Blizzard has made the WoW expansion pack official and we reveal plans to announce Diablo 3, showcasing it with a gameplay demo, this weekend at BlizzCon.

Blizzard has announced the full details of the World of Warcraft expansion pack; The Burning Crusade. The details reported in the leaked expansion pack story we brought you last week were pretty close to those announced today although they were not spot-on. Since the title and general juice of the expansion were correct we can assume that the leak was real, it would seem impossible for a person to accurately guess so many features without some inside help.
World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade expands the game, adding new races, lands, Battlegrounds, professions and items, and more. Here is just a partial list of what you can expect from the World of Warcraft expansion:

– An increase in the level cap to 70
– Two new playable races, including the magical Blood Elves
– New starting zones in Quel’Thalas and beyond
– The entire new continent of Outland, reachable through the Dark Portal
– Many new high-level dungeons to explore in Azeroth, Outland, and elsewhere
– New flying mounts in Outland
– Many new and dangerous monsters, including epic world bosses
– Hundreds of new quests
– Hundreds of new items
– A new profession: Jewelcrafting
– Socketed items and more…

Diablo 3

Blizzard will also use the BlizzCon event to introduce Diablo 3 to gamers and if the excitement of Blizzard employees is anything to go by, the game will be a big deal. According to a message sent to WoW Guru by former Blizzard employee Chris Hartgraves, Diablo 3 takes place in heaven. Hell is trying to take it over and it is AWESOME looking … Imagine the brightness of heaven being taken over by the darkness of hell … Imagine WoW but in a Diablo world in amount of size and playability … Also, guild housing is available in this game for those of you who know about it. They should have a gameplay demo to show at BlizzCon.

This is definitely the second most heartwarming story for Blizzard fans, the first being the developer’s denial of any plans to bring WoW to XBox 360.

 

  

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 The launch date for the next iteration of one of the biggest gaming franchises of all time, Diablo III, is May 15, Blizzard has announced.

There will be no long wait lines for this one, either: Blizzard says all players who digitally pre-order the game will be able to play it “the minute the servers go live.”

Also, on May 15 Diablo III will be available at retailers throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, South Korea, Southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and the regions of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau.

The digital version will be available in the regions above as well as in Mexico, Argentina, Chile, and Brazil.

The game will once again have players return to the village of Tristram on a quest to save the world from a demonic invasion.

Players will be able to play as a barbarian, monk, demon hunter, witch doctor, or a wizard, and Blizzard once again promises a fast-paced action RPG gameplay – exactly what Diablo fans expect from the franchise. 

As we’re counting down the days until we’re ready to announce a release date for Diablo III, we’ve come to realize that the PvP game and systems aren’t yet living up to our standards. Today, we wanted to let you know that we’ve made the difficult decision to hold back the PvP Arena system and release it in a patch following the game’s launch. After a lot of consideration and discussion, we ultimately felt that delaying the whole game purely for PvP would just be punishing to everyone who’s waiting to enjoy the campaign and core solo/co-op content, all of which is just about complete.

While we work on making sure PvP lives up to its full potential, we hope you’ll find some consolation in the fact that soon, you’ll be having a blast leveling characters, finding items, learning the classes, and perfecting builds…and that when the Arenas do arrive, you’ll be all the better prepared for battle.

When the PvP patch is ultimately ready, it will add multiple Arena maps with themed locations and layouts, PvP-centric achievements, and a matchmaking system that will help you and your team get into fairly matched games quickly and easily. We’ll also be adding a personal progression system that will reward you for successfully bashing in the other team’s skulls. 

 

Activision Blizzard arguably stole the show today by slapping a May 15 release date on Diablo 3.

 Elsewhere, Microsoft and Activision became the latest names on the long list of publishers not having their titles stocked at troubled retailer GAME, and MS quickly pulled a number of job ads that mentioned the “next-generation” of Xbox.

Meanwhile, Beachhead product director Noah Heller told us that Call of Duty Elite has helped foster collaboration between the franchise’s various developers, although he wouldn’t necessarily describe the situation as harmonious, we rounded up some reviews of the new iPad, and Sega threw the ever-hungry Shenmue fans a bone by teasing the possibility of a high-definition re-release of its beloved Dreamcast RPG.

  

 
With just under two months to go until the release of Diablo 3, Blizzard are now giving their game a big push because perfecting the equilibrium and experience will be key to its success, one of the most important areas where they need to get right is the end game and we have seen with games like Mass Effect 3 that by getting it wrong will bring the wrath of the fans down on them.

Blizzard needs to get things right here because they have angered Diablo fans in the past by constantly keeping them updated as to new features, only for them to be taken away again, but if what we’ve learned from this Forum article is correct then the game will surely get more positive reactions rather than negative.

Community manager Bashiok has been outlining some of the key new features and one of them is the skill build combinations, which we have to say are now mounting in numbers. The hard part for the development team is to make certain that they are not only workable but fascinating as well.

