The PC Spotlight 10.16.08
Posted by Chris Vicari on 10.16.2008
Half-Life 2 Ep 3 info on the way, new IP bill awaits Pres. sig, news from BlizzCon, Far Cry 2 DRM, Lord British in space and a crap ton of other stuff. Get your reading glasses.
Welcome back to the next weekly installment of the PC Spotlight. We've got another interesting week again and finally there are some excellent games coming out. Far Cry 2 and Dead Space are on the horizon and I can't wait. So let's get right down to it, there's a lot of stuff this week.
Half-Life 2 Episode 3 info soon to be released
In an interview with gaming blog Kikizo, Valve marketing director Doug Lombardi revealed that information on the game may be just around the corner. "We may at the very end of the year," said Lombardi, when asked when Valve plans to release some information.
Don't expect a release date anytime soon.
With BlizzCon now a thing of the past, it's time for a recap. So what happened at the sold-out two-day convention? To put it simply, tons.
Diablo III's wizard class just a sorceress of a different color
One of the bigger announcements during the BlizzCon convention was the unveiling of Diablo III's third class: the wizard. The three-person panel consisting of lead designer Jay Wilson, lead technical artist Julian Love, and technical game designer Wyatt Cheng discussed the new class in the Anaheim Convention Center extensively. According to Cheng, the devs wanted to make the wizard class as synonymous to the sorceress as much as possible. Why the name change then you might ask? No clue.
In a video showcasing the wizard class, attendees were able to see first hand what the class was capable of. Thankfully the class has some new tricks up her sleeve and the spell effects were looking good. First up was the all-around familiar spell: D&D's magic missile. Cheng noted that this first spell is the perfect introduction to the wizard class and it sets the tone of universal power. The next spell was electrocute which is basically just chain lightning. The third spell, and in my opinion the coolest out of all of them, is the ability to slow time. And then the fourth spell in the video was disintegrate and according to Cheng it is "a real face-melter."
Judging by the video, the wizard is shaping up to be a pretty nifty class. Although it appears quite similar to the sorceress in the Diablo 2 days of old, that certainly doesn't mean it won't be awesome. I miss my massive hordes of skeletons though and hopefully the witch doctor will deliver in that area. Can only imagine what the other two classes will be. I doubt we'll be disappointed.
Other Diablo III bits
After Cheng gave his little spiel about the wizard class, the mic was handed over to Jay Wilson, the game's lead designer. Wilson discussed Diablo III's new skill system. He explained that during development, devs analyzed the skill systems in Diablo and Diablo II as well as World of Warcraft. So what skill system did Blizzard finally decide upon? If you're familiar with Sacred and Diablo, skills will now be random drops.
According to them it's nothing final yet, but Wilson elaborated that it had to be a system easy to understand, compelling during every part of the game including higher difficulty levels, and allow for a large variety of character builds while supporting six active skills. So what we have is a system which is a step above Diablo II's and incorporates active and passive skills, synergies, skill runes, and re-specs. Yep, finally a Diablo with re-specs.
Diablo III will also utilize a rune system, but unlike Diablo II's, they will not be socketed in armor to grant them bonuses. Instead, they will provide various boosts to your character and their abilities. In one example provided by Wilson, the witch doctor spell Skull of Flame lets players toss a flaming head at enemies. With a rune of multistrike, the skull will bounce instead of explode on impact and hit more foes.
Interesting information all around, until it all went to Hell with the StarCraft II panel.
StarCraft II now three separate games over three years. Good idea? Hell no!
Mike Morhaime, Blizzard's president, started off BlizzCon with his keynote address talking about the Wrath of the Lich King release, the new Wizard class for Diablo III and the upcoming StarCraft II tournament. Few jeers were heard when Morhaime revealed that no new games were under development. It wasn't until the StarCraft II panel hit the stage when things started taking a turn for the worse.
Of course, the crowd ate up every little morsel Blizzard's Rob Pardo threw at them, save for one rotten apple core: StarCraft II will be released as a trilogy. Yes, you heard that correctly, one game for the price of three. Apparently, the game shaped up to be a far larger undertaking than previously anticipated. This didn't save the panel from the myriad of boos though.
