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Archive for Blizzard

Warcraft Movie Trailer

Nov07

Well the first “real” Warcraft Movie trailer is here:

Interesting. I really wonder what non players are going to make of this. Visually it looks good. The CGI and real world stuff appears fairly seamless. Odd too see the characters, which look pretty much like their in-game cartoon origins against those realistic backgrounds.

The world and mythos of WOW is so vast, complex, and “inclusive” of so many other fantasy ideas that it must have been a serious challenge to narrow down into a coherent story. Clearly they are focusing on the Warcraft I Orcs vs Humans aspect. I see nary a glance of any of the other even more fantastic elements: spellcasters, undead, elves, dragons, etc. Probably not a bad idea from a budget and mainstreaming POV.

Hmmm. It will be interesting to see how good a job they do — and if people not familiar with the lore can engage in it.

WOW Endgame series: Vanilla, Burning Crusade, Lich King, Cataclysm, and Pandaria.
or read about Mists of Pandaria leveling.
Latest hot post: Reaper of Souls Analysis!
If you liked this post, follow me at:

My novels: The Darkening Dream and Untimed
or the video game post depot
or win Crash & Jak giveaways!

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Related posts:

  1. Movie Review: Thor
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  5. Book and Movie Review: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
By: agavin
Comments (2)
Posted in: Games, Movies
Tagged as: Blizzard, Warcraft, Warcraft Movie, WOW

Blizzard Bits

Nov07

Blizzard today announced a new franchise, Overwatch. Not only does it look cool, and very Blizzard, but it looks like an interesting take on the FPS. Sort of combining FPS with League of Legends style characters/classes. And perhaps business model? This is an all PVP team play shooter. Probably no “campaign” in the traditional 1 player shooter sense.

The game play is in the above second video. Truth is, the real gameplay looks far cooler than the cartoon-style cinematic. It’s this stuff, and the implied highly differentiated character/classes that gets me excited. I’m just not that into running around in a traditional FPS and grabbing a collection of bigger and bigger guns.

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In other news, there is a new Hearthstone expansion, Goblins vs. Gnomes. Well fine, but I’m kinda mostly over Hearthstone. And, BTW, trying really hard to NOT play Warlords of Draenor. We will see if I can hold out. I did pass Paragon 400 in Diablo 3 though. Oh, there’s also a third Starcraft II, Legacy of the Void. Never really got into Starcraft. Too hardcore for me.

Related posts:

  1. Hearthstone Beta Review
  2. Expansion of the WOW Factor
  3. Diablo 3 – Commercial
  4. Diablo III: Wrath
  5. Warlords of Draenor Cinematic
By: agavin
Comments (3)
Posted in: Games
Tagged as: Blizzard, Blizzard Entertainment, BlizzCon, Diablo III, Overwatch, StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void

Warlords of Draenor Cinematic

Aug14

Blizard released the Warlords (WOW expansion 5!) cinematic today:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLzhlsEFcVQ]

Actually pretty cool. Oddly, and as usual, even after having played since launch, I don’t totally understand the details of the “lore” and even who all the players are. Guldan, Thrall, Hellscream sure. But who is that Burning Legion dude with the Illidan wings? It’s funny how much effort you’d have to make in order to actually understand the lore. I know all the factions and just roll with it. Now the gameplay, that I understand. Although I hesitate to actually play again, as it’s such a time suck. But usually my resolve breaks.

WOW Endgame series: Vanilla, Burning Crusade, Lich King, Cataclysm, and Pandaria.
or read about Mists of Pandaria leveling.
Latest hot post: Reaper of Souls Analysis!
If you liked this post, follow me at:

My novels: The Darkening Dream and Untimed
or the video game post depot
or win Crash & Jak giveaways!

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Related posts:

  1. Diablo 3 Opening Cinematic
  2. Expansion of the WOW Factor
  3. WOW Endgames – Mists of Pandaria
  4. Hearthstone Beta Review
  5. Diablo 3 – Commercial
By: agavin
Comments (2)
Posted in: Games
Tagged as: Blizzard, Blizzard Entertainment, Races and factions of Warcraft, Warcraft, Warlords, Warlords of Draenor, World of Warcraft

Hearthstone Beta Review

Jan06

I’m no stranger to Trading Card strategy games, having played Magic: The Gathering way back in 1993 (and fairly heavily through 1995 or 96). In recent years, lacking an enthusiastic series of human opponents, I  periodically tried my hand at their latest computer incarnations. Most recently, this was IOS Magic 2013. This game was okay, but the designers felt too beholden to the specifics of the card game and not confident enough to invest in changes that would streamline the digital experience. Also, I’ve long felt that nearly all MTG expansion packs have strayed from their classic D&D flavored roots into that sort of bizarre out-there-and-too-cool-for-school style of western fantasy (all that dimensional and  plane waker stuff).

To prove my old school cred, I dug up 20 year old box of magic cards, including beta dual manas, and a 1996 calendar!

To prove my old school cred, I dug up 20 year old box of magic cards, including beta dual manas, and a 1996 calendar!

Which brings us to Blizzard’s entry into this underdeveloped genre: Hearthstone. Basically, the Irvine powerhouse has taken the MTG formula, reskinned it with Warcraft characters, and streamlined it for online play. And while this may sound merely evolutionary — and it is — in typical Blizzard fashion, when they do something, they do it well.

Hearthstone is great fun and the gameplay itself extremely well balanced (considering its beta state) and fast and furious for a card game.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdXl3QtutQI]

For those of you not familiar with this sort of game, it represents a “duel” between two fantasy characters. Each player constructs (or uses an off the shelf) deck of cards out of the pool of cards they own. Hearthstone’s decks are 30 cards, no more than two of any one type. You draw from this (shuffled) deck representing spells, abilities, and creatures to play them against your opponent as best you can. Generally cards require certain resources (mana) be spent to play, limiting the combinations you can cast in a given turn.

The biggest Hearthstone gameplay innovation (and I haven’t played enough Trading Card Duel games to know if it’s even a real innovation) is assigning decks a distinct class. In MTG, your deck design balances the flavor of mana versus the cost needs of various cards.  I.e. it’s possible to “dual class” (or even triple class), but the odds of ending up with mismatched land and spell/creature cards becomes greater. In Hearthstone, you select one of the original nine Warcraft classes (Warrior, Rogue, Warlock, Mage, Druid, Shaman, Paladin, Priest, and Hunter — Deathknight and Monk being left for a future patch). Your deck must be constructed from cards specific to that class or the Neutral cards. This is quite clever as by giving each class unique mechanics found only in their specific cards, particular gameplay styles are created. Each class also has a unique 2 mana hero ability which can be used once per turn without consuming a card. This serves to both differential them and prevent the “nothing to do because I don’t have a usable card” problem. In Hearthstone, mana capacity notches up one turn at a time (unless affected by special cards). I.e. first turn you have one mana available, next turn two, and so on. This helps measure out the phase and progression of the game, being like a less frustrating version of playing your MTG lands.

A typical game board

A typical game board

The original World of Warcraft classes transition to this new medium impressively. For flavor, the art is very similar, cards are almost invariably named after WOW spells and creatures, and many are even accompanied by sound effects or voice snippets lifted right out of the MMO (Aaaaaughibbrgubugbugrguburgle!) . To a longtime WOW player like myself (9 years!), this is all pretty effective. I’ve played most WOW classes (all but Hunter and Shaman) and I’ve done enough PVP and raided exhaustively. For me,all the class abilities have a certain iconic quality. Add the fact that Blizzard based the mechanics of the individual classes around similar WOW abilities to color me impressed. For example, mage specific cards include: Arcane Explosion, Arcane Missles, Fireball, Polymorph, Cone of Cold, Flamestrike, Frost Nova, Frostbolt, Ice Lance, Mirror Image, Blizzard, Pyroblast, Mana Wyrm, Water Elemental, and Ice Block — all of which are fairly faithful to their WOW roots. And they world as a cohesive play feel and strategy that makes the transition into the card duel.

