#nerditorial

By: John Perna

Earlier this week a Best Buy retail chain in Minnesota started putting up end caps with a “Feburary(sic) 1st” release date for Diablo III, complete with a digital timer with countdown to the day. Only a short time later some UK retailers listed Diablo III with a release date of February 3rd.  The internet that revolves around Diablo III caught fire.

Well yesterday Blizzard came out and said that Diablo III does not have a release date and any dates listed by retailers are speculation. He then said that any release date for the game would be announced via press release before any retailer gets the information.

Seems like an open and shut case right?

Not so fast.

Ever since Blizzard was merged with Activision what was once an Apple-esque ability to keep information secret has turned into a leaky ship. Blizzard’s decisions go through a company whose upper echelon is filled with men concerned with stockholders and profits.

With their stock prices sagging due to WoW subscription losses and the release of what Wall St seems to think is a legit competitor in Star Wars: The Old Republic, I could very well see an Activision executive telling some wary board members who would then tell some high profile stockholders ‘don’t tell anyone this, but their next cash cow is coming out February’. Once that kind of information is leaked, you don’t get it back.

Second, and playing back into my first point, Mists of Pandaria; WoW’s next big expansion, was leaked months before its official announcement at Blizzcon. Do any of you remember what Blizzard did then? That’s right; they said there were no official announcements for the expansion, and our next expansion certainly wasn’t related to this ‘Mists of Pandaria’ name the press is throwing around. Some short time later, Mists was announced at Blizzcon.

Finally, I can see this being the release date; or something very close, because it just fits. Blizzard doesn’t want to step on its own toes, and with Heart of the Swarm and Mists of Pandaria coming out this year they have to find a slot to fit Diablo III into.

We can reasonably assume that Star Craft II: Heart of the Swarm will be released around the same time Wings of Liberty was released, July. There really is no reason to move that date around, it fits into a nice lull of gaming and it’s equally distant from its predecessor.

If Mists of Pandaria were to be released this Quarter the beta invites would have started to go out, so that moves it out into the rest of the year, again Blizzard doesn’t want to step on its own toes, so you can move it out of 3rd quarter also, so it’s either 2nd quarter or 4th quarter. Now besides their first expansion coming out in January every World of Warcraft Expansion since then has been released in the 4th Quarter, October through December.

This leaves Diablo III the front half of the year, speaking from a business perspective, putting it out in February, Heart of the Swarm end of July and Mists out in November gives them a great string of games as equally spaced through the year as can be.

By: John Perna

I have been struggling with a question for a while now when I play WoW. With the latest patch Blizzard has added a new tier of raiding, allowing anyone with a 372 ilvl to jump in and do easier versions of the current end game content. I at first thought this would be great, I have a few max level characters now and they all need gear. If I don’t have to try and get guild groups or trade pick up groups together, all the better.

However I am starting to wonder if maybe Blizzard made it too easy, but I cannot actually test my theory. I am not exactly a hardcore player, I do not raid six days a week, nor does my guild strive to be first at anything, I am however very much not a casual player. I understand my classes and their mechanics, I learn all the boss fights for each role in the game; healing, tanking and dps, both melee and ranged and I spend hours after each new patch mapping out where I have to go to get the best gear I can for my characters.

My main character, a warlock was already very well geared due to our heroic Firelands progression, however my healing alt (Shaman) and my tanking alt (Paladin) both needed gear, and within one day of 4.3 being released my Shaman had gone from a gear level of 367 to a gear level of 379, my tank the next day went from 371 to 380. For those of you that are not as well versed in the gear level mechanic, just know that is a boost on the order of magnitudes. In another view, most our main raiders in our progression raid are hovering around the 383 range, meaning I went from not ready to raid to as good as a solid raid progression guild raid member in one day.

My issue is, I don’t know if that’s because of the time I put into the game, and I already know the ins and outs of it and could home in and acquire the gear I needed, or has Blizzard really pushed the ‘anyone can raid’ line this hard?

If it’s the first, then I applaud Blizzard for giving people that only really want to do the end game content a quicker path to being able to actually start on it. Only three patches ago, at 4.0 my guild would go into the Bastion of Twilight raid and just kill the trash over and over again to get the world drops we desperately needed to get our gear levels up to be able to actually consider killing bosses. All told from time of us forming a raid to the time we dropped our first raid boss was almost two months.

However, if it’s the latter, part of me wants to fully support it, I am not one of the elitist saying that raiding should be for raiders and if a casual wants in they had better step up their game. I think everyone should get to experience raiding; it can be one of the most fun and rewarding experiences in your gaming career.

However, if everyone is getting their gear this fast and easily, then they are not actually learning the game. It would be akin of stepping into a RTS with a steep learning curve and using a cheat code to get infinite resources to beat the game. Sure maybe you won, but if you ever played with or against other people you will find yourself sorely lacking skills.

