I’m planning to have this be my last Blizzcon post (I do have a raid that starts at 8pm EST tonight…). The first part of the class panel should be a recap of what they said yesterday, so only the Q&A part would have interesting things going on.
WoW Class Panel 2
- Presentation pretty much the same as yesterday.
- Racial profession bonuses getting buffed for all classes
- No new classes for Draenei
- Soul Shards will have an in-combat regen mechanic (maybe drain soul?).
- Repeated that new druids will have new forms
- Want DPS classes to not have to worry so much about resource management
- Don’t want hunters to be ranged rogues.
- Working on big fishing changes to actually make it more fun.
- Druid Art: Redoing moonkin, especially for Worgen & Trolls. Probably redoing treants & tree forms. Artists eager to do aquatic form.
- Shaman AOE – want totems to play an important role
- Offtanks shouldn’t have to worry about being “resource starved”
- Ghost Wolf & travel form speed? “Druids already don’t see their gear very much, and we think that’s a problem. So I would be hesisitant to say ‘you can’t even see your mounts.’ We’ve talked about is it time for epic travel form. Maybe that’s something to break out in Cataclysm.”
- More questions about gear and how stats will work for classes like paladins.
- Will still probably be a block mechanic even if we aren’t using defense to get “hit capped”
- Race changes will come later after faction changes.
- May introduce scrolls with lesser versions of class specific buffs (ie. priest fort, bloodlust).
- Will be more weapons with fun procs, instead of just stats.
- More improvements to alchemy
- Working on Shadow priest raid desirability
- Can’t have rare glyphs for scribes because they are so tied to class gameplay
- Possibly more lower level (pre-40) class-specific quests
Starcraft 2 lore
- Introducing voice actors
- Jim Raynor – Robert Clotworthy et cetra
- Kerrigan – From Battlestar Galactica - Tricia Helfer
- They have 8 people on stage talking about what it’s like to be voice actors for SC2
- Talking about visualizing & “inhabiting the character’s soul”. Want to know the back story, what the character wants, what the obstacles are… How do they get around obstacles? Not just doing a voice, it’s acting. “How do I serve the story my best?” Need to visualize more what is going on because you aren’t able to move around the same way as other types of acting.
- The great questions of the SC universe will be unveiled.
- Want to have continuity in voice actors for future additions to the SC2 game.
- Chris Metzen did the voice acting for Thrall
Both panels now done.
Tom Chilton Interview on DTV
- Thrall – lots of new things going on in Cataclysm
- Current Heirloom items won’t necessarily scale to 85.
- Don’t want 1v1 arenas, don’t like 2v2 arena balancing issues quite so much – reserving high end rewards for where it is more balanced.
- Gnomeregan - Have some stuff brewing for the gnomes. Something will happen for them in Cataclysm.
- Item changes probably patched in before major content expansion pack hits. Want to make sure things are stable.
Blizzcon 2009 is officially over!