Starcraft 2?

[GummyBearOfDoom]

Probably fake, but they really need to make a second starcraft. I'll take the chance of it sucking, I just want it to come out.

http://sc.gosugamers.net/news.php?id=6151

I guess I didn't post the link at first...? there it is..

[Belial]

A couple weeks ago I was thinking about this...

If they make another Starcraft they can't just stick with the same formula, not after all the changes that have happened in the RTS genre. I think if they made each mission cover the span of an entire planet, and you controlled everything from the ships in orbit to the men (or Zerg) on the ground that would be pretty epic.

But yeah, Starcraft 2 is way beyond due.

[GummyBearOfDoom]

I'd be content with revamped graphics new servers and 3 new races plus a new story line. I actually like the system they have.

[J-Stop]

The news that Blizzard is making an announcement about a new game at WWI is true. What it is, though, is just a guess right now.

[Wind]

Probably fake, but they really need to make a second starcraft. I'll take the chance of it sucking, I just want it to come out.

get C&C3 bro, its the best multiplayer RTS i've played since SC

[Chris]

The news that Blizzard is making an announcement about a new game at WWI is true. What it is, though, is just a guess right now.

I want Diablo III or World of Diablo or some shit :awesome:

[GummyBearOfDoom]

get C&C3 bro, its the best multiplayer RTS i've played since SC

I'll look into it.

[Wind]

I'll look into it.

Yeah man, me and scott got it, we play alot together.

[The Lone Magician]

If StarCraft 2 ever DOES come out, I want it to look and play exactly like the first one and BrrodWar, but just with more units and stuff. That way, it will be familiar to me AND my computer could play it.

[GummyBearOfDoom]

If StarCraft 2 ever DOES come out, I want it to look and play exactly like the first one and BrrodWar, but just with more units and stuff. That way, it will be familiar to me AND my computer could play it.

Agreed. Then again I still play Starcraft, so don't listen to me.

[GummyBearOfDoom]

Anyways I guess I didn't post the link a friend sent me at first... So there it is.

[The Lone Magician]

Agreed. Then again I still play Starcraft, so don't listen to me.

I still play, too.

[Galkar]

CHANGE IS BAD. IT HAS TO BE EXACTLY THE SAME AS THE FIRST CAUSE THAT'S WHAT I'M USED TO.

[The Lone Magician]

I WANT THEM TO MAKE A WORLD OF STARCRAFT BECAUSE IT WOULD BE AWESOME

ME AND MY GUILD WOUILD TOTALLY RAID THE PROTOSS HOMEWORLD BECAUSE

WE WANT EPIC GEAR FROM THE ZERG MOTHERQUEEN

THEN WE WOULD DO IT AGAIN BECAUSE WE WANT TO BEAT THE EXPANSION{PACK

Drucila here, coming to you from Ironforge in Earthen Ring. With all these new snapjaws running amuck, baby hyppogriphs flying about, and gnomes turning into OGRES!, I thought I should get to the bottom of this. At first I thought the undead were just playing some more hallows end tricks on us but I soon found out it was this new card game from Upper Deck called, World of Warcraft, Heroes of Azeroth. I thought to myself, I must investigate further, find some people here in the great city of Ironforge that know more about this.

So I sat down with Neran, a paladin visiting from Stormwind who seemed to know all about this new card game the humans have.

Neran, nice to have you hear, you have been playing these games for a long time?

Yes. This card game is set up much like VS (pronounced verse). It is also somewhat like Magic.

Tell me Neran, what do you know so far about this game? What makes it different?

Well Dru, this one is different because the player can get a starter deck of any of the 9 classes in the World of Warcraft. With these 9 classes you can play any class/race combination hero that you want. So there are multiple hero cards. Then each hero will get ability cards such as spells or weapon skills. Also they will get Quest cards. It is much like the MMORPG in card form. You will upgrade your character though expansion Raid decks such as the Onyxia’s liar raid deck to be released in November 2006.

November 2006, that is just around the corner! I better get moving, I also hear there are UDE points with this game, what are they used for?

Yep that’s right Dru! UDE points are earned with all the new Upper Deck game cards such as VS, Yo-Gi-Oh, and Avatar cards. These points are accumulated through the UDE.com/points online system and can be used for in-game items such as Tabards and trinkets. They can also be used for real life items such as original artwork and auction items. With each expansion there will be more items to earn with your UDE points it is quite exciting, so save up!

