MMO-Champion

Double Treasure Goblin Is Event Live! Hearthstone Patch 9.4 - Marin the Fox, Kobolds Pre-Order, New Brawl Cards Greater Invasion Boss - Inquisitor Meto Inquisitor Meto is up this week, rewarding item level 930 gear. World Boss - Ana-Mouz Ana-Mouz is up as this week's Broken Isles world boss. Weekly Event - Wrath of the Lich King Timewalking Wrath of the Lich King Timewalking is back this week. The weekly quest from Archmage Timear rewards a Accolade of Victory, Seal of Broken Fate, and Cache of Fel Treasures. You can find Auzin in old Dalaran. Don't forget to keep working towards Reins of the Eclipse Dragonhawk, Bridle of the Ironbound Wraithcharger, and Yu'lei, Daughter of Jade! Reins of the Infinite Timereaver can also drop from any Timewalking dungeon boss. View the full article

Exploring Diablo's Community Panel Overview Hearthstone Patch 9.4 - Marin the Fox, Kobolds Pre-Order, New Brawl Cards Patch 7.3.2 Hotfixes - November 6 Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums) Class Halls The mission "Another Rat Problem" should again be available, and awards pet supplies with a bonus pet supplies reward. Dungeons and Raids Court of Stars Watchful Inquisitor's Searing Glare should be more reliably interrupted by stuns and interrupts. Dragon Soul Fixed a bug that was causing NPCs to disappear in some circumstances. Tomb of Sargeras Fallen Avatar Tainted Essence healing absorb has been reduced to 8% (was 10%). Tainted Essence now cancels upon death. Kil’jaeden Armageddon Hail is now spawned only once in Mythic difficulty. Items The Unstable Portal Emitter should now function again … with predictably unpredictable results. World of Warcraft Interview Recaps Lots of interviews took place at BlizzCon, so we are starting with some recaps today! Trade Chat Interview with Alex Afrasiabi and Chris Robinson Tradechat sat down with Alex Afrasiabi and Chris Robinson to discuss Battle for Azeroth. Dungeon bosses will consist of threats outside the Horde and Alliance conflict. Faction conflict is the foreground and the outside threats are a slow build up in this expansion. Redoing Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms again was an option, however, team realized the narrative was tied to level and decided to use sharding tech to change existing zones for characters 110 and above. Team wanted players to connect with the faction and who they are before the events of Battle for Azeroth so you have a connection to what unfolds. Sharding allows team to take tangible and meaningful places in the world and update them with what is happening in the story. Flying will unlock in a similar way to Legion and Warlords. Team wants players to get familiarity with the world before being able to fly. They learned from Legion though and will tweak it as needed. No plans to have followers or missions at the moment. Team doesn't want to hold on to something for the sake of holding on to it. They want it to work with the story and new content. World quests will extend to the continent not explored by your faction. (i.e Horde: Kul Tiras and Alliance: Zandalar) New World PVP concept could allow (tentatively) for things like bounties in which the longer and more dangerous you become on the opposite faction's continent, the more the other faction is alerted to your presence and encouraged to take you down. (Might not happen) New AI allows players who don't PVP to experience what PVP is like without fighting actual players. Brawls will continue, but not sure on how much it will be expanded. Soloing old content will still be fine with the scaling tech, however, one expansion back could still pose a challenge. Classic servers are still super early in development and so not much is known outside of them happening. Allied races are super fun and people will be pleased with them! Player characters act as heroes from Wacraft 3 in Warfronts Taliesin and Evitel Interview World of Warcraft producers Ray Cobo and Shani Edwards Taliesin and Evitel interviewed producers Ray Cobo and Shani Edwards. No plans for mobile support for Battle for Azeroth at the moment Azerite is similar to artifact power for this expansion No plans for paid loot boxes in WoW right now Circles on the Heart of Azeroth can alternate between damage/healing and utility. Abilities are hand crafted so there isn't much RNG in what you have as options. Every item in a slot that has the same name will have the same ability options. The higher the ilvl, the better the abilities. No plans for getting your own boat. FinalBoss Interviews Ion And Alex FinalBoss sat down with Ion and Alex for an interview as well. Here are the highlights: Team is looking into tweaking the frequency in which warforging/titanforging occurs. Allied races will get full character kits: their own emotes, their own flirts, funnies, exertions, etc. Ideally our current legendaries will taper off in their power as you level towards 120. By the time you reach max level, you will want to replace them with better, newer gear. It would be nice to make flying possible and no loading screen for Silvermoon City but it is not currently slated for the BfA release. Team is trying to figure out how to deal with Allied races being hero classes. They are talking about allowing Dark Iron Dwarves to be Death Knights. It’s possible that there will be some form of missions moving forward. However, it won’t be a central feature like in Warlords. The faction divide is key to the game. That is what makes Warcraft Warcraft. It is not expected to be broken in the future. They have talked about plans for Wrathion for various other things, but currently have no plans for him in BfA. As of now, Warfronts are PVE only. For some classes, their artifact abilities will be incorporated into the spec as baseline or a talent. Others will be eliminated altogether. There is a prevalence of immunities/defensives and the team wants to revisit these and make changes where it makes sense. No plans to re-envision the Moonkin model as of now. No class changes as drastic as Survival Hunters are being planned at this time. The story will definitely build up to a major threat. It will be a ‘slow burn’ that escalates as the expansion progresses. The profession rank system is likely staying. The amount of quest content tied to them may go down, however. They want to give players options to customize their gear and keep crafting relevant. Arcane Torrent and Rocket Jump are being looked at for a re-design. Blue Posts Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums) Artifact Ability and next expansion We haven't nailed down the specifics on which artifact abilities and traits will be carried forward into the next expansion, though we have heard from players that some traits feel like core parts of their rotation now. So, where possible (and feasible), we will be looking into carrying over those traits as talents or passives. Note, this doesn't mean that everything will be carried forward. Look for more specifics on this as we head into beta which, before you ask, I don't have a date for yet either. Soon™ Heroes of the Storm - PTR Notes and Alexstraza A new build is on the Heroes PTR! Highlights of this build include the introduction of Alexstraza and some bug fixes. Overwatch - New PTR Build and Moira A new build has appeared on the Overwatch PTR. Moira, the new support hero announced at Blizzcon, is available for testing! BlizzCon 2017 - Weekend Recap Blizzard released a short recap video of the entire BlizzCon weekend. Dark Legacy Comics #606 - Classic DLC #606 has been released! View the full article

Release Date for Antorus: The Burning Throne Raid Ashtag released a tweet stating the release date of the Antorus Raid will be on November 28. This post was backed up by RhoWOW of Realm Maintenance who spoke to J. Allen Brack, executive producer, and confirmed the date. Christie Golden's Before the Storm Novel Cover Art Del Rey Books tweeted a photo for the cover art of Christie Golden's upcoming novel Before the Storm! Blue Posts Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums) BlizzCon 2017 World of Warcraft Day 2 Wrap-Up Another epic BlizzCon has come to a close. Soon the buzz and hum around the Anaheim Convention Center will just be a fading memory, but oh, what memories have been made! Inside the World of Warcraft The Instance Live!–*Taking you inside World of Warcraft news and discussion, Scott Johnson of fan favorite podcast “The Instance” hosted a live panel* along with Instance regular Patrick Beja, and guests Pat Krane from Convert to Raid, and World of Warcraft’s own Art Director Chris Robinson. The Art of World of Warcraft–*World of Warcraft artists provided an inside look* at character design, animation and world building, special effects including spells and all things that sparkle, environment design, dungeon art, and prop art within Battle for Azeroth. Each artist gave an inside look at their process for getting into the culture of the denizens within these new regions and creating the world that Azeroth’s Heroes will adventure through. DesignCraft | Building Blocks for Level Design–*World of Warcraft designers provided a first-hand look *at the overall process for creating the environments and points of interest within Azeroth that bring the world to life. World of Warcraft Battle for Azeroth Q&A–*Focusing on the newly announced Battle for Azeroth expansion, player questions were gathered from BlizzCon 2017 attendees and community members from around the world to be answered live on the main stage. If you missed it, you can check out the coverage from Wowhead, or watch the VoD* on the BlizzCon site. World of Warcraft Boss Design Workshop–*The WoW encounter team invited the community to peek behind the scenes at their roundtable, where they brainstormed and designed a new dungeon boss from scratch. What would normally take months, was condensed to just a short 60-minute window. Taking Attendees into the Battle for Lordaeron 10,000 lucky BlizzCon attendees were randomly selected to have their character printed in 3D and join the fray as either one of the Horde or the Alliance in the Battle for Lordaeron Diorama. Attendees were able to visit the site here to see if they made it to the battleground. Meet the World of Warcraft Arena 2017 World Champions: ABC! 12 teams from around the globe fought their way to BlizzCon 2017, but in the end, only one could claim the top prize and take home the trophy – and the cash. Congratulations go to ABC who defeated Panda Global to become the World of Warcraft Arena 2017 World Champions! If you missed any of the matches, you can see them all on the BlizzCon.com site. So Long and thanks for another great BlizzCon. We’ll see you in Azeroth! *Virtual Ticket Required View the full article

