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As it is BlizzCon tradition, the opening ceremony featured speeches from the Blizzard's upper management. Broke down in seven parts, the footage shows the announcements of Mike Morhaime, Dustin Browder, Rob Pardo and Chris Metzen.
- Mike Morhaime's opening speech
- End of Morhaime's speech & Heroes of the Storm trailer
- Dustin Browder on Heroes of the Storm
- Rob Pardo's speech
- World of WarCraft retrospective narrative
- Christ Metzen's speech
- End of Metzen's speech and Warlords of Draenor announcement
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Expectedly, Blizzard's MOBA Heroes of the Storm were among BlizzCon's highlights. Having went through a series of name changes, Heroes is expected to enter beta testing "soon", now that the opt-in option is available through the Battle.net accounts.
What else is know about Heroes of the Storm is that:
- The game will be more objective based rather than mechanics based (i.e. emphasis on capturing points and incentivizing team work rather than putting great importance on things like last hitting)
- Systems to encourage interaction and decrease community toxicity are being developed. People will be encouraged to play with their friends to gain bonuses. The reputation system of vanilla WoW was also mentioned
- All heroes will share experience
- There are no items to buy
- Max level is 25, average game duration is about 20 minutes
- Upon leveling, heroes will chose from a number of talents instead leveling a set skill as in traditional MOBAs. Players will be able to create presets they can choose before the game.
- eSports and map creation will be outsourced to the community
- The number of heroes available on Blizzard's internal clients is around 30
VOD compilation:
- Gameplay sneak peek
- Cinematic trailer
- Heroes of the Storm developer interview
- Chris Sigaty talks Heroes of the Storm
- Hero developer interview
- Heroes of the Storm panel overview
In essence, Reaper of Souls is all about gameplay improvements and, indeed, Diablo's new expansion seems to be ripe with them. Bulletpointed, RoS's features are as follows:
- New adventure mode where all acts and waypoints are unlocked.
- Adventure modes will have the so called bounties - randomized quests that give a hefty amoung of XP and gold upon completion
- The loot runs have been renamed to nephalem rifts. They will be opened through Rift Keys (available through completing bounties or just random drop) and will be completely randomized. Rifts will also have buff shrines not available in the normal campaign mode
- Unlike in Diablo 3 vanilla, exteriors will also be randomized
- There will be six difficulty levels: Easy, normal, hard, torment, demonic and apocalypse
- Groups and clans system will be implemented
VOD compilation:
- Reaper of Souls: Making of the cinematic part 1/4
- Reaper of Souls: Making of the cinematic part 2/4
- Reaper of Souls: Making of the cinematic part 3/4
- Reaper of Souls: Making of the cinematic part 4/4
- Diablo 3 lore Q&A
- Reaper of Souls preview
- Reaper of Souls features trailer
- Reaper of Souls adventure mode trailer
Although the game is not yet out of beta, new features for it are already being developed including ways to create PvE experience and provide for a more adequate ranking system for constructed.
- The adventures will be a new mode to battle the AI and earn cards that way
- Three more keys are available for the arena and players will be able to go up to 12 wins and not stop at nine
- The ranked system for constructed is revised to have 25 ranks with five stars each. Upon leveling a rank, your ranked icon will change to a minion from Hearthstone (starting at Angry Chicken as the 25th rank)
- There will be sort of a grand master division for the top performers from which you cannot be demoted. Furthermore, once in that rank, the game will give you daily updates on where you stand in your region
- Golden animated heroes will be unlocked after 500 wins
- Ranked play will unlock different card backs
- Mobile versions are in development
- Reconnect option in development
- Open beta likely to start this December
- Balance changes to hunters and priests
Full editorial overview of the panel will be available shortly. The scarce Hearthston VOD archive from day one is below:
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New features will be coming with Patch 2.1:
- Clan and group event calendar
- Custom clan decals: Clans will be able to create and upload their own insignia
- Extension mods available for custom map creators
- Level cap increased to 35, StarCrafts portraits to be made available
- StarCraft 1 and BroodWar music will be made available
- The starter pack will have all three races and the entire arcade mode unlocked
? - StarCraft 2 update panel VOD
Understandably, World of WarCraft's new expansion was the other main focus of day one (alongside Reaper of Souls), spanning over three panels. VOD compilation of said panels is available below, preceded with a bulletpoint summary of the WoW info we have so far.
- Six new dungeons, 3 for leveling and 3 for max level
- Upper Blackrock Spire dungeon returns
- 2 new raids: Blackrock Foundry, Highmaul. Fighting world bosses will also be made available
- Level cap increased to 100
- New world Draenor with 7 new questing zones
- Quest items will no longer take an inventory slot
- Bags will be sortable
- New character models
- Number of drops will scale with the number of raiders
- Few or no daily quests at max level
- Hit, Expertise, Parry, Reforging and Dodge have been removed to simplify gear
- Armor primary stats will change with spec
- Players will be able to create a free level 90 character
- Warlords of Draenor reveal trailer
- "The Adventure Continues" panel
- The art of World of WarCraft
- Remaking a World
- ?Warlords of Draenor faction zones
?Rotator photo: Blizzplanet
