give players more choice. Here you can choose where you want to fight the boss encounter. He patrols all around this area."

As he continued on, we saw actual windows that looked out onto Northrend from inside the dungeon, showing us that we were inside the bowels of a mountain cave system. "We want to emphasise that dungeons are a part of the overall world, instead of separate areas. We want to get rid of the 'instancy' feel."

"We also wanted to design for suspense," Cory said as he panned out and we saw another boss hanging out on a platform playing with a bucket of lava that Cory couldn't reach from where his character was standing. "You see this guy and think 'wow, he's a cool guy, wonder how we can get to him?'"

The dungeon is divided into distinct sections with their own artwork style. "Players need to have landmarks they can recognise and navigate with. We've created this striking artwork so that they have something they remember."

This is when he came up to another boss encounter, this one with a character that looked part wind elemental and part ethereal with his body composed of swirling dust. "We've been coming up with a lot of new custom models. And it's hard because we come up with a model like this and we think it's so cool and we want to use it in other places in the game, but we don't want you to encounter a mob that looks like a boss in the world. We want to keep these new models exclusive to bosses."

Ahn'kahet: The Old Kingdom

Ahn'kahet is all about the old gods story. The dungeon represents the vast underground city built by the old gods. "This is where Kael pulled Naxx from, so as you can see, it's got a similar art style. We wanted players to recognise the connection."

He panned out to a vast cave system with glowing mushrooms lighting up the cave and a Nerubian city nestled within. "We've come up with this new technology that allows us to create these massive spaces in an enclosed area. It lets us create an inside/outside feel even underground."

Ahn'kahet has plenty of old school influence, with the Twilight Hammer playing an important part (remember them from Silithus?) in the lore.

"We've also come up with new technology for this boss fight," Cory told us as he came up to a very large faceless one, tentacles writhing like some Davey Jones casting reject. "In this fight, each player is put into their own phase where they have to 'damage' other party members to break out. However, we knew that similar mechanics like this (e.g. evil twin mechanic in SSC) cause a problem for healers, so we've designed it so that as DPS classes break out of their phase, they can help the healers out," he said to applause from everyone in the audience.

Raids

The goal in the new 10/25 man raid design in LK is to allow more group sizes to participate in raiding content and to see the content that Blizzard produces. They've grown tired of only the top raiding guilds seeing some of their content.

"We'll show you a couple of the raid dungeons in LK today."

Chamber of Aspects

The Chamber of Aspects is meant to be a raid that functions as an introduction to raiding in LK. "We made a mistake in BC. The first two raids available to players were Gruul and Magtheridon. They were too hard. ZA didn't really help things much either because most raiders were doing Hyjal/BT already, so ZA wasn't as relevant. We're fixing that at release in LK."

That's when he showed us a walk through of the Chamber of Aspects, which contains Black Dragons flying in an open air mountain environment. "The whole instance is black dragon themed. We're really working with the dragonflight aspect."

The really cool feature of the Chamber of Secrets is the scaling encounter ability. The main Black Dragon boss in the chamber has three drakes nearby that serve as his lieutenants. You're able to pick these drakes off one by one before engaging the main boss, and doing so makes the boss encounter easier; however, the loot he drops won't be as good. If you leave one drake up, the encounter will be somewhat harder, and better loot will drop. Two drakes up, and it gets more difficult, and again, the loot level will rise. If you leave all three drakes up and engage the boss, the fight will be very difficult and you'll get the best loot drops. "This scaling ability is a new technology we developed for LK, and we're going to make use of it so that raid groups can make the fights as hard as their skill level allows them to take on."

Eye of Eternity

The Eye of Eternity is an Onyxia-like single boss encounter dealing with the Blue Dragon Aspect, Malecgos. "We wanted to make this fight really unique, and emphasise the aspect of magic in the fight. You'll be using new effects, even vehicles. Let me show you how the fights starts."

Cory showed us his paladin waking into Malecgos's chamber, a floating platform in the middle of a galactic backdrop, with the dragon ignoring his presence and flying around to multiple crystals floating in the distance. "He's a big magical dragon, so he doesn't really care about you. You're meaningless to him." He explained that one member of the raid team will need to have a key acquired through a quest line to start the encounter. "He ignores you until, of course, you do something to piss him off, like mess with his orb here."

Unfortunately, Malecgos didn't seem to be distracted by Cory's attempts at sabotaging his magic orb. "Err... oops we forgot that we're still invincible. Malecgos doesn't want to fight us like that," said Cory as he chuckled to himself. "Sorry we can't show you how the encounter starts, but trust us, it's amazing and it's got a lot of really cool effects."

Items

Blizzard has also given thought to redesigning the currency system in LK so that they avoid the "Mechanar Effect." (i.e. running the same one dungeon over and over merely to get badges to purchase loot.) Part of the solution to this has been to introduce two levels of epic badges. One level of badges drops off of Heroic 5 man dungeons and 10 man raids, which allows you to purchase certain items. The top level of badges, which drops off of 25 man raid bosses, allows the player to purchase even higher level items, and even pieces of tier loot!

"We also wanted a smoother transition between low level raiding and high level raiding, so the sets from 10 and 25 man raids will complete each other in respects to set bonuses," Cory revealed to much applause.

"Also key to our Heroic Dungeon loot is that we wanted all the loot that dropped to be better. They must have better loot. We didn't want the same loot dropping in Heroics as Normal dungeons."

