Trying Out Diablo IV

 I didn't grow up playing Diablo or Diablo II - as a kid, I was pretty averse to any grim, ultra-violent games, and for certain my parents were (I remember when I was twelve having to persuade my mom that the then-upcoming The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time wasn't too violent despite the fact that the player character wields a sword). So, my experience with the franchise began with Diablo III, born out of the good will that Blizzard had earned with me after playing World of Warcraft for a few years at that point.

However, despite Blizzard starting out as a Mac OS game developer, the release of Overwatch and eventually Diablo IV on PCs only left me out in the cold.

I had barely cared to finish Diablo III's campaign initially, but the game underwent some serious refinements with its Reaper of Souls expansion.

I actually played quite a lot of that - I got characters of every class a full class set and had a build where I could mow down waves upon waves of demons at the highest Torment difficulties.

Here's the thing: Diablo, and honestly a lot of Blizzard games (WoW included) are built to be perpetual treadmills - ever higher power and ever higher challenge.

And as I make my way through Diablo IV, I'm confronted with the fact that such things aren't quite as appealing to me as they once were.

I like the aesthetic of the game - while I don't want to wallow in it for every game I play, there's something compelling about the extreme-dark fantasy of the world of Sanctuary. Indeed, Diablo IV's opening sets a tone in a way that few games do: the first town you come across, while worrying about freezing to death in the wilderness (not that this is a danger mechanically,) sends you on a pretty standard sort of quest to go fight some monsters in a nearby dungeon. In lieu of gold as a reward, however, they give you dinner and party with you, only for it to be revealed that they've drugged you, apparently seeking to sacrifice you to Lilith, the game's demonic big bad (also, I believe this breaks from the tradition of it always turning out to be the titular Diablo as the game's final boss).

I also really like the take the game has on its various character classes - I've primarily played a necromancer, but I also started a Druid (which wasn't an option in D3).

But I think that the combat is just not really doing it for me. Diablo combat is all about fighting absurd numbers of monsters, where enemy density becomes a positive thing because of the chain-reaction way that a lot of character abilities work.

It is, perhaps, the polar opposite of Dark Souls-style combat, in which each attack and dodge is something that you have to carefully consider in the moment. I don't mean to say there's zero thought that you have to put into what you do in Diablo, but I find that even without a bunch of legendary items and on high difficulty settings, the most important thing is to make sure you're using everything at your disposal as frequently as possible.

To be clear: this is a matter of taste, not of quality. But I do think that the purpose of a game like Diablo is to get a kind of zen calm in clearing out waves upon waves of enemies.

But for me, the enemies themselves kind of blur together into an undifferentiated mass.

The story is grim as ever - even the angelic church that would seem to protect the world from the demons is a deeply repressive and unforgiving one - at one point, a friendly NPC who admittedly screwed up big time by taking a bribe to let someone get in somewhere they shouldn't have is forced to wear a suit of "Penitent Armor," which is one part mech suit and one part Iron Maiden, so he dies after coming to our aid. That's just one example.

One thing that's maybe a little disappointing is that the story doesn't really follow up on the revelations of Diablo III. 50 years have passed, but the only real direct reference to that is that Lorath, the young Horadrim apprentice who befriends us in Reaper of Souls, is now a bitter old man with tons of regrets (though he does seem to serve as our primary ally through the game - and is voiced by Ralph Ineson, whose voice is always fun to hear). But the implications of the Nephalem reawakening their god-like power seems to have been just kind of tossed to the side, at least for now (I'm I think in Act IV - I'm in Kejistan).

Actually, one thing that's funny is that the Butcher, who was the Act One boss in Diablo III, has been returned to his old role from previous games of being a randomly-spawning nightmare boss that just zeroes in on your character (even if you're a poor Necromancer whose skeletons and golem are supposed to tank for you) and murders you. Having gotten used to the Butcher as an easy kill on my super-powered D3 characters, this is a brutal wake-up call.

Anyway, I feel weird complaining about the game because it's just being what Diablo has always been. And yet, there's a part of me that might better enjoy playing through this story in just a different game system.

Is That Kormac in the Diablo IV Features Trailer?

I'll confess that my only real experience with the Diablo franchise is Diablo III, which I'm given to understand is a more triumphant game than most - the initial game ends with us defeating the Prime Evil and saving the Heavens, and while Tyrael expresses some concern about it, the Nephalem also defeats Malthael, saving the world.

Of course, in order for there to be a plot, things have to go bad.

Where are the Nephalem in all of this? And are the heroes of Diablo III not going to be Nephalem themselves?

I believe Diablo IV is going to be set twenty years after Diablo III (unless it's 40.) I haven't checked the voice actor for the features trailer, but it appears to be an older man who is speaking to a "brother" who died at some point. Like Kormac, the Templar follower who fought alongside us in Diablo III, the narrator has a kind of Northern English accent (I don't think I could tell you the specific one, unfortunately.) Could this be an aged, retired Templar who has lost the strength to fight the evils that plague the world?

Given the way that the earlier games ended, I do worry that the heroes of Diablo III might, in fact, have become villains by the time of Diablo IV. But also, as godlike beings of incredible power, one also wonders what role they're playing in the Diablo cosmos now. Did someone figure out how to kill them? Or have they gone elsewhere?

I know Diablo IV is meant to be a return to the darker tone of the earlier games (not that Diablo III was super bright) but I'm curious to see how the earth-shaking events of Diablo III come into play.

Blizzcon Announcements: Diablo IV, Overwatch 2, WoW Shadowlands, Hearthstone Descent of Dragons

We got four major announcements this morning in the opening ceremonies that just closed.

In brief:

Diablo:

Diablo IV is coming, and looks to be super Grimdark, with the release of Lilith, the demoness who, with the Angel Inarius, birthed the first Nephalem and is thus the mother of humanity. Three classes are known: the Barbarian, Sorceress, and Druid. Other than just being another Diablo game, I don't know if we know much about the gameplay.

Overwatch:

Overwatch 2 is coming, and with it, there will be more single-player and PvE content to tell the game's story. In a bit of welcome news, players who are still playing Overwatch 1 will be able to play with players in 2 on the same maps, and any cosmetic rewards you've earned in the first game carry over to the second - this is a pretty great way not to divide the playerbase and to make people feel more excited for the new game.

Hearthstone:

Descent of Dragons is going to be the finale to the E.V.I.L. vs Adventurer's League story they've been doing, with a major dragon theme as well as a new multiplayer mode called Battlegrounds.

