BlizzCon Recap
Here's everything announced at this year's BlizzCon 2013. There was tons of information about World of WarCraft's next expansion - Warlords of Draenor, good amounts of information on Diablo III's Reaper of Souls, first look at Blizzard's MOBA Heroes of the Storm and some very interesting information about Hearthstone!
Diablo III: Reaper of Souls
Not a lot of new things were announced at this year's BlizzCon, especially for our audience, that has been following the tons of datamining information we've posted over the past few months. With that said, there have been more then a few clarifications and interesting things mentioned. Here are the major links:
Reaper of Souls Curse Interview
James managed to get a hold of Travis Day and Jason Ragier and asked a few interesting questions. Here are some of the topics discussed:
Incentivising team play in the expansion
The reason Legendaries will be soulbound
A detailed look at Adventure mode
The Nephalem Rift-specific buffs
What's happening with the Hellfire Ring in Reaper of Souls
World of WarCraft: Warlords of Draenor
The new expansion for World of WarCraft has been announced and it is called Warlords of Draenor. Here are the main features and the in-game trailer. As always you can check out the full Recap for World of WarCraft at MMO-Champion.com.
Heroes of the Storm
Heroes of the Storm had a detailed announcement at BlizzCon. Its cinematic and gameplay trailer feature many interesting things, including a good amount of confirmed characters. Stay tuned for everything involving Heroes of the Storm's future on HeroesoftheStorm.Gamepedia.com.
Hearthstone
Hearthstone was also among the highlights of this BlizzCon and has received enormous attention from fans, for a game that is still in it's Beta phase. A lot is going to change soon. You can also check out the full information unload on Hearthpwn.com.
All legendary and set items being soul-bound is a terrible idea. Don't kill trading. Killing the auction house is good, killing the social aspect of trading is bad.
All legendary and set items being soul-bound is a terrible idea. Don't kill trading. Killing the auction house is good, killing the social aspect of trading is bad.
If any this is really going to be what happens when RoS ships...
Then they pretty much went full transition since launch, from essentially a free market and progressively get more and more closed, from some soul bounds to removal of auction house and now to soul bound of all legendaries?
I think they need balance, I generally believe that removal of the AH was for the better, not really sure about current soul-bound items but that doesn't mean we should go from one extreme to the other.
If legendaries are all sound-bound (even if it's just top end) then what do we trade?
Soul-bound items: demonic essences, organs, keys, nephilim rift keys (from RoS Demo), now all legendaries/sets (I'm assuming legendary plans too?, possibly some of the new crafting materials?
Non Soul-bound items:We are getting more and more limited in what we can trade now... gold, lower tier gems, low end crafting materials, rares (rares might actually not even be end game items anymore since now legendaries can roll at any level and have unique affixes that rares don't have)
Wow, I actually have more respect w/ how they did it. Any "half" measures were going to result in black market RMT w/ a vengeance. So instead, they just soul-bound certain items, and made EVERYTHING else "junk" by comparison. No wonder they didn't want to fix and buff rares.
All legendary and set items being soul-bound is a terrible idea. Don't kill trading. Killing the auction house is good, killing the social aspect of trading is bad.
Going to have to disagree here. One of the worst things about D2 was trade spam, scams, and sitting around in lobbies yelling "10 SOJs for Tal's Helm" for hours.
Trading in Diablo is one of those things that sounds like a good idea on paper but doesn't really work in practice.
The devs have it spot on in my opinion. I don't want to spend time in some sort of trade chat spamming for the item I need. I want to go out there, kill demons, and find it. And then enchant it to make it perfect. And then use it to go out and kill more demons.
All legendary and set items being soul-bound is a terrible idea. Don't kill trading. Killing the auction house is good, killing the social aspect of trading is bad.
Going to have to disagree here. One of the worst things about D2 was trade spam, scams, and sitting around in lobbies yelling "10 SOJs for Tal's Helm" for hours.
Trading in Diablo is one of those things that sounds like a good idea on paper but doesn't really work in practice.
The devs have it spot on in my opinion. I don't want to spend time in some sort of trade chat spamming for the item I need. I want to go out there, kill demons, and find it. And then enchant it to make it perfect. And then use it to go out and kill more demons.
Due to RNG, do you even know if you'll ever see it? In D3, I've found multiple Andariel Helms, Manticores, Zuni's ring and boots, Tal Rasha helms, Nat's boots and weapon, Inna's weapon, and every piece of Immortal King. I have NEVER found, on my own, either Chantodo piece, Uhkapian Serpent, Skorn, Tal Rasha chest, orb, or amulet, Zuni's mojo, Echoing Fury, or Mempo, let alone the "good" versions of all of the above. If the new Legend and Set affixes are as build defining and gameplay altering as they claim (and what they showed hasn't proven that yet, although the Horrify/Root combo looks promising), then you'll never be able to play "your" build b/c you may never find the items you need to make it. Imagine if you actually had to find (no trading, no duping) an Enigma for your classical Hammerdin. You'd never make one. What about WW Assassins? Infinity Sorceress? You couldn't experiment w/ these builds w/o trading (or more likely, cheating/duping/bot farming). If you need ONE item to define a build, especially if it's a random property on one or two items, then you'll likely never make that build in the first place. In D3, the Sacrifice builds come to mind; you need a couple of items w/ Zombie Dogs affixes to make it work, and the only reasonable way for that is trading (through AH or other means). Unless they just flood the game w/ constant legendaries at all times. But that leads to the console problem, only you can't trade your PC game in for GTA V or AC 4 Black Flag.
All legendary and set items being soul-bound is a terrible idea. Don't kill trading. Killing the auction house is good, killing the social aspect of trading is bad.
Going to have to disagree here. One of the worst things about D2 was trade spam, scams, and sitting around in lobbies yelling "10 SOJs for Tal's Helm" for hours.
Trading in Diablo is one of those things that sounds like a good idea on paper but doesn't really work in practice.
The devs have it spot on in my opinion. I don't want to spend time in some sort of trade chat spamming for the item I need. I want to go out there, kill demons, and find it. And then enchant it to make it perfect. And then use it to go out and kill more demons.
Due to RNG, do you even know if you'll ever see it? In D3, I've found multiple Andariel Helms, Manticores, Zuni's ring and boots, Tal Rasha helms, Nat's boots and weapon, Inna's weapon, and every piece of Immortal King. I have NEVER found, on my own, either Chantodo piece, Uhkapian Serpent, Skorn, Tal Rasha chest, orb, or amulet, Zuni's mojo, Echoing Fury, or Mempo, let alone the "good" versions of all of the above.
No, you haven't. Most people haven't, because the droprates for legendaries sucks right now. That's all changing with 2.0.
But the real point is that the item hunt, in general, will take longer now because you can't just go buy the BiS stuff after you get enough money. Good rares will become more beneficial and more valuable for those who want to trade. Finding those really good legendaries will be one of the end-game goals, and will actually be feasible with the new droprates. But you won't NEED them just to make progress like you do now.
All legendary and set items being soul-bound is a terrible idea. Don't kill trading. Killing the auction house is good, killing the social aspect of trading is bad.
Going to have to disagree here. One of the worst things about D2 was trade spam, scams, and sitting around in lobbies yelling "10 SOJs for Tal's Helm" for hours.
Trading in Diablo is one of those things that sounds like a good idea on paper but doesn't really work in practice.
The devs have it spot on in my opinion. I don't want to spend time in some sort of trade chat spamming for the item I need. I want to go out there, kill demons, and find it. And then enchant it to make it perfect. And then use it to go out and kill more demons.
Due to RNG, do you even know if you'll ever see it? In D3, I've found multiple Andariel Helms, Manticores, Zuni's ring and boots, Tal Rasha helms, Nat's boots and weapon, Inna's weapon, and every piece of Immortal King. I have NEVER found, on my own, either Chantodo piece, Uhkapian Serpent, Skorn, Tal Rasha chest, orb, or amulet, Zuni's mojo, Echoing Fury, or Mempo, let alone the "good" versions of all of the above.
No, you haven't. Most people haven't, because the droprates for legendaries sucks right now. That's all changing with 2.0.
But the real point is that the item hunt, in general, will take longer now because you can't just go buy the BiS stuff after you get enough money. Good rares will become more beneficial and more valuable for those who want to trade. Finding those really good legendaries will be one of the end-game goals, and will actually be feasible with the new droprates. But you won't NEED them just to make progress like you do now.
It's not about progress it's about builds. Weird gimmicky builds that are are possible w/ very specific items and very specific affixes on said items (the Sacrifice builds). The only way to ever try out these builds is if you somehow find these items, and that seems "remote." If it's NOT remote, then you've run out of stuff to do already, b/c they refuse to make any kind of endgame that doesn't involve looking for more items.
Personally, they should have kept the AH, but introduced Bind on Equip, or Bind on Sale. You can either wear it or sell it, but not both. You can buy it, but then you can't resell it. Something like that. They needed an item sink, no question, but this seems extreme. This is like the console version, where you find what you want immediately and now have nothing to do. I guess the biggest elephant in the room is the lack of a non-item oriented end-game. There is no PvP and no raid system. There is nothing to actually do w/ the gear you find. Gear needs to be a means to an end, instead of the end in and of itself.
It's not about progress it's about builds. Weird gimmicky builds that are are possible w/ very specific items and very specific affixes on said items (the Sacrifice builds). The only way to ever try out these builds is if you somehow find these items, and that seems "remote." If it's NOT remote, then you've run out of stuff to do already, b/c they refuse to make any kind of endgame that doesn't involve looking for more items.
As opposed to what?
Personally, they should have kept the AH, but introduced Bind on Equip, or Bind on Sale. You can either wear it or sell it, but not both. You can buy it, but then you can't resell it. Something like that. They needed an item sink, no question, but this seems extreme. This is like the console version, where you find what you want immediately and now have nothing to do. I guess the biggest elephant in the room is the lack of a non-item oriented end-game. There is no PvP and no raid system. There is nothing to actually do w/ the gear you find. Gear needs to be a means to an end, instead of the end in and of itself.
So, to you, trade is "sitting around in lobbies yelling "10 SOJs for Tal's Helm" for hours"? Interesting. Because, you know, to me trading is giving my mate this awesome barb item I found while playing a wiz, or trading weapons with my mate because I have a slow weapon and want a fast one, and he has a fast one and wants a slow one.
There seems to be a fairly straightforward solution to this, which is to only allow trading with people who are on your friend's list, and have been there for some period of time, and why not make it so that unbound items become bound when traded to stop on any arbitrage nonsense.
Blizzard goes on a lot about 'playing with friends' (hell, that's their cookie-cutter response to the always-on thing)... I'd really like to see them have a crack at trying to solve the 'trading problem' in a way that's compatible with their stated philosophy.
With soulbound, at least you don't have to worry about d2jsp.
lol "worry"? What about d2jsp "worries" you?
Even though I'm not a competative person and generally keeps to myself by playing hardcore selffound. I can't help but get ticked of by streamers bragging about (third party site bought) gear that he claims is self-found. Even though I don't participate in the run down softcore culture it still affects me. I'd rather see everybody find the best items themselves. That's just how I am and feel about the game.
Those streamers can feast on these two round objects dangling down there.
In all seriousness, why care about what some no-life loser claims or does not claim?
One could ask why you care what others care about. Just because it's not an issue to you, doesn't mean that it invalidates others concerns.
All legendary and set items being soul-bound is a terrible idea. Don't kill trading. Killing the auction house is good, killing the social aspect of trading is bad.
I agree with them, being handed items by your friends is generally not very fun in the long run, and that's the best case scenario of trading IMO. On a fundamental level, as long as trading is possible then the natural loot game is constantly in competition with it. Maybe killing the AH and adding soft measures like Mystic account binding will be enough to minimize the influence of trading, but what if it isn't? It's likely that someone out there will build a third party site that is comparable in functionality to the Auction House - it happened for TF2. I think that trading is a corrupting influence in these games that distracts from what the game is really supposed to be about. If I find that perfect legendary, I want to have fun kicking ass with it without having to feel that nagging temptation knowing I could sell it somewhere for $100.
While they're at it I sincerely hope they completely kill the ability to trade gold. Stop the bots once and for all, then finally bring back decent rewards from breakables.
So, to you, trade is "sitting around in lobbies yelling "10 SOJs for Tal's Helm" for hours"? Interesting. Because, you know, to me trading is giving my mate this awesome barb item I found while playing a wiz, or trading weapons with my mate because I have a slow weapon and want a fast one, and he has a fast one and wants a slow one.
They addressed this in two ways (that they have mentioned so far):
-- If you are in the same game when something drops, you can trade a legendary between each other. So if you want to trade, play together. Somewhat heavy handed, but it does encourage grouping.
-- They didn't like the idea of just getting handed a bunch of stuff by a friend who plays more than you. Clearly you disagree with this, but I actually support it. It certainly feels cool to be handed a bunch of things but in the end it just means you don't need / want to farm, aka play the game.
What's also interesting is that you didn't like your option yet you did it, and I love my option yet I won't be able to do it.
The problem is that if the AH / trading exists then drop rates are low so you need to trade. Which means it doesn't matter if I like it or don't like it--I have to do it. I didn't like the AH but I used the hell of out if (as well as d2jsp). Why? It was the only way to get the end game items I needed.
You say you would just use trading to trade between your friends. But the spamming of chat channels would happen if the best items could be traded. That problem had to be addressed and the devs made their choice. Counter proposals are fine but "just allow trading" isn't viable because it doesn't solve that problem.
