blizzcon-2009 posts

During out BlizzCon 2009 coverage last week we checked out the Pocket Books booth where they were showing off their previous and upcoming novels based on Blizzard's games. Among the books featured was StarCraft: Heaven's Devils, an upcoming hardcover prose novel from author William C Dietz.

Now Pocket Books has posted up an except from that novel on its web site. Designed to be a prequel to StarCraft II, the novel will be tell the story of the first meeting between Jim Raynor (hero of the first StarCraft game) and Tychus Findlay (the space marine that's the subject of the first StarCraft II CGI trailer). The novel is due in stores in mid-December.

BlizzCon 2009 happened less than a week ago, but the announcements still resonate among fans. Big premieres included revealing that the Monk class would be included in Diablo III. Longtime players or the series might recall that there was a Monk class included in the Hellfire expansion for the original Diablo. However, that wasn't a Blizzard-made expansion, and is therefore not included in the game's official canon or lore.

The new class will be a fast-paced melee fighter that can chain together moves into devastating combos. There's still no word on when fans can expect the game to release, but we're hoping it will come out sometime in 2010. You can see the Monk in action in the Diablo III gameplay video shown after the jump.

Download HD Diablo III Monk Trailer (64 MB)
Download HD Diablo III Monk Gameplay Video (354 MB)
Check out all Diablo III downloads

When we got a chance to go hands-on with the newly revealed Diablo III Monk character at BlizzCon this weekend, we go to see blood. Lots of blood. Blood in extraordinary quantities (to quote Alan Moore). Yes, the action-RPG sequel will indeed be a showcase for developer Blizzard to see lots of creatures blow up a lot of the red stuff.

But what about countries where the red stuff in games is frowned upon? Over at Wired, Diablo III lead designer Jay Wilson states, " Definitely for regions like Germany and Australia, we will have to change blood if we're going to sell there." And its looking like the game may not be sold in China at all with Wilson saying, "Because a lot of the restrictions there are really... we may not be able to do them. It may not be possible." Wilson also says that Diablo III will have parental controls that will allow anyone to tone down the blood and change its color.

If you, for one reason or another, you haven't had a chance to try out the Crusader Coliseum introduced in the World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King 3.2 update, this gameplay video shown at BlizzCon 2009 lets you know what you're missing.

Download HD WoW: Wrath of the Lich King BlizzCon 2009 Gameplay Video (110 MB)

Well, BlizzCon 2009 is winding down for this year and Big Download has been very impressed with how Blizzard has handled the event. Having 26,000 Blizzard fans gather in one place but everything seemed to run like clockwork. All the panels and events started on time, the lines were full to play the new and upcoming games from the company and lots of unique stuff was sold at the Blizzard story, with lots of sell-outs of items

We have some pictures we took from today's events at BlizzCon to show you and that will in fact be our concluding port directly from the event. Make sure you check out WoW.com's continuing coverage of BlizzCon 2009 (including photos from Sharon Osbourne's husband's concert).

Blizzard's final StarCraft II panel at BlizzCon 2009 was on gameplay. Here are just some of the highlights:

StarCraft II's single player campaign will feature more story and go deeper into the characters than previous Blizzard RTS games. There will also be more choices in terms of which missions to take on and what upgrades and weapons you can take with you. There will also be more unique missions with different kinds of goals and challenges.

Mine Your Own Business is the name of one of these missions, set on a volanic and hostile planet. The map will have some of the new features of the game's engine and map tools such as two distinct cliff types, some new water tools (used to rise lava levels) and new lighting tools to make the map look more realistic.

Check out the jump for more info on the panel:

Many folks thought that Blizzard might reveal the details about their next MMO at BlizzCon 2009. Unfortunately, Blizzard "only" announced the next World of Warcraft expansion pack. However Blizzard's Rob Pardo gave some tiny hints about their process for making their next MMO in chatting today on the DirectTV BlizzCon pay-per-view broadcast.

Pardo, the head of Blizzard's game design, stated that they started their process on the next MMO by having meetings on what ideas the team might have for the game. He admitted that they discussed ideas like StarCraft-like MMO or a Diablo-like MMO as well as ideas like an MMO RTS game or an MMO FPS game. Eventually Pardo said that as a result of these meetings they leaned toward ideas that everyone involved agreed would be best for their next MMO. Pardo said that they are now past the technology and art stage and are now developing actual game prototypes for the MMO. Naturally there's no word on when Blizzard will reveal any concrete details for the game, much less a release date.

As we reported earlier, today's BlizzCon's so-called "StarCraft II Lore panel" was actually a StarCraft II voice actor panel, where it was revealed that Tricia Helfer will voice Sarah Kerrigan in the sequel. Robert Clotworthy was also on the panel talking about returning to the role of Jim Raynor after voicing the role in the original StarCraft over 10 years ago. Chris Metzen, Blizzard's VP of creative development, moderated the panel.

Other actors on the panel include Fred Tatasciore, a veteran voice actor who plays two roles in StarCraft II (Zeratul and Swann). Next on the voice actor panel was Neil Kaplan, the gravely voice behind Tychus Findlay in the game. Dave Fennoy was up next; he plays the new character role of Gabriel Tosh. Finally James Harper, a veteran of the original game, returns for StarCraft II in the role of Arcturus Meigsk. As we previously reported, well known Warner Bros. Animation voice director Andrea Romano has those duties for StarCraft II

Check out the jump for more on the panel

Blizzard has said that 26,000 people bought tickets for BlizzCon 2009. That means that the show, at $125 per ticket, generate $3.25 million in revenue. That's not counting the 50,000 people in 100 countries that Blizzard said bought the pay-per-view coverage on either DirecTV on via the BlizzCon's web streaming service. That means more revenue to the tune of nearly $2 million from the broadcast (at $39.99 per person).

The Anaheim Convention Center is pretty much packed to capacity for the event this year even though Blizzard limited the number of tickets sold for the event. During the BlizzCon DirecTV broadcast Blizzard' VP Paul Sams said that the reason they picked Anaheim as the location was that it was near to Blizzard''s home base of Irvine CA. As such moving such a huge event to another location would be a big task. However, Sams did say that if BlizzCon continues to grow they would have to seriously consider moving to a larger convention center.

BlizzCon 2009 held an open Q&A panel with a ton of Blizzard's team members from Diablo III answering questions about the next game in the action-RPG series. Here are some of the highlights:

• While the team is not talking about Player Vs Player gameplay in Diablo III at the moment they did say they want to avoid the "go hostile at any time" type of gameplay that was a part of the first two games in the series. The feeling is that kind of gameplay ruins the co-op modes.
• The new Battle.net system will allow for a more sophisticated matchmaking system for Diablo III.
• The designers do have plans for more variety in quests in the new game.
• The dev team have some long term plans for the Diablo universe's Paladins but they would not go into details (sorry, no word if it will be a playable character)
• They also want to support players who play the game "hardcore"
• There are no plans to support user interface add-ons.
• The gold system in Diablo III is planned to be improved and changed compared to Diablo III in terms of their use to buy items.
• Randomly generated items are at the heart of the Diablo universe, according to the dev team. Unique items may have some different properties in Diablo III but will still be prominent.

Check out even more info after the jump: