Rock, Paper, Shotgun

If you’re a registered World of Warcraft player, and are willing to commit to a 12 month contract to the game, you can get Diablo III for free. In one of the more confusing offers I’ve seen, Blizzard seem to be rewarding ongoing loyalty to WoW players, rather than actually trying to get new customers, as this is an offer open only to those who have a registered WoW account on or before the 18th October 2011. If that’s you, and you’re willing to add twelve months to your sub, then not only do you get Diablo III whenever it happens to release, but access to the beta for Mists Of Pandaria (still can’t believe that’s really a thing) and a new walkie/flying mount, Tyrael’s Charger.

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Remember World Of Warcraft? Coo, those were the days. Well, you may be surprised to learn the game is still running after all these years, and it’s still being updated! The latest patch for the Cataclysm update, as Eurogamer reports, is called Hour Of Twilight, and adds stuff.

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The forthcoming Mists of Pandaria expansion for World of Warcraft will be bringing along a revamped talent tree as well as fluffykins up there. Not happy with how players built identically specced characters at their most statistically efficient, Blizzard are hoping their new system will make it more tempting for players to forge their own path through the levels.

Three specilisations will be available for every class with specific spells assigned to each one. Meanwhile, talents are available for every spec in that class, and will be awarded every 15 levels. These talents will be interchangeable as you play, further tempting players to rebuild and experiment with the numbers. Sounds a lot like Diablo 3, come to think of it.

Have a go at rolling your new build with the official talent calculator, and keep in mind that the numbers aren’t final.

Actually, I’m not quite sure what age kids really start riding bicycles, at least without stabilisers and/or a worried parent holding onto the back of the saddle. I think I was at least around seven when I first managed a brief, unassisted pedal down a country lane (and, more excitingly, was rewarded with a second-hand Superion for my efforts. I still have that somewhere) so I’m going to go ahead and say that Blizzard’s MMO should be capable of such a feat.

Yes, World of Warcraft, the main man of the MMO industry, has been around for seven years this week, which is an alarming prospect. How did it get so old? (By which I mean ‘how did I get so old?) And it’s remarkable it’s only seen three expansions in that time, given what a cash-cow it’s been for Blizzard, Vivendi and Activision. There are gentle celebrations in honour of this birthday, primarily in the form of a ‘feat of strength’ item dropped into the inventories of any players who sign in between now-ish and December 3.
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I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that WoW’s pandas look quite good in motion, but, well, they do. You can see them frolicking in their Asia-themed themepark world below in the Mists of Pandaria trailer. Cute hot air balloons, too.

These Panda types will apparently be a neutral race, with players deciding between alliance and horde once they get past the starting stuff. The pandaren starting area is, also, on the back of a giant turtle. Hmm.
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(Seriously? Pandaria?) Ok: A new race, the Pandaren, a new class, the monk. All that within a new Chinese-styled continent, Pandaria. There will also be a new level cap of 90, new PVE scenarios, a new pet system, and a new talent system. That’s a lot of new! They’re also going to renew the Horde Vs Alliance war somehow, and that will take place on this new continent.

That’s it for now.

The big news from Blizzcon is starting to pour out of the holes in the internet, and the biggest news is that Diablo III is going to be free to annual World Of Warcraft subscribers. Signing up for the annual pass gets you Diablo III for nowt and new in-game mount for WoW, Tyrael’s Charger. And there we were thinking WoW subs were going to decline. Clever boys.

Check out VG247′s liveblog for loads more.

World Of Warcraft lead Tom “Kalgan” Chilton has been talking to PC Gamer about the recent decline in World Of Warcraft subs, which are down to 11.4m worldwide compared to a 12m high. What is interesting, however, is his citing of “complexity” as a reason why PCs might be “re-emerging” as a platform, suggesting he sees a shift in developer attention back keyboard-baring beast.

“In a lot of ways I see the PC as potentially a re-emerging sort of platform,” said Chilton. “I think that the PC has always offered ways to approach games that you can’t necessarily approach on console, even if it’s just because of UI restraints. Keyboard and mouse opens up options that you can’t get replicate as easily with a controller in RTS games like Starcraft 2. If you look at the way we do an MMO like World of Warcraft, our communication method and all that kind of stuff, it kind of implies a level of UI complexity that would be really hard to pull off on console.” Chilton’s focus on the PC has been continuous, of course, but it’s interesting to see so many developers now expressing this sentiment. (Basically: Devs are so hot for hotkeys.)

It would be simply rude to say ‘isn’t this the kind of thing that every MMO in its right mind should have at launch?’, so instead let’s just celebrate that, finally, friends from different World of Warcraft servers can band together to give some sort of huge boss with a repeating attack pattern what’s coming to him/her/it/them.
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Gamasutra reports that Sterne Agee analyst Arvind Bhatia claims [PDF] that Blizzard’s next big MMO project, Titan, will be a “casual MMO”. Now, in my head at least, “casual” is Zynga, or maybe PopCap. Games with a shallow learning curve, and limited endgame complexity. Now Blizzard games might not be ultra-badcore brainburners, but they are also not casual, and I don’t expect that to change. Quite what analyst means by this term, of course, isn’t clear. Perhaps it was a slip of the finger. Or maybe he is so l33t that anything less ‘core than Darkfall doesn’t stand up in his book. Whatever it means, it paints what I think is an inaccurate picture.

My prediction? I say Titan will be an action MMO, probably an MMOFPS, with a sci-fi setting. It’ll aim wide, be accessible, and snare millions of gamers, but “casual” won’t be a word we use to describe it. Let’s come back here in two years and see who is right.