Untouchable Online

MMORPG.com Community Manager Richard Cox attended BlizzCon over the weekend and today presents us with this overview of the event including announcements from all of your favorite Blizzard games.


As many of you who were following my blog over the weekend know, I was at BlizzCon again this year. For those of you who followed those daily reports, no fear, there will be stuff here I didn't talk about there. For those of you, who didn't, feel free to head over and check those entries out as well. Most of it will be covered here, but you never know.

First of all, I'll get all bias out of the way. I absolutely love BlizzCon. And no, it isn't because I'm a WoW fanboy, I don't even currently play WoW. Nor am I really a fanboy of any of their other games. I love the Diablo series, but come on; it's been years and years since I've played D2. Nope, none of that is the reason. I love BlizzCon because as a Community Manager, and one who has worked both IN the industry and in the press covering the industry, I recognize BlizzCon as THE standard when it comes to running a community appreciation event. I've been to most of them; DAoC's Roundtables, SOE's Fan Faires, etc, none of them even come remotely close to BlizzCon. In my opinion one of the most important things a company can do to show appreciation to their community is have a great live event with fun activities, tournaments, great swag and devs accessible to the community. Blizzard does all of this in spades with BlizzCon. So if you're in the industry and in a community relations role in said industry, and aren't attending BlizzCon to take notes when it rolls around, you're doing your community a great disservice.


Now I'm not saying they do everything perfectly, no one's perfect, not even Blizzard. They could definitely be better at anticipating demand. The fact that they completely sold out their initial batch of 15,000 tickets in 15 minutes, yes, that's 1,000 tickets a minute, insane huh? That shows they left a LOT of people who wanted to attend just out of luck. I realize they've more than doubled each event, but with the next one they seriously need to plan for tripling instead of doubling, even if that means finding another venue to host it in. Also, I think they dropped the ball on the Blizzard Store setup this year. Last year they had less than half as many attendees and two stores set up, both of which always had long lines. This year, they more than double the number of attendees, but leave just two stores, which resulted in people standing in line for over five hours just to buy a BlizzCon t-shirt. There should definitely have been four stores this year. Also, I think someone going around with a t-shirt cannon or even just tossing them out the old fashion way, with the BlizzCon t-shirts would have been a great touch.

Not that the swag back every attendee got with their ticket didn't rock. Here, let me list off the rockingness of my swag back for you:

1 Inflatable Frostmourne Sword
1 WoW SwagDog.com Mouse pad with a place to insert a photo
1 Special Edition Vasco Blizzard Authenticator
1 BlizzCon '08 TokyoPop Sketchbook/Notepad
1 StarCraft: The Board Game Typhon Promotion
1 Pandaren Brewmaster Brand Beer Coozie
1 Pack of WoW QQ Noob Tissues
1 Pandaren Brewmaster Brand Bottle Opener
1 Inflatable 'Paladin in a Bubble Hearthing Away' beach ball
1 set StarCraft 2 Wristbands
1 canister of Zerg Creep Ooze stuff
1 Blue Diablo 3 Mana Stress Ball
1 Frostmourne Hilt Keychain
1 WoW: TCG Heroes of Azeroth Starter Deck
1 Bottle of Blizzcon '08 Hand Sanitizer with Carbineer
1 WoW: WotLK Light up Pen
1 BlizzCon 2008 Keychain
1 WoW 'A Bird in Hand' Quest Bookmark
1 WoW Action Figures Pin
1 Blizzard Store Merchandise Catalog
1 Troll Mask
1 Arthas Postcard
1 copy of the WoW Ashbringer Comic, BlizzCon Exclusive
1 Lich King sticker
1 Figure Prints Pendant
Approximately 8-10 assorted ad/deal cards/fliers
Oh, and of course don't forget the scratch off card with the StarCraft 2 beta access and polar bear riding murloc pet, can't forget that. So yeah, when it comes to swag, it generally doesn't get much better than what you walk away from BlizzCon with. But really, who doesn't love the chance of catching a free shirt flying over their head at a convention?

There were more than enough various contests, tournaments and fun of all types to keep everyone happy. Tournaments took place in the original StarCraft, WarCraft 3, WoW Arena 3v3s, and even the first ever StarCraft 2 tournament. All told over $200,000 in prizes were given out and some of the matches were a blast to watch. The contests took place over in the main hall on Friday night, the best easily being the costume contest. Watching that contest made me realize how little free time and money I have on my hands compared to some of these people. Some of the costumes were just insanely well done. While I was unable to get pictures of all the entrants, I got several, including shots of the five finalists and the winner. I want my own Speedy the Turtle... The /silly contest had its funny moments but drew a lot of moans, groans and outright boos from the crowd. The dance contest was funny, in a sometimes painful, sort of way. Jay Mohr did an excellent job in my opinion of MCing the contests, even though there were obviously times that didn't go according to schedule or plan and he had to ad lib a lot. Saturday night's closing festivities included the stand up antics of the lumberjack looking Kyle Kinane (which was unannounced and a surprise, at least to me) and (announced and known about) Patton Oswalt. Both were quite funny and seemed to win over the crowd, especially compared to when Jay Mohr tried to do his act last year before the concert. Mental note: don't go commando in corduroy pants. And then the night ended with a concert featuring 'Level 80 ETC' and 'Video Games Live' as it did last year, but they never get old.


