Blizzcon 2009 was just as great if not better than last year last year. Blizzard once again held no punches with their annual conference. Last year there were 16,000 attendees, this year 20,000. Here’s my 5 favorite things about this year’s Blizzcon.
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The new character class the Monk can only described as a skilled holy warrior. His huge buddha beads around his neck gives you a slight Shaolin monk-esque feel. His fighting style is lightning fast combo based attacks.
Attacks tested first hand:
Inner Sanctuary - Casts a seal onto the ground creating a AoE that prevents creatures for stepping into. In effective toward ranged units, useful for crowd controlling while soloing. Read More »
Lovers of Starcraft be prepared for a campaign treat. We all love watching those Korean pro Starcraft players on YouTube, but we all remember playing the campaign at some point in our lives. The Starcraft 2 campaign is an extremely different experience than it’s 11 year old predecessor.
The units, of course, are significantly different between the skirmishes and campaign. For one, our beloved firebats and medics are no where to be found in skirmishes!
At BlizzCon 2008, they went into great detail about the Diablo 3 gameplay, and announced a new class—The Wizard! I personally love playing the glass cannon class, but she is no wimp! She can take out mobs like it’s nobody’s business!
First, I want to go into greater detail about the new gameplay. Diablo 3 is everything you loved about Diablo 2, and more. Blizzard took player favorites, and improved upon them. Besides the massive graphics upgrade, your character can destroy the environment and interact with it: building walls can collapse, rusty chandeliers can fall, and you can push your enemies off the side to fall to their death.
On the more technical side of E for All, Fusion-io featured their new ioXtreme that is headed straight for consumer markets. To promote it, their booth featured a bull riding exhibit, that was less bull and more hard drive. Shoes were flying as they were thrown off the “crashing hard drive.”
I had the wonderful opportunity to interview CTO, David Flynn. He explained what the ioXtreme is and how it is the future of computers.
Events, Gears of War, Xbox 360
Many of us are well versed in the awesome religion known as Gears of War. Those of us who are worshipers of the Gears have been keeping a close eye on its sequel’s launch date, November 7th.
At this weekend’s E for All Expo, I had the pleasure of demoing Gears of War 2 in the brand new Horde Mode. Horde mode is a 5-manned, almost non-stop, battle with the Locust. With each wave, the mobs gets scarier, beefier, and more accurate at liquidating your brains. There are a total of 50 waves. E for All groups were only able to reach about wave 16. Horde mode can also be played in insane mode, where the highest wave anyone has ever gotten is wave 7. Needless to say, the game gets hard…fast! Luckily, it never ceases to entertain.
Events, Game Design, MMORPGs, Virtual Worlds
Nexon.com is a Korean-founded video game company with a mission: to provide high quality games, for free! They have a unique business model that earns their profits through selling character customization. Microtransactions do not provide godly weapons to the highest bidder, but simply offer more personalization and customization options to the user’s beloved character.
Upon approaching the Nexon booth at E for All, one can’t help but feel a sense of awe at their setup. They have around 20 HP Blackbirds decaled to show off their new FPS, Combat Arms. Considering these machines are about $6000+ each, being able to test on them was a dream come true.
Casual Games, PC, Virtual Worlds
Anyone who considers themselves a gamer knows about Spore (console gamers, you have no excuse).
Ever since that 30-minute gameplay video that we watched and shared with our friends so feverishly, we have all been waiting patiently over the last 2 years for the mind-blowing game to come out. We’ve all watched the video enough times to know that this game is procedural (if you don’t know, watch the video).
For those who don’t already know, a cracked version of Spore has been released on the internet with only days left before the launch. Apparently, an Australian vendor sold some copies a little earlier than the actual launch date. The result? As of this moment, the number of downloads exceeds 120,000. This does not include the number of individuals who have already pirated their copy.