Being fully computerized, and not relying on mechanics that work with physical cards, Hearthstone is able to support more complex AOE and card modification. Spells can strike all or groups of cards for certain, random, or variable damage — and work in combination with modifiers like shield, stealth (can’t be attacked), taunt (must attack first), or enrage (extra abilities for damaged minions). Some of these mechanics, while possible on paper, would be tedious and slow to manage (annoying counters anyone?). The game doesn’t exactly push the hardware limits of a modern PC/Mac, but it features the typical slick Blizzard interface. Actions are fast, with satisfying sounds and effects. Plus they queue up nicely in a way that allows for rapid play out of multiple moves. This is in sharp contrast to a game like Magic 2013 which drags out each move with awkward and slow animations. Hearthstone lets you just go bang bang bang in a far more satisfying manner.

$1.50 to $2.00 for just 5 virtual cards!

$1.50 to $2.00 for just 5 virtual cards!

I suspect Blizzard is also (as usual) going to make a lot of money with Hearthstone. Not only is it fun, and technically free to play, but seamlessly integrated with Battlenet and your attached credit card. Basically, to add anything but the basic cards to your pool of available cards, you have to either be very good, very patient, or spend some money on packs of cards. These cost $1.50-$2 for a pack of 5! And there is no guarantee you’ll get cards you want. Although you can disenchant extra or undesired cards for dust and use them to craft any specific card. Getting substantial dust pretty much only comes from buying packs, so this mostly allows the player who spends $50+ a way to fill in for bad luck (thank God!). Certainly for $50-100 one could get the cards for any ONE deck one wanted (the cost is mostly in getting lucky or enough dust for the 1-3 legendaries many serious decks want).

Warlock class specific cards. You face Jaraxxus, Eredar lord of the Burning Legion!

Warlock class specific cards. You face Jaraxxus, Eredar lord of the Burning Legion!

There are a variety of modes and tricks to keep you coming back. Classes level up (giving you extra cards and bonuses). There are daily quests (you can have up to 3) that earn extra gold (which can be spent on cards or the Arena) and there is practice, normal, and ranked play modes. Possibly most interesting is the creative Arena mode. You have to pay (with dollars or gold) to enter, then you semi-randomly build a new deck, and play until you lose three times. The more wins in this time, the bigger the reward in gold, dust, and cards. The Arena seems currently, even for a sucky player, to be a slightly better value gold/dollars to cards, as it costs $1.50 and you seem to earn at least one pack. However, it does take an hour or two (you don’t have to play all at once). I’ve only done it twice, as I find playing with it’s fairly random decks a little frustrating compared to my carefully crafted normal mode ones.

Finally, you can always play with your Battle net friends, which will be cool once we get out of closed beta and more of mine try out the game. All in all, now that my main in WOW is ilevel 558 and I’d basically have to run Heroic raids for upgrades (almost), and given the fact that Hearthstone can be played in 5-10 minute chunks, I’m having a blast with it. If I feel motivated, I might even write up my experiences with the three late game strategies I’ve been working: Warlock, Mage Ice Control, and Pally Utility Control (sadly, as I’m a Lock in WOW, my Mage deck is doing much better).

WOW Endgame series: Vanilla, Burning Crusade, Lich King, Cataclysm, and Pandaria.
or read about Mists of Pandaria leveling.
Latest hot post: Reaper of Souls Analysis!
If you liked this post, follow me at:

My novels: The Darkening Dream and Untimed
or the video game post depot
or win Crash & Jak giveaways!

12

Related posts:

  1. Diablo 3 – Beta Preview
  2. WOW Endgames – Cataclysm
  3. WOW Endgames – Burning Crusade
  4. Expansion of the WOW Factor
  5. The Last of Us – My Review
By: agavin
Comments (5)
Posted in: Games
Tagged as: beta, Blizzard, Blizzard Entertainment, card game, Hearthstone, Magic: The Gathering, Video Games, Warcraft, World of Warcraft

WOW Endgames – Lich King

Nov14
Wrath of the Lich King Collector's Edition

The collector’s edition box

…continued from my coverage of the WOW Burning Crusade endgame.

The months leading up to the launch of Wrath of the Lich King were very exciting for me. First of all, my son was about to be born — in fact, he was scheduled to arrive just days after LK! And on a WOW front, Blizzard pushed the 3.0.x series of patches 4-6 weeks in advance of the expansion itself.

Before Heading North

Patch 3.0.x introduced the most sweeping changes of any infrastructure patch yet — and a lot of it was content of a sort. We got the usual full reworking of the classes and talent trees. This didn’t itself add any content, but yet it did. One consequence was a substantial increase in average dps output. All of a sudden, impossible raid bosses were now difficult… but doable. Our guild, which previously could kill Arche and Illidan on a good night, starting trouncing them and moving through Sunwell.

Over Achiever

Just as significant, was the brand new achievement system. Blizzard hardly invented achievements, but in their usual fashion, took what other did and did it better. The WOW achievement system launched with an overwhelming array of achievements and meta-achievements (more than 500). These didn’t give you any in-game advantage, but they sure felt cool and opened up fun vanity awards such as pets, mounts, and titles.

Even before LK itself shipped, I spent countless hours grinding out certainly achievement types. I’m a completist (i.e. type A) and I thought I’d knocked off almost every quest in Azeroth. Well, it still took me about three weeks to complete the Azeroth and Outland sections of Loremaster (an achievement and title awarded for doing every quest in the game).

The patch also moved pets, mounts, and currencies into new interface tabs. This opened up a lot of bag space and made it reasonable to invest heavily in collecting the cute little beasties. I was already a bit of a pet collector, but in the month or so before LK went nuts with grinding out every cool pet I could. Unless the grind was particularly horrific (Hyacinth Macaw), I got it. This included rarities like the Black Tabby Cat and Disgusting Oozeling. I always had the most pets of anyone I knew.

One of the great things about the achievement system was that it opened up countless different avenues of time investiture to choose from. I worked on questing, dungeons, seasonal events, and pets. Others might have worked on PVP, reputation, or whatever. Every aspect of the game was covered and it brought new life into many of them.

WOW Achievements

Holiday Fun

Patch 3.0.x shipped during the busy WOW holiday season that includes Brew Fest, Hallows Eve, Winter’s Veil etc. In the Vanilla period, I treated holidays as curious decoration. A few minutes doing the Winter’s Veil chains in 2005 showed them to yield… pretty much nothing and that was the last of it.

During Burning Crusade, Blizzard introduced the first holiday boss, the Headless Horseman.  Not only was he a fun new boss, but he dropped a bit of epic loot. Serious toons like my Warlock had much better gear anyway, but he was great for grabbing a good ring for your alt. He was so popular that the Dire Brew boss, Ahune, and the Valentine’s boss soon followed.

But achievements took the holidays to a new level. They provided a road map of weird activities during each holiday. And if you did everything for the holiday, you got a title. And, even better, if you did everything for every holiday (which took a year) you could earn a 310% speed special purple dragon mount! At the time, these fast mounts were very hard to come by. Usually only the most hardcore raiders could hope to earn one.

So that Halloween I tried (successfully) to finish the holiday meta, which was in those days pretty f**king stressful. Blizzard has since made them much easier, but that first year there were some achievements that required a lot of luck and a lot of grinding. To maximize your odds, you had to really knock everything out as soon as you could during the holiday in case there was some troublesome random number based task. Also, at the beginning of the holiday, the crowds generally made most things easier. And there were some serious crowds. The holidays were never too popular before, but the rush to earn the achievements brought out a serious frenzy of players.