Warcraft:

The next WoW expansion is Shadowlands, and while details are still filtering in from various angles, there will apparently be a level squish (players currently at 120 will go to 50, with a new cap of 60) and there will be a roguelike-style thing called the Tower of the Damned where players can progress through a shifting dungeon. Additionally, there will apparently be four different Covenants that players can choose between to get new campaigns and even abilities, based on the different factions within the Shadowlands.

Blizzcon Schedule: Four "Coming Soon" Panels that are Free to Watch

Blizzard released the schedule for the convention coming in a week and a half, and there's some curious stuff there.

On the main stage, after the opening ceremonies, there will be four panels. None of these have been given names, but they will be free to watch, which is usually only allowed for those opening ceremonies when they do the very initial announcements - playing announcement trailers and such.

There have been rumors coming from Blizzard employees that this is going to be a very big Blizzcon, and this does seem to play into that rumor.

Here are my general predictions:

We're obviously getting a new WoW expansion, though I also wonder if it's going to be a bigger one than usual. With the conclusion of the faction war, we might see a fundamental shift to the way that the game handles its two rival sides. Indeed, if 8.3 is supposed to see the longterm (though I would never say permanent) defeat of the Old Gods, it would mean that the background villain that has been there for all of WoW (though only retroactively through all of Warcraft) has been dealt with. I don't think we're ever going to get a WoW 2 (or rather, I'd argue that we got it back in 2007 and it was called Burning Crusade) but I wouldn't be surprised if we get an expansion with a more radical redesign of the game - possibly as big as Cataclysm.

Next, I think Diablo IV is looking more and more likely, especially after a German magazine seemed to spoil that announcement. Diablo players have been waiting for a new game for a long time, and I think part of the reason Blizzard was caught off guard by the uproar over Diablo Immortal was that they would never have thought of it as "replacing" a true sequel because they already knew the real sequel was in the works. What Diablo IV is going to be like, however, remains to be seen - Reaper of Souls ended on a scary note - is Tyrael going to turn on humanity, or perhaps are the Nephalem going to be the new villains?

Another big speculation/rumor is that we could get a sequel to Overwatch. The real hope for that would be one that has a single-player mode. Overwatch has a deep well of lore that, frustratingly, is almost entirely absent from the game itself. Having a game where we could play through the story and also allow said story to evolve would be pretty exciting.

Now, the fourth panel could be for another one of Blizzard's major franchises. Or, it could be for a new IP. Blizzard is of course very conservative in creating new franchises - Hearthstone is really part of the Warcraft brand and Heroes of the Storm is just a Smash Bros.-like mishmash of their brands. That means the gap between their two most recent IPs, Overwatch and Diablo, was over a decade. Meanwhile, their most iconic one (except perhaps if you live in South Korea) is 25 years old this year.

Anyway, the rumor mill should be kicking into high gear.

Two Weeks Until Blizzcon: Hopes and Thoughts

Blizzcon this year is going to be a big one for WoW players, though to be fair, you can say that for most Blizzcons that come in odd-numbered years, as we typically get the announcement of the expansion to come the following year.

First off, let's talk briefly about what is sure to be a very large elephant in the room:

Blizzard has walked back some of its punishments of Blitzchung for speaking out in favor of the Hong Kong protestors after winning a Hearthstone tournament, giving his prize money back and cutting his ban to six months rather than a year.

Still, there is still a punishment. While I'm certainly more sympathetic to Blitzchung's stance and Hong Kong's desires for democratic autonomy than China's ruthless oppression of free speech and free thought, I can understand a general attitude of wanting to keep gaming tournaments a realm that is free of divisive politics. As someone with grandparents who survived the holocaust (though I hope having a personal history with this wouldn't be the only thing qualifying me to have this view,) I'd totally understand and laud Blizzard banning a player who used their platform to advance an ideology of white supremacy or some other horrific political stance.

That being said, I think one of the big challenges we face as a liberal democracy is the balance between political even-handedness and identifying those core political ideas that define us, you know, as a liberal democracy.

International capitalism, however, straddles countries that have different core political values. There was hope, when we established diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China, that opening them to Western markets would also open them to liberalism (small L, to be clear, though big L Liberalism is one facet of that.) That clearly hasn't worked out as well as we hoped.

So Blizzard, being a big company with some immensely popular brands, has enjoyed profits gained by doing business in China, and are thus disincentivized to do things that would get on the Chinese government's bad side. Blizzard claims that their harsh actions toward Blitzchung were not based on a desire to bow to pressures from China, but that assertion has been met with some healthy skepticism from public.

It's sad, because the game designers and community managers that we gamers interact with had nothing to do with the decision, and it's their work that we're eager to find out about and celebrate at Blizzard's annual convention.

So, putting that massive elephant to the side, let's talk a bit about what I'm hoping to see.

I'm not going to go franchise-by-franchise here, because I honestly don't really know if all of them are going to get a major focus.

But we will go with franchises I am very curious about.

Diablo: The unveiling of Diablo Immortal was basically a marketing nightmare - you don't usually get new entries in a beloved franchise booed on stage. Of course, the upset over it (expressed in not really the most mature way) was based on a fear that there would be no more Diablo as we knew it - PC-based with all the complexity one expects of the franchise.

Reaper of Souls was a fantastic release that basically fixed Diablo III, but that came out a good long time ago, and players have wanted more. If Blizzard announces Diablo IV, and it looks enough like Diablo as we know it, people will be very happy.

WoW: Given that this blog is mostly a World of Warcraft one (admittedly with a whole lot more D&D in the past few years) I won't go into full detail here. We're almost certainly getting a new expansion announcement - and frankly if we don't, you're going to see an even worse reaction than Diablo Immortal got. That being said, what that expansion is going to be remains to be seen.

With 8.3 put on the PTR just weeks before Blizzcon, it's clear that they wanted not to have to spend too much time on the final patch of Battle for Azeroth, and so I think we're going to get a fair amount of info on the new expansion. Major features, like a new level cap, new zones, and any sort of new class or race are going to be the big headliners here.

If there is to be some revolutionary change to the game, my big suspicion is some fundamental shake-up to the breakdown of the two factions. I'll admit this is partially wishful thinking, but I suspect we're going to see a relaxation of the division between the factions, likely allowing cross-faction grouping at the very least. A "level squish" is also a possibility.

Overwatch: Overwatch is still quite popular. That being said, I could imagine, given that popularity, that they might finally release the single-player game that it could have been - whether that will be as add-on content for Overwatch itself or a new release (I would think the latter) is unknown.

We could easily see new heroes announced (likewise in Heroes of the Storm,) but it would be fun to get a bigger story.

A New IP: I haven't heard anything about a new IP. Overwatch, back when it was Titan, was in the works for many years (a guild member claimed to have done some concept art for it back during Wrath) but we haven't really been hearing about anything like that. Could be cool, but I'm not holding my breath.