Oh that sounds really cool, how do we earn UDE points?

UDE points are earned with each booster pack that is purchased. There is one 10 point card in each pack. Each pack can also contain a loot card which can give you an in game tabard, mount or pet. The ones you see around here in Ironforge.

Ahhh…that explains the turtles and baby hyppogriphs, people their loot cards. All this talk of UDE points, what does UDE stand for?

Upper Deck Entertainment points.

How much do these cards cost?

It all depends on the retailer but the suggested retail price on each of the starter decks are 14.95 and booster boxes are $69.95. The booster packs should run between $2.50 and $3.00 a piece.

Where can I purchase these?

Local card and comic shops are carrying these throughout the country, you can also purchase them through www.UDE.com. They have at the officially website if you do not mind waiting for them to get back in stock.

How can I meet other people to play?

This is a tournament style game like most other UDE games. This means there will be tournaments throughout the world to play. Check out the latest news at www.UDE.com to stay in with other players, the official tournament schedules and all the latest World of Warcraft, Heroes of Azeroth news. The first big tournament will be at GEN CON.

Well Neran thanks for joining us.

Drucila here coming to you from Ironforge. So here are more details from the last time we spoke about this newfangled card game they have here in the world of Azeroth. Apparently the object of the game is:

In the World of Warcraft - Heroes of Azeroth, you control a hero. Your hero is the leader of your party who fights alongside your allies. The cards that you play will allow you to equip your hero with weapons and armor, use spells and talents, invite allies into your party, and complete quests.

Over the course of the game, you party will deal damage to the opponents’ party, all damage is permanent unless healed. If your hero takes damage equal to or greater than his or her health, you’re out of the game.

You’re also out of the game if you run out of cards in your deck and you can't draw another card, so you must defeat your opponents before that happens.

The Basics:

Cards - You build a deck getting your cards. One important thing to remember though is that spells cannot be broken from raid decks. They must be kept together as a whole. So all those spells from the Onyxia deck stay in the onyxia deck.

There are seven types of cards. They are Hero, Ally, Weapon, Armor, Ability and Quest cards. These are all played to help your hero deal more damage to your opponent. The seventh type is a resource card, these are like mana cards in Magic. They help you play cards such as quest cards and complete the quest to get the reward, such as drawing another card, or healing your hero from damage taken from an opponent.

Also like in game the cards have a degree of rarity. White for most common, up to orange for legendary loot. There are many rare and epic cards being found in booster packs everyday to be used for armor and weapons on heroes throughout the world.

While your heroes have professions at the bottom of their cards there is no way to use these professions to your advantage thus far. Upper deck and blizzard say they will be expanded on in the future.

One last note there IS a Leeroy Jenkins card! Also the artwork amazing and done by names like Todd McFarlin, they are beautifully done.

There have been many horror stories lately, some true, some fiction about players of WOW. The stories have a wide range, a kid leaping from a building claiming to be reenacting a spell from WOW, parents not feeding their children for days due to their in-game needs, to a real life stabbing over a virtual theft. After playing the games online for a while, it is evident that some people will inevitably take the virtual world too seriously. It’s a game, meant for fun. There are plenty of casual players, but some take things too personally or too seriously. That’s when it begins to borderline on addiction, and becomes dangerous.

In an America where everyone is becoming more enlightened and in touch with themselves, there seem to be twelve step programs to help contain the addictions of every sort. Now the kids who grew up playing video games are growing older, and still playing them. Video games are a form of entertainment, a method to escape from the toil of every day life no different than television. WOW offers its players a chance to adventure in a virtual world that many of their customers are familiar with from the Warcraft franchise.

The online role playing genre however lends itself to addiction and competitive nature very easily. A portion of the game is attaining the maximum level; level 60 in WOW. Only the people who have achieved this feat can possibly hope to have any influence. At maximum level, one would think there’s not much left to do in the game, after all, there is no more improvement that the character can strive for. With the Player versus Player (PvP) ranking system, and “end game†content, that’s hardly the truth. Through the PvP system WOW has put in place, players may view their characters rating against all others that they play with. The PvP system rewards player for each enemy player they slay. The more foes killed, the higher the rating. Players are ranked on quantity rather than quality, meaning the players with the most time to dedicate to the game get the highest rank and reward. The “end game†content is mainly made up of raid instances, challenging dungeons and content that requires a group of forty people to coordinate and spend six to eight hours a night to complete a dungeon. There are currently three such instances in the game, meaning a raid group who wants to do all three, as they often do, would have to dedicate a minimum of three nights of eight hours to just those instances. That’s the equivalent of a part time job playing WOW. The players gain nothing tangible for their time, but their characters have a chance to get some new armor or a new weapon for the time spent.

