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Announcements at the opening ceremonies:

Diablo 3:
- New class: Demon Hunter
- PvP Battle Arenas included, both individual and team-based PvP

Starcraft 2:
- Blizzard-developed custom games: DoTA, Left 2 Die, Aiur Chef, Star-jeweled (free of course)

World of Warcraft:
- Patch 4.1 information will be discussed at the Raids and Dungeons panel later today

Any word on D III drop date? They have been teasing for years.

Nothing yet, watching the D3 character panel now (focusing on the demon hunter, obviously).

From the Diablo 3 character panel:
- Skills trees are redesigned and no longer trees. You can have up to 7 skills, but all skill choices are active skills now.
- Attributes are gone, and replaced by Traits, which are essentially passive skills.
- D3 has a new separate inventory specifically for charms, called a Talisman, that grows in slots as you level.
- Runes now affect and customize the skills you have, and called Skill runes, that hugely increase the type of skill builds you can have for each class.

This is like having a man on the inside...

Dang, didn't think they'd change the old dungeons that much.

Classic Dungeons

• Classic dungeons have been revamped to be made shorter and less confusing. Dungeons such as Maraudon or Uldaman were really really long to get through.
• For example dungeons can be split into multiple wings. Uldaman will be broken up into 2 wings. Ironaya will be the final boss of the first wing for the Dungeon Finder.
• Maraudon will also be broken up into 2 wings as well. The dungeon now has a "living" section, and a lower section where Princess Theradras is.
• Other dungeons will be trimmed. The top portion of the Sunken Temple has been removed and only the bottom floor remains.
• Wailing Caverns's maze has been removed and bosses have been moved around to just make the instance smaller. Moving bosses wasn't hard because bosses didn't really have their own rooms.

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I am happy to hear about the Sunken Temple changes. Because GOD! if you ever go afk and the party moves around the corner, you will spend 30 minutes trying to find them.

I still get lost trying to find the damn entrance to that place.

WoW Raids and Dungeons panel:

Patch 4.1
- Raid: The Firelands - Elemental Plane of Fire, accessed from Hyjal, home of Ragnaros. 7 bosses total.
- Dungeon: The Abyssal Maw - Elemental Plane of Water, accessed from Vash'jir. "It's nothing like the Oculus."

sixpackshaker said:

I am happy to hear about the Sunken Temple changes. Because GOD! if you ever go afk and the party moves around the corner, you will spend 30 minutes trying to find them.

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Mara was worse. If you went AFK, it was literally impossible to find them again. My guildies used to beg me to come with them to Mara with my lock, just so if someone got lost, I could get them back.

Additional 4.1 info:
- Enhanced Dungeon Maps: 2D overlay maps for every dungeon, both classic and new. Included in each map is detailed boss information for each boss, detailing the lore of the boss, all the loot it drops and all the abilities it has, along with a full 3D model. Works in dungeons and raids.

From the post-panel Q&A:
- BRD didn't have a good place to break it up into wings or trim like Maraudon, Uldaman, Sunken Temple or Wailing Caverns, so instead they just put teleporters all over the place to get around quicker.

Blizz is finally implementing player-viewable loot tables into their interface? About darn time.

They haven't come up with a new game yet? Thank god of the WoW cashcow feeding them all these years.

A second 2 word class... and with such a generic name too... almost at the level of D&D1st edition Magic-User (or Fighting-man).

But she looks like an Amazon/Trap Assassin hybrid, which is nice: Diablo III -

I hope she can use normal bows too.

---------- Post added at 09:30 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:27 PM ----------

Jay said:

They haven't come up with a new game yet? Thank god of the WoW cashcow feeding them all these years.

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They never had a "new" game since they became Blizzard... Diablo 1 was made by other guys that they bought 6 months before the game came out, and that's their closest to anything original franchise they have...

---------- Post added at 09:40 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:30 PM ----------

Piotyr said:

- Attributes are gone, and replaced by Traits, which are essentially passive skills.

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[STRIKE]Wait, what?! Aren't attributes simply growing on their own anymore?! And how are Traits a replacement?![/STRIKE] Oh, you got that wrong, what is gone are customizable attributes, with some traits adding +X to an attribute (as do some talisman charms).

---------- Post added at 09:44 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:40 PM ----------

So she does use bows, nice:

Now that you’ve had time to absorb the fact that the Demon Hunter is the final class, you are probably ready for some info. Below are some bullets from the Diablo 3 panel that immediately followed the opening ceremony.

• They chose the Demon Hunter because they wanted one that felt like a bounty hunter.
• Conventional ranged class that was fast, mysterious, dark and medieval. Operates at range with weaponry. Using gadgets and traps.
• Has a bit of an attitude.
• Shadow Magic - Dark magic. She knows more about demons than anyone else in Diablo 3.
• What makes them visually distinct - A flowing scarf. Can see their legs and they have an arm guard.
• Their tools will be bows, crossbows and they are the only class that can dual weild pistol crossbows.
• They can come from any walk of life. They are not chosen. They are bound together by their thirst for revenge against demons who have killed their families.
• They are recruited by other Demon Hunters and they don’t have a homeland. They are nomadic but have a base in the borderlands up north where they train recruits.
• They are obsessed heroes.
• They have glowing eyes that hints at working with darker forces.
• They want their prey to know the terror of being stalked.
• The Demon Hunter is in this battle for only one thing, and that is to kill Demons.