Blizzcon 2019: November 1st and 2nd

Blizzard has just announced the dates of this year's Blizzcon, and it'll be the first two days of November.

So, what do we expect, announcement-wise? Let's go franchise by franchise. Obviously, they could start a new one - Overwatch was a big expansion of their brand (and weirdly inspired a whole genre of animated porn, which... congrats? Maybe?) But Blizzard is fairly conservative with its IPs, and so I'm going to assume we'll see updates by existing franchises.

Warcraft:

This will be the main event - it's an odd-numbered year, meaning that we're due to get the announcement of a new WoW expansion to be released about a year later. By then 8.2 will have been out for a while, and we'll either be in the middle of 8.3 or it'll be coming soon. I think it's hard to judge BFA given how overwhelmingly popular (and in this player's opinion, superlative) Legion was, but it's pretty clear that WoW is holding to its pattern of kind of alternating between really good expansions and not so good ones. If that pattern holds, the next expansion will join the ranks of Wrath, Mists, and Legion. Where it stands among those (and again, if it does fit that pattern) remains to be seen, and its announcement is not going to tell us that. Legion was announced at Gamescom to a stereotypically dispassionate German crowd, and enthusiasm was probably tempered by the real disappointment of Warlords of Draenor, but wound up being what I think a lot of people consider WoW's best expansion.

An expansion announcement is coming - the question is what we think it will be about - I'm crossing fingers for a Death/Shadowlands expansion, but we'll see. Could be anything from Dragon Isles to a risen Black Empire.

Outside of WoW, if WCIII Reforged isn't out yet, we'll probably get updates on that, and possibly hear about similar treatments to the earlier games.

Overwatch:

Overwatch is one of the games they have that has pretty regular updates, so I'd expect more heroes and maps and events, probably with a new animated short. We'll also probably get more of the eSports angle with Overwatch League (to be honest, I'm about as interested in eSports as I am in regular sports, which is not very much.)

Heroes of the Storm:

While it's slowed down, HotS will, like Overwatch, probably get some continuing updates. New heroes, new map, maybe.

Hearthstone:

Again, a game that gets regular updates, so I'd expect a new expansion announcement.

Starcraft:

Big shrug here. I think this franchise, despite being one of its most historically popular, is kind of in stasis. The story was finished pretty emphatically in Starcraft II, or at least seems that way. I really don't follow this one, so apologies if I've forgotten something.

Diablo:

Ok, here's the interesting one: I've never seen such a negative reaction to a game announcement as Diablo Immortal, the anger over it seeming to shock the developers who announced it. I get that it wasn't the game people wanted, but it's especially bizarre that, according to Kotaku, Blizzard has actually been working on a Diablo IV, yet did not announce it.

Announcing that it's in development - even if it's a super-early stage - would probably be a good move and give players something to look forward to. I think Blizzard underestimated how skeptical old-school gamers are of the microtransaction-fueled mobile gaming market. Anyway, if there is to be a new main-series Diablo game, giving players something to look forward to would probably be good. Hell, I'm still feeling the high of hearing Elder Scrolls VI announced and I don't think we've gotten a single detail about that game in over a year.

Kotaku Article Claims Diablo 4 Is Coming, But Announcement Was Pulled From Blizzcon

Hey, it's rumor-mill/wishful thinking time!

The announcement of Diablo Immortal went about as poorly as one could imagine any game announcement going. I feel bad for everyone involved - the developers who have poured hours upon hours into this project only to see it booed by a disappointed fanbase and the players who wanted a robust, PC-based game that would be a worthy successor to Diablo III and not a mobile-only game that they fear will be a microtransaction-ridden hellscape.

I have no idea how Diablo Immortal will turn out, but the rumor mill is at it:

According to this article by Kotaku, the hotly anticipated Diablo IV is, in fact, in the works. But it was not in a state to present, and so they pulled it from the announcements.

Let's unpack this:

First off, this is not at all confirmed by Blizzard. The news itself would be very welcome if it's true, but it would really raise some questions about how Blizzard has handled it from a marketing perspective.

If it's false, this rumor would just be a painful salt-in-the-wound thing for fans. But for the sake of argument, let's assume that it's actually true.

Blizzard does love to control the narrative on their games, and giving an impressive announcement is a big part of that. But given how starved Diablo fans are these days - Reaper of Souls was fantastic, but it's not fresh anymore - just letting them have something to look forward to would be great.

Let's look at a couple examples: As a huge Skyrim fan, I was overjoyed to see that an Elder Scrolls VI was coming, even if that's literally all we know about the game. Because TES went the MMO route with Elder Scrolls Online, I had worried (I suppose gaining a little sympathy for all the people who have clamored for Warcraft IV for the last decade and a half) that we'd never see another single-player Elder Scrolls game. What Bethesda has now given us is literally just the promise that we'll get a new game. And you know what? That's a big deal and a big relief.

Similarly, after the apparent (I never played it) disappointment of Metroid Other M, it was a source of great excitement to see that Metroid Prime 4 had been announced - the Metroid Prime sub-series being a very successful and beloved series of games that translated Metroid into a first person shooter while still feeling totally Metroid.

The point being: Not only would a promise of Diablo 4 at Blizzcon been one of the highlights of the 'con, but it would probably have made the response to Diablo Immortal a far less negative, maybe positive one. Yes, the hardcore might dismiss it and say "meh, I'll just wait for Diablo 4," but there would be so, so much less hostility to the game if it weren't presented as the thing we're all getting instead of a proper Diablo 4.

It's very easy for me to armchair quarterback here, but I really think that communicating intention with a loyal fanbase is a good strategy. There are always shitty, entitled people with unreasonable expectations, and you can't please them all. But a mere "yes, Diablo 4 is in the works" would have diffused so much of the rancor last weekend.

Assuming that the rumor is true.

Either way, even if you're disappointed with an upcoming release, don't be shitty. Remember that there are hardworking human beings behind every project - good or bad. You're free to register your complaints and vent your frustrations, but try to have some empathy. Ultimately it's a game, and there are other games to play.

Diablo Immortal and its Not Being Diablo IV

Apparently someone asked in a Q&A whether the Diablo Immortal announcement was a joke, which I think is maybe a harsh way of voicing concerns.

But I do sort of get it - on the spectrum of gaming devices, Computers and Phones are on opposite ends. A PC (or Mac, but I get that I'm in the minority for playing games on one) gives you myriad options. Going to a console means reducing controls to the options you have in your hands, and while that has worked for a lot of games (Diablo III's console ports have been quite popular,) it would be hard to imagine something like World of Warcraft working with anything less than a keyboard and mouse. Phones take in further, such that your entire interaction with the game has to take place within a touch-screen interface. Having played a bit of Final Fantasy VII on my phone, I can tell you that it's not 100% intuitive.

