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In less than 140 characters, Blizzard may have turned Diablo III’s mechanics on its head. One of the core mechanics to leveling up, the skill tree, may be getting the axe in the next installment of the series. Asking their followers (twitter followers, Blizzard isn’t that much of a cult) to speculate on what they might be using instead seems to be a good starting point for the discussion, but what is really at work here?
In an interview with Diablofans.com, Lead Designer Jay Wilson discusses – very vaguely – what they’re thinking of, but doesn’t really answer anything other than “we’re trying different things.” Which would explain why we’re probably not going to see the game until late next year at the earliest.
Released on Tuesday for digital download Torchlight is the first game to come out of the relatively newly formed Runic Games studio. Torchlight is an action RPG title in the vein of Diablo with stylised graphics described as a cross between Dragon Age and The Incredibles. This is the studio’s first release, however Runic is made up of many industry veterans including staff from Blizzard North and those who worked on the original Diablo game. Runic were kind enough to send us a copy of the game for review to allow us to experience the mountains of loot, randomly generated dungeons and fast paced action RPG gameplay for ourselves. Unfortunately the editing tools weren’t available at the time of review.
The small town of Torchlight is under attack by creatures of all shapes and sizes and the people of the town believe the mines to be the reason behind their sudden appearance. The mystical ore Ember that the miners are collecting seems to corrupt everything that it comes into contact with and it’s up to you to find the source of the corruption. Though the story may sound like an epic journey it does seem under-represented in the game, with a short cutscene or paragraph of text appearing at rare intervals to progress it further.
As you may have noticed from listening to the NGCast or from yesterday’s contest announcement, we are more than a little excited about Runic Games’ Torchlight which is coming out later this week.
Torchlight is in many ways a spiritual successor to the original Diablo, containing the familiar action RPG gameplay along with gorgeous, randomly generated dungeons to crawl through. The adventure is set in the mining settlement of Torchlight, a town founded on the discovery of rich veins of a magical ore called Ember that seems to corrupt everything it comes into contact with. It’s up to you to discover the full extent of the influence that Ember has had on not only the town of Torchlight, but the civilisations that came before it.
Not even a year after the previous expansion has been out, all of the content that should’ve been in the original expansion still hasn’t been released, Blizzard has announced a third World of Warcraft expansion. I’m a bit ambivalent about this as I haven’t played in a while, but as there usually is with a new expansion announcement, there’s a ton of cool new features coming to the game. It’s great for Blizzard, most of their subscribers will shell out the $30-40 for the new content and raised level cap without a second thought.
But do they really need to release another update so soon? The list of what’s going to be in the new expansion (which is called Cataclysm, by the way) was announced at Blizzcon the other day. A couple of new races, new class/race combinations, and a bevy of other new quests, zones, and dungeons. The most recent expansion has received several updates beyond the original version (to date, there have been 2 major updates to it), adding a couple of new dungeons and quests, which the best guilds have ploughed through like nobody’s business.
As a few of you may know I have a soft spot for MMOGs, having played numerous different iterations of the standard formula of grinding to level so that you can grind for gear so you can grind to level. Even though this sounds like the least amount of fun anyone could have with a game, every so often I’ll get a little itch that makes me crave the MMO atmosphere and style of play. I can’t tell you exactly what draws me back in, maybe it’s the epic, sprawling worlds or perhaps the persistent population of other players, but what I can tell you is that now is one of those times.
Bet you thought that removing LAN support would get Starcraft 2 here on time right? WRONG! In a move seen coming by pretty much everyone Blizzard have announced that their sequel to the Korean national sport has slipped down the release schedule into 2010. SC2 now joins Bioshock 2, Red Steel 2 and Splinter Cell Conviction in the list of big games that have slipped into next year. Most have dived out of the way for commercial reasons, but with financial success assured Blizzard are instead making the delay to ensure Battle.net is prepared to get slammed on launch day. From the press release debuted on Yahoo Finance:
Over the past couple of weeks, it has become clear that it will take longer than expected to prepare the new Battle.net for the launch of the game. The upgraded Battle.net is an integral part of the StarCraft II experience and will be an essential part of all of our games moving forward. This extra development time will be critical to help us realize our vision for the service.
So the game of the decade, Starcraft II, is set to come out within the year (not counting the delays from balancing that will take place in beta). Online communities across the board are speculating about every facet of the game; Price Point, Storyline, and The Lack of LAN play. But, what do the professionals have to say about how it’s going to say?
Well, according to this article on gamasutra, Starcraft 2 is bound to sell pretty well, raise Activison Blizzard’s stock by a good bit, and maybe even be a contender for best selling game of the year. To which I have this to say: REALLY? NO WAY!
Can’t wait for Starcraft II? Me either. However one of my favorite features, the option to LAN a game, won’t be supported. Blizzard tells IncGamers that “we will not support it.” Joystiq got a bit more of an explination from Blizzard PR man Bob Colayco. Read more →
Hot on the heels of the rousing “meh” that was Rock Band 2 the Stars last year, it seems Activision may be taking the Guitar Hero franchise on a similar jaunt into reality TV. After watching a couple of episodes of Rock Band 2 the Stars to see if it really was as bad as it looked, I seriously cannot fathom how this will be any better, let alone make a profit for Activision.
Anyone who has watched others play Guitar Hero or Rock Band knows how quickly it gets boring. It’s not a game that lends itself to spectators in the way an FPS or sports game can, so making yet another terrible rhythm-game based reality show seems like an awful idea. Even if it is a different company producing it, there really is only one formula for a show like this.
I know Activision are famous for releasing the same game year after year with many of their franchises (Call of Duty, Guitar Hero, etc.) and seemingly will do anything to squeeze that extra bit of cash out of the consumer. This really doesn’t make business sense, especially with the general economic downturn. Let’s just hope that their better than expected first quarter fiscal results don’t make them get cocky and produce what is obviously a bad idea.
Via: GamesIndustry.biz
Rob Pardo, an Activision Blizzard executive, was at a high-powered luncheon (because the people who go to GDC can’t just say lunch) yesterday and what he said is hilarious.
I think we sometimes value innovation too highly.
Said the man in charge of a studio that releases 1 of its 3 games every year.
We really don’t teach lessons of execution enough. It’s not necessarily that there are a lot of fantasy games. I don’t think that’s so much the problem as that there are a lot of bad fantasy games.
OK fair enough, Warcraft was a solid series until you killed it off in favour of owning an entire genre. Starcraft was very good until it became impenetrable to new players and Diablo was good until….actually Diablo’s still good. My point is that I’m not sure someone from Activision Blizzard (they’re one company now, they get the same brush on both sides) is really in a position to be lecturing on innovation, especially not when the Blizzard side hasn’t really released a new game for over 5 years.
Via: Gamasutra
Ever since it’s release, World of Warcraft has dominated all its competition. However what is the secret of Blizzard’s success? Great game content? An enjoyable experience? Or is there something more sinister at work…? There are some that are beginning to speculate the latter. There are those that insist that Blizzard is using subliminal messages to get players to continue to play World of Warcraft. Here is a video demonstrating how, supposedly, the Spirit Healer is manipulating your mind..
Now of course, after watching the video I can hear those key phrases as well. However you can easily rationalize this. Your listening for a phrase, and when you hear gibberish that sounds somewhat like that phrase, you will swear that you’re actually hearing it. Also the author of this video states that this may have something to do with World of Warcraft’s success. Because it can’t possibly be it’s just a good game can it? Still, it could be worse, it could be converting you to Islam.
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