I just don't understand when people decided that trading was such a fundamental component of Diablo. Trading in Diablo 2 was absolutely awful. And it certainly wasn't any good in Diablo 1, i.e. "I'll drop my hacked sword over here, you drop your duped gold over there".
D3's auction house was clearly inspired by WoW's auction house, but they left out an incredibly critical detail: everything in WoW is Bind on Equip, and the really good stuff is Bind on Pickup. Turns out, that has always worked just fine for WoW, which is a loot game at its core not so different from Diablo. I don't know where the pushback is coming from. Unrestricted trading in Diablo has always been bad from the very start - why defend it?
With all this soulbound madness...I just wish the stash was bigger. like, a lot bigger.
If they stick to the BoA idea and keep drop rates as high as they say, there is no way they can keep the stash that small. I'd buy a second copy of D3 just for additional stash in that case. Hate to throw things away.
Here's everything announced at this year's BlizzCon 2013. There was tons of information about World of WarCraft's next expansion - Warlords of Draenor, good amounts of information on Diablo III's Reaper of Souls, first look at Blizzard's MOBA Heroes of the Storm and some very interesting information about Hearthstone!
Diablo III: Reaper of Souls
Not a lot of new things were announced at this year's BlizzCon, especially for our audience, that has been following the tons of datamining information we've posted over the past few months. With that said, there have been more then a few clarifications and interesting things mentioned. Here are the major links:
Diablo III BlizzCon Open Q&A
Reaper of Souls Curse Interview
James managed to get a hold of Travis Day and Jason Ragier and asked a few interesting questions. Here are some of the topics discussed:
World of WarCraft: Warlords of Draenor
The new expansion for World of WarCraft has been announced and it is called Warlords of Draenor. Here are the main features and the in-game trailer. As always you can check out the full Recap for World of WarCraft at MMO-Champion.com.
Warlords of Draenor is announced
Heroes of the Storm
Heroes of the Storm had a detailed announcement at BlizzCon. Its cinematic and gameplay trailer feature many interesting things, including a good amount of confirmed characters. Stay tuned for everything involving Heroes of the Storm's future on HeroesoftheStorm.Gamepedia.com.
Highlights
Hearthstone
Hearthstone was also among the highlights of this BlizzCon and has received enormous attention from fans, for a game that is still in it's Beta phase. A lot is going to change soon. You can also check out the full information unload on Hearthpwn.com.
Fireside Chat
Ha. Bagstone.
If any this is really going to be what happens when RoS ships...
Then they pretty much went full transition since launch, from essentially a free market and progressively get more and more closed, from some soul bounds to removal of auction house and now to soul bound of all legendaries?
I think they need balance, I generally believe that removal of the AH was for the better, not really sure about current soul-bound items but that doesn't mean we should go from one extreme to the other.
If legendaries are all sound-bound (even if it's just top end) then what do we trade?
Soul-bound items: demonic essences, organs, keys, nephilim rift keys (from RoS Demo), now all legendaries/sets (I'm assuming legendary plans too?, possibly some of the new crafting materials?
Non Soul-bound items: We are getting more and more limited in what we can trade now... gold, lower tier gems, low end crafting materials, rares (rares might actually not even be end game items anymore since now legendaries can roll at any level and have unique affixes that rares don't have)
Going to have to disagree here. One of the worst things about D2 was trade spam, scams, and sitting around in lobbies yelling "10 SOJs for Tal's Helm" for hours.
Trading in Diablo is one of those things that sounds like a good idea on paper but doesn't really work in practice.
The devs have it spot on in my opinion. I don't want to spend time in some sort of trade chat spamming for the item I need. I want to go out there, kill demons, and find it. And then enchant it to make it perfect. And then use it to go out and kill more demons.
Ha. Bagstone.
Due to RNG, do you even know if you'll ever see it? In D3, I've found multiple Andariel Helms, Manticores, Zuni's ring and boots, Tal Rasha helms, Nat's boots and weapon, Inna's weapon, and every piece of Immortal King. I have NEVER found, on my own, either Chantodo piece, Uhkapian Serpent, Skorn, Tal Rasha chest, orb, or amulet, Zuni's mojo, Echoing Fury, or Mempo, let alone the "good" versions of all of the above. If the new Legend and Set affixes are as build defining and gameplay altering as they claim (and what they showed hasn't proven that yet, although the Horrify/Root combo looks promising), then you'll never be able to play "your" build b/c you may never find the items you need to make it. Imagine if you actually had to find (no trading, no duping) an Enigma for your classical Hammerdin. You'd never make one. What about WW Assassins? Infinity Sorceress? You couldn't experiment w/ these builds w/o trading (or more likely, cheating/duping/bot farming). If you need ONE item to define a build, especially if it's a random property on one or two items, then you'll likely never make that build in the first place. In D3, the Sacrifice builds come to mind; you need a couple of items w/ Zombie Dogs affixes to make it work, and the only reasonable way for that is trading (through AH or other means). Unless they just flood the game w/ constant legendaries at all times. But that leads to the console problem, only you can't trade your PC game in for GTA V or AC 4 Black Flag.
