Wrath Cinematic Trailer!

Blizzard has finally released the Wrath Of The Lich King Trailer! Click on that link to watch and also to download the video.

(Spoilers bellow!!!)

As always, it looks great. Blizzard really knows how to create a cinematic trailer. I'm kinda disappointed with it because I expected more of Arthas slaying Horde and Alliance characters and narrating himself; not his father (almost like the Zul' jin trailer). But, I really can't complain; it's awesome anyway. The Frost Wymn looked great and his army was exactly how I imagined it would be. Go check it out!

Adam Sessler Rants On The D3 Haters

Adam Sessler is still my favorite gaming guru. In last week's Sessler's Soapbox, he flames the Diablo 3 art haters. I've been waiting for him to finally speak on the subject because I knew he would make good points. If you want to see more of Sessler's Soapbox, you can get it through iTunes video podcast, G4's website, and youtube.



PS: Madden 09, Fantasy Football, and NFL preseason games took up all of my free time last week. This week, I should have a post up ASAP.

Today's The Day!

Don't forget: Today is August 11th and Blizzcon08 tickets are going on sale!

However, the site is currently down lol.

Keep checking back to the Blizzard store and get your tickets before they all sell out.

*Update*

Tickets are sold out. Hope you got yours!

Old Diablo 2 Characters May Appear In D3

I was going to post yesterday but once I got home and turned on the NFL network for my daily Brett Favre update, I noticed one little small headline.... Brett Favre was traded to the J-E-T-S! JETS! JETS! JETS!! So, for the rest of the day, I was kinda glued to my TV :-D.

But onto news. Blizzard has been busy with Diablo 3 lately. MTV Multiplayer has Blizzard's take on why older classes (ie: Necromancer) are not in Diablo 3.

“Our approach for classes in ‘Diablo III’ is that we don’t have a strong desire to bring back classes from the previous game,” Wilson told me. “The goal is to try and give people new gameplay and not just re-hash old gameplay. We’re not just making a ‘Diablo II’ with updated 3D graphics.”

Well, that's dandy. If you wanted to stay away from older classes, then why do I see the Barbarian there? Not just the Barbarian but you're creating the same gameplay of the Necromancer in the Doctor with some added fireballs. Stop making excuses for something fans want. Diablo 2's characters are perfect (well, not the Assassin and Druid... they could have been improved a bit) so why change it? If nothing is wrong, don't fix it.

“There’s a lot of people on our team who aren’t happy with our class choices,” he admitted. “But after we’ve established ‘Diablo III’ as its own game with its own type of gameplay and experiences, I wouldn’t be opposed to looking at old classes. We are trying to design [the Witch Doctor] class so that if we did bring back the Necromancer, there’s room for him. 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 added, “It’s one of those things where, unless we put like 30 classes in the game, people are going to be unhappy. But if we put 30 classes in the game, we’d hurt the game. I think that of the classes that we’ve chosen, there will be something for everyone. I’m not worried that people won’t be able to find a class that they like to play.”

I can agree with the 30 classes argument but give us more than 5 classes. If you are going to release an expansion, and it's going to take as long as Wrath to make, make sure the characters are good and something that the fans want. It sounds like this new director is doing what HE wants to do and not what he people want in their classes. If HALF of your team wants some older classes back, I think that throws up some red flags. But if they make another assassin or rouge type class, I'm going to pull my hair out. I hate playing those classes and because it's Diablo, I'm going to have to play it.

The Shockadin In Wrath

Synovia at wowpaladin.org wrote an amazing article on how great Shockadins are going to be when we go north. I'm running out the door now for a looooong day at the office so I'll post the article here for you to read but I highly recommend wowpaladin.org for a lot of raid Paladin news.

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"With WotLK being tentatively slotted for a November release, it’s easy to get overly excited about the possibilities. However, something in particular caught my attention today as I was browsing through the Beta talent calculator over at www.wowhead.com: Are Holy Paladins to be limited to back of the raid healbotting? After some deliberation and placement of talent points, I’m inclined to state that it certainly seems as though this time around Blizzard has opened the proverbial doors for a large variety of Paladin playstyles: the Shockadin being one of them.

Now while I won’t at all claim a Shockadin now or even then to have any kind of raid viability, as of the present I am extremely confident as to their effectiveness in PvP. Let me share with you my thoughts on just why I believe what I do.

