BlizzCon Friday Wrapup

Besides the Burning Crusade announcement, there's lots of interesting stuff going on out in California. Gamespot reports from the scene and has a first look at the Blood Elf starting area. Meanwhile, Next Generation has the lay of the land from the first day of Blizzard's games get-together. From the Gamespot article: "As for the scene, Morhaime announced that slightly fewer than 8,000 attendees would be at Blizzcon, and there seemed to be about that many people crowding in Hall A of the Anaheim Convention Center. The line for showgoers to pick up their free goody bags seemed to snake as long as a line for a ride at nearby Disneyland, looking to be easily more than an hour's wait. Though there were dozens of computer stations, lines for Blizzcon attendees looking to play the new expansion pack were also quite long. Two GameSpot editors stood in line for about an hour to get 30 minutes of play time with the content."

Comments

From the GameSpot article...

[djflipstarx]

Quite a variety of people have made their way to the show, including parents and children who must have decided that a day at Blizzcon was more critical than spending it at school.

Jack Thompson: PIXELANTES ARE SKIPPING SCHOOL TO ATTEND A GAME CONVENTION?! MORE REASON GAMES ARE EVIL, TRUST ME.

Re:From the GameSpot article...

[Seumas]

People who act like one day of school is the difference between a career and a job make me laugh. Clearly those are people who haven't attended school in many decades. Trust me, one more day of "shut up and be quiet so teacher can recover from her hangover" is not going to help anything.

Besides, I don't know about anyone else, but I could only take so many consecutive days of teacher's tender loving fingers before I needed a day or two break from him.

Re:From the GameSpot article...

[Dachannien]

People who act like one day of school is the difference between a career and a job make me laugh.

Making your kids go to school on-time every day is part of instilling in them a positive work ethic. Of course, when you consider that the parents probably took a sick day to head to Blizzcon with their kids, it all kinda makes sense.

Re:From the GameSpot article...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've found from personal experience (I am 21 atm) that skipping a day now and then from high school was the best thing I could have done. It let me get away from the draconian, stifling administration and it let me vent my anxiety over the feeling of being trapped. Its not so much that you have a day off...its that you are in control of your time instead of handing it over to your "jailors" at school. It was truly a psychological boost more than anything else. I learned more in those days off than I ever did it some lame high school class with some teacher who was more concerned with hanging on to his or her pitiful paycheck than educating the students. I learned, most importantly, about myself and my limits as a human being to be coralled and controlled by the school administration.

Blizzard planning on killing modding?

[Anonymous Coward]

World of Warcraft allows third-party UI mods via XML and LUA. Well, some of these mods are apparently entering into a gray area, and are considered to be "too powerful" or something. (I remember a very confusing statement by Blizzard about how mods that allow people to do something that people without the mod can't do are considered too powerful - but isn't that the entire point of a mod?)

So, anyway, there's a rumor going around that they announced at BlizzCon that mods are going to have to be digitally signed in a future content patch. Anyone know if this is true?

If it is true, it will kill all third-party mods, "legal" or not. Even if they allow third-party authors to apply for digital signatures, it will still prevent them from developing at all. You can't develop a modification if you have to get EVERY single version of it signed by Blizzard. Bugs happen, it's a fact of development. If you have to wait a day between tests of various versions, mod development will simply stop.

So, is this true? Does Blizzard really intend to close off modding to their player-base, and only allow certain "golden" mods? I can only hope that this isn't the case.

Re:Blizzard planning on killing modding?

[KDR_11k]

They'll probably hand out mod licenses that allow you to develop these things and run unsigned mods, those without a mod license can only run signed code.

Too powerful mods would include stuff like automation (either botting or just "automatically heal self whenm damage below threshold", "immediately trigger $skill again when the effect runs out/the reload time is up" or "use $counteraction when $action is encountered"). Not-so-powerful ones will maybe give you an extra panel or two to fill up with stuff or allow you to have a different design for the various UI elements.

Re:Blizzard planning on killing modding?

[JavaLord]

I wouldn't be suprised. Mods like decursive, when run by a paladin basically keeps their whole party DoT/Debuff free just by mashing a button. There are healing mods that do the same. To me, they always seemed a bit like cheating.

Re:Blizzard planning on killing modding?

[Incoherent07]

I doubt they'll kill it off completely, as it's a great selling point for the game. They've already put a great deal of effort into making it impossible to write a full-on bot using UI mods (the main reason is that UI mods can't move you, and they can only cast one spell per button clicked).

