Every year, the High Priests of Blizzard gather their flock and descend upon Anaheim, California to profess their faith and devotion. They call it BlizzCon, and they bill it as some celebration of gaming. Obviously, it’s just a front ritualistic activity. I’ve seen the pictures. People dressed as demons and orcs and pandas. There’s even a Weird Al Yankovic sighting this year. It’s obviously pagan in origin.
I have never been a full convert to their cult, but I have studied their scriptures and enjoy some of their wares. As a fan of Diablo, Overwatch, and World of Warcraft, I was interested in what they would be showing off this year. So for the fourth time in its history, I purchased a Virtual Ticket to watch BlizzCon live. Going in person would be dangerous; being so close to the belly of the beast can me narcotic. At least in my home, with my landlord’s killer Chihuahuas standing guard, I am safe. The Demon Hunters will never get past those ankle biters!
BlizzCon 2016 was an intriguing event. With no other major announcements expected, other than the reveal of Overwatch’s Sombra, no one knew quite what to expect. Rumors always abound, of course, and there were many here as well, primarily around the Diablo series. What did Blizzard have in store? I was curious to find out.
Here are the announcements Blizzard did make during the opening keynote on the main stage. I will list them in order of reveal.
World of Warcraft
There was no serious news expected for Blizzard’s cash cow MMORPG. After Legion’s successful launch earlier this year, the only thing anyone expected was more promises about further content in later patches. Patch 7.1 dropped before the festivities, added a new 5-man Mythic dungeon in Karazhan as well as a new raid, Trial of Valor. That’ll keep hardcore players busy for a little bit, while giving a “filthy casual” like me more to look forward to.
At a later panel, Blizzard made good on its promise and detailed its plans for Patch 7.1.5 and 7.2. Patch 7.1.5 will be a small update. It will add Mists of Pandaria dungeons to its Timewalking events, which allow players to play older dungeons in level-appropriate gear for bonuses. The Bawler’s Guild will also add new bosses and introduce “raid” bosses that require onlookers to join in the battle. There will also be “micro-holidays”, small 1- or 2-day events meant to shake up the tedium of grinding world quests.
Patch 7.2, called “The Tomb of Sargeras”, will be more substantial. It will replace world quests in the Broken Isles with Legion Assault events. These quests are meant to help push back the Burning Legion invasion. In addition, the 12 class halls will join together to form a new faction: the Armies of Legionfall. This faction will require that players build a new base (smells like garrisons in Warlords of Draenor!) All this is part of a new set of achievements players will have to perform in order to unlock flying in the Broken Isles.
Of course, Patch 7.2 will introduce a new raid. The Tomb of Sargeras raid will include nine bosses and will progress from the Nighthold raid, still locked in Patch 7.1. The Tomb of Sargeras will also house a four-boss dungeon, available in both heroic and Mythic difficulties. Finally, the current Mythic-only dungeons will receive heroic versions for those who haven’t been able to enter them.
For PvP players, a new Brawl mode will be added. The first one discussed was Packed House, which will take a standard 3v3 arena and dump two 15-player teams in it. The resulting pile of bodies will please a Braveheart fan. There will also be a winter Arathi Basin brawlm where the classic PvP map is enveloped in a blizzard, reducing visibility severely.
I gotta say, Blizzard promised more constant content for World of Warcraft and they are delivering!
Overwatch
Blizzard started its discussion of its ultra-successful hero FPS with a look back at Overwatch’s launch day, which was also very successful. Only…wait…what’s that glitching? Is Blizzard’s presentation crashing…ohhhhhh wait!
Blizzard used the retrospective as a nice little subterfuge for its REAL reveal: Sombra, Overwatch’s new hero. She’s been teased for months as part of a cool ARG campaign by Blizzard, and a pic leaked earlier this week showed off her final look. She was officially unveiled in an Animated Short that interrupted the retrospective. It showed her, Reaper, and Widowmaker on a mission to eliminate a target. In the short, she shows off her teleporting and hacking skills.A look at her role and abilities suggests that she will be fun to play as.
Sombra will be playable next week on the Public Test Realm (PTR). No word yet on a full public release.
It turns out that Sombra wasn’t the only Overwatch news. The biggest announcement was Arcade mode, a way to offer new modes, rulesets, maps, and challenges. It will also be available next week on the PTR.
Arcade mode starts by assimilating the current Weekly Brawls and then adding more. In addition to the usual 6v6 Brawls, Arcade mode will offer 1v1 Mystery Duels, which picks a random hero for each round. Players will have to battle each other as that hero in a best-of-nine format. This mode will be played on a smaller map, named Eco Point: Antarctica, home to Mei’s research facility. Arcade mode will also offer the 3v3 Elimination mode, which is a best-of-five format. In this mode, players pick their team composition and are locked into that configuration until the next round.