The Headless Horseman

The Headless Horseman: Holiday boss extroidnaire

The Big Day

Burning Crusade was so cool that I was very excited for Lich King. Plus, the trailer was badass. I even waited outside at midnight to buy my pre-ordered Collector’s Edition. This was the last time I bothered. I still got CEs (for the pets) but I just ordered them from Amazon and waited the extra 12 hours.

I bought a new Macbook Pro a couple weeks before just to make sure I could play in the hospital with my tired wife and freshly minted son. This actually worked pretty well, newborns sleep a lot. 🙂

Heroic Faceroll

Anyway: the endgame.

Historically, dungeons made up the bulk of early endgame play. I dinged level 80 and some guildies invited me into a Heroic. Yeah, that’s right. No keys. No attunement. No grinding to Revered reputation. Just hop right in… and crush the dungeon in 20-30 minutes!

Huh? Not only were dungeons short, which was obvious even while leveling, but even the Heroics were incredibly easy. I never ran a single level 80 non-heroic instance. There was no need. Your quest gear would easily carry you in Heroics, and the rewards were much better. Better gear, more rep, and more badges (more on that later). Crowd control was completely useless. Pats? Who cares? The tank just grabbed a pile of mobs, you nuked them down, repeat.

A few specific fights were kinda hard at the beginning of the expansion: Skadi in Utgrade Pinnacle, and the final bosses of Oculus and Halls of Lightning. As a consequence, those last two were the least popular instances.

For those that liked a challenge, every dungeon had 2-4 funky achievements that involved weird ways of beating bosses. Some were quite hard and almost all required a group that played together regularly. Getting all these achievements earned you a cool mount and provided quite a time sink for the dedicated few.

Badges for Everyone

LK took the badge system developed in BC to a whole new level. It introduced two (soon to grow to four, then six) badge currencies for PVE alone. Badges of Heroism came from 5 man Heroics and 10 man raids and Badges of Valor from 25 man raids. Both allowed the purchase of good endgame gear. The lower currency epics were the same grade as the heroic epics. The better currency similar to the first tier of 25 man raiding.

In practice, this meant that you wanted lots and lots of badges at first. For several weeks, even Heroism badges were useful. Soon enough, at least for classes with damage only specs, you wouldn’t need those so much (except maybe for the new Heirloom gear). But Valor badges, you could always use those. And even the heroics let you earn two of those a day by running the “daily dungeon.”

All of this meant that it was advantageous to run 5 man dungeons long after you needed anything the dungeons themselves dropped. As they were easy to begin with and most players out-geared them rapidly, they became mindless zergs (see below).

WOW currency tab

The currency tab: have a few badge types!

Rep Hubs & Tabards

LK gave us more reputations than ever. Most zones had one. Some of these had small clusters of repetitive daily quests you could use to grind to exalted.  Those with quests mostly yielded cosmetic or profession benefits. The grinds were fairly short, usually around 2 weeks.

While in BC each dungeon yielded a specific rep, LK instituted tabards that allowed you to earn the rep of your choice while running Heroics. This meant that it was only a matter of time before you brought all tabard reps to exalted, but usually, by the time it happened, you didn’t need much they had to offer. Each rep did have an epic or two, and so the first couple were useful, particularly if they had dailies to speed up the process.

Professions, both of the crafting sort and the basic cooking and fishing, usually each got a single daily quest. Instead of having recipes drop all over the world randomly, the were usually sold by the profession vendor in exchange for a new currency given by the profession daily. So, for cooking, you ran your quick little daily, and every couple of days, bought a new recipe. This all made it easier and more predictable to collect your patterns, but it also took most of the excitement out of the process.

Overall, after about a month, you were done with the dailies (other than the daily dungeon).

WOW Oracles hub

The “hub” (or home town) of the Oracles faction

Even Raids can be Easy

At launch, LK was a little shy on raid content. It gave us two single boss raids: Obsidian Sanctum and Eye of Eternity and one big one. Naxxramas 2.0 had 15 bosses!

These three raids could be run either in 10 man or 25 man configurations. You could run both each week if you liked. I was never much for 10 man because the loot was considerably worse and they dropped the lower badge type (which I always had in excess). 10 man was a bit easier for most fights. OS was very easy normally (there was a progressive way to make it harder) and The Eye was harder, but not too hard. Both were short.

Even Naxx was tuned way easier than previous raids. But it was long. At this stage, Naxx 25 held a lot of good gear, but it quickly became quite a slog, particularly if you ran BOTH the 10 man and 25 man versions. It only took our guild about a month to have it on farm (where every boss died every week). Long before the next raid tier launched, we were pretty darn sick of Naxx. The revised Vanilla design was still excellent, and few players had seen the instance the first time around, but still, it felt a little lazy. Even the gear looked the same (although it was updated for level 80)!

The clever achievements did add a little fun. Title based ones like “The Undying” (where you cleared Naxx without any deaths) were very popular among the skilled.

Naxxramas

Naxxramas 2.0: back for more ghoulish fun

PVP backburner

In BC, although tedious, PVP was a good way to progress your PVE game. LK saw the introduction of gear that was so heavily slanted toward PVP as to be nearly useless in PVE (compared to easy to get badge gear). This, combined with crazy battleground fatigue from BC, insured I never ran a battleground during the whole of LK (except for a few holiday achievements).

One exception was Wintergrasp, the new world PVP zone. Now, I couldn’t have cared less about WG itself, and found it pretty boring. But it was useful to run it occasionally so as to be in the right place at the right time to catch a group for the new PVP raid instance. This dungeon, located under WG keep, was available to the faction that most recently won the zone and contained at first one, then with each new tier, more raid bosses. These bosses were very easy, trivial to PUG, and dropped a mix of PVE and PVP gear, including the pants and gloves from each tier!

Getting lucky here was an easy way to save badges or DKP (Dragon Kill Points used to partition guild loot).

Archavon

Archavon: PVP/PVE loot piñata waiting for the slaughter

3 Drakes, Ulduar and crazy hard modes

The early raids were easy by design. Blizzard wanted a wider range of players to experience the raiding content. But OS had an unusual mechanic for making it harder. You could kill Sartharion’s 3 drakes before the boss, and take him down easy, or you could leave up one, two, or three drakes. For each extra drake you fought at the same time as the boss, the loot was better. This itself didn’t make much of a gearing difference, but if you killed him with all three drakes up (3D) you got an elitist title and a chance at a cool specialty mount.

In the spring of 2009, when the next big raid, Ulduar, shipped, it took hard modes a step further. Ulduar was another giant raid with 14 bosses. It was long, involved, and pretty hard even normally. At least, the last third was. Some people loved it. I thought it was too big and took too long. And I really wasn’t a fan of the first boss’s tedious vehicle mechanic. A few of the bosses also had unusual “hard modes” like OS where you could trigger a different, much much harder fight. We attempted these a number of times but our guild only really managed hard modes on Flame Leviathan and XT-002. The hard modes dropped gear a half tier better.

If you more or less did all of these hard modes you could open up Algalon, and extra boss who was really cool, and really really hard. You only had an hour a week to fight him too, but killing him awarded a highly prestigious title.

mimiron

Ulduar was home to some crazy-ass fights

Badge Inflation

During the LK period, Blizzard experimented with the badge system. At first, you had to manually loot your badges off bosses. It was easy to forget, and so they then added an “auto loot” that forced them into your bag. This worked, but was buggy and often caused server instabilities. Later, they moved the badges from your bags into a special currency section and added a system by which they would be automatically credited as soon as the boss was downed. This included a system to issue rewards when the final boss of a dungeon was cleared.

