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Take a shot at Battlecry's first three class types
In a world where gunpowder is banned, a massive sword that can transform into a shield isn't so outlandish. This gunless world hosts the team-focused, free-to-play Battlecry, which Bethesda Softworks detailed three class types for during a panel at PAX Australia. The Enforcer wields the aforementioned transforming sword, as well as the beefiest health stats in the game. Each attack blocked by an Enforcer's shield builds adrenaline, which can be used as fuel for stronger attacks. In contrast, the Tech Archer is an at-a-distance character, both due to having the best attack range in the game and a general vulnerability to getting stabbed. Should their spacious personal bubble be invaded, Tech Archers can use a Sonic Shot ability to push opponents away from them.
Bethesda's BattleCry brings big swords, no gunpowder to online war
Bethesda unveiled BattleCry today, a new free-to-play multiplayer PC combat game from its studio of the same name. Set in a world where gunpowder has been banned, BattleCry's 32-player team action focuses on powerful "transformative" weapons. They include swords (very big swords) that become shields, electrostatic-charged blades, armor-piercing bows and, as shown in the trailer, face-mashing gauntlet things. The game's retro-futuristic world is dreamed up by Viktor Antonov, the conceptual artist for Half-Life 2 and visual design director for Dishonored. In the alternate history of BattleCry, world war at the turn of the 20th century shaped conflicts for years to come. Now things are settled in designated "WarZones," where select teams eviscerate each other with great big weapons. At the very least, it sounds organized. As for the gameplay, players can choose to enlist with the Royal Marines or Cossacks - we'll let you work out which is which - and progress their character through ranks to unlock abilities and builds. E3 attendees will be able to get their hands on BattleCry next month, while a beta is scheduled to begin in 2015. [Image: Bethesda Softworks]
Bethesda's new Battlecry Studios looking for F2P experts
Bethesda may be known for its one-of-a-kind offline RPGs, but its new Battlecry Studios division is looking to ride the online free-to-play gravy train. Eurogamer has sussed out a few details based on the firm's job postings, which include a "monetization designer" and a platform lead position that requires experience with "design and implementation of microtransaction systems and services." The advertisements also suggest some sort of console release, as Bethesda notes that "console experience -- preferably next generation (PS3, Xbox 360)" is preferred. Battlecry is headed by former Star Wars: The Old Republic executive producer Rich Vogel.
Tom Chilton explains early WoW class balance (or lack thereof)
We see a fair amount of pining for "the way things used to be" in this community -- rose-colored hindsight that is, by all accounts, horribly wrong. Maybe you enjoyed the sense of wonder upon going through the game the first time. That's completely understandable. But no one really enjoyed running Molten Core. Or the old honor system. Or the horrible class balance and several patently useless talent trees at launch. Speaking of, I wonder if there's anybody that could shed some light on that last bit. Maybe Tom Chilton, the lead Game Director could, in his latest interview on the five-year anniversary mini-site. As it turns out, Chilton was brought in in early 2004 to work on the PvP portion of the game, but ended up handling a lot more when the honor system was put on hold to handle more pressing concerns, like making gameplay interesting. "From April until the game shipped, the vast majority of my time was spent working on the design for the auction house, the mail system, and implementing the talent trees for every class. I was the only person available to do that -- our other class designer, Kevin Jordan, was mainly focused on ensuring that all of the classes had spells and abilities up to level 60, and managing the flow of when you'd get which ability. Kevin and I, and Rob Pardo, and Mike Heiberg from the StarCraft team, all worked on that part of the game. It was exciting, but it was weird -- my experience with some of the classes was making a character of that class on an internal server, playing it up to level 10 to get a feel for how the class played, and starting to make 60 levels worth of talents. A lot of my early experience was trying to get familiar with every class." Kind of explains a lot, doesn't it? Like Lacerate, for example. People who complain about balance nowadays really have no idea how bad it used to be, or how much Blizzard's process for fixing it has improved. Chilton goes into more detail about WoW's early development in his full interview on the Battlecry site.
World of Warcraft 5th Anniversary mosaic finally complete
It looks like the fans followed through, after all, and we finally get to see the Battlecry mosaic much sooner than I'd previously thought. The completed mosaic reveals a truly awesome piece of art by Wei Wang depicting all the current faction leaders. By awesome I mean truly mind-blowing, and Blizzard has high resolution versions of both the mosaic and the actual painting available for download in different versions. The full mosaic, for example, can be viewed in all its 14400 x 6150 pixel glory. Arguably the best version is the dual screen wallpaper which shows the most detail, although there are also much smaller versions for mobile phones. The Battlecry mosaic is comprised of 20,000 player-submitted pictures called out by Blizzard as part of the World of Warcraft 5th Anniversary celebration. Each section of the multi-part mosaic unlocked various content over the past few months, which included sneak peeks at conceptual art and even a piece of the game's musical score. The final artwork is arguably the best and coolest rendition of all the faction leaders so far, including a dual-wielding Magni Bronzebeard in armor that's significantly different from what he's wearing in-game, which may or may not hint at a possible model change come Cataclysm. Congratulations to all the fans who contributed to the mosaic!