Some games work great when they're designed for it, like Hearthstone, but if you were to compare that to, say, Magic the Gathering Online, you're dealing with a far simpler game that requires less precise player input.

And I think that's one of the major factors that is subverting enthusiasm for Blizzard's latest Diablo product.

I think the other, maybe biggest factor, is less about what it is than what it's not.

Diablo III came out a long time ago - I think six years. After Reaper of Souls and I guess the addition of the Necromancer class a bit later, the game has been in stagnation for years. Fans have been clamoring for Diablo IV, and the fact that this is the big Diablo announcement feels like a serious let-down after a perceived hyping-up for the title.

After Blizzard's post about managing expectations for Diablo announcements prior to Blizzcon, I thought that perhaps the announcement for Diablo IV was just being delayed a bit to maybe wait until it was in a more presentable place. But I think that if that were the case, I would have done something like the original WoW Classic announcement last year, where they said "this is happening, but we can't really say anything else yet." Giving Diablo fans something to look forward to would be good.

Now naturally, I think that the people working on Diablo Immortal felt that this would be that exciting news, and I don't want to make light of the major work they've put into the project. But I do think that Diablo players skew a little more hardcore and skeptical toward the mobile platform, which has a reputation for having underwhelming games with a mercenary attitude toward monetization. Blizzard has been pretty good about avoiding such practices - the fact that you can play Hearhstone or Heroes of the Storm pretty easily without dumping cash into them is a serious credit to Blizzard as a company - but for players who were hoping for Diablo as a franchise to go into greater detail and complexity, perhaps putting a little more RPG into the ARPG, this seems like a step in the opposite direction.

Now, I'm not nearly as invested in Diablo as I am in WoW, and so I don't think I felt this sting as much as the biggest Diablo fans did. But the reaction I'm seeing (and it's really anecdotal - there might be at on of people eager to play Diablo on their phones) suggests that this whole project and direction for the franchise is not really the right move. If there's actually a Diablo IV in the works, you could mitigate any worries about the mobile game (or at least most of them,) but right now I imagine a lot of people see it as a bait-and-switch.

Blizzcon 2018 Opening Ceremony Roundup

Ok, let's get a quick and dirty list of announcements!

WoW: Classic is going to come with your normal WoW subscription and releases next summer! More 8.2 and beyond news coming this afternoon.

Warcraft: WCIII will be remastered in Warcraft III Reforged. Models and terrain are getting ground-up rebuilds, giving us pretty gorgeous looking units.

Starcraft II: Zeratul will be a new co-op commander.

Diablo: Diablo Immortal will be a new mobile game that they claim will be a full action-RPG set between Diablo II and III.

Overwatch: New McCree-focused cinematic introducing Ashe, the leader of the Deadlock gang as a new hero for the game (plus a new Omnic character who is likely to come later.)

Hearthstone: Rastakhan' Rumble will be the next expansion, based around Trolls, Loa, and fighting at the Gurubashi Arena.

Heroes of the Storm: The first HOTS-original character is getting added: Orphea, the daughter of the Raven Lord, will use a bunch of spooky gooey shadow magic (with teeth!) and walks around with a massive coffin on her back.

I'll go into more details as we get them.

Blizzcon Expectations

Blizzcon 2018 is coming in less than a month. What might we expect to see?

I'll put this caveat here that I'm less of a Blizzard omnivore than I used to be - I haven't played much Diablo or Heroes of the Storm in a while. But I can speculate!

Overwatch: While perhaps not as steady a stream as it had when the game was newer, Overwatch does tend to get new characters over time. I suspect that we'll get some new reveal, probably another one of their gorgeous story cinematics, and likely updates on how the Overwatch League is going. They might also announce a new character.

Heroes of the Storm: HotS gets a pretty steady stream of characters, so I'd expect two or three to be announced at Blizzcon. New events and maps would also be welcome. Given their experiments in Nexus-specific stories, we might see that expanded with perhaps fully original characters, though that's pretty broad speculation.

Hearthstone: A new expansion's announcement would be pretty well-timed, given that the Dr. Boom cards have been out for a while.

Starcraft: I don't really know what the plans for the future of the Starcraft franchise are. I suspect that they'll focus primarily on new multiplayer options, but this franchise has shuffled its way to the back a bit.

Warcraft: With 8.1 likely coming either right before or right after Blizzcon, it's time for us to find out more about where the expansion is going. Two years ago, we got a big preview of the Broken Shore and Tomb of Sargeras, with a last-second cliffhanger-offhand-comment being that in the patch to follow, we'd go to Argus. I suspect we'll get a big preview for 8.2 and possibly a similar hint to 8.3, which I'd assume is BFA's capstone patch. The Blizzcon to follow will presumably be to announce the next expansion, so this is when we can expect a big focus on BFA.

Diablo: A week ago I might have said that there's something massive, like Diablo 4 or a second Diablo 3 expansion. But Blizzard has attempted to calm the hype after building it up, so what I suspect is that we're going to get more of a promise than a preview - I would bet that they don't really have the project in a state that's ready to show off, but that we might get a title or basic announcement and then a promise that we'll get a big preview to follow. We might also get word on a rumored Diablo Netflix show, which would be a pretty big deal.

Set Investigation with Diablo 3's Necromancer

Diablo 3 works a bit like a snowball: you start off having to really watch yourself when you encounter an elite enemy, and your abilities are a mix of what seems cool at the time. However, once you get to level 70 and hope and pray to Rathma (or whomever) for set pieces, and those prayers start getting answered, things get kicked into high gear.

At this point, I have full sets of Trag'oul and Inarius armor for my Necromancer, and I'm close to complete on the Rathma set, and the Plaguebringer set I actually have six pieces, but need to farm Death's Breath in order to transform pieces until I get all six individual parts.

While I'd like to get a Rathma-based set going, I haven't quite figured out the survival game for that playstyle (using Icy Veins as my guide - I don't like that their build doesn't use Army of the Dead, which, unless I'm missing some Legendary that causes it to go off automatically, seems like you wouldn't want to bother with a six-piece bonus.)

The easiest one I've been able to work with is an Inarius build that uses Corpse Lance and of course, based on the set, Bone Armor. The Inarius set greatly increases the damage done by Bone Armor's activation, and also ups the defensive bonus from the set as well. At 6 pieces, it causes the bones to whirl around you, dealing a fair amount of damage to anyone nearby and I think just generally buffing your damage.

