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by Published on 2016-12-30 11:41 AM

Blizzard Celebrate 20 Years of Diablo - In-game events in all Blizzard Titles

Value Town #101 - The Current Meta & Wishlist Discussion

Addon - Reagent Banker
Reagent Banker is a simple addon that auto deposits reagents to the reagent bank when you visit the bank. There are some additional options to modify behavior of the addon and print what is deposited to chat.



Patch 7.1 - Ravika and Lenny "Fingers" McCoy
One small change in Patch 7.1 is the expanded availability of the Patch 5.3 toys. With the launch of Legion, these toys were added to vendors you had to visit before doing the Broken Shore intro. Now you can also find these vendors out in the world, on Echo Isles and in Stormwind.

Bom'bay's Color-Seein' Sauce is also back on the vendor. It was not available on the version of Lenny that appears before the Broken Shore, but is now on both versions.



Level Type Name Cost
1Other Whole-Body Shrinka'25
1Other Sen'jin Spirit Drum10
1Cosmetic Griftah's Authentic Troll Shoes50
1Other Xan'tish's Flute5


Level Type Name Cost
1Junk Lucky Rat's Tooth8
1Junk Old Lucky Coin1 60
1Junk Lucky Charm17 77 77
1Other Bom'bay's Color-Seein' Sauce200
1Shirt Lucky Shirt100


Fan Art - Updated Paladin Judgment Set
Shem Dawson is a 3D artist at Blizzard and did some personal art (not official) of the Paladin Judgment Set. Scroll down on the page to view it in the 3D modelviewer! You can see the original set here.

by Published on 2016-12-29 05:56 AM

Blizzard Celebrate 20 Years of Diablo - In-game events in all Blizzard Titles

Party Portals is This Week's Tavern Brawl!

Blizzard Celebrates 20 Years of Diablo
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker)
As we approach the original game’s release anniversary on December 31, Blizzard Entertainment is thrilled to commemorate twenty years of Diablo. We’re ready to celebrate our passion for the world of Sanctuary and the brave heroes who inhabit it!

Starting soon, you can experience special in-game events and goodies in Diablo III, Heroes of the Storm, Hearthstone, Overwatch, StarCraft II, and World of Warcraft to celebrate a few of the things we love about Diablo. These events and items will only be available for a limited time, so be sure to check them all out before they’re gone.

A small taste of each tribute is below—keep an eye out for more details about these celebrations. . . and thank you, all of you, for allowing us to continue adventuring in the world of Sanctuary. Here’s to twenty years of loot!

Diablo III:
Recapture the feeling of your first play through of the original Diablo with The Darkening of Tristram tribute event. Venture through a reimagined version of the original cathedral in Diablo III and keep an eye out for some familiar items.
Heroes of the Storm:

The battle for the High Heavens continues, and a new Diablo-themed portrait is up for grabs! Can you emerge victorious on this hectic new brawl map?

Hearthstone:
In this Tavern Brawl, a hooded stranger awaits, holding a grim deck in his hands. Will you unravel the secrets surrounding this dark wanderer?

Overwatch:
Bring the battle for Sanctuary into the fight for the future with in-game sprays representing your favorite Diablo III classes—along with a new player icon modeled after the Lord of Terror!

StarCraft II:
Put the Lord of Terror to work for you with a Diablo-themed worker portrait.

World of Warcraft:
Strange things are afoot in the world of Azeroth as denizens of Sanctuary cross over into an unfamiliar world.

Diablo 20th Anniversary Event
The Diablo 20th Anniversary event is coming soon! There is an achievement, music, and some items associated with the event. The Treasure Demons and their Sanctuary Coins from Beta may also be related.




Name Category
Diablo's 20th Anniversary There is no cow level.
Events


Level Type Name
20Other Twelve-String Guitar
110Bag Horadric Satchel
66Other Stone of Jordan
1Other Tome of Town Portal
1Other Scroll of Town Portal
1Other Blank Diabolic Tome
1Other Small Charm of Life
1Other Small Charm of Inertia
1Other Large Charm of Strength
1Other Large Charm of Dexterity
1Other Serpent's Grand Charm
1Other Stalwart's Grand Charm


Poll - Diablo Games
Which of the Diablo games and expansions have you played?

by Published on 2016-12-28 08:12 AM

Diablo 3 Lightning Talks

Popular Decks of the Week for December 26

Patch 7.1.5 - Hunter Traps
Patch 7.1.5 brings some small updates to a few of the Hunter trap spell effects.



Poll - Legendary Items
How many legendary items do you have?


Ghostcrawler Tweets
Ghostcrawler still occasionally talks about WoW. Remember that he no longer works for or speaks for Blizzard.
Originally Posted by MMO-Champion
Do you have to main X to develop X?
I addressed a question earlier today about whether designers should “main” the characters, classes or champions (depending on the game) that they work on.

This topic got a lot of traction, at least on my Twitter feed, so I thought I’d explore it a little more.

I phrased it as a question back to players: do you want designers to be objective or subjective about character design?

Someone commented that they wanted the designer to be objective about data (say win rates) but subjective about class design.

