Blizzcon 2011

Fairweather Pure · Post by **Fairweather Pure** » October 21, 2011, 10:23 am

I bought the online streaming option for Blizzcon this year. I got a WoW pet and some SC 2 stuff as well. I'm actually pretty excited about the convention this year. All in all, for 40$ it's a pretty good deal IMO. This is the first year I've ever done this. I'm working the next 2 days and will just stream the entire thing as I work.

--There will be some SC2 unit announcements as well as more details on the Heart of the Swarm expansion. Surely a release date could be in the cards.

--The next WoW expansion will be announced along with as many details as they have available and are able to cram into the next 2 days. Maybe a new hero class? I'm thinking that Pandas will be a non-playable race but be the main focus of the expansion. Perhaps they will teach the alliance and horde a healing/monk hybrid type of hero class using existing races? I think if they do another class, a healer is a shoe-in. I'm kind of surprised that Blizzard has been able to keep this under wraps so well, all things considered.

--Diablo 3 will surely have a release date pinned down and perhaps mention of an open beta.

--Blizzard's DOTA may get some attention.

I look forward to the details on all 3 games, so it should be a pretty fun experience. Also, Foo Fighters live is all kinds of awesome.

There is a Blizzcon schedule iPhone app that scales well on the iPad for those who are interested.

miir · Post by **miir** » October 21, 2011, 10:36 am

I can't really understand how giving any company $40 to listen to them hype their products online can be considered a 'good deal'.

Lynks · Post by **Lynks** » October 21, 2011, 10:40 am

Fairweather Pure wrote:Also, Foo Fighters live is all kinds of awesome.

Yes, that is awesome, but it's as much live for you as it is for me when I watch a youtube clip of it the following week for free.

Live = you are there.

miir · Post by **miir** » October 21, 2011, 10:45 am

I can understand why someone would want to attend one of these events 'live'.
The social aspect is appeal enough... getting info about your favorite games and the chance to meet and ask developers questions is gravy.

Charging people to watch 'live streaming' is ridiculous.
But I would imagine there's a lot of stupid people who are willing to waste their money to get their WOW info a few minutes before everyone else.

masteen · Post by **masteen** » October 21, 2011, 10:50 am

I considered doing this before for the wow in-game pets. Since I quit wow and don't really have any interest in any other blizzard games, this isn't even on my radar anymore.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » October 21, 2011, 11:03 am

The only thing interesting from Blizzard, their next MMO "Titan", will not be discussed so that leaves no reason to be pay attention to the proceedings.

Fairweather Pure · Post by **Fairweather Pure** » October 21, 2011, 11:13 am

miir wrote:I can understand why someone would want to attend one of these events 'live'.
The social aspect is appeal enough... getting info about your favorite games and the chance to meet and ask developers questions is gravy.

Charging people to watch 'live streaming' is ridiculous.
But I would imagine there's a lot of stupid people who are willing to waste their money to get their WOW info a few minutes before everyone else.

I'll be live chatting and thread watching with others who are watching Blizzcon via the virtual ticket. If you can't be there first hand, I think hanging out and chatting with people in your same situation is about as close as you can get. I'm sure I would have a chance to text questions in to the developers during certain panels, but that's not really my thing.

PPV is hardly a new venture. I don't understand the derision being voiced. Is it because it's video game related? I've done PPV for sports on several occasions in the past. It has cost more and lasts a couple of hours at best. 40$ for 2 entire days of direct live streaming from multiple channels from a convention about a hobby and company I enjoy is pretty cool! No, I'm not there in person. Yes, I could watch it later or simply read the highlights. Seeing it happen as it's happening is a big part of the experience!

miir · Post by **miir** » October 21, 2011, 11:35 am

I still don't get it... and the comparison to a PPV sporting event is asinine.
You can't watch PPV events for free with a 2-3 minute delay.
You know all the Blizzcon info is going to be plastered all over the internet a few minutes after it's announced.

