Hello everyone. I apologize in the long delay for my Diablo 3 review. I know the game has been out for a few months now, but I was hoping to progress through Inferno before posting anything, however, thanks to my wonderful job and me being in South Korea at the moment, I’ve found myself a little short on time.Anyway, without further delay… I present you with Diablo 3: A Long Overdue Review.
Board games have had just about every theme you can think of these days, Nintendo, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, basically if it has a fan base there is most likely someone trying to cash in on it and what better way to do that than with Monopoly! Well it seems that Blizzard has jumped into the dice filled ocean too.
USAopoly has anounced that there will be two new board games revolving around two of Blizzards biggest franchises. The first being Monopoly: World of Warcraft where players will try to be the richest creature in Azeroth. The other game will be Starcraft: Risk which will apparently consist of 290 custom designed pieces and three different game modes.
Both games will be appearing this summer for a price tag of 40-50 dollars.
BlizzCon 2009 Artwork
This morning, Blizzard announced that they were cancelling this year’s annual festival where they usually hold rock concerts and showcase their latest in game-development.
Blizzard Entertainment, known for the World of Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo franchises, will be too busy working on developing games. A short press release from Blizz said: “We’re also heavily focused on getting Diablo III, Mists of Pandaria, and Heart of the Swarm into players’ hands as soon as possible.”
However, there will still be big tournaments for World of Warcraft Arena and Starcraft II later this year in the 2012 Battle.net World Championship Event. It will likely be one of the biggest eSports events of the year with pro-gamers around the world playing for the title.
The Championship is said to be taking place in Asia, but dates and times are yet to be confirmed. BlizzCon will be returning in 2013 for what will hopefully be the biggest one to date, considering their plans to skip this year, although this is of course good news if it means we get the next set of Blizzard games quicker.
Blizzard are known to be working on a mysterious MMO, named ‘Titan’, but the lack of news on that topic continues. But we are still expecting a few games from Blizz this year, including the next World of Warcraft expansion: Mists of Pandaria, the first Starcraft II expansion: Heart of the Swarm, and the third-entry into the Diablo Franchise: Diablo III, which is still in closed beta.
Akardo
The rumours about the Diablo III release date were quashed by Blizzard’s Community Manager via Twitter, @Bashiok, he said: “Diablo III does not have a release date. Any store or person claiming otherwise is guessing,” added by Akardo.
For all of you who have been waiting for the ages it looks like Diablo 3 finally has an official release date! Well….Best Buy official that is. It seems that in Rochester, Minnesota a countdown display for the game was spotted inside of a Best Buy store. Blizzard has not commented on this yet but it looks like Best Buy’s website reads the same date. For proof the picture is below, it has been checked and it is legitimate. IGN and Joystiq are looking for comments from Blizzard soon.
In September, Blizzard Entertainment began sending out closed Beta Testing invites for the highly anticipated Diablo III. While it seems there have been a rather limited number of these highly sought after beta invites, I have been fortunate enough to have a friend ( thanks again Mike!) who has been kind enough to allow me to watch him play the game in order to write this series of content previews for the GTN readers! Continue Reading
BlizzCon 2011 started today with CEO and Founder, Michael Morhaime, making some big announcements, followed by a crowd favourite, Chris Metzen.
Biggest announcements for each of Blizzard’s big franchises include the new World of Warcraft expansion, Mists of Pandaria, which was leaked several months ago but has now been made official.
With the new expansion, there will be new PvE zones and general content, along with the new race (of Pandas) which can be played by both Alliance AND Horde, the new class, Monk, and the level cap goes up to 90. There will also be a new talent system, and more PvE content that will convince you to play more out in the world, rather than sitting around cities.
Diablo III is now “on the home stretch,” said Metzen, with still no official release date, due to Blizzard’s usual process of it being released “when it’s done.” Diablo 3 Collector’s Edition includes in-game items for D3, SC2, and WoW, as well as an art book, and a very awesome 4GB Soulstone USB device.
As of now, you can purchase a World of Warcraft Annual pass – a year’s subscription that you pay for monthly, but you get some excellent goodies, including a digital version of Diablo 3 for free, access to the new WoW expansion beta, and an in-game mount: Tyrael’s Charger.
With Starcraft 2, there has been various units released for Terran, Protoss, and Zerg, but the focus this year is on the expansion, Heart of the Swarm, which continues the epic storyline with Kerrigan in the campaign, as well as new multiplayer modes that are yet to be seen.
You can still purchase a BlizzCon 2011 Virtual Ticket to see the upcoming panels, competitions, and tournaments, and still get the Murkablo WoW in-game pet and see Foo Fighters live tomorrow night. Blizzard have also released three EPIC trailers for each game that can be found online now, including the especially epic Diablo 3 trailer, The Black Soulstone.
Akardo
At the end of November some leaked documents appeared online via MMOGameSite which seemingly detailed Blizzard’s release schedule up to 2015.
In this document there are the details of WOW, Starcraft and Diablo 3 expansions but interestingly there was also a release date for an unknown title called ‘Titan’ for Q4, 2013. There were rumours circulating that this could be Blizzard’s next gen MMO which was first hinted at a couple of years ago.
Interestingly at Blizzcon this year Blizzard announced that other than WOW Blizzard were not currently developing another MMO and had no plans to.
Seemingly this has all changed because when Blizzard’s senior VP, Frank Pearce, was interviewed by Destructoid he was asked about Titan:
The media is not supposed to know anything about that. It’s our next-gen MMO project.
Gaming and Tech Network 