Skills

• Bola Shot wraps around the target and explodes.
• Vault is a Move skill and has a shadow theme and has some acrobatics to it.
• Spike Trap, not unlike some of the assassin gameplay from Diablo 2. Take a normal trap spell weave in some shadow and has a sense of anticipation about it.
• Grenades is another ranged attack and this really shows off the 3d engine. Can bounce them off walls and floors and bounces around.
• Multishot you may remember from Diablo 2, a hugely popular skill but it’s been ramped up.

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---------- Post added at 09:59 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:44 PM ----------

Interesting, they actually started out with a Ranger:
But they decided to add some melee to him instead of some Druid-like summons... WTF!

Hopefully they do a Amazon/Druid hybrid class for an expansion, a second ranged class would be something different for Diablo.

Sweet! Can't wait to play again when Cat comes out... shorter and less confusing dungeons FTW!

Does anyone here care about sc2? Todays matches between BoxeR and oGs cool were really fun to watch. TBH I think the casters missed a bunch of calls - like when cool's roaches beat BoxeR's whole damn army in round 2 and tasteless (or maybe artosis) said the match was "really close".

lol.

They brought the humour though, which is good. Shortly after BoxeR transitioned from losing his whole damn army into losing his whole friggin base they started cracking jokes.

I watched the games where HuK got destroyed by Loner - kind of disappointing to watch him make the exact same mistakes in back-to-back games and lose both because of it.

I'll definitely be trying to catch more tomorrow, though.

I'm really torn about what I think about the smaller-ification of dungeons. Because on one hand, yeah it was hella easy to get lost. And forming a group was hella intimidating... but the sheer scale of them was really impressive. Black Rock Depths felt like I as in a living, breathing city full of people who wanted to kill me, and that was awesome. As opposed to a linear corridor of people who wanted to kill me standing in a row.

Raemon777 said:

I'm really torn about what I think about the smaller-ification of dungeons. Because on one hand, yeah it was hella easy to get lost. And forming a group was hella intimidating... but the sheer scale of them was really impressive. Black Rock Depths felt like I as in a living, breathing city full of people who wanted to kill me, and that was awesome. As opposed to a linear corridor of people who wanted to kill me standing in a row.

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I think they're trying very hard to make dungeon quests and boss placement a larger part of the emotional appeal of dungeons, rather than physical size. They certainly are for Deadmines and SFK. BRD is probably not going to change that much; they'll probably just pull out the prison level to a separate wing, and leave the rest more or less the same. Especially with the chain-pulling room right before the Emperor, BRD should retain its "city that wants to kill you" feel.

I feel where you're coming from, but once people got used to spending 20 min max in a dungeon, no one is going to want to go back to spending 1 hour in a 5-man like we used to in classic.

SpecialKO;446650][QUOTE=Raemon777 said:

I'm really torn about what I think about the smaller-ification of dungeons. Because on one hand, yeah it was hella easy to get lost. And forming a group was hella intimidating... but the sheer scale of them was really impressive. Black Rock Depths felt like I as in a living, breathing city full of people who wanted to kill me, and that was awesome. As opposed to a linear corridor of people who wanted to kill me standing in a row.

Click to expand...

I think they're trying very hard to make dungeon quests and boss placement a larger part of the emotional appeal of dungeons, rather than physical size. They certainly are for Deadmines and SFK. BRD is probably not going to change that much; they'll probably just pull out the prison level to a separate wing, and leave the rest more or less the same. Especially with the chain-pulling room right before the Emperor, BRD should retain its "city that wants to kill you" feel.

I feel where you're coming from, but once people got used to spending 20 min max in a dungeon, no one is going to want to go back to spending 1 hour in a 5-man like we used to in classic.[/QUOTE]

They actually specifically addressed BRD in the Raids and Dungeons panel, saying there wasn't really a good break point or cut point in there, so the best they could do is make teleporters that send you to the various areas quickly.

That works. No more running through the entire darn instance if you wipe.

SpecialKO said:

That works. No more running through the entire darn instance if you wipe.

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That was the intention. They also said that they put Graveyards pretty much right outside every dungeon to lower the amount of ghost walking.

Is it just me, or does anyone else think (from the live feed anyway) that Blizzcon looks pretty damn boring? I'm not knocking on anyone that went, but I wouldn't pay for a flight and a ticket to it. Seems like all you do is wait in line to play games you can play at home, get info that is pretty much instantly hitting the web as it's released, and the last day you get a concert.

The concerts for two years now have had a really shitty crowd response. Are they bored? Tenacious D put on a great show, and the whole time it seems like there are crickets in the audience. Ozzy was the same way last year.

Chazwozel said:

Ozzy was the same way last year.

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:wtf: I haven't watched this year's concert, but last year's was pretty awesome, going by the PPV feed. The crowd was screaming the lyrics of every song loud enough to be heard clearly through Ozzy's mike, and you could see security fighting to hold back the first few rows that you could see.

Didn't compare to the average Ozzfest, obviously, but I'm also pretty sure that they didn't allow beer in the Blizzcon concert hall.

SpecialKO said:

Didn't compare to the average Ozzfest, obviously, but I'm also pretty sure that they didn't allow beer in the Blizzcon concert hall.

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When it comes to the concerts, this is the crux of the issue. People don't buy tickets to go to the concert as crazy fans. It's not like the thousands of people attending went there specifically to see Ozzy, or Tenacious D, and so they are not going to go absolutely nuts for them and start a mosh-pit.

As someone that went to BlizzCon, the place can be a blast, but that is because you are going to meet other people who share your passion while taking part in the events, games, etc... I remember some of the most fun I had was just geeking out with people while waiting in line to try out Cataclysm for the first time.

It's not something you appreciate unless you are part of the culture.