Question & Answer

Will you be adding tools to kick people from a raid dungeon, instead of having to wait for AFK people to be logged out? A: "Yeah, we know how much of a pain it can be when someone just disappears in a raid. We like the idea, and we're working on a solution for raid leaders" (w00t!)
What are your plans for legendary weapons? A: "We want more caster legendary weapons, less random drops. We want to make them more like in the original game were you build them."
With the new spec switch system you're planning, will you be designing raid encounters based on that, requiring people to switch specs in different encounters? A: "No way! We really don't want to design raid encounters for specific specs." (I guess they've learned.)
What about Azeroth dungeons, any plans to update them or add to them? A: "We'll keep them in mind. It all depends on lore and whether it will fit. Right now there's no plans for anything new there, other than the Stratholme update."
What about balancing item drops based on class makeup? A: "Yeah, we're looking into that, specially because of all the hybrids."
What about preventing certain class items from dropping if that class isn't in the raid? A: "No. The badge system will let you buy pieces if your loot doesn't drop. We're even letting badges buy some of your tier gear."
Are you planning on having any more keys/attunements for dungeons or raids? A: "No more keys! We want to allow for more content access. The only 'key' that will be needed is in Malecgos, and only one person in your raid will need it to start the encounter."
What about making Hunters viable main tanks (with pets)? A: "We only plan on them for off-tank only, not main tanking. No way." (Yes, the guy who asked this got booed off the mic.)
Are you going to ramp up the difficulty level in Lich King to Sunwell levels? Naxx is pretty easy. A: "Yeah, we'll be ramping up the difficulty in LK. We're not going to go all the way to Sunwell difficulty level, though. That's too hard. We don't want to push players to have to use cheesy strats like we saw on M'uru."
BRS in the original game was easily puggable by raids, could be run at any time without lockouts, and bridged the gap between 5 mans and raids, Karazhan in BC didn't mainly due to the lockout timer. Any plans for a BRS like raid? A: "Right now, no. All raids have lockout timers. This allows us to assign them better loot."
In BC and even in Azeroth, related dungeons (like TK 5 mans and Scarlet Monastery) all required you to go back outside to access the next dungeon in the group. Do you have plans to have more dungeon interconnects in LK to provide a smoother flow? A: "That's actually one of the big things we've been talking about. We're trying to improve cohesiveness, and we're looking into that issue. We don't want that 'separate' feel for sure."
Are you looking at dropping one of each tier token each time? Balancing their drops? A: "We're not looking at having one of each drop. The way we're balancing the random drop system is by allowing you to purchase some tier pieces with badges obtained in raids now."
Are you looking to lengthen how long it takes the top guilds to beat your content? A: "(laughs) Yeah the top guilds beat LK content in two weeks. Naxx even less than that. We really can't build for those guilds; they go through content too fast. We want to design for the average guild, so that more people can see content. We hope not to have Sunwell Plateau again."
Does the LFG tool look at your spec and group you accordingly? A: (at this, they looked around at each other for a bit before answering) "I'm pretty sure it does, but we are looking at making general improvements to that interface."

This article is one in a series of in-depth articles detailing all the news from BlizzCon 2008.

Stay tuned for the rest of our coverage!

For the rest of the articles, here's the schedule with links to previously published portions of our series:

Tues.) Diablo 3 Class Design
Wed.) StarCraft 2 Gameplay Design, WoW Class Design
Thurs.) Diablo 3 Lore & Art Design, WoW Raid & Dungeon Design
Fri.) Q&A with The Guild cast, Diablo 3 Hands-On Impressions
Sat.) Diablo 3 Gameplay Design, StarCraft 2 Hands-On Impressions

BlizzCon 2008: Panel With 'The Guild' Cast!

2008-10-17T16:00:00Z

I have an admission to make...

... I would turn straight for Felicia Day. There, I said it. It's true.

Imagine my glee when I found out Felicia Day and the rest of the cast of The Guild would be at BlizzCon 2008, signing autographs and hosting a panel!

I was more than happy to find out that Felicia is as genuinely funny and delightfully nerdy in person as she appears on camera. It made me love her even more. We even bonded over our twin 16GB iPhone 3Gs as we twittered away whilst she signed my Season 1 DVD - she twittered about her excitement over being at BlizzCon, I twittered about my excitement over meeting her. She even loved my "Joss Whedon is my master now" shirt (I wore it specifically for her that day; I'm a dork.)

But enough about me and my secret straight crush on Felicia Day, there was an entire panel with the whole cast chock full of answers for all of us fans of The Guild, including some advice for starving actors! Let's get right down to the Q&A, shall we?

Hit the jump for advice on acting, the character level of Jeff Lewis's house, Sandeep Parikh's masturbatory aids, and, oh yeah, news about the second season of The Guild!

]]>

Who designed the logo for The Guild? A: (Felicia Day) "I did using an illegal copy of Photoshop. It was how I learned how to use it. It's got a really sharp learning curve!"

Are you going to keep your link to WoW ambiguous? A: (Felicia Day) "Yeah, we're going to keep it ambiguous."

Are you going to do a Horde theme on the show? (The crowd vigorously booed - the only time there were more Alliance than Horde in an audience at BlizzCon. Horde scum! *angry fists*) A: (Felicia Day) "Wow, it's like West Side Story in here!"

How'd you form up as a guild? A: (Felicia Day): "Uh..." she paused, "you know it's not real, right?" (laughter) (Sandeep Parikh): "The cast got together because some of us did improv. together. It's funny because Vince (Bladezz) is totally opposite from his character, but he's just... He's Vince." (Felicia Day): "The perfect tool."

What's your advice to drama teachers to give to students? A: (Felicia Day): "Web video is key now. Write what you're passionate about. Do shows anywhere - at the corner of a coffee shop. Leap before you look."

With your success, will you be moving to TV? A: (Felicia Day): "We'll stay on the web. There's better feedback and it's just more rewarding."

What got you started on gaming? (Sandeep Parikh): "I just grew up with it." (Jeff Lewis): "I got forced into it." (Felicia Day): "I was home schooled and moved around a lot. It was the only constant thing in my life. I played a lot of games online. It allowed me to have a social aspect."

What classes do you play in real life? Does it help you with your acting? A: (Vincent Caso): "Some of us actually didn't play before the show, now we do. I play a rogue, of course." (Jeff Lewis): "I'm a 70 NE Warrior." (Felicia Day): "I'm a Warlock Gnome. 68." (Jeff Lewis): "Wait, you're not 70?!" (Felicia Day): (nervous look) "I'm working on it!"

How does all your work fit with SAG. Does it conflict? A: (Felicia Day): "Actually this season we're all in SAG. There's no conflict with web video." (Jeff Lewis): "Dude, I'm level 70, and you're not. I can't understate it."

Do you also play pen and paper RPGs? A: (Felicia Day): "I play 4.0 D&D, I've got a level 5 Wizard." (Awesome!) "I used to play 3.5 as well."

Is there a lot of input by the actors on their characters and lines? A: (Sandeep Parikh): "None. She's a slave driver." (Felicia Day): "During readings we do have feedback, sometimes we change things on set, but we follow the written story. Since we shoot our scenes non-sequentially, it would be hard to keep continuity if we did improv."

(This one's about Legend of Neil, a related web series headed by Sandeep Parikh) Was the theme song inspired by you? A: (Sandeep Parikh): "Yeah! I masturbated like hell to that fairy!"

Are you going HD? (Felicia Day): "Yep, thanks to some funding from Butch Cassidy, we'll be going HD soon."

