#67 - This Week in Blizz: “Title”

• Garrett • Ben • Kyle

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Intro:  Welcome to This Week in Blizz!  Keeping you up to date on the worlds of Blizzard Entertainment.

Hearthstone

Hearthstone now in Closed Beta

(GIVE ME A !@&%ING KEY, BLIZZARD)

Friday saw the launch of the closed beta of Blizzard's new Hearthstone franchise, in a limited release primarily to members of the press and fan sites and significant community members.  There has been practically universal acclaim and prolific stream numbers over the weekend as the community has been clamoring for keys and fan sites have been holding numerous giveaways.

[discuss]

Links

• Hearthstone Closed Beta Test Begins!

Hearthstone Factoids

The Basics

• There are 4 different rarities of Hearthstone cards

• Common = White
• Rare = Blue
• Epic = Purple
• Legendary = Yellow

• Decks are made up of 30 cards
• There can be only 2 of the same card per deck

• Only 1 copy of a Legendary card is allowed

• Players start the game with 30 health.

• You can not exceed 30 health at any time.

• You start with 4 cards and pull one card at the beginning of your turn.

• If you go second (as a result of a coin flip) you get an extra card and the “coin” which you can spend to give yourself one extra mana for one turn.

• You can only hold 10 cards.

• Drawn cards beyond 10 are discarded.

• The mana cost of a card must be payed to be played.
• You start with 1 mana and the mana pool increases by 1 every turn up to a maximum of 10.

The Cards

• Card types

• Minions

• Creature cards more or less. These have attack power and health.
• Only 7 minions can be on the battlefield at one time.
• Damage to minions is persistent. You have to heal to restore health.

• Spells

• One time use cards.
• Ex. Polymorph - Turn target minion into a 1/1 sheep.

• Secrets

• Cards that are hidden from your opponent after being cast. They don’t take effect until something specific occurs.
• Note: Some minion cards have a “Secret” ability.

• Weapons

• These cards have attack power and durability.
• Weapons give you, the hero, the ability to attack as if you were a minion.
• The durability on a weapon dictates how many times you can attack as a hero before the weapon breaks.
• Ex. Durability 4 = You can attack 4 times.

Hero Classes

There are 9 Hero Classes. What class you choose dictates your Hero Power and what Class-Specific cards you may include in your deck.

• Warrior

• Hero power - Armor Up!: Gain 2 Armor

• Rogue

• Hero Power - Dagger Mastery: Equip a 1/2 Dagger; or Give your weapon +1 Attack this turn.

• Mage

• Hero Power - Fireblast: Deal 1 damage.

• Priest

• Hero Power - Lesser Heal: Restore 2 Health.

• Warlock

• Hero Power - Life Tap: Draw a card and take 2 damage.

• Paladin

• Hero Power - Reinforce: Summon a 1/1 Silver Hand Recruit.

• Druid

• Hero Power - Shapeshift: +1 Attack this turn. +1 Armor.

• Hunter

• Hero Power - Steady Shot: Deal 2 damage to the enemy hero.

• Shaman

• Hero Power - Totemic Call: Summon a random Totem.

Links

• WoW Head - Hearthstone
• r/hearthstone - Beginner FAQ
• Artosis’ Shaman Control Deck

Diablo III

Reaper of Souls

Earlier this week a splash page on the Diablo site turned up with the following text:

"Death, at last, shall spread its wings over all." - The Book of Tyrael

Earlier today, at Gamescom, Blizzard pulled back the curtain officially and announced Reaper of Souls the first expansion to Diablo III.

Malthael (New Baddy)

The scary-looking death-like figure in the cinematic is Malthael, the angel of death. So if the cinematic is to be believed Malthael now has the Black Soulstone, which contains the soul of Diablo. Not to mention Malthael’s dual scythes which can rip the souls from the bodies of the living.

Crusader (New Class)

• Inspired by the Paladin.
• Focuses on Shields. (shield bash! YAY!)
• Uses Flails as weapons.
• Mid-range melee character.
• Uses the resource "Wrath"

Loot Runs

• 15-20 minute completely random dungeons
• Random weather
• Random enemies
• Random boss
• Multi-tiered (several levels deep)

Loot 2.0

A comparison was given between how items in Act III drop now and how they'll drop in the expansion:

• Now: 256 white, 399 blue, 275 yellow and one legendary items.
• Then: 73 white items, 266 blue items, 83 yellow items and 7 legendary items!
• Legendary will be build-changers as seen in the screenshots below

Everything Else

The Mystic

• Can Transmogrify items, so you don't have to sacrifice looks for power.
• Item Enchanting - allows to reroll one of the affixes on a rare/legendary item.

New Level Cap - 70

• Every class gets new Skills and Runes
• Which means a fresh economy and new power-cap as

New Act

• Featuring what looks like Westmarch, with lots of graveyards and other fun places!

Major Paragon Changes

• Is now Account wide.
• No longer has a cap
• Seems to have Stat Allocation tied to it

Lylirra Tweets

• Interesting, seems you 'Assign' Paragon Points to a character. So you earn them with 1 hero but can put them onto another? #D3RoS
• Correct. All normal characters on an account will share a Paragon level, same for Hardcore, as well as earned Paragon Points.

• Any estimates on release date at this point? I'd assume 2nd-3rd Quarter 2014.
• No release date info to share right now. That's pretty typical, though!

• also, what happens to the people who've already leveled up in Paragon?
• Bonuses are retroactive. I.E. If you have two p100 heroes right now, the current plan is that you'd have 200 points in ROS.