Blizzcon 2017 Recap Lots of new info this year! Be sure to read each post, watch videos, and stay tuned for more information as we get it. Opening Ceremony Battle for Azeroth is the next World of Warcraft expansion. World of Warcraft: Classic servers announced. Overwatch is getting a new map called Blizzardworld and a new support hero, Moira. New Overwatch Cinematic: Honor and Glory. Hearthstone expansion called Kobolds and Catacombs and new single player mode called Dungeon Run. Heroes of the Storm is getting two new heroes and a bunch of new features. New Heroes of the Storm Cinematic: Dragons of the Nexus Starcraft 2 is going free to play. World of Warcraft Battle for Azeroth Features Trailer Battle for Azeroth Cinematic was released! World of Warcraft: Classic Trailer World of Warcraft - What's Next Panel Recap Battle for Lordaeron kicks off expansion. Teldrassil is burned down by Horde. New Alliance Continent: Kul Tiras New Horde Continent: Zandalar Epic "War Campaign" will tell the story and bring you to the other faction's continent at max level World quests and emissaries are here to stay. Zone scaling in the old world. Expansions now have level ranges that cap. Heart of Azeroth is a new artifact neck that uses Azerite to power up itself and three armor slots. Island Expeditions: 3-player scenarios Warfronts: 20 main faction raids inspired by Warcraft RTS roots Removal of PVP/PVE server rulesets. Personal choice toggle now. 10 dungeons at launch Ul'dir is the first raid. Azshara is part of the story Gameplay and Systems Deep Dive Panel Recap Gain Azerite from playing the game Island Expeditions are role agnostic and have dynamic replayability New AI behaves unpredictably and makes strategic decisions First Warfront is Stromgarde WoW Communities are new social groups that help players of similar interests play together Battle for Azeroth - Allied Races Unlock 6 new race options via quest chains to fight for your faction Alliance: Void Elves, Lightforged Draenei, Dark Iron Dwarves Horde: Highmountain Tauren, Nightborne, Zandalari Trolls More coming after launch Designcraft: Building Blocks of Level Design Panel Recap Panel detailed the process of creating a zone in World of Warcraft Art of World of Warcraft Panel Recap New spell effects for Warlocks are on the way Upright standing orcs are coming as well. Toggle between hunched and upright in the Barber Shop New druid forms for Allied Races capable of being druids Live Q & A with the Developers Stat squish and item squish Unique raid buffs are back and are class specific Titanforging will continue, however, slots affected by the Heart of Azeroth can't warforge/titanforge. More character customization options coming in expansion. Jaina is not a villain, just flawed Void Elves will switch into a void form in combat and have a more normal form when desired. Timewalking will be expanded Flying will unlock similar to Legion The Legion legendary system is gone in Battle for Azeroth Starting bag will increase in size if you have an authenticator attached to your account Worgen/Goblin updates are on the way, but not for 8.0 Players get 6 new character slots per realm. Boss Design Workshop Panel Recap Watch the boss design team discuss mechanics of one of the new bosses in Battle for Azeroth Shadow the Fox Plush announced for charity Overwatch BlizzardWorld Map First Look Trailer New Support Hero: Moira Moira First Look Trailer Biotic Grasp: Primary fire is Regeneration, which is a healing throughput. Controlled by a meter. Secondary fire is Decay, which does damage and fills the meter back up. Small amount of Leech Fade (Shift): A small dash, making her invisible, which also grants movement speed Biotic Orb (E): Pulls out two orbs, then the healing one can be activated by Primary fire, or damage orb by Secondary fire. This orb does AOE healing, bounces around, slows down when it is close to a friendly target Coalescence (Q): Long range frontal beam that heals allies and damages enemies affected by it. This ultimate pierces barriers Reinhardt Origin Story Cinematic: Honor and Glory Overwatch - What's Next Panel Recap BlizzardWorld Map is a hybrid assault/payload map. Coming to PTR soon and going live early next year New skins coming soon in base lootboxes Immortal Orisa Magni Bronzebeard Torbjorn Nova Widowmaker Blackhand Doomfist Barbarian Zarya Butcher Roadhog Crusader Reinhardt Ecopoint Mei Junkertown: The Plan - Creating a New Kind of Overwatch Animation Panel Recap Cinematic team discusses what it takes to bring the Junkertown Cinematic to life. Overwatch: Archives Panel Recap Overwatch team discusses the behind the scenes making of Overwatch Voices of Blizzard - United Nations of Overwatch Panel Recap Overwatch voice actors interviewed on their characters Hearthstone Kobolds and Catacombs Trailer was released. Dungeon Run is a new single player mode Defeat bosses and collect loot. Earn new cards for deck as you progress, but if you lose your deck gets thrown away and you start over. It's completely free. Marin the Fox card is available for everyone who logs into the game starting Monday. You will receieve a golden version of Marin the Fox if you attended Blizzcon or have the virtual ticket Developer Interview with Mike Donais and Jomaro Kindred Hearthstone's Arena to Soon Receive Cool New Exclusive Cards, Temporarily Hearthstone Live Q&A Recap Heroes of the Storm Dragons of the Nexus Cinematic was released. Highlights Trailer shows off what is to come. Alexstraza and Hanzo are the two new heroes coming to the Nexus. Heroes of the Storm What's Next Panel Recap Target frame is being added to game. Heroes in Hiding: New way of showing heroes inside vehicles, Stitches Gorge, Zagara Maw, etc. Blizzard voice chat is being added to game client. Performance-based matchmaking is coming. Camera improvements Team is making stealth more manageable The standalone tower in towns is being removed. Certain map objectives will be pushed back to allow for longer laning phases. Heroes of the Storm: Deep Dive Panel Recap Alexstraza is a support hero. Team wanted Alexstraza's dragon form to feel massive. Alexstraza heals teammates and can rain fire down from above as a dragon. Hanzo is an assassin hero. Hanzo has a higher attack range but his attacks are slower. Diablo III No announcements at BlizzconView the full article