Since some of you don't actually play MMORPGs, how hard is it to get in character? (Robin Thorsen) "Yeah, Amy and I both don't play. It was funny because on the first day of readings I actually said 'afk' instead of the letters as an acronym. The rest of the cast helps us learn the lingo. We've gotten good at it."

What's your shooting and writing schedule? A: (Felicia Day): "I started writing this season in May, right after we wrapped season 1. Season 2 is longer, with more story. It's a big script! We had 2 days of shooting for the first episode of season 2. We shoot 'my house' somewhere else. Everywhere else we shoot on location." (Jeff Lewis): "Yeah, in my level 70 house!"

Do you have auditions? How do you find your actors? A: (Felicia Day): "We have a casting director, and we know friends. It's not a big cast. We're not looking for more cast members right now, sorry!" (Jeff Lewis): "You can be in my spin-off. It'll be level 70" (laughs)

Now that you've done Dr. Horrible (applause) are there plans for a musical episode of The Guild? A: (Felicia Day): "Did you see the Christmas carol? I didn't even ask the cast before that if they could sing. That was a mistake."

Since you have a gnome, do you experience gnome hate? (person in the audience): "Gnome: the other white meat!" A: (Felicia Day): "That's a horrible thing to say! Thankfully we're on a PvE server now, so no more getting backstabbed while picking dreamfoil."

Do you play WoW on a Mac? A: (Sandeep Parikh): "I'm the only one!"

How was it working with Hugh Laurie on House? A: (Felicia Day): "Hugh is HOT! He was so sexy. That's weird because he actually does smoke and ride a bike, and usually that's a turnoff but the way he does it... He's hot."

Where do you get your funding? A: (Felicia Day): "I don't want to give up the rights to the show, so we're not selling it to a network. The show is funded by you guys. DVD sales are the main portion. We may be getting sponsors, but right now we're shooting on money from the DVDs. We're not waiting on funding. We'll shoot from out of pocket if needed."

For those of you that don't play WoW, why not? A: (Robin Thorsen): "I have an addictive personality. I'm afraid of what would happen." (Amy Okuda): "I'm not really interested. I'm more of a watcher. I do play Wii. I like to play the Wii."

Are you going to start playing Horde any time soon? (boos again) A: (Felicia Day): "I'm a lover, not a hater! I'd totally do a blood elf. I like pretty, and they're so pretty!"

This article is one in a series of in-depth articles detailing all the news from BlizzCon 2008.

Stay tuned for the rest of our coverage!

For the rest of the articles, here's the schedule with links to previously published portions of our series:

Tues.) Diablo 3 Class Design
Wed.) StarCraft 2 Gameplay Design, WoW Class Design
Thurs.) Diablo 3 Lore & Art Design, WoW Raid & Dungeon Design
Fri.) Q&A with The Guild cast, Diablo 3 Hands-On Impressions
Sat.) Diablo 3 Gameplay Design, StarCraft 2 Hands-On Impressions

BlizzCon 2008: Diablo 3 Lore & Art Design

2008-10-16T20:30:13Z

Diablo 3 takes place 20 years after Diablo was defeated in Diablo 2. Tyrael has been told by other dwellers of heaven to not interfere with humanity. The people of Sanctuary know that something bad happened 20 years ago, but the memory of it has faded.

And so begins the story of Diablo 3. Join Leonard Boyarsky, Diablo 3 Lead World Designer, as he leads us through the art and lore of Diablo 3 and answers many of your burning story and rainbow colour-related questions!

Art Design

"One big advantage in Diablo is the fixed camera design. This allows us to hand craft scenes." A big emphasis in the art style is a hand drawn look that pushes strong silhouettes, that, according to Leonard, lend the game a more "epic feel."

"Film uses colour to establish the mood, and we wanted to make use of that same technique." At this, he showed us how the colour palettes established a horror vibe in the game, and that they're making heavy use of accent colours in order to help guide the player. "This is a fast paced game. We want the player to be able to easily tell where to go. The big bold shapes make the game much easier to read."

Leonard then showed us how much work they're putting into dynamic background animations, including fauna and destructible object movements. "Background movement adds believability, and destructible objects are just plain fun. Our art has to support that fun."

Hit the jump for more information on Diablo 3 dungeon design and the transcript to a very lengthy Q&A session where many of your lore and art questions are answered!

]]> Dungeon Design

In order to design a dungeon, a designer starts out with a basic sketch of the entrances and exits to the dungeon. The design mantra is very puzzle-piece driven, so that it can be used for Diablo 3's randomised dungeon generator.

Blizzard then comes up with encounter ideas, interactive objects and how the player will use them, and any other sort of situation the player might run into. At this point, the art team "iterates until it's done."

"That's when we enter the concept stage and establish colours and texture. It's really all evolutionary."

