Blizzard Groups, WoW Year in Review, Unannounced Project, No Diablo Announcements

[chaud]

Community Highlights: Rhykker's PTR Update, Diablo 3 Commercial, Necro Fan Art, & Curse Hiring

Oktoberbrawl, Countering Tempo Rogue, Power Creep - Value Town #139

Blizzard Groups Feature
A recent Battle.Net desktop application update added a few more group related strings. Keep in mind this feature isn't active yet.

These groups include channels, roles, invites, moderators, require Push to Talk option, message of the day, profiles, and more.

World of Warcraft - 2017 Year In Review
Blizzard posted a World of Warcraft year in review video! What's coming next? Where can we possibly go after this final climactic battle? We'll find out at BlizzCon!

Senior Client Engineer, Unannounced Project
Blizzard posted a new job listing this week and then removed it shortly after. It calls for an engineer to work on an unannounced mobile MMO RTS project. The most recent earnings call mentioned that there are multiple teams working on new games right now.

Blizzard Entertainment is seeking an experienced Unity mobile client engineer to work on an unannounced MMO RTS project. The ideal applicant has an unwavering passion for mobile development and solving engineering problems unique to mobile app environments. If you thrive in an environment that values creativity, collaboration, and knowledge sharing, then drop us a line!

Requirements

• 5+ years of Game Development experience
• iOS and/or Android development experience
• Experience with Unity
• Fluent in C#
• Capable of working very closely with artists, designers, and engineers to understand and meet their client needs
• Strong understanding of game assets and handling asset version changes
• Excellent verbal and written communications skills
• Experience with optimizations for mobile platforms

Pluses

• Experience with code optimization
• Fluency with C++
• Avid mobile application user
• Strong understanding of 3D graphics and shaders
• CS or related degree
• Strong data structures, logic, and algorithm skills
• Strong debugging skills

BlizzCon 2017 - No New Diablo Announcements

Hey everyone,

BlizzCon draws near, and we wanted to give you an update about Diablo’s presence at the show. Last year at BlizzCon, we kicked off Diablo’s 20th anniversary by announcing the old-school cathedral dungeon (if you missed that the first time around, it’s coming back in January) and unveiling Rise of the Necromancer. This year, we want to give you a heads-up that while Diablo will be on the show floor, we won’t be making any new Diablo announcements. There will be a time for that at some point in the future, but that time is not now.

However, in addition to the special BlizzCon Diablo III in-game reward, we’ll also have Diablo panels for attendees and Virtual Ticket holders, and, as always, we look forward to a weekend filled with fun and revelry with the heroes who call Sanctuary home.

Patch 2.6.1 is on the horizon. Looking beyond that, we’re hard at work on the future of Diablo and exploring what’s next for the franchise. Please be patient. Our passion for Sanctuary burns as bright as the High Heavens and as hot as the Burning Hells—and we’re excited to hunker down and get working!

Until next time,
The Diablo Development Team

In Remembrance: The Harvest Festival Has Arrived

The yearly Harvest Festival is now underway in Azeroth. This is a solemn time when the Alliance honors Uther the Lightbringer by lighting a candle at his tomb in the Western Plaguelands, while members of the Horde show their respect to Grommash Hellscream by leaving a bottle of spirits at the base of the Hellscream Memorial in Demon Fall Canyon in Ashenvale.

To commemorate those who have sacrificed their lives to help friends and allies, feasts are also held outside Ironforge and Orgrimmar in honor of these fallen heroes.

When: September 29–October 6

Where: Outside of Ironforge and Orgrimmar

This year, worgen, goblin, and pandaren now have unique tributes available to them in the quest, “Honoring a Hero.” All Harvest Festival foods also provide 4% health per tick.

Blue Posts

Shadowcaster Voruun
Hey all,

I have some answers on this now - Shadowcaster Voruun will spawn like all other Argus rares - i.e. he has a chance of being a daily World Quest, and he can also spawn as a rare every time the Argus rares cycle (every four hours).

What we resolved with Voruun was an issue that was preventing him from spawning in general, and, now that that is resolved, he will definitely be making appearances in the future. Just to stress this - while he may not be up immediately, he should now be spawning much, much more often going forward.

Thanks for all of your patience while we got this sorted out today! (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Human and Blood Elf Shaman
I don't think it's about their culture not being "primitive", it's more that when you play a Human or a Blood Elf, or any other race for that matter, your character comes from a specific "faction" within that race. This lends them the ability to choose what they want to "be" when they grow up, but only insofar as what that particular society offers.

Playable Humans are always from the nation of Stormwind. Playable Blood Elves are always from Silvermoon. While it's possible for there to be "break aways" in the story and for members of those races to join "opposing factions" and learn new skills, that's not something that's on offer to player characters.

