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Tom Chilton retrospective interview on Wrath of the Lich King
There's an excellent interview with Tom Chilton, the World of Warcraft lead game designer, up on GameInformer. Lots of stuff we've heard before, but there are some interesting talking points. For example: They are looking into extending the dungeon finder to 10-man content. Chilton hinted that we may see a new boss in the Ruby Sanctum before Cataclysm launches They have a "general philosophical approach of getting the hybrids to where they're close to the DPS classes when it comes to DPS roles. Otherwise, those specs just turn into joke specs." They feel warlocks could use a boost to their DPS. Tol Barad, the Cataclysm equivalent to Wintergrasp, will be more of a Isle of Quel'Danas style daily quest hub instead of a farming zone. Before settling on death knights for Wrath of the Lich King's hero class, they specifically debated necromancers and rune-masters. They feel that with all the accessibility work they did on end game PvE in Wrath, end game PvP has become harder to get into by comparison. It's a three page interview, so click through to read the whole thing! What really struck me reading this was that comment about hybrid DPS compared to pure. This "hybrid tax" concept has been harped on by posters on the official forums for a long time now, and this is a fairly straightforward way of putting it.
Castle Crashers Necromantic DLC coming tomorrow for 160 MS Points
Wow. When Castle Crashers developer The Behemoth teased last week that its upcoming Necromantic DLC pack was coming "SOON," they weren't kidding. According to a countdown clock recently added to the game's official blog, it's due to drop tomorrow, bringing the long overdue chainsaw, two new characters and one new animal orb to the multi-man beat-'em-up. The company has wisely placed the price of the expansion at 160 -- so before you download that new The Devil Wears Prada track on Rock Band 2, we want you to stop, and reconsider your priorities. Music from a hardcore band named after a Meryl Streep movie? Or chainsaws? (This decision is also a litmus test for whether we can still be friends with you. Choose wisely.)
'Necromantic' DLC pack coming to Castle Crashers
It's been a long time coming -- like, a looooong time -- but it looks like an upcoming DLC pack for The Behemoth's four-player beat-'em-up is finally delivering the oft-promised Chainsaw weapon to Castle Crashers worldwide. It's part of the "Necromantic" DLC pack, which in addition to the gas-powered armament, will give players access to two new characters (the titular Necromancer and The Cult Minion), a new "Dragonhead" animal orb and two new weapons (the NG Skull Mace and, yes, the Chainsaw).The Behemoth didn't reveal a price or a definitive release date for the pack, but did mention it is coming "SOON." That's their choice of capitalization, not ours. As in, it's not coming "soon" -- it's coming "SOON."
Robotic necromancer chest beams in new Champions Online screens
More robots are always a good thing, as everyone knows you can never have too many robots. Well, maybe a man named John Conner would disagree -- but we digress. Evil or no, there have been a lot of robotic things in the latest slew of Champions Online screens and we highly approve.Thankfully, if you were hoping for more than robot (but who would!?) then you'll be happy to see some evil sorcerer goings on as well. Plus, we're pretty sure we saw some sweet, sweet chest beam action in this other screen. Robot, necromancers and chest beams? This week is a good week to be a Champions Online fan, surely.%Gallery-17946%
Ask a Lore Nerd: Life and Death
Welcome to Ask a Lore Nerd, where each week blogger and columnist Alex Ziebart answers your questions about the lore and history of the World of Warcraft. Ask your questions in the comments section below, and we'll try to answer it in a future edition. Today we're fielding a lot of questions on the Light and the Shadow, and Life and Death. I don't know why, really, that's just how things happened! Trends like that are always fun, like the week or two where we had nothing but dragon questions. It makes picking out themes really easy!Emorich asked... I was under the impression that C'Thun wasn't dead. I thought we simply stopped him. After all, we were attacking one of his eyeballs, hardly a vital organ. Is Kil'Jaeden dead too? I thought we basically just pushed him back through the portal and now he's really pissed.
What we're expecting from BlizzCon
As we announced earlier, BlizzCon tickets are on sale. Sort of. Kind of. If you can fight past the store servers. I know I've been getting nothing but the fail murloc pretty much all day. Still, I and the rest of WoW Insider's crack live team will be there come hell or high water, and we'll bring you the news you need to know. In the meantime, we're stuck here refreshing the Blizzard Store. To pass the time, we did a bit of speculation about what we might see in Anaheim on October 10th and 11th. Here's what we decided: What we're sure to see The Wrath of the Lich King Cinematic: Though we still have no solid announcement, Blizzard's already stated that they want to get Wrath out before 2008 is up. Considering that, they must have the opening cinematic pretty close to done. I would be surprised if we don't see it open the opening ceremony, to be completely honest. I'm expecting Arthas and/or a "rebel" Human Death Knight to feature prominently, as well as our first cinematic Gnome shot.
