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ICYMI: Mobility scooters that autonomously get around
try{document.getElementById("aol-cms-player-1").style.display="none";}catch(e){}Today on In Case You Missed It: MIT's Computer Science and AI Lab have cooked up another autonomously driving vehicle, but this one is a disability scooter. In this newly posted video, you can watch as the scooter navigates around human obstacles when taking a person on the way to their destination. In other AI news, Google and Blizzard Entertainment are teaming up to use Deepmind to train the system to autonomously play Starcraft II. If you, too, have a fondness for Big Mouth Billy Bass, the singing fish trophy, you need to see how one was hacked to be the voice of Alexa. It's pretty terrifying. And if you haven't yet played the New York Times' Voter Suppression Trail, you're missing out on both nostalgia and maybe sadness. As always, please share any interesting tech or science videos you find by using the #ICYMI hashtag on Twitter for @mskerryd.
Senior Artist for Blizzard's next MMO sure likes dieselpunk
It's always a good thing to know the sort of hands in which the art of an upcoming MMO rests. One of Blizzard's senior artists, Nick Carver, has got quite the excellent collection of personal works. As a senior artist, Carver is busy with Blizzard's tremendously mysterious Project Titan, the company's MMO-in-the-making. While personal works may not be indicative of which way an MMO's art team is leaning, these are still well-worth an appreciative gander.There are occasional speed paintings and one-offs, but many of the pieces belong to the world of the dieselpunk or Decopunk city of Dustrum, Carver's personal project. Head over to Kotaku to check out a fine sampling of Carver's work, or hit up his blog to wade hip-deep in the original source.
Blizzard introduces universal BattleTags to its titles
When Blizzard first rolled out Battle.net's Real ID feature, many players were timid (read: incensed) about using it due to the fact that it revealed players' real-life names to fellow gamers they added. These worries can be easily laid to rest with Blizzard's latest announcement: the addition of BattleTags. What's a BattleTag, you ask? Well, simply put, it's a screen name by which you are identifiable across all Blizzard games, only without the privacy concerns of Real ID. Real ID, however, will continue to exist along with BattleTags, so players can use whichever method they so desire. BattleTags are currently being tested in the Diablo III beta, and the feature will be available to Diablo III players when the game launches. The feature will also be rolled into World of Warcraft and StarCraft II, but the studio isn't ready to give solid dates on when that may take place. For the full details on BattleTags, including instructions on how to claim your own, head on over to WoW Insider and have a read.
BlizzCon ticket barcodes ideally emailing next week
Bashiok has confirmed that Blizzard is anticipating emailing out BlizzCon ticket barcodes next week. If you were lucky enough to have bought BlizzCon tickets, watch your email and make sure nothing gets lodged in the spam filter. Your BlizzCon ticket barcode is required, along with a photo ID, to get into the show and pick up your badge. It is important to print out the barcode before you leave for Anaheim and bring it with you for registration. Bashiok -- Re: Emailed Blizzcon Tickets None have gone out yet. We're anticipating them to begin going out early next week. source
Finding Blizzard's Cataclysm
The other day, we posted that Blizzard had trademarked the name "Cataclysm," and right after that, the community exploded with speculation: is it the name of WoW's next expansion, Blizzard's next-gen MMO, or some other project? Nothing is guaranteed yet (is it ever with Blizzard?), but the Internets have pretty much landed on the new expansion as the answer. "Cataclysm" actually means "a momentous and violent event marked by overwhelming upheaval and demolition," but it also has a pretty specific relation to water, and that's got lots of people thinking that it's the name of the Maelstrom expansion. In fact, The Sundering, or the world event in Azeroth's history where the Well of Eternity was destroyed and the Maelstrom (that swirly thing in the middle of the map) was created, was referred to as "the Cataclysm." So there you go -- pretty solid evidence, even though, as I said, nothing is guaranteed until we hear it from Blizz.Stropp's got an interesting piece of speculation that says though "Cataclysm" is still probably the next expansion, the event the word refers to has yet to happen. He claims that if Blizzard really wants to speed up the 1-50 leveling process, they should just destroy Old Azeroth as we know it, and just have all the new characters start at level 50. That would be pretty nuts, but then again, Blizzard's never shown a real affinity for the old content, and by the next expansion, we'll be heading up to level 90 or even 100.