As of present, the Shockadin arsenal requires the expenditure of talent points to retrieve all of the following:

• 1/1 Sanctity Aura (Retribution)
• 1/1 Holy Shock (Holy)
• 5/5 Holy Guidance (Holy)
• 5/5 Improved Seal of Righteousness (Holy)
• 5/5 Divine Intellect (Holy)
• 3/3 Crusade (Retribution)

Now we can all agree the list above, although comprised of “essential” Shockadin talents, is lengthy. They are required as such due to the nature of the spec. It is unarguable that each of these talents directly affects the damage output of the build but what’s more is that although WotLK is removing the first altogether (Sanctity Aura), it is providing not just one replacement to increase DPS but several.

At this time, I would like to draw your attention to the following build:

http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=sEA0xhzGVzMxkZZVbhxbczh

The list above now receives the following additions:

• 3/3 Healing Light (Holy)
  • This talent currently only increases the healing done by Flash of Light and Holy light by 4/8/12%. As of WotLK it will still do this but it will additionally increase the effectiveness of your Holy Shock spell by 4/8/12% as well.
• 5/5 Conviction (Retribution)
  • As of today, this talent only increases your melee critical strike chance by 1/2/3/4/5%. With WotLK, it will also increase your spell critical strike chance by 1/2/3/4/5%
• 3/3 Sheath of Light
  • This new talent increases your Spell Power by 10/20/30% of your attack power and puts a HoT on your heal targets any time your crit them with a heal.
• 1/1 Sanctified Retribution
  • Allows for 2% flat damage increase by anyone affected by Retribution Aura. This essentially replaces Improved Sanctity Aura directly.

So we’ve lost the flat 10% damage increase to Holy spells granted by Sanctity Aura but in return we’ve gained the above four sources of extra damage on our Holy Shocks. Let’s see how this all breaks down in WotLK terms.

For this demonstration, I’m going to make a floored assumption that my statistics on my Holy Paladin, in her Holy gear, will remain unchanged at level 80. The only difference I”m assuming is the acquisition of 10 more talent points to spend within the WotLK talent trees. I makes these assumptions for simplicity in calculation and also so I can use real numbers taken directly from my Holy Paladin.

The coefficient used for instant cast damaging spells is 42.86%. Although Blizzard has noted that coefficients are being adjusted for healing spells given the removal of +healing gear and the introduction of spell power, the damage coefficients will remain in tact as no change is needed.

Holy Shock, at level 80, does a base range of damage beginning at 967 and ending at 1047. From here, we would first apply our +damage (or Spell Power) at rate consistent with the above coefficient of 42.86%. For my Holy Paladin, this is done as follows:

• 1047 + (740 spell damage * .4286) = 1365

However, we know that Sheath of Light will yield an addition Spell Power value of 30% of my attack power. At first consideration this many seem negligible but even someone completely naked has an attack power granted by their level alone. For example, my Holy Paladin’s level 70 attack power, while garbed in full Holy PvP gear is actually 436. Taking this into account we have the following base damage instead:

• 1047 + (740 + (436 * .3) * .4286) = 1421

With the base damage calculation completed, we now turn to talents for any further benefit to the spell. The order of application for these talents is irrelevant so we’ll begin arbitrarily with Healing Light which adds 12% effectiveness to Holy Shock:

• 1421 * 1.12 = 1592

Next, we account for Sanctified Retribution:

• 1592 * 1.02 = 1624

Lastly, we consider Crusade:

• 1624 * 1.03 = 1673

As we can see, our basetop-end damage on Holy Shock, in level 70 Holy (not even spell damage gear) PvP gear and without any additional stats (that will obviously be accumulated on our way to 80) is 1624. Now, let’s add the icing on our delicious cake by applying Avenging Wrath:

• 1673 * 1.20 = 2008

Now the fun begins. Spell critical strikes deal 150% damage after damage-increasing calculation has concluded. Given a top-end of 2008 damage as calculated above, let’s assume either a straight away critical strike or use of Divine Favor to yield one:

• 2008 * 1.50 = 3012

Please remind yourself that all these calculations were done off the statistics present for my level 70 Holy Paladin in healing(Ornamented) PvP gear. Most Shockadins presently in World of Warcraft float around 1200 spell damage and not my awe-devoid 740. Let’s make one last assumption, shall we? Let’s assume, on what I would consider to be the far low end of the potential spectrum, that a level 80 Shockadin has 500 attack power and 1600 spell damage. Using these new numbers, let’s run through the calculation one last time:

• 1047 + (1600 * .4286) = 1733 (base spell damage including Sheath of Light)
• 1733 * 1.12 = 1941 (Healing Light)
• 1941 * 1.02 = 1980 (Sanctified Retribution)
• 1980 * 1.03 = 2040 (Crusade)
• 2040 * 1.20 = 2448 (Avenging Wrath)
• 2448 * 1.50 = 3672 (Critical Strike)

As you can see, even low-balling the potential spell damage of a level 80 Shockadin immensely still leads us to near 4000+ damage Holy Shocks. I would argue that it won’t be uncommon for Shockadins, with proper buffs to be capable of putting out 5000+ damage Holy Shocks in PvP.

