Diablo III Launching May 15 – Digital Pre-Sales NOW OPEN

Mar 15 2012 12:41 PM | By regulator_mk in Diablo III News | 5 comments

The End of Days approaches…. Diablo III will be unleashed from the Burning Hells on May 15, 2012, and you can be ready to play the minute the servers go live by pre-purchasing the game digitally on Battle.net today.

Beginning May 15, players around the world will be able to return to Tristram to discover the dark secrets of a fallen star and begin their quest to save Sanctuary from the impending demonic invasion. To secure your place as a barbarian, monk, demon hunter, witch doctor, or wizard right now, simply log in to your Battle.net account, and then purchase and download* Diablo III, and you’ll be ready to play when the game launches.




World of Warcraft players interested in getting Diablo III for free can still get in on the World of Warcraft Annual Pass, but the promotion will be ending at 12:01 a.m. PDT on May 1, 2012. When you sign up for the Annual Pass and make a 1-year commitment to World of Warcraft, you’ll receive a free digital copy of Diablo III, an exclusive World of Warcraft in-game mount (Tyrael’s Charger), as well as access to the upcoming World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria beta test. Learn more at the Annual Pass signup page.

For more details on the May 15 release of Diablo III, be sure to hit the official press release, or head to our new Diablo III game page to learn more about the game and pre-purchase your digital copy.

*When you pre-purchase Diablo III, you will be able to download an encrypted version of the game that will be unlocked upon release on May 15.

Source: http://us.battle.net...-3_15_2012#blog

Hero concept designs

Feb 15 2012 11:42 AM | By Kaiser Leon in Dota 2 News | 0 comments

An approach to concept art

With the Dota 2 team promising an update this coming Thursday, they have decided to let the fans see the final designs of 3 heroes to be added in future updates - Shadow Demon, Lycan, and Lone Druid.


View in the FN Gallery



View in the FN Gallery



View in the FN Gallery

They also added that in an upcoming blog post, they will discuss the actual process that eventually leads up to these final art designs so the fans will have an idea how the team approaches concept art for Dota 2 heroes. Stay tuned!


Links
Dota 2 blog - Source

Season 6 Ladder Map Pool Update

Feb 10 2012 01:45 PM | By regulator_mk in Starcraft 2 News | 1 comments

Beginning with Season 4, we’ve been experimenting with prioritizing tournament-style maps on the StarCraft II ladder. Now, in Season 6, we’re giving player-created maps the spotlight!

TeamLiquid.net recently hosted the TeamLiquid map contest to offer enthusiasts from the StarCraft II community a chance to show off their map making skills. The competitors in that contest were also tempted with the tantalizing possibility of seeing their creations featured on the official StarCraft II ladder. The contest was a smashing success and we had the opportunity to see the map contest finalists in action during the TL Open. The contest also gave you, the player community, a chance to share your opinions and shape StarCraft history by voting on your favorite maps in the wake of the tournament. The votes were tallied, the final winners were chosen, and the time has come! In Season 6, you can finally meet your fellow players in furious battle on top TeamLiquid map contest maps: Cloud Kingdom and Korhal Compound. We’re truly excited to give such high quality community created maps a place on the official ladder.

Season 6, which begins the week of February 14, brings with it the following changes to the existing map pool:



Maps being removed:

(2) Xel’naga Caverns

Players have been enjoying Xel’naga Caverns since the StarCraft II beta. However, as this map is no longer preferred in a tournament setting, we’ve opted to pull it from the pool for this season.

(2) Arid Plateau

In the spirit of making every ladder map tournament viable, we added two new maps last season that would be true to that goal. We pushed some new features on Arid Plateau such as unusual natural expansions, and a lot of open areas around the map. Arid Plateau wasn’t as widely accepted as a tournament friendly map, so we’ve decided to retire it from the rotation for Season 6.



Maps being added:

(2) Cloud Kingdom

By SUPEROUMAN and the other members of the ESV Mapmaking Team



(2) Korhal Compound

By monitor and the other members of the ESV Mapmaking Team

We would also like to recognize IronmanSC and the members of ESV and The Planetary Workshop (TPW) for their amazing work on Ohana, which took second place in the TeamLiquid map contest. We’re currently working with IronmanSC to help fix a few bugs while ensuring we retain the intent of the map, and once those are done we’ll be adding it to the pool for a future ladder season.

We will continue to change the map lineup on the StarCraft II ladder over time, and we’ll also maintain our focus on tournament-viable maps to ensure the fiercest competition. Maps that don’t make the cut will be replaced by maps that meet the standards set by major tournaments all around the globe.

Patch 1.4.3 Situation Report

Feb 10 2012 01:40 PM | By regulator_mk in Starcraft 2 News | 1 comments



MULEs now harvest the same amount of minerals on both high yield minerals and normal minerals.
We’ve been looking into the effects that high yield expansions have on gameplay, in particular how the added efficiency of MULEs on these mineral patches can affect matchups. This is also a common piece of feedback we’ve received from both pro players and the community.

We’ve been closely monitoring several sources of information: GSL tournaments which feature maps that do not have high yield mineral patches at all, major tournaments that still use high yield expansions, and our own ladder maps data now that our 1v1 ladder features a tournament-