Guest Star

by John Hoskin on Aug 09, 2007

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1. Daily Column

The amount of information that came out of BlizzCON is astounding and our coverage today is some of the most entertaining. The automated attendant will help you with your choice.

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For the last few days you have been held captive and made to listen to my ramblings about Blizzard, BlizzCON, the state of the game and of course, the state of games that compete with it. Today will be different. I promise.

Today instead of my normal column which is unbridled by facts and humility I give you the musings of another gamer, Medeor. I was fortunate enough to meet Medeor's at BlizzCON and fortunate yet again when he sent me this article. Enjoy!

Blizzcon Gets Hit by a Medeor

Lists are the fast food of writing for readers, you can drive through and get something that may fill you up, but it will give you heart burn. Mmmâ¦Lists. Love them or hate them, they are fun, and heck they're easier to write than a real story so here you go

General observations and notes from Blizzcon:

I walked into Blizzcon and immediately toured the whole area. I didn't dive into the merchandise lines or gather in front of the Starcraft II demo. Nope, I wondered around and soaked it all in. During my meandering I found a huge set of posters that looked like box art that read "World of Warcraft Wrath of the Lich King". My immediate reaction was "Holy crap, I'm seeing the expansion box." I walked in when the doors opened and there were only two other people standing next to me in front of this new artwork so I was really one of the first attendees to see it, so neener neener. My immediate follow up reaction was - why does Arthas look like Sauronâs twin brother (the bad guy from Lord of the Rings)? I think Blizzard is hoping to sucker some LoTRo fans into thinking this is their first expansion, you know so they can steal all those fans from Turbine.

I also found that black is the new black. And by "new" I mean you can't be âoldâ to wear it. Black may be slimming, but according to my wife it is not so fly on an old fat bald guy. When I triumphantly held up my newly acquired Wrath of the Lich King shirts I think her words were along the lines of "Stalk any playgrounds lately?" Someday I'll be cool again, I just hope the kids don't trip over my walker when I get there.

Neck pain. Not only were there girls there, there were hot girls there, and we're not just talking about booth babes. Only one booth had babes, but some of the others had very nice looking women at their booths. Attendees were hotties too though. There was an overall hotness in the crowds.

Celebration of diversity (or not). There were old/young, hip/square, cool/lame, and definitely 1eet/newbs in attendance. While Blizzcon showcased a cross-section of the global gaming society, it was mostly made up of the white North American gaming society. Gaming of the Blizzard sort is still not embraced by all of the protected classes here in the states. Carrying that forward, shockingly or not, some of the best foreign PvP teams are also very white, as in Scandinavian alabaster. And yes, mostly male. I did eat lunch at a table with ages ranging from 16 to 56 though.

Top things heard:

The voices for the contest on Friday night. The grand prize Ten Ton Hammer Blizzcon attendee Prynnie went above and beyond the call of duty with her female Gnome impression - she did awesome. I soiled myself just thinking about being on that stage looking at thousands of critics. The dude that did the âStop Dotsâ skit made me pee myself. The winner did a blood elf thing from pre-WoW Warcraft and he did a great job â drama and comedy all rolled into one.

Blizz does comedy too â there was a good bit of humor in all of the presentations like the story told by Tigole (muckity muck Blizzard Blue) when he discussed the Death Knight and his 12 year old son asked whether the new class would be overpowered like the warlock. Solid work young man.

Top things seen:

Did I mention the female Blood Elf costumes? If they are over-played, check out some of the female Draenais or some of the female human rogues...hubba hubba. There were a lot of male characters but none of them stand out in my memory, go figure.

Starcraft II was not on my list of things to drool all over. I've outgrown my RTS roots, but I have to say that when that game ships, I'll buy it.

Death Knight. Mmmm Death Knight. A dual wielding or two handed smackâem tanking tank. Shield lovers need not apply. Iâm very interested in the way the DK will use runes instead of mana, energy or rage. You will have 6 slots on a weapon (subject to change, ymmv) and youâll equip one of three types of runes on the weapon â similar to poisoning in that youâll have timed applications of the runes. The runes will be expended as you use the type of rune for the magic effect â runes were blood, unholy and frost â and they will regen over time. You could equip 6 of the same type, or 2 of each, or 3 of 2, you get the idea. The only question I have is â if they up the dps on the paladin retribution spec, will it end up being too similar? Probably not since the DK will have ranged magic and dual wield, but that is the type of balancing act Blizz will have to deal with as they add new hero classes.

There were some excellent walk-throughs of how Blizz handles the development process. They held some very frank and informative panel discussions on creating the zones (showing leveling progression, etc.), another panel went over the classes and they had a long discussion about dungeons and raids. Other Ten Ton Hammer guys have and will provide more detailing of what was said, but I'll say that the top items I heard and saw included:

- Trash mob discussion. Blizzard confessed to screwing some of these up (Scholo has more trash than the continents), but for the most part they have this down to a science. They have specific metrics on how to use trash mobs to increase or decrease the time/loot/difficulty of an instance. Again, we all know this, but to hear how they tweak an instance by using these speed bumps on the way to the boss mob is very interesting. There was an awesome run through Molten Core by Tigole with all the major boss mobs of ALL instances including the Lich King and he ran through as a gnome without aggroing anything. Very fun to see God Mode in action.

- Classes - I finally heard the peeps from Blizzard discuss the issue of Pally retribution spec and the fact that it sucks. This is one of those elephant-in-the-living room areas where we all know it sucks, but we can now openly discuss its mass suckitude because they are apparently going to address it. There were some interesting questions about the increase in end-game shadow priests and feral druids - people are pretty happy or pissed about this depending on whether you are happy playing a shadow priest or you are dependant on a holy healer but now your buddy pays a shadow priest who out DPSes you. I think they've done an excellent job of allowing people options on how they want to play those classes - especially if you don't want to be an endgame healbot.

Top things not heard:

I love my ret-specâd pally.

I love to party with a ret-specâd pally.

Release dates for anything, I donât even think the bartender told me when I could get a drink, it just showed up when he was done.

I wish I was at Fan Faireâ¦

Sorry, couldnât resist. Keep on truckinâ yâall.

-Medeor

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Thanks as always for visiting TenTonHammer.com

John "Boomjack" Hoskin

Last Updated: Mar 13, 2016