Blizzcon 2017 - Steve Burke Interview - World of Warcraft Originally Posted by MMO-Champion We were able to sit down with Steve Burke, Senior Game Designer on World of Warcraft, for a quick interview! Here is a recap: Classic Servers Q: When did you decide that there was enough support to go ahead with classic WoW servers? A: Internally it has always been a huge discussion. Obviously there is a lot of external desire as well. It's just a monumental task and so it's a matter of setting it up right. Q: Will classic servers and the current game be bundled together? Are they using the same client and under your normal subscription? A: These are fantastic questions that haven't been answered internally yet. Development is still super early and a lot of work needs to be done. Q: Vanilla had a lot of mechanics/issues that might not be fun anymore. Are there any specific issues or mechanics you are looking at addressing in classic servers? A: Team wants to keep the experience as close to Vanilla as possible, but it is also too early to answer. Q: What thoughts/considerations have been taken into account for patching of the classic servers? Vanilla forever or slow expansion relaunches? A: Another great question that has yet to be decided! Battle for Azeroth Q: Will the Heart of Azeroth be spec agnostic or will we have to put Azerite into all of our different specs much like the different artifact weapons in Legion? A: The Heart of Azeroth is what unlocks the different abilities on three pieces of armor and so it is all tied to the neck piece which is used on all specs. Q: Are spec specific legendaries continuing in Battle for Azeroth? A: The Legion legendary system is being retired in a very epic way, but not something to be revealed yet. Team learned a lot from the system and liked a lot of aspects of it, however, they are not ready to reveal the future of acquiring legendaries. Q: Will the current races in WoW receive unique Heritage Armor similar to the new Allied Races? A: As of right now Heritage Armor is only for the Allied Races. The armor is also only wearable by the Allied Race it is designed for. Q: How are rewards going to be done for Warfronts? A: Safe to say Azerite will play a role in rewards, but the rest is still being ironed out. Q: Will the new AI take place in dungeons as well? A: Right now the AI is being focused in Islands and Warfronts. Q: Are class specific buffs such as Mark of the Wild and Power Word: Fortitude returning? A: As of right now these buffs are back in the playtest. Team always looks at classes and how to make them more flavorful and the class buffs fit that niche. Q: Will max level content be added to the old word? A: Team wants to focus max level content into the new continents. The great thing about this expansion is each faction has three leveling zones and then another three open up when max level is reached. Q: So would a Horde 110 character just starting to level on Zandalar a few weeks into the expansion run into max level Alliance and vice versa? A: Yes. The whole world is open to your character upon reaching max level. Q: Will there be other options to unlock Allied Races? A: Each Allied race has some prerequisite quest content required to unlock them. Also, Allied Races are allowed to be boosted to 110 once unlocked, but only physically leveling them from 20-120 gives you the Heritage Armor. Q: Allied Races are set to start at level 20 when created. Where will they be placed in the world upon being created? Will they be in their respective zones? A: The current plan is for the Allied Races to start in their faction's main hub when created. Q: Will there be any new class/race combinations? A: Nothing to announce on that, but not ruling it out. Team doesn't want every race able to be any class. Q: Can you tell us about some of the racials for the other Allied Races? A: They will all have unique racials but some aren't ready to be discussed yet. Q: Any tinkering to be done to current racials? A: Team isn't ruling it out, but nothing to discuss. Q: Will the mission table/follower system carry forward into Battle for Azeroth? A: The team likes the follower system and would like to move forward with it, but nothing to announce as of now. Q: How will flying work in Battle for Azeroth? A: Team like flying being something that takes time to unlock. They want to see that you completed the content before you can fly above it. Q: Can you tell us a bit more about the stat squish? A: There is definitely another stat squish happening. Team wants numbers to be reasonable and work hard to make sure old content doesn't become hard to solo with the squish. Q: Are you continuing with professions in Battle for Azeroth similar to how they were in Legion? A: Can't say for sure, but team definitely wants there to be content for professions, but maybe not quite as many quests. Q: Any changes to professions other than the typical new recipes and 100 skill points? A: Definitely all that but also trying to tie some of the professions into the Heart of Azeroth system. No specifics yet. Q: Will the team address faction imbalance on realms? A: The new WPVP system will solve a lot of these issues as sharding technology will place you into shards with others who have opted into WPVP. View the full article

BlizzCon 2017 - Voices of Blizzard - United Nations of Overwatch Meet the Panel Andrea Toyas - Senior Voice Casting and Voice Director Darin De Paul - Reinhardt Jonny Cruz - Lucio Jen Cohn - Pharah Aysha Selim - Ana Chloe Hollings - Widowmaker Sahr Ngaujah - Doomfist Michael Chu - Lead Writer for Overwatch New Cinematic Took three session to record the voice, first of which was over 7 hours Voice tries to capture the add real emotion to the characters Reinhardt has a sad and heartbroken side, hidden behind his armor This makes his joy so much more special, because he could have died during the fight in the short Multiple layers and emotions add to the character, It was not supposed to be Reinhardt who joined Overwatch, but his arrogance caused the death of someone close to him The voice of Reinhardt is partially based on the father of Darin Lucio Jonny Cruz was a camera actor, before becoming the voice of Lucio Connecting to the character: altruism, mischief, playfulness Lucio embodies the love, and joy of Overwatch Pharah She first did voice acting for Voice of Warcraft Jen always has to stand when recording Pharah is a soulful character, and all her actions are motivated by a deeper passion She was a character who always dreamt of becoming part of Overwatch This dream was stopped in its tracks when Overwatch disbanded, but then she had a new chance during the call for heroes The father of Pharah is hinted at in certain comics, and sprays in game Ana Ana brings a lot of diversity to the Overwatch team Eisha in Arabic means Life The letter that Ana wrote was very personal to her, because at this time her neice was in surgery She is the embodiment of competence Extremely self-aware, and this shows during her interactions with other characters Widowmaker Widowmaker is all about loss, which she tries to shield The character becomes a killer to feel alive Even bad characters, have dynamic sides, making them the hero of their own story The first ear, she wore very high heels to feel like the character When recording voice, it has a major physical component Intensely tragic character, and there is much more to come Doomfist When casting for an actor, Andrea listens for something specific that connects them to the character Sahr was found through a political speech This was his first time doing a voice for a videogame Doomfist is a character with charm, charisma, and personality This character had to embody a lot of traits to make him a leader There is a hidden intimidation Sahr bases Doomfist on Charles Taylor, who is an infamous person in Liberia, exploiting others to further himself Doomfist represents the natural and elemental power of the world Q&A Q: What would your character do at the BlizzWorld? A: Lucio: DJ, Reinhardt: say hell to children, Doomfist: figure out who is running it to make more mone, Pharah: fly around to keep poeple safe. Q: How do you make combat sounds sound real? A: It takes physical movements to make the sound effects. Q: How has your life changed after becoming the actors for these voices? A: Jonny: It has been overwhelming, and the people is what make it so special. Chloe: Blizzcon is a conduit for love, which makes being an actor so much more special Q: If you could add a voiceline what would it be? A: Widowmaker: I am the strongest woman in the world. Reinhardt: CANDY!View the full article

World of Warcraft Boss Design Workshop The boss design team came up with the potential mechanics for the first boss for Shrine of the Storms right on stage! Giant Water Elemental Boss Boss starts as full water elemental but descends into shadow. Boss has 3 abilities in A phase then moves to B phase and splits into smaller adds (2 or more) Killing Adds hurts his health bar as well Will add spawn locations be RNG based? Is this fight mean to melee? Dungeon as a whole is considered. Different bosses in dungeons test the different members of the party. Some sort of party damage to test healer: maybe a tank crush mechanic or a raid wide dot? Something shadow based! Impossible to design a fight that caters to every role. Make sure certain abilities aren't mandatory. Court of Stars is used as a reference for dungeons in Battle for Azeroth. Potential mechanic that absorbs a random party member into his body who needs to be dpsed out. Shadow pools on the ground will either help you from getting pushed off the platform or hinder you. Some boss designs focus on visually stunning mechanics and events. View the full article