The build is very bursty - using Land of the Dead to fuel Corpse Lance and of course waiting for Bone Armor's cooldown, you'll utterly annihilate rares and elites if you can burn your cooldowns, but until then you're just going to be running through with your swirling bones and Grim Scythe-ing enemies. This is a close-quarters build.

Trag'oul also uses Corpse Lance, but this is a build that has absurd damage potential and can very easily kill you even if you aren't getting hit, as it's all about your life-spending abilities. Still, if played with finesse, it has a ton of potential, but the funny thing is that you will definitely be using Blood Rush all the time to give you a corpse to start the process going.

While leveling up I used lots of minions and Corpse Explosion as a major source of damage, and I'd like to find a build that incorporates those elements, but for now I'm very much still farming non-set pieces.

Trying out Diablo III's Necromancer

While, given the cooperative nature of WoW, I haven't really been playing it much on my ancient laptop while I'm out of town, I did find in my email an invite to the Diablo III Necromancer beta test.

Diablo III's in a weird place where content is coming in entirely patches. The Necromancer will be paid DLC, but it's not a full expansion.

The Necromancer was, of course, a popular class from Diablo II (and Xul, the character who represents the class in Heroes of the Storm, is my favorite character in that game,) so it's exciting to get to play it in Diablo III, even if some of us (me) don't really feel incentivized to keep playing much given the lack of a new campaign act (and I long-since got multiple full gear sets for each class.)

Still, I dig the necromancer aesthetic (I was never a goth, but Halloween was my favorite holiday as a kid) and wanted to give it a go.

Now obviously, the first thing that comes to mind playing the necromancer is its similarities with the Witch Doctor. The Witch Doctor is also an intelligence-based caster who tends to command undead legions. Indeed, I think the Witch Doctor was heavily based on the Necromancer, but given a decidedly different aesthetic. So what does this new version of the Necromancer bring?

Well, one thing is that, mechanically, when you kill enemies, you get corpses on the ground. Certain abilities (the first one you get and probably the most iconic being Corpse Explosion) use these corpses as a kind of alternate resource. You can explode corpses without any cost as long as there are some on the ground, but positioning enemies to be near corpses will require a degree of skill.

Necromancers use Essence as their resource, which seems to build and spend at roughly the same rate, though in my mere 14 levels of experience, I've tended to just let my skeletons and by builder ability drop a couple of monsters and then wipe up the rest with corpse explosions (sometimes I use Bone Spear, a spender, to get the ball rolling.)

A bit like the Scourge in Warcraft III, the Necromancer seems to be pretty powerful if you can build up momentum, and if there's a large swarm of enemies, you can devastate them with amazing speed (though to be fair, this tends to be the case with most Diablo III classes after you get a decent complement of abilities.)

I don't know off the top of my head how much the DLC will cost, but right now I think I'd be willing to pay something under twenty (preferably under fifteen) dollars for it. I'm curious to see what the set bonuses do.

The Darkening of Tristram

So I went in and blasted through the Darkening of Tristram, Diablo III's 20th anniversary event. This essentially recreates the original Diablo in Diablo III's adventure mode, doing some fun things like pixelating the graphics, changing the UI, altering run animations and simplifying the sound effects to make it feel more like the game from the 90s.

You can access this by going to the ruins of Old Tristram in adventure mode, where you'll find a portal transporting you back.

It's then a linear (for Diablo) trip down through the depths of the cathedral.

There are four bosses, The Butcher, the Skeleton King, Archbishop Lazarus, and the Dark Lord himself. The first two bosses can be missed - I didn't actually see the Skeleton King on my run - but Lazarus is required to get into the final level where Diablo is.

I'll confess that I find Diablo III's endless hack-and-slash gets a little tiring after a while, and given that this is recreating a 20-year-old game of the same sort, you can imagine that there's not much in the way of... plot?

Actually, when you beat Diablo, the old cutscene from the end of the game plays (with 90s era CGI,) which involves the Warrior plucking the gem from Diablo's head and putting it in his own head. What I do not understand is who the human who had had the Red Soulstone prior to this was. We know that the Warrior was the prince (and became the Dark Wanderer/Leah's dad) but this guy can't be Lazarus or Leoric, as both are already accounted for as earlier bosses.

You can get two in-game pets. One you can get after a little quest that starts with you getting a Rotten Mushroom from level 9, after which you can go around the ruins of Tristram and basically trade items between various corpses (reviving them as ghosts) until you get a recipe to craft Wirt's Leg. Crafting and then immediately salvaging it will give you a guide regarding three cow corpses next to Adria's Hut (in the flashback) that will open a path to a farm where there is a cow pet in a chest (don't click the cows until you have the guide on which order to click them in.)

The other pet, which I didn't get as I took my best-in-slot level 70 Crusader through, requires you to go in at level 1 and complete the event, which yields a little Butcher pet.

Necromancer Coming to Diablo III, Plus Diablo I Being Remastered Diablo III style: "The Darkening of Tristram"

The Necromancer is being added to Diablo III. Inspired by the Diablo II Necromancer, it will be available next year as part of a paid package that will include other stuff (though we don't know yet what.)

Additionally, as part of a free patch, the original Diablo game will be added into Diablo III - you'll be able to take your Diablo III characters through it.

The Diablo I section will have a visual filter that pixelates things to look more like a 1996 game and will limit movement to 8 directions for true authenticity.

So nothing about a new Diablo game or expansion, but I'm SO ON BOARD with getting the Necromancer, even if it does sort of step on the toes of the Witch Doctor. Xul is my favorite Heroes of the Storm character.

Blizzcon 2016 Schedule Released

Blizzard's mostly annual proprietary convention is coming next month, and they have just released the schedule. Of course, these schedules can sometimes give you a good clue to where their various games are going and if there's something exciting to anticipate.

There are several "What's Next" panels, which frequently imply expansions, though I've learned to take that with a grain of salt after being very confident in a new Diablo III expansion for previous Blizzcons. Also, the World of Warcraft "What's Next" panel specifically refers to World of Warcraft: Legion, and given that the company has made it clear that they're going to focus on really ensuring that Legion has legs, I honestly think even hinting at the expansion to follow Legion would not be met by a good response - something that they're aware of.

So let's break it down by franchise.

Hearthstone:

Hearthstone gets updates at a pretty good rate and is a huge cash cow for Blizzard. We just got a new adventure, so I'd expect to hear about a new expansion this time around. No hints as to what that will be so far, as far as I know.

Heroes of the Storm:

Heroes just added new maps (which I haven't actually played yet) and new characters. Much like Hearthstone, though, additions to the game come at a pretty regular pace, rather than big bursts. So I'd expect them to announce a couple of new heroes and possibly a map, as well as new skins of course.

