Blizzcon 2015 Recap

[chaud]

Blizzcon 2015 Recap
Lots of new info this year! Be sure to read each post, watch videos, and stay tuned for the class blog changes coming this week.

Opening Ceremony

• We finally got to see the Warcraft Movie trailer!
• Legion will launch in Summer 2016 (before September 21). Pre-purchasing gives you a level 100 boost to use now.
• Overwatch is getting three new heroes, along with a new map. You can purchase Overwatch or Overwatch Origins now, launch in Spring 2016 on PC and consoles.
• Hearthstone is getting a new adventure on Thursday: The League of Explorers.
• Heroes of the Storm is getting three new heroes, a new game mode, and a new map, along with the usual new skins and mounts.
• Starcraft is getting mission packs starting in Spring 2016, with the third out by December 2016. Nova Covert Ops is first up!
• Activision Blizzard is opening a TV and Film studio to create content based on their IP.
• Brightpaw the Mana Kitty is this year's charity pet.

World of Warcraft

• Legion beta begins in the weeks following Blizzcon
• Legion Cinematic was released
• Warcraft Movie
  
  • The movie trailer was shown during the Opening Ceremony.
  • There was a press event with Duncan Jones, Chris Metzen, and some of the movie cast
• Legion Releasing by September 2016
  
  • The regular version costs $50 and Digital Deluxe costs $70.
  • Pre-purchasing gives you a Level 100 Boost and at least one week early access to the Demon Hunter class.
  • You will need a level 70 character to create a Demon Hunter and you can only have one Demon Hunter per realm.
• Artifact Weapons - Blog posts for all of the Artifact Weapons include models and a little bit of story.
• World of Warcraft: Legion - World and Content Overview (Official Recap)
  
  • The Broken Shore has a 20 Alliance and 20 Horde (40 Player) scenario that begins right after the cinematic.
  • Demon Hunters have a unique starting experience involving Illidan, who creates a Felsaber epic mount for you.
  • There are four leveling zones that can be done in any order, as they scale.
  • There will be endgame world questing content that aren't strictly daily quests.
  • Legion will have two raids, one with 7 bosses (Emerald Nightmare) and one with 10 (Suramar Palace) with Gul'dan as the final boss.
  • Legion Challenge Mode dungeons keep becoming harder as you defeat them and the rewards keep getting better. Complements or replaces raiding.
• World of Warcraft Cinematics - The Road to Legion
• Misc
  
  • We got our first glimpse of Legion armor sets.
  • The Diablo 3 inspired transmog system coming to WoW will include tabards.
  • There was a Community Amphitheater Discussion that wasn't on the Virtual Ticket. Lots of good info, so be sure to read the recap.
  • World of Warcraft: Legion - Game Systems
    
    • Artifact power comes from quest bosses, rare spawns, rare drops, dungeons, raids, battlegrounds, arenas. Used to unlock traits.
    • Hunters and Druids get special transportation networks in their halls, warriors have a sparring arena.
    • Class themed Death Gate style spells to get to your class hall.
    • Talents will have less theme rows, more meaningful choices, more spec specific talents, hundreds of new talents!
    • Recipes have ranks, 1-3 star recipes. Rare, make you more efficient at crafting things. Less materials, shorter cooldown.
    • Lots of things to do with professions, shouldn't be running out of content.
    • Transmog - Clean up bank and inventory some more. More customization. A collection system.
    • Wardrobe - As soon as item is bound to you, appearance is unlocked. Once it is unlocked, you can get rid of it. Account wide! Have to be able to equip item to unlock it.
    • Outfits - Make item sets, store what you look like now, link outfits to other people even if everything isn't unlocked.
    • Hiding shoulders allowed!
    • Weapon enchants, shirts, and tabards for transmog!
  • World of Warcraft Q&A
    
    • The flying achievement will exist at launch, but you won't be able to complete it at launch. You can start progressing on it though.
    • A solution won't make it for launch, but some way to communicate with a cross-server group is something they are working on.
    • No new battleground, focus is on the new PvP progression system.
    • It would be ideal if you could be in multiple guilds at some point, one for PvP, one for Raids. Maybe a secondary guild system? Still in progress.
    • Legion will allow you to use all the specs, no longer limited to dual spec, each spec remembers your action bars and such.
    • Karazhan will be relevant in Legion. The secrets we need to beat the Burning Legion are in Karazhan. Karazhan could be a 5 player dungeon in Patch 7.1.
  • The Cutscene - Behind Blizzard's In-Game Cinematics
  • Engineering Community Amphitheater Discussion
    
    • Lots of cool stories, including why we are stuck with the current backpack size.
  • Legion Class and Systems Community Amphitheater Discussion
    
    • The team is fixing the boss movement issues in Patch 6.2.3. Thank the engineers!
    • In Legion healers can do a lot more damage than they could before when you choose to spend globals and resources on it.
    • You should be able to level as a healer.
    • The transmog system will include old quests that have been removed
  • Vhell proposed!