Additionally, as each successive raiding tier was released, it became necessary to make available new currencies. Players would have accumulated surplus badges in the older tiers, and to keep things fair they introduced new pairs of currencies (one for dungeons and 10 man and one for 25 man). Limited means of down converting newer currencies into older ones were experimented with. By the end of the expansion this became an unwieldy collection of 6-8 different badge currencies just for LK, so while the basic scheme was to be retained in Cataclysm, some cleanups were in order.

Overall, the badge system did remove some of the frustration inherent in the random nature of dropped loot. It helped you make steady progress regardless of your raiding situation. In the Vanilla/BC days this had been vastly more susceptible to your spec and how often your guild ran farm content. If you played an “easy to gear” spec like Holy Paladin (who has healing plate all to itself) previous tier or farm instances would literally shower you with loot. In the days when a Holy Pally could heal effectively in any armor type, you could passably gear one in just a run or two of a big instance like Kara or Naxx if other healers didn’t need the loot.

Another Hub

Summer saw another interim patch with a new rep, a new daily quest hub, a new 5 man, a revised level 80 version of Ony, and a new mid-sized raid. Grinding the rep mostly got you cosmetic gains again, but the new 5 man was useful in gearing alts as it dropped entry level epics very easily. Both the 5 man and the raid were lazy designs and took place inside the same basic arena map. You fought a series of bosses with no trash.

Lazy and uninspired as this was, it was efficient gearing wise.

10 + 25 + heroic 10 + heroic 25 = Burnout

The raid, Trial of the Crusader, had 5 bosses and could be run in 30-40 minutes. Blizzard tried something new with raid difficulty variations. TOC had 4 modes: 10 man, 25 man, 10 man heroic, and 25 man heroic. You could run all four modes every week! Because of the complex array of gear levels in Ulduar (10 man, 25 man, and their respective hard modes ranged from 213 – 239) there was rapid gear inflation going into TOC. 10 man was 232, 10 man heroic and 25 man 245, and 25 man heroic 258.

This all meant that almost anything from TOC was better than Ulduar (and of course Naxx and the like). 25 man regular was pretty easy and its 245 stuff was even better than Algalon loot. The place was fast and pretty easy. 10 man heroic wasn’t even THAT hard once you had 25 man gear. 25 man heroic was pretty hard, but not crazy.

All in all, a total loot fest that invalidated all the previous LK raiding content. It was also mind numbing because there was incentive to run it on 3-4 modes per week. Sometimes I’d run all four in one day, then switch over to an alt and run a few more! Everyone was very rapidly and totally burned out on the place. Good thing there wasn’t any trash.

Trial of the Crusader bosses

Trial of the Crusader: all bosses, all the time, four times a week!

Ice Crown Patch, Magister’s Terrace redux

The penultimate major patch of LK introduced a lot of content. The giant Ice Crown Citadel raid opened along with three new 5 man dungeons. These followed the model set by the Isle of Quel’Danas in BC and were both more difficult and dropped far better loot. In fact, they dropped 232 in Heroic, which was equivalent to TOC 10 man. This continued to devalue loot from the original dungeons and first two tiers of raiding (Naxx and Uld). You could gear new tunes very quickly and effectively in 232 and 245 by a combination of these new dungeons and TOC farm runs.

Which prepared you well to run ICC for 258 and 264 loot. The first four bosses of ICC were very easy and the instance opened in waves. Average gear levels surged. Still, the middle and ending ICC bosses were not so easy and again separated out the solid and just average guilds. This gigantic instance was to be the main source of endgame raiding for the next year to come. The only exception was a one boss side raid that came in Spring of 2010. After a few months of endlessly repeating ICC many players moved on to alts or other games.

The creative hard modes of Ulduar must have required too much developer effort and constraint, so ICC retained the preselected Heroic mode like TOC, but Blizzard collapsed the normal and Heroic raid lockouts so you could run it at most twice on one character. This manual switch between difficulties is still the case today in Mists of Pandaria.

Icecrown Citadel

Icecrown Citadel looms in the background

Dual Spec

LK also introduced Dual Specialization. This continued Blizzard’s push toward quicker and easier by allowing your character to have two entirely different talent/action bar/glyph setups. This was most useful for tanks and healers as they could split between a raid and farming spec. Die hard PVP players could also split that way. For PVE only dps classes like my Warlock it was a nicety, but not essential. Still, it supported the varied play-style agenda that Blizzard had and has been pushing.

The Dungeon Finder

The ICC patch also brought one of the biggest changes to date: the dungeon finder. Previously, to run a 5 man dungeon, players had to assemble a group manually via global chat channels (idiotically confined to capital cities), all players came from the same server, and had to journey across the world to the instance. Once three arrived, it was possible to summon the other two.

The dungeon finder allowed players to queue for a category or specific instance and then instantly teleport into the dungeon together. It even drew from a pool of servers. In practice, this was nearly instant for tanks and healers and 10-15 minutes for dps. You could continue questing or dailies while waiting and you could replace players fairly quickly if one bailed. Afterward, you could teleport back to the exact spot you left.

Given that assembling a group required 1-2 hours of broadcasting in a capital city, this was enormously convenient. It meant that you could queue while playing, and then when ready, pop in, run a dungeon, and pop back with very little down time. But most players were from different servers and this meant that the incentive to stay with a problematic (or slightly problematic) group was very low. Gone was accountability, the sense that you would be branded lame by other players on the server. Gone was the camaraderie of making in-game friends during successful (and not so successful) runs. Server identity continued to erode.

wow dungeon finder

The dungeon finder

Zerg for all

The combination of factors introduced in LK led to the rise of “zerg dungeon farming”:

  1. Easier Heroic dungeons
  2. Badge rewards  from bosses
  3. Daily rewards making it valuable to run instances long after players outgeared the instances and their direct loot
  4. The dungeon finder allowed for rapid forming of runs

The net effect of all this was that late period LK dungeons became a sort of silent and hurried  race through the instance. In the typical run, the tank charged forward, grabbing mobs willy nilly while dps aoed them down and healers barely had to do anything. Boss mechanics became nearly irrelevant. Subtlety and strategy were abandoned.

Howling Fjord

Wrath had this dramatic Nordic vibe

Conclusion

By the end of Lich King, nearly all the major mechanics that Blizzard introduced during the course of WOW evolution had come into play: Badges, the dungeon finder, dailies, reputation hubs, tier acceleration, split difficulties (heroic and normal), split raid sizes (10 and 25), profession currencies, separate pvp/pve tracks, achievements, and more. This endgame toolbox allowed for a wide range of player activities and for fairly continuous rewards along many of them. It allowed for much of the player base to experience raid content and tried to avoid sudden progress blockages for different player types.

The general feel and flavor of Lich King was also fantastic, but there were problems. In the name of accessibility, the epic nature of many encounters was sorely eroded. Numerous difficulty and size tracks and long reuse of content led to fairly extreme burnout. Overgearing of instances watered down designs that were already fairly forgiving and removed any strategic play in dungeons (i.e. crowd control and the like). In the name of balance, loot and rewards became monotonous and chore-like. Raid content was too sparse and too easy to cover the two year expansion. More burnout ensued.

I liked the expansion, and I give Blizzard an A for effort. They aren’t afraid to experiment and try to move the game in a better direction, even if those changes sometimes have negative consequences. They are particularly willing to overhaul class mechanics again and again. Overall, the LK endgame gave you more to do than ever before.

We return to Azeroth for Cataclysm, where the back swing of the difficulty pendulum was to have interesting consequences…

WOW Endgame series: Vanilla, Burning Crusade, Lich King, Cataclysm, and Pandaria.
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Diablo 3 – The Infernal Barbarian

Jul06

A few hours after hitting level 60 I mowed through Hell Mode Act IV and one-shot Diablo. That’s when the real hell began.