The last confirmed Arcade mode addition is No Limits. It is 6v6 and it is similar to how Quickplay is now. No Limits will allow you to construct a team featuring all Junkrats or Reinhardts if you wish. Why is this being done here if it’s already allowed in Quickplay? Blizzard wants to institute the same one-hero limit in Quickplay that is in Competitive Mode. For those who want to rock three D.vas, No Limit will be your new destination.
During a panel, Overwatch game director Jeff Kaplan also discussed other Brawl ideas they were kicking around. One of them would restrict players to only Lucio and Roadhog, while another would only allow Lucio and Reinhardt.
There is one other benefit to Arcade mode: it will allow players to earn extra loot boxes outside of experience grinding. If a player wins three matches across all Arcade modes in one week, they will earn a loot box. Up to three loot boxes can be earned by a player per week using this method.
For Overwatch fans, BlizzCon was a treasure trove of news.
StarCraft II
The venerable RTS is reaching the zenith of its existence. Blizzard announced during the BlizzCon opening keynote that StarCraft II will see the third and final set of the Nova missions released on November 22nd. In addition, there will be a new co-op commander: Alexei Stukov. He is an infested Terran captain and is the vice-admiral of the UED Expeditionary Fleet. He employs infested units, Terrans infected with a hyper-evolutionary virus by the Zerg.
In other StarCraft news, Blizzard announced a new partnership with Google’s DeepMind aimed at AI enhancement. Blizzard will be releasing the StarCraft II API to research centers like DeepMind. The idea is to see if today’s Ai can learn to play a game as complex and reliant on quick thinking as StarCraft II. The hope is that they can recreate the success of AlphaGo, an AI machine that is able to play the game board game Go at an expert level.
I understand that research teams like DeepMind are constantly trying to push the envelope with Ai design. I also understand that advances in AI can one day lead to very beneficial things in the future. But…uhh..have you folks ever heard of something called SKYNET??? The robots will soon overtake the planet…AND YOU’RE TEACHING THEM STARCRAFT II SO THEY CAN PLOT THEIR STRATEGIES????
Ok, back under control. Back to the recap.
E-Sports
I am not a fan of e-sports in general. I am, however, aware of its meteoric growth in the last year alone.
Although I have known tangentially of Blizzard’s presence in the e-sports scene, it took blizzCon 2016 for me to formally realize that they are absolute TITANS in the scene. At this year’s BlizzCon alone, they will be wrapping up the finals of e-sport tournaments for FIVE of their own games: Overwatch, Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm, StarCraft II, and World of Warcraft Arena. If I’m 100% honest, I didn’t even know the latter was an e-sport! The total purse to be handed out at this year’s events will be $2.7 million, and Blizzard claims to have awarded over $8 million this year! Maybe I should work on my 3v3 skills…
Blizzard is not even remotely done, however. During the keynote presentation, they announced Overwatch League, a new competitive league fashioned after other professional leagues like the NFL and NBA. There will be teams representing cities around the globe like franchises. The players representing those teams will be picked from the current pool of players. Combines will be held in 2017 where team owners will scout prospective players. The best players will be signed by these teams.
There are still a lot of things to work out, however. First and foremost, which cities will host teams? Will there be a draft, or are all top players free agents? Assuming a regular season-playoff format like other pro sports, how will the league be arranged? Will they be separated into conferences or divisions? Will there be different leagues for countries or regions? What will determine the playoff contenders? Will the players be unionized? These are just a few of the things that came out the top of my head.
Still, the prospect of anyone becoming a professional Overwatch player is a very intriguing prospect for many. The concept is in its early stages, but it looks very promising.
Heroes of the Storm
I’m not a MOBA fan, and I have yet to play Blizzard’s take on the genre. I may remedy that soon;, as Heroes of the Storm is adding two new characters from World of Warcraft to is burgeoning roster. One of them is a somber addition for me, given the circumstances of Legion, but one I would love to command: Varian Wrynn, the late King of Stormwind.
(Note: I didn’t put up a spoiler warning for that tidbit because expansion has been out since August. If you didn’t know by now and I spoiled it, tough! You’ve had two months; you obviously didn’t care enough to find out already!)
Varian is the first multi-class her in the game. Players can customize him so that he can assume one of up to six different roles. That allows players to tailor him to their play style and needs. This is a great feature for veteran players. Wrynn will be available November 22nd.
The second character, Ragnaros, has his own tricks. In addition to being a pile of napalm with arms that clears lanes with lava and hurls meteors, he is able to take over any fort or keep, regardless of whether or not it’s standing and become huge, looking imposing as hell as he smashes enemy units. Ragnaros will arrive sometime in December.