I guess I'm not a marketing/hype sheep like you.
You're probably the type of person who would also pay to attend an Apple product release 'event'

Fairweather Pure · Post by **Fairweather Pure** » October 21, 2011, 11:47 am

miir wrote: You know all the Blizzcon info is going to be plastered all over the internet a few minutes after it's announced.

Yeah I know. I'll be one of the people typing it.

Just got my Blizzcon pet for WoW too!

Kwonryu DragonFist · October 21, 2011, 10:50 pm

Nice one Fairweather!

What was the most interesting thing revealed at Blizzon so far Fair?

Zygar_ Cthulhukin · Post by **Zygar_ Cthulhukin** » October 22, 2011, 11:17 am

Pandas!

http://www.iheartchaos.com/post/1174136 ... s-mists-of

Fairweather Pure · Post by **Fairweather Pure** » October 22, 2011, 12:31 pm

Kwonryu DragonFist wrote:Nice one Fairweather!

What was the most interesting thing revealed at Blizzon so far Fair?

I think this Blizzcon has been amazing so far. There has been a ton of information and quite a few surprises for sure. My biggest surprise has been the complete revamping of the talent trees and the addition of pokemon to WoW with the pet battle system (as well as pets going across all characters!). Leveling pets, wild pets to capture, and the ability to buy and sell them is an entirely new game within a game. I'm also surprised to see Horde and Alliance sharing the same character. The "quality of life" enhancements look fantastic for MoP. This expansion is doing to gameplay what Cata did to the world. It's a re-write and I can't wait to play it. I like how the team is actively trying to get people out of the cities and into the world again.

For SC2 I'm surprised that they're taking units out of multiplayer and replacing them with others for Protoss. That's a pretty big deal. Overall, SC2 units and info looks great. i think this expansion may prove to be better that Brood War. My thoughts are already looking forward to what the Protoss expansion will bring to the table...

For Diablo 3, I simply want a release date. I've already preordered the awesome SE, but seriously, give me a release date!

I'm neutral on Blizzard DotA because I've never really played those types of games. It seems to be getting a muted response too.

The cross game promotion stuff is great for someone like me that plays and loves all 3 games. I ordered WoW for a year to get the new mount. If we get all 3 of these games in the same year, Blizzard will easily get the majority of my video game time.

Boogahz · Post by **Boogahz** » October 22, 2011, 1:07 pm

oh....yay....another talent overhaul

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » October 22, 2011, 1:24 pm

What about their next MMO Titan where any talent that the company has is focused on now?

Boogahz · Post by **Boogahz** » October 22, 2011, 1:51 pm

I think they specifically announced that they would not be discussing Titan at Blizzcon this year

Fairweather Pure · Post by **Fairweather Pure** » October 22, 2011, 2:52 pm

Winnow wrote:What about their next MMO Titan where any talent that the company has is focused on now?

Which particular game developer or creative people are you referring to that was relocated from WoW to Titan? Give me some names to work with here.

Fairweather Pure · Post by **Fairweather Pure** » October 22, 2011, 3:01 pm

Boogahz wrote:oh....yay....another talent overhaul

This one is easily the most significant yet. Even watching them explain it first hand left me scratching my head about several aspects. Druids have 4 trees now. You get 6 talent points for 90 levels? Fucking what? No class trainers anymore? The end of cookie cutter builds? A lot of thus sounds really obtuse just because it's so different. I think once I can actually play with a talent calculater it will be easier to understand.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » October 22, 2011, 6:02 pm

Fairweather Pure wrote: Which particular game developer or creative people are you referring to that was relocated from WoW to Titan? Give me some names to work with here.

Some info:

Paul Sams on “Titan”

“I believe [it's] the most ambitious thing we’ve ever attempted. And I feel like we have set our company up to succeed on that. We have some of our most talented and most experienced developers on that team. Many of the people that built World of Warcraft are full time on that other team.