Question & Answer

In Diablo 2, we destroyed the soulstones for Diablo. How is Diablo coming back? A: "Well, you're assuming Diablo is coming back, aren't you?" Leonard smiled. "We're not going to reveal any secrets. What happens will be based on the story in previous games."
Destructible objects are fun! How much are you going to emphasise them in gameplay? A: "We're making them a big part of the game."
What about the Church of Zakarum? A: "Well, Mephisto corrupted the church, but the church is a big organisation, and it's managed to bounce back from that. They're gaining their influence back and claiming they're good again."
Are we going to be seeing heroes and characters from previous games? A: "We'll revisit old NPCs and hero characters. Our focus is on making a living world, so yes, we'll have lots of revisiting."
Will characters from the books be brought into the game? A: " We're not going to comment on specifics, but we are bringing some of the stuff in the books into the game. We want to integrate them back together."
Are we going to see more of Leah? (the woman in the teaser trailer for D3) A: "She's very important. She'll be central in the game cinematics and will be very tied to the game play."
Are you using lots of new graphics technology to push the art? A: "We want lots of people to be able to play the game, so we're not pushing specs. The hand drawn style we've chosen helps lower spec machines look good. We're relying on our strong artists more than technology."
Baal's soulstone wasn't destroyed in Diablo 2. Is he coming back? A: "No comment."
Are all dungeons going to be generated randomly? A: "We're going to have varying degrees of randomness. We'll have pockets of planned sequences within the randomness. Quests within dungeons will even be randomised. The main story will be static."
Will each hero character have a fleshed out backstory? A: "Each character will have a voice, and each will have a specific backstory. They all have their own reason for being here: for example, the Wizard is looking for a challenge. There will be class specific quests to advance the hero's storyline as well."
Cain grew up with tales of the Horadrim surrounding him. Does Cain know he's the last mage of the Horadrim? A: "He's definitely convinced that he is."
Will the spell graphics change as you level? A: "The look of spells will change based on the Rune system. We're still exploring all the types of changes that will happen. As far as the Skill system is concerned, that's still a work in progress."
Are paladins making a comeback? A: "The paladin is not returning as a playable class. They're not related to the lore of D3, and we just didn't want paladins in the game."
The Diablo 2 story didn't really care about the player, it just ran on rails. Are there plans to make that better? A: "The cinematics will make it better. The character voices and ability to choose your own quests in town will also help."
What are you doing to address colour blind gamers? A: "We're aware of the issue. It's especially important for telling items apart. We're making sure that each item looks different enough. We restrict colour palettes to ensure that colour blind gamers will be able to distinguish between them. We have a big emphasis on having a background colour and an accent colour that guides the player along. The heavy hand drawn style silhouettes will also aid colour blind gamers."
Are necromancers going to be in the world? A: "There will be some NPCs who are necromancers. We're not bringing them back as a playable class because the necromancer was pretty much perfect in Diablo 2. We can't improve on him. The barbarian could definitely be improved, which is why he's making a return."
How is Cain still alive? He's so old! A: "Well, he's part of the Horadrim line; they're magical wizard folk. It's not like he's not feeling the ages, however. He's certainly looking old."
Are you going to have more armour influence how your character looks? A: "We're going to have shoulder pads, helmets, more customisation options, certainly."
In Diablo 2, some creatures were just completely surreal and didn't fit their environment. Is this going to be the case in Diablo 3? A: "It's about ecology. We want creatures to fit within the setting. There will be surreal creatures, but there will be backstory for why they're there."
Since you can now choose gender, will there be explanations in the storyline for that, especially in the case of the barbarian? A: "The barbarian female has a different story from the male barbarian. She's basically had to step up because the men weren't doing their jobs."
In multiplayer in Diablo 2, you could loose track of what you're doing with so many abilities on the screen. How are we going to be able to tell ourselves apart in multiplayer? A: "We're experimenting with that. Maybe we'll make your own effects more prominent."
We've seen plenty of Hell, will we be going into Heaven in D3? A: "... maybe."
How many classes will there be? A: "There will be five playable classes. That's the sweet spot. Each will fill an archetypal slot."
Will there be unique monsters? A: "Yep, they're making a comeback."
Is the horadric cube coming back? A: "No. We like the whole lore, so maybe we'll bring other items like it, but definitely not the cube. It was too cheesy. We're fixing the inventory problem, so it won't be needed for that."
Diablo and Diablo 2 had a linear progression. Will D3 give you more options with different results depending on choice? A: "We're thinking about that. There will be random side quests, and ability to choose quests in town."
Will other player's abilities interact with yours? A: "There are buffs that players can give each other, but we're exploring more interaction between abilities. No guarantees, though.

This article is one in a series of in-depth articles detailing all the news from BlizzCon 2008.

Stay tuned for the rest of our coverage!

For the rest of the articles, here's the schedule with links to previously published portions of our series:

Tues.) Diablo 3 Class Design
Wed.) StarCraft 2 Gameplay Design, WoW Class Design
Thurs.) Diablo 3 Lore & Art Design, WoW Raid & Dungeon Design
Fri.) Q&A with The Guild cast, Diablo 3 Hands-On Impressions
Sat.) Diablo 3 Gameplay Design, StarCraft 2 Hands-On Impressions

BlizzCon 2008: World Of Warcraft Class Design Panel

2008-10-16T00:30:06Z

What influences Blizzard's ideas about class balance and ability usage in World of Warcraft? Will "insert your favourite class here" be fixed in the next patch? What about the philosophy behind the Death Knight? How will the Buff/Debuff overhaul affect class and group balance?

Join the infamous Tom Chilton, World of Warcraft Lead Game Designer, as he leads us to the answers to these questions and more at BlizzCon's WoW Class Design Panel:

The Death Knight

With the Death Knight, Blizzard wanted to avoid some of the common pitfalls they created with some of the original classes. They wanted another class that could tank due heavy group dependence on tanks and tank shortage, but they wanted to specifically avoid having a tanking tree, PVP tree, and DPS tree. Not only that, but it needed to share itemisation with current classes. "We didn't want a whole bunch of new Death Knight armour running around and taking up loot slots."

The Rune system as a resource for Death Knights was conceived to provide a new experience for players. "It distinguishes the Death Knight from the other classes." While players are able to customise the amount of runes, changing all 6 slots to Frost runes or Blood runes or Unholy, Tom warns that they're specifically encouraging players to mix their runes. "We designed the abilities so you'd need a combination of runes instead of relying only on one type."

The second resource type for Death Knights, Runic Power, was conceived to break up the "metronome" effect that the Rune system started to force the class into. "We found we were just pressing buttons to this constant metronome each time a rune refreshed, so we needed something to break that up."

Hit the jump to continue reading about the Death Knight, the reasons behind the changes in your favourite class, what Blizzard is doing to aid in group flexibility, and much more!

]]> The Runic Power system, which works much like Warrior rage, but is filled by your use of Rune abilities, allows you to unleash special abilities apart from your Runes. "We started with lots of diseases, but eventually we brought the number down and went with a combo system. We wanted players to be able to build these sequences of diseases for maximum effect."

The talent trees are built around "style not role." Frost emphasises burst and control, Blood emphasises melee and healing, and Unholy is all about minions and diseases.

Tom was especially proud of the Death Knight starting area, an instanced and scripted area where all Death Knights will begin their (un)life. "It's got talents, blues, and mounts as quest rewards. A phased and progressive zone that's a great tie-in to existing and new lore. If you're not in the Beta and haven't experienced it yet, you really should make a Death Knight when LK hits just to experience it."

"Yes, yes, Den Den, but what about my class?" you say. Tom also went over Blizzard's philosophy behind each class and the changes for them in 3.0 and beyond:

Hunter

The Hunter class features a pet overhaul to simplify a system that had become too unwieldy. Pet talent trees were added instead of the pet trainers to further simplify the system and to allow them to more rigidly divide pet types between dps, utility, and tanking.

"We knew the whole freezing trap run around was a pain, so we added the Freezing Shot so that there's less setup involved with CC and so it's easier on the player."

Disengage was also beefed up to help escape from melee and shot rotations cleaned up to lower dependence on macros for rotations.

Priest

"We wanted to remove the mana battery aspect of Shadow," Tom said to a large amount of boos from the audience. "We wanted Shadow to be able to do actual DPS."