Act I

Inferno Mode is hard, and particularly difficult for a Barbarian. As a short-range melee class, you have to take the hits, and the hits are big. Real big. The first thing I noticed about Inferno was that even the trivial zombies took a few hits to kill, and they actually do some damage. The elites are out of this world crazy. With normal Hell mode gear, the second you step into an area of effect zone (molten, plagued, desecrator, or the like), you die.

This sent me back to the Auction house for a few upgrades. I found a strong DPS 2 hander in the real money AH for $3 and this helped (1080 base DPS, 200 strength, socket). I picked up some more armor and changed my passives to be more defensive. I ended up (in several waves) spending a lot of gold to get level 60 pieces on most slots. This enabled me to slog through Act I scene by scene, but the going was tough and expensive, even before Blizzard’s repair cost hike. The elites trained me to play better and more defensively. You can’t step in their shit. You can’t get hit by their telegraphed physical attacks. If health gets low you have to run until your cooldowns recover. You have to be careful about pulling too much trash at the same time, or God forbid, two elite packs (99.9% fatal). If you can’t kill The Butcher fast enough, the whole floor starts to burn (enrage timer). I went into him with five stacks and couldn’t kill him in 30 minutes. When they wore off I switched to a more offensive build and managed to kill him with no stacks, just to get it done.

A more defensive build

Cleave (with Broad Sweep) – I still wanted an AOE main as there are far to many enemies to single target down

Seismic Slam (Stagger for Crowd Control) – This is a controversial skill. It’s a terrible fury dump on bosses, but I like it against crowds and elites because you can AOE, and more importantly, stun and knock back big groups of enemies. This keeps a little damage at bay while dishing out some punishment.

Ground Stomp (with Wrenching Smash) – This turns out to be a pretty awesome skill. Against trash it’s a great way to gather in a group for Cleave or Revenge and against champions it allows you to keep them stunned — briefly.

Revenge (with Provocation) – a combo fury-free heal/aoe. The increased chance to proc seems the best when you need it to survive.

Furious Charge (with Dreadnought) – A short cooldown escape/closer with a heal and stun. This extra heal (besides your health potion) can really keep you alive.

Wrath of the Berserker (with Insanity) – This big burst damage is pretty much a requirement to burst down tough elite packs and bosses.

Passives: Superstition, Tough as Nails, and Nerves of Steel – I ended up going all defensive for now. Later, I was able to switch out Superstition (which seemed the worst of the trio) for Ruthless.

Follower: Templar, specced fully for healing. Really, as a Barbarian, anything that heals you is good. If you can stay alive, you will prevail. The Templar also has a nice WOW Warrior style charge and stun.

Back on the Farm

Before some of the recent patches and hotfixes Act I dropped shit gear. Packs dropped mostly blues, even with 5 stacks, and bosses dropped two crap yellows. The repair costs were so high versus the rewards (not to mention the high AH prices) that you lose money to play.

This forced me to find farming spots. If you set the quest to “search for the stranger, the cursed hold” and teleport to the “old ruins” there is about 75% of the time a cellar straight to the west through the gates. The elite there is very easy and drops a lot of gold. He’s easy enough that you can kill him in a complete set of gold find gear, plus he’s real close to a checkpoint so you can repeat it quickly. This is incredibly boring but earns (for me) about 200,000 gold an hour.

I think it’s a serious flaw that the game basically requires you to farm gold in order to either progress or even play at the edge of your skills. Act I does not itself drop good enough gear to allow you to pass it easily, at least not during the first 4-6 weeks of release. The totally random nature of the gear means that you almost NEVER find a genuine upgrade yourself in Inferno. You need to sell what you find and buy stuff on the AH. But it’s EXPENSIVE. Either I’m missing some easy gold earning technique or the player base can an incredible tolerance for tedium. It takes A LOT of farming to improve your gear in Inferno, and Act I is the easy sauce.

Also, I have terrible luck selling on the AH. I keep 10 items listed on both gold and $ AH at all times, but they rarely sell. I’ve tried pricing them cheap, I’ve tried pricing expensive, but there is such an incredible supply (despite high prices), and the visibility is so low, that very little seems to sell. There are no aides to pricing and it’s very tedious to search for comparable prices. There should be a “show me stuff that is like this item” search.

Act II

If I thought Act I was hard, Act II was a total wake up call. There is a very steep cliff which is not present in any of the previous difficulty modes. And unlike those earlier modes, in Inferno, there is no option to just grind for a bit and level past it. You have to improve your skills, spec, and gear. At first, using gear that made Act I Halls of Agony easy enough, even Act II trash pulls of more than 2-3 mobs killed me. And forget about elites. Those annoying wasps with their mini-wasp “bullets” could easily be fatal. In Act II, as a Barbarian, you need at least 200-400 resist in every category in order to survive the area of effects.

One of the first things I did was switch from 2-hander to 1-hander and shield. Getting a shield with a reasonable block rating (17%+) helps a lot, but your DPS craters compared to 2-hander or dual-wielding. I had to farm, farm, and farm some more in order to repurchase more gear slots with a big chunk of “all resist.” This stat is essential to Inferno melee and is priced accordingly. Any gear with it, and decent other stats, is very expensive. I re-gemmed for all vitality. I got some more health on hit. Other classes can focus on DPS, but the Barbarian needs to use at least half his stat allocation for resists, armor, and healing. It sucks.

As I slowly got my resists up around 400 I was able to push through the Act. Still, even before the repair hike, progress cost me money.  Some elites took a couple deaths to finish off and this cost a lot of gold. I was, however, able to move forward, defeating 80-90% of elite packs. Bosses were no problem, and single elites, but occasional pulls involving two packs or nasty affix combinations like molten and fiery chains or molten, invulnerable minions, and waller would require skipping or resetting the game. Belial was hard. After the patch where he has a enrage timer he required a more DPS/healing oriented spec (including Frenzy) and a two-hander to defeat.

Act III

The third act put me up against yet another wall. Defeating the first elite pack took me into the yellow and cost 45,000 gold. Hardly an economical solution. I put on my two hander, changed my passives to DPS, and went back to farm Act I. With my Act II gear (all purchased, at most I’m wearing one piece that actually dropped for me) I can now crush Act I Inferno. I only die when I get exceedingly sloppy (like taking on three elite packs) and can DPS the Butcher down in about 1.5 minutes.

Farming Act I earns perhaps 150,000 gold an hour direct and a huge number of rares, particularly after the most recent patch where they drop from both elite packs and bosses in good numbers. The increased drop rates of ilevel 62 and 63 stuff mean that some of it is even decent. Still, the random number generator churns out enormous amounts of crap that is barely useable by any class. Vendor fodder. I have improved my gear to about 22,000 DPS with a 2-hander, 7k armor, and 400-450 resists. Then back to Act III and see how that goes.

I can kill some elites, but I still die too often. It would cost me 200,000 gold an hour to progress. Hmmm.

Stacking it all up

I have mixed feelings about the valor stack mechanic. It’s essentially pretty good except for the fact that it requires at least an hour or two of play time. The fact that the game will disconnect you after about 20-30 minutes of pause means that you can’t really leave it. That DC will kill your stacks and reroll the world. This isn’t a big deal before 60, but loosing those stacks sucks. It can also be frustrating with the harder end-of-act bosses that really need a different spec than the rest of the Act. By the time you arrive at them, you usually have 5 stacks, and killing them without any is useless. I don’t like being forced to kill trash with a single target DPS spec just so I can save my stacks for the boss.