Diablo:

Diablo's 20th anniversary is coming up. Diablo III is also very much ready for a new expansion, or perhaps we're ready for Diablo IV. I don't see a ton of Diablo panels, though, so I'll remain skeptical.

Starcraft:

Starcraft has a "Foundations for the Future" panel. Obviously the grand Starcraft II trilogy has come to a conclusion (and frankly, the plot really seems tied up in a definitive way) so I am curious about what their plan for the future of the franchise is. Granted, the original Starcraft persisted as a popular multiplayer game basically until Starcraft II came out (and may even still be played) so I would bet that Blizzard's focus is going to be on tending to the multiplayer side of things.

Overwatch:

Like Heroes of the Storm and Hearthstone, Overwatch is a game that gets frequent updates, and so I wouldn't expect to see a huge thing like an expansion or sequel yet. Instead I'd expect to maybe hear about new game modes, maps, and characters that will filter in over time.

Warcraft:

Legion just came out a month and a half ago, and they're also making it clear that they're going to stick with this expansion for the long haul (fingers crossed they succeed at that) and so the idea of hearing about the next expansion is basically a 0% probability. In fact, I'm not even sure that we're going to hear about the second raid tier, as I imagine that the Nighthold raid won't even be open yet at that point, given that we'll be getting Trial of Valor in between Emerald Nightmare and Nighthold. 7.1 will probably come out some time before the end of the year, but not necessarily before Blizzcon. Still, if they wanted to reassure players, announcing content to follow the release of Nighthold would be very welcome.

Blizzcon Announcement Leak - Nov. 4th and 5th

Blizzard briefly put up an announcement of this year's Blizzcon, but quickly took the announcement down. However, it's no shock that the company would have it this year. So what kind of predictions should we expect?

World of Warcraft:

Legion is going to launch some time in the middle of the year - my guess is mid-to-late June, so at that point we will have been on the Broken Isles for a few months. At most I think we might be getting ready for whatever Legion's second raiding tier will be. Assuming that they're continuing with the Warlords model (as disastrous as that might be, it's possible they started planning Legion before they realized what a bad idea a two-tier expansion is) that's probably going to be the Tomb of Sargeras, but I'm hoping that it will be a middle-tier - though given what we've seen of the Legion alpha, I don't know what that middle tier would entail.

Anyway, it's extremely unlikely we'll start hearing about the expansion that comes after Legion until 2017.

Starcraft:

Starcraft just completed its Starcraft II trilogy. I honestly don't know what's in store for the series. The ending of Legacy of the Void really closed off the vast majority of the storyline. There's still room for conflict, certainly, and new characters might arise to carry forward, but I think after the long rollout of Starcraft II, we're probably going to see the series take a breather at the very least.

Diablo:

There was apparently some hiring call for people to work on a new Diablo game. The question then is whether it's a new expansion or Diablo IV. I'd wager more on the former, as Diablo III has gotten fairly popular, especially with the console version. A new class and a new act would work pretty well, and perhaps a bunch of new ideas brought into the seasonal system or the bounties/exploration mode. There's also a few story hooks that would carry directly from what's happened in DIII so far. I just hope they don't turn the Nephalem evil or something.

Hearthstone:

Hearthstone has been getting pretty regular periodic updates, so I don't expect to see anything terribly radical. Probably a new solo adventure and maybe a new expansion announced (by then, Whispers of the Old Gods will have been out for several months.)

Heroes of the Storm:

Like Hearthstone, Heroes is built for periodic small updates - throwing in a hero or map every now and then, and of course skins and mounts. I'm hoping we see more unusual maps like Towers of Doom (both the unique tile set and objectives.) Still, major shifts are probably going to be rare, so I'd simply look for these periodic update announcements.

Overwatch:

Overwatch will have officially been out for a while by then. Given that it's a general-admission type game, we won't see individual new characters introduced. We might see a big chunk brought in as DLC, though. It'll be way too early to announced a full sequel though.

Something New:

Blizzard has been expanding its franchises recently, so I wouldn't be shocked to hear them coming up with another major project to work on. Personally I hope we get something a little more solo/story-driven. As enjoyable as I'm finding Heroes of the Storm, I tend to prefer games with a solid solo campaign, and finding that "Project Titan" was scrapped in favor of making Overwatch a multiplayer-only shooter was pretty disappointing.

Dreaming Up Diablo IV

With the rumor mills buzzing about a new Diablo game in development, and given that I've been playing a lot of Diablo III lately, I thought I'd reflect on the possibilities for a new game. Season 5 has invigorated me to the point where the stuff my main-game characters will be inheriting will be far, far, like exponential to several degrees better than what they had before. (I've got full sets of gear for most of my non-seasonal male/female counterparts to suit them up in.)

Now, the big, huge caveat here - this could be another expansion. And I'd be ok with that, as I'm rather fond of my characters (though the introduction of Xul in Heroes of the Storm makes me really want a Necromancer - even if the Witch Doctor mostly covers that niche,) and I'm always happy to have Lyndon along making quips.

Setting the story aside (since I kind of covered that,) one question might be how the mechanics would change in a future game.

Diablo III gave each class its own resource, and while a lot of them work pretty similarly, it's a nice way to distinguish their mechanics.

The Adventure Mode introduced in Reaper of Souls gave players a ton more freedom - you no longer had to endlessly cycle through the main story and the same dungeons and bosses in the same order over and over.

I might try to work this freedom of exploration into the main game. It might be interesting to have a number of threats (like Belial and Azmodan in Diablo III) that you can take down in the order you want.

Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing the loot become a bit less random. Basically any item can drop from any enemy (though some require you to get them in rifts) and while that gives you more of an incentive to go clear out that Khazra cave, it also dilutes a bit of what's exciting about fighting a boss.

The way Legendaries work in Diablo has you really get tremendously more powerful once a particular effect is gained - as an example, if you are using the Thorns of the Invoker set on a Crusader, Belt of the Trove suddenly has you raining down Bombardments constantly and thus not only getting a lot of free damage (and freeing up an ability slot) but also perpetually having your 50% damage reduction buff.

But once you have that set, with all the best legendary effects, your main incentive to keep playing is simply to amass better gear for your off-sets or alts. Or grinding legendary gems to help you run higher Greater Rifts.

It might be nice to segment the end-game at the level cap a little more, and to provide quantitative differences after getting qualitative ones. Maybe you can't get gear that would let you face, oh, I don't know, some Nephalem who has gone over to the side of Hell (brainstorming potential villains) until you've gotten a decent set of gear together.