They also redesigned Discipline so that it's a viable healing spec and removed racials in order to emphasise their new "bring the player, not the class" philosophy.

Mage

"We wanted a viable elementalist spec, so a lot of our changes were influenced by that. Frostfire bolt helps that."

Mirror Image was built to add another escape mechanism for mages.

Druid

"Real Boomkin DPS and real CC were our big influences this time around. No more Oomkin." Resto druid emphasis has also been shifted to be more reactive and depend less on HOTs with both Nourish and Wild Growth. They've also added the ability for druids to specialise in cat, bear, or both within the Feral tree.

Shamans

CC has finally come to the Shaman in the form of Hex. Totem consolidation was also a big goal behind many of the totem changes.

Rogues

"When you think 'rogue' people think of poisons and daggers. Neither were being used. We wanted that back!" They've also added many more valid sap targets and a more viable AoE ability: Fan of Knives. "We know how bored rogues were on AoE pulls just stabbing one little mob."

Warrior

The big new ability for Fury warriors is Titan's grip, which allows you to use two-handed weapons in one hand. "We also wanted more crossover with Arms/Fury for both PVE and PVP."

"Protection now has more toys, fewer mitigation talents."

Warlock

"We still think that Affliction is too complicated, we're working on it."

They're also trying to emphasise more pet diversity and spell rotations amongst all specs. (And if my test runs in 3.0.2 and Beta with my Destruction warlock are any indication, they've succeeded. No more "2" syndrome.)

"Metamorphosis was put in because every warlock secretly wants to be Illidan."

Paladin

One of the big influences for Holy Paladin changes is mobility. They also overhauled the Seal and Judgement system to be more friendly.

"Protection needed to care about tank gear, and Retribution needed to be less dependent on raid buffs." They've also added more mana for Retribution paladins with Replenishment, to aid in that raid independence.

Group Flexibility

All the class changes are great, but Blizzard started to have a problem. "There were 30 specs and 25 raid slots. Our changes had made more viable specs, plus death knights, but there was no room."

"We wanted people to bring the player, not the class."

Blizzard also wanted to de-emphasise "super buffs." "What we were seeing is raids disbanding because Jimmy can't come -> no Windfury -> cancel the raid. That's not good."

Hence, the new buff/debuff system was born. The new system allows for buff categories that don't stack but overlap several classes, allowing you to be much more flexible with class balance. There's multiple classes that can provide the same benefit, and most buffs affect the whole raid now.

"We also wanted to downplay consumables." The new pot cooldown and drum nerf are both indicative of this.

There's also more shared gear, now that a single unified spellpower stat has been implemented. Healers can use the same set of armour to DPS and heal.

"The tank changes help create overlapping niches. We also fixed threat so that healing and coordination are more important than threat management." And the music to raid leader's ears? "We don't want you to have to bring specific tank classes for specific fights." (Thank the gods!)

"In the end, we wanted gear and skill >> than buffs and pots."

Question and Answer

What about affliction Warlocks? Will they be made viable again? A: "Yep, we've implemented more scaling, and we're definitely concentrating on Affliction Warlocks."
What about infernals and doomguards? Will they still be pets you summon as a joke? A: "We've changed it so you have more guaranteed time where they will be under you control, but other than that, no other changes are planned."
What about feral druid shifting and mana? Will feral druids be able to shift more than a couple of times? A: "That's on our list to look at. We know that shifting often is integral to feral gameplay."
With the Windfury changes that are coming - rogue poisons: will we be able to use them on bosses again? Will they still be immune? A: "More bosses are going to be affected by poisons. We want rogues to use poison instead of depending on Windfury.
Will you be fixing mages? A: "Spec mage table! (laughs rippled through the audience) But in all seriousness, we've run the numbers on Fire and Frost mages, and they're on par with other classes. We're still massaging Arcane."
What about the 51pt. Fire talent for mages? What's up with that? A: "Well, more damage = more fun. Fire is all about that big number. Arcane is about mobility and Frost about survival. With all the 51pt. talents we didn't really want to add more buttons to push."
What about feral druid dps versus rogues in PVP? A: "We know that feral druid cat dps right now is a 'B' spec. However, right now we have no clear idea on how to improve feral druids in arena."
Mages are now the only clothies who can't heal themselves somehow, is this going to be fixed? A: "The emphasis on mages is that they have many ways of escaping as opposed to other cloth wearers. No, you won't heal."
What about a redesign of Windfury for Enhancement shamans? A: "We're interested in removing the internal cooldown for Windfury, but we're trying to see how to balance that. We're also trying to encourage more Flametongue usage."
Boomkins in PVP: will we be able to kill without running like a girl? A: "Typhoon is an ability to help that out with the knockback component, and we're adding meatier damage."
Are you looking into balancing the Retribution paladin burst damage between raid and PVP? A: "We don't think it's way off at the moment, we think it's mostly weapon issues. We are trying to tone down uncontrollable proc damage so it's more predictable for raiders."
With four tank classes in LK now and more interchangeability between them, how will you keep different tank classes feeling unique? A: "Tanks classes are very sensitive. Everyone needs one. We're still trying to balance that out."
With the LK dual spec system you've mentioned, will we be able to switch specs mid raid? A: "That's the goal. We want players to be able to switch without having to port back to town. We're not going to let you switch specs in the middle of combat, but we're still deciding on exactly what the limits will be."

This article is one in a series of in-depth articles detailing all the news from BlizzCon 2008.

Stay tuned for the rest of our coverage!

For the rest of the articles, here's the schedule with links to previously published portions of our series:

Tues.) Diablo 3 Class Design
Wed.) StarCraft 2 Gameplay Design, WoW Class Design
Thurs.) Diablo 3 Lore & Art Design, WoW Raid & Dungeon Design
Fri.) Q&A with The Guild cast, Diablo 3 Hands-On Impressions
Sat.) Diablo 3 Gameplay Design, StarCraft 2 Hands-On Impressions

BlizzCon 2008: StarCraft 2 Gameplay Design Panel

2008-10-15T22:00:00Z

By now, every StarCraft fan knows that StarCraft 2 will in fact be three different products, one for each main race in order to have a full campaign storyline for every faction.

But how will it work? How will the main campaign story lines justify three different products? Will the new campaign change the feel of StarCraft? Why are they making a trilogy?