World of Warcraft executive producer Frank Pearce

It's our next gen MMO and we've only started talking about it in a limited fashion because we want to leverage the fact that we're working on something like that for the purpose of recruiting – getting some of the best talent in the industry on that

Rob Pardo (WoW's first lead designer) was moved to Titan from World of Warcraft, which is why Greg Street was hired.

I also know that Jeff Kaplan, the guy who designed most of the map in WoW was moved to an undisclosed project, which was likely Titan.

"We've spent a lot of time over the last number of years transitioning those people off [of World of Warcraft], and having great people below them that were trained up by them to run World of Warcraft," Sams said. "Those people have been doing it for the last couple of years without the assistance of those people that created it."

Boogahz · Post by **Boogahz** » October 22, 2011, 8:09 pm

Fairweather Pure wrote:
Boogahz wrote:oh....yay....another talent overhaul

This one is easily the most significant yet. Even watching them explain it first hand left me scratching my head about several aspects. Druids have 4 trees now. You get 6 talent points for 90 levels? Fucking what? No class trainers anymore? The end of cookie cutter builds? A lot of thus sounds really obtuse just because it's so different. I think once I can actually play with a talent calculater it will be easier to understand.

They basically said the same things with the last overhaul.

Kwonryu DragonFist · October 22, 2011, 11:10 pm

Took them a while to add Monks to the game!

Always wondered why they didn't have Monks earlier, ever since i saw Woo Ping in Stormwind for the first time!

Fairweather Pure · Post by **Fairweather Pure** » October 23, 2011, 2:34 am

Boogahz wrote:They basically said the same things with the last overhaul.

Well it's nothing like this overhaul.

http://www.wowhead.com/mists-of-pandari ... calculator

Animalor · Post by **Animalor** » October 23, 2011, 9:19 am

Wow.. This is a rather drastic revamp of the talent trees. What do they have to gain by kneecapping the only meaningful type of character customisation?

Fairweather Pure · Post by **Fairweather Pure** » October 23, 2011, 11:38 am

Animalor wrote:Wow.. This is a rather drastic revamp of the talent trees. What do they have to gain by kneecapping the only meaningful type of character customisation?

They're actually allowing much more customization. You should read up on it before drawing the wrong conclusions.

kyoukan · Post by **kyoukan** » October 23, 2011, 9:01 pm

I did read up on it. It looks really dumbed down and boring. I guess it will do away with cookie cutter builds since every spec will be identical. The next expansion after this one, all classes will just gestalt into one class called a "dude" and will just have every talent in the game.

The fucking hacks on the WoW developer farm team they have on this game are even worse than I thought they were. This whole expansion is a fucking joke. Their long time subscribers that made wow such a success are basically getting their faces slapped with "content" like this. A fake asian continent with fucking playable kung-fu pandas? this is just a bet among the Activision execs that WOW players will fucking buy anything.

Funkmasterr · Post by **Funkmasterr** » October 23, 2011, 9:29 pm

Yeah it's seemed clear to me for the last 8-10 months that the amount of effort being put into this ge was drastically declining. I won't be coming back at any point.

miir · Post by **miir** » October 23, 2011, 11:06 pm

Haha, they dumbed the game down even more than I thought was possible.
I remember a long time ago when Warcraft lore wasn't written by fucking retards.

Animalor · Post by **Animalor** » October 23, 2011, 11:23 pm

The pandaen have been part of WoW lore longer than the Tauren have. Wasn't there one in Warcraft 2? I'm surprised it's taken em this long to put em into WoW

kyoukan · Post by **kyoukan** » October 24, 2011, 12:03 am

no they haven't. their first appearance was an april fool's joke in 2005.

yeah, this entire expansion is based around an unfunny april fool's joke. that is how much respect blizzard has for their WOW playerbase. they are basically saying "fuck you; you retards will pay for anything" and they are pretty much right.

hopefully they will get jack black to do the voice for the male pandaren but that would probably cost more than a dollar so blizzard won't be bothered.

also: they hail from the pandaren empire on the secret continent of pandaren and speak pandaren and their martial arts style is called "pandaren style." still waiting to see if their favorite food is pandarenberries and whether or not they frequently substitute other adjectives with the word "pandaren"

Animalor · Post by **Animalor** » October 24, 2011, 8:30 am

I stand corrected. Thank Kyo

miir · Post by **miir** » October 24, 2011, 10:02 am

kyoukan wrote:their first appearance was an april fool's joke in 2005.

