Wow, so Blizzard is actually going to make an in-game threatmeter? Aggro and threat, in the many MMOs I've played in the past, have always been hidden variables about which the designers gave no info.
Wow, so Blizzard is actually going to make an in-game threatmeter? Aggro and threat, in the many MMOs I've played in the past, have always been hidden variables about which the designers gave no info.
I mean, it's awesome, but very surprising.
Now if only they'd make an in-game raid interface that's worth half a shit.
They did mention implementing bossmods into the game itself. They don't want you to be forced to run to curse every time a patch comes out because you can't raid without your bossmods. Also my face in that picture is a carefully crafted mask. I entered in the costume contest as undead and with all the bruises on my chest from Rent I was petty convinving. Almost won.
I'm sitting in the movie panel now, some quick factoids:
Live action, at least PG13, focused on a new badass hero we haven't seen before (Alliance side) and we will see a lot of familiar faces.
Not an "adventure/quest/party situation" movie and more about cultures clashing and large scale war. To be set about 1 year before the beginning of WoW. Forsaken may or may not have joined the Horde yet. "Principally told from the Alliance perspective" (Metzen sez) but Thrall will still be in there and maybe Cairn.
It will focus on the conflict between the Horde and the Alliance rather than them banding together against an outside threat. They are currently finishing up the script and locking down design decisions. They hope to have it out by 2009, and it will be a $100 mil+ film.
Fall of Lordaeron may be referenced, but not a priority. In closing they showed a CG mockup of Teldrassil and said that might be an art direction or story point they choose to look at in the film.
Best part: Someone asked if the movie would mostly be from an Alliance perspective or a Horde perspective.
Metzen: Yeah so we wanted to make it mostly from the Alliance perspective because, and I love Thrall, but it's hard to have a movie with a big green guy as your main guy, you know?
Someone in the crowd: What about Shrek!!?
Metzen:
And everyone laughed at him for a few minutes while he sat there looking embarrassed. Hahahha.
Best part: Someone asked if the movie would mostly be from an Alliance perspective or a Horde perspective.
Metzen: Yeah so we wanted to make it mostly from the Alliance perspective because, and I love Thrall, but it's hard to have a movie with a big green guy as your main guy, you know?
Someone in the crowd: What about Shrek!!?
Metzen:
And everyone laughed at him for a few minutes while he sat there looking embarrassed. Hahahha.
To be fair Shreak is crap and everyone only watches those movies for Donkey and Puss in Boots.
The bottom line is that we got three movies staring a big green guy, making Metzen look like the biggest idiot since, well, we made him look like an idiot at E3 2006. If they make Horde look like typical villains...I'll save my money.
The irony is pretty deep here. I have to tip my hat to such a post.
Just for the sake of pointing out the painfully obvious, please do elaborate.
You are complaining about my complaining over something trivial. And my bitching is trivial as well, so it's like a snake eating itself.
You're overreacting to a guy choosing a perhaps inideal way of telling you that an Alliance [read: probably human] protagonist is more marketable to America than an orc. Your post is basically "lol we pwned him so hrd, wut a noob," and I'm chiming in saying I don't think it was a big deal that he said what he did.
The bottom line is that we got three movies staring a big green guy, making Metzen look like the biggest idiot since, well, we made him look like an idiot at E3 2006. If they make Horde look like typical villains...I'll save my money.
Well, a lot of higher-ups at Blizzard freely admit that they've been biased towards the Horde as far as what they enjoy playing for a very long time. I'm talking WC1 days.
We could do with some polarizing for once.
korodullin on
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
Hamurabi, everyone was laughing at him for about two minutes straight while he gathered himself to reply. It was obvious what he was trying to get at but it was hilarious that he chose his words in such a manner and then did get totally pwned by some random audience dude.
And my friend and I were just discussing - we heard about one guy from Blizzard say they played Alliance. Metzen ended his movie panel by shouting out "for the horde." And Bald Guy #2 from the raid panel told us he was pissed Horde still don't have fear ward. So I'm hoping they don't dick over the Horde in the movie.
It was amazing to watch the devs pro-actively address almost every major criticism of classes, pvp, and itemization, and do it in a positive way. They acknowledged their fuckups and really made you feel like "they got it." Came away from those panels really looking forward to the expansion.
The best part was the Q&A paladin player *whine*AoE dispell kills my bubble* and the crowd almost murdering him on the spot.