I have all those answers and more as we follow Rob Pardo, Executive Vice President of Game Design, and Dustin Browder, StarCraft 2 Lead Designer, through BlizzCon's StarCraft 2 Gameplay Design Panel:

The Terran Campaign

"We wanted to rethink the RTS single player experience: make it less linear, emphasise player choice," Rob started out. "We wanted more story."

The Terran campaign will centre around Jim Raynor, and will have you focus on his development through the story arc. The way you drive his interactions with other characters in between missions will determine how the story unfolds and the missions and technology that you'll have access too.

Those who have seen the StarCraft 2 teaser trailer will also be familiar with an old friend of Jim's who will also accompany him through the campaign: Tychus Findlay, the brash Terran marine who loves to walk around in his powered armour.

Jim and Tychus have an old standing friendship it seems, with Tychus playing the counter part of the rowdy, loud bounty hunter type to Jim's brooding demeanour.

"We're going to be using a lot more cinematics and real time cutscenes to tell the story," Rob mentioned as he began playing an introduction video showing Tychus meeting Jim for the first time in years at a dusty bar in some unknown planet.

Hit the jump for more in-depth coverage of the Terran campaign, interactive environments, character development, technology acquisition, the reasoning behind the decision to make the game a trilogy, and much more!

]]> "Thought you were iced," Jim said to Tychus. "They let me out for good behaviour," Tychus replied as he picked up a bottle of whiskey.

As soon as the video was finished, the bar scene actually became interactive. "We're going to have these interactive spaces between all the missions." As Jim and Tychus sat at the bar, various items around the room were clickable, including a bulletin board. "This bulletin board will change as you advance in the storyline. It'll have current news, wanted posters - all influenced by what you do in the campaign."

You could also direct Jim to talk more with other characters and find out what's going on and what missions are available. "It's all about deeper character development."

Clicking on Tychus brought out a cutscene where he informs Jim that a tidy profit can be made from stealing an old Protoss artifact from the Dominion. "You'll find out about missions from various characters as you interact with them."

At this point, we skipped ahead to the third mission in the Terran campaign, and Rob clicked on the TV in the bar, which began showing a news report of surprise Zerg attacks on the planet, prompting Tychus and Jim to seek a way off the planet. Fortunately, Jim has access to a Terran Cruiser that he calls in, and your mission is to protect a couple of bridges from waves of Zerg as you wait for an evac.

After skipping ahead to the end of the mission, another cinematic sequence ensued, showing us that our favourite Zerg lady, Kerrigan, is back with a vengeance.

We were now in the Terran cruiser, inside another interactive space much like the bar from earlier. There's different areas including the armoury, mess hall, and bridge that you can explore, each populated with characters to talk to and acquire missions from. The conversations are all scripted; however: there are no response choices. This is no Mass Effect.

The armoury section is where you can actually implement technology upgrades you acquire during your missions. "Some of the technology you'll just find on missions, others you'll purchase with credits earned from missions."

Cutting back to the bridge section of the cruiser, Rob clicked on the star map floating in the room. "As we mentioned earlier, we don't want to be so linear, so at any point you can have up to five or six missions choices at a time." He clicked on a few and an "avatar video" that all StarCraft players are familiar with popped up that filled us in on the details of each mission.

Some missions that you can choose will have you saving people, and if you're successful, they'll be added to the cast of characters walking around the cruiser. These new characters will bring their own mission opportunities to you, opening the way for more credits and technology.

The StarCraft 2 Trilogy

"So you can see we're putting a lot more effort into the main campaign this time around. Which leads us to some challenges."

Rob explained that the new approach, with more cinematics, story, alternate missions, and more characters, meant a decision had to be made. "We have three choices: A) Simplify the campaign, give you less choices, less characters, less story. B) Make each campaign EPIC, but release each as a separate product. C) Compromise in the middle, but delay the game greatly."

"The choice we made might not be popular, but I think it's the best choice for the series," Rob said as he smiled nervously in front of a hushed audience of several thousand fans.

"We've decided to make a StarCraft 2 trilogy!" he announced to thundering applause.

As Sgt. Sausagepants reported, each race will have a separate game with their main campaign. The first game will be the Terran campaign, called Wings of Liberty, Zerg will be second, called Heart of the Swarm, and Protoss will be last (of course my favourite has to be last, GAH!), called Legacy of the Void.

Each game will feature a full campaign compliment of 26-30 missions, and will not influence the multi-player portion of StarCraft. The separate products are only relevant to the single player campaigns. Each campaign will have a set introduction, and a set end (no multiple endings!), but the middle is all up to the player.

While each game will deal with a different race and their story, there will be a Protoss mini-storyline that will weave through all three, focused on Zeratul, the Protoss Dark Templar assassin. "This will allow us to focus on a greater threat that is coming, and give the player an opportunity to play a different race to give them a break during the main campaign."

At this, Rob left us with a sneak peak at one minute of the four minute opening cinematic for StarCraft 2, which showed Zeratul fighting a swarm of Zerg with some badass Dark Templar moves. As he finishes off a Hydralisk by driving its own claw he cut off with his psyblade through its head, the camera panned out to a figure wreathed in darkness.

"Welcome, Zeratul. We've been expecting you," said the voice of Kerrigan.

Question & Answer

Are huge armies here to stay, or will StarCraft become hero focused like WC3? A: "StarCraft will continue to have massive armies, a fast RTS. We have no plans to implement heroes like WC3."
What about pricing? A: "Each campaign will be a separate product, with the Zerg and Protoss campaigns functioning like expansions. We haven't finalised pricing."
Will your choices during the missions in the campaign matter? A: "Yes! Depending on what missions you choose to take on, you will have access to different technologies, missions. Saving characters during missions can also lead you to have access to even more content as they bring their connections to you."
What about multiplayer? Will we be able to play with all three races if we own only one of the campaigns? A: "The multiplayer component is separate from the trilogy aspect. The Terran campaign will have full multiplayer; you will be able to play all three races."
Chronologically, will the campaigns be occurring at the same time or consecutively? A: "As far as storyline, the campaigns will be occurring sequentially."

This article is one in a series of in-depth articles detailing all the news from BlizzCon 2008.

Stay tuned for the rest of our coverage!

For the rest of the articles, here's the schedule with links to previously published portions of our series:

Tues.) Diablo 3 Class Design
Wed.) StarCraft 2 Gameplay Design, WoW Class Design
Thurs.) Diablo 3 Lore & Art Design, WoW Raid & Dungeon Design
Fri.) Q&A with The Guild cast, Diablo 3 Hands-On Impressions
Sat.) Diablo 3 Gameplay Design, StarCraft 2 Hands-On Impressions

BlizzCon 2008: Diablo 3 Class Design Panel

2008-10-14T23:30:26Z

As Dawdle reported last Saturday, the big news that came out of the Diablo 3 Class Design panel at BlizzCon 2008 was the introduction of the Wizard class, the third announced playable class in the third entry of the Diablo series.

