BlizzCon 2010 News Roundup

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Day One

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm
will be released December 7 2010, however that’s not the
exciting news. Instead players will be pleased to discover that for the
first time ever they will be able to pre-order the expansion directly
from the Blizzard store, download much of the DVD content in advance,
which equates to being able to play the second, or if you are truly
hardcore, the millisecond that the servers go live. Thanks largely in part to
the stunning success of the Pandaren Monk which helped to raise money
for the Make-A-Wish Foundation, Blizzard will be offering up a new
charity pet; the Moonkin Hatchling. Expected to make its debut in
November this new pet will allow players to add another awesome
addition to their pet collection while feeling good about themselves at
the same time. Finally the suspense is over
and Blizzard has announced the Fifth and final playable class for
Diablo III,  the href="http://us.blizzard.com/diablo3/characters/demonhunter.xml"
target="_blank">Demon Hunter,
which seems to be vaguely reminiscent of the Amazon, except much darker
and with the potential to be much cooler. Also unveiled was the
game’s href="http://us.blizzard.com/diablo3/world/systems/pvp.xml"
target="_blank">player vs. player combat system which
is more advanced than anything seen in any Diablo game before. To say that StarCraft II has
been embraced by Blizzard’s fan base is an understatement to
say the least, with more than 91 million StarCraft ranked matches
having taken place on Battle.net since release. Perhaps to thank
StarCraft fans everywhere for their continued enthusiasm the StarCraft
development team has been hard at work creating four new custom games
including; href="http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/994843#blog"
target="_blank">StaJeweled, Aiur Chef, Left 2 Die,
and Blizzard DOTA.These new
games are scheduled to be released for free sometime in the not so
distant future.\ At possibly the most
anticipated StarCraft II exhibition match of the day SlayerS_BoxeR took
on Fruit Dealer. Both considered legends  in their own right,
the Starcraft battle that would ensue was really anyone’s
game. The showdown was a spectacular sight and no player seemed able to
keep the upper hand. Evemtually one of these amazing players had to
fall with Fruit Dealer emerging as the victor. To see replays of all
the amazing Tournaments at BlizzCon visit the href="http://us.blizzard.com/blizzcon/tournaments/"
target="_blank">tournaments page on
Blizzard’s website. The first exciting day of
BlizzCon wrapped up as Jay Mohr appeared to
host the contest stage show. 25,000 in prizes were given away
in five separate contents (Fan Art, Original Song, Movie, Dance, and
Costume). Although there was tough competition this year several of the
entries stood out above the rest. The href="http://us.blizzard.com/blizzcon/contests/index.xml"
target="_blank">winners of each of the contests
are as follows:

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Day Two

Think your games are
intense? Well they are nothing compared to the intensity found at the
grand finals of the World of Warcraft, Warcraft III, and StarCraft II
tournaments. Dreams were built and shattered, tempers flared, and even
those with the calmest nerves threatened to crack. After some long and
hard game play the winners finally began to emerge. Visit the href="http://us.blizzard.com/blizzcon/tournaments/index.xml"
target="_blank">BlizzCon tournament page to
view the various brackets for each game and the winners for each. At the Diablo III Crafting
Sanctuary panel players discovered that in Diablo III instead of seeing
the dreaded wall of text instructing you on what to
do, Blizzard will be trying to enforce a more “Play,
Don’t Tell” policy. Instead of a screen filled with
text when players encounter a quest giver the NPC will instead follow
the player until they arrive at the quest objective. Once there the NPC
will impart only needed information upon the player, while the action
continues. If this bit of news wasn’t exciting enough players
will be pleased to discover that almost any and all ridiculously long
storytelling that can be found in the game will be totally optional.
Less talking and more killing? Yeah that sounds good no matter which
way you look at it. Also at the Diablo III
Crafting Sanctuary panel the role of artisans was finally revealed. The
three artisans are the mystic, jeweler, and blacksmith. Players who are
familiar with World of Warcraft will find that these artisans are a bit
like all WoW professions combined. The mystic can craft items of the
magic sort and enchant and identify items, the blacksmith can add gem
sockets, repair, and create armor and weapons, while the jeweler
combines gems, de-sockets gems from items, and crafts rings and
amulets. At the StarCraft II Art
panel the audience had the pleasure of viewing 70 plus pieces of art
both silly and serious, including some pieces that will be found in
Blizzard’s upcoming custom maps for Starcraft. Visit the href="http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/994848" target="_blank">
StarCraft II Art Panel page to
see some examples of the art displayed. As a final treat several pieces
of concept art from StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm were revealed
leaving those of us not lucky enough to attend green with envy. Not tobe outdone, the World
of Warcraft Dungeons and Raids Panel also provided us with some
exciting news. The days of searching endlessly for that one elusive
dungeon quest are over. All key dungeon quest givers will now be found
inside the dungeon’s entrance, making the lives of players
everywhere just a little bit easier. Those who attended the World
of Warcraft Dungeons and Raids Panel also got several other treats
including being permitted to have the first look at the all new raid
coming in patch 4.1; the Firelands. Building on the storyline to save
Hyjal players will be asked to adventure into the elemental plane of
fire and take out seven bosses including Ragnaros who has apparently
finally made it out of forgotten exile in the Molten Core. Also
(finally) coming in 4.1 are enhanced dungeon and raid maps showing
information for each boss in a zone, including 3D portraits, lore,
loot, and boss abilities. No more will players who haven’t
done their homework be franticly  trying to find boss
information on the web. Instead they will be able to just view the
needed information on their handy dandy map. The last panel of the day
was the BlizzCon Sound Panel, however, it was far from the least
exciting. Those that stuck around for this event were presented
with exclusive music directly from World of Warcraft:
Cataclysm. Also Alfred Music Publishing proudly announced several new
product lines that would be based on Blizzard music leaving no doubt
that the composers involved in creating the music for Blizzard games
are true artists indeed.  While the two days of
BlizzCon would be difficult to top it certainly ended with a bang. At
the closing concert Tenacious D took the stage and brought to a close
what was an epic weekend leaving those in attendance to excitedly
anticipate BlizzCon 2011.