Thats right looks like everyone’s very much anticipated RTS, Starcraft II, is being announced as a trilogy! The game will be broken into three separate campaigns for each race and will be named the following:
Wings of Liberty - Terrans
Heart of the Swarm - Zerg
Legacy of the Void - Protoss
So it looks like if you really want to enjoy the entire scope of Starcraft II you need to purchase three games instead of one. Each will be a stand alone single player game that will have special meta games for each specific race.
The reasoning behind the trilogy aspect according to the Blizzard producers is in order to get more from each single player campaign and not have to skimp on the options, but what does it mean to us as gamers? If you only enjoy playing one of the races then you are in luck but if your like me and like to experiment with the different strategies of all three races it means you will need to purchase three games. So Starcraft II now will cost you $150?!
At Blizcon 2008 we got a view of the newest class for Diablo 3, the Wizard. We get to see the Blizzard’s Wizard and all of her spells glory as she rips through some skeletons and other dungeon dwellers.
I have to say that the animations for the spells look really good and remind me of some of the original spells from the Diablo games, but I do enjoy the force field that repels projectiles and the ability to multiply. Another key feature that is being showed off is the ability to use the destructible environment in order to kill your enemies, like destroying pillars and having them fall on a group of skeletons.
I know a lot of you out there are creaming your pants waiting until late November when Wrath of the Lich King gets released. Al is stuffing his face with Red Bull and Cheetos trying to get to level 70 with his Hunter, I’m sitting pretty around level 12 with my Blood Elf (haven’t had a ton of time to play lately). If some of you are out there are making your own 80’s montage and getting fat and pimply like the kids in South Park trying to level up quickly, you’ll be happy to know you don’t need an insane PC to run the upcoming expansion pack.
PC:
Windows XP SP3 or Vista SP1 (Windows 2000 no longer supported)
Pentium 4 1.3 GHz or AMD Athlon XP 1.5 GHz (up from 800 MHz Intel/AMD). Dual-core recommended.
RAM: 512 MB/1 GB for Vista, same as before. 1 GB/2 GB recommended.
Video: GPU with hardware transform and lighting and 32 MB VRAM, same as before. Recommended 128 MB VRAM.
Mac:
Mac OS X 10.4.11 (10.3 no longer supported)
PowerPC G5 1.6 GHz or Intel Core Duo. G4s are no longer supported. Intel 1.8 GHz recommended.
Wrath of the Lich King is boasting many things like new areas, new enemies, new weapons and even new mounts. Here you can see that they are incorporating in a Mammoth Mount, you actually get to ride a giant mammoth around, which is pretty cool.
Even better still is at the end of the video you will see a character on a motorcycle, seems that as part of the engineering skill you will be able to make yourself a motorcycle mount to get around the world. Blizzard knows exactly what to add in to keep you hooked in and grabbing the next expansion.
World of Warcrafft is huge, how huge you may ask? Big enough to get Bejeweled in it? Looks like next time you are flying from one town to the next or killing some time at the auction house you may be able to keep yourself busy by playing some Bejeweled. I like the idea of having something to do during those long trips from town to town, but usually I just use those trips as a chance to go to the bathroom. What do you guys think, do you want some Bejeweled in your WoW?
Using World of Warcraft’s mod tools, Fromwiller built a surprisingly convincing copy of PopCap’s game, which he called Besharded. His feat did not go unnoticed by the Seattle-based publisher of the original.
“[Besharded] was cool and fun, but not very polished, so we reached out to the gamer in question and hired him to do an official version of Bejeweled for WoW,” PopCap representative Garth Chouteau said in an e-mail to Wired.com.
Blizzard did not respond to requests for comment.
When asked why Blizzard would show no opposition to adding a competitor’s game within their game, Chouteau said: “I think there may be some Bejeweled fans over there.”
WTF? This cant be for real you must be thinking, well unforatunately it is. Seems like the US government believes that World of Warcraft can do more than just corrupt a young person’s mind and waste your time in real life. The government believes that WoW can be used to plot and set into motion dastardly terrorist plans on a real life scale.