Links

• DiabloFans - Reaper of Souls
• Official Reaper of Souls site

World of Warcraft

5.4: The Siege of Orgrimmar Trailer released

In case you needed more reasons to want to bitch-slap Garrosh Hellscream, there's a trailer out now for the upcoming 5.4 Patch featuring Garrosh facing off against Shado-Pan leader Taran Zhu.  After watching this, you'll feel about...oh...693 times more disgusted with Garrosh than you were before, if it was even possible to dislike him more.

Preparing for Patch 5.4: Siege of Orgrimmar - September 10 <- confirmed

Links

• Siege of Orgrimmar Trailer

Pre-5.4 Developer Interviews

As is now typical before a major patch release, Blizzard developers made the rounds with several fansites (*elbows Blizzard* Hey, how about us next time?) and dropped a lot of great tidbits of info.  

From Tom Chilton & Ghostcrawler:

Flex Raiding

• Flex difficulty will open at the same pace as the Normal difficulty raid.
• Most guilds should be able to make progress in Flex difficulty.
• Scenarios might be a useful place to apply the Flex scaling tech in the future, scaling from 3 to 5 players.
• Any other content that doesn't need very tight balance is also a good candidate for scaling. This means heroic raids are not a good candidate.
• The idea of scaling raids past 25 players has also been considered, allowing you to scale up to a higher limit like 30 players.

Raids & Heirloom Drops

• Siege of Orgrimmar has a little bit of branching in paths and ideally raids in the future will have more, allowing you to skip a boss or do bosses in a slightly different order.
• The first three or four bosses shouldn't be too hard for most raiding guilds, allowing them to have bosses they can use to gear up with as they progress.
• The first heirloom weapon that drops for you will be for your current loot spec, but after that you will get one at random.
• The heirloom weapons are also intended to make Mists of Pandaria a little more alt friendly.
• Thunderforged and Warforged style items are likely going to be the solution for addressing the lower popularity of 25 player raids in order to avoid making 25 player raids feel mandatory.

Proving Grounds

• As long as Proving Grounds works out well, it could be used as a lower level training environment in the future.

• Proving Grounds could even be used to replace item level as the gating requirement for Raid Finder or other things that use matchmaking.

Misc.

• Patch trailers could be added to the game itself in the future, but there are some things that would need to be addressed first. The trailers are created to get people excited about a patch, so they feel a little bit more like an ad than other in game cinematics, so things might have to be done a little differently.
• There will be some kind of content and event between now and the next expansion, but the patch number isn't determined yet.
• Skills on your bar that you have to keybind and rarely actually use are the prime targets when and if the developers address ability bloat.
• The cosmetic minor glyphs are working out well, and more will be added in the future. It might make sense to increase the number of Minor Glyph slots at some point.
• It is easy for your character's level to advance much faster than your profession skill level. Fixing this will take a significant amount of developer time, as what to do with all of the recipes have to be considered.
• Valor Points will not be converted to Justice Points for Patch 5.4. "Players who want to stockpile their 3,000 Valor before Patch 5.4 hits will be able to do that, and probably should start thinking about that."

Links

• MMO-Champ - 5.4 Dev Interviews

Timeless Isle Blog Post

Blizzard's Big New Idea in open-ended player content was covered in a blog post on Wednesday:

Once you’re on the Timeless Isle, it’s open-world adventuring at your own pace. There are a couple quests on the island, but they’re not going to tell you exactly where to go and what to do. Instead they exist to encourage you to explore caverns, discover underwater grottos, and battle all manner of frightful beasts for great rewards.

As this is an open-world experience, everything except the raid bosses (more on those below) is designed to be taken on solo. See a level-93 Elite? Attack it! Depending on your spec and gear it may take you a while to whittle down its health, but your ability to skillfully play your class and dodge attacks can lead you to victory.

Let’s talk about raid bosses! The four August Celestials: Chi-Ji, Niuzao, Xuen, and Yu’lon, are found at the ancient proving grounds in the middle of the island. This location was used for generations to prove a pandaren’s worth as a warrior, and you can challenge a Celestial to prove yours as well. An able group can simply stroll in and begin the fight with one of the Celestials. Upon completion, each player will receive personal loot, just like with any other world boss.

[Clarification on last week's Censer of Eternal Agony:]

Using the Censer will flag you for PvP to everyone—even your own faction. Your skin takes on a bright flame effect, showing all around that you’ve summoned the rage of Ordos and are out for blood. Using the Censer also immediately reduces your health to 10% of its maximum (which you can then heal back up over time), keeping it from becoming a quick ganking device. On PvE realms, the rules of flagging still apply; it won’t become open warfare, but players can choose to engage these flagged players if they like. On PvP realms, though, this menacing new threat will certainly be a target for both factions. Finally, when you kill other players while you’re under the effects of the Censer, you’ll gain Bloody Coins, a currency that can be exchanged for exclusive rewards.

Links

• http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/10590712/The_Timeless_Isle%E2%80%94Take_Your_Time-8_14_2013

StarCraft

WCS Season 2 Finals are this weekend!

Update: Jim can’t get a VISA

Links

• Liquipedia - WCS 2013, Season 2 Finals

http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/10681058#best

Outro

iTunes Thanks

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This Week in Blizz is a production of Amove.TV.  You can see more about This Week in Blizz at ThisWeekInBlizz.com.  You can also email the show at thisweekinblizz@gmail.com.

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