New daily quests: dungeon, battleground, and cooking.
Announced expansion features:
Level cap increased to 80.
The new continent of Northrend.
Capital city will be Dalaran.
Two points of entry, allowing for two different leveling experiences.
WoW's first Hero Class: the Death Knight
Plate-wearing tank/DPS hybrid.
Can tank with two-handed weapon or dual-wielding. No shield required.
Uses a mix of spells and abilities.
Will use a new Rune-based resource system. Your weapon can be imbued with 6 runes in any combination of Blood, Frost, and Unholy. These runes are used for casting spells and will recharge over time.
Unlocked via a quest chain available at level 80.
Death Knights will start at a fairly high level, at least 55-60.
Possibility of additional Hero Classes added in the future.
New PvP content:
Siege weapons and destructible buildings.
A new 15v15 battleground that includes the siege weapons.
A new arena map.
A new arena season.
An outdoor world PvP zone for all servers. PvE servers will now have a contested territory.
Zul'Aman will be an upgrade to Karazhan.
A new profession: Inscriptions, which will allow players to modify/augment their existing spells and abilities. Example given: adding a Knockback effect to a Mage's Fireball.
Talent trees extended to include 51-point talents.
Faster leveling from 1-60.
New Caverns of Time instance.
New flying mount options, with current mounts usable in Northrend.
More daily quests.
Someone posted a 6-part video series covering the panel on YouTube, which is where I got this information:
The Inform compiler is available from inform-fiction.org for those who want to try their hand at actually creating old-school IF. It produces story files for the Z-machine that will run under Frotz. There is also an online copy of the Inform designer's manual available.
From reading the article, it sounds like they fear outside control of the aircraft, and if that's even remotely possible, it's easy to understand why they want the source code -- and not just to check for intentional backdoors. "Switching off the plane" would be the least of my worries. I'm no airplane or military nut, but I can imagine Bad Things(tm): changing targets, recording or disabling communication systems, faking radar or other data, activating or deactivating weapon systems, using the surveillance capabilities, etc. Heck, you should get the code when buying something like this without having to ask for it.
Of course, from the US military's viewpoint, the ability to "switch them off" would be nice if the planes were being used against the US or their allies or by one customer against another. Not to mention that by handing over the source code, just like with normal, everyday open-source programs, there is always the possibility of "them" finding an exploitable problem, quietly fixing it in their own planes, and storing the tidbit away for future use.
Slashdot Mirror
- In-game voice chat.
- A new raid zone.
- New daily quests: dungeon, battleground, and cooking.
Announced expansion features:- Level cap increased to 80.
- The new continent of Northrend.
- Capital city will be Dalaran.
- Two points of entry, allowing for two different leveling experiences.
- WoW's first Hero Class: the Death Knight
- Plate-wearing tank/DPS hybrid.
- Can tank with two-handed weapon or dual-wielding. No shield required.
- Uses a mix of spells and abilities.
- Will use a new Rune-based resource system. Your weapon can be imbued with 6 runes in any combination of Blood, Frost, and Unholy. These runes are used for casting spells and will recharge over time.
- Unlocked via a quest chain available at level 80.
- Death Knights will start at a fairly high level, at least 55-60.
- Possibility of additional Hero Classes added in the future.
- New PvP content:
- Siege weapons and destructible buildings.
- A new 15v15 battleground that includes the siege weapons.
- A new arena map.
- A new arena season.
- An outdoor world PvP zone for all servers. PvE servers will now have a contested territory.
- Zul'Aman will be an upgrade to Karazhan.
- A new profession: Inscriptions, which will allow players to modify/augment their existing spells and abilities. Example given: adding a Knockback effect to a Mage's Fireball.
- Talent trees extended to include 51-point talents.
- Faster leveling from 1-60.
- New Caverns of Time instance.
- New flying mount options, with current mounts usable in Northrend.
- More daily quests.
Someone posted a 6-part video series covering the panel on YouTube, which is where I got this information:Inform isn't the only system available for creating IF -- see the rec.arts.int-fiction Authorship FAQ.
On a related note, the Interactive Fiction Competition is apparently still going strong after over a decade, with entries sorted by authoring system.
Of course, from the US military's viewpoint, the ability to "switch them off" would be nice if the planes were being used against the US or their allies or by one customer against another. Not to mention that by handing over the source code, just like with normal, everyday open-source programs, there is always the possibility of "them" finding an exploitable problem, quietly fixing it in their own planes, and storing the tidbit away for future use.