Asuma on
"Extremism is so easy. You've got your position, and that's it. It doesn't take much thought. And when you go far enough to the right, you meet the same idiots coming around from the left." -- Clint Eastwood ***
Well. I made it home alive. Blizzcon was a blast. I got some schwag. I payed too much for some tiny pizzas.
I'd call it a success.
Did you play some Starcraft2? Man I hate you, I wanted to go Blizzcon this year but Im planning for PAX and E3 next year and frankly I dont wanna spend all my time in America.
Now that all is said and done, has anyone found any particularly in depth blogs where one might find as much of the presented info as possible?
I've seen the Youtube videos of the Northrend pannel, and have read recaps on some of the SC2 stuff, but things like the Professions and Raids have been a little harder to find, aside from snippits here and there.
Forar on
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
Well. I made it home alive. Blizzcon was a blast. I got some schwag. I payed too much for some tiny pizzas.
I'd call it a success.
Did you play some Starcraft2? Man I hate you, I wanted to go Blizzcon this year but Im planning for PAX and E3 next year and frankly I dont wanna spend all my time in America.
I played the multi twice, once with each race. Absolutely loved it. And I hate most RTS games. I was probably going to buy it anyway, but now I'll be demanding everyone else buy it as well. I think watching those professional SC1 games got me pumped as well.
Now that all is said and done, has anyone found any particularly in depth blogs where one might find as much of the presented info as possible?
I've seen the Youtube videos of the Northrend pannel, and have read recaps on some of the SC2 stuff, but things like the Professions and Raids have been a little harder to find, aside from snippits here and there.
So, it's over. It's been a long 16 hours and I've taken a four hour nap to shrug off the exhaustion, but I still feel it. I don't want to sleep all day though, because I don't want to fuck up my sleep schedule.
I, like many Blizzard employees, were on the tear down/clean up crew from 10pm-6am. But I was one of the few who did a 3-10 shift before that, bussing excited players around the SC2 area. I'm just hardcore like that. While I knew that many executives and head developers were out partying and patting each other on the back, it felt good to keep my head in the thing, to stay on the ground floor and get shit done. It's a company I love working for and am happy to break my back for. I plan on being one of those guys one day, one of those guys who can sit on a panel and tell players about the next big thing from Blizzard. And if they're promotion track record stays the same, I will.
But enough of that. I want to share with you guys some of the background things going on at Blizzcon. None of them are bad or scandelous, as I want to keep my job, but some may be open to interpretation. Here goes:
-Our break room was just off the main stage, and some tables could see a side-view of the guys onstage for the costume contest or whatever. I was never scared of speaking in public, but those stage lights were so bright and there were so many goddamn people sitting and watching, that it became more than intimidating. Props to anyone going up there willingly, especially to dance like a damn retard.
-The guys who built the Anaheim Convention Center also paved the floors of Hell. I don't want to hear otherwise.
-Edit: Removed
-Edit: Removed
-I have a kind-of cool story about working the SC2 area. So my row had press computers, but only four. This very nice Korean press lady politely requested that I reserve more, and that was fine by me. We basically ended up shutting down the whole row for about an hour for Korean press to play. There were a couple things funny about this. For one, all of the press only spoke broken english, so we had to communicate to them through her. So when I told her that such and such computer were ready for use she barked orders at a press guy to sit the fuck down in this gutteral, lightning-paced foreign language, and they complied like scared, obedient dogs. Then she would turn to me with big smiles and say in almost perfect, delicate English, "Thank you very much." That never got old.
Edit: Removed
- All of the female staff got hit on. I'm going to say right now that in the area of the company I work in, every female employee is a looker. Blizzard female employees totally shatter the stereotypes about female gamers. One instance of this I expecially got a kick out of: So my tiny, Asian female coworker was working SC2 when a couple guys come up to her.
They look right at her and say, "Hey, do you play DOTA?"
She says a deadpan "No," even though I know she does.
They say, "Well, we just one the DOTA tournament over there, you wanna come hang out and chat with us after you're done here?"
She gets this wierded out look and says, "No thanks."
Shot down but still high in spirits, they walk away.
I had heard of flashing money to get tail, but flashing your DOTA skills? Man that was a new low. I'm never going to let her live it down either.