The Gear/AH Problem

The relationship between gear, progress, and the Auction House seems fairly broken. In order to progress in Inferno you need extremely specific gear that is very expensive. During the first couple of weeks the acts themselves were not dropping this in sufficient quantity. The RNG generates a lot of crap. I try to have no more than one “second rate affix” on any piece too, ideally zero. A second rater for a Barb is something like Int, or Dexterity. I try to have no “third rate” like gold pickup range or something specific to other classes. This kind of gear drops once in a blue moon.

With the new drop rates, and my ability to farm Act I and Act II it should be possible to get a lot of good gear, but I despair of actually finding much I might want myself. Which leaves the AH. It just seems very difficult to sell anything, and what I want to buy is frightfully expensive. Prices are random and all over the place. The AH needs a lot of improvement for finding items. It needs more than three filters and ways to sort your finds better. It needs tools for pricing your loot and probably a higher limit on the number of sales and a shorter sale time.

It just seems broken to have progress come only from an external mechanism (or willingness to pay significant real dollars or farm insane gold stacks). Blizzard has made improvements (and a few backward steps like the repair cost hike). The increase drop rates are good and the reduction of crafting costs. Still, merging gems is frightfully expensive. Blacksmithing requires a lot of materials considering how random the results are.

Coming from WOW, which also had a very steep cliff in vanilla at level 60, this one seems even odder. That was gated by your ability to raid (and to a lesser extent by a similar willingness to grind), but this one seems “pay to play” or “grind to play.” Neither seems super appealing.

Check out my review of Barbarian 1-60 leveling.

Or my Beta preview of all the classes.

Related posts:

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  2. Diablo 3 – Beta Preview
  3. Diablo 3 – Commercial
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  5. What is Diablo 3?
By: agavin
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Posted in: Games
Tagged as: Area of effect, Barbarian, Barbarian Build, Blizzard, Blizzard Entertainment, Diablo, Diablo 3, Diablo III, inferno, inferno mode

Diablo 3 – Barbarian 1-60

Jun08

I used the Diablo 3 Beta as a chance to explore each class, but my first 48 hours with the real game were thwarted by the login boss. Blizzard clearly had a few problems out of the box, but by Wednesday or Thursday things were mostly stabilized.

I rolled a Barbarian as my main. Thematically, I’m more a Witch Doctor type, but I didn’t love the indirect style of gameplay so I debated Barbarian or Wizard. Both were fun to play, but ultimately I went with the Barbarian because he seemed tougher (theoretically less dying) and his “jump right into the middle and kill” style was very satisfying. Over the next three weeks I played through Normal, Nightmare, and Hell, and have just started on Inferno.

Normal Mode

The game is pretty easy on Normal Mode, probably easier than Diablo II (it’s hard to remember). Personally I think the difficulty here is about right, there’s really no reason to be punitive given the game is intended to be played multiple times. A couple mechanical changes make for less downtime than previous games: You don’t have to corpse run. All you lose when you die is a bit of time and the cost of repair. Champions save the health you left them with, so zerging is possible. In normal I barely died, perhaps only 5-6 times.

Each play through took about a week of fairly casual play, with the increasing difficulty being matched by increasing familiarity. The end of Act I and Act II seemed the hardest. Bosses seemed pretty easy. Act IV very easy.

Game Size

The game is long and very linear. It feels about the right length. Acts I and II go on and on. Even on the second and third play throughs I kept saying to myself “oh yeah, this again” as I had forgotten all the varied sub areas. The random generation does mix it up fairly well. I, myself, usually explore every level completely, milking every last chest, monster, and elite out of it. This makes the game considerably easier than if you force ahead at the fastest rate. The way I did it, the leveling was perfectly paced, I reached level 60 just as I hit the last boss of Act III on Hell Mode.

Plot

The plot as told in D3 is a bizarre mix of voice over quest text and three kinds of FMV. There is a brown ink on parchment style, in game boss talk, and the fully rendered advanced CGI style. I found only this last compelling. The full-rendered character models, notably Leah, are pretty awesome. So are the angels. The boss speeches are pretty laughable, almost Scooby Doo style. “Muuuhahhaha. Now I have become the prime evil!!!!”

The quest structure is pretty good, if entirely 100% linear. You can skip everything for repeat listening (or not). I also enjoyed the comments of the companion followers. They are well acted and occasionally amusing. Still, they do get a bit repetitive.

None of this detracts much from the game as it’s more about the combat and the overall mood than it is about the specifics of character and plot. Nevertheless, as a writer I suggest that Blizzard could use to… ahem… hire one. This is no Uncharted with regard to story.

Barbarian Build 1

It takes until about Act II of Normal Mode to really get enough of your skills for a full sense of the class. Once you do, the Barbarian is a real badass. Wading into a giant group of trash is very satisfying. Blood and bodies fly everywhere. I tuned my first build for maximum AOE damage output. Given the difficulty level of Normal this was fine even for champions and most bosses. Occasionally, I had to swap a skill for bosses.

Cleave (usually with Rupture) – This is a no brainer, it’s the AOE fury builder

Either Rend (usually with Ravage for extra range) or Seismic Slam (with Stagger) – More AOE. Rend is a little more practical, particularly against elites and bosses, but SS is so much more fun. It’s particularly exciting with huge groups of mobs.

Leap (with Iron Impact then Call of Arreat) – Great for opening a fight, or getting a brief stun, or escaping

Revenge (with Vengeance is Mine or Best Served Cold) – a combo fury-free heal/aoe

Battle Rage (with Marauder’s Rage) – a pure damage buff

Call of the Ancients (with the Council Rises) – If you get overwhelmed, this will sop up some monster attention and burn them down

Passives: Ruthless, Weapons Master, and Berserker Rage or Brawler – all of these are straight DPS increases

Follower: Enchantress, speced for buffs and DPS

For bosses I would sometimes swap Cleave out for Frenzy (Sidearm) for more single target DPS and COTA for Wrath of the Berserker (Insanity) to burn bosses down.

This basic build served me fine through all of Normal and Nightmare.

Nightmare

The second difficulty level doesn’t really feel any harder than the first. It’s more fun too because you have a much more complete set of abilities. In general, in both Normal and Nightmare, I would kill bosses in one try, maybe two. I barely noticed champion packs and would usually only die if I caught an Elite or Champion at the same time as a huge pull of trash mobs.

Hell

In Hell Mode, after the Skeleton King, things start to change. Suddenly, champion packs of three start to become a problem. Single elites and their minions can also be tough, but generally I found these much easier than champion trios with certain abilities. In Diablo, champion packs (usually 3) and elites roll from certain sets of abilities. Generally, they will have three or four. For melee classes like the Barbarian some of the worst are: Molten, Plagued, Fire Chains, Waller, and Frozen. If one of these movement impairing or area of effect skills is combined with something like Horde, Extra Health, Illusionist, or Shared Health it can be a real problem. Lethally a movement impairing effect, an AOE damage, and a health/numerical increase. The strategy here is to pick off the minions and then focus down one of the three champions, all the while keeping out of the deadly stuff. In Hell Mode, even a well equipped melee can die in seconds if trapped inside the bad zones.

By the post Skeleton King section of Act I, the “real bosses” (uniques) are no longer the problem. It’s these champion groups.

Build 2: Dealing with Hell’s Champions

For a while, in late Act I and early Act II Hell Mode, I was dying too often. Clearly I needed more survivability.

Cleave (with Broad Sweep) – I still wanted an AOE main as there are far to many enemies to single target down

Hammer of the Ancients (Smash for max damage) – This turned out to be a more useful way to spend fury. It allows for slamming down champion and elite health in a more focused manner

Ground Stomp (with Wrenching Smash) – This turns out to be a pretty awesome skill. Against trash it’s a great way to gather in a group for Cleave or Revenge and against champions it allows you to keep them stunned — briefly.

