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Blizzcon 2010 overview


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#1 Knights-of-Kneee

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Posted 22 October 2010 - 03:06 PM

Blizzcon 2010 starts shortly. Attendees from 29 countries. Schedule of events here

Blizzard - 20th aniversary
Diablo - 10th anniversary with over 12 million users
Starcraft2 - 4 new maps available, 3 custom games, launched over 5 continents, fastest selling strategy game.

1.1 million was donated to make a wish from the pandaren monk sale in wow.

He's doing for the horde's and for the alliances. They are offering the mookkin hatchling as another charity pet. They are auctioning off the old servers you used to play on and donating the proceedes to charity speaking of wow arthas has been slaying about 489,000 times.

Welcome to china and their entrance to northrend. This years the first time they have ever launched 2 games in one year. Starcraft2 was launched on 5 continents and in 11 languages.

New blizz chat with blizz moderator

Diablo3 update by Sr VP Chris Mettson.

He is on stage giving words for audience response. 1. horde, 2. diablo, 3. alliance, 4. starcraft, 5. geek
Say "Geek is" growing up playing with toys and is fact that we are smarter than our parent, Geek is or not -- crashing your enemies. "Geek is" imagining you can actually ride dragons and sky across the skies. "Geek is" realizing with great power comes great responsibility. "Geek is" being terrified during .... "Geek is" watching your kids watching star wars for the first time.

D3 -- Hunter is fifth class. Kick ass demon hunter video.
D3 -- PvP battle arenas.

WOW Cataclysm - cinematic trailer released. Deathwing - goes live Dec 7 at midnight - download online (deathwing will reak havok on azeroth)

No new announcements forthcoming.

#2 Knights-of-Kneee

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Posted 22 October 2010 - 04:07 PM

Day1, Panel2.

D3 hero's emerge and the game panel make introductions. 7 of them.

Why the demon hunter?
Character fills out archetypes, fits the diablo universe, an obscessed anti hero. They liked the idea of a bounty hunter hunting enimies. She is a conventional ranged class, uses gadgets and traps and shadow magic. Damn she can move fast too. She started out as a ranger with ranged attacks. So they are gong in a new direction.. they want it DARK More mysterious and needed to be medieval.

Creating the Demon Hunter
A demon hunting demons? Thee problems were player classes must be humans. So they though about making him/her part demon. The issue was townspeople would "recoil" The size and bulkiness didn't feel fast it felt slow. So shoulder armor dual crossbows no metal armor below the ribs. And again it has to be human. This is how the hero was born.. fast swift mysterious dark medieval and RANGED. Next up character art. Modeling and texturing of the demon hunter. Character hit the mark.. and she's sexy. (their quote not mine) and they are working on the male demon hunter to make him attractive for the ladies. Gearing up and what makes the character visually distinct. Character has a scarf.. so you can tell it was a demon hunter from a distance.

Demon Hunter LoreShe is the most diverse character. Demon hunters are chosen not born into a class. Bound together by a thirst for revenge. They are recruited by other demon hunters only. They have no homeland so they are more nomadic. There is a base up north that they are trained at. Ranger + bounty hunter + epic quest = win. What drives demon hunters? Obsession with killing demons. She dabbles int he darkside., but they didn't want her to seem demonic. They gave her glowing eye's for effect. She stalks demons and to strike fear into them. She realizes the true stakes of what's going on... Other classes are in it for other reason's, but she's in it to kill demons.