The issue that Blizzard has is finding the perfect balance with those quick “three-minute” boss runs and a more intensive “two-hour commitment“. They don’t want the former to be the most effective but they also don’t wish for fans to feel the need to commit to two hours either, so you can see the dilemma they are faced with? 

Earlier versions of the cinematic were much more focused on the characters talking back and forth, mostly about the Eternal Conflict. We ultimately decided it was better to ‘show not tell,’ so we moved away from this direction and instead came up with the idea of establishing the Eternal Conflict by flashing back to it. We loved the concept of angels pouring down from the sky like a waterfall of diamonds into an ocean of demons, but there was no way we could create such sequences and still ship the game on time; it was essentially like adding another entire cinematic relatively late in the schedule.
That’s where the idea of the 2D animations originated. Here, we could show the same backstory in the context of a macabre, living storybook where the images come to life on the page. Through the constraint of time, we came up with the unique ‘storybook’ look for which I think the Diablo III cinematics will be remembered. This storybook grounds the sequence as a flashback — without explicitly explaining that it’s a flashback — and it even gives the viewer the sense that they are witnessing events with the weight of an epic, almost mythological past. 

Earlier versions of the cinematic were much more focused on the characters talking back and forth, mostly about the Eternal Conflict. We ultimately decided it was better to ‘show not tell,’ so we moved away from this direction and instead came up with the idea of establishing the Eternal Conflict by flashing back to it. We loved the concept of angels pouring down from the sky like a waterfall of diamonds into an ocean of demons, but there was no way we could create such sequences and still ship the game on time; it was essentially like adding another entire cinematic relatively late in the schedule.
That’s where the idea of the 2D animations originated. Here, we could show the same backstory in the context of a macabre, living storybook where the images come to life on the page. Through the constraint of time, we came up with the unique ‘storybook’ look for which I think the Diablo III cinematics will be remembered. This storybook grounds the sequence as a flashback — without explicitly explaining that it’s a flashback — and it even gives the viewer the sense that they are witnessing events with the weight of an epic, almost mythological past. 

In addition to storyboarding all our ideas, we also focus a lot of time on the ‘animatics’ — moving 2D storyboards that give a sense of timing and pacing. We also like to score our animatics with music from other movies to enhance the sense of the mood at atmosphere that we’re ultimately aiming for. As Blizzard gets bigger, it becomes more and more important to avoid what we call the ‘grand reveal,’ which is keeping your work to yourself until it’s almost 100% done

. By that point, it’s far too late to incorporate feedback, and there’s always plenty of valuable feedback. A much better approach comes from building rough versions of the footage early and sharing with as many teams as possible as soon as possible. Animatics are very effective in that regard. We can build them quickly and still convey a lot of the elements and emotions we hope to capture in the final footage.
     Once we have the animatic in a place where we like it, we start blocking things out in 3D and layering in sound. Animators and artists start with simple skeletons and rough backgrounds to flesh out the space.

 The first 3D animatic is often called the ‘slap comp’ and from it we get a sense for how the cinematic is evolving into 3D space. The slap comp goes out to many teams for feedback, and another round of iteration begins in which we start layering in more features, piece by piece.

Details begin to emerge through rendering and painting, and eventually we start doing very subtle things, like supporting facial animations with muscle movement. These later stages can be very time consuming, which is why the earlier rounds of feedback are so vital. It’s important to start building all the meticulous details on top of a foundation that works. 

If the answer is yes, then you should take a look at some recently released videos showcasing class skills like the Barbarians Seismic Slam, or the Demon Hunters Evasive Fire, and Monks Crippling Wave. You can get a visual look at these class skills and many others via this page on battle.net, and also find a Skill Calculator here.

We’ve embedded a few videos below this article, which were recently uploaded to YouTube. The first video gives you details on Diablo 3 Armor Tiers from 2 to 16 and for all classes, and a second video explains a few reasons why you should play as Demon Hunter (we’d love to hear your thoughts on their points).

We’ve also included a third video explaining 3 reasons to play Witch Doctor, which are sure to give fans ideas or maybe even confuse those that are new to the franchise. 

Are you one of the lucky gamers who has been playing Blizzard’s beta for Diablo III? If so, we want to know what you think!

You can tell us whatever you like, but any or all of the following would be good to touch on:

 

Does it live up to expectations?

 

What do you like most about it?

 

What you like least about it?

 

What do you think of the new skill system?

 

How about the skill runes?

 

The enemies?

 

The visuals?

 

The sound?

 

The character classes?

We want to know what’s blowing you away, and what’s disappointing you (if anything), in other words. So if you’ve been playing the beta, you can submit your thoughts in the comments below, or send us an email, and we’ll compile some of the most interesting and insightful feedback into a feature on Diablo III, driven by IGN’s community.

With the game’s release date in sight, there’s no better time to put together the definitive community impressions of this highly-anticipated title!