BlizzCon has only been underway for a few hours and already there's huge news hitting the web. Unfortunately, none of it is StarCraft II related however, that should change a little later today during the Battle.net panel discussion.
So what do we know?
Well, for one, World of Warcraft will have a new expansion pack titled "Cataclysm," and Diablo III's newest class is "The Monk." I'll let Amanda at omgrpg.com go into much more detail on Cataclysm because it seems like a MASSIVE deal for WoW fans. (Obviously i'm a WoW n00b).
For quick hit information we just learned about during the "Heroes and Monsters" panel, hit the jump. To the right is a fan dressed up as Jim Raynor...he had such a great costume, I had to take a pic.
Why the Monk and who is the Monk?
- Inspired by pen & paper RPG characters
- He contrasts the Barbarian well
- He has fast and furious melee attacks focused around a new combo attack system
- He utilizes speed over toughness and is relatively fragile compared to the other heroes
What else is going on with D3 characters?
- There have been tweaks and changes made to already announced characters
- Runes are not in the BlizzCon build of the game because they are not complete enough to make sense for this demo. They will be in the final game, according to Blizzard reps.
- There are roughly 100 different monsters in the game so far, some old, many new
- There is a "Fallen Family" of monsters, which brings back some of the classic monsters from Diablo II
What about StarCraft II damnit!?
Frankly, there hasn't been much news thus far. I did sit through the Art panel and I will have some video and information up about that later tonight. I can tell you that there is certainly a lot of work going into making the environments and levels unique and immersive, something that's difficult to do in a top-down RTS.
Well, I'm off to the Battle.net discussion panel where I'm nearly positive I'll have a ton of news for you including some great video footage.
Keep checking back...so, so, so much more to come, including lots of new screenshots and videos, and don't forget to also follow the coverage on omgrpg.com.
