Blizzcon 2017 TLDR
Starcraft
- 2 New Co-op Heroes named Han and Horner. Click here for a preview of both of these heroes
- The multiplayer for Starcraft 2 along with the Co-op and first campaign will now be completely free to play!
Heroes of the Storm
- We got a showcase trailer for the 2 new heroes being added, Hanzo & Alexstrasza. This can be watched by clicking here!
- We also got a look at new gameplay changes such as a new camera, performance based matchmaking, and VOICE CHAT! The camera change is basically allowing you to zoom out further.
Hearthstone
- The new expansion Kobolds and Catacombs was revealed. Trailer can be viewed by clicking here,
- This expansion includes limited adventures, free cards, legendary weapons for all classes, and a free to play boss single player arena.
Overwatch
- First we got a new map called Blizzard World that essentially combines all the other maps games into one. Trailer for Blizzard World can be seen by clicking here!
- A new Support Healer Hero was announced named Moira. Her introduction video can be seen by clicking here.
- We also got a short cinematic starring Reinhardt called "Honor and Glory". Click here to watch.
World of Warcraft
- Official Legacy Servers were announced right off the bat with a sweet trailer. Click here for trailer.
- A new expansion was also revealed called Battle for Azeroth. With this came a sweet cinematic trailer and feature trailer. For the feature trailer click here. & ill show the cinematic at the end of this section.
- The expansion will include two new continents, a level cap raise to 120, 6 new races, new Plundering mode where you can go take loot from islands, and a new pvp battle called Warfronts which they describe like an RTS style mode.
- We lose our current artifacts and instead get a new one in the necklace slot and there will be a new form of Artifact Power called Azerite.
Honorbuddy is shutting down
If you ever played World of Warcraft than you know about Honorbuddy. Honorbuddy has been the king when it came to botting programs for World of Warcraft. Well for the past couple years they have been in a lawsuit with Blizzard and from the looks of it are now shutting down the bot completely due to these lawsuits. A statement was released by Bossland on their forum that states the following:
So some key points in this is:
- Sales are completely done and if you already have a license it will work until December 31 2017.
- Pokefarmer and a couple others are on the chopping block
- Claims the reason Blizzard could only make these advancements by compromising the privacy of their players.
Now here is what I ask you guys/gals.
What does this mean for World of Warcraft?
Will botting just overall simmer out or will a new king take the throne?
How will this impact the WoW economy?!
Community Highlights
Cerms shows us how to use Class Trials to farm Replica Gear in the Darkmoon Faire.
Madorisiath did some sweet exploration of the Wandering Isle Panda starting zone.
Smitten is doing another amazing giveaway over in the contests section. This includes a Rank 1 / Multi Glad Shaman account + Gametime Codes
For all of you with access to Elite Sections this one is a gem for PUBG. Loletas shows us how to make it so there is no grass in PUBG! Still working.
Community Interview
This week our community interview is with the veteran king48488. I asked King about Blizzcon 2017, Battle for Azeroth, and the Honorbuddy fiasco.
Q: What was your overall opinion of this years Blizzcon 2017?
A: I think it was pretty decent. I enjoyed most of their game announcements. Also their cinematics, awesome as always, but there were also some less good things like their deep dive and codecraft stages. They were pretty boring in my opinion, but in general it was a successfull and interesting Blizzcon, as always.
Q: Was there anything going into this years Blizzcon that you were hyped for? Did it meet your expectations if so?
A: Of course there was. The hype was real for the new World of Warcraft expansion announcement! It was a torture to wait for it during the opening ceremony, but when they announced classic servers, they kinda destroyed the hype a bit. However the Battle for Azeroth cinematic compensated that. In general it met my expectations, but I was a bit disappointed about not having something really new like a new class in the new expansion.
Q:Do you think Battle for Azeroth is the right direction for World of Warcraft?
A: I wish I could say much about that one. I never played World of Warcraft until October last year, but I always enjoyed the conflicts between the Alliance and the Horde. It just didn't feel right to fight together with them in Legion. In my opinion the conflicts between the Alliance and the Horde has always been something like a key part of the game, so getting back to the roots with Battle for Azeroth is really cool.
Q: Speaking of WoW, what is your opinion on this whole Honorbuddy situation? Do you think it came down to the law suit or was Blizzard truly getting that good at making anti-cheats?
A: Many site reports about the Honorbuddy shutdown write, that the main reason came down to the law suit, but I don't think that it's the main reason for that. Blizzard already prove, that they are pretty good in making anti cheats in Overwatch. Now they introduced their new anti cheat methods for WoW too and it's hitting the bots, hacks and modding tools hard. I don't want to go too much into detail about it, but yes I think the main reason is their 'new' anti cheat.
Q: Will another bot reign and take the throne with Honorbuddy gone?
A: That's a good question. There are already many bots that have their development stopped, there are not many left. Of course we'll always see new bots coming and there are still a few left, but Blizzard won't stop improving their anti cheat. If the developers keep learning and improving their protections, etc. we may see a new king on the throne soon., even if it's not such a feature rich bot.