However, there was much, much more discussed at the panel, including how they came up with the Wizard concept, the current Skill system and how it works, the new Rune system for ability modification, special effects differentiation, and even a mention of Wirt's fourth leg!

Follow along as Jay Wilson, Diablo 3's Game Director, takes us through Blizzard's class design process:

The Wizard Class

Right from the start, the Wizard's design goal is to be the blaster class: the nuker; the quintessential glass cannon.

Unlike the Sorceress in Diablo 2, who dealt with elemental magic, the source of the Wizard's magic is "High Magic" - the direct manipulation of the physical world through magic. The inspiration for the spells comes from old school pen and paper RPGs like D&D, which is evident in one of the first skills you start out with: Magic Missile.

"At first we though of a fireball as one of her main skills, but that was more elemental magic, and we felt we couldn't come up with different ways for a fireball to look. It wasn't as versatile as we wanted. Magic missile has that old school flavour we were looking for." Magic Missile shows up as a purple glob of energy that shoots from the Wizard's hands and smashes into a mob, causing damage. "The look of the Magic Missile established the look of arcane magic in the Diablo world."

That's not the only old school spell D&D players will be familiar with; the Wizard will also have Disintegrate - the "face melter." Showing up as a satisfyingly red energy ray emanating from your Wizard, Disintegrate works by letting you hold down the mouse button and sweeping the mouse around the screen to aim your ray of doom. The longer you keep the ray on a target, the more damage you will do over time.

"One of the first really big ideas we came up with for the Barbarian was this charge swing, where you would hold down the mouse button to stand there and charge your swing. The longer you held it the more powerful your blow would be. We quickly found out that making people sit still and hold a mouse button waiting to deploy a swing was not fun." The idea of holding down the mouse button for an ability; however, wasn't completely thrown out the window, and after playing around with different iterations, Disintegrate for the Wizard was born. "Yeah, you're holding down the mouse button, but you're melting faces as you do it. That's fun."

Hit the "Read More" link below to continue our in depth coverage of the Wizard class, special effects, the skill and rune system, and the panel's Q&A session!

]]> In theme with the "High Magic" manipulation of physics, the Wizard also has a Slow Time ability. "We took our inspiration from books and movies for this ability," said Jay. "At first, we made the ability slow down everything on screen, but then we quickly realised this wouldn't work at all for multi-player." Blizzard instead decided on a bubble of warped space time that looks like the city's shield from Stargate Atlantis that forms around the Wizard, slowing any object that comes inside except the Wizard herself.

Blizzard didn't completely avoid elemental based magic; however, as they revealed a fourth ability: Electrocute. "Controlling the weather feels really epic, so we had to include the ability to shoot lightning," said Jay as a video showed the Wizard arcing lightning across multiple mobs, leaving satisfyingly charred corpses behind.

Skill System

Blizzard wanted a skill system that was simple and compelling in both the early and late game. It needed to support 6 active skills and a large number of builds. Most importantly, they did not want Diablo 2 style point dumping into one skill.

While the skill system isn't finalised, Blizzard did show us what they've come up with so far: a modified tree system that has main abilities as its trunk, and skill points that augment each main ability as branches from the trunk.

"We're still unhappy with this version, however, so you're likely to see it changed before release," Jay told us as he explained that it presents too many choices to the player, and still feels unintuitive to play testers.

"However, we also wanted to maintain a random drop component for abilities, which is where the Rune System comes in."

The Rune System

Runes are a random drop from mobs that serve as modifiers to your abilities. Each of your main abilities has a rune slot where you drop a rune in. Depending on the type and power level of the rune, your ability will be modified in effect, size, damage and even how it looks like on screen! All runes are interchangeable and class agnostic.

At this point, Jay showed us multiple ways you could change the look, feel, and power of abilities with different runes:

Wizard's Teleport + strike rune = and offensive teleport ability. Each time the Wizard teleports to a spot, blades strike out upon her arrival, dealing damage to mobs.
Wizard's Teleport + multistrike rune = when you teleport, the Wizard splits into multiple images of herself, causing a mirror image effect.
Witchdoctor's Skull of Flame + multistrike rune = the burning skull bounces. The more powerful the rune, the more bounces your skull can do.
Witchdoctor's Skull of Flame + power rune = the skull leaves a burning area on the ground that damages mobs.
Wizard's Electrocute + multistrike rune = chain lightning effect that spans along multiple enemies.
Wizard's Electrocute + lethality rune = mobs blow up when killed by the ability. (This was especially cool to watch!)

Each rune combination created a different look for each spell that was unique. "We wanted player's abilities to look different, even though they're playing the same class."

From what I saw, they succeeded.

Special Effects

Each class has their own unique palette of special effect that helps differentiate it from the other classes:

The Barbarian is all about physical damage, but he can also call upon some Ancestral powers that manifest as ghostly energy that augments his physical abilities.

The Witchdoctor is all about indirect damage, and that inspires all his effects and abilities: he fills a skull with a concoction and throws it at a mob to make it blow up. He sends swarms after his enemies. His hands never directly touch the mobs he decimates.

Wizards are all about the light show. The arcane orbs they hold in their hand (and that you can see in the trailer) are "inspired by cosmology." "We came up with the Tornado ability that we first made to look realistic: swirling dust, etc., but it looked so boring, so we came up with this," Jay narrated as he showed a video of the Wizard creating shiny swirling vortexes of light that spun around her. "This is much more attractive visually speaking." I'd have to agree. It looked magical and powerful. It makes you feel like you're actually manipulating the world.

Blizzard also showed off the Wizard's Blizzard ability, which had a decidedly old school feel about it: heavy chunks of ice raining down upon the Wizard's enemies leaving the ground covered in snow. "We wanted it to feel slushy."

The attention to special effects doesn't stop at class abilities, but also extends to mob deaths. Blizzard doesn't want to have one standard death for each type of mob. If you crit on a mob, it explodes into a satisfying shower of meaty chunks. Rare mobs explode with even more gusto. The Wizard's Disintegrate ability even inspired Blizzard to create different death effects for mobs depending on the ability they die to (Disintegrate has the mob char into dust as it dies to your face melting power.)

