BlizzCon 2008 Day 1 Recap
I’m on vacation this week and unfortunately it’s on the wrong side of the country. Day 1 of BlizzCon came and went today and there is a ton of information to get posted. I’m gonna try and squeeze as much as possible into this post, but it may take a couple more to get it all.
Curse Visits Blizzard HQers for a Community Summit
Kody from Curse posted information on WoR about their visit to the Blizzard campus for the community summit. Here are some of the highlights, you can click HERE for the full story.
- The Ashbringer story line is set to be completed by patch 3.3 (no news on the date of that patch).
- Patch 3.1 is already complete and will contain 10 & 25 Ulduar. Patch 3.2 will contain a “secret” raid zone. Patch 3.3 will likely contain Icecrown Citadel.
- The Dance Studio is still in the works and they would like for people to be able to customize their characters dance.
- Guild ratings based on PvE and PvP achievements are ideas being tossed around.
Death Knight Class Panel Information
This is not verbatim and taken from WotLKWiki’s live blog…er live wiki…um, live note taking.
- They wanted DK’s to fill a tank roll (snore, we know that) and didn’t want one tree to tbe THE tanking tree.
- Customizable runes were described as “sucking” and caused people to forget about a majority of the skills.
- They wanted all tree to be able to tank or DPS, something they also want for other classes.
- They want any “tank” class to be able to tank any encounter with even more threat generation for all tanking classes.
- (This is my own entry. From reading every single website that covered the class panel, there was absolutely nothing new about DK’s that we haven’t known for a long time.)
Pictures via WoR
Q: Tanking: Tank homogenization is rampant with the changes recently, especially to AoE tanking abilities. Will there be more uniqueness added back in later?
A: A lot of classes feel they need all the same abilities to be similarly viable. Devs have to be very careful to give them all the abilities
Ghostcrawler Announces Some Exciting Information About Duel-Specs
We already knew Ghostcrawler (aka Greg Street) rocked, now we found out what an even more likeable guy he is. Huge props and smart move by Blizzard for letting him represent their company!
Q: Dual spec system: Will there be a fast way to switch gear without taking up a lot of bag space.
A: There has been discussion of a gear changing UI, like Wardrobe or similar mods. They want to make those improvements.
Q: Dual spec system: Did you actually say you want people to be able to switch spec mid-raid?
A: Yes, that’s the idea.
UI Panel Recap
- Achievements UI took 9 months to complete.
- Runic power was taken out of the game and then put back in.
- Rune design has been changes several times. Several factors went into their design (China can’t have skulls in the UI…lol)
- Making a bigger backpack has been nixed due to the token system, but may be looked at in the future.
- There is a focus frame being added.
- Addon compatibility should be ok with WotLK, no major LUA changes.
- Creating “one bag” for the bag UI will not happen anytime soon, if at all.
- The current beta Threat UI is the final version, they wanted to keep it simple.
Q: Why no skulls in China?
A: It’s a sociological thing. In Germany you can’t have red blood. Devs have no idea, that’s just the way it seems to be.
Misc Notes (via MMOC)
- Ozzy Osbourne will be the next “What’s in your game” commercial celebrity.
- The Warcraft movie is STILL in the works, they even have a script.
- WotLK has hit gold and disc production has begun. Any changes from now on will come via release day patches.
- A new MMO from Blizzard was confirmed under a brand new IP with a new universe! (don’t expect it anytime soon)
Diablo 3! One the of the biggest announcements from today was the news of a new class, Wizard!
Is anyone else a little disappointed in the direction that WoW is headed? I just feel that the pure dps classes are getting the shaft. Don’t even get me started on the whole SC2 being split into 3 games. What’s next? Paying for Bnet? Individual expansion packs for each class in D3? Bad Blizzard, Bad!
P.s.
Unfortunately, I’m like a crack addict when comes to their games. There’s no way to quit them.
I really think blizzard is doing the right thing for WoW. Bc absolutely ruined this game and their trying to make up from their losses and head back to the original WoW in a sense.
Well I like and dislike the way its going, I have mixed feelings on the spec swaping because it unlocks so many possibilities, too many almost… Nice thing about that is that during leveling there will be less of
“Whisper hey wanta heal WC?”
“Sorry Shadow speced for leveling”
“oh ok”
it changes to
“Whisper hey wanta heal WC?”
“I havent mastered healing because I level in shadow but I have had some practice in instances so sure let me just swap out my spell crit gear with my MP5 gear so that I don’t go OOM while healing”
“ok, cool meet you at the entrance in 5 minutes then”
It doesn’t make PuGs any better they will still be the hardest way to do an instance but atleast it will open the option of actualy having someone atleast speced to heal during the whole leveling phase of the game since so many priests level in shadow and then swap to holy once they are doing lvl 70 instancing. Same with other classes, it is very very rare to see someone actualy level up as healing spec, you see more people level as tank spec then heal spec and both are just as bad in the time to level compaired to DPS speced.
So with that said, I like it because I love to heal or tank in instances, I don’t like the DPS there is less thrill in it then having to keep someone alive or having to keep everything on you so others don’t die, so I love it its what I would do any instance run any time… if I wasn’t leveling as DPS spec to make leveling easier, I am not droping 100G each instance to do what I love to do during the leveling phases of the game due to having to respec to instance spec and then once done respec to solo questing spec.
thats some wicked stuff going on there
I’m not worried about the dual spec thing. Just because a player *can* do something, doesn’t mean they will. Players who want to DPS will still DPS; players who want to tank will still tank; players who want to heal will still heal. It allows a larger pool of healers/tanks for 5-mans (normal and heroic), but I don’t see it hurting the “pure DPS” in larger instances (much like making pallies/druids viable tanks in BC didn’t hurt warriors much in larger instances).
lol ozzy rocks, i bet hes gonna be an undead death knight. i wonder what the new mmo will be about o.O
“A brand new universe.” I’m a bit suspicious about what it’s going to be like if they aren’t basing their next MMO on Warcraft, Starcraft, or Diablo. Should definitely be interesting though, knowing Blizzard.
I like the way WotLK is turning out. I hated the “magical” land of Outlands, and tanking looks like it won’t be as boring anymore.
I agree Kemi, thats why I have mixed feelings on it, but the one thing I like is now that Retro and Prot use basicly the same gear (or atleast alot closer then what it used to be) people can actualy quest in retro yet tank in instances where as only thing they need to worry about it keeping both 2H and 1H skills up to date and keeping a good 2H and good “sowrd and board”, I love to tank in instances but I hate to be prot while questing.
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