Blizzcon, first hand experience
As I promised to Will I said I was going to make a post about our (Seth and I) trip to Blizzcon. All in all it was a pretty kickass trip. We got our hands on Diablo 3 as well as watched the WoW 3v3 finals arena live. We also found a Petey!
We got to our hotel on Thursday and went to grab our tickets/passes. We were thinking we would beat the rush on Friday morning so we wouldn’t have to wait in long ass lines. Holy crap if we weren’t dead wrong. I think everyone else had the same idea. The line wrapped around the convention center then went inside, then back out, then It continued into a warehouse that Blizzard rented for sole purpose of holding a line. The worse part is that you just assume that the line is going to end right around the corner only to find out that it continues another 500ft to the next corner, which leads to more people. The line only took us 45min to an hour to get through which was extremely surprising considering how long it was. Other people we talked to said they waited for 4-5 hours to get their passes.
On Friday morning the line to get into Blizzcon was even worse. I took pictures of the inside of the additional sports dome that the line continued into. Even thought the lines were insanely long it was bearable because we were able to talk to fellow nerds in line. There was even a guy that was holding a small white board above his head that said, “<AFK>” Which we thought was pretty funny at the time. Standing in line we also got a chance to see most of the people dressed up for the costume contest. I don’t think I can stress enough how many girls were dressed like harpies, elves, and succubuses that had no business doing so. One of the funnier ones was a little 6-8year old kid that had the top of his head shaved, the rest dyed neon green, and spiked up so that he looked like a gnome.
Blizzcon, first hand experience
Once we got in we saw the opening ceremony which was decent. Mike Morhane even joked about how crappy they handled the ticket selling. A few minutes after that was done the Diablo 3 discussion panel was up. They talked in detail about what they were wanting to get away from in Diablo 2, as well as the direction they were wanting to take the 3 known classes.
Diablo 3 is amazing. I played it a total of about 45min and I can’t wait for it to come out. They split everyone into 4 person groups that would all join together and play the dungeon that was in the first Diablo 3 videos. They game runs very very smooth. It plays very similar to D2 while still having a ton of differences. They are wanting people to be using 6-7 different abilities all the time. Which imo is a nice change coming from a sorc in D2 which playing consisted of teleporting my ass off and spamming fireball. The controls are 1-6 then LMB and RMB. You also have a Tab slot that when you press tab is swaps that ability with the one bound to your RMB. While in the dungeon I noticed a few key differences with the game. First when an item drops only you can see it. So, when an axe dropped when I was playing the Wizard. I had to pick it up then drop it so the Barbarian in the group could use it. This was a much needed change. I started a secondary quest while in the dungeon from a scroll that dropped. When I picked it up it launched a little sound player in the lower right corner and read the quest off. Diablo 2 NPC’s always talked to you with quests. I was wondering if they were going to take the WoW approach and just make all the quests, text with no audio, because Diablo 3 is going to have more than 40 quests to do.
During the D3 panel they talked about wanting people to spread the skill points out more and get away from people putting all their points into 2 or 3 specific skills. Oh, did I mention there is going to be fucking RESPECS?!?! Thank god! I always hated that about D2; I’m very happy they are doing this.
The rune system works differently now. You get them from random drops and they have all kinds of effects. The drop rate seemed to be pretty good. Each play session I picked up 3-4 runes. In D3 you put runes on specific skills to give them new abilities. For example, the Wizards teleport runes I found gives an added AoE damage once you teleport somewhere. The other one spawned images of myself that run around and deal damage. A rune that I saw for the Witch Doctor altered his firebomb to bounce multiple times before exploding causing all kinds of damage along the way. I really like this new rune system. It allows more customization which is something that Diablo 2 lacked most of the time.
Now it’s time for some class specifics. I only played the Wizard and Barbarian. I didn’t get a chance to play the Witch doctor so I don’t really have much to write about other than what I have heard.
The Wizard is the new class revealed at Blizzcon. They have 3 different skill trees that are: Arcane (Arcane and fire), Storm (lightning and frost), and Conjuring (
?). The Wizard is different than the D2 Sorceress because the Wizard focuses on “High magic.” They described this as being able to alter time and break the laws of physics. Some spells from the Sorceress are in the Wizard, like blizzard and teleport. The new arcane and conjuring aspect adds spells like arcane orb, which works pretty much like frozen orb did except that it doesn’t shoot off smaller projectiles in flight but detonates at the end. There are moves that work together for instance in the Wizard video you see her put up a slow time bubble, and then she pushes all the projectiles back. Those are two different moves that almost look like the same move if you are just watching instead of playing it. She also has twisters like D2 Druids. They seem to behave in the same way. One of the coolest moves they have is called Disintegrate. It works pretty much like Cyclops from X-Men. The longer you keep it on a target the more damage it deals. You can take down high health mobs quickly or mow down a zerg of low health mobs.
The Barbarian has a new mechanic that I was unaware of until I played him. He doesn’t use mana like D2; instead he uses Fury. This works like rage does for Warriors in WoW. Max of 100 Fury, goes away when not in combat, gain it by dealing/taking damage. I wasn’t able to get to the point where I could jump around and kill stuff like in the videos. However, I was able to get a good feel for the class. Most of the moves in D2 are still here in D3. I had Frenzy, Whirlwind, Leap, etc. But I also had some new ones. I can’t remember the exact name of the move but it was like Enrage or something. It costs 50 Fury, increases your damage by 100%, crit chance by 25%, and makes the Barb grow in size. It also had a 30-45 second cooldown. This move worked great when you were being overwhelmed by tons of mobs. There are some moves like with the Wizard that you use together. Ground stomp stuns enemies around you and If they are using shields they can’t use them when stunned. So you just ground stomp and cleave to take them out. I really wish I was able to get some of the abilities that was shown in the barbarian videos. Even so, it felt like a class that I really want to play when D3 comes out.
We didn’t play WoW at all because it was the same beta version that we could play at home so we didn’t see the point. The strange thing was that the line for WoW was so much shorter than the one for Diablo 3. I figured most people were there for WoW and WoW alone. With the kind of interest people were showing in it, Diablo 3 is looking like it will be even more popular than D2 was back in the day if that is even possible.
On the second day there weren’t many discussion panels going on and we had already played Diablo 3 quite a bit the day before. So we decided to check out the 3v3 arena finals. It was pretty cool to watch them live there was a team there that was new and didn’t even have any sponsors that 3-0’d Council of Mages. If you don’t know who they are, they won last year, and are the best RMP team I’ve ever seen. Their rogue doesn’t use crippling poison instead he uses dual wounding and counts on the mage to slow the dps target with cone of cold. They pretty much dominate everyone and it was quite the upset when they were beat 3-0 by a team that most people have never heard of before.
During the hour or so between each round of matches they played some Starcraft 2 tournament videos. I have to admit that going into Blizzcon I couldn’t have been any more uninterested in Starcraft 2. After watching a couple of the videos and learning how the game Is played etc. I’m interested to check it out once the beta starts.
We left early on the second day to meet Pete and that. Like I said before it was a good trip, played D3, gained an interest in a game I couldn’t care less about a couple days ago, and met Pete.