Based on a shitty food-court chinese food chain.

Fairweather Pure · Post by **Fairweather Pure** » October 24, 2011, 11:37 am

I was looking forward to Pandas! I'm glad we get them as playable characters! Origins and all that don't bother me at all. I have a vague knowledge of all the WoW lore, but I'm not like the red shirt dude from last year's panel or anything.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwyMB19q7ms

The game already has Cows and space goats, why would pandas suddenly matter? I recall a huge deal being made about the Darani background, shaman coming to alliance, pallies going to horde, all that crap. I don't really care that much and apparently neither does anyone else because no one bitches about that stuff anymore. I just want a good game with lots of stuff to do. Twist the "lore". Whatever, just make the game better. Done!

And I believe you are way off on the talent trees. It's pretty obvious that the Diablo 3 team and WoW team are sharing a lot of the same ideas about the micro stuff and overall vision of each game. Looking at Diablo 3's ability to individualize your armor with wings, banners, and effects is like a ground up approach to what Blizzard is retro fitting into WoW. Likewise, the customization of class skills and such is coming over from Diablo 3. Having 3 "tabs" per class is pretty smart thinking. Class/Spec/Talent will allow for much more diversity. I don't know how you think it will actually be less (especially when the class/spec portions haven't even been detailed!). Furthermore, being able to change your talents on the fly will be a godsend IMO. They need to change up and add to the glyph system for even more diversity. Hell, throw all of that out the window and simply getting new talents/abilities/leveling paths for a 7 year old game is pretty amazing in of itself. It is keeping my interest, and that is more than EQ did this late into the game's life span. Just the constant tweaking and fine tuning to keep the game involving is a godsend. MoP will be making an effort to get people out of cities and into the world again. They tried with archaeology (I hate archaeology), but it sounds like they'll be doing much more this time around.

There comes a point where you're just sick of a game. I haven't hit that point with WoW yet. Well, I took a 6-8 month break at the end of WotLK, but you know what I mean

Even though EQ's content was untouchable when WoW came out, I made the switch simply because I was sick of EQ. It doesn't mean EQ was a bad game at all, I was just sick of it. I see a lot of people, like, angry at WoW. It's fucking ridiculous! It's a game! Then again, I don't play WoW like it's a second job like I did EQ. I'm sure my more casual approach makes me somewhat easier to appease. Haha, I like how 10-12ish hours a week is considered casual

How far we've come!

EDIT: If you really want to know about Panda lore, I've heard the books flesh a lot of that stuff out. Apparently they're a bigger player than I ever knew (or cared about!).

Zygar_ Cthulhukin · Post by **Zygar_ Cthulhukin** » October 24, 2011, 11:51 am

O RLY?

Try Warcraft III

Appearance in The Frozen Throne campaigns

In the fourth mission of the Sentinels campaign a pandaren was in the Pandaren Brewing area in southwest corner of the map. He gave Maiev Shadowsong a Slipper of Agility +3, before closing up his shop.

Chen Stormstout is the most prominently featured Brewmaster and is present throughout the bonus campaign, albeit only if you complete an optional quest to recruit him.

Two brewmasters appear in the Blood Elf campaign. In the secret mission, one shows up in the final wave to try to stop the blood elves from escaping through the portal. The second one is a secret character. To get the Brewmaster, however, the player must survive all the waves of attackers on the tower defense style secret level, including defeating the alliance allied Pandaren. If successful, they'll control not only Kael & Vashj during the next mission, but also a random-named brewmaster.