Overwatch

• Overwatch Pricing
  
  • Overwatch - $40, PC only, includes all of the heroes. Widowmaker skin bonus for pre-orders.
  • Overwatch Origins Edition - $60, PC, Xbox One, and PS4. All of the heroes, bonus skins, rewards for other Blizzard games. Baby Wintson Pet for WoW.
  • Overwatch Collector's Edition - $130m PC Xbox One, PS4. All of the Origins Edition content plus the soundtrack, an art book, and Soldier: 76 statue.
• New Map and Trailer
  
  • Hollywood is the new Overwatch map, set in a fictional version of Hollywood.
  • A new gameplay trailer was released.
• New Heroes
  
  • D.Va - Former pro-gamer turned mech pilot.
  • Mei - Former Climatologist. Uses lower damage frost based attacks, has an ice block like ability, ice wall, blizzard.
  • Genji - Hanzo's brother. Throws Shuriken, deflects attacks, charges forward, and uses a katana.
• Whats New in Overwatch
  
  • There will be no support for Macs
  • Release will only have 21 heroes, no announcement on additional heroes or pricing for anything after that.
  • New heroes are coming to beta next week.
• The World of Overwatch
  
  • Working on a series of animated shorts and comics to tell the story outside of the game.

Hearthstone

• The League of Explorers Cinematic Trailer
• The League of Explorers - Hearthstone's Third Adventure - Launches Thursday!
  
  • Launches November 12th, 2015 for $20 or 700 gold / $7 per wing.
  • Introduces 45 new cards, a new game board, class challenges, and new cards backs.
  • When you defeat all of a wing, you get that wing's legendary card.
• What's New for Hearthstone
  
  • All of the new cards were revealed during this panel, along with the new card backs and game boards.
• Tavern Brawls and Open Q&A
• Exclusive Hearthstone Developer Interview with Yong Woo

Heroes of the Storm

• Announcement Trailer
• Hero Deep Dive
  
  • There are more than 200 characters on the list of potential heroes.
  • Lunara, King Genn Greymane, and Cho'Gall are the three new heroes.
  • Cho'gall is one hero controlled by two players.
  • Cho'Gall will be given to everyone that bought a Blizzcon (or Virtual) ticket.
  • If you party up and play 2 games with someone who does not have Cho'gall, they will unlock the hero for free as well.
  • If you play 4 games as Cho'gall with someone else, you will get bonus gold!
  • The Arena is a new mode will let you pick from 3 random heroes, then play on a new small single objective map. The game is shorter and has less restrictions than normal games now.
  • Towers of Doom is the new map, allowing you to destroy enemy towns to take them over and damage the core.
• New Hero Skills and Talents
• Battlegrounds Panel, State of the Game, BlizzCon Day 1, Greymane, Lunara, Cho Talents

Diablo III

• Blood and Treasure - New Content and Features for Reaper of Souls
  
  • New zone - Greyhollow Island, Adventure Mode only.
  • The Eternal Woods and Royal Quarters were expanded for Adventure Mode.
  • Patch 2.4.0 is going to revamp, revisit, or revise nearly every one of the 24 class sets in the game.
  • Set Dungeons - Once you complete and don the full six pieces of any given class set, you'll receive a clue to track down an ancient dungeon designed just for you and your set.
  • Empowered Rifts, New Legendaries, More Stash Space, Season Journey Revisions, and more!

BlizzCon Costume Contest Winners
Lots of great costumes this year, including the four winners below.

[Frostyfire14]

Imperius was SOOO good! Well done!

[Will]

"Legion will have two raids, one with 7 bosses (Emerald Nightmare) and one with 10 (Suramar Palace) with Gul'dan as the final boss."

Please tell me this is a joke, or bad wording. The impression I got is the game will LAUNCH with 2 raids, but MMOC makes it sound as if the expansion will ONLY have 2 raids. We need at least four (or five). Initial two. Two more. Maybe a final, larger one. The dev team is larger than ever, but we're seeing fewer raids each expansion.

[Shampro]

"Legion will have two raids, one with 7 bosses (Emerald Nightmare) and one with 10 (Suramar Palace) with Gul'dan as the final boss."