The intro video for Heroes showed Wrynn going toe-to-toe against Ragnaros. After seeing Wrynn take down a monstrous Fel Reaver singlehandedly, I’ll put money down on Wrynn again the hothead.
Blizzard also announced the Nexus Challenge, which will run from November 15th to January 4th. This event will encourage players to play with their friends in Co-op vs AI, Quick Match, Unranked Draft and Ranked modes. After 15 completed games, players will get an Oni Genji skin for Overwatch and Zarya and Oni Kenji portraits in Heroes of the Storm. After 30 games togerther, players will earn Auriel, Greymane, Kerrigan, Li-Ming, the Orochi hovercycle mount, and a 30-day Heroes if the Storm Stimpack.
Maybe I can get my son to join me…
Hearthstone
Another game I don’t play, but at least I did try it for a bit. Blizzard introduced the new expansion pack for Hearthstone, Mean Streets of Gadgetzan. Due in early December, the expansion takes us to the “jewel” of Tanaris, where shifty folk wander about.
The expansion introduces three new classes to the collectible card game: the Grimy Goons, the Kabal, and the Lotus Assassins. Each of them offer new things. My favorite is the Grimy Goons’ new card, the piranha launcher. Yes, it’s a gun that fires carnivorous fish! ‘MURICA! The Kabal Talonpriestess offers health boosts to friendly minions. Finally, Lotus Assassins have a card that offers stealth abilities after killing someone.
For veterans of Hearthstone here’s another new deck to tickle your fancy.
Diablo III
Of all Blizzard’s games, it was the Diablo series that had the rumors swirling around it. Entire conspiracy theories proving the imminent announcement of Diablo IV ruled the interwebs for a time before the conference kicked off. Of course, another leaked photo, released along with Sombra’s, sent everyone off in a different direction: was that the necromancer, one of the heroes of Diablo II? It sure as hell looked like him. What did that mean? Is Diablo III getting another expansion? Is he part of a patch? Is it something else?
We knew Blizzard had to do something special for its beloved series. After all, it is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. Well, Blizzard decided to celebrate its upcoming 20th year anniversary by returning players to Tristram, where the journey first began.
Out next week in Diablo III PTR, the Darkening of Tristram will return players to the Cathedral, the original dungeon in Diablo. Blizzard is recreating the original, offering players 16 levels of dungeon crawling and a reunion with the original four bosses. They are doing more than just recreating it, however. They will also be recreating the original’s grainy, pixelated look. Dubbed “glorious retrovision” by chief development officer Frank Pearce, the dungeon will have visual filters applied in homage to the O.G. The game’s movement will also be restricted to 8 directions, just like the original. I don’t care how it looks; I just wanna play it!
The Darkening of Tristram will require the Reaper of Souls expansion, so PC players must be sure it is applied before receiving the patch. Since the only requirement is RoS, I am assuming owners of the Ultimate Evil Edition for consoles will be seeing the patch as well. Blizzard has been good about patching those versions.
Blizzard also announced two new zones for players to traipse through while performing bounties in Adventure Mode: Shadow Moors and the Temple of the Moor. That will also be part of the anniversary patch.
The big news brings us back to the aforementioned leaked picture. Blizzard formally announced that the necromancer will be coming to Diablo III…as paid DLC. No price was announced, and the only date given was “2017.” Pearce also mentioned that he will arrive alongside “other great features.”
The necromancer. My absolute favorite playable hero in the Diablo universe. Mine for a fee.
If I’m allowed to stand on my soapbox for a bit…
Although I’m not a complete Luddite and do accept that publishers want to find new money-making venues, the thought of DLC characters for Diablo III seems a bit sacrilegious to me. It’s a feeling akin to the feeling I had when Blizzard started populating its cash shop with World-of-Warcraft mounts and pets. Actually, it’s more egregious there, because WoW is a subscription service that makes them beaucoup bucks already. Still, it’s an icky feeling I’m not too comfortable with.
Icky feelings aside, my mind still wonders some more. Will they offer more heroes, like the Druid or Amazon? Will they introduce new heroes, including archangels or reformed demons? And how much will they want to charge? Fine, I’m okay with them wanting to make their money, but why do I feel like I’m going to have to make excuses for my purchase? I hate DLC characters, but they have my nuts in a vice with this one.
Well, it’s still cool that they’re bringing the necromancer into Diablo III. That addition, just like all the others Blizzard announced, means the fanatics and cultists will return home from their pilgrimage satisfied. I am mostly pleased as well. At the very least, I know I will be getting more enjoyment from games that I love to play. Who knows? Maybe I’ll spring for the necromancer when he comes out. Maybe I’ll even forgive myself for giving the Cult of Blizzard its tithe. If not, there’s always vodka…