I have some more stories but all in all I will say that a get-together of this magnitude is not something that gets executed easily. While there was nothing for a guy like me to do on his free time (I had played SC2 and WotLK to death, and have heard the Dev's speil numerous times), I could appreciate what these things meant to the players. It felt good to be on the inside looking out, and to be a part of something so much greater than myself. No one gave me more than a second look, but that didn't make me any less proud of my Blizzard Staff badge and shirt.
Feint you fucker, did you seat me and Jaef? DID YOU!? A skinny guy in a grey shirt and a tall girl with a staff drawn on her back.
And me personally, I was sure to be extra nice to the Blizz staffers. Working at a con has to be stupid tiring and annoying all at once. There were people bitching at the store staffers for running out of 2XL shirts and hoodies and such. Fucktards. I waited patiently for my backed-up order to come through and said thanks as much as I could.
Also I heard a staffer made Jaef do the peanut butter jelly dance for his hearthstone keychain :winky:
Oh yeah, L70TEC rocked pretty hard. They had a terrific song about rogues, if you can find it.
Speaking of 2XL, they were throwing out L70ETC shirts during the concert and I was roaming around on the floor during intermission and two huge guys just handed me their L because it wouldn't fit either of them.
btw, Feint, or anyone else who might've heard... does anyone know how the last Beta Invites were done?
Not the new ones, I mean the last expansion. I'm mainly curious if it's entirely random, or if it's based somewhat on time spent in game, or forum activity, or something else entirely?
Because I know a guy who got 6 of them for TBC, and it's always puzzled me how that happened.
Forar on
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
A) Random invite Blizzcon 2005 invite
C) High-end raiding guild invite (I think this happened very late in the beta)
D) Friends and Family of Blizzard
E) MVP Poster
I has a lot of KATUSA soldiers that loved the hell out of SC1.
I even watched some of their competitions back then. Like the freaking Olympics for them.
Been to that nine story mall in Seoul, the one with the stadium on the top? Watching them play professional SC on a freaking IMax sized screen was insane.
TDL on
Meet me on my vast veranda
My sweet, untouched Miranda
And while the seagulls are crying
We fall but our souls are flying
Feint you fucker, did you seat me and Jaef? DID YOU!? A skinny guy in a grey shirt and a tall girl with a staff drawn on her back.
And me personally, I was sure to be extra nice to the Blizz staffers. Working at a con has to be stupid tiring and annoying all at once. There were people bitching at the store staffers for running out of 2XL shirts and hoodies and such. Fucktards. I waited patiently for my backed-up order to come through and said thanks as much as I could.
Also I heard a staffer made Jaef do the peanut butter jelly dance for his hearthstone keychain :winky:
Oh yeah, L70TEC rocked pretty hard. They had a terrific song about rogues, if you can find it.
I saw and met lots of cool people, but your PB&J story reminds me of something else:
So early in the first day it had gotten around that someone in the WoW: WotLK area had gotten pissed off for whatever reason at the game. We tried to answer his question and accomidate him and such, but he just seemed to be a general fucktard. So he waits until the staff goes to help others before he starts systematically deleting the premade characters on the computer, out of spite I guess.
Well Rob Pardo, VP of Blizzard (and this is where it gets a little urban legend-y, but I've met Rob more than once and this totally sounds like something he'd do) was watching this kid the whole time. So before he can get to the third character to scrap, Rob yanks his badge off his head, kicks him out of the chair and says, "Thanks for the hundred bucks for your 20 minutes. See ya later!" And kicks his ass out the door.
Word spreads quick, I guess, because later that day a guy asked me if he could just hop over the rail to exit the SC2 area, instead of walking all the way to the exit. I said, "Sure, but if you knock it over I'm going to have to kick you out." I tried to sound like I was joking with him, but he laughed nervously like he wasn't quite sure. I think he knew what had happened to the kid.
So, you guess it, he knocks over the rails (which were pretty flimsy to begin with, in his defense). I just look at him with disappointment and cross my arms, not saying anything. This guy turns BRIGHT RED and gets that fight-or-flight look of panic in his eyes. I seriously think he would have run away if I didn't break the ice and told him it was cool. We laughed about it, he helped me set it back up, and I never saw him again.
Has blizz said anything about an official stance on selling beta keys and murloc codes? I'd assume they'd be against it, but I see a ton of those things on ebay.
Posts
Wait, WTF? He's not supposed to have a face.
I mean, it's awesome, but very surprising.
Now if only they'd make an in-game raid interface that's worth half a shit.