So, instead of paying the $50 price tag which has been the constant for the better part of a decade, potential buyers now have to fork over ~$150 if they want to play all three campaigns. Feeling milked yet? As of now, Blizzard has yet to release when the first game in the trilogy will hit shelves. I know there are some December release dates floating around, but it may or may not be happening at this point. From what we know, the order of the trilogy will be as follows: The "Wings of Liberty" campaign is for the Terrans, "Heart of the Swarm" goes to the Zerg, and "Legacy of the Void" is on the Protoss. According to Pardo, the second two releases could be considered expansion packs, but that "we really want them to feel like stand-alone products."
This "stand-alone product" bit is the trilogies' only saving grace as each game will have 26-30 missions, expanding the storyline considerably. Also, each new "expansion" will add new multiplayer units, so in a sense, you have to buy every game. But, if you purchase one game, you can play as the other two online. If you're a multiplayer junkie, this news probably won't affect all too much. If you loved StarCraft for its campaign and storyline though, I doubt you're happy right now.
In an interview with Joystiq, Blizzard's vice president of game design, Rob Pardo, also explained that he ideally sees the StarCraft 2 trilogy as a three-year plan. "With any luck, it would be like a year for each successive one, but that's going to be a target date, that's not a promise," Pardo said, after explaining the successive releases should be seen more as "expansion sets to the original" as opposed to separate products.
Want my opinion? This move reeks of stupidity. No game, I don't care how long it is, should ever cost $150 to play the whole thing. What bothers me most is that the original StarCraft campaigns were a brisk 10 missions for each side which did not overstay their welcome, so I haven't the slightest how they will hold people's interest with over two dozen missions per campaign. The game's multiplayer is what put StarCraft on the map. Hell, the Koreans still hold competitions for the game. Milk your customer-base much?
And expect StarCraft 2 to come in 2009, thus preventing us from seeing the third campaign until 2011. Huzzah.
That's it for major BlizzCon news.
Ultima creator pays $30 mil for spacewalk
U.S. space tourist Richard Garriott, left, U.S. astronaut Michael Fincke, right, and Russian cosmonaut, commander of the mission Yury Lonchakov, center, before liftoff.
Photo courtesy of MSNBC
Renowned Ultima creator and video game designer Richard Garriot, aka Lord British, successfully and flawlessly docked with the International Space Station this past Tuesday after lifting off from Kazakhstan on Sunday. Finally launching into space 35 years after his father Owen Garriot, who was also an astronaut and circled Earth on Skylab, Garriot with fellow U.S. astronaut Michael Fincke and Russian cosmonaut Yury Lonchakov, were greeted with a warm reception from the three crewmates currently onboard the space station. One of whom was Russian cosmonaut Sergei Volkov, who is also keeping space travel a family tradition as his father was a cosmonaut.
"Congratulations on leaving the cradle of Earth," Garriott's brother Robert said in a video linkup with the station.
Reportedly, Garriot paid the sum of $30 million to be the sixth space tourist flown to the International Space Station. He will spend the next 10 days conducting experiments as well as delivering human DNA fingerprints to orbit, some of which belongs to comedian Stephen Colbert.
"There's a lot of work to do," said Owen Garriott, who returned to space in 1983 and was glad to see his son achieve his dream.
I wish Richard Garriot a safe return home and safe travels to the five other astronauts and cosmonauts.
Far Cry 2 DRM revealed
Ubisoft has finally released their version of DRM and guess what? It's nearly identical to EA's! Huzzahs all around!
Thankfully though it is not as bad as EA's judging by the points below:
• You have 5 activations on 3 separate PCs.
• Uninstalling the game "refunds" an activation. This process is called "revoke", so as long as you complete proper uninstall you will be able to install the game an unlimited number of times on 3 systems.
• You can upgrade your computer as many time as you want (using our revoke system)
• Ubisoft is committed to the support of our games, and additional activations can be provided.
• Ubisoft is committed to the long term support of our games: you'll always be able to play Far Cry 2.
Regardless...
Succinctly put by Joel Robinson (Joel Hodgson) from Mystery Science Theater 3000.
EA's CEO John Riccitiello apparently doesn't like DRM much either
"We implemented a form of DRM [for Spore] and it's something that 99.8 percent of users wouldn't notice. But for the other .2 percent, it became an issue and a number of them launched a cabal online to protest against it," Riccitiello said. "I personally don't like DRM. It interrupts the user experience. We would like to get around that. But there is this problem called piracy out there."