So all that aside, I know why you're really here, the meat and gravy of the convention, what did I learn about the various Blizzard games. To make things easier, I'll break it all down by product, starting with the only game of the three that we actually cover here on the site, World of Warcraft. Unfortunately, WoW had the least news to report on, as the show was definitely mostly focused on Diablo 3 and StarCraft 2, so I'll cover them a bit as well.

World of Warcraft:

As stated above, there wasn't a whole lot of stuff we didn't already know talked about in regards to WoW at BlizzCon. With Wrath's release right around the corner, just about everything that could be talked about concerning the expansion has already been talked about. The two big items to come out of the convention concerning WoW were: In the first patch after the expansions launch, mounts will gain the ability to swim, meaning far less time spent having to stop to resummon your mount after crossing a body of water. And there was some vague talk/rumoring of being able to change your character's appearance, face and hair, for a fee in the future.

The WoW class panel talked a lot about how the existing classes in WoW would change with the launch of the expansion. I'll run through the list rapid-fire style listing off the changes I managed to get into my notes and remember off the top of my head:

Druids: Druids are getting a fairly major overhaul to their talent trees, across the board. It will be a lot harder to really split your spec across multiple trees in the future. With the feral tree you'll REALLY need to decide on either cat or bear. Resto druids will be getting some love with some new heals and tangling roots will work indoors now, adding more crowd control to the class.
Hunters: Hunter changes seem mostly focused around making the class easier to play. Pets are being changed around to be easier to manage and new stable slots being added. Shot rotations are being looked at and they'll receive a new shot, Freezing Shot.
Mages: Their changes seem primarily focused on the DPS side of the house.
Paladins: Not much change here damage wise, most of the Paladin changes seemed to be centered on available gear and some work on the seals and judgments. They will also get some love when it comes to their healing and how it works in PvP.
Priests: Shadow priests should be getting a significant boost in the DPS area as well as healing priests being helped, mostly due to the new 'spell power' attribute on gear boosting all spells across the board rather than being limited to certain spell lines. They're also getting a new damage ability.
Rogues: Rogue changes will help them out against multiple targets with a new ability. Sap is getting a boost.
Shaman: Shamans will be getting all kinds-a new toys to play with; a new crowd control, totem consolidation, a new damage spell AND even a new healing spell.
Warlocks: A couple new skills here and a lot of "we want to..." concerning demon selection and making affliction better.
Warriors: They seem to want to make warriors more fun overall. Some talent juggling going on, a new ability for Fury warriors to allow dual wielding 2-handed weapons and a couple new talents.


There was also a bit of talk about raiding. Basically from the sounds of it, they want to make it less confusing and more fun overall; less emphasis on consumables and buffs, more on skill. They're also looking at ways to make things easier for dual spec classes.

The PvP panel primarily talked about the arenas and battleground, as well as Wintergrasp, coming in the expansion. The arenas definitely sound cool, and different from anything currently in the game. There was also a little talk of changes coming down the pipe not related to the expansion. Though, it is pretty easy to see what brought these changes on... The ability to queue up for scenarios from anywhere in the game has been hugely popular in WAR, and it seems Blizzard has noticed, as in the future you'll be able to queue up for battlegrounds from anywhere. They're also strongly considering the ability to gain experience in battlegrounds, much like you do in scenarios in WAR, in the future. There were a couple other panels that I missed because they overlapped with other things I attended, or I was standing in insanely long lines at the time. But overall from what I've read and heard from other people I knew there who attended them, nothing really new was talked about, so not much missed.

StarCraft 2:

Well, this is an easy one to cover the news of the convention on. There was really only one big announcement, and if you're anything like me you won't like it. StarCraft 2 is now a trilogy of games. That's right, three separate products, three separate SKUs, three separate price tags, spread over a three year window. Each race's campaign is being fleshed out to "full game length." While a small part of me is a little happy about this news, it is a VERY small part. Sure, 26-30 missions per campaign instead of 10-12 sounds great. But paying $50 (plus tax, and this figure is pure speculation on my part as no price point was announced) three times just so I can play all 3 campaigns does NOT, in ANY way, make me even remotely happy. And it really hurts people like me more than anyone. I don't play RTSes for the multiplayer, which for the record, if you do; you'll be fine as all three products will ship with all three races fully implemented for multiplayer skirmishes. I play them for the story, for the campaign. And I really feel sorry for the hardcore Protoss fans; their campaign is dead last, so welcome to your 3+ year wait.


