The latest Blizzcast chat talks up WoW, Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3.
The latest Blizzcast is out, and it's packed with news and developments on some of the most anticipated games of 2009.
On the Diablo 3 front, we've learnt that a lot of work is going into the UI. "Current design right now is to have bags. You'll get bags and they will expand, you know kind of like in WoW," says Mike Nicholson, a Senior Artist on Diablo III. "Except you're not going to open up separate windows. You'll start off your inventory with say... you know, eight slots, right, and then you'll get a new bag and that has ten, so two more slots will open up within that tab, but you'll never have multiple tabs. Like you won't have two or three 'large' tabs."
Monster death animation is receiving a lot of work, too, and so far each baddie has up to 35 different death animations.
Starcraft 2 is chugging along nicely, and the flying units are looking to get a big boost. "You'll also see some new authority for some of the bigger units in the game. Certainly the carriers have a much longer range than they've ever had before," says Lead Game Designer Dustin Browder. "It makes them a very powerful threat from the air in the end game. We should probably see more carriers used in higher level games but obviously will see how that goes in the beta."
Roll on that beta!
In terms of World of Warcraft news, WoW's Game Director, Tom Chilton, says that the team is looking into ways to refine flying vehicles, especially in the Wintergrasp PvP area. "If you look at a lot of games that have done flight simulation, there is a lot of care that goes into giving you that sensation of flying by having the world tilt and stuff like that so it feels a little less mechanical, feels a little bit more alive or more natural."
"So one of the things that we have kind of tasked ourselves with doing is figuring out how to polish that, how to improve on our vehicle physics, there's still a lot of vehicle physics tech that we want to get in that didn't make it into the first pass of Lich King."
There's a whole MESS more stuff in the 'cast, though, so be sure to check it out. You can either listen to the whole thing, or read to QandA.
Issue: 107 | December, 2009