Tag Archives: World of Warcraft

Blizzcon: Starcraft, Diablo, and More Mists of Pandaria

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Blizzcon:

Yesterday, I posted about the announcement of Mists of Pandaria as the next WoW expansion. Today, I’ll cover some of the other highlights coming out of Blizzcon, as well as elaborate on a few points about the pandas.

Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm:

I may mostly discuss WoW on this blog, but I’m also a big Starcraft fan. Blizzard owns all of my soul, not just some of it. So I was quite interested in the new Starcraft info at Blizzcon.

First, we got a nice new trailer. It doesn’t really tell us anything we didn’t already know in terms of plot or gameplay, but it looks pretty, and it was quite nerdgasmic to see Kerrigan in all her rage-fueled glory. I’m a big Battlestar Galactica fan, and I love Tricia Helfer as Kerrigan.

Next, the new multiplayer units were revealed. They sound cool now, but if there’s one thing we learned from Wings of Liberty, it’s that the cool units will be nerfed into oblivion for the sake of balance. I know they have to do it, but it puts a damper on these things.

The Zerg gain two units, the viper and the swarm host. The viper is an aerial caster to replace overseers. Its most entertaining ability is probably “abduct,” which allows it to grab enemies and pull them out of unit balls so that the zerglings can nom on them. The swarm host is a burrowed siege unit that continually spawns mini-units to attack nearby enemies. Swarmtacular.

The Terrans get two new units, the warhound and the shredder, as well as a tougher “battle mode” for Hellions. The warhound is analogous to a small thor; if you played the original Starcraft, they’ll greatly remind you of goliaths. The shredder is an odd kind of mobile, area of effect defense structure. Sounds hard to balance. Terran doesn’t lose any units per se, but you will now only be able to have one thor at a time, similar to Protoss motherships now, so it’s likely no one will bother using them.

Protoss loses both the mothership and the carrier (sad face) and gains three units. The tempest is a capitol ship that has an AoE attack for use against other air units and a single target attack for ground. Sounds cool, but I’d rather they just find a way to make carriers useful. The oracle is a flying caster/harassment unit. It doesn’t actually do any damage, but it can shut down buildings and interfere with economies. Finally, the replicant is a unit capable of duplicating any other non-massive unit, complete with all their abilities and attributes. (“Hmm, nice siege tank; I think I’ll take it.”) This seems like a gimmick unit that will be impossible to balance.

There will also be many changes to and new abilities for existing units. For example, ultralisks now have an underground charge ability. I’m honestly more excited about the upgrades to old units than the new units. After the mothership fiasco, I refuse to get excited about cool new units.

Diablo III:

A quick piece of backstory: I played Diablo II many years ago and despised the one-dimensional, grindy gameplay, but Diablo III intrigued me a little. Then Blizzard came out with an offer where I could get it for free for signing up for a year of WoW.

I care about Diablo now.

I haven’t been following the game too closely, so I don’t know much about it, but I can tell you there was a lovely new trailer at Blizzcon. I don’t even really know what’s going on in this trailer, but holy crap the CG is beautiful.

Mists of Pandaria: After the dust settles:

After the frenzied pandemonium of yesterday (no, I won’t stop making these jokes; sorry), I’ve had time to think about the expansion. There are a few things I’d like to elaborate on.

The design philosophy: I love it. They seem to be embracing choice and casual play over the hardcore, raid-centric endgame of the previous expansions. The idea seems to be to do what you want, when you want. This is what the game needs.

The lore: This really worries me. I don’t want another pretty expansion with no real story. *Glares at Burning Crusade.* But it seems like that’s what we’re getting. Warcraft is supposed to be about epic story-telling. Running around DrunkenPandaLand with no real goal in mind is not epic.

There’s a theory going around that we, the Horde and the Alliance, may be the villains of Mists of Pandaria. One of the new monster types is going to be the sha, a kind of negative spirit that are drawn to violence and conflict. The theory goes that us bringing our war to Pandaria will begin summoning massive numbers of sha, threatening to destroy Pandaria. We will be forced to reexamine our old hatreds, lest our foolhardy wars consume all of Azeroth.

This would be a lovely return to the morality play style of storytelling we saw in Warcraft III, and I’d love for it to be true, but I don’t think Blizzard is clever enough for this anymore.

The talent changes: Very mixed feelings here. I love the customization that comes with the talents being mostly utility with no direct impact on your damage, healing, or tanking. I’m sure theorycrafters will still find the “right” choices, but the penalty for choosing “wrong” choices should be much lower.

Also, SHADOWSTEP FOR ALL ROGUES SHADOWSTEP FOR ALL ROGUES SHADOWSTEP FOR ALL ROGUES!!!!11!1!

On the other hand, only getting one talent per fifteen levels is going to really suck the fun out of leveling, and I really don’t relish having to wait 90 levels for the best toys.

