Welcome back!  This is the 99th attempt at this column.  

Welcome back!  

This is the 99th edition of this column.  

99 is the atomic number of Einsteinium.  

I’m John Hoskin and I’ll be your MMOG guide today.   

“One of the most difficult tasks people can perform, however much others may despise it, is the invention of good games.” – Carl Jung

Everyone can use a feel good moment to start the day.   Let’s go with this…

Thanks for taking some time out of your day to read this column.  I truly appreciate it.    If you happen to use Twitter, you can follow me @BoomjackTTH.   I rarely use Facebook, but I do occasionally post gaming related tidbits on Google+ where you can find me under my real moniker John Hoskin.  

It was an all BlizzCon, all the time type of weekend.   I tried to keep up to everything while driving across half the province to my kids’ hockey games.    Are the announcements enough to quell the tide flowing towards Star Wars: The Old Republic?  

I will take a look at what Blizzard has told us and attempt to dissect into something meaningful for the gaming community as a whole.

A lot of new information was shared by Blizzard over the weekend and sensibly, other game companies shut down their PR so as not to have their announcements washed away in the flood that is BlizzCon.    Below is a list of the content we have posted along with some highlighted bits that I personally found interesting.

The talent redesign is interesting in that it attempts to take away the cookie cutter talent choices that are common in the game today.  That said, if the choices are all vanilla then who cares about talents?  If it boils down to “player preference” why even bother?  It doesn’t make sense for me at least to take something the can define a player within a class and make it generic, albeit with three flavours of generic to choose from.

Monk’s will be able to heal, but will do so while they DPS.   They don’t target their heals, but rather will aid their groupmates based on proximity.  This sounds a bit like a class that existed in Vanguard, also called a monk.  

10 player raids will not be made more difficult because, “Korea finds 10 man raids to be the hardcore ones.”   I’m not sure how this is even possible.   Can someone out there enlighten me as to how a raid with less to worry about can be harder for one group of people?  This seems like a non-answer to me.  

Even though Monks will be able to heal, Blizzard answered that no more healers will be required for raids, so… we have another healing class when we probably didn’t need one, but also a new tank class.   Giving a class the ability to fill all three roles makes sense to me, given that even on my priest and paladin I like to mix it up as a DPS sometimes.

Jewelcrafters may be able to make a craftable mount in the new expansion.   I like this, much like I enjoyed the vial of the sands for alchemists.   Let’s hope it isn’t as rare a recipe.  

There are plans for player housing, but there are no resources to implement them.   

Monks will have no auto-attack.  Essentially, they build up chi which they then expend to do damage, heal, etc.

There is far too much for me to cover in this column.  Do yourself a favour and check out those links for the good stuff.

Some other nifty information.

  • If you commit to playing WoW for 12 months you will get Diablo 3 free.

That’s it for today.  Thanks again for reading and as always, may your dreams be big and your worries be small. “

As always, you can contact me a number of ways:

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One winner will be chosen at random to receive:

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Last Updated: Mar 13, 2016

About The Author

Dissecting and distilling the game industry since 1994. Lover of family time, youth hockey, eSports, and the game industry in general.

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