BattleCry mosaic feature revealed: "Invincible"
Another portion of the BattleCry mosaic was revealed on Friday, bringing the total completed to 50%. This time, instead of unlocking a piece of art, Blizzard gave us something a little more special -- a 3-minute piece of music titled "Invincible" recalling the leitmotif of the Wrath of the Lich King trailer. Blizzard rather cryptically describes it thusly: An ode to one who has fallen. Time and events have left it unclear whether the song refers to the former prince of Lordaeron or his beloved steed. Cryptic or not, this is a beautiful piece of music, and one we're hoping appears in-game soon. Staffers here have guessed that "Invincible" might play either during or after the much-anticipated fight with the Lich King himself, and we're quite likely to see one whopper of a lore moment and cutscene. Fingers crossed, but until then, I'm going to enjoy playing this in Icecrown, and I'd kill to hear a rendition with a full chorus and symphony, perhaps at some social convention said to take place yearly...but surely that's just crazy talk.
What's taking the Battlecry mosaic so long?
When the World of Warcraft Anniversary mini-site was unveiled last November, one of its features was a photo-mosaic dubbed the Battlecry which would unlock little art goodies each time a certain milestone was reached. The Battlecry mosaic called for player submissions to submit their pictures with a logo of their favored faction, with a modest goal of 20,000 player-submitted pictures in order to reveal the final artwork created specially for the event. It's come along rather smoothly, and some really cool player pictures have been submitted, with the seeming abundance of Horde-aligned pictures prompting us to ask where the Alliance pride was. But what really surprises me is how long the whole project is taking. When the site was launched, one of the first questions that actually ran through my head was how long it would take to fill up the whole mosaic. With over ten million active players, you'd think getting to 20,000 would be easy. Out of ten million, that's like a drop in a bucket. But after almost two months of the site being active, we're still only at 32% of the goal. Why?
The Daily Quest: "Looking for Waldo"
We here at WoW.com are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere. The Pink Pigtail Inn is collecting nominations for a "list of the year," picking the best in a few different categories from the World of Warcraft in 2009. Go leave a nom for their awards, and then come back here -- we'll have our own year-end list of top stories as well. Kinless Chronicles has not had such a great experience with the Dungeon Finder so far. Low level DPS might be out of luck on finding groups fast. Tank Like a Girl examines some good tanking gear in the new Frozen Halls 5-mans. And while Alliance pride is hard to find, Kimberly D knows exactly why she's Horde. Click here to submit a link to TDQ
A lack of Alliance pride
Larisa makes an interesting observation about the Battlecry mosaic that's being assembled over on Blizzard's website. There certainly are a lot of Horde symbols there, and not quite so many Alliance symbols. The best information we have access to actually says that Alliance outnumber the Horde, and ancedotally, we know that's probably true. So why aren't the Alliance representing? Now, it could just be specific to this outlet -- perhaps Horde players spend more time online, or have more free time in general, and thus have the knowhow and chance to submit their pictures. But this issue has come up before (on our podcast as well): while many Horde players are ready to jump in and shout "For the Horde!" at a moment's notice, not so many Alliance players are as open about their allegiances. As Larisa asks: where's the faction pride?
Fan pictures added to the Battlecry mosaic
We posted about Blizzard's Warcraft anniversary minisite a while back, and since then, they've been busy, filling it up with even more content. The community interviews and the new Blizzcast haven't yet appeared, but there are many, many pictures on the Battlecry mosaic submissions section. Pages and pages of fans showing their support for the Horde or the Alliance. It's quite a sight to see, actually -- the pictures range from the straightforward to the silly to the very involved (one couple's posed up with their t-shirts and Frostmourne and logo and everything). There's quite a few whole-guild pics too. There's 43 pages total, so it's a lot to look through, but it's definitely worth a browse. Ancilorn reminds us, also, that this is a contest -- as more and more pictures from each faction roll in, we'll have access to some mosaic art using these actual pictures, the first piece of which was just revealed today. They've featured some of their favorite pictures over on the Facebook page as well. This is turning out to be a pretty cool idea, and as I said in the original post, I bet we'll be seeing these pictures in lots of other places in the future.
Win prizes in Blizzard's Twitter contests
If you are following Blizzard's Diablo, StarCraft and Warcraft Twitter accounts, then you already know that Blizzard has announced three new Twitter contests.For all three of them, you must be following the appropriate account. Here is a summary of each contest: Starcraft: Tweet how you are the biggest StarCraft 2 fan using the #SC2fan hashtag for a chance to win one of 500 Starcraft 2 beta keys. Diablo: Tweet an item name using the #D3unique hashtag to win one of many Diablo 3 prizes. Warcraft: Using the #Battlecry hashtag, tweet "For the Horde" when the background of the @warcraft twitter page shows a Horde flag and "For the Alliance" when the background is Alliance. Horde or Alliance prize packages are up for grabs in this sweepstakes. These contests end August 24, 2009. Good luck everyone!
Ask a Beta Tester: Lordaeron, epic quests, and other things
Welcome back to Ask a Beta Tester, where we answer your questions about the Wrath of the Lich King beta! Let's get things started with Chris's question...I really enjoy the Epic quest in Nagrand to bring Thrall to meet his grandmother. Is there anything like that in Wrath where you have to complete all the quests in one zone before you get an epic quest to complete?Well, there are a lot of quest chains. Maybe not that long, but certainly not less epic. That doesn't mean the chains are short, either. They just don't necessarily require completing every other quest in the zone. Some of the stories start the moment you step into a zone and last straight through until you're ready to leave it again, but there are plenty of other quests you do on the way. They're less of a prize for 'beating the zone' and more an everpresent story.