Blizz wants your class questions
Blizzard gets more and more communicative every week recently. I love it. They recently announced that they're seeking questions for a community question and answer series, with a separate thread for each class. They'll be going through the class threads in order, answering questions and generally being awesome (one hopes). Afterwards everything will be gathered into one big blue pile of answers and presented to the community. Nethaera is going to be the organizer of this little event, it seems. She warns us that it is "probably going to be a couple of weeks" before we start getting answers, because they want to give sufficient time for WoW players around the world to get their questions in. She also says she's going to try to get "the most prominent questions" answered, as well as questions that have been around for a long time without being addressed. This is a great time to get your class questions and concerns addressed, so if you have anything you've always wanted to ask a dev, go find the Q&A thread for your class (in your class forum) and post away.
Last remaning BlizzCon tickets go on sale at 8:00 p.m. PDT tonight
If you want to go to BlizzCon in October, you have one last window to buy your tickets: 8:00 p.m. PDT tonight. That's 11:00 p.m. Eastern, and 10:00 p.m. Central. This news comes from an announcement on the main page of the WoW website. The announcement further tells us that all the available tickets were sold out within minutes of the Blizzard Store coming on-line this afternoon.Considering there will be a third hall open this year, we believe around 12,000 tickets have been made available (this number has also been reportedly confirmed by phone sales reps), which is 50% more than the 8,000 that were sold last year. The World Wide Invitational that took place in June also sold out very quickly.In the case of the WWI, additional tickets were made available after the primary batch had sold out. However, and this is important, there is no indication Blizzard will do this again.We'll update with any further information when we have it.
What's new in Blizzcast 2?
As I mentioned a little while ago, episode two of Blizzcast was released today. It features interviews with Chris Metzen and Geoff Goodman, the second of whom was a new name to me. You can go download or listen to it, or read the transcript, at Blizzard's site, but if you don't feel like it, or can't, here's a highlights version for you.Chris Metzen talks about story stuff, since that's what his job is: vice president of creative development. What does he have to say about WoW? Not that this should surprise anyone, but the story team is "looking forward to future expansions". The original WoW was basically a snapshot, story-wise, with not much in the way of dynamic content. The expansions get more back to linear stories. We'll see themes in Wrath of the Lich King like Titans, the creation of the world, the dragon flights, and why Azeroth is so central to the events of this universe. Geoff Goodman was on mostly to be interviewed about Magtheridon, by my favorite illuminating CM, Nethaera. Here's what I found interesting in his segment:
Blizzcast episode 2 now out
The second episode of Blizzcast, Blizzard's official podcast, has just been released. This one is double the length of the previous installment, at just over 49 minutes. Interviewees are Chris Metzen, VP of creative development, as well as WoW designer Geoff Goodman. The interviews are followed by a reader question-and-answer segment. You can see our coverage of the first episode in case you've forgotten what happened last time, and if you need some more WoW podcast goodness, why not check out our own WoW Insider show?Another post is forthcoming as soon as I get a chance to analyze what's revealed in this episode; I just wanted to get this news out as quick as possible.
Blizzcast reveals Sunwell details
Episode 1 of Blizzard's new podcast, cunningly titled "Blizzcast," went live today. It's in two segments, one hosted by CM Karune and featuring Blizz artist extraordinaire (and, in fact, art director) Samwise Didier, and the second hosted by CM Drysc and featuring Jeff "Tigole" Kaplan. This installment is audio-only, but they promise that future episodes will include video as well. For now you can hear the podcast or read a transcript of it, and check out some Samwise art, at Blizzard's site. A more extensive overview is forthcoming, but for now, I imagine what you really care about is Jeff Kaplan's hints for the upcoming patch 2.4: The Sunwell raid is tuned for players in T6 gear, but there is no attunement. The Sunwell faction, called Shattered Sun Offensive, is a joint effort by Aldor and Scryer to drive the Burning Legion out from the Sunwell Plateau. Jeff calls it "the culmination of the Aldor and Scryer storyline." Many Aldor/Scryer NPCs in Shattrath will be changed to SSO NPCs. SW25 gear will be a Tier 7, but the looks will not be class-specific; the example he gives is that the Pally plate and the Warrior plate will be differently-colored versions of the same models -- but you can, apparently, rest assured that the itemization will be better than AQ40. The 5-man dungeon will be about as hard as Shadow Labyrinth or Shattered