BlizzCon 2017 - Overwatch: Archives Take a look at the Behind the Scenes of making Overwatch The Pitch Overwatch development started in the summer of 2013 The development team is known as Team 4 Made 3 totally different game pitches, first of which was new Starcraft content A sketch of Chris Metzen was used to inspire this new project After the first two weeks it looked like the Starcraft project was likely to happen The second pitch was a Chris Metzen idea, about a far remote crossroads planet for aliens Movies, other games, and community artists are used to inspire the visual style This was supposed to be a new class based MMO with about 9 classes Explored the idea of having around 50 classes with very different but specific abilities Titan had a lot of incredible art made for the project Character art from Titan was used to make a new concept for the third pitch After the pitch to the team, each team member was assigned to come up with 1 hero A total of 48 hero concepts were made the very first day A more polished pitch deck was made by Jeremy Craig to be shown to Blizzard This was to be a global game with maps around the world The concept art for the maps by Peter Lee were used, however this was a completely different art style The final concept was to be pitched to Activision The CEO stopped the pitch mid presentation, and asked to go back three slides This was the group concept art of the Overwatch heroes The variety, and color became hallmark of the Overwtch universe This new project was code Prometheus Was given permission to develop Core Combat for the greenlight gate Core Combat The core of the game was to be developed with 4 heroes and 1 map Almost 4 million lines of the code from the Titan engine were erased Only about 760 thousand were kept to develop into Overwatch engine The concept was taken from Titan, but all the art was re-modeled from scratch New Render pipeline to allow for 60 FPS on console and PC Tech Reboot Very first render of the engine. Tracer with her floating gloves showing Added guns, and experimented with light In November it was added to the Blizzard engine to have more game Physics added Smooth camera development to make movement more organic Heroes of Core Combat The core combat was started in October, 2013 Reinhardt was one of the first four to be developed Tracer, Reaper, and Widowmaker were the other three Rocketdude later was developed into Pharah Early play testing on Temple of Anubis Reaper used for scale for buildings After block levels, the map was further developed Abilities slowly added to the game Early animations By February, 2014 the map was almost complete The Core Combat was to be shown in March at a company show and tell Announcement was planned for BlizzCon the following year 3 playable maps, and 12 heroes were needed for the announcement Ability Design Hanzo first had the bow implemented Sonic Arrow Scatter Shot Dragon Strike was to be a moving AOE known as the caterpillar The initial design only had 1 dragon The final version would have 2 dragons to show the full range of the hitbox Hero Ideation A hockey hero was being though of as a fast moving hero A free flight character with a flamethrower Later became the Jetpack cat in early concept art These ideas were though of going too far, but not within the boundaries of Overwatch Torbjorn's early ability Claw Trap was a mine which when triggered would grab the hero and contain them In the video Reinhard is shown as throwing his hammer This ability was implemented to deal with Claw Trap If he threw his hammer too far, he had to wait before attacking This later evolved into his new E ability, which is now in the game BlizzCon Video This early video had Mercy with green healing animation Early Reinhardt charge had no charge-up time The last point, known as Robot City in King's Row was very open with multiple drops First Mercy ultimate allowed her to heal multiple people Winson's early ability marker was a banana Early Volskaya had a capture point which also moved like a payload would First point on Hanamura was initially a circular area Symmetra's early sentries were mini Torbjorn turrets Bastion's early ultimate was a volley of grenades Winston's initial leap also stunned when landing Genji started out as a melee character who was able to perch on walls Q&A Q: Will we ever see a Titan progress video? A: There are screenshots and video of Titan, but someday they might surface. Q: Have you considered Officer Mai skin? A: Yes, a lot of the skins are inspired by the community. Q: Overwatch is very character driven, is there a chance of novels for the game in the future? A: Different character mediums are always being explored, such as the 2D Doomfist reveal. Q: In the Hanzo-Genji short Hanzo can bend the path of arrow, was this ever something on the board? A: Deflect on Genjo was the closest thing, but the tech is capable of supporting this and might be part of future mechanics. Q: Is there a cap on how far the game can go? A: The game is only as good as the last patch, so ideas are constantly being explored. Very inspired by Warcraft, Starcaft, and Diablo, so Overwatch is just though of as the first game.View the full article

World of Warcraft Boss Design Workshop Several members of the Warcraft team are sitting down to discuss boss design! More news to come! Pre-production Meeting Determine setting and story What bosses are inside? Get enough info to create a 2D setting The Setting Quest designer for the zone dungeon resides in is brought in for dungeon meetings Stormsong Valley is based on ship production Sea Priests have magical dominion over the ocean Shrine of the Storm Story involves uncovering dark secrets of Stormsong Valley eventually leading to Shrine Giant Water Elemental Boss Dungeon takes place on shore and cliffs and eventually into the shrine. Rules No bad ideas Throw ideas around and see what sticks Bad ideas might lead to good ideas Water Elemental Boss Boss currently has no abilities. Panel is the actual process Wanna see Sea Priests channel the ocean into boss Want focus to be on the elemental itself Is the room flooded? Physical form could have no water, but when submerged could flood the room View the full article

World of Warcraft: Live Q & A Recap The developers are sitting down to answer community questions about all things Warcraft and the next expansion! More info to come!View the full article