Diablo 3:

Several bits of big news on the D3 front. First and foremost is easily the announcement of the Wizard as the third class in the game. So now we have a main tank, a glass cannon and umm... a freak. There was also a bit of rumoring going around the convention about them monetizing Battle Net in some manner, but no details were released, other than confirmation that D3 would not be a subscription based game like WoW.

The Diablo 3 class and skills panel talked mostly about the Wizard class, but also touched on the Barbarian and Witch Doctor a bit. They discussed how they came up with the current skill system in Diablo 3, while reiterating many, many times that it was in no way a final product and still very subject to change. They showed a slide show ticking off all of the discarded failed ideas for skill systems, including several radial systems, stuff involving beads and wheels and even two versions of the 'Horadric Skill Cube' which the crowd went crazy about. Their goals when creating the skill system for D3 were to keep it simple, compelling at both early and end game, allow for a lot of character customization and differentiation and support around six active skills. One thing they really wanted to do was get back to the system from the first Diablo where skills were dropped from mobs as books, or at least something along the lines of that system. They wanted Diablo 3's system to incorporate both randomly dropped skills, and ways to enhance skills through looted items.

The second part of that is achieved through the rune system. When exploring the D3 world you'll come across runes in your loot quite often. Those runes can be attached to a skill to alter not only its functionality, but also its appearance. Some of the examples they gave were with the Wizard's teleport and electrocute spells and the Witch Doctor's flaming skull spell. They showed the base teleport spell, which functions the same as it always has, just jumps you to a different area on the screen. Then they added a striking rune to the spell which caused the Wizard to do damage to mobs in the area where she appeared. And then they added a multi-strike rune to it which caused the wizard to teleport around the screen hitting multiple enemies kinda like Nightcrawler does in the Marvel Alliance games. With the flaming skull spell, when they added the multi-strike rune to it, it caused the skull to bounce damaging multiple enemies in a path, the farther you threw it, the more bounces it took. They also added a power rune to it which caused the skill to leave areas of fire on the ground that would damage any enemies that wandered into them. They also showed the Wizard's electrocute spell, which works kinda like chain lightning in the previous game. By adding multi-strike to it, it caused the lightning to bounce to more enemies. They also showed it with a lethality rune which caused any enemy hit to explode doing radial damage. Overall I think the system looks to be very well done and interesting, definitely leading to some high levels of customization and differentiation.


There will also be a respec ability of some form in Diablo 3, so if you don't like how your character is progressing, you can always wipe it clean and reassign the points. The details of how it would exactly work weren't available since it's not implemented into the game yet. The gems you use to upgrade your socketed weapons and armor from previous games are back, functioning pretty much exactly as before and even looking pretty much identical. The inventory works a lot like it did before, it just isn't grid based this time. You have X number of slots for items, regardless of their size. You also have 4 bag slots where you can add bags of varying sizes to increase the number of slots in your main inventory, kinda like the bank system in WoW, but free.

I played through the entire demo segment on all three available classes. Of the three I definitely preferred the Wizard. I will admit though that that isn't entirely fair. The Wizard was the only one of the three with the rune system implemented. Also when I was playing through as the Barbarian, my mouse was acting up, making targeting a huge pain in the rump. All that being said though, I absolutely loved the Wizard's disintegrate spell, as well as electrocute, which is just a beefed up version of the old chain lightning spell. Disintegrate was just way too much fun to use though. Basically you fire a line of fire out from you, the longer you hold it on a mob, the more damage it does to them as they 'heat up'. You can also swing the mouse around and move it from mob to mob, keeping it going, until you run out of mana of course.

Monster deaths provide a lot of varied entertainment in Diablo 3. You have your basic deaths, then your 'epic' deaths, usually for the bosses and mini-bosses. Certain mobs also have their own special ways to die, like the Grotesque that explodes and sends worms/lampreys all over to attack you. Then on top of that there are critical kills, for when you manage to kill a mob with a critical hit, these tend to be especially gruesome and gory; think HUGE blood spatter. AND finally there are skill kills; certain skills kill the mobs differently. For example an acid attack will melt the mob leaving only a puddle, or cold based skills freeze and shatter them.

All in all, it was a great time and a great show. Definitely a big thanks to Blizzard for having me out and I can't wait for the next one.