No, you haven't. Most people haven't, because the droprates for legendaries sucks right now. That's all changing with 2.0.
But the real point is that the item hunt, in general, will take longer now because you can't just go buy the BiS stuff after you get enough money. Good rares will become more beneficial and more valuable for those who want to trade. Finding those really good legendaries will be one of the end-game goals, and will actually be feasible with the new droprates. But you won't NEED them just to make progress like you do now.
It's not about progress it's about builds. Weird gimmicky builds that are are possible w/ very specific items and very specific affixes on said items (the Sacrifice builds). The only way to ever try out these builds is if you somehow find these items, and that seems "remote." If it's NOT remote, then you've run out of stuff to do already, b/c they refuse to make any kind of endgame that doesn't involve looking for more items.
Personally, they should have kept the AH, but introduced Bind on Equip, or Bind on Sale. You can either wear it or sell it, but not both. You can buy it, but then you can't resell it. Something like that. They needed an item sink, no question, but this seems extreme. This is like the console version, where you find what you want immediately and now have nothing to do. I guess the biggest elephant in the room is the lack of a non-item oriented end-game. There is no PvP and no raid system. There is nothing to actually do w/ the gear you find. Gear needs to be a means to an end, instead of the end in and of itself.
As opposed to what?
Uh...welcome to Diablo?
There seems to be a fairly straightforward solution to this, which is to only allow trading with people who are on your friend's list, and have been there for some period of time, and why not make it so that unbound items become bound when traded to stop on any arbitrage nonsense.
Blizzard goes on a lot about 'playing with friends' (hell, that's their cookie-cutter response to the always-on thing)... I'd really like to see them have a crack at trying to solve the 'trading problem' in a way that's compatible with their stated philosophy.
One could ask why you care what others care about. Just because it's not an issue to you, doesn't mean that it invalidates others concerns.
I agree with them, being handed items by your friends is generally not very fun in the long run, and that's the best case scenario of trading IMO. On a fundamental level, as long as trading is possible then the natural loot game is constantly in competition with it. Maybe killing the AH and adding soft measures like Mystic account binding will be enough to minimize the influence of trading, but what if it isn't? It's likely that someone out there will build a third party site that is comparable in functionality to the Auction House - it happened for TF2. I think that trading is a corrupting influence in these games that distracts from what the game is really supposed to be about. If I find that perfect legendary, I want to have fun kicking ass with it without having to feel that nagging temptation knowing I could sell it somewhere for $100.
They addressed this in two ways (that they have mentioned so far):
-- If you are in the same game when something drops, you can trade a legendary between each other. So if you want to trade, play together. Somewhat heavy handed, but it does encourage grouping.
-- They didn't like the idea of just getting handed a bunch of stuff by a friend who plays more than you. Clearly you disagree with this, but I actually support it. It certainly feels cool to be handed a bunch of things but in the end it just means you don't need / want to farm, aka play the game.
The problem is that if the AH / trading exists then drop rates are low so you need to trade. Which means it doesn't matter if I like it or don't like it--I have to do it. I didn't like the AH but I used the hell of out if (as well as d2jsp). Why? It was the only way to get the end game items I needed.
You say you would just use trading to trade between your friends. But the spamming of chat channels would happen if the best items could be traded. That problem had to be addressed and the devs made their choice. Counter proposals are fine but "just allow trading" isn't viable because it doesn't solve that problem.
D3's auction house was clearly inspired by WoW's auction house, but they left out an incredibly critical detail: everything in WoW is Bind on Equip, and the really good stuff is Bind on Pickup. Turns out, that has always worked just fine for WoW, which is a loot game at its core not so different from Diablo. I don't know where the pushback is coming from. Unrestricted trading in Diablo has always been bad from the very start - why defend it?
If they stick to the BoA idea and keep drop rates as high as they say, there is no way they can keep the stash that small. I'd buy a second copy of D3 just for additional stash in that case. Hate to throw things away.