Heores of the Storm: What's Next - Live Panel Recap Screenshots Recap This panel was hosted by Alex Kinabrew (Senior 3D Artist), Matt Villers (Senior Game Designer), Kent-Erik Hagman (Lead Hero Designer), and Alex Neyman (Live Game Designer). Alexstrasza - Art She's the Queen of Dragons, so they wanted to make her human form regal Addressing the "dragon in the room". Dragons are massive. Team wanted to make her as large as possible. Didn't want a drake but a dragon. They looked at other heroes, like Azmodan who's massive in the Diablo universe but more subdued in Heroes Uther's model size is used for baseline comparisons for all heroes, so they used his model to make her the proper size for the game Movement was also a concern. The heroes need to turn on a dime, so sometimes they need additional animations to not appear janky. They had to do this with Alexstrasza's dragon form Skins and tints affect both her human and dragon forms Alexstrasza - Gameplay They needed to emphasize that she's a dragon. And not just a dragon, but the aspect of life. They wanted to convey that properly. Check out our hero thread for ability details: http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...-Warcraft-Hero Gift of Life is all about sacrificing her own life to heal others. Abundance was inspired by the storm dragons primarly found in Cataclysm (the dragon mobs in Vortex Pinnacle, for example) Abundance did indiscriminate healing at first (heal enemies as well as friendlies), but it didn't work out. The zone on the ground of healing worked well though, so they kept that aspect The ability is well-telegraphed, so enemy team can punish you for standing in it Flame Buffet is inspired by Blackwing Lair dragon abilities. Damage stacks with subsequent hits, low cooldown All that is cool, but they wanted an actual dragon, which is where her trait comes in Inspired by resto shaman Ascendance from World of Warcraft. Improves her stats and her basic abilities for a short duration First heroic, Life-Binder, is inspired by her Hearthstone card where she sets a hero's health to a specific amount of health She links to a hero, and after 2 seconds the lower health hero is healed to the percentage health level of the healthier hero (yo, I heard you like health...) Second heroic is Cleansing Flame. She flies into the air and rains damage and healing down Probius was originally meant to have a Mothership heroic ability raining damage down on the battlefield. They didn't like it, given his builder-oriented gameplay. So they moved it to Alexstrasza instead The flame comes down at your cursor for precision healing/damage. She lands at your mouse cursor 2 seconds after the ability ends Hanzo - Art What does it take to bring a character from a first-person shooter to a top-down game? Level of detail is of great importance when transfering from one type of game to another Details on the hero were enlarged to make them more noticeable He's a bit bulkier in Heroes, "everyone is getting swol" But why are the adjustments necessary? It's all about "budget". Texture budget, polygon. It's not about money, it's about filesize A lot of info is being loaded by your computer every time you play. Every computer has a limit It's all about the gameview. Need to recreate the hero properly so it looks as awesome as possible Hanzo - Gameplay And General Hero Testing Insight Hanzo is different from Alex. He's well-known and well-defined already. Players have expectations. He's using bow and arrow His attack range is higher than standard. His attacks are slower but deal more damage Storm Bow is a charged ability, Gazlowe's laser, but he can move while it is charging Scatter Arrow uses new tech to allow for proper scattering They looked at existing abilities/talents to find the right numbers for his abilities, such as Chromie's Sand Blast for his Q They then used that as a baseline to balance his overall damage output. New heroes are playtested every morning on the design team They use a lot of data (and pie charts!) to figure out how his damage is lined up Storm Bow was extremely powerful early on, dealing almost 50% of his total damage in a game They have an ideal "Power Pie", which shows their goal for damage distribution between abilities. No hero fits exactly into it, but it's a good guideline Among other changes, they used this to buff Scatter Arrow by 210% from the values used for the first playtest. The new damage distribution between abilities was much better He did a lot of damage with quite long range early on. They wondered if they had too many snipers in the game Because of this, they lowered the basic attack range to encourage basic attacks more often Hanzo is "Coming Soon(TM)" Stealth Updates Most players weren't able to spot the shimmer of stealthed heroes, but skilled players saw through it easily They wanted to take the eye test out of stealth and instead put the stealth advantage elsewhere Stealth - Nova They want to enforce her class fantasy as a proper stealth sniper Snipe Master is being made baseline. Subsequent snipes do more damage as long as she doesn't miss +15% movement speed in stealth New baseline active ability to immediately stealth, reminiscent of her current Ghost Protocol talent Stealth - Valeera She's the disabling hero. Can pick one hero on the enemy team and reduce their effect in a fight She relies a lot on stealth because of her new ability bar in stealth They will enhance her disabling openers to make up for the stealth changes She can also teleport to enemies baseline if she has been in stealth for at least 3 seconds Playtesting showed it felt better for even the opponents, because it's even more rewarding to knock her out of stealth now Stealth - Samuro They want to put more control into his images. His trait is now an ability to swap location with a mirror image. Illusion Master will buff it further When activating Mirror Image, the real Samuro will be placed closest to your mouse cursor. Will emphasize skill more than randomness Some damage is being moved from mirror images into Samuro himself Stealth - Zeratul The team is happy with him currently. Technically demanding, lots of flashy plays, can be threatening in the hands of a skilled player Vorpal Blade is being made baseline That change opens up for Blink to be used in more ways too Shadow Assault didn't really fit with Zeratul's kit. It's too limiting. New Heroic: Might of the Nerazim Low cooldown. Replicates the last basic ability you used All these changes are "Coming Soon(TM)" Q&A Q: About a mechanic that was kinda removed but reintroduced with Garrosh. Stitches can't hook people through walls, but Garrosh can throw over walls. Consistency? A: Similar to Diablo's Overpower, they don't want an invisible wall to block Throw. Q: Hanzo's Storm Bow still requires an extra click to release with quick cast enabled. Intended? A: Currently intended. They're hoping to make improvements before he launches though. It'll require some work Q: If McCree were to be a hero, would they remove his cigar or give Tychus' back? A: They'd give Tychus McCree's cigar Robo-Probius rolled up to ask a question Q: What's your favorite talent on the new heroes? A: Alexstrasza's level 20 Ancient Flame. Flame Buffet is normally not usable in Dragonform, but this talent turns her basic attack into Flame Buffet. Hanzo's talent that allows him to instantly mount with his Trait, Natural Agility. Q: How do you decide which heroes to add to the game? A: 180 heroes currently on the to-do list. They're all awesome and they want to do them all. They want heroes that players are looking forward to, but they also want to bring in heroes from every universe and for every role. They want a lot of diversity, there's a lot of discussion on which they want to do at any given time. Q: What about Uther's and Arthas' models? A: They're happy with the general size of the models, but they'd like to bring the height of the models more in line with each other. Uther and Arthas are some of the older models, they'd like to do something but it's a question of time Q: Tyrael feels stale and his mana costs are high. Imrpvoements coming? A: Want lower mana costs? Okay. Q: Do you have plans to revamp hero roles? A: First they had warriors, supports, and assassins. And then there was Abathur. So they just made specialists as an oddball category. But now all these years later the waters are getting muddied with all the new heroes with varying roles. They'd love to split up the roles a lot more to emphasize their roles, such as tanks/bruisers. They think it would help the playerbase a lot in understanding which hero belongs where, but it's a question of having the time to do it Q: Chen was recently changed to get some brew instantly when drinking and then he was nerfed. Are you going to reverse some of that? A: There is a lot of fallout from any changes made because of how interconnected everything is on him. No immediate plans but they'll continue to watch him. They risk making him too good by buffing him, making it not fun for everyone else. Q: Have you considered changing the stealth shader depending on how fast the character is moving? A: Not specifically, but currently they want to make the stealthed hero completely disappear after standing still for 1.5 seconds. They want some psychological strategy added to it. They want to move away from the current eye test completely. Either you "see" the hero when they move, or you don't at all when they stand still Q: How will stealth changes work with stealth talents on other characters? A: Global change, all heroes will use it. They're considering changes to those characters if there's a need for it. Medivh talent gives the new stealth shader as well, target goes invisible if they stand still Q: Brawl-related. Will they ever add new hero selection options, other than the current choose-one-of-three random heroes? A: None of the panelists work on brawls Q: When Alexstrasza is on both teams, you can't see which Alexstrasza is going to hit where when both are using the flying heroic at the same time A: They made the impact of the projectile instant so it won't have much of an effect. Just try to be as evasive as possible. Q: More multiclass heroes? A: They're actively discussing where to go with it. They definitely want to do more. Q: Lost Vikings. Are we going to see more changes? Will we see more retro characters? A: Balance: The team is okay with most of what TLV does at the moment. It's not perfect, but it's not a high priority at the moment. It would be cool to do changes. Retro: It's a matter of when, not if. Q: Medivh's power comes from teammates understanding him. It can be frustrating if they don't click portals and such, not knowing what a portal even is, etc. Do you have any plans to address this? A: They're trying to figure out how to make Medivh feel better without having to rely as much on teammates, but they don't want to break esports. They think some of it will even out over time as the playerbase matures and watches more esports and such.View the full article

The Art of World of Warcraft The art team sits down to discuss the art and models in World of Warcraft. Kul Tiras Wanted Kul Tiras humans to look more battle hardened and robust Clothing is made for harsh weather Elegant weapons with nautical themes View the full article

Designcraft: Building Blocks of Level Design Panel Live Recap A few members of the Warcraft team are sitting down to discuss how they build the world of Azeroth! More info to come!

Submit Your World of Warcraft Questions for Saturday's Live Q & A Hands on with the Kobolds and Catacombs New Dungeon Run Feature Visual Effects of the Necromancer Panel Overview Blizzcon 2017 - Day 2 Schedule Join us in the chat for the biggest Blizzcon viewing party! Keep checking back to explore the new content as we update live during the panels! Note: all times are converted to the timezone your computer is currently in. Blizzcon 2017 - Day 1 Recap Saturday starts off with the CodeCraft - Under the Hood with Blizzard Engineering panel at 10 AM PST / 1 PM EST, followed by DesignCraft - Building Blocks of Level Design panel at 11:30 AM PST / 2:30 PM PST. The Art of World of Warcraft panel is at 12:45 PM PST / 3:45 PM EST and The World of Warcraft - Live Q&A is at 4 PM PST / 7 PM EST. Muse will close out the show! World of Warcraft A new expansion and Classic servers were announced! Submit your questions now for the live Q & A tomorrow! World of Warcraft: Classic Servers announced. World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth is the next expansion. Allied Races - Horde: Nightborne, Highmountain Tauren and Zandalari Trolls / Alliance: Void Elves, Lightforged Draenei and Dark Iron Dwarves. New gameplay features and social systems will make it easier to play together. 7.3.5 will start the old world zone scaling as well as introduce the new battleground: The Seething Shore. Shadow the Fox is now also a charity plush for purchase. Overwatch Overwatch is getting a Blizzard Theme park map and a new support hero: Moira. New map: Blizzard World - Blizzard Theme park map that is a assault/payload map. New Hero: Moira - A support hero who heals allies and damages foes by draining health from enemies. New Reinhardt Cinematic showcases his backstory. Blizzard themed skins are coming soon. Junkertown's Animation was showcased. Hearthstone A new expansion and single player mode were announced. Kobolds and Catacombs is the next expansion. Dungeon Run is a new free to play single player mode. Legendary weapons are now cards for all classes in Hearthstone. Marin the Fox given for free to all those who log into the game starting Monday. Virtual ticket/Blizzcon attendees get golden version. Heroes of the Storm Two new heroes are coming as well as many new features. Hanzo and Alexstraza are the two new heroes. Performance based matchmaking, voice chat and new camera features. Laning improvements, stealth rework and evolved battleground mechanics View the full article