The majority of the subscribers to WOW are not these same video game junkies that would kill for their online world. Just like classic pen and paper role playing games, most of the players know the clear cut line between fantasy and reality. The amount of time needed to dedicate to a WOW game just to stay on top of the curve is more than any casual gamer has. The competitive nature of video gamers push many of them to spend more time than they can afford to have the most powerful character possible. Plenty of college students have failed out of college because of the downward spiral that WOW addiction can cause. Once a student gets behind in a class, they can become depressed. WOW can be a good way to take your mind off the problem. A planned hour of play can easily turn into three or four. Soon, the once small problem of turning a project in late becomes test material left unstudied.

The Job of the Warrior in WOW is to get relentlessly beat upon. While there are a handful of classes in WOW that have the capability to tank, the Warrior stands above them all with more talents, abilities and equipment geared for the role. In a group setting, if the warrior dies first, they died knowing they did their job to the best of their abilities. Some players are better at holding the agro from the monsters than others, but it’s a common adage that effective tanking is 10% gear, 10% talent build and 80% skill.

A large part of effective tanking is outside the hands of the warrior. One common fallacy held by the players of WOW is that if a tank loses control of a monster, he’s a bad tank. While this very well could be true, the case could actually be quite the opposite. There is a limited number of things a Warrior can do to generate threat on a creature. Assuming that the skill, talents build are in place and the gear collected, he can build a lot of threat. There is an upper limit to the threat obtainable. When a character is assigned to tank, he will not be generating the majority of his threat from dealing damage to a target. Outside of the Warrior class, dealing damage is the best way to increase threat on a monster. Over a period of time, the threat from damage caused by another character can overcome the threat generated by the tank. In such a situation, as long as the warrior was using all his abilities to their maximum effectiveness, there’s nothing else he could have done to keep the focus of the enemy. A party who knows this, and can manage their own threat makes the tanks life that much easier. At lower levels, the group tends to blame the tank if he loses control of the monster. In the end game forty man instances, the smart groups tend to blame the player who pulled the target for not managing his own threat.

Warriors are very dependant on the sort of gear they use. If the goal is to play the higher intensity raid instances, a lot of time will be spent gathering up the equipment. For a tank, there are three main things to look at while gathering gear: Stamina, Armor Rating, and Defense. Stamina gives the character ten hit points per point. That may not seem like a lot, but just like pennies in a piggy back, it starts adding up. Armor Rating lowers the incoming damage percentage. Defense ups the skill of the same name, and lowers the chance that enemies will critically hit the tank by a percentage point for every twenty five points of defense. Thankfully, WOW offers many different dungeons to crawl in order to gather equipment with all of these perks. On epic pieces of armor, players will find bonuses to blocking skill or dodge percentages, and those are nice too, but those will only come after time spent tanking. There will be a long time when the characters will be relying on uncommon and rare equipment that is much easier to obtain.

Of the 51 talent points WOW offers its players, eighteen of those should be dedicated to the protection tree. For a tank to excel at his job, it is in his best interest to send points on the talents Defiance, Toughness and Last Stand. Neither five point talent on the first tier of talents a warrior can access truly outdoes the other, one raises the chance to block with a shield, the other raises the characters natural defense. Both are good options, yet not required for optimum tanking. On the second tier, five points in Toughness gives you ten percent more armor contribution, and at the high armor ratings a warrior can achieve this talent can decrease all incoming damage by up to five percent. Also on tier two is the Improved Bloodrage talent. This two point talent is useful, but not required to tank. It is required to gain access to the tier three talent Last Stand. Last stand increases the warriors current and maximum hit points by thirty percent for twenty seconds, great for the times when that heal is coming just a second too late. Lastly, the Defiance talent raises the threat generated by the warrior by fifteen percent. Without all these talents, the warrior is not able to tank to the best of the class’s ability.

