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Posts with tag blizz

What's new in Blizzcast 2?

Posted Feb 28th 2008 5:00PM by Eliah Hecht
Filed under: Podcasts, Blizzard

As I mentioned a little while ago, episode two of Blizzcast was released today. It features interviews with Chris Metzen and Geoff Goodman, the second of whom was a new name to me. You can go download or listen to it, or read the transcript, at Blizzard's site, but if you don't feel like it, or can't, here's a highlights version for you.

Chris Metzen talks about story stuff, since that's what his job is: vice president of creative development. What does he have to say about WoW?
  • Not that this should surprise anyone, but the story team is "looking forward to future expansions".
  • The original WoW was basically a snapshot, story-wise, with not much in the way of dynamic content. The expansions get more back to linear stories.
  • We'll see themes in Wrath of the Lich King like Titans, the creation of the world, the dragon flights, and why Azeroth is so central to the events of this universe.
Geoff Goodman was on mostly to be interviewed about Magtheridon, by my favorite illuminating CM, Nethaera. Here's what I found interesting in his segment:

Continue reading What's new in Blizzcast 2?

Blizzcast episode 2 now out

Posted Feb 28th 2008 2:48PM by Eliah Hecht
Filed under: Podcasts, Blizzard, Interviews


The second episode of Blizzcast, Blizzard's official podcast, has just been released. This one is double the length of the previous installment, at just over 49 minutes. Interviewees are Chris Metzen, VP of creative development, as well as WoW designer Geoff Goodman. The interviews are followed by a reader question-and-answer segment. You can see our coverage of the first episode in case you've forgotten what happened last time, and if you need some more WoW podcast goodness, why not check out our own WoW Insider show?

Another post is forthcoming as soon as I get a chance to analyze what's revealed in this episode; I just wanted to get this news out as quick as possible.

Blizzcast reveals Sunwell details

Posted Jan 10th 2008 3:45PM by Eliah Hecht
Filed under: Patches, Podcasting, Blizzard, News items, Interviews


Episode 1 of Blizzard's new podcast, cunningly titled "Blizzcast," went live today. It's in two segments, one hosted by CM Karune and featuring Blizz artist extraordinaire (and, in fact, art director) Samwise Didier, and the second hosted by CM Drysc and featuring Jeff "Tigole" Kaplan. This installment is audio-only, but they promise that future episodes will include video as well. For now you can hear the podcast or read a transcript of it, and check out some Samwise art, at Blizzard's site. A more extensive overview is forthcoming, but for now, I imagine what you really care about is Jeff Kaplan's hints for the upcoming patch 2.4:
  • The Sunwell raid is tuned for players in T6 gear, but there is no attunement.
  • The Sunwell faction, called Shattered Sun Offensive, is a joint effort by Aldor and Scryer to drive the Burning Legion out from the Sunwell Plateau. Jeff calls it "the culmination of the Aldor and Scryer storyline." Many Aldor/Scryer NPCs in Shattrath will be changed to SSO NPCs.
  • SW25 gear will be a Tier 7, but the looks will not be class-specific; the example he gives is that the Pally plate and the Warrior plate will be differently-colored versions of the same models -- but you can, apparently, rest assured that the itemization will be better than AQ40.
  • The 5-man dungeon will be about as hard as Shadow Labyrinth or Shattered Halls. There are four bosses. On normal mode, the first three drop ilvl 110 blues (normal dungeon blues), but the last boss drops an ilvl 115 epic, on par with a lower-level Karazhan epic. In heroic, the first three bosses drop ilvl 115 epics, and the last boss drops an item on the level of Prince Malchezzar's drops. Buffing the loot like this means it will still be relevant for people that have been playing BC for a while now, and also it gives newcomers a chance to catch up.
As one more bonus, Blizzard is giving away 12 Logitech 5.1 speaker sets and Starcraft II hats to lucky folks who write feedback emails about the podcast to them; details on this are at the Blizzcast home page. I for one really enjoyed hearing the voices behind some of the avatars I see every day, and of course hearing some new details about 2.4. Keep it up, Blizzcasters!