Similarly, I wonder if it might help (or hinder) the game if getting your particular legendary effects was less difficult (or tedious,) but then there might be several levels of "Ancient" gear to work your way through, allowing your set to work properly but gaining new ways to increase your power.

Diablo seems to be all about slaughtering massive swarms of enemies, and I think the tried-and-true isometric camera is probably right for that. If they want to scale things down a bit and make each enemy count more, you could do a WoW-style ground-level camera. But that's probably not the direction they mean to take for the game.

Obviously, a brand new game would need brand-new classes, though even an expansion would probably require at least one new one as well. WoW's classes were partially inspired by Diablo II's (as well as some WCIII hero units,) but you could almost kind of reverse the process.

Obviously there are some clear 1-1 correspondences: Paladins are Crusader, Warriors are Barbarians. Monks are Monks. Mages are Wizards. Ironically, Demon Hunters are not Demon Hunters. Diablo III doesn't have a real Druid equivalent, unless you seriously tried to stretch Witch Doctors because of things like Plague of Toads and Corpse Spiders. There's also not a really clear Cleric-type, though Crusaders' spells do veer into that territory. Demon Hunters kind of cover the stealthy-rogue combat style as well as the ranger/hunter archetype.

Of course, a Diablo IV would be able to toss out all the Diablo III classes and begin anew, freeing up a lot of the archetypes that the current classes fill.

I suspect that we'll get our first real news about this new game or new expansion at Blizzcon, though given how they did Legion and Reaper of Souls, it may come sooner than that.

New Diablo Game In Development

In a surprisingly low-key manner, Blizzard has effectively announced a new Diablo game, as they are currently seeking people to work on it.

The big question is whether this means a new expansion for Diablo III or if it will be a Diablo IV (or maybe they'll abandon the numeric naming conventions.)

Mechanically, I think they've done a fantastic job of tightening the game up over the course of Reaper of Souls. Seasons give you an incentive to go back and play more even if you're geared in best-in-slot sets and I really cannot overemphasize how much better the loot system is now than it was before Reaper of Souls.

A new game or expansion would hopefully keep up with this, but perhaps allow for more granularity in quality. Once at the level cap, the stats on a piece of gear are less important than legendary effects (particularly with class sets, though some sets are really unleashed by one particular item or another,) and so it might be nice to expand the "Ancient" legendary system to allow more of a sense of progress.

Storywise, there's plenty that's open. Given Malthael's hypocritical use of the Black Soulstone, all seven Lords of Hell are now unleashed. Likewise, Malthael himself may be dead, but as an Angel he should be able to return from the Crystal Arch (though hopefully the rest of the Angels are standing there, waiting to lock him up for what he did.)

Imperius has always kind of presented himself as a potential villain, given his disdain for humanity, though he was willing to help us fight Malthael, which suggests he might begrudgingly accept us.

However, I think the most interesting direction to take the Diablo series - assuming we don't find out about some other powerful entity outside of angels and demons - would be to delve into the history of the Nephalem. Humanity's ancestors (and the player characters in Diablo III) are effectively gods. Neither inherently good nor inherently evil (some, like Rathma, appear to have been inherently neutral,) the Nephalem could promise a far more complex story and environment for Diablo.

In terms of new features, I think the obvious thing with a new expansion would be a new class. The Crusader was a fantastic addition in Reaper of Souls (becoming my favorite class.) I'm not exactly sure what bases we don't have covered. I don't know much about Diablo II's Druid, but perhaps we could have a more nature-based class. The awesomeness that is Xul in Heroes of the Storm kind of makes me want a Necromancer, but that of course is already well-covered by the Witch Doctor, and on top of that, I don't know if they've ever repeated a class other than the Barbarian.

Anyway, we'll probably not hear too much about this for a while, possibly until this year's Blizzcon (which is of course several months away.)

The Scope of Lore in Diablo vs Warcraft

To a certain extent, my taste in fantasy might be shaped by the fact that I never had a very religious upbringing. While both sides of my family had Abrahamic traditions (one Jewish, one Catholic,) there was never a strong pressure to really conform to either of those. While not religious exactly, I've always been fascinated by the philosophical distinction between the mundane and the supernatural. In a way, that's kind of distinction between science fiction and fantasy. The best I can do to define the two is that in fantasy, the supernatural is ultimately mysterious. If you can sufficiently analyze magic, it just becomes a new set of physical laws. But in a science fiction setting, you can propose beings of such tremendous power and sophistication that, to us humans, their technology can only be appreciated as a sort of magic.

It's an interesting philosophical question whether technology and magic are inevitably on a spectrum and that the only distinction is our understanding of it or if the two are fundamentally different things.

The Warcraft Universe has plenty of magical stuff in it, but I actually think that if we consider this distinction (whether magic can ever be truly understood) the difference between Sci-Fi and Fantasy, then Warcraft actually leans a bit into the science-fiction side of things.

I'd hesitate to say that it's truly science fiction, though, because there are some things that remains mysterious. Much like Star Wars, it fits into the hybrid "Science Fantasy" genre, though Star Wars, having a more traditional science fiction setting, is generally thought to be from that genre, whereas Warcraft's setting is more similar (at least at first glance) to the Tolkien-style grand fantasy tradition. But unlike Tolkien, where there is a very clear creator of the universe who is ineffable, no individual in the Warcraft universe appears to be entirely, independently supernatural.

That's arguable, of course. But if we try to come up with the most powerful figures in Warcraft, the best answers are probably the Titans and the Old Gods.

The Old Gods seem to come from the Void, but they aren't void beings the same way that Voidwalkers are (the Voidwalkers could potentially seem "inherently" magical, but unlike the Old Gods, I suspect they are not really sentient, living beings.) The Old Gods seem to actually be organic in some sense, which suggests they are less truly "gods" than really Lovecraftian aliens. They are so fundamentally different from the animal life that we Azerothians are familiar with, and despite not being humanoid in appearance, are clearly far more advanced and intelligent than any mortals on Azeroth. They use void magic in a way that we could never hope to, and this makes it seem as if they are truly one with the Void - but I don't actually think they are. Instead, they are channeling the power of the void in such a sophisticated way (perhaps a way that has become part of their physiology to the extent that they don't even need to consciously "cast" shadow magic) that a mere mortal can only look upon them with awe (and madness.)

On the other side, you have the Titans, who almost go out of their way to demonstrate that, while incredibly powerful, their power is based in a scientific, technological understanding of the universe. They use magic the same way we use electricity. It's an understood force that behaves in ways that are predictable if used correctly, and they engineer with it. It seems as if they even might use the Holy Light as one of their tools.