Halls. There are four bosses. On normal mode, the first three drop ilvl 110 blues (normal dungeon blues), but the last boss drops an ilvl 115 epic, on par with a lower-level Karazhan epic. In heroic, the first three bosses drop ilvl 115 epics, and the last boss drops an item on the level of Prince Malchezzar's drops. Buffing the loot like this means it will still be relevant for people that have been playing BC for a while now, and also it gives newcomers a chance to catch up. As one more bonus, Blizzard is giving away 12 Logitech 5.1 speaker sets and Starcraft II hats to lucky folks who write feedback emails about the podcast to them; details on this are at the Blizzcast home page. I for one really enjoyed hearing the voices behind some of the avatars I see every day, and of course hearing some new details about 2.4. Keep it up, Blizzcasters!%Gallery-12115%
PTR notes: Go to the PTRs, fight Blizzard
To help test out the new battleground matching feature, Blizzard is offering players the chance to fight teams of "World of Warcraft community managers and other Blizzard employees." This Friday, May 4, starting at 2:00 PM PDT, go to the PvP PTR with a level 70 character, queue up for WSG, and prepare to battle your creators. They've done this before, and I think they lost at least a few of the games. Think how cool it would be to beat Blizzard at their own game. I wonder why they always pick WSG, though. That's definitely my least favorite of the three pre-BC battlegrounds (I haven't tried EotS yet). Anyway, full blue post after the cut as usual.
Blue Notes: Shaman dispel poison and a web designer opening
A long-standing bug regarding Shaman having difficulty curing Rogue poisons will finally be squashed, though not until 2.1.0. From Ommra:Ok, so I had the wrong information on when this bug was fixed. Apparently it didn't get fixed in the last patch (as you noticed), but will get fixed in 2.1.0 instead. The change will be that the difficulty of dispelling the rogue's poison is based on the level of the player instead of the level of the weapon the poison is applied to. That makes sense, but I have trouble seeing how weapon level is ever going to be higher than player level, making this almost look like a nerf on the face of things. I'm sure it's not, though -- anyone want to explain?In other news, perhaps Blizz took my jab at their web design on Sunday a little too seriously -- they're now on the lookout for a new web designer:Blizzard Entertainment has an immediate opening for a Web Designer. The ideal candidate is well versed in HTML, JavaScript, and Photoshop and experienced in all manner of web-design elements, such as the design and layout of buttons, links, menus, and text. The Web Designer's primary duties will be to help design and implement the HTML pages for our growing websites. A lot of focus will be spent on supporting existing and future Blizzard titles. The Web Designer will also be responsible for daily web updates and maintenance of existing Blizzard sites. The ideal candidate will also have a strong working knowledge of Blizzard games. For more information on this position, please view the job description at: http://www.blizzard.com/jobopp/web-designer.shtml
Play.tm interviews Shane Dabiri
Blizzard people always give fairly good interviews, and this one is no exception (even if it is a week old or so). Play.tm caught up with WoW lead producer Shane Dabiri about the success of WoW and BC, and what the future holds. I'd agree with one of the commentors on the blog that most of the questions were softies, but there's still some good stuff. There's a lot of congratulations all around; WoW, as we know, has posted up pretty big numbers in terms of sales and subscriptions. Unfortunately, this does not mean prices will be lowering any time soon: Is there any chance of a drop in the subscription costs in the future? With the massive amount of content in the game, as well as our regular content updates, 24/7 support offerings, and network infrastructure, we believe we're providing great entertainment value for players at the current price. The continued growth of the game is a positive indicator of this value as well. That's too bad, although of course I can understand the financial sense behind it. Blizz continues to be confident that WoW can keep going for a long time: "we're confident that World of Warcraft has many years ahead of it. We all love working with the Warcraft mythology, and we have no shortage of ideas and plans for the future."What surprised me in this interview was the amount of questions that were dodged, even soft as they are. The interviewer asked what Shane's personal favorite part of BC was, and he replied with some back-of-the-box copy about how flying mounts let us see the world in a new way, and there are a million dungeons, and we've got this Arena system; that bit felt very canned. Also, apparently they "haven't discussed specifics about future expansions" -- really? Players are constantly talking about it; I have trouble believing that the devs haven't tossed any specific ideas back and forth. Maybe they're too busy refusing to make any major changes to the classes. At any rate, click the Read link to check out the interview, and come back here to talk about it.
