BlizzCon Keynote — New WoW Expansion, Diablo 3 Details

BlizzCon kicked off this morning with a keynote address that brought some major announcements for some of their games. First, World of Warcraft's third expansion, Cataclysm, was officially revealed. It differs from the previous expansions in that they will not be creating an entirely new continent for players to explore. Instead, the two huge continents from the original game will be going through a literal cataclysm, causing some zones to be destroyed, new ones to become available, and existing ones to be entirely revamped. Big news came for Diablo III as well, with the announcement of the Monk class and a trailer showing how it plays. More details for both games as well as StarCraft II will undoubtedly become available over the next few days, but read on for more about what we already know. If you have any questions, don't forget to post them here.

Cataclysm will also be different due to the fact that the new level cap is 85 — a five-level increase, as opposed to the ten-level increases from previous expansions. That's not to say there is less content, but the idea is that each individual level will be more meaningful. There will be two new playable races for this expansion: Goblins for the Horde and Worgen for the Alliance. The disaster apparently strikes the Goblins hard, forcing from their lands and into conflict with an "unknown enemy," which the Horde helps them with. Meanwhile, the Greymane Wall has broken open, revealing the kingdom of Gilneas, the residents of which were turned into the werewolf-like Worgen, but were able to keep their human minds.

The revamped Azeroth will include updated dungeons — heroic versions of Shadowfang Keep and the Deadmines — as well as entirely new dungeons for leveling and endgame. It's not yet clear whether the old version of the damaged zones will still be around in some form, but look for an explanation in the next few days. Players will be able to use their flying mounts in the new Azeroth. The dragon Deathwing is making a return, and will serve as a major villain. In addition to the damaged zones, some will change in other ways — Desolace, which is currently a barren wasteland, will find new life from the water of the tidal waves, turning the land green. The more damaged zones will feature lots of lava and broken terrain. There will be new Battlegrounds, new Race/Class combinations (we saw a Troll Druid, Tauren Paladin, and Gnome Priest), a new profession called Archaeology, a guild leveling system, tons of new monsters and quests, as well as a new "character progression" system called "Path of the Titans."

From the Diablo III Monk trailer, you can see that the class seems to have an area-of-effect swing of his weapon, a way to reflect spells, and an attack that sprints between a bunch of enemies, hitting each of them. The monk also seems to be able to make enemies explode quite easily. And messily.

Re:New 3D engine?

[Darkness404]

WoW survives for 2 reasons, one is the same reason as social networking, you have some friends on WoW who might only play WoW, so to move to a different game would mean losing them, and the other is time, there are people who have devoted nearly years of their life to WoW, even with a better MMO people will still play WoW because they are the top level, have good weapons, etc. they don't want to go back to level 1 and no items even if the game is more fun.

Wha?

[TheRealMindChild]

From the Diablo III Monk trailer, you can see...

No I can't! The only link in the article is to the "Ask Blizzard people something or another"... and every other comment seems to be a bunch of WoW zombies.

Re:Wha?

[Dremth]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFGXKV_45HQ [youtube.com]

More info...

[H0p313ss]

... here! [worldofwarcraft.com]

Re:Changes to old zones

[Anonymous Coward]

In Europe they usually cut the weed with tobacco and put a little piece of rolled up paper at the end for a filter when they roll joints. Just sayin'.

Re:Blizzard is slipping.

[Anonymous Coward]

How is this rated interesting? The Diablo 3 trailer is in-game graphics while the Warcraft 3 is pre-rendered. Apples and oranges.

Re:Blizzard is slipping.

[chrisG23]

Apples and Oranges buddy. The difference is the Diablo 3 trailer was not using pre-rendered graphics, instead was on display was using the in game engine. (Or the worst. graphics. renderer. ever.) The Warcraft 3 cinematic you linked to is a pre-rendered movie saved as a movie file that is played using whatever the WC3 movie player is.

Pre-rendered cinematics are nice, especially the ones made by Blizzard, and there will probably be some in the game, but I expect Diablo 3 to continue the trend that they used in WC3 to tell as much of the story with scripted cinematic events that make use of the game engine and don't have to break the contnuity of the game. And save money on production costs.

Re:End level content is where the game is at

[Anonymous Coward]

refering to the rpg Monty Haul effect...As in Full Monty = everything under the sun

Re:End level content is where the game is at

[spacefiddle]

which led to situations like characters assassinating ''gods'' like Thor to gain their nifty weapons.

...which is basically the endgame of WoW.

Re:New 3D engine?

[Chromium_One]

Have you verified that WoW is properly detecting the number of CPU cores you have? I've seen it be stupid and keep setting itself back to using only one core.

You can try setting the number of cores manually:
http://www.wowwiki.com/CVar_processAffinityMask [wowwiki.com]

Old versions of the zones

[VGPowerlord]

It's not yet clear whether the old version of the damaged zones will still be around in some form, but look for an explanation in the next few days.

Really? The FAQ [worldofwarcraft.com] over on the Cataclysm page is quite clear about this:

Will I need the expansion to be able to experience the Cataclysm changes?

When the Cataclysm occurs, it will occur for all players, whether they have purchased the expansion or not--you will no longer be to play in the original version of Kalimdor or the Eastern Kingdoms. However, certain features such as the new zones, new races, and new level cap will only be accessible to players who purchase the expansion.

Re:Huh?

[Gravatron]

Not really, your coul get tier gear from tokens. A heroic droped a fair number of them, so you had gear in no time. Raids still gave you better gear, but you could gear up enough from tokens to do pretty much any PUG raid or instance.

Re:Huh?

[achacha]

I think the problem is that people are always trying to reach the max level without actually having fun and when they get to max level people complain that there is nothing to do. 60-70 are very interesting levels if you spend time on the Outlands, there are like 10 zones with hundreds of quests that have a lot of story behind them. I did 6 levels in 2 zones by turning off the XP bar and actually reading the quest text and trying to have fun doing quests rather than just trying to get 70 so you can move to northrend and repeat.

The grind is your choice, try to stop and smell the flowers, there is a lot more to WoW than getting to max level in the shortest possibly time.