(I remember a very confusing statement by Blizzard about how mods that allow people to do something that people without the mod can't do are considered too powerful - but isn't that the entire point of a mod?)

Not really. These are just UI mods; the intention is to allow you to reconfigure your UI and see information which is given to you, but not in a useful way by the default UI. I'll take the Decursive example. Decursive looks at your party/raid, finds a debuff that you can cure, and uses the correct cure spell on that person, all with one button. Notice there's only one spell being cast for each push of the button, and notice that nothing in there is something that a human player cannot do by himself. The reason people don't like it is because it's pretty brainless to use something like this; similar mods exist for selecting the correct rank of healing spell to not waste any healing.

Re:Blizzard planning on killing modding?

[snuf23]

"similar mods exist for selecting the correct rank of healing spell to not waste any healing."

For a Druid at least (haven't played a priest), it's not just to not waste healing, it's because my higher level heals won't work on lower level players. So if I want to assist lower level player I have to reconfigure my spell bar. If I'm in a mixed level group I have to have multiple levels of spells available. If I'm in a mixed level outdoor PVP raid, I might need to use almost all the spell levels. The same thing applies to my buffs. It's irritating.

Re:Blizzard planning on killing modding?

[JavaLord]

These are just UI mods; the intention is to allow you to reconfigure your UI and see information which is given to you, but not in a useful way by the default UI. I'll take the Decursive example. Decursive looks at your party/raid, finds a debuff that you can cure, and uses the correct cure spell on that person, all with one button

Yeah, but take a paladin for example. Say im in a battleground with 7 teammates defending some point. A warlock and priest come up, and debuff/DoT everyone in my group (they are fast!). I can cleanse all 7 of them just by jamming on the decursive button seven times quickly. There is no way humanly possible you could do that without decursive. Those with decursive have a huge advantage over those without.

Re:Blizzard planning on killing modding?

[Rhys]

If I was blizzard, wanting to implement a system like this it would be very easy. I'd make an automated web-service to sign the mods. All you have to do to access it is sign in with your account.

Sign a mod that's used to macro/cheat/blizzard doesn't like? Bye-bye goes your account.

Pretty low turn around time, etc, but you live with the risk blizz might ban you if you do something they decide they don't like.

Starcraft II

[nukem996]

Is Blizzard ever going to make Starcraft II? I know plenty of people still play it and would love for the story to go somewhere(the ending of Broodwar is a cliff hanger if you dont remember). sigh I remember hearing years ago that it was going to come out in 2005, I wonder if it will ever see the light of day.

Re:Starcraft II

[Locke03]

Yeah, I agree....although I have this horriable feeling that I may be old and grey before I find out what happens with Raynor, Kerrigan, the U.E.D. and the Protoss.....please prove me wrong Blizzard....

Re:Starcraft II

[Anonymous Coward]

There was some kind of C&C generals mod. Can't rememer the name, but blizzard killed the project, because people were using copyrighted names (sc and other).

Re:Starcraft II

[captjc]

A lot of games end like that...look at Leisure Suit Larry 7...but games get canceled for other things, even great ones...it is sad, but it is true. RTS's just don't seem as popular as they once were. As of now...it seems like a coin toss but my money would be on no.

Re:Starcraft II

[nukem996]

What about Age of Empires? M$ keeps making it. I think theres still plenty of money in it and if they did make a good sequal it would make tons of money. Its never a good buisness plan to only sell one thing(right now blizzards main thing is world of warcraft) although I hope they dont do something like World of Starcraft.

Video Recordings and Information from BlizzCon 05

[antdude]

WorldofWar.net posted new and confirmed information and media such as photographs, screenshots, and movie footages (including panels and presentations) of the BlizzCon (year 2005). The video presentations are quite funny to hear the fans yelling. Here are some samples of videos:

• Expansion Blood Elf Warrior gameplay Movie [28Mb]
  
• Rob Pardo Video Interview [47Mb]
  
• Sound-alike Contest Movie [86Mb]
  
• Original Song Contest Movie [35Mb]
  
• Dance-Alike Contest Movie [29Mb]
  
• Costume Contest [129mb]
  

Huh...

[thesnarky1]

FTFA and Summary: "Two GameSpot editors stood in line for about an hour to get 30 minutes of play time with the content."
So... that implies there was only two peopl per computer in line (assuming they both played on the same system). 1 hour wait, divided by 30 minutes of play time = 2, right? Not exactly a rave review, in my book.