Revenge (with Best Served Cold) – a combo fury-free heal/aoe. The increased Crit helps you really smash and destroy

War Cry (with Invigorate) – exchanging the damage buff for this increased armor really helped survivability, and even better it has a self heal.

Furious Charge (with Dreadnought) – A short cooldown escape/closer with a heal and stun. This extra heal (besides your health potion) can really keep you alive.

Passives: Ruthless, Weapons Master, and Nerves of Steel – Replacing the last DPS buff with increased armor and gemming and gearing for more Vitality, Lifesteal, and Health per second really helped keep me alive.

Follower: Templar, specced fully for healing. Really, as a Barbarian, anything that heals you is good. If you can stay alive, you will prevail. The Templar also has a nice WOW Warrior style charge and stun.

For bosses, I would usually change out Cleave for Frenzy (Sidearm) and Ground Stomp for Wrath of The Berserker (Insanity). But at level 60, the need to keep up the Valor stacks (which reset when you spec) made me stick with the usual build. It wasn’t a problem, just without WOTB bosses took a bit longer.

This build worked wonders for my Hell Mode champion problem. With the first build, I would die again and again on certain champion abilities. Once I learned to play this build, use everything on cooldown, and keep moving, I rarely died more than once or twice on even a tough group.

Gear

One of the weird things about gear in D3 is that while rare drops come in a fairly steady stream and blues are a dime-a-dozen, it’s very unusual to find an upgrade in the game. The gear available on the auction house was almost always better and cheaper than finding or making it in game. I suspect this is because of the random factor. As a Barbarian (or any class) you only really want certain stats. Any Intelligence or Dexterity (or a host of other stats) on gear is near useless. The odds of perfect Barbarian gear dropping is low. But with millions of players the AH is choked with it. Same goes with the crafting. At first in Normal Mode I leveled the Blacksmith. But it gets very expensive by Nightmare and for the cost of just one skill level you can buy one or two better things on the AH. This trend, frustratingly, seems even more true in Inferno. You have to play inferno to earn gold to buy better gear on the AH, not to actually win better gear (unless you are very lucky). I don’t think this will be good for Inferno. The relationship between play and reward is too disconnected.

Inferno

I’ve only had a day or two to play Inferno and have only done so in the easiest section of the game, but it’s clearly a lot harder. Even normal trash hits for a wallop. I came across a champion pack with Fire Chains, which along with Molten, are my least favorite. They crushed me. You have to get in close as a Barbarian to do any damage and they just cross those chains over you — near instant death. If this persists I will experiment to changing all my passives to survival and stacking my gear with more resists. Still, I think it will be hard.

My guide/discussion to Barbarian Inferno play is in a separate post.

Multiplayer

The multiplayer system is great for hooking up with your battlenet friends. I did a bunch of that. I found cooperative a little slower, but perhaps more fun, than solo play. You often have to wait for the other person to do something, or go back to town and sell, etc. In solo, things go at your own pace. I played a couple of times with mismatched levels. This works but isn’t very fun. It was either hard to stay alive (if I was too low) or way too easy (if I stepped down). I suspect that once a bunch of my friends reach Inferno it will be easier. I was often concerned with not messing up my solo game or having to repeat. If you exit the game to join another and you aren’t at a checkpoint you’ll have to backtrack a little to wherever it lets you reset the quest to.

I also think to progress in Inferno will nearly require group play. We’ll see.

Overall

The game rocks. As I mentioned in my beta preview, it isn’t the most graphically advanced game. The camera is incredibly conservative and never changes POV. But the game is impeccably smooth and the responsiveness of the skills and varied monster deaths are awesome. The overall feel is exciting and it’s extremely gratifying to destroy demons en mass. Stuff destroys all over the place too, which is awesome. Class balance is also very good with a wide number of cool and useful abilities and play styles. Most games are really lame in this department and it doesn’t really seem to matter which skills you use and how you combine them. Not so here, there are all sorts of interesting synergies and the builds feel distinct.

Makes me wonder if I should level a Wizard!

Continue reading about my Inferno Mode experience here.

Related posts:

  1. Diablo 3 – Beta Preview
  2. What is Diablo 3?
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  5. Diablo 3 – Commercial
By: agavin
Comments (14)
Posted in: Games
Tagged as: Area of effect, Barbarian, Barbarian Build, Berserker, Blizzard, Blizzard Entertainment, Diablo, Diablo 3, Diablo III, diabloIII, Hell Mode, Normal Mode, Roleplaying, Witch Doctor

What is Diablo 3?

May12

Only three days to go until D3-day, and in case you don’t know what that means, this little video from Blizzard does a nice job summarizing the game:

See you in Sanctuary!

My detailed impressions of the closed beta can be found here.

And my review of the Barbarian 1-60 experience here.

Related posts:

  1. Diablo 3 – Beta Preview
  2. Diablo III: Wrath
  3. Diablo 3 – Commercial
  4. Diablo 3 Opening Cinematic
  5. Dark Souls
By: agavin
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Posted in: Games
Tagged as: Blizzard, Blizzard Entertainment, Blizzard North, Diablo 3, Diablo III, Fantasy, role playing game, RPG

Diablo III: Wrath

May08

Blizzard has released Wrath, an animated short by directory Peter Chung (Aeon Flux) depicting an ancient battle between the angels of Sanctuary and Diablo. Pretty cool.

Strangely though, I am reminded a bit of Ralph Bakshi’s bizarre The Lord of the Rings.

Related posts:

  1. Diablo 3 – Beta Preview
  2. Diablo 3 Opening Cinematic
  3. Expansion of the WOW Factor
  4. Diablo 3 – Commercial
  5. Conan the Barbarian – Lamentation of their women
By: agavin
Comments (3)
Posted in: Games
Tagged as: Animated cartoon, Animation, Arts, Blizzard, Blizzard Entertainment, Diablo, Diablo 3, Diablo III, Peter Chung, Ralph Bakshi, Wrath

Diablo 3 – Commercial

Apr29

The geek watch countdown!

And a second ad:

Related posts:

  1. Diablo 3 – Beta Preview
  2. Diablo 3 Opening Cinematic
  3. Expansion of the WOW Factor
By: agavin
Comments (11)
Posted in: Games
Tagged as: Blizzard, Blizzard Entertainment, Diablo, Diablo 3, Diablo III, Fantasy, RPG

Diablo 3 – Beta Preview

Apr19

[ NOTE: this is my beta preview. I also have a release post on playing the Barbarian 1-60 and a separate one on the Barbarian in Inferno Mode. ]

Finally, the Diablo 3 beta invite showed up in my mailbox. Unfortunately, by the time I got it downloaded and installed I was headed to Vegas for the weekend (which wasn’t so bad, really). But as soon as I returned, I fired it up, rolled a toon, and cranked through the 1.5-2 hours it took to defeat the Skeleton King and “finish” the beta. Then I rolled another class. Then another and another until I’d played them all.

General Impressions

Not surprisingly, for a Blizzard game, and one that is only a month from launch, the game looks “finished” and is seemingly bug free. I didn’t have any problems. I didn’t try any multiplayer but I’m looking forward to it in the release.

Graphics wise, D3 is kinda dark, which wasn’t a problem playing at night, but during the sunny hours it was hard to see a lot of detail. I play on a Mac Pro with an Apple 30″ monitor. At full 2500×1600 resolution the game ran fine (I have a ATI Radeon HD 5870 1024 MB). There was occasional slight slowdown as new textures paged in (I think that’s what it was because it wasn’t during big fights but moving into new areas).

The art is fantastic and everything is modeled in detailed 3D, yet the classic three-quarters pulled back viewpoint limits the options for dynamic camerawork or even the simple ability to show enemies at any real scale. Overall, this substantially reduces the visual drama in favor of more approachable gameplay.