Quotes!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=028qkDLiyp4

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » October 24, 2011, 12:05 pm

Other MMORPGs are getting boob physics and WoW gets Pandas? Lame.

miir · Post by **miir** » October 24, 2011, 12:34 pm

Anyone who thinks WOW measures up to other MMOs in terms of content and features obviously hasn't played any other MMOs in the past few years. It's pretty ironic that WOW is now copying crap from Rift.

WOW is probably done... especially for western gamers.
With so many superior alternatives out now (and coming soon), there's not going to be much appeal to play this ugly, dated, tired MMO for anything more than 4-6 weeks after expansion release.

Fairweather Pure · Post by **Fairweather Pure** » October 24, 2011, 12:56 pm

Hey miir, how's Rift doin' anyway? LOL

Your opinions and efforts to troll are as ill informed and forced as usual.

All other MMOs are, and will continue to eat WoW's table scraps for the forseeable future. WoW could lose 1/2 it's subscribers and still be #1. WoW may very well be the number 1 MMO long enough to be ousted by Titan. Not that I care one way or the other. It's a fun game and nothing more.

miir · Post by **miir** » October 24, 2011, 1:15 pm

Rift is fun... still going strong.
Last I heard they are sitting around 500-600k subs.

But that's not really the point... as usual, you completely missed it.

WoW could lose 1/2 it's subscribers and still be #1.

It's not about how many Chinese subs a game has, it's about a dev team that's half-assed an expansion for a stagnant game.
The game that will end up 'killing' WOW was released 7 years ago.

kyoukan · Post by **kyoukan** » October 24, 2011, 1:57 pm

Zygar_ Cthulhukin wrote:O RLY?

Try Warcraft III

Appearance in The Frozen Throne campaigns

In the fourth mission of the Sentinels campaign a pandaren was in the Pandaren Brewing area in southwest corner of the map. He gave Maiev Shadowsong a Slipper of Agility +3, before closing up his shop.

Chen Stormstout is the most prominently featured Brewmaster and is present throughout the bonus campaign, albeit only if you complete an optional quest to recruit him.

Two brewmasters appear in the Blood Elf campaign. In the secret mission, one shows up in the final wave to try to stop the blood elves from escaping through the portal. The second one is a secret character. To get the Brewmaster, however, the player must survive all the waves of attackers on the tower defense style secret level, including defeating the alliance allied Pandaren. If successful, they'll control not only Kael & Vashj during the next mission, but also a random-named brewmaster.

Quotes!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=028qkDLiyp4

http://www.wowwiki.com/Pandaren

The pandaren started as a creation of the Blizzard artist Samwise Didier and an April Fool's joke, but they got a massive response from Warcraft fans. In the first BlizzCast episode launched on Jan. 10, 2008, Samwise recalled the process to the creation of the Pandaren April Fool's page: "But so we put that up in there and everyone was like “Oh my God! A PANDA RACE? That’s kind of cool!” And I’m like “Are you kidding me, really? You want to see pandas in Warcraft III or whatever?”" Soon, they were included in the Warcraft III expansion and Chris Metzen began to write them into the game lore.

So I got the year wrong. Point is the same.

Fairweather Pure · Post by **Fairweather Pure** » October 24, 2011, 3:02 pm

Kyoukan, aren't you playing the Star Wars MMO?!? If you have serious concerns with retconned and add-on lore, you really picked the wrong fucking franchise!

miir · Post by **miir** » October 24, 2011, 3:06 pm

I doubt Kyoukan would ever try to defend lore written retards.

Bubba Grizz · Post by **Bubba Grizz** » October 24, 2011, 5:48 pm

Are you serious about the Poke'mon aspect of the game? Not that I am interested but my daugher might be. Well enough to play the free 20 levels at least.

Fairweather Pure · Post by **Fairweather Pure** » October 24, 2011, 6:57 pm

Bubba Grizz wrote:Are you serious about the Poke'mon aspect of the game? Not that I am interested but my daugher might be. Well enough to play the free 20 levels at least.