Heroes of the Storm What's Next - Live Panel Recap Screenshots Recap This panel was hosted by Matthew Cooper (Lead Live Designer), Alan Dabiri (Game Director), and Travis McGeathy (Lead Game Designer)! 2017 Recap The release of Heroes 2.0 was the single-biggest moment in Heroes history Hanamura brought a lot of new things, but some didn't quite work out as planned. They're still working on a rework for the map 15 new heroes were added in 2017! Hanzo will be the 75th hero in the game, more than double the 30 on release 16 hero reworks for existing heroes were carried out just in 2017 alone. 59 heroes had balance updates made to them. Looking Ahead Previously the team has focused on very big updates. It feels cool but it can also become cluttered, individual pieces of content often feel overshadowed. Massive amounts of concurrent changes can also disrupt the meta. They're planning on spreading out individual content/releases/changes to several updates. New hero in one patch, hero rework in the next one, and so on. UI Updates Target frame being added to the game. You can select units and see their stats. Includes armor, attack, etc. Heroes in Hiding: New way of showing heroes inside vehicles, Stitches Gorge, Zagara Maw, etc. Voice Chat Blizzard Voice being integrated directly into the game client. The system is opt-in. Ingame voice chat indicators for easy overview to see who has opted in. Performance-based Matchmaking Goal is to improve matchmaking accuracy by taking personal ingame performance into account Matchmaker tries to match players together by MMR. The higher the accuracy of your MMR, the better the game. MMR is hard to pin down though. Current system is solely decided by win/loss. They've been adding data hooks to the game for a while (MVP, on-fire system) to pinpoint personalized stats and help with the new MMR system. Illidan example: Damage, xp soak, few deaths, camp captures. Kerrigan example: Damage, xp, few deaths, but focus on Crowd Control instead of camps. These hero/role-specific stats can be incorporated into the matchmaker for it to more accurately figure out how well you actually do in a game. The new matchmaker has quietly been running on Live servers in parallel to current systems for a while, for statistics gathering MMR example: Master tier player took control of a Bronze player's account under the current matchmaker. The data gathered from both old and new MMR systems showed that the Master player would reach his intended rank (Master) in only half the time under the new system. This sytem can also help detect feeding to help with punishing bad behaviour. The system isn't currently automated, but it could be with time This is releasing in mid-December with the new ranked season! 2018 Gameplay Update - Camera Can currently be claustrophobic. Over time they've added heroes with long range or crazy mobility (Chromie, Genji), so they want to pull the camera out a little bit. How far out can they go? Question of performance vs visibility. They want to reach the right balance. Too far can impact performance significantly, and it can be hard to see details Gameplay - Stealth Stealth heroes are typically powerful heroes in quick match, but weak in competitive. They want to even out the playing field The stealth visual can be hard to see for the untrained eye. Goal is to make stealth easier to see for moving heroes. In internal testing, stealth is being changed so that heroes standing still will disappear completely after a few seconds Stealth should still be a strategic advantage. You're still invisible on the minimap, and you cannot be directly targeted. Stealth heroes are being updated and buffed in response to being easier to see Nova: New active ability to insta-stealth. Baseline +15% movement speed in stealth. Base Snipe damage reduced, but Snipe Master is baseline. Full stealth changes will be covered on tomorrow's panel. Gameplay - Laning The laning phase currently carries to small of an impact. Towers now have infinite shots. Currently too easy to just clear a lane and go elsewhere while the minions push the towers and drain shots. The change will make pushing require more active measures and less passivity Minions have been buffed to compensate. New Regeneration Globes: Team-specific for 4 seconds, and then it turns Neutral for another 4 seconds before timing out. Gameplay - Fortifications The standalone tower in towns is being removed. It's not really that important, and sometimes even hinders defender movement. Remaining town structures have had health buffed to compensate Like the core, forts and keeps are getting Truesight. Any stealth heroes in range are revealed. This will help heroes like Abathur and Murky. Gameplay - Map Mechanics Some maps keep you in the lane (Tomb, Dragon Shire), while others pull you out of the lane (Sky Temple, Cursed Hollow). Certain map objectives will be pushed back to allow for longer laning phases. Simplified objective timers. Two rulesets: Objectives spawn at 1:30, or 3:00. 30 second warnings are being added so people are aware of objectives coming up. Upcoming objectives will be telegraphed, such as the next active shrine on Infernal Shrines being highlighted beforehand They still want variation on maps, such as random Tribute spawns, but they want to make the randomness more visible. The goal is to make the game more interesting without increasing game length. Gameplay - Mercenaries Currently many are working as tower ammo fodder. Won't work with the new tower system Knight Camp caster will emit a spell armor aura, to encourage pushing with the camp. Hellbat will decrease armor on the targets. Siege Giants will now always telegraph their attacks at all times, even when capturing the camp They're still looking at the other camps too, to ensure they're all interesting. Upcoming Timeline Community summit was held back in October, to collect feedback from prominent community members and pro players 3-week PTR will be coming up later in November, with release in December alongside new ranked season. Q&A Q: Are you considering moving duo-queue back into Hero League? A: Not currently. Always looking to evaulate, but they currently like Hero League solo-queue. They'd rather work to improve the Team League experience for grouped players Q: It's difficult to see things like sprays and emojis on 4K monitors. Improvements, like up-scaling, coming? A: Known issue, the team will work on it Q: Will you do personal commendations and the like? A: Want to do it, team has been thinking about it for a while. Want to call out good players in various ways. Nothing specific to announce right now. Q: Will you expand interactive environment, like conveyor belts, to more maps? A: The battleground team is always looking to push boundaries. Crazy ideas are always being tried, so who knows what will happen Q: Have you considered repositioning fountains to make them less vulnerable? A: Battleground team has been looking at this and want to improve. Not a huge concern, but they're keeping an eye on it. Q: QM team comps. Sometimes you get actual comps, sometimes you get the exact opposite Will you look at improving this? A: QM is an interesting beast. Meant to be the Wild West. Constrained compositions runs contrary to the goal of the gamemode. They've run simulations with trying to find good comps every time, and the queue times "explode". They continue to tweak the matchmaking rules, but no sweeping changesView the full article