Please tell me this is a joke, or bad wording. The impression I got is the game will LAUNCH with 2 raids, but MMOC makes it sound as if the expansion will ONLY have 2 raids. We need at least four (or five). Initial two. Two more. Maybe a final, larger one. The dev team is larger than ever, but we're seeing fewer raids each expansion.

Comeon dude. Everything presented here is launch content, and this was already presented at Gamescom, the nightmare and Suramar are the launch raids. Not really complicated.

[alexday14]

Comeon dude. Everything presented here is launch content, and this was already presented at Gamescom, the nightmare and Suramar are the launch raids. Not really complicated.

It's not that much of a stretch to be concerned about this considering WoD only had two raids and, let's be honest, one tier of content considering both were supposed to be out on launch.

[Logwyn]

Why does the guy on the left look like he is trying to sitting down?

[mystery8]

It's not that much of a stretch to be concerned about this considering WoD only had two raids and, let's be honest, one tier of content considering both were supposed to be out on launch.

Agreed. It's a legitimate concern. This expansion has a fuckton of stuff going for it lorewise. It'd be terrible to see it be short.

[Alakallanar]

It's not that much of a stretch to be concerned about this considering WoD only had two raids and, let's be honest, one tier of content considering both were supposed to be out on launch.

?

Did you completely miss Hellfire Citadel?

WoD had three raids (Highmaul, BRF, HFC) and two tiers. (Not saying that was enough, but your post makes no sense.)

[Zebuthecow]

I prepurchased Legion after the first night and as exciting as they made it sound, I am regretting purchasing it at this point. I am angry at myself for at least not waiting to decide until the end of Blizzcon or at the least, when the prepatch drops in a few months.

My reasons? I just do not trust what they say. They are braggarts. They boast more than deliver.

Legion could very easily just be another Steam Early Access expansion like WoD- hyped and great at first and then grossly unfinished. The devs get their cash and do not care if we get mad. They will just do it again and again. Thus why I am pissed at myself.

In addition- the recent blue post comparing WoW sub model to shady workout gyms...

Blizzard freely admits that it is not a nice world out there and stated they expect there to be a lot of players who pay for subs way in advance and never, ever log in. They believe it helps keep the cost of the game's subs down.

Keep in mind, this title still rakes in over a $Billion per year. That does not include China either.

Couple that with the horrible WoD launch due to lack of server space, bandwidth, and power and their refusal to tell us how many unique account logins occur each month, it really makes me suspect they are very happy with how WoD worked out. I wonder what their percentage of labor vs profits were on WoD.

WoD's hype got a lot of us buying the expansion and then most of us stopped logging in. The WoW Token has been a boon for them as well. More future subs from players who most likely will not log in.

Finally, all this makes me believe they really do enjoy these content droughts. They have gotten their money from long term subs, they know that most will not log in and if they do, they do not have much to do. That adds up to a huge savings on server and power costs for them as well.

[KrotosTheTank]

I prepurchased Legion after the first night and as exciting as they made it sound, I am regretting purchasing it at this point. I am angry at myself for at least not waiting to decide until the end of Blizzcon or at the least, when the prepatch drops in a few months.

My reasons? I just do not trust what they say. They are braggarts. They boast more than deliver.

Legion could very easily just be another Steam Early Access expansion like WoD- hyped and great at first and then grossly unfinished. The devs get their cash and do not care if we get mad. They will just do it again and again. Thus why I am pissed at myself.

In addition- the recent blue post comparing WoW sub model to shady workout gyms...

Blizzard freely admits that it is not a nice world out there and stated they expect there to be a lot of players who pay for subs way in advance and never, ever log in. They believe it helps keep the cost of the game's subs down.

Keep in mind, this title still rakes in over a $Billion per year. That does not include China either.

Couple that with the horrible WoD launch due to lack of server space, bandwidth, and power and their refusal to tell us how many unique account logins occur each month, it really makes me suspect they are very happy with how WoD worked out. I wonder what their percentage of labor vs profits were on WoD.

WoD's hype got a lot of us buying the expansion and then most of us stopped logging in. The WoW Token has been a boon for them as well. More future subs from players who most likely will not log in.

Finally, all this makes me believe they really do enjoy these content droughts. They have gotten their money from long term subs, they know that most will not log in and if they do, they do not have much to do. That adds up to a huge savings on server and power costs for them as well.

These posts never cease to make me laugh. I always seem to forget that businesses aren't in it to make money...NOT. My real question is why the fuck is this a bad thing? Even assuming you think it's a terrible thing, do you not think that a good game attracts more attention and cash flow then a fledgling/failing one? Answer a few of these items honestly and then use your brain as to Blizzard's intentions.

Krotos