Demon Hunter Skills
bola shot - it explodes after it wraps around the target, pushing the core concepts. She has a shadow theme
vault - it looks like its a fast charge of some sort.
spike trap - selling traps and gadgets and it has a sense of preparation,
gernades - they bounce off walls around corners and off walls and
multishot - it has been ramped up and broght to a new level for d3. They showed it but its hard to tell from one shot

Content Designers
The skill system has been overhauled. Trade system overhauled. The ui they used last year was unwieldy and overwhelming. It had class lines that were arbitrary. They went to a tabbed approach. All the skill lines couldn't be seen all at once. Then they went to a list approach. All 7 skills in one place.> on the right choosing new skills was easier but not quite good enough. So its still a list approach now and it looks a lot nicer now though. Leveling up opens slots. You can have 7 total skills at a given time. Upgrading skills is easier too. It's also easier to re-spec.. (so char respecing is in the game) They are going over skills and abilities of classes we saw last year.. so I won't give details unless theres a big change. The new graphics for meteor = sweet. Spirit walk for whitch hunter is like a guided teleport. The monk wave of lite combines mystic arts with combat arts.

System Traits
Traits are passive skills. Trait example. Barb inner rage - it reduces rage costs and gains rage gained
The wizard uses prizmatic cloak that so why traits the main reasons for char customization to address the attribute points placement. There are choices for traits for each class and spec. With more variety there,s more options. There's 50 traits with 5 levels each. the acitve vs passive skills ... the passive skills are boring so they were moved to traits.. and other skills are in the skills ui. The design for passive traits has to be big numebrs.. no .01% upgrades that feel lackluster. They are working on the ui.. they dont feel its awesome yet. Gaining traits every other level feels a little strange. There are probly too many traits at the moment and too many ranks of each. Back to the first guy. tailmen in d3. They act like charms from d2 but they charms took up too much inv space. They solved this by a tailsmen which is a dedicated inventory for your charms it grows over time. You still have limited space. Charms will be more focused on core attributes.. as opposed to charms for everything. And that is the talismam.

Skill Runes
They are fully implemented in barb witchdocter and wizard.. and are playable at the show. Runes are a system for modifying your skills. They work like gems but for skills and they dont go in your weapons and armor. Skill runes will provide more class builds.. so he's done the math to find out how many skills builds you can have and its 96,886,969,344 build posibilities per class times 5 classes. This should allow for diversity in class skill runes effect the way a spell works and looks. There's still 5 types of skill runes. This was changed form the old system because they had ideas that didn't fit with a specific skill. There are 7 ranks of runes per rune type. the more ranks a spell or action has the wilder it gets.. Each level adds soemthing to the spell or action. He just confirmed hell dificulty in a comment. The barb has the ability to pick up and throw a corpse. Hydra has been brought back in d3. Hey are no longer just fire.. You can have arcane orb ice fire acid.. based on the runes you select.. one of them is a big hydra that drops firewalls as it casts. One of the runes gives a rain of toads.. one of them's a giant toad that eats monsters. And you still get loot if he eats them.

Battle Arena
A dedicated arena for your pvp needs. What do you want to bet that the demon hunter gets baal's body explosion from the diablo 2 FMV. Focused on team absed play for pvp. pvp is going to be helped by a team of builds instead of jsut your own. You build a pve char into a pvp monster as opposed to pvp chars fromt he start. There are many skills that are pvp based.. lots of stuns and slows. These are fought with countermoves these are fought with countermoves to get out of those things. There's a round mechanic. So the arena's will be best of 5 or so. They havent decided on the numebrs yet. Teams will be matched based on skill. They are looking for specific teams and one on ones against ya.. they are working on those apects at the moment. D3 will be progression based. Rewards for wins and achievments.

Q&A was canceled this panel. D3 released not announced.

#3 Knights-of-Kneee

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Posted 22 October 2010 - 05:28 PM

WOW Dungeons and Raids
(Day1, Panel3)

Classic Heroics
The concept of a old dungeon with new and interesting. Deadmines and shadowfang keep are added. They got to keep the flavor of the dungeons while redoing them. New dungeons have new quests and encounters. All quest givers for a dungeon are at the front of the dungeon.. All old dungeons were changed for this too. The climax is in westfall and silverpine. These dungeons will be interacted with in the zones to complete lore. Lord gofery is the new boss in SFK and vanessa vancleef is the new end boss in deadmines. The goal is to make them less confusing. They are looking at the classic dungeons to make them less confusing and make them shorter methods to change the dungeons. They created wings in each dungeon. So a dungeon won't take hours any longer. For example they broke ulduman up into 2 parts. Maraudon has been broken up into 2 dungeons.. a seperate section for princess. and a shorter overall dungeon. They are cutting parts of dungeons up. For example sunken temple has had over 1/2 of it removed...they cut the bottom out of it. Wailing caverns. The solution was to eliminate the maze like components.. and shrink the dungeon