Diablo 3 lead: Necromancer, other classes could return
When Diablo 3's Witch Doctor class was revealed, many of you -- at least one-fourth, by our estimates -- decried the perceived loss of the D2 Necromancer. Keep hope alive, True Believers, because D3 lead designer Jay Wilson tells MTV Multiplayer that it's still possible he'll rise from the dead. Wilson admits that the dev team was divided on the topic of bringing back classes. "But after we've established Diablo 3 as its own game with its own type of gameplay and experiences," he said, "I wouldn't be opposed to looking at old classes ... We're looking out ahead of time at what our expansions are going to be, so we've got to keep room open for some of those other classes down the road." Wilson also said they designed the Witch Doctor so there would be room for the Necromancer. Now that we've got that settled, you can go back to complaining over the art style.
Patch notes available for AoC's 10th of July update
The next major patch hits Age of Conan's live servers today. The patch notes are lengthy, chocked full of details on all of the quest, item, UI and NPC fixes that made it in. Necromancers, Dark Templars and Heralds of Xotli took the lion's share of class tweaks, although Priests of Mitra, Rangers, Assassins and Barbarians also had some smaller changes.Female characters received some fixes to the way they swing their weapons, and had their other combat animations corrected. Among the quest amendments, the "Obtaining the Noble Arena Key" fix stands out, hopefully allowing the poor people who could not enter the Arena in the Arsman's Tavern to finally complete their quests. As good as all of this progress is, we're going to sound like a broken record by mentioning the big PvP update again -- can we pretty please have it next patch? You can take a look at what we do have for now in the full patch notes.
AoC's 2nd of July patch completes planned Necro changes
The first patch for Age of Conan under the new scheduling has hit the live servers. Along with a healthy portion of quest and NPC bug fixes, the second half of the discussed Necromancer changes have made it in, granting them more splash damage for a couple of their pets, some feat related changes, and the ironing out of a few bugs relating to their spells.Massive PvP also received some updates. Players attacking battlekeeps will now respawn at the front gate of the city, a bug that disabled siege weapons has been corrected, and most notably, a lot of dodgy keep walls that could be walked through have been fixed. This patch does not introduce the major PvP overhaul that everyone has been waiting for unfortunately, and under the new schedule, we'll need to wait another week for the next opportunity. Check out the forums to get a full list of this patch's updates.
WWI '08 Death Knight Demo: Unholy spells and talents
Unholy was originally touted as the PvP DPS tree. What it appears to do rather well, though, are diseases and minions. If your vision of a Death Knight is close to a Diablo 2 Necromancer type, leading an army of undead minions and spreading plague and exploding corpses across the land, Unholy is probably going to be the tree for you. Of course, your crowd control is probably going to be a little peeved at you with all those DoTs, but that's what AE spells like Death and Decay and Unholy Blight are for, right? Unholy also seems to include quite a bit of utility, including the ability to resist lots of spells and status effects, and some debilitating debuffs, so it could be called a utility tree of sorts as well. Here's a list of some of the Unholy spells and talents available in the WWI Demo: Unholy Spells: Death GateRequires level 55Costs 1 Unholy Rune10 second cast, 15 minute cooldownDescription: Returns you to Ebon Hold (Note: Since Ebon Hold is not yet implemented, in the demo it returned you to Tirion Fordring). Death GripRequires level 55Costs 1 Unholy RuneInstant cast, 35 second cooldown.30 yard rangeDescription: Harness the unholy energy that surrounds and binds all matter, drawing the target toward the Death Knight and forcing the enemy to attack the Death Knight for 3 seconds.Plague Strike Requires level 55Costs 1 Blood Rune and 1 Unholy RuneInstant cast Melee rangeDescription: A vicious strike that deals weapon damage plus 37 and plagues the target, dealing 350 shadow damage over 12 seconds. Raise Dead Requires level 56 Costs 2 Unholy RunesInstant cast30 yard rangeDescription: Raises a ghoul from a corpse to fight by your side. if the target corpse is not humanoid, Corpse Dust must be supplied to complete the spell.Death Strike Requires level 58Costs 1 Unholy RuneDescription: A deadly attack that deals 60% weapon damage. if the target dies within 6 sec and yields exp or honor, Death Strike heals the Death Knight for 406 damage.Death and DecayRequires level 60Costs 1 Unholy Rune, 1 Blood Rune, 1 Frost Rune.30 second cooldown30 yard rangeDescription: 100 shadow damage modified by Attack Power is inflicted every 2 seconds to all targets in the affected area for 10 seconds. Has a chance to cause affected targets to cower in fearDegenerationRequires level 62 Costs 1 Unholy RuneDescription: Instantly attack the target, dealing 60% weapon damage and inflicting a disease dealing 91 damage over 21 seconds. Any existing heal over time spells on the target become corrupted, dramatically increasing the damage done by the disease and removing the healing effect. Stacks up to 3 times.Unholy PresenceRequires level 70 Description: Imbues the Death Knight with unholy fury, increasing attack speed by 15% and reducing the global cooldown on all Death Knight abilities by 0.5 seconds.Anti-Magic Shell Requires level 75Costs 1 Unholy Rune20 second cooldownDescription: Surrounds the Death Knight in an anti-magic shell, absorbing 75% of the damage dealt by the next harmful spell. Damage absorbed by anti-magic shell energizes the Death Knight with additional runic power. Lasts 5 seconds.Army of the DeadRequires level 80 Costs 2 Unholy Runes10 minute cooldownDescription: Summons an entire legion of your best ghouls to fight by your side.