I had always assumed objectivity is the right way to go. This doesn’t mean a designer has to be clinical or cold-hearted or unempathetic. But it does mean they should view things from an impartial lens. I sometimes get suspicious when a designer is too close to her design. There is a risk she may want players to like her design at all costs. (For example, if her champion in LoL is hard to counter, that may increase play rates and even player affinity for that champion.) Maybe she gives her character special perks or content that others don’t get. Maybe she just sets expectations with players that she’s personally looking out for their character, so they feel that much safer.

Is this a good thing?

I feel like the player experience when discussing their character, at least on social media and forums, is often adversarial to other players. You might feel like your character got the raw end of the deal, but they feel their character got the raw end of the deal. I wonder if that’s why there’s such a strong sentiment about having a developer in their corner who players their character.

But as a developer, ideally the way we view characters, classes or champions is not adversarial. They are all our children, and we want to see them all succeed. I played a warrior and priest the most in WoW. I worked on death knights a lot, but never spent that much time playing them. Hell, if anything I felt like I should spend my time playing on a different class so I would learn a class that I didn’t know as well.

I feel like what a lot of players are saying when they want a developer who mains their character is they want someone who understands their problems, because the dev has experienced them first hand. That makes some sense. But if all design problems were so intuitive to designers, then we wouldn’t need player feedback, because we wouldn’t make mistakes in the first place.

I think as a dev you definitely need to understand the problems, or you may underestimate (or overestimate) the severity or maybe even try to fix the wrong problem. I’ve seen this happen before - hell, I’ve done this before. You need to understand your game at a pretty detailed level to be effective at working on it, and yes this can be a challenge when working on very large games. I’m still not sure that means that somebody on the development team needs to main the character they are working on.

(As an aside, I’m strictly talking about the design work itself that goes into character creation, not whether or not the designer in question is active on forums, Reddit or other social media specifically addressing your concerns or answering your questions. That may be a problem, but I think it’s orthogonal to this one.) (Source)



StarCrafts - Season 5 Ep 14: Home Alone
A holiday themed episode of StarCrafts has been released.

by Published on 2016-12-27 05:27 PM

Popular Decks of the Week for December 26

The Best Holiday Game Discounts from Amazon

World Boss - Drugon the Frostblood
Drugon the Frostblood is up this week, rewarding players with gold and a chance at item level 860 loot.



Weekly Event - Outland Timewalking
Outland timewalking is up this week!





Blue Tweets
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Hunter (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
You think I'm joking but here's how a typical AoE pull goes with Hati around. The AI is so borked. https://t.co/laLS7GFfyl
.Hunters and Gloria - what do you, ideally, in any situation, want Hati to do? It can't be auto-win in raid fights. (Muffinus)
I wish Hati was more responsive. My main pet is always on target while Hati is left in the dust.
This seems solvable, will discuss. (Muffinus)
nobody's asking for autowin. We just want class coders to fix what was reported broken a year ago
.This has been bugged, pathfinding is a hard problem to solve, worse with 2 pets. It needs to be solved though. (Muffinus)

I'm still surprised that NONE of the new pet families had family abilities at launch.
Valid, the replacements for passives weren't added after they were removed, working on this atm, thx. (Muffinus)

Ghostcrawler Tweets
Ghostcrawler still occasionally talks about WoW. Remember that he no longer works for or speaks for Blizzard.
Originally Posted by MMO-Champion
Is it possible that no dev actual play’s a class? There are a lot of rumors that since Xelnath left that there are none for warlocks. Would explain the stated they are in right now. And if so, would it so hard for blizzard (a billion dollar company) to hire a dedicated single dev per class and to let them talk to the community?
I think you’re talking about 4 different things here:

  • Does a developer need to hire someone who focuses on playing X class?
  • Does a developer need to hire someone who works on X class?
  • Does a developer need to hire someone to read feedback on X class?
  • Does a developer need to hire someone to reply to feedback on X class?

When I was at Blizzard, we had points 2 and 3 solidly covered. I assume that is still the case today. Point 4 is more about company communication policy.

Point 1 I think is an interesting debate. Let’s say that WoW eventually has 20 classes. Do you need 20 class designers in that world? What if one designer is better at her class than another? What if one mostly plays PvP and another PvE? What if their guild asks them to play an alt for their raid? Are they now supposed to resign their class design position? What if Doom comes out and they really want to play Doom for a few weeks? Does that mean their class design suffers? League of Legends by contrast has over 130 champions. Should we hire that many designers? Should we give each designer 6 champions?

The point I am trying to raise with all of these theoretical questions is maybe point 1 isn’t that important if point 2 and 3 are covered. Yes, you need enough knowledge to be able not only to troubleshoot but also to empathize with players.

I’m just dragging this out, because it is a question I have gotten a lot about game design - specifically do you need to play X to be able to work on X. A lot of people work on rockets who don’t actually go into space, but they certainly need to understand what going into space entails.

But I’d be interested in understanding *why* so many players think that it’s important that you main X in order to make sure they are designed well. (Source)



Dark Legacy Comics #565
DLC #565 has been released.

by Published on 2016-12-25 10:27 AM

Merry Christmas! - Endothermic Blaster and Disposable Winter Veil Suit Christmas Gifts
The Christmas gifts are now available in-game in some regions and you might want to log in to grab this year's gift: Endothermic Blaster! Obtaining it rewards Brr... It's Cold in Here

New to 2016 is the Disposable Winter Veil Suits toy, allowing your party to put on Winter Veil suits.



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