But in that regard, Blizzard does it’s usual slick job of babying you into the game. This is in complete contrast to a hardcore RPG like Dark Souls, which does no coddling. Here, you start each class with just one skill, gaining them incrementally as you level. The early quests are easy and straightforward. By the time you get into the depths of the cathedral and to level six or so, the real flavor of the class starts to emerge.

The overall gameplay is, as one of my friends said, like the Diablo II you remember, not as it actually was. If you boot up the aforementioned classic you’ll find a 2D game that runs in 800×600 (and that only with the expansion pack installed!). Sure the gameplay is slick, but the late 90s graphics are very dated. The new Diablo brings the same basic experience but updated to perhaps 2007 level technology. And really, it’s that great gameplay that matters.

The Barbarian

I’m normally drawn toward dark wizards, and so in D2 I mostly played a Necromancer. In D3, that niche is filled by the Witchdoctor, but neither the pet based nature or the class style really appealed. I decided to try out the Barbarian. Big and plate wearing, this is a very straightforward class. The few skill choices available in the first nine or so levels basically seemed to oscillate between heavy hitting on a single target and non-quite-so heavy hitting on multiple targets. I haven’t studied the skill system in detail but it seems to have been simplified, moving away from the elaborate talent trees. Each skill can be powered up or tweaked with runes, and there are several completely distinct skill slots (primary, secondary, defensive, etc) that you can swap in and out skills that belong exclusively in their particular category. For the Barbarian, the primary is a fury generating basic attack and the secondary a harder hitting fury sink.

Progression with the Barbarian was a piece of cake. In the limited scope of the beta I barely even had to chug a health potion, perhaps once. I didn’t die at all. Even the Skeleton King was pretty easy. The attacks definitely got more satisfying as they leveled up, but some felt lackluster like the bleed-causing whirlwind. Maybe it gets cooler later. Maybe they aren’t done with it.

Still, all and all a very fun class to play.

For my discussion of leveling 1-60 in the final version, see here.

Taking on the Skeleton King

The Wizard

Next I tried out the wizard. This is the ranged magical damage dealer. Overall, this class is much squishier than the Barbarian and I died in one spot (right on returning to the Cathedral where there are three big sub-bosses). You have to watch your health and make sure to kite, mostly using the freeze ray or the frost nova to slow down the badies. I liked the feel of the freeze ray, it’s pretty fun. If you tune the skills toward the electrical discharges and the spark-like exploding fireball the wizard can do some serious AOE damage. On one middling outside area I collected a rather large collection of undead and then obliterated them in a big firefight (earning a 60 enemies killed at once achievement). I think there is more pure DPS output here than with the melee classes — in exchange for being fragile.

You have to pay more attention to your resources than the Barbarian. The defensive skill (on the 1 key) is crucial. With the Barbarian it was a sweetener, here, it’s key to getting out of the middle of a big cluster of foes (or blasting them down quick if you are using Crystal Armor). Although harder, it was a fun class to play and I’ll be torn what to try first in the release version.

Monk

Third up I tried the Monk. Squishier than the Barbarian for sure, but fairly similar in that you get right in the thick of thinks and wallop. At the earlier levels the different skills didn’t seem as differentiated. Theoretically the Barbarian would be slower and the Monk more nimble, but the Barb is plenty fast, so I’m not sure I yet see a compelling advantage. The teleport TO an enemy rune is kinda cool though.

At about level 7 or 8 things power up a bit and the excitement level rises. The spinning circle of fire and triple punch are real nice. Overall this was an easy class too. I didn’t die and pretty much never needed a health pot.

Witch Doctor

A few days after finishing the monk I felt it was my duty as a Necromancer player and diehard WOW Warlock to try the Witch Doctor. It was immediately obvious that this was a seriously squishy class, even more so than the Wizard. It’s harder to kite with too. A lot of the early skills are pets of one sort or another and you have to toss them out there and run. This is true of the spiders and bats. I really didn’t like trading the snaring hands for the bats and quickly went back to it. The spiders were okay though. Like the other classes, by the time I got to level 8 or so he was getting fairly powerful. The dogs were fun. The runed version of the grasping hands was a really solid snare and the machine gun blow gun too. Fun to play, but despite the cool theme, I think the Wizard was more straightforward as a ranged caster.

Demon Hunter

This is the last class I played and thematically the least interesting. The Hunter in WOW never held any interest whatsoever for me and it’s the only class I’ve never rolled. But the D3 Demon Hunter turned out to be pretty fun. Its long range and rapid fire is satisfying and I put an epic? (yellow) bow I got from another tune to good use right from the beginning. The problem with this class, like the Witch Doctor and Wizard, is that it’s very squishy. But even more than those other two it becomes problematic when you get mobbed by mobs. The Demon Hunter can go down fast. Now, even given that, I only died on the Skeleton King, but it was the only class where the boss gave me some trouble. Once I learned to kite and stun him and run back and forth for the health balls it was okay, but still harder and slower than the other classes. Up until that point I often felt I was really kicking ass with the DH, but the problem seemed to stem from the classes’ lack of AOE. I ended up having to use the “trap” as my slowing and AOE device, laying them down (up to five) in advance. I didn’t like the invisible skill very much. The Wizard, while also a ranged squishy, has much better AOE (at least at these early levels).

Gear

I enjoy the gearing up minigame in Diablo, always have. My only complaint is the still present need to manage your inventory. It’s not as bad as in D2 where one spent a ridiculous amount of time combing the trash from your inventory and leaving it on the dungeon floor, but you still have to do this. The more readily available town portal(s) makes flipping back to sell your crap much easier.

I also don’t exactly get what gear you really want for each class. Classes can use a large percentage of the items, which I guess is a good thing, but it’s hard to know if a 15.5 dagger is better for a Wizard than a 12.0 wand.

Multiplayer

I spent about an hour playing the last two dungeons and the Skeleton King with a pickup group of one other person. This does not represent any exhaustive survey of D3’s four player coop mode. Overall, it was fun, and slightly easier. It was also slower as one often had to wait on the other person. That player clearly hadn’t run through the whole beta four times already and didn’t know exactly where to go like I did :-). I’m assuming multiplayer is the most fun with a good or pre-made four man group. I was playing my monk (repeating the dungeons and she was level 9-11) and they were playing a Demon Hunter about two levels lower. There is no increased loot or particular advantage to playing multiplayer, either. There should be. It’s also not very competitive anymore because everyone has their own loot and there is no PVP (that’s in a separate non PVE mode like the WOW arenas).

Random

The consistent naming and art elements in Blizzard style are an amusing note. While Diablo is darker and more gothic than WOW there are quite a number of common enemy archetypes. The grotesques (abominations in WOW) are one example. These are a distinctly Blizzard baddie. Many of the spell names (and even the class archetypes) are overlapping. The Demon Hunter fires arrows and drops traps and bombs like the Hunter. The Wizard is like a WOW Mage, even down to having a Frost Nova with nearly identical effect. There was even a skeletal sub-boss with the same name as a Scholo boss.

I can’t wait for May 15. In the meantime, watch the Wrath animated short.

Or read my discussion of the Barbarian class, levels 1-60 here.

Find more video game posts here.

Related posts:

  1. Diablo 3 Opening Cinematic
  2. Expansion of the WOW Factor
  3. Making Crash Bandicoot – part 4
  4. Dark Souls
  5. Book Review: Personal Demons
By: agavin
Comments (12)
Posted in: Games
Tagged as: Barbarian, Battle.net, Blizzard, Blizzard Entertainment, Blizzard North, dark souls, Diablo, Diablo 3, Diablo III, diabloIII, Games, Mac Pro, Monk, roll playing game, RPG, Skeleton King, Video Games, Wizard, World of Warcraft
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