Blizzard Worldwide Invitational Summary

I have been back from the Blizzard Worldwide Invitational for a few days now, and had a chance to digest all the information that was presented there.

First of all, and the most important part for most people, was the announcement that Blizzard is working on Diablo 3 and we were also presented with some in-game footage of the game. I was never a huge fan of the Diablo franchise, although I did buy and enjoy the second game in the series. And the demo of this third incarnation impressed me. The characters in the game are intentionally overpowered, they showed a barbarian fighting hordes of enemies at the same time, all the while jumping in the middle of the fight, knocking back his enemies and even smashing down walls, burying the mobs under them. Looks like Blizzard will get more of my money when that game is released.

Of course the most important part for me was the different panels containing information about Wrath of the Lich King. There was a presentation about the classes and the new abilities and talents they will have, including the new Death Knight class, one about dungeons and raids and one about PvP. Finally there was a generic Q&A session where anyone could ask any question they wanted about the game.

There were some interesting changes to the classes, I'm sure most of you have already seen 'em on the different WoW fansites. Highlights for me including talent trees for hunter pets, combined Frostfire Bolt for mages, Hex for shamans, Titan's Grip (dual wielding 2H weapons) for warriors and of course the totally awesome demon form for warlocks. Especially the story behind Titan's Grip is interesting, because that talent was originally included by a fan in fake patch notes for the previous expansion, The Burning Crusade. Apparently Blizzard liked it so much, that they included in Wrath of the Lich King.

Blizzard also presented 3 new dungeons in the expansion. One max-level dungeon called The Oculus looked pretty impressive. It'll have mounted combat, on dragons, with each dragon fulfulling a particular role in a team. So you'll have tank dragons, healer dragons and damage dealing dragons. It's perfectly possible for the healer to pick the tank dragon or vice versa, so they'll be able to experience the game from another viewpoint.

The second dungeon was called The Halls of Stone, which is a level 77-79 dungeon, the first one of the Ulduar set of dungeons. This one is more conventional, but lore fans more particularly fans of Ulduman will be excited to learn that the story about the stone discs is continued here.

The last dungeon they presented was another Caverns of Time instance, namely The Culling of Stratholme. Fans of Warcraft 3 will recognize this as the scene where Arthas kills all the citizens of Stratholme after they've eaten poisoned grain, infected with the Scourge disease. The player will get to fight alongside Arthas as things go wrong in the doomed city. I've always been a fan of Caverns of Time instances, so I'm pretty excited to see how this one pans out.

Blizzard also revealed some of their more high-level plans for the expansion, such as dungeon implementation strategy and priorities for the future. A few keywords include more non-linear content, you'll be able to go to the third boss before the second one etc., tighter level ranges for the different dungeons, such as for example the Halls of Stone instance which is aimed at levels 77-79, so they can create their content more specifically aimed at certain levels which should improve the experience. They also want to aim content updates more specifically at what the players want. As an example, they said that in retrospect, they would have preferred to release Zul'Aman before Mount Hyjal/Black Temple as it is content that is accessible to more players. How the hardcore guilds are going to react to that, is a different matter of course.

Furthermore they confirmed that they thought heroic versions of the dungeons were a success and they are going to keep the concept for the expansion, with the one difference that you won't need a certain reputation level, heroics will be available right away for everyone. They wanted to make rep grinds less hard though, so they're introducing a "championing" system through tabards. So for example by wearing a Cenarion Expedition tabard, you get a small amount of CE rep from killing mobs in a dungeon, even if it's a Sha'tar dungeon.

I personally got to play an alpha version of the expansion, and so far it looks like it's more of the same. Which of course isn't as bad as it sounds. WoW is a great game and it will appeal to a lot of people who just want some new content to explore. I played around a bit with the warlock demon form, which looks just like demon form Illidan, and it was really fun, even though it seemed like it was a little overpowered. We'll see if Blizzard introduces some fixes to balance them out more. Though I have to say, I played with an enhancement shaman for a bit as well, and she was taking down mobs in a couple of hits too, so… I did get a sneak peak at a potential new fan favourite mob of Northrend, the Gorlocs, which seem like a distant cousin of the Murlocs except they have big heads, no neck, and they hop around like frogs instead of running.

I also very briefly played StarCraft 2. Not so excited about this game yet, it looks like it plays just like the original game, except with updated graphics. But I guess that's probably just what the fans want.

Of special interest is of course the goody bag, which contained among other things a very nice Diablo 3 hardcover notebook, a WoW Card Game Starter Kit and of course a card which contains a beta key for an upcoming new Blizzard title (we don't know which one yet) and a key for an in-game pet. The pet has been revealed as a miniature version of the Archangel Tyrael from Diablo 3. The bag itself was also pretty impressive, a stylish black canvas shoulder bag.

All in all a very fun event, and certainly worthy of another visit should they decide to have the WWI in Europe again.