Furthermore, while I know the talents aren’t set in stone, they sound pretty lame for most classes right now, with a few major exceptions, such as death knights. AoE death grip that does damage, Remorseless Winter… Holy crap; can you say overpowered?

I know, I know. None of it’s final yet.

So, yeah, I still don’t know how I feel about these talents.

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So, what do you think? How are you liking this year’s Blizzcon announcements? Pro-panda or anti-panda? Looking forward to new talents or hating them? Excited for Diablo? Mourning the carrier or hoping to roflstomp mutalisks with your tempests?

It’s Official: Mists of Pandaria

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Blizzard Brings Pandemonium:

Blizzard has just made official what we knew for so long: Mists of Pandaria will be the next expansion for World of Warcraft. Facts are coming out fast, so forgive me if my rundown is a bit rushed or a bit incomplete, but here’s the big news so far:

Pandaren are playable:

Contrary to my own assumptions, Pandaren will be a playable race. They will start out neutral and choose to side with either the Horde or the Alliance at level ten. Their starting zone is a giant turtle with an island on its back that swims around the ocean, which sounds neat.It's official: pandas

I’m fairly indifferent to this news, to be honest. I like Pandaren, but I don’t need to play as one. I was considering race changing my pally to make a pandadin, but they can’t play as paladins, so I can’t do that. I just hope they don’t screw them up like they did with Goblins.

Monks:

A new class! My wish has been fulfilled! Monks are a hybrid class capable of filling all three roles through a variety of martial arts skills and magical powers. Their resources include chi, which powers some basic attacks, and light and dark force, which powers their finishers. Interestingly, they will not be able to autoattack — the developers want them to have a dynamic feel.

This pleases me greatly. A new class is probably the thing I wanted most out of Mists of Pandaria, and this sounds like a cool one. It sounds like a very dynamic, button-mashy class, which I like, and they can heal, which I also like.

Unlike death knights, monks will start at level one. They are slated to be available for all races but Goblins and Worgen, but I wonder if this is a mistake. It seems weird to cut out only those two. I hope it’s a mistake; I want a Worgen monk, dagnabbit.

Pandaria:

Pandaria, a land shrouded in mists since the Great Sundering, will be the setting for the new expansion. It will be Asian-themed and feature several massive zones. Based on the screenshots, it looks like it will be absolutely beautiful. Definitely something to look forward to.

Also, a winter zone. OMGYay!Pandarian winter zone!

Pandaria will also bring the requisite new monsters. The only ones that sound terribly interesting to me so far are a race of intelligent mantids that swarm in an orgy of destruction every 1,000 years. Could this be another off-shoot of the Aqir, like the Nerubians and the Qiraji?

The story:

Distressingly, this seems to be what’s gotten the least attention so far. The plot of Mists of Pandaria is at best unclear at this point. There’s talk of it focusing on the Alliance/Horde war, but we see none of that in the trailer, and there’s also talk of it being the “calm before the storm” of the next expansion.

I’m worried about this. The last thing I want is another Burning Crusade, where we bravely charge into a new land to wander around aimlessly and kill monsters for no clear reason.

New features:

Mists of Pandaria will also feature the level cap increasing to 90 and several new game features.

There will be a new combat system for… non-combat pets. This reeks of Pokemon, and honestly, I think it’s a pretty dumb idea, but I don’t have to participate in it, so whatever.

There will also be challenge dungeons, which offer prestigious cosmetic rewards for completing dungeons in a specified amount of time.

They’ve also mentioned something called “PvE scenarios.” These will resemble dungeons, battlegrounds, and group quests all at once and will feature short, simple challenges for small groups of people. No need for tanks or healers or damage dealers specifically. Just get some friends and have fun.

I’ve wanted something like these scenarios for so long. Reading this just sold me on Mists of Pandaria.

Finally, Blizzard will once again be redesigning talent trees. No more points or ranks. You will get spec abilities (like avenger’s shield) as you level up, and every fifteen levels, you will be able to choose one of a selection of talents for that level. Once you choose one, the other options for that level will be forever lost to you (unless you respec). However, there will be no more prerequisites in talent trees, meaning you won’t need to chose one talent at one level to access one at a later level. This is intended to streamline talent trees while giving more customizability. If you’ve played Starcraft II, it sounds very similar to the lab research trees. Gonna have to wait and see more of this before I form an opinion.

Blizzard’s overall goal with Mists of Pandaria is to give people as many options as possible for how to play. Daily quests will even reward valor points. This is pretty much the antithesis of Cataclysm’s “raid or GTFO n00b” model.

My overall take:

Unlike most people, I’m not going to declare this the worst/best expansion ever until I see more. There’s a lot of awesome potential here, but also a lot of things that have me worried.

So, dear reader, what say you? Are you for or against the pandas? Does this have you excited, or merely bamboozled?