So what are the possibilities? You tell me. Seemingly, they are endless as already at level 70 the Shockadin has proven his worth in 2v2 arena by bursting down topped-off Warriors with 13K HP in 3 seconds. Perhaps Blizzard saw this video as well and realized the potential for a very fun aspect to the Paladin game play. We can only wait and see.

This is Synovia, taking her leave."

Arthas In Soul Calibur 4?

For those who don't already know, Wrath is confirmed for October-December 2008. But onto other epic things. I came across this Joystiq post which showed a video of Soul Calibur 4 with 24 customizable characters from video games and movies. What really caught my eye though, was Paladin Arthas and Death Knight Arthas! I was freaking out from the awesomeness; seriously.

The Paladin Arthas was using Astaroth's hammer and Death Knight Arthas was using Soul Calibur. For those who have Soul Calibur 4 (AND YOU SHOULD!), you can create these guys by using the Paladin Armor (white and black), long blonde and white hair, Astaroth's fighting style and Siegfried's fighting style. I'm going to try and make my own Arthas too... in fact, right now.

Here's the link to the video! It's about 14-15 minutes until you see Arthas.

*UPDATE*

I was fooling around with the Soul Calibur editor this morning and was able to make an ok Joker and an amazing looking Harley Quinn! There's no suit for the Joker and the faces given are horrible. I had to give him normal pants (which look good) and a stupid looking jacket. Oh well.

Harley Quinn on the other hand is amazing! I unlocked the Jester Costume and changed the colors around as best as I could to fit her suit (ex: With her boots, I was not able to make one boot Red and the other Black. I had to choose one color). She came out great though. Here's some pics from my cell phone. Not the best quality but it's the best I got:

Blizzcon 08 Press Release

This morning, Blizzard announced that they will start selling tickets to Blizzcon 08 on August 11th. The tickets will go for $100 (do not forget to include airfare, hotels, rental car, etc). Also, if you cannot make the event and you have DirectTV, you will be able to purchase a pay-per-view event that has 8 hours of Blizzcon 08 footage. I might just get that if the price is right. At the moment, there is no price set on the pay-per-view event. Here's the press release:


IRVINE, Calif. – July 29, 2008 – Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. today announced that tickets for its third BlizzCon^™ gaming convention will go on sale August 11 and that live coverage of the event will be available as an exclusive DIRECTV pay per view event. BlizzCon is a celebration of the global player communities surrounding Blizzard Entertainment^®'s Warcraft^®, Diablo^®, and StarCraft^® game universes. The event will take place at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California on October 10 and 11.

"Meeting and interacting with our players at BlizzCon is always a great experience for us," stated Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. "We're also pleased to be working with DIRECTV this year to bring the show, for the first time, to those players who are unable to attend."

In addition to serving as a gathering place for the different Blizzard Entertainment gaming communities, BlizzCon will offer an array of activities, including discussion panels, hands-on playtime with upcoming games, tournaments, contests, and more. Tickets to the convention will be priced at $100 USD each, and will be available for purchase directly from the official BlizzCon website at www.blizzcon.com.

The pay per view event will deliver a minimum of eight hours of live HD coverage from the show floor on each day of the convention, including exclusive interviews, demos, and more. Beginning in August, DIRECTV will run a promotion offering the BlizzCon pay per view event free to new DIRECTV subscribers. Pricing for existing DIRECTV customers and programming details will be available in the coming weeks from Blizzard Entertainment and DIRECTV.

"BlizzCon is one of the most highly anticipated gaming conventions of the year, and we are excited to partner with Blizzard Entertainment to deliver coverage of the show to gamers nationwide," said Steven Roberts, senior vice president, new media and business development, DIRECTV. "With our BlizzCon pay per view package, members of Blizzard's gaming communities who are not attending the event can now experience it in crystal-clear HD."