I'm sitting in the movie panel now, some quick factoids:
Live action, at least PG13, focused on a new badass hero we haven't seen before (Alliance side) and we will see a lot of familiar faces.
Not an "adventure/quest/party situation" movie and more about cultures clashing and large scale war. To be set about 1 year before the beginning of WoW. Forsaken may or may not have joined the Horde yet. "Principally told from the Alliance perspective" (Metzen sez) but Thrall will still be in there and maybe Cairn.
It will focus on the conflict between the Horde and the Alliance rather than them banding together against an outside threat. They are currently finishing up the script and locking down design decisions. They hope to have it out by 2009, and it will be a $100 mil+ film.
Fall of Lordaeron may be referenced, but not a priority. In closing they showed a CG mockup of Teldrassil and said that might be an art direction or story point they choose to look at in the film.
Metzen: Yeah so we wanted to make it mostly from the Alliance perspective because, and I love Thrall, but it's hard to have a movie with a big green guy as your main guy, you know?
Someone in the crowd: What about Shrek!!?
Metzen:
And everyone laughed at him for a few minutes while he sat there looking embarrassed. Hahahha.
To be fair Shreak is crap and everyone only watches those movies for Donkey and Puss in Boots.
The bottom line is that we got three movies staring a big green guy, making Metzen look like the biggest idiot since, well, we made him look like an idiot at E3 2006. If they make Horde look like typical villains...I'll save my money.
Just for the sake of pointing out the painfully obvious, please do elaborate.
You're overreacting to a guy choosing a perhaps inideal way of telling you that an Alliance [read: probably human] protagonist is more marketable to America than an orc. Your post is basically "lol we pwned him so hrd, wut a noob," and I'm chiming in saying I don't think it was a big deal that he said what he did.
ITT we question the validity of individual posts
just glaze
m i rite?
Well, a lot of higher-ups at Blizzard freely admit that they've been biased towards the Horde as far as what they enjoy playing for a very long time. I'm talking WC1 days.
We could do with some polarizing for once.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
And my friend and I were just discussing - we heard about one guy from Blizzard say they played Alliance. Metzen ended his movie panel by shouting out "for the horde." And Bald Guy #2 from the raid panel told us he was pissed Horde still don't have fear ward. So I'm hoping they don't dick over the Horde in the movie.
The best part was the Q&A paladin player *whine*AoE dispell kills my bubble* and the crowd almost murdering him on the spot.
I'd call it a success.
Did you play some Starcraft2? Man I hate you, I wanted to go Blizzcon this year but Im planning for PAX and E3 next year and frankly I dont wanna spend all my time in America.
I've seen the Youtube videos of the Northrend pannel, and have read recaps on some of the SC2 stuff, but things like the Professions and Raids have been a little harder to find, aside from snippits here and there.
And I haven't seen any videos at all of the side panels.
I has a lot of KATUSA soldiers that loved the hell out of SC1.
I even watched some of their competitions back then. Like the freaking Olympics for them.
Battlenet ID: MildC#11186 - If I'm in the game, send me an invite at anytime and I'll play.
If you were a paladin healer trying to heal against the ubiquitous priest/warrior combo in 2v2 arena, you just might not be so smug about this.
http://www.Wowinsider.com
It's a little ways down, but the site has a recap of all the panels. Quite informative.
I, like many Blizzard employees, were on the tear down/clean up crew from 10pm-6am. But I was one of the few who did a 3-10 shift before that, bussing excited players around the SC2 area. I'm just hardcore like that. While I knew that many executives and head developers were out partying and patting each other on the back, it felt good to keep my head in the thing, to stay on the ground floor and get shit done. It's a company I love working for and am happy to break my back for. I plan on being one of those guys one day, one of those guys who can sit on a panel and tell players about the next big thing from Blizzard. And if they're promotion track record stays the same, I will.
But enough of that. I want to share with you guys some of the background things going on at Blizzcon. None of them are bad or scandelous, as I want to keep my job, but some may be open to interpretation. Here goes:
-Our break room was just off the main stage, and some tables could see a side-view of the guys onstage for the costume contest or whatever. I was never scared of speaking in public, but those stage lights were so bright and there were so many goddamn people sitting and watching, that it became more than intimidating. Props to anyone going up there willingly, especially to dance like a damn retard.
-The guys who built the Anaheim Convention Center also paved the floors of Hell. I don't want to hear otherwise.
