What’s Blizzard cooking…

Last week Blizzcon ended. As Blizzard sais “BlizzCon is a celebration of the Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo franchises and the communities that surround them.” … or how I say is just another occasion to raise the hype around these franchises just like Blizzard Worldwide Invitation that took place in Paris this summer. There were made a lot of announcements, not all of them to my liking. Let’s start with Diablo 3. A new class was announced, the Wizard. From what I saw in the trailer this class is pretty cool, it’s my favorite till now. Spells like Disintegrate, Electrocute, Magic Missile and Slow Time make this class a lot of fun to play. Another important element for the game will be the story that will have a bigger roll than in the previous games. The action will take place after 20 years from where Diablo 2 ended. Caldeum is the new capital city, and is one of the cities accessible by the player. This sounds really nice because a more complex story is what Diablo 2 lacked. Here are more new stuff about Diablo 3. The NPCs will react differently according to the class the player chooses. Nightmare and Hell are back…YEAH! The potions aren’t the only health source, now monsters will leave behind red health orbs after they are killed. This will make the gameplay more dynamic. The quests will be more complex. Some monsters will be more vulnerable when you dodge an attack. But enough about the good thinks.
What caught my attention is that some features will not be included in the retail price, that means you’ll have to pay extra. Battlenet 2.0 is not one of these extra features (we all saw how Hellgate London turned out with the monthly subscription for the multiplayer) but whatever it is, it doesn’t sound good. This brings me to the next problem…Starcraft 2. Guess what Blizzard came up with… Starcraft 2 trilogy.. like in 1…2…3 !!! So if you whant the whole Starcraft 2 game you will have to pay not 1 time for it, not even 2 times, but 3 times, and if they will make an expansion the count continues. They said this decision was made to keep the game quality, otherwise they would have to cut a lot of the game features. If this is the case Starcraft 2 should be the best game ever.

Of course Blizzard comes out with all sorts of reasons for this kind of decision, but for me one thing is clear…their priority is to milk these very famous franchises the best way they can, and not important gameplay elements like they claim. Even so I’m sure the games will break a lot of sale records, but I’m afraid Blizzard will step on a lot of gamers tails if they don’t change their priorities. It looks like all the millions they made with WoW went to their heads.