Question & Answer

Will there be a cow level? A: "We cannot comment on the bovine content of our games at this time."
How will you deal with power leveling? A: "We're not. It's not something we feel is pressing in Diablo."
Will all runes be global? A: "We haven't decided yet. We may make some ability specific runes."
What about magic resist on mobs? Will there be magic-type immune mobs? A: "This isn't as big an issue in Diablo 3 due to the focus on more skills. You're just simply not going to focus on making one ability all powerful, so having a mob resistant to your one ability is no longer relevant. Our aim is for you to have 6 main skills that you're using. That said, we are looking to tone back resist importance, but we're not getting rid of it."
Will it be possible to collect all the runes in the game? A: "Runes will drop frequently, but they are randomised loot. There are also different power levels on the runes, each will drop frequently."
What's the class breakdown going to look like? How many melee/dps/casters? A: "No comment. They're all DPS classes. Nice try."
Will there still be multiple difficulties? (Normal, Nightmare, Hell, Hardcore)? A: "Yep."
What about Hammerdins? A: "No comment."
Will player deaths be generic, or will there be custom deaths depending on mobs? A: "Our plan is to make custom player death sequences with bosses."
Will runes take up bag space? A: "Yes they will. However, you'll have more bag space, and we're not using the grid system from Diablo 2. It's straight up slots for items."
How will the overall difficulty of the game compare with Diablo 2? A: "Diablo 3 will be more challenging. You'll have less ways to escape, less health. We want that feeling of danger you get from being low on health and getting by on the skin of your teeth that was present in Diablo 1. We want to put an emphasis on a wide use of skills."
Will you be putting more emphasis on character growth via skills or items? A: "Both. We want all the classes to care about items, including casters. We're going to have spell damage gear so items matter more to them now. Item impact will be bigger than Diablo 2."
Will there be a Wirt's fourth leg? A: "Well... I mean how many legs can a guy have? Maybe we can do the arms? With hooks! Post your ideas on the forums, they might make it in the game."

Stay tuned for the rest of our coverage from BlizzCon 2008 during the rest of the week!

Here's the schedule for the rest of our coverage:

Wed.) StarCraft 2 Gameplay Design, WoW Class Design
Thurs.) Diablo 3 Lore & Art Design, WoW Raid & Dungeon Design
Fri.) Q&A with The Guild cast, Diablo 3 Hands-On Impressions
Sat.) Diablo 3 Gameplay Design, StarCraft 2 Hands-On Impressions

BlizzCon 2008: Post-Con Coverage Is Coming!

2008-10-14T19:30:39Z

There's really only one way to describe this year's BlizzCon: EPIC.

Not merely because everyone at Blizzard seemed to have been conditioned to say "epic" as many times as possible ("epic storyline!" "epic artwork!" "epic graphics!"), or because tickets were so hard to get (15,000 tickets were sold in the space of a very crashy 15 minutes!), but also because of the sheer amount of people at the convention hall. It was great to be in the presence of so many fans of Blizzard, all sharing in a love of their games.

For my first video game convention, it was an awesome experience.

I managed to grab as much in-depth coverage as I could with my cramped hands scribbling furiously on my now full notebook, so I'll be bringing you plenty of coverage on all things Blizzard through the weekend. Not only will you get in-depth coverage on all current and coming Blizzard games (Diablo III, StarCraft II, WoW), but you'll also get my hands-on impressions of SC2 and D3 (Yes, you may start hating me right... now.)

Want a schedule? Here's what I plan on bringing to you, our dear readers:

Today) Diablo 3 Class Design
Wed.) StarCraft 2 Gameplay Design, WoW Class Design
Thurs.) Diablo 3 Lore & Art Design, WoW Raid & Dungeon Design
Fri.) Q&A with The Guild cast, Diablo 3 Hands-On Impressions
Sat.) Diablo 3 Gameplay Design, StarCraft 2 Hands-On Impressions

Stay tuned for our in-depth coverage!

Homotron Deal Of The Week: Free iPhone Games From Hudson!

2008-10-08T20:30:55Z

From over at Homotron: Hello folks, it's been a while since I've brought you an offering of cheap thrills here at Homotron, so to appease the bargain gods I give you the best kind of deal: free!

In celebration of the Tokyo Game Show going on right now in the land of the rising sun, Hudson is giving away three of its iPhone games for free: Aqua Forest (normally $7.99), Catch the Egg (normally $3.99), and NeoSameGame (normally $3.99.)

You have to hurry though, because the offer expires on October 12th!

Check out the video below for a look at Aqua Forest in action:

Hudson Offering 'Aqua Forest' and Other Titles for Free [MacRumors]

Off To BlizzCon 2008! Got Questions? Send Them In!

2008-10-08T19:30:40Z

Hello folks! This is your friendly neighbourhood writer from Homotron here to tell you that tomorrow morning I'm going to be packing my bags here in sunny Miami, Florida and heading off to another wonderfully sunny locale: Los Angeles, California for BlizzCon 2008!

BlizzCon 2008 is shaping up to be a huge event for all of us Blizzard fans, and will even include appearances by actors from The Guild. Of particular interest to you, our dear readers, is that there will be tons of panels with Blizzard developers covering all things Blizzard: WoW, Starcraft II, and Diablo III.

So here's the deal: I want to ask Blizzard your questions!

Send me any burning questions you want me to ask Blizzard to my e-mail box (or post them as a comment on this entry), and I'll be sure to try and get you answers to your questions at all the various panels!

From Starcraft unit balance to WoW dps normalisations to what's the Diablo team's favourite pizza topping, send me your questions!

When I come back from LA, I'll be sure to write a post BlizzCon report right here on GayGamer with the answers to your questions.

"Tris" Tetris Clone For iPhone Being Pulled Tomorrow, Grab It Now!

2008-08-26T20:30:47Z

From over at Homotron: Tris, a Tetris clone that currently holds the top spot for free iPhone apps on the App Store, is being pulled tomorrow due to a copyright claim from the Tetris Company, which the developer can't fight off:

The trouble is, I'm a college student, and not an affluent one, and I simply do not have the time, energy, or resources to fight this battle right now. There's a point at which I am willing to give up and be practical, to let the world have its way with that ever-mistreated little ideal of "principle". Thus, it's with great sadness that I must announce that I'll be pulling Tris from the App Store on Wednesday, August 27th, to remain in Apple's systems but publicly unavailable until I work out a solution to this.

If you want to get your free Tetris clone action on your iPhone, download it now!

Last Chance to Get 'Tris' Before It's Gone [MacRumors]