-Edit: Removed
-Edit: Removed
-I have a kind-of cool story about working the SC2 area. So my row had press computers, but only four. This very nice Korean press lady politely requested that I reserve more, and that was fine by me. We basically ended up shutting down the whole row for about an hour for Korean press to play. There were a couple things funny about this. For one, all of the press only spoke broken english, so we had to communicate to them through her. So when I told her that such and such computer were ready for use she barked orders at a press guy to sit the fuck down in this gutteral, lightning-paced foreign language, and they complied like scared, obedient dogs. Then she would turn to me with big smiles and say in almost perfect, delicate English, "Thank you very much." That never got old.
Edit: Removed
- All of the female staff got hit on. I'm going to say right now that in the area of the company I work in, every female employee is a looker. Blizzard female employees totally shatter the stereotypes about female gamers. One instance of this I expecially got a kick out of: So my tiny, Asian female coworker was working SC2 when a couple guys come up to her.
They look right at her and say, "Hey, do you play DOTA?"
She says a deadpan "No," even though I know she does.
They say, "Well, we just one the DOTA tournament over there, you wanna come hang out and chat with us after you're done here?"
She gets this wierded out look and says, "No thanks."
Shot down but still high in spirits, they walk away.
I had heard of flashing money to get tail, but flashing your DOTA skills? Man that was a new low. I'm never going to let her live it down either.
I have some more stories but all in all I will say that a get-together of this magnitude is not something that gets executed easily. While there was nothing for a guy like me to do on his free time (I had played SC2 and WotLK to death, and have heard the Dev's speil numerous times), I could appreciate what these things meant to the players. It felt good to be on the inside looking out, and to be a part of something so much greater than myself. No one gave me more than a second look, but that didn't make me any less proud of my Blizzard Staff badge and shirt.
*Lobotimized for various reasons. Sorry*
And me personally, I was sure to be extra nice to the Blizz staffers. Working at a con has to be stupid tiring and annoying all at once. There were people bitching at the store staffers for running out of 2XL shirts and hoodies and such. Fucktards. I waited patiently for my backed-up order to come through and said thanks as much as I could.
Also I heard a staffer made Jaef do the peanut butter jelly dance for his hearthstone keychain :winky:
Oh yeah, L70TEC rocked pretty hard. They had a terrific song about rogues, if you can find it.
Super score.
Not the new ones, I mean the last expansion. I'm mainly curious if it's entirely random, or if it's based somewhat on time spent in game, or forum activity, or something else entirely?
Because I know a guy who got 6 of them for TBC, and it's always puzzled me how that happened.
A) Random invite
C) High-end raiding guild invite (I think this happened very late in the beta)
D) Friends and Family of Blizzard
E) MVP Poster
Deffinately not F&F, Blizzcon or an MVP.
Been to that nine story mall in Seoul, the one with the stadium on the top? Watching them play professional SC on a freaking IMax sized screen was insane.
My sweet, untouched Miranda
And while the seagulls are crying
We fall but our souls are flying
I saw and met lots of cool people, but your PB&J story reminds me of something else:
So early in the first day it had gotten around that someone in the WoW: WotLK area had gotten pissed off for whatever reason at the game. We tried to answer his question and accomidate him and such, but he just seemed to be a general fucktard. So he waits until the staff goes to help others before he starts systematically deleting the premade characters on the computer, out of spite I guess.
Well Rob Pardo, VP of Blizzard (and this is where it gets a little urban legend-y, but I've met Rob more than once and this totally sounds like something he'd do) was watching this kid the whole time. So before he can get to the third character to scrap, Rob yanks his badge off his head, kicks him out of the chair and says, "Thanks for the hundred bucks for your 20 minutes. See ya later!" And kicks his ass out the door.
Word spreads quick, I guess, because later that day a guy asked me if he could just hop over the rail to exit the SC2 area, instead of walking all the way to the exit. I said, "Sure, but if you knock it over I'm going to have to kick you out." I tried to sound like I was joking with him, but he laughed nervously like he wasn't quite sure. I think he knew what had happened to the kid.
So, you guess it, he knocks over the rails (which were pretty flimsy to begin with, in his defense). I just look at him with disappointment and cross my arms, not saying anything. This guy turns BRIGHT RED and gets that fight-or-flight look of panic in his eyes. I seriously think he would have run away if I didn't break the ice and told him it was cool. We laughed about it, he helped me set it back up, and I never saw him again.
I should have made him dance.