Catalysm Goals
- more raids on ship
- cool encounters

One of the mechanics is sneaking past a sleeping dragon. They want raids to be bite sized chunks. They want raids to be bite sized chunks. They want to have content for everyone with normal and heroic mode bosses. Make raiding more flexable with a new raid lock system that saves you to bosses not individual raids. But allows only 1 boss kiill per week so no more 10 and 25 man loot for 2 raids on the same boss. 10 man and 2 man will drop the same loot. No more all-day-mfing?

Patch 4.1 Preview
Firelands raid will be included in 4.1.0. It's the elemental plain of fire and is a part of hydra. This is the home of ragnaros. He will be in this raid and will be much more powerfull as he's in his elemental plane. It will have 7 bosses in this raid. The dungeon map for firelands looks vary open with tons of fire and lava. rag is inside of his keep. Most bosses will be outdoors. This means you can use mounts in it.. and have to be carefull to not pull multiple bosses.

There is concept art being shown and it looks alot like the actual place in the beta. Another new raid abyssal maw (5 player dungeon) but not a raid. This is a continuation of vashier and takes place in the elemental plane of water. Oh and its nothing like occulus. Tthis will be a 4 boss dungeon. The map looks very open at the moment. The dungeon looks alot like the areas of vashier that you quest in. This will be underwater combat, but you dont have to swim you can walk for it.

They are adding a new feature that won't ship with Catalysm but will be there in 4.1.0. There will be 2d maps for all dungeons in the game beig shipped with cata.. but this is more details and features will be added. The maps will show loot lore and abilities of the boss. This will not give away how to kill bosses just what abilities they can use. 3d portraits of the boss will be added. This works in both dungeons and raids.

In closing this panel, they are showing a raid video before the Q&A. Raid preview blackwing decent. The sounds brokenraid preview bastion of twilight. These are jsut fast pans of video through the instance to give folks an idea of what to expect. Throne of the 4 winds. The place looks arabian

- Q & A -

Q. LFG system looting -- .. Any plans to modify it to a more stringent plan for giving out loot?
A. They will be stringent what loot can be needed.. for example if your speced heals you can't need on tank gear. With 10 and 25 mans having the same loot.. what are you doing to make the ballance of difficulty of 10's so they arn't harder in 10 or in 25. Even if they arn't the same difficulty they will be a similar difficulty. some bosses may be easer in 10 or others in 25 but overall they should be ablout the same. Tooning on 25 mans between heroic and normal so that some normal encounters were harder than some heroics bosses. He mentioned some encounters, but basicaly said nothing. For the new raid lockouts isn't this going to hurt pugs.. as people will leave if they wipe. They believe it will work itself out once people get to know the encounters. These will be better because people can raid with thier guilds and pug a few bosses after. Legendary weapons will they allow drops in 10 mans of old raids. They will go over it monday, and they seem to like the suggestion

Q. In catalysm, are you changing brd?
A. Apparently they have removed alot of the problems in brd by putting in teleporters. Graveyards have all been moved to within 30 seconds of a dungeon and in most cases.. right outside the portals. A lot of times people want to join raids but its full..

Q. Is there an observation feature?
A. We don't have that planned but it is a cool idea. > It is a huge thing and they will go over it.

Q. Is there any plan to make legendary weapons guild bound so people that take a full guild effort to get... so the guild doesn't loose the item?
A. They have looked at it, and there are alot of issues for the benifit that it would give the guild. That is the way the new guild benifits work, but too many complications. 25 man raiding... if you get the rewards of a 10 man, will people still raid 25 mans. Justice points is the only difference.