By Alec Meer on October 24th, 2012.
It’s been a long time since Blizzard added a new string to its bow o’universes, but not so long ago a fourth franchise was on the cards. In the time-honoured tradition of fantasying up Warcraft into Starcraft, so at one point was Diablo to be sent to space, in a game that never quite made it past the unfortunate portmanteau working title ‘Starblo.’
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The Art Of More
By Nathan Grayson on October 16th, 2012.
Whether you’re a sucker for their furry brand of kung-fury or not, World of Warcraft‘s pandas are officially here to stay. Fortunately, Pandaria’s mysterious de-misting actually revealed one of the better WoW expansions in recent memory, so life goes on – and quite merrily at that. But while fresh competitors like Guild Wars 2 continue to be the talk of the town, MoP didn’t quite take the world (Warcraft-flavored or otherwise) by storm. Slow and steady though the process might be, MMOs are evolving. Sure, WoW’s world is bigger than ever, but its every strained lurch is followed by a deafening creak. So what’s next? How does Blizzard plan to keep WoW relevant? Does it involve free-to-play? A return to the Horde vs Alliance glory days? More species of playable bear? During GDC Online, I sat down with production director J. Allen Brack to find out.
By Nathan Grayson on October 13th, 2012.
All in all, I’m pretty happy not being The Devil Himself. It’s a sentiment that’s followed me through each day – from dusk ’til dawn – for quite some time, but Diablo III gave me renewed appreciation for my frail, non-red flesh and lack of dominion over the most miserable location ever conceived. I mean, it’s bad enough having every righteous hero’s target on your back, but when they start Paragon leveling and optimizing builds, well, why even get out of your bed assembled from the twisted, eternally weeping faces of ten thousand racists who constantly insist they aren’t racist? Blizzard, though, is hoping to put some challenge back into not only the Big Bad himself, but every single zone in its exceedingly beaten and battered hack ‘n’ slash.
By Alec Meer on October 8th, 2012.
No-one’s immune to hacking, and the bigger they are the harder they fall (but more quickly they recover, given the megabucks, etc). Over the weekend, someone manage to slip a knife into World of Warcraft’s ribs, finding an exploit that allowed the usually near-invincible NPCs inhabiting the capital cities of Stormwind and Ogrimmar to become as weak as asthmatic kitten (though this was done by by the exploiting players accessing kill commands, not the NPCs actually being weakened). Slaughter inevitably followed.
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By Nathan Grayson on October 6th, 2012.
As a child, one of my first Real Person (read: PC) games was Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness. Back in those days, the Horde and Alliance, well, they didn’t like each other so much. There was, I suppose you could say, a whole lot less crafting and a rather sizable helping of war. But times have changed, and so has the world of Warcraft. For one, it grew a world. That’s fairly significant. But with rather unpleasant-sounding crusades and apocalypse dragons came a certain level of necessary chumminess between the warring factions. According to Blizzard, however, Mists of Pandaria’s first major update is about to (finally) change all of that.
Heart Of The Swarm Is Missing Something
By RPS on October 3rd, 2012.
RPS chum Rich Stanton has been contemplating the loss of a classic Terran unit over in the Heart Of The Swarm beta. Here are his thoughts on the matter.
Let’s not beat around the bush: I love building Marines. Starcraft II may as well be called ‘Marines’ for me, because making lots of these little guys and then sending them off to destroy alien forces is pretty much all I’ve done for the past two years. Terran scrubs represent! Starcraft II rather encourages this, I think, because there isn’t really a better option for the Terran army than Marines. Sure, the odd fancy-pants will try Hellion openings, and gods among men like Thorzain can dominate with all-mech strategies – but for a bog standard Terran like me? Marines mate. A few Marauders, couple of Medivacs, if it’s Zerg or Terran then add a few Siege Tanks. It is often said that the Terran army in Wings of Liberty has more options than any other, which may be true, but things begin and end with the Marine.
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By Alec Meer on September 24th, 2012.
We know World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria has kung-fun pandas in it. I’ve seen it on adverts on the telly and everything. What else does it have in it? Well, if you’ve got seven minutes you can find out, with the below flyover trailer that runs through some of the new zones, enemies, abilities and dungeons to be found in WoW’s fourth expansion. It’s like a timeshare brochure, but with flying ships, angry crab-men and Chinese temples.
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By Nathan Grayson on September 12th, 2012.
Well, this is more than a little upsetting. A picture, our forefathers (or someone’s forefathers, anyway) said, is worth a thousand words, but I’m willing to bet they’d have upped that wager a little if their pictures contained bits of decryptable info that revealed very sensitive personal information. Reports coming out of the world of World of Warcraft, however, suggest just that, and – given that hackers tend to flock to Blizzard products like ravens to places that will soon be dooooooooomed – it’s a bit worrisome, to say the least.
By Nathan Grayson on September 6th, 2012.
It’s been quite the day for long-awaited project launches. First Natural Selection 2 got a release month, and now StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm‘s beta has all its Overlords in a nice, neatly organized row. Also, I guess Farmville 2′s taken to Facebook’s oh-so-fertile pastures. So that’s… yep. Anyway, StarCraft! The beta’s officially up and running, and you could very well be in it. But probably not – because the initial round of invites went out to “a select group of pro-gamers, members of the press, Arcade contest winners, and shoutcasters.” Soon, though. Sooooooooon.
By Jim Rossignol on August 24th, 2012.
Back in June Blizzard showed off the beta stages of their Starcraft II community forum, The Arcade, and the latest patch makes it official. In case you missed the fuss over this, it’s a pretty major event for the SC2 community because it provides a new platform for sharing content created in the game’s hefty editor. Custom games will now be easier to track, even before they are released (assuming the author updates and so forth) and it should make it easier for folks to promote their creations to the overall community. As closed a system as Blizzard games are right now, this seems like a large and positive step in the direct of acknowledging that the PC is just as much about making stuff as it is about playing stuff.
And in case you were thinking “that inevitably means DOTA in Starcraft II, right?” Blizzard are already working on it, as announced last year. “Soonish“, indeed.
By Nathan Grayson on August 22nd, 2012.
Modern videogames may present their share of annoyances (insert obvious reference to online requirements here), but I’ve got to admit, it’s pretty neat to live in a world where someone can announce a massive free revamp one day and have it in the grasp of our arthritis-stricken click-click-clicking fingers the next. Such is the case with Diablo III‘s 1.0.4 update, which includes all sorts of balancing tweaks, upgrades to a smattering of underused class skills, buffs to legendary weapons, and of course, 100 “Paragon” levels to extend your endgame until time’s cyclical nature brings you right back around to the day before Diablo III came out.