Demons, it appears, are simply races that were once mortals and were inundated with Arcane energy (something that mortals don't really understand, but the Titans probably do.) The original demons were mutated and addicted to the Arcane, and Sargeras somehow altered this energy to create Fel, which empowers his Burning Legion to be even more dangerous and destructive than the demons he was originally fighting.

Finally, Naaru seem to be intelligent while also fundamentally attached to the Holy Light (tied to it just as the Voidwalkers are to the Void,) and that's another place you could say my argument breaks down. That's assuming, of course, that we won't discover in the future that someone (perhaps the Titans) created the Naaru. Really, explaining the Naaru as essentially magic robot angels would make more sense than any other explanation I could give you.

One of the key ways in which Warcraft seems to exist in a broader, secular worldview is that there might be demon lords or "gods," but they aren't inherent to their domains. Nozdormu was, for all intents and purposes, the Azerothian God of Time for most of his life, but it isn't like time itself wouldn't run without him. Instead, it was a kind of ministry position. It's like the distinction between being a Fertility Goddess or being the Secretary of Agriculture.

Also, while there are important historical events that are alluded to, there's no real official "beginning" of time in Warcraft. Even if many, most, or even all of the playable mortal races were ultimately created by the Titans (and then mutated through various things like the Curse of Flesh or later the Plague of Undeath or the Worgen Curse,) there's no "In the beginning." We still know very little about the Titans and how they came to be. We don't know how the Old Gods came to be. We're only just starting to scratch the surface on how the Demons came to be. But the universe itself plausibly could have come about the same way that modern physics believes ours did - a Big Bang, particles coalescing into atoms and then stars and planets forming, and then some unlikely chemical combination that could replicate itself and mutate and eventually become what we recognize as life.

Diablo is very different.

First of all, it's binary. There are really only two sides to the supernatural coin - good and evil, angels and demons. Outside of Sanctuary, as far as we can tell, there's really nothing other than those two types of things (though I do think there's some sort of mystery about dragons.) The Angels and the Demons have been waging war against each other ever since they arose, and they were both created out of the remnants of the ur-Good, Anu, and the ur-Evil, Tathamet.

The Nephalem, and their human descendants, introduced moral ambiguity to the universe. Born of both angelic and demonic ancestors, the Nephalem had the potential for both good and evil, and were actually practically Gods.

And that's, I think, the saving grace of Diablo's lore. With good and evil being so strictly separated, it becomes a pretty uninteresting cycle of the same things over and over. But in Diablo III's expansion (that made the game good, finally,) we got to see some very interesting twists that made good seem evil, or perhaps evil seem good?

Humans are half-Angel, half-Demon. Demons are, fundamentally, evil. At the end of Vanilla Diablo III, all seven of the Lords of Hell are trapped within Zoltan Kulle's black soulstone. Thus, it would seem that the only remaining evil in the universe is the demonic half of each human. Malthiel, the Angel of Wisdom, goes down to Sanctuary to retrieve the Soulstone and attempts to use it to siphon off all the demonic souls in Sanctuary - which would literally involve tearing every human's soul in half, annihilating them.

What's really fascinating to me about this is that in one sense, if you think of evil as a real thing that has a kind of tangible substance to it, Malthiel is right to do what he is doing. He has an opportunity to rid the universe of all evil.

But in a much saner way of looking at things, it's clear that what Malthiel is doing is evil. Evil is not some substance that can be cleaned away. It is  cruelty and callousness and violence against the innocent.

And ultimately, this casts the entire Eternal Conflict into a kind of new light. Before there were humans - specifically, before there were mortals - what really made one side of the Conflict better than the other? Each sought to destroy the other, and each had its own way of doing things, but outside of the context of day to day human morality, how could we even seriously call one side good and one evil?

Once presented with humans, Angels and Demons were given an opportunity to demonstrate the value of their side. Angels for the most part seem to be a lot nicer - Tyrael in particular, but most of them seem to be capable of sympathy for us.

But Malthiel did not show that, and his actions made him something just as evil as anything that came out of the Burning Hells.

I don't know what the future plans for the Diablo series are - whether they're going to do another expansion or start working on Diablo IV - but Malthiel opened the door to much more interesting stories. Then there are the Nephalem themselves - reborn into the world, we might see the old good/evil dichotomy break down as new Gods - more powerful than the Archangels or Demon Lords of old - start to throw their weight around.

Tomorrow - Game Systems and Q&A Panel. For now: Other news from Blizzcon!

Tomorrow we'll be getting a panel dedicated to game systems. Given the massive work that they'll be doing for level scaling in Legion, I think there's a good chance that that will be the main focus.

Still, we could find out some stuff about class changes and maybe even professions. We also need some more info on how the artifact weapons will work.

The Beta is supposed to launch within weeks (which could mean mid or late December for all we know) so I wonder if they don't really want to bother getting into the nitty-gritty of class details until the Beta patch notes are up.

We'll get some tidbits out of the Q&A, but to be honest, we usually don't learn a ton of big info from those, as they generally like to announce that stuff on their own terms.

Still, I'd say that this Blizzcon had some pretty big surprises up its sleeves, so I'm not disappointed. I really did not expect to see the cinematic this early.

While I'm 99.99% certain I'm going to be getting Legion at this point, I still can't really bring myself to pre-order a game until it has a release date. I can't imagine Demon Hunters will be available until the 7.0 patch, and I'm sure there will be a date by then. And then, well, Futurama Fry money meme etc.

Also, I still have a level 90 boost. Wonder if that will stack with a 100 one?

Oh man, there's a ton of other stuff from other games.

Heroes of the Storm is getting three warcraft characters. These are Genn Greymane, who transforms from wolf form to human in combat (that might be a real-money purchase for me,) a Dryad whose name I can't remember, and Cho'gall, who's the weirdest hero yet. See, one player plays as Cho while the other plays as Gall. Also, Cho'gall will be gained not through money or gold, but through playing with people playing Cho'gall. (Guess I should play a bunch tonight to try to get that.)

There's also a new battleground called Towers of Doom, some cool new skins (including an Arthas as Castlevania-style Dracula one) and also a hint that the Headless Horseman might be coming as well (though he could be a map feature for the new battleground.)

There's also a new Arena mode, which I assume is more of a deathmatch.

Hearthstone is getting a new expansion/adventure set called League of Explorers, which seems to be, well, Adventure-Movie-themed.

SCII is getting Legacy of the Void in a few days, so not a lot of news there.

Diablo III doesn't have an expansion to announce, but there is a new patch with new areas coming.

And Overwatch will be buy-to-play, with all 21 heroes available from the start and all maps. There's a special addition with cosmetic rewards. It'll also be available for Xbox One and PS4. Also some new heroes were announced.

And that's about it, as far as I know. Phew.