Gallery: Patch 2.4 Sunwell Isle

Map of Sunwell IsleBoat in Sunwell IsleKael'Thas in Sunwell IsleArchitecture on Sunwell Isle

PTR notes: Go to the PTRs, fight Blizzard

Posted May 2nd 2007 6:51PM by Eliah Hecht
Filed under: Patches, Blizzard, PvP

To help test out the new battleground matching feature, Blizzard is offering players the chance to fight teams of "World of Warcraft community managers and other Blizzard employees." This Friday, May 4, starting at 2:00 PM PDT, go to the PvP PTR with a level 70 character, queue up for WSG, and prepare to battle your creators.

They've done this before, and I think they lost at least a few of the games. Think how cool it would be to beat Blizzard at their own game. I wonder why they always pick WSG, though. That's definitely my least favorite of the three pre-BC battlegrounds (I haven't tried EotS yet). Anyway, full blue post after the cut as usual.

Continue reading PTR notes: Go to the PTRs, fight Blizzard

Blue Notes: Shaman dispel poison and a web designer opening

Posted Apr 3rd 2007 5:16PM by Eliah Hecht
Filed under: Shaman, Odds and ends, News items

A long-standing bug regarding Shaman having difficulty curing Rogue poisons will finally be squashed, though not until 2.1.0. From Ommra:

Ok, so I had the wrong information on when this bug was fixed. Apparently it didn't get fixed in the last patch (as you noticed), but will get fixed in 2.1.0 instead.

The change will be that the difficulty of dispelling the rogue's poison is based on the level of the player instead of the level of the weapon the poison is applied to.

That makes sense, but I have trouble seeing how weapon level is ever going to be higher than player level, making this almost look like a nerf on the face of things. I'm sure it's not, though -- anyone want to explain?

In other news, perhaps Blizz took my jab at their web design on Sunday a little too seriously -- they're now on the lookout for a new web designer:

Blizzard Entertainment has an immediate opening for a Web Designer. The ideal candidate is well versed in HTML, JavaScript, and Photoshop and experienced in all manner of web-design elements, such as the design and layout of buttons, links, menus, and text. The Web Designer's primary duties will be to help design and implement the HTML pages for our growing websites. A lot of focus will be spent on supporting existing and future Blizzard titles. The Web Designer will also be responsible for daily web updates and maintenance of existing Blizzard sites. The ideal candidate will also have a strong working knowledge of Blizzard games. For more information on this position, please view the job description at: http://www.blizzard.com/jobopp/web-designer.shtml

Play.tm interviews Shane Dabiri

Posted Mar 20th 2007 6:29PM by Eliah Hecht
Filed under: Blizzard, Burning Crusade

Blizzard people always give fairly good interviews, and this one is no exception (even if it is a week old or so). Play.tm caught up with WoW lead producer Shane Dabiri about the success of WoW and BC, and what the future holds. I'd agree with one of the commentors on the blog that most of the questions were softies, but there's still some good stuff. There's a lot of congratulations all around; WoW, as we know, has posted up pretty big numbers in terms of sales and subscriptions. Unfortunately, this does not mean prices will be lowering any time soon:

Is there any chance of a drop in the subscription costs in the future?

With the massive amount of content in the game, as well as our regular content updates, 24/7 support offerings, and network infrastructure, we believe we're providing great entertainment value for players at the current price. The continued growth of the game is a positive indicator of this value as well.

That's too bad, although of course I can understand the financial sense behind it. Blizz continues to be confident that WoW can keep going for a long time: "we're confident that World of Warcraft has many years ahead of it. We all love working with the Warcraft mythology, and we have no shortage of ideas and plans for the future."

What surprised me in this interview was the amount of questions that were dodged, even soft as they are. The interviewer asked what Shane's personal favorite part of BC was, and he replied with some back-of-the-box copy about how flying mounts let us see the world in a new way, and there are a million dungeons, and we've got this Arena system; that bit felt very canned. Also, apparently they "haven't discussed specifics about future expansions" -- really? Players are constantly talking about it; I have trouble believing that the devs haven't tossed any specific ideas back and forth. Maybe they're too busy refusing to make any major changes to the classes. At any rate, click the Read link to check out the interview, and come back here to talk about it.


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