BlizzCon 2017 - Junkertown: The Plan - Creating a New Kind of Overwatch Animation This is a brief summary of the second Overwatch panel! In-Game Cinematic Panel Teamwork: Cinematics are created as a collaboration of the IGC and the Overwatch Engine Team A whole new engine had to be built to allow creation of cinematics The team has about 25 members The team incorporates multiple Blizzard game engines Story Development Planning started early 2017, when the map didn't exist yet Characters: Junkrat and Roadhog Concept art, and the Queen's Decree was given to the team During their exile, they [Junkrat, and Roadhog] stole everything they could Choosing the place: the gate of the town The Hook: Junkrat just wants to light the fuse to blow stuff up Overwatch cinematics up to this point were very empotional The title sequence was made to feel like a fun adventure The Pitch The cinematic was pitched without a script or a storyboard The whole pitch was acted out Greenlight to continue The storyboard was very close to the final cinematic Nuts and Bolts of the Overwatch Engine Needed to be able to capture images and insert assets to the engine Buffers: images that represent data Set the Scene: TED is a light Overwatch engine used to set scenes, use the camera, add animations The effects system drove the capture The Play of the Game system and Capture system was very useful New Camera system: had to make a free movement camera Make the game engine not optimize engine by forcing quality 11 Break apart the scene into assets so they can be manipulated Inserting the images to the engine The Graphics cards were not able to support Quality 11 Slowed frames down to 1 FPS The cinematic took up 5 TB of space Animations The game team helps the IGC team understand the character Play of the Games give a really good insight into the character Reference is used to discover ideas, facial expressions and nuances Brad passed out during one of the takes when acting for the reference Smear Frames: makes the animation more realistic by smearing the character Makes it easier for the eye to follow, only visible in slow motion Jokes are added by animators sometimes The Engine The characters, costumes, and variations are taken from the game engine Everything that doesn't already exists in the game has to be manually made The mesh of the characters has to be improved, because cinematics have more detail A rig has to be built, which is the skeleton. This gives points of articulation Limbs: these are added separately as controls for the animatior Junkrat alone has 78 limbs and 524 controls There are multiple automated control that move controls together The face has multiple animated controls to create facial expressions Effects are hand drawn frame-by-frame All these are then added to TED for capture Art and Lighting The map was in development during the cinematic development The final map was used as a base Ambient light: simulates sunlight in the cinematic The characters could not be seen while the light was added Multiple point lights are added to make characters and items pop After lights are added, it is ran through compositing Because the payload was not used in game, which allowed to make it much more exaggerated A surprised Pachimari was added to the cinematic as an Easter egg View the full article

BlizzCon 2017 - Overwatch - What's Next A quick outline of what to expect in the future of Overwatch! New Hero: Development of Moira Moira is the new Support Healer The geneticist of the team Moira doesn't allow morals to come in the way of science Recruited by Reyes to join Blackwatch Allied herself with Talon, after Overwatch was gone The Art of Moira Concept art weapons included syringes, and a two handed cannon, and tentacles Her duality between doing damage and healing indicated by the liquid in the tubes Drains energy from her enemies Ultimate Ability: Coalescence, which is a frontal beam Skins Oasis: She was invited to be the minister of Genetics in Oasis Glam: A tribute to Glam Rock in from the 70s Gameplay Biotic Grasp: Primary fire is Regeneration, which is a healing throughput. Controlled by a meter Secondary fire is Decay, which does damage and fills the meter back up. Small amount of Leech Fade (Shift): A small dash, making her invisible, which also grants movement speed Biotic Orb (E): Pulls out two orbs, then the healing one can be activated by Primary fire, or damage orb by Secondary fire This orb does AOE healing, bounces around, slows down when it is close to a friendly target Coalescence (Q): Long range frontal beam that heals allies and damages enemies affected by it This ultimate pierces barriers New Map: Blizzard World The idea has been around since before last BlizzCon BlizzardWorld is an amusement park, celebrating the worlds and places of Blizzard Ent. There is no Overwatch part of the Park Hybrid Map First is a Control Point Two main paths to the first point The first choke is a mini-arena, with multiple routes Several Healthpacks to gain a foothold After capturing the first point, it is time to move the payload Circular arena, with abundance of high-ground Multiple flanking routes, Mega healthpacks and corridors Push the payload to the Throne of the Skeleton King, in Leoric's Manor Hidden lore in the area The park was designed by artists from all Blizzard Games Lots of easter eggs, including special voicelines Coming to the PTR soon, and will go live early next year New Skins: Blizzard Themed Immortal Orisa Magni Bronzebeard Torbjorn Nova Widowmaker Blackhand Doomfist Barbarian Zarya Butcher Roadhog Crusader Reinhardt Ecopoint Mei All the skins will be available in the Base Lootbox More info early next year Q&A Q: Will BlizzardWorld come to real life? A: Not currently planned. Q: Can the siege tank be used? A: Possibly in an Arcade Version. Q: How does Moiras healing connect to Zenyata? A: Her healing has a connection to Mercy, there is a hint on one of the maps. Q: Will Pharah's rockets or damage be updated like Junkrat? A: With Junkrat it made sense to make the changes, but Pharah's kit allows her to stay at range. Q: Will next year be an Eichenwalde PVE event? A: Can't answer, but they really love the map. Q: Are there changes planned to Symmetra? A: Not likely to have healing abilities added, but the categories might be changed. Always looking at heroes to make changes. Q: Was Moira a scrap class from Titan, and what other features are planned from that game? A: Moira was not inspired by Titan, but there are guns from Titan which influence weapons. Q: How is mobility being looked at when designing new heroes, and balancing the game? A: Mobility is a big topic, and a main theme to watch out for when designing new heroes. Q: Can we expect more LGBT identified heroes? A: Representation is definitely important, but characters personalities need to be revealed through story. Q: Quickplay has some issues with it not being competitive enough, is this being looked at? A: Quickplay is always being looked at, and some more restrictions might be included in the future to find more like players. Q: Will there be any interest in using old assets or locations for new map modes? A: Yes, this has been done in the past with maps such as Chateou. In the future this can be expected to continue. Q: Could a new competitive scorecard be added with more detail? A: This is definitely something being looked at. Currently this is done by third party websites, but it is an idea they are interested in. Q: There is so much lore potential, can there be more added in single player mode? A: More frequent lore bits can be expected in the future. Q: Is there plans to bring a more social aspect to Overwatch, such as a general lobby before or LFG system? A: This has been discussed, but there are a lot of challenges implementing it. Q: Are there voiceline interactions between Magni Bronzebeard skin and Moira? A: Haven't though of this yet, but Moira definitely inspired by Wizzard and Mage . Q: What is being though of when it comes to diversity in the game? A: Ovewatch is a very diverse team, and it is important to have diverse characters. View the full article

CodeCraft – Under the Hood with Blizzard Engineering, Part 1 Mythic Plus Systems Record a watermark of mythic + level when determining keystone level Design team determines what combinations of keystone affixes are possible Dungeon reads keystone when it's placed and allows design team to modify dungeon based on what the key turns on. Design team also is responsible for implementing the chest and rewards at end of keystone dungeon Overwatch Patch Days Patch cycle starts days to weeks before patch. Red and blue deployment cycle for patches. Testing happens on one cycle to prepare for launch day Technology Challenges Team had to deal with the growing pains of being a multiple platform system Integrating all games through one platform helps immensely Learning from Warcraft Patch Days Try to avoid surprises and downtime Went from over 8 hour deployments to much faster with red/blue deployment Getting into Design Industry Look at team culture and your fit within it Try to do side projects and consider the scope Finished projects are much better than larger scope projects Don't forget a cover letter! Mythic Plus Affixes Wasn't necessarily an engineering challenge Content creators design the affixes, designers just see code and implement it Designers run scripts to add additional functionality based on affixes (such as conditional upon enemy death) Lag in Blizzard Matchmaking New technology also involves infrastructure Data centers all over the world Evaluate where players are coming from Understanding where to put servers Always trying to reduce ping Data collection helps the speed at which network team can respond to concerns View the full article

