Blizzcon Begins, Diablo 3 Wizard Class Unveiled

Blizzcon is officially underway today, starting with a presentation showcasing the Worldwide Invitational tournament held earlier this year. A company spokesman went on to talk about the tournaments being held for World of Warcraft 3v3 Arena, Warcraft 3, and Starcraft 2, followed by word that Starcraft 2 was not yet ready for beta, but that Blizzcon attendees would be included in the first round of testers when the beta program starts. The big news of the presentation, though, was the unveiling of the Wizard class — the third such class to be announced, along with the previously mentioned Barbarian and Witch Doctor. Read on for some more details.

The trailer illustrating the new class showed actual gameplay demonstrating the Wizard's spells and abilities, some of which hearken back to the Sorceress in Diablo 2. Attacks such as Meteor and Chain Lightning seem to be returning, and several new spells were seen, including one invoking a spherical shield that seems to alter the flow of time within it, allowing the Wizard to dodge projectiles and approaching enemies with ease. Another spell sends tornadoes storming through the room. Here's Blizzard description of the class from their press release: "The wizard is a wielder of the elements and a master manipulator of time, who combats the hordes of the Burning Hells by launching environment-shattering lightning bolts, channeling explosive arcane energies, and creating pockets of space outside of the normal flow of time."

Comments

Simple things

[Kingrames]

What I found coolest about Blizzcon so far was something very simple: a container of nickelodeon-style slime with a Hydralisk inside.

Your very own zerg unit, complete with matching creep. I thought it was an excellent example of how Blizzard is very good at taking simple ideas and making them work very well.

Re:Your sound card

[Anonymous Coward]

A quote of one of the original warcraft setup programs is hardly offtopic. They always stuck in the little extra quotes for those nutters (myself included) that insisted on clicking on a button or character so many times in a row.

Re:Totally new - the Wizard!

[Kandenshi]

Well, you *can* have a sorceress in Diablo 2 using a sword. In fact, there are swords that are made specifically for spellcasters to use. The act 3 mercenaries are sword/shield and magic(though they very very rarely actually HIT anything with their sword).

The problem with this is that typically wizards/etc need to learn *how* to do all the crazy physics-defying things they do. That apparently takes time effort and money, leaving your character with much less time to devote to lifting very heavy things, running quite a bit and learning the best way to stab someone with an oversized knife.
So you'd expect they'd be kinda crummy at both.

Diablo 2 still lets you do that if you want, it just doesn't expect you to be as powerful as a pure frozen orb/meteor sorc or a pure fighter.
Sorceress' can hit things with their swords like Hexfire, having buffed themselves with enchant and with energy shield.

Druids can run around shapeshifted into a werewolf form, clawing and biting things all the while calling down Armageddon. Of course, the number of skill point you need to expend in order to be really good at both is very high, but you *can* do it...