If those classes were ever added to those races, I would expect specific backstory to be created for how those races adopted those techniques and rituals, such as with gnome hunters "creating" and taming mechanical beasts. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

MMO-Champion Forums Moderator Recruitment
Good news everyone! We're recruiting moderators for the forums again! Please be sure to read the entire post before applying!

[Brocksley]

Wow, so they are just letting Diablo 3 die then. Sad.

[Baneador]

i can see you dont care anymore about Diablo Blizzard. A ugly dlc and 2 zones of 1 minute each one is enough for 2-3 years, thanks. They dont even try to save Diablo, thats horrible.

[balatro]

If they're letting Diablo "die," then it's for a reason. I suspect they're wanting to take Diablo in a new direction and it involves one of their unannounced projects.

[Triggered Fridgekin]

At least they've finally said what every one was assuming.

[Deleted]

I think its pretty bad that they put more effort into games like Hearthstone and HotS then a franchise like Diablo.
Anyways at this point they should be working on a Diablo4 otherwsie i see the Diablo name follow Starcraft and we will see nothing about it anymore for years to come.

[Daveon]

This is hilarious... Blizzard realizes if they say nothing about Diablo at Blizzcon, that people will cry and say that they're letting Diablo die, so they announce beforehand that there's not going to be any announcements... and people cry and say they're letting Diablo die. They can't win.

You can infer from their message that they're working on something Diablo-related, but it's too soon to say if they will consider the project successful enough to release it (re: Titan). Hopefully it's not a Diablo mobile app, but they're clearly keeping whatever it is a secret for now.

[Tygerman]

I'm hoping those comments about Human/Blood Elf shamans aren't indicative of how they also feel about Night Elf paladins, since there has been some story/lore given in the Paladin order hall as to why one came to be in the first place. Would really like to see that race/class combo in the future.

[Frolk]

RIP Diablo 3

[Tiwack]

Can't wait for them to scrap another big project and deny their huge fanbase any insight into what they'll be missing out on. Just releasing a scrappy indy version showing the idea and intent for free or a few bucks is way more satisfying than being told "it didn't live up to our quality standard" /spit why not leave judgment to the customers. If they think it'll bomb maybe don't charge 60 dollars for it to start with smh.

[Daveon]

I think its pretty bad that they put more effort into games like Hearthstone and HotS then a franchise like Diablo.
Anyways at this point they should be working on a Diablo4 otherwsie i see the Diablo name follow Starcraft and we will see nothing about it anymore for years to come.

They make a TON of money vs. the effort involved for Hearthstone. It is one of their highest margin games, if not the highest. That team is one of the smaller teams, and they make quite a bit of money. So that is not going to stop, and it doesn't really take anything away from the other development teams either (they're not growing the Hearthstone team at the expense of other teams as far as I know), so I wouldn't worry about it.
I can never get a good sense of how much money they make on HotS, I imagine it barely scrapes by with a profit because they never make a big deal about it in their quarterly reports. The main downside to this game is that it uses graphic designers that could be used on other projects (Blizzard is always complaining about not having enough art asset creation resources - it has been used as an excuse in WoW for sure).

And to your last point, if they're working on Diablo4, it will definitely be quite a few years before we see anything about it.

[Symphonic]

Thanks for the Diablo RTS mobile game announcement!

[Sencha]

wtf is a MMO RTS? Starcraft with 10000 players?

[Daedius]

wtf is a MMO RTS? Starcraft with 10000 players?

Something like Clash of Clans and such, on mobile I'd imagine... i.e. those super lame ass mobile games that are literally P2W.

[SinR]

RIP Diablo Franchise 1996-2017

You had a good run

[Sencha]

Something like Clash of Clans and such, on mobile I'd imagine... i.e. those super lame ass mobile games that are literally P2W.

Oh this type of game. Right. Looks like they are running out of ideas then.

Thanks for the answer.

[Gravity2015]

"RIP Diablo Franchise 1996-2017" - womp womp, truly saddens me.. I would say 14/20 of the replies are in regards to Diablo - so obviously it has a fan base, thanks Blizz..

[Teri]

Diablo 3 is still maintained and updated, there's even a PTR up for 2.6.1, yes a minor patch but better then letting the game rot for years now is it??

WoW went through 2 patches with 430 days of nothing, Diablo 3 didn't have that long of a drought I believe. (yes I know reaper of souls is 3.5 years old now)

Now I know the franchise needs some new life into it, outside of just class DLC (druid?). Sometimes a game company is just working on something bigger that takes longer then 2-3 years, you know, it took 11 years between diablo 2 and 3?

[pfbe]

"World of Warcraft - 2017 Year In Review: plz buy tickets"

hazzikostas must be working real hard if he's got the time to record these insipid marketing stunts

[Tupolew519]

i hope it'll be warcraft 4.