Ironically, Spore still sold extremely well despite the huge amount of times it was pirated because of customer displeasure over the game's DRM. Does this mean that it doesn't matter one way or another? Who knows.
EA to discontinue offline-only games
In an article found on Yahoo! Finance by David Kaplan:
"The growth of online gaming make[sic] this the last year that Electronic Arts (ERTS) will produce offline-only games, said CEO John Riccitiello, speaking in a Q&A at the Dow Jones/Nielsen Media and Money Conference. He sees the growth of gaming constrained mostly by piracy and the difficulties in getting in-game ads right. "Those areas have a lot of hurdles and they aren't small hurdles either.""
And then he goes on to say that the DRM controversy was blown out of proportion or some such, I wasn't listening too much.
In-game advertising goes political
Months after Burnout Paradise's release on the consoles, EA finally confirms that Obama ads were running in the game.
Quoted article from GigaOm.com on Monday, October 13:
"Last week [GigaOm] noted unconfirmed sightings of an "Obama for President" billboard in the Xbox 360 racing game Burnout Paradise. Today [they] were able to report that it is, in fact, an official advertisement placed by the senator's campaign team.
"I can confirm that the Obama campaign has paid for in-game advertising in Burnout," Holly Rockwood, director of corporate communications at Electronic Arts, the game's publisher, told me via email, noting that EA regularly allows ad placements in their online games. "Like most television, radio and print outlets, we accept advertising from credible political candidates," she continued. "Like political spots on the television networks, these ads do not reflect the political policies of EA or the opinions of its development teams.""
With Burnout Paradise coming to the PC next year, I doubt we'll be seeing any political ads of the sort, but it's somewhat scary to think what else we'll be seeing.
Yet another Spore add-on revealed
Hot off the news of the "Creepy and Cute Parts Pack", yet another Spore add-on is slotted to arrive Spring of next year. Its title has yet to be released, but thankfully it'll do more than just add creature parts. This add-on will focus on the space stage giving players the players opportunity to beam down their own race to new planets for exploring, interacting with its inhabitants and to take on new missions. Also, a new user creation tool will be added called the "Aventure Creator". This allows users to craft their own missions and give them to other players using the Spore network.
New WoW patch released
This past Tuesday, Blizzard released the last patch called Echoes of Doom before the new expansion next month. Some of the major changes include:
• All players will have their talent points reimbursed and will have access to new talents throughout their trees; this includes the 51-point talents. Several new spells and abilities have been added for all classes. Players will need to visit their class trainer to learn new spells.
• The Kirin Tor have made their move and so has Dalaran. Please watch your step around the crater that has been left behind!
• The Barber Shop has been implemented and you can now visit one of the Barber Shops in the major cities to change your appearance. Be sure to get your Shave and a Haircut!
• The all new Achievement System has been implemented and the Achievement panel can be accessed via the interface. While many achievements are not retroactive, we have done our best to credit as many as possible. Gamemasters will not be able to grant achievements for past accomplishments.
• Stormwind Harbor is now open for business.
• New towers have been added outside Of Orgrimmar and in Tirisfal Glades. Crews are currently at work to establish a new Zeppelin route to Northrend for your travel pleasure.
• A new entrance is now viewable in the Caverns of Time.
• Hit Rating, Critical Strike Rating, and Haste Rating now modify both melee attacks and spells.
It's over a one gig file so get ready for a long download time.
New IP Enforcement Bill ready for Bush's John Hancock
The Intellectual Property Act aka the "PRO-IP Act" has been passed by Congress and awaits President Bush's signature. Some major points are listed below:
• Increases the penalties for infringement by expanding what is considered a 'work'
• Broadens the ability of the government to permanently seize goods
• Creates an Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator, a new cabinet position whose sole job is to increase intellectual property enforcement.
According to Mark Methenitis, the columnist for Law of the Game on Joystiq, "The impact to the consumer is obvious... more or less anything that has come into contact with that pirated item can be seized by the government. The statute is worded in such a broad manner that it would be theoretically possible to seize all of the computers in a home or office if one pirated MP3 or piece of software was present. ...based on this new definition of 'works,' a game with a licensed soundtrack may be multiple works... For example, let's say someone is pirating Madden 2002. It might not be worth EA's time or trouble to go after those pirates, since their real concern at this point is Madden 2009, but the piracy of that game could now also potentially be considered the piracy of that music.
Ooh boy.
That's it for the news this week. God there was a lot.
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