Yup!

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/game/mists- ... pet-battle

kyoukan · Post by **kyoukan** » October 25, 2011, 5:58 am

I am mostly interested in stabbing stormtroopers in the face with a light saber then I care about star wars lore.

Mind you I'd watch star wars episode 1 back to back for an entire weekend before trying to take this awful shit blizzard's mmorpg trainees are trying to shove down their customer's throats.

Aslanna · Post by **Aslanna** » October 25, 2011, 6:22 am

I think I saw somewhere that Diablo 3 would also have a console (360 / PS3 ) release. Unless I was dreaming.

Kwonryu DragonFist · Post by **Kwonryu DragonFist** » October 25, 2011, 6:32 am

Zygar_ Cthulhukin wrote:O RLY?

Try Warcraft III

Appearance in The Frozen Throne campaigns

In the fourth mission of the Sentinels campaign a pandaren was in the Pandaren Brewing area in southwest corner of the map. He gave Maiev Shadowsong a Slipper of Agility +3, before closing up his shop.

Chen Stormstout is the most prominently featured Brewmaster and is present throughout the bonus campaign, albeit only if you complete an optional quest to recruit him.

Two brewmasters appear in the Blood Elf campaign. In the secret mission, one shows up in the final wave to try to stop the blood elves from escaping through the portal. The second one is a secret character. To get the Brewmaster, however, the player must survive all the waves of attackers on the tower defense style secret level, including defeating the alliance allied Pandaren. If successful, they'll control not only Kael & Vashj during the next mission, but also a random-named brewmaster.

Quotes!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=028qkDLiyp4

Yes, the Pandarens first appearance was in 2003.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8BgIg_Q3FE

Funkmasterr · Post by **Funkmasterr** » October 25, 2011, 7:53 am

The recent thread in the eq forum put this game into perspective for me. I don't have anywhere near the number of fond memories, nor friendships from wow that I did/do from eq. All the more reason if never go back, have fun with blizzyawn though

Am excited for Diablo, though.

Kwonryu DragonFist · Post by **Kwonryu DragonFist** » October 25, 2011, 8:10 am

Funkmasterr wrote:The recent thread in the eq forum put this game into perspective for me. I don't have anywhere near the number of fond memories, nor friendships from wow that I did/do from eq. All the more reason if never go back, have fun with blizzyawn though

Am excited for Diablo, though.

The friendships from the early EQ-days created OMGIAMRETARDEDCAUSEALOTISTWOWORDS of bonds and friends, it even was the cause of this forum!

Wonder why it happened in EQ and not for example in WoW?

Was it because of the novelty? Our age? Did it require more of us? What?

Was experiencing something together in EQ so much grander and special than in for example WoW, RIFT or SWTOR?

Kilmoll the Sexy · Post by **Kilmoll the Sexy** » October 25, 2011, 12:00 pm

It was because EQ forced you to do things with people. If you died in an ugly spot you had to find a way to get your corpse for your gear...which a lot of times meant other groups in that area. There were no instanced areas, so you were pretty much always in places populated with other people.

Bubba Grizz · Post by **Bubba Grizz** » October 25, 2011, 1:16 pm

I agree with the idea that Instancing killed the community feel in MMO's. Having multiple groups running through Sol B was awesome. Trains, Camp Checks, 38 hour waits for Jboots only to have someone swipe the kill, are all memorable.

masteen · Post by **masteen** » October 25, 2011, 6:31 pm

Kwonryu DragonFist wrote:Took them a while to add Monks to the game!

Always wondered why they didn't have Monks earlier, ever since i saw Woo Ping in Stormwind for the first time!

Because Furor hates monks, and Furor is not longer working on WoW. He was moved to Titan a while ago.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » October 25, 2011, 6:37 pm

masteen wrote: Because Furor hates monks, and Furor is not longer working on WoW. He was moved to Titan a while ago.

There goes my theory about all the best people moving to Titan!*

*FoH sucks!