The gear is in place, the talent build is good, but the most important thing to tank effectively is the skill. Its not hard to tank. It just takes knowledge. Sunder Armor is the staple of every tanks retinue. It is the most efficient way to gather rage early in a fight, and it makes the enemy easier to kill by lowering its armor rating. Another ability widely used is Heroic Strike. Some tanks use these two abilities and they manage to control the monster. In a prolonged fight, this will not be enough. There are three abilities other than sunder armor that allow the tank to gain as much agro as possible. Shield block, while not an threat generating ability in itself, it guarantees a block, which in turn allows the tank to use the Revenge ability. Revenge is the lowest cost and highest threat generating ability in the game. Finally, Shield Bash, a high threat producing ability used primarily to stop a spell caster from casting can be used liberally on non-magical foes to generate high amounts of threat. Each of these abilities should be used when they are cooled down and available. Once the basics of tanking are understood, each individual player can add their own flavor to the game and improve on their own abilities.

Never post again.

[Samurai Drifter]

^Did you really have to quote the whole thing?

And I'd really like a Starcraft 2. I guess the multiplayer system could use improvement, but really, I don't see how they could make it any better than the first one. Starcraft is my favorite video game of all time, so if there's a sequel it had damn well better be good.

[GummyBearOfDoom]

^Did you really have to quote the whole thing?

And I'd really like a Starcraft 2. I guess the multiplayer system could use improvement, but really, I don't see how they could make it any better than the first one. Starcraft is my favorite video game of all time, so if there's a sequel it had damn well better be good.

QFT

[Belial]

I honestly don't understand why everyone sports a big rubbery one over Starcraft around here. Granted, it was a really good game for its time, but it was nothing new.

[Artie]

Never post again.

agreed

^Did you really have to quote the whole thing?

And I'd really like a Starcraft 2. I guess the multiplayer system could use improvement, but really, I don't see how they could make it any better than the first one. Starcraft is my favorite video game of all time, so if there's a sequel it had damn well better be good.

I feel the same way. I played that game so damn much. I should start playing again.

[The Lone Magician]

^Did you really have to quote the whole thing?

Yes, yes I did.

[The Lone Magician]

there are much better RTS's out there, and considering they never will make another starcraft you might as will try them out.

a few recent ones that come to mind are Supreme Commander and Command & Conquer 3, Generals even.

Or if you're into the FPS vs. RTS thing, there are tons of Source Engine mods with that genre, Iron Grip, Zombie Master, etc.

even SAVAGE is freeware now, so if you're a cheap 13 year old you might wanna try that one out.

Starcraft is cool every once in a while in school when there's free time, but I'd rather play something updated. This is the same reason I don't play Counter Strike 1.6 anymore, it's so old and boring, not that I ever enjoyed it that much anyway but still.

Are you implying, sir, that things are boring because they are old? If so, the Reaper may be paying you a visit very soon.

[troN]

there are much better RTS's out there, and considering they never will make another starcraft you might as will try them out.

a few recent ones that come to mind are Supreme Commander and Command & Conquer 3, Generals even.

Or if you're into the FPS vs. RTS thing, there are tons of Source Engine mods with that genre, Iron Grip, Zombie Master, etc.

even SAVAGE is freeware now, so if you're a cheap 13 year old you might wanna try that one out.

Starcraft is cool every once in a while in school when there's free time, but I'd rather play something updated. This is the same reason I don't play Counter Strike 1.6 anymore, it's so old and boring, not that I ever enjoyed it that much anyway but still.

you suck, dawn of war was badass

[Wind]

you suck, dawn of war was badass

Dawn of war did own.. but bro.. you gotta try C&C 3, its so rad

[Artie]

no, I'm saying that things I spent years playing aren't as fun as they were years ago, and that things can be upgraded

so....you're saying games such as Tetris, Pong, The Legend of Zelda, and many other badass games that, given the graphics have not aged well to today's standards, aren't good, or as good as they once were?

[Belial]

Pong sucks.

[Wind]

so....you're saying games such as Tetris, Pong, The Legend of Zelda, and many other badass games that, given the graphics have not aged well to today's standards, aren't good, or as good as they once were?

How many people are still playing Tetris and Pong 5 hours a day trying to master strategies because it is "THE GREATEST GAME EVAR BLIZZARD DOES NO WRONG IM GAY"?