Q: Do you think this will impact the economy in WoW with such a massive bot program going down?
A: Other bots or tools are going to replace Honorbuddy. The current shutdown of it may have a little impact of the economy in WoW, but people keep using bots. They will find other ways to do it, so we won't see massive changes to it.
Q: What games are you playing these days? Are you hyped for anything in the near future?
A: I personally don't play many games. The most time I play WoW, also sometimes a bit HotS and Hearthstone.
Right now I'm still a bit hyped for Ashes of Creation. The first alpha starts next month and I can't wait to see how it looks ingame! And of course I like new WoW expansions, so I'm already hyped for the next one, even if the new announced one isn't out yet.
Classic WoW Implementation and Thoughts by Veritable
Veritable on the news team wrote this article so make sure you guys show him some love!
During Blizzcon's opening ceremonies, we got a glimpse at World of Warcraft Classic. The masses of voices that cried out, some in joy and some in fear, can be separated into groups. Lets take a look at each group and how they reacted and why.
Private Server Players
This is actually two groups in one. On one hand you have players that have religiously and sometimes fanatically played on private realms just because they were unhappy with Blizzard's current implementation of retail World of Warcraft. Many of the players you find in this group have long wanted Blizzard to release a classic realm system, with original progression and unlocks through timed content releases. Similarly to the way some private servers operate, they wanted to start off at level 1 through 60 and then go through the releases of each major patch in a timed sequence through to The Burning Crusades pre-patch. 10-Man UBRS, releases of Dire Maul and Maraudon, Patch 1.4 and PvP Honor System introduction and 1.5 with the first Battlegrounds of Alterac Valley and Warsong Gulch. Then you have 1.6 with Black Wing Lair raid and so on and so forth.
Going through the list of patches and the content that were released in Vanilla, you really see what a massive change the game has taken since Vanilla. And it is extremely easy to see why people are so loyal for Vanilla WoW content. It was a much more time consuming game, and enjoyable for people who wanted to get something out of time spent. You had to work for everything you got in Vanilla.
Then you have a second group of players who always wanted to try out a private server, but for one reason or another were too cautious about spending time on a server that may disappear at any moment and all progress lost. It happens all the time, even to the biggest servers. These people will finally have a way to experience content, sometimes for the first time, on an official retail blizzard classic server.
Private Server Owners
Double edged sword for some server admins, as the only reason they existed was to fill a gap in what the players and community wanted, and what Blizzard had failed to provide them. Now that Retail is coming out they will be watching like a hawk to see what exactly it is going to do to them. Their servers might potentially disappear when the retail classic launches, and they might try to figure out a different approach to their server design to keep players.
Other server owners are only doing it for the money. They make money running private servers, especially with the donation systems on some of the WotLK servers being horribly skewed towards the plot point of the server design makeup. If you don't spend money, you can't compete with people who do. Those servers might stick around, but any Blizzlike server past Classic is going to probably still run, however, if Blizzard announces say a timed release for a Classic system, but then might introduce relaunches of patches somehow for other expansions (TBC, WotLK) then even their servers might disappear.
Current Retail Players
A lot of peoples in this group share the concern with security side of the Private Server Players. They play retail because they do not want to lose their time spent on a game that could potentially not have their interests at heart. They see the Classic launch as having great potential to re-live their past experiences, or even experience them for the first time. If anyone had joined after WotLK, the game functions are so completely different than what they will experience in the Classic realm, that they might find it a breath of fresh air. Or they hate it and go back to retail.
The Nostalgia is strong with Vanilla WoW, and there is nothing that any game can replicate the first time you set foot in Azeroth. Whatever that first major eye-opening experience was when you played Vanilla WoW, or even if you played during TBC or WotLK for the first time, something happened and it just blew your mind. Whatever _that_ is, you keep looking for it in every game you play, every patch release, expansions of WoW, and even the multitude of other MMO's that were released while you stopped playing Retail WoW for a time.
That is always there, and the truth is, nothing (not even Classic relaunch from Blizz) is going to replicate it. You have seen it already and it will get stale. At this point, people who play Private WoW Classic Blizzlike servers, are going to get the most out of the game. But I can see the people who play Retail WoW going to Classic and getting bored. Very easily. They will see the struggle, and because they have been handed so many free epics in recent expansions, they are going to get overwhelmed by the work and effort into it.
Subscription Model
Will they allow you to buy it like a digital service addon? Then you can use the WoW Token from Retail to buy the game. Or will they roll the fee of the game or subscription into the Current subscription model. Perhaps just like adding a $3/mo. to your retail sub or if you only want classic it is $10. Something like that. If they allow you to buy a classic time item for $5 in the store, the tokens are going to just completely skyrocket. And the 180k+ for North America is going to be like Gas Prices before a long weekend. They will just shoot up to 400k and stick there.
So a question to any readers, what is your Nostalgic event from the first World of Warcraft Login? And if you play on a private server, do you fit into any or all of the above categories?
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