I have already seen Hunters sporting Tanking meta gems and dodge trinkets or Restoration Druids wearing agility leather in the looking for raid groups, showing a very basic and fundamental lack of knowledge on how to play their class or the game at all. Meaning that while they are getting to see the raid content finally they still aren’t learning to play their class, which would lead them to be able to dig deeper into the end game content, instead of dealing with 25 man pugs until they get bored and quitting.

By: John Perna

The final major content patch of the Cataclysm Expansion for World of Warcraft is upon us; named Dragon Soul, 4.3 will bring a new raid, a fully functional Raid Finder system, three new heroic level dungeons and a slew of class and game mechanic changes. This will also be the content patch that starts to lay the ground work for the next expansion Mists of Pandaria, but I’ll save that for a later article.

DRAGON SOUL RAID

The biggest part of the content patch will be the Dragon Soul raid itself, finally pitting the forces of Azeroth against the big bad of this expansion, Deathwing. It’ll feature 8 bosses, though the 7th and 8th are both Deathwing and three levels of difficulty. It’ll also be the first raid in the game that can be accessed via the Raid Finder tool, more on that later.

The Dragon Soul raid will play out like most raids, it starts where the new dungeons leave off, you’ll enter the Caverns of Time to use the remaining aspects to empower the ancient artifact, aptly named the Dragon Soul to put Deathwing down, that’s a lot of gibberish to me, but I know some of you dig the lore

In execution this raid will be like any other, however in flavor it has some neat epic feeling elements. The most epic being the fight with Deathwing himself, starting by hopping on an Airship and battling your way through waves of dragons and monsters to jump on his back to peel off his protective armor and finally dropping him fully exposed and pissed off.

Did I mention that there’s a boss fight on the Airship that you’re taking to go have a boss fight? Blizzard really appears to be pulling the stops on making sure this raid feels as epic as fighting one of the biggest bads in Warcraft lore should feel, hopefully assuaging some players complaints that the fights against demi-gods just don’t feel epic enough.

Raid Information

NEW DUNGEONS

Along with the new raid Blizzard is also adding three new “Heroic” Heroic Dungeons, replacing the Zandalari dungeons as the hard mode dungeoning experience. The troll dungeons will be removed from their separate queue and added to the normal heroic rotation and these new dungeons will take their place.

However, there is a twist to these. Each one sets up your ability to run in the next, so first you have to beat End Time to unlock Well of Eternity and beat that one to unlock the final Hour of Twilight. The dungeons will drop introductory raid gear, bridging the gap between normal heroic loot and the new raid gear requirements much like the old Zandalari dungeons.

End Time

End Time is a trek into the distant Future via the Caverns of Time to remove a force that is blocking your ability to travel in to the past to acquire the Dragon Soul to beat Deathwing with. Its desolate wasteland filled with wraths of prominent figures in WoW.

Well of Eternity

Well of Eternity is another Caverns of Time dungeon, this time taking you back 10,000 years to the sundering of Azeroth and the destruction of the Elven Empire. You will watch Illidan and Tyranda fight the initial Burning Legion invasion while you try to get the Dragon Soul.

Hour of Twilight

This is the final dungeon and will see you fighting through an all-out invasion of Dragonblight in present day. You will escort Thrall to the Wyrmrest Temple and do battle against a traitor of mankind.

RAID FINDER

The Raid Finder tool is a new system put in place to allow players to hit a button and get put in a queue to run an easier (some would say dumbed down) version of the newest Raid. It will all be 25 man, and will drop weaker versions of the normal and heroic versions gear.

There will not be a lock out on this tool, and you can queue up for the raid as many times as you want in a week, however loot will only drop off each boss once a week for you.

Blizzard has said they will add more raids if it seems that people want it.

Raid Finder

TRANSMOG AND VOID STORAGE

Another change brought on by 4.3 will be the player’s ability to change the appearance of their gear to look like anything of a similar type (cloth to cloth, plate to plate) and has stats. If you are tired of all Warlocks or all Druids looking the same this is the chance to change that. This change will see new vendors where the old reforging vendor was located.

Void storage is just a deeper bank that you have to pay to put things in. Take that as you will.

60-80 QUEST FLOW AND EXPERIENCE

The amount of experience needed to level from 71 to 80 has been reduced by a third, and a large portion of the quests in Outlands that used to be marked group quests have been retooled and changed to be soloable.

However the biggest change is that people that give you quests to go into dungeons in those areas have been moved INSIDE the dungeons so that people using the Dungeon finder can finally get the quests without having to fly to Outlands and hunt them down.

DARKMOON FAIR

The Darkmoon fair is going to get its own island and become a full fledge carnival with a slew of mini games and pets to acquire, plus becoming a place you can go to buy old gear models that were taken out of the game.

Darkmoon Fair

CLASS CHANGES AND WRAP UP

There have been a slew of changes to class mechanics and numbers and percentages that I don’t want to get into, so I’ll give you the link to the official blizzard post that lists them all off.

Full PTR 4.3 Patch Notes