Battle for Azeroth - Allied Races Subraces are finally here, officially called Allied Races. Two of them were playable at BlizzCon. Keep in mind this is a demo, not final. In addition to the races listed below, Zandalari Trolls, Nightborne, Void Elves, and Dark Iron Dwarves are planned. Highmountain Tauren In addition to the regular options, customize facial hair / hair, horn style, horn color. Racials: Rugged Tenacity - Reduces damage taken by 330 Pride of Ironhorn - Mining skill increased by 15 and allows you to mine faster Mountaineer - Increases your Versatility by 1%. Bull Rush - Charges forward for 1 sec, knocking enemies down for 1.5 sec. 2 minute cooldown. Waste Not, Want Not - You have a chance to loot additional meat and fish Lightforged Draenei In addition to the regular options, customize facial hair, tattoo style, and runes. In the demo, only has access to Warrior, Paladin, Hunter, Priest, Mage. Racials: Light's Judgement - Call down a strike of Holy energy dealing 5,150 Holy damage to enemies within 5 yards after 3 sec. 40 yd range, 2.5 min cooldown. Forge of Light - Summon a forge of light, enabling Blacksmithing. Blacksmithing skill increased by 10. Demonbane - Experience gains from killing beasts increased by 20%. Holy Resistance - Reduce Holy damage taken by 1%. Final Verdict - When you die the Light avenges you, dealing 1,162 Holy damage to enemies within 8 yards and healing allies for 1,383. View the full article

World of Warcraft – Gameplay and Systems Deep Dive More information to come!View the full article

Blizzcon 2017 Opening Ceremony Announcements BlizzCon 2017 - World of Warcraft - What's Next Plenty of content is coming soon! Cinematic reinforces the foundation of Warcraft: the factions. Battle for Lordaeron Horde burns down Teldrassil Alliance attacks Lordaeron View the full article

BlizzCon 2017 - The Opening Ceremony has Started! Update 11:04 AM PDT: Mike Morhaime is taking the stage Update 11:02 AM PDT: Opening video shows the passion and experiences of the Blizzard community. View the full article

New Potential WoW Trademark Filed in New Zealand Blizzcon Opening Ceremony in 1 Hour Hold on to your hats and join us in the chat for the biggest Blizzcon viewing party! Keep checking back to explore the new content as we update live during the panels! Note: all times are converted to the timezone your computer is currently in. View the full article

New Potential WoW Trademark Filed in New Zealand A potential trademark for the title World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth was discovered in New Zealand by users in the speculation thread. In addition, whenever you type in a random url under the worldofwarcraft.com domain, you will be redirected to the url without any hyphens. (Example: worldofwarcraft.com/corgisunleashed redirects to worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/corgisunleashed) However, when typing in worldofwarcraft.com/battleforazeroth, you are redirected to a page in which hyphens are automatically added to the name: worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/battle-for-azeroth. View the full article

Virtual Ticket Giveaway & New Diablo Fans Community Manager Sylvanas Statue Now On Sale, BlizzCon 2017 Charity Auction has Begun Blizzcon 2017 - Day 0 BlizzCon is less than a day away and in-game goodies are out! If you haven't already grabbed them, be sure to pick up a Virtual Ticket to see the whole event and get some in-game goodies. If you aren't planning on watching with the Virtual Ticket, we will be providing live updates throughout the day. Note: all times are converted to the timezone your computer is currently in. Activision Blizzard Earnings Call The quarterly Activision Blizzard earnings call was today: Activision Blizzard had 384 million Monthly Active Users in this quarter. Blizzard had the biggest third quarter online player community in its history, with a record 42 million Monthly Active Users. Overwatch and Hearthstone Monthly Active Users grew year-over-year. The Overwatch community rose to over 35 million registered players. The company achieved a new milestone with players spending over 50 minutes per day in Activision Blizzard games. Hearthstone: Knights of the Frozen Throne expansion led to double-digit percentage growth in time spent year-over-year for the franchise. World of Warcraft released a new content update in the quarter, leading to stable Monthly Active Users for the franchise quarter-over-quarter and continued participation in value added services. Activision Blizzard delivered a Q3 record of over $1 billion of in-game revenues, with record performance year-to-date. Christie Golden's Before the Storm Sample Chapter The first chapter of the upcoming World of Warcraft Novel Before the Storm by Christie Golden was included in the Blizzcon 2017 Goody Bag as a surprise treat. Below you will find photos of the entire prologue. Be aware that this preview includes spoilers! New Sylvanas Sculpture Available from Blizzard Gear Store Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums) New Store Item: Bring the Banshee Queen Home Today! We’ve added a new World of Warcraft item to the Blizzard Gear Store! Bring the Banshee Queen home today. New Sculpture: Bring the Banshee Queen Home Known by many names–Ranger-General, Banshee Queen, Warchief–you can call this new collectable sculpture of Sylvanas Windrunner–yours. “I've walked the realms of the dead. I have seen the infinite dark. Nothing you say. Or do. Could possibly frighten me." Standing 18 inches tall and made of polyresin, this hand-painted sculpture of Sylvanas Windrunner will make the perfect addition to your collection. Supplies of this highly detailed sculpture are limited — so head over to the Blizzard Gear Store to get yours before it’s too late! Each statue is hand painted which may result in slight variances in the final item. Faithfully crafted by: Brian Fay (Sculpt, Mold & Cast) Alvaro Buendia (Sculpt) Jason Huang (Digital Model) Sandra Shaffer (Paint) Laurel Austin (Art Direction- Paintmaster) Justin Thavirat (Art Direction) Chris Robinson (Art Direction) Jimmy Lo (Art Direction) Blizzard Animation World of Warcraft Development Team But Wait! There’s More! We’ve got more of the World of Warcraft items you’re looking for in the Gear Store including: World of Warcraft Backpack and World of Warcraft Ugly Sweater World of Warcraft Elekk Plushie and World of Warcraft Raptor Plushie World of Warcraft Sargeras Shirt–Women's and World of Warcraft Sargeras Shirt–Men's All this and more are on the Gear Store. Check it out now! GET THE GEAR! All orders will be shipped from the United States; not all countries may be eligible to participate, and international shipping rates and other fees may apply. For more information, including how to find out if the Gear Store ships to your region, see the Blizzard Gear Store Shipping article on our support site. Blizzcon 2017 Charity Auction Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums) The BlizzCon® 2017 Charity Auction Has Begun! We’re auctioning off a variety of original pieces from the talented artists at Blizzard including some truly iconic World of Warcraft items. For over 50 years, CHOC Children’s has been steadfastly committed to providing the highest quality medical care to children. This BlizzCon, members of the global Blizzard community will have the opportunity to bid on an array of unique Blizzard artwork and collectible memorabilia to benefit CHOC through the online Blizzard 2017 Charity Auction, taking place Thursday, November 2 through Tuesday, November 7. You’ll have the opportunity to add some legendary items World of Warcraft items (and more!) to your collection, and Blizzard will donate the proceeds to benefit CHOC Children’s. Vol’jin bust: Original polyurethane resin sculpture by artist Ehren Bienert Chieftain Blackhand Makes War on the Ogre:Framed original pencil sketch by Alex Horley One Grunt is All It Takes!: Framed original sketch by Sam “Samwise” Didier Stormrage framed fine art print signed by Laurel Austin BlizzCon 10th Anniversary Poster and Collectible Pins, Including the original ETC Pin Mold Bloom of Ashenvale framed original ink and marker drawing by Brittany Drew Beyond the Dark Portal framed fine art print signed by Peter Lee, matting signed by the World of Warcraft development team Grommash Hellscream Statue, Preproduction Prototype Polyurethane Casting signed by artists Brian Fay, Laurel Austin, Chris Robinson, and Jon McConnell Battle of Hillsbrad Foothills framed fine art print signed by Wei Wang Visit the Auction Site now to see all the available items and place your bid! To participate in this year’s auction, you’ll need to set up an eBay account. Head to www.ebay.com now to get started. If you already have an account, check that your contact and payment information before bidding. Blue Posts Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment Did the Convergence of Fates 'rebalance' reduce the PPM or just the trinket base agi/str and CDR values? Convergence of Fates’ proc rate is unchanged in 7.3.2. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums) Since levelling up my Champions on Argus the Pet Charm missions seem not existent, intended? We hotfixed an issue with the mission "Another Rat Problem" about an hour ago. Thank you for the feedback! (Blue Tracker / Official Forums) View the full article