There’s been no public proof to date of terrorists hatching plots in virtual worlds. But online spaces like World of Warcraft are making some spooks, generals and Congressmen extremely nervous. They imagine terrorists rehearsing attacks in these worlds, just like the U.S. military trains with commercial shoot-em-up games. They worry that the massively multiplayer games make it incredibly easy to gather plotters from around the world. But, mostly, virtual worlds are nerve-wracking to spies because they’re so hard to monitor. The accounts are pseudonymous. The access is global. The jargon is thick. And most of the spy agencies’ employees aren’t exactly level-70 shamans.
The thought process is that the in game capability of chatting and the games lingo can be used to develop a plan that no one currently would be able to decode. Using in game talk like raids, loot, races and city names to take the place of actual real life targets and strategies. Seems to me that the FBI needs to employ some hardcore gamers to help them crack some of this.
Hit the jump to read more about World of Warcraft as a terrorist plot and to see a mock scenario that has been set up. Read More »
Sorry Diablo fans I know there was some rumors flying around the internet about the possibility of Diablo III being rushed out and coming out before Starcraft II, but these have been unconfirmed as of right now. Starcraft II will launch first and Diablo III will follow, which means that Diablo fans will have to wait a while. All of the development team at Blizzard working on Starcraft II remain in place and have not been shifted over to speed up the timelines on Diablo III, just wishful thinking by some hardcore fans.
Diii.net denies the chance of any such rumours to be true, stating known information about StarCraft II being a long way ahead in the development cycle over Diablo III. They also state the fact that Battle.net 2.0 will launch with the RTS game, making a DIII preemptive release unlikely as the Battle.net upgrade is said to be out before the action RPG game.
Looks like World of Warcraft is going to become a science after all? Ok maybe not a full blown science class, but there are people actually studying the habits of WoW players and the impacts that culture play on playing habits. Bonnie Nardi has been looking into the habits of WoW players for some time now and has even gone to Beijing to see things first hand, but now she will be able to do a study right here in Cali.
The National Science Foundation has given UC Irvine $100,000 to figure out why Americans go to greater lengths than the Chinese to modify “World of Warcraft,” the hugely popular multiplayer online game produced by Blizzard Entertainment of Irvine.
About 5 million Chinese play “WoW,” which is twice the number of American players. But Americans produce far more modifications, or “mods,” to enrich the gaming experience.
“We are examining the many reasons for this disparity, including cultural and institutional factors,” says Bonnie Nardi, the UCI informatics professor who’ll conduct the study with help from doctoral student Yong Ming Kow.
In a recent interview concerning Wrath of the Lich King, lead designer Tom Chilton said the following:
It’s going to be the same with Lich King. When our… patch goes live sometime before the expansion actually activates, I’m sure it’s going to be quite a madhouse of players trying out new stuff.
I can’t agree more! The fact is that many World of Warcraft players are very hardcore about playing, they know not only areas, mobs, talent trees, buffs and everything else involved with the game, but even break it down to calculations to determine damage, healing, etc. It is almost a second language of sorts and a science to master.
A group of new talents and skills will mean players will need to experiment with new builds in order to get the most out of their characters. It will mean new macros and key bindings and possibly even new strategies of play both for grinding levels out and for doing large Raids. Wrath of the Lich King and the pre-patch for it will turn the game upside down for a time.
The good folks over at Blizzard are really pushing people to pick up World of Warcraft by having refer a friend programs, free usage if you get AT&T high speed internet and now if you watch BlizzCon on pay per view you can get a free polar bear mount. Not only can you get the mount for free, but if you sign up for DIRECTV you can get the event free as well, so if you don’t have cable yet this could be a sweet deal.
DIRECTV has just announced further details for their pay per view package of BlizzCon coverage, and that the special promotion offering it free with a new subscription is now open. New DIRECTV subscribers in the US who sign up for DIRECTV by September 30 through www.blizzard.directv.com or 800-728-9375 will receive the package for free, while existing DIRECTV customers will be able to order it for $39.95 beginning on September 28.
We're like Spaceballs... we're making Loot Ninja everything. Coming soon we'll have hats, shirts, hoodies, possibly banana hammocks if one Editor has his way...
Check out the shirt prototypes here and the hats here
