Warcraft 3 Reforged
For me this was one of the best announcements if not the best of the whole Blizzcon. Warcraft 3 is finally getting its well deserved remaster and with it is coming some really cool stuff. Right now the release date for this is sometime in 2019. The pre-order just says sometime before December 2019 but I read the estimation is November 2019 because if you pre-order you must be within a year from prepurchase date according to US LAW. Some of the coolest things to note are:
- If you own old WC3 you can play against people on WC3 Reforged
- New World Editor and Custom Game support
- Completely new models (I'll show some below)
- New cutscenes and new cinematics. They completely redid the one with the infernal dropping from the sky and killing the grunt/footman and it was amazing
- Spoils of War edition. Normally I am not an advocate for a lot of upgraded versions of games but this one has some cool perks. You get a meat wagon mount in WoW that has a working catapult and also you get 4 unique hero skins in WC3: Reforged. An example of this is Jaina can be played as a skin for the Archmage hero for Humans instead of the normal old Archmage.
- It will be on Battle.net
Gameplay trailer
Campaign Trailer
If you want to dwell deeper down this rabbit hole because you are as hyped as I am definitely check out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iPXgOPc_4E”]this 20 minute video by WC3 icon Grubby where he gives his thoughts on the game and the future. [/url]
Also...if anybody wants to play some Line Tower Wars or Uther Party, I am your guy please invite me!
Hearthstone
Honestly this is one of the dumbest announcement trailers I have ever witnessed. DisguisedToast actually has a funny clip of him comparing it to League of Legends and Overwatch. Click HERE for that
On a serious note the expansion is Rastakhan's Rumble which is a Stranglethorn Gurabashi Arena themed expansion. There is a new keyword called Overkill where if you attack and kill a minion and deal more damage than you need, you get to Overkill. There will be a Single Player adventure called the Rumble Run. All in all, a new expansion that didn't seem to be that exciting or break any new ground.
Diablo Immortal
If you read the comments or look at the dislike to like ratio of the video above you will get the point of how everybody feels about this announcement. At the end of the day Blizzard used their biggest Mythic Stage spot for Diablo this year which usually means its the “announcement of the year” and it ended up being Diablo mobile. This obviously turned into a massive shitstorm because it was the only thing we got from Diablo after so much hype was built up. Now most people who follow Diablo knew D4 was not getting announced due to that recent blog post by Blizzard stating something along the lines of “we know what you all want, it won't be at Blizzcon but just know good things come to those who wait”. So everybody kind of knew that meant no D4 but still what could warrant the prime spot on the Mythic Stage? Diablo 2 Remastered of course. But sadly we did not even get that.
Some things to note about this is that NetEase, who are making this Diablo Mobile game, also made other ARPG mobile games most notably Crusaders of Light. This actually became a hot topic because the Diablo Immortal UI looks like a straight copy pasta of Crusaders of Light. So not only did we get a game we don't want but its just a rip off of the companies older game. Clearly this was not done inhouse. As far as lore if you care, the story takes place between D2 and D3.
Since this whole thing blew up in Blizzards face they have been on major damage control deleting comments and apparently unlisting the trailer from the Battle.net client. I even heard a rumor they re-uploaded it once it hit 500k dislikes that fast. Regardless I don't think any of this would have been that bad if they just gave us D2 Remastered than also gave us this D3 Mobile game. I don't know how they could have ever thought just announcing a mobile game to a bunch of PC gamers was ever going to go well. This Blizzcon had a total of 3 boo counts. 1 at the Destiny guy in the beginning (not heard on stream but confirmed by people there), 1 at the first Q&A when the dude asked if it was strictly a mobile game and they said “yes”, and lastly another at the closing ceremony when Diablo was shown again.
D4 better be a homerun or that franchise is dead because POE has the biggest season/expansion of the year coming up and after this I don't see why anybody would choose Diablo anything over POE right now.
Overwatch
Overwatch basically just got a new hero Ashe but that video above is an animated short called Reunion and it is sooooo good. I don't even play OW but god is that a good watch.
As far as Ashe goes here is her trailer she is a gunslinger who seems to deal damage most efficiently at medium to long ranges with her rifle. Firing from the hip allows faster shooting but you can slow it down a bit by looking down the scopes which adds accuracy. So think of the in between hero for McCree and Widowmaker.
Some other cool stuff is get mobile by disengaging using a shotgun's blast and also throw dynamite setting enemies on fire applying a DoT. This dynamite is on a timer but can also be shot to speed things up. Her ultimate is “Bob”. He is her robot security guard who she summons to charge through enemies knocking them in the air. After his charge ends he plants himself firmly into the ground and becomes a turret. Bob is unique in that he is killable, has an HP pool, can receive buffs, be cc'd, and even capture objectives. Definitely sounds like a hero that will become very strong if tuned correctly.
Heroes of the Storm
This one was actually very cool because they added a champion who is completely unique and for the first time not from another Blizzard franchise. Her name is Orphea. The video above is her cinematic trailer. Orphea reminds me a lot of Annie from League of Legends. Young girl who has insane powers behind her innocent look.
To get a full skill breakdown Click Here
WoW
This was a very juicy year for WoW considering it wasn't a new expansion. They shows a lot of videos/cinematics and are adding a ton of cool additions. Before I go listing all the stuff off that seems most important I will say that if you are not enjoying BFA right now and don't think the upcoming changes to Azerite in 8.1 will fix that than most of the things I am about to list are just null for you. It's a lot of glitter and glam but no game changers by any means. Also a lot of stuff below is clickable! Also possible spoilers
- To start it off this cinematic 'Lost Honor' featuring Saurfang is dope
- Warsong Gulch and Arathi Basin are getting a complete visual upgrade.
- The Goblin and Worgen models are FINALLY getting the update we were promised! (in 8.2)
- We now know what classes the Zandalari Trolls and Kul Tiran can be along with their racials. (Zandalari Troll Paladin Hype Train)
- Rise of Azshara is what 8.2 is called and we will get to explore Naga territory in Nazjatar which is a completely new zone.
- The Abandoned Junkheap door will open and lead us to...MECHAGON where we will run into, you guessed it, MECHAGNOMES.
- With Rise of Azshara and Mechagon come a new Raid called Azshara's Eternal Throne and a new "Mega Dungeon" (8 boss dungeon) called Mechagon which is basically Kara 2.0.
As far as Classic WoW
We got to see the Demo which raised some concerns but we also got some good news.
- The Demo had sharding which basically means if a zone is too populated on one server it will split that server up into multiple versions of the zone. So hypothetical example is if a Classic Server called "Jinx" had 6,000 people in Durotar on launch Blizzard would make 6 Durotars all on "Jinx" but only hold 1,000 people each to lighten the load. This is a huge nono for classic due to server identity, fighting for thorium ore and materials, world bosses, world pvp, etc. Ion addressed this and said it will be talked about going forward and their plans for sharding were probably going to be limited to launch until everybody started to spread out from the packed starter zones on week 1. To some that is okay and to others its no sharding or bust.
- WoW Classic is coming out Summer 2019
- WoW Classic will only require a subscription
- Addons will be limited because they don't want advantages becoming the fabric of the game
- No flying mounts, no dungeon finder, no instant mail, no achievements, no unified auction houses, no cross-realm grouping
- They are considering getting rid of the debuff cap since it was apparently not a design decision when Vanilla was made but a tech limitation
- No wall jumping since it's the new engine
- They are considering adding in the 2 hour trade window for loot. This is because if it's not in the game you're just gonna put in a ticket and get it taken care of so why not just skip that step and add the 2 hour window.
- Content release plan can be seen HERE
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