Diablo III Will Supports Console-Style Controllers…After Release
Spiteful dickwad that I am, I kind of hope this news bunches the collective panties of the sort of PC gamers who regard consoles with haughty condescension. In an interview with PC Gamer (via The Escapist), Diablo 3 game director Jay Wilson spoke highly of the idea: "With some of our early experiments in putting a direct control scheme into the game via a 360-like analogue controller, I’ve been 'Oh this feels even better, with direct control…'" He went on to mention "if we decide to do a console version," further hinting at Blizzard toying with the idea of taking Diablo 3 into the console market. However, he doubts that such plans would be ready to go by the time the game launches on PC, the date of which has yet to be announced.
The PC faithful need not worry that their mice and keyboards will be left behind, and would do well to remember that the first Diablo game was actually ported to the PlayStation, back in the days before analog sticks were standard on console controllers. Anyone else think a gamepad option for a game like this is a sweet idea? I tend to find the more action-intensive the game, the more I like the "feel" of the controller. Shooter enthusiasts point out that you can be more precise with a mouse and keyboard, but there's something more visceral about the feel of the controller in your hand with an actual trigger you can pull (at least on the 360) that a little *click* of a finger on a mouse just can't replicate. And I could see analog sticks being vastly superior to the mouse and keyboard for navigating in an isometric perspective like Diablo has. Perhaps menu navigation would be less nimble, but I would consider that an acceptable trade-off.
Report: Top 11% World of Warcraft Players More Hardcore Than Bottom 89%
I don't use the word "loser" lightly on anyone besides myself, but it really is the only word that comes to mind after reading this report. According to the gaming site/tracking software Raptr, the top 11% of all World of Warcraft players who use the service account for more overall gametime than the bottom 89%. In other words, 1 top-tenth hardcore WoW player spends more time in the game than 9 casual (or simply not psychotic) players. That's some impressive dedication to the game.
Raptr says the top World of Warcraft player that uses its service at one point played 149 hours in a single week. A single 168-hour week. The average WoW session is a 2.1-hour consecutive chunk of gameplay, while the average length of gametime the day Cataclysm first came out was over 6.2 hours. Additionally, weekly gameplay on WoW has gone up 50% from summer 2010, and the average total gametime is 20 hours per week.
These numbers come from Raptr, so it's safe to assume that they don't account for non-Raptr gamers. Still, 149 hours in one week? That's nuts, and I saw Everquest benders back when I was in high school.
The Cataclysm Line: The End of an Era
I spent a good long while last night staring at the snow gently fall around the super-bright florescent parking lot lights outside a Best Buy. Oh yes, by now you've deduced that this is a story about waiting in line for the midnight release of the latest World of WarCraft expansion. I was staring at the snow because for several hours, I just didn't have much else to occupy my attention during the wait. This Best Buy is in Richfield, Minnesota, a south suburb of Minneapolis. It got down to 16° F last night with light wind, which made it cold but not brutally so. Still, it's obviously not something one would normally choose to stand around in for hours, so I set out to talk to people about their motivations.
This was actually my third such adventure at this location. The first WoW expansion launched in the dead of January, the absolute worst time to be in Minnesota. The wind chill was godawful, and the temperature dipped to under -22 ºF. People would moan as the breeze kicked up, and pressed against strangers for warmth. But the shared suffering brought a festive atmosphere to the wait. Everyone had something in common, and there was a warm sense of camaraderie. People ordered pizzas, and one guy brought a propane heater attached to a high-powered fan to blast some warmth at the crowd. Out of nowhere, a fire juggler showed up. The first guys had arrived up at 4:00 pm the previous afternoon, and the line of hundreds would eventually wrap around the building and to the street.
Blizzcon 2010: What You Might Have Missed
If you're wondering what you might have missed from Blizzcon 2010, you need only turn your attention to the developments for World of WarCraft, StarCraft 2, and Diablo 3. Unless, of course, a completely new title was announced!
...which didn't happen. And no Lost Vikings or Rock and Roll Racing revival, either. But let's be honest, the three aforementioned games are quite the three-course meal to sink your teeth into by themselves. Check out our Blizzcon 2010 recap.
WoW Doesn’t Want Zombies On Its Lawn
I'm not a World of WarCraft player; I've never even tried it. But, regardless of my feeling toward MMO's and Activision, this is easily one of the coolest things I've ever seen in any MMO. World of WarCraft: Cataclysm comes out sometime this year, though the latest rumors are pointing at a November 2nd release. Via Destructoid.
Blizzard Wants A Starcraft Movie Directed By James Cameron
MTV Multiplayer recently posted a short interview Rob Pardo, the EVP of Game Design over at Blizzard about the progress of the World of WarCraft movie. "We're still super excited about it," he says, "but it's still in that story-development phase."
The World of WarCraft movie is based in the WarCraft universe, the setting of the strategy trilogy and wildly popular MMO. Coming from Legendary Pictures, the movie was first announced in 2006 and Sam Raimi, of Evil Dead and Spider-Man fame, attached to direct last year. Having just released massively critically and financially successful StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty, MTV asked if the other Blizzard properties would be coming to the silver screen as well.
"We've always had an interest in seeing our stuff on film or TV," Pardo replied. "It's just tricky to find the right partners. We probably could have made a ['StarCraft'] movie or something on TV years and years ago, but it's really important to us that we find creative people that are really talented but also really excited about our properties. That's always been the challenge for us. I think if Jim Cameron came to us tomorrow and said, 'You want to make a 'StarCraft' movie?' we'd probably sign that ... That's why we did the 'WoW' movie. We were really excited about being involved with Legendary Pictures, who we thought had a really good track record with these sorts of movies that would make sense for our franchises."
It's interesting to note that the WoW film is currently in development hell, with few people actually expecting it to go anywhere. That being said, maybe in a few years people will stop attaching such a stigma to films related to video games. Yes, I'm referring to Scott Pilgrim.
Blizzard readying 1.1 patch for StarCraft 2
And so it begins. Blizzard has released details on the first of what will undoubtedly be many tweak-and-balance patches to the newest horse in its stable, StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty. The meat and potatoes of this version 1.1 patch are increases to build times for certain infantry units (Protoss zealots and Terran reapers take longer to train) and nerfs to some of the heavier units (Terran battlecruisers and Zerg ultralisks are weakened). Apparently Terran siege tanks and battle cruisers have been wiping the deck with everything they encounter.
If the World of WarCraft community serves as any precedent, expect the StarCraft forums to be awash in the tears of those who feel Blizzard has trampled on the very spirit of justice herself by making even the most modest of changes to unit and faction balance. Other, less politically contentious updates involve new hotkey options for left-handed players, and a tweak to friendly units so they no longer provide vision after they're killed.
Top 15 games that still aren’t on the Virtual Console yet
When Nintendo first announced the Virtual Console, it seemed like a brilliant idea. The company would re-release the greatest games on its 8-, 16-, and 64-bit systems for download, letting us rebuild our childhood gaming libraries on a single memory card and play all of our favorite old-school games on the Wii. Every week would see a handful of classic games released on the Virtual Console, ready for download.
Four years later, the Virtual Console offers over 360 games (in North America) from the Nintendo Entertainment System, Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64, Sega Genesis, Turbografix-16, Neo Geo, and even the Sega Master System and Commodore 64. It sounds like a lot, until you realize the NES and SNES had over 700 games each.
The Virtual Console still has a lot of big holes in its library, and it looks like Nintendo isn't trying very hard to fill them. These days we're lucky to see one game come out on the VC per week, and that game can range from the obscure and uninteresting (this week's Ufouria: THe Saga) to the vaguely fun but pales in comparison to other titles (Aero the Acrobat).
Here are the 15 most notable games missing from the Wii Virtual Console.
From the Game: Jim Raynor’s USB dog tag from Starcraft 2 Collector’s Edition
Jim Raynor is a galactic badass. He fights Zerg, he rebels against tyranny, he drinks bourbon, and he looks and sounds an awful lot like Red Dead Redemption's cowboy-with-a-heart-of-gold John Marston. He plays a big part in Starcraft 2, to the point that the game's $100 collector's edition includes a replica of his old Confederate dog tag. It's not just a neat sci-fi dog tag, though; it's a 2 GB USB key that includes the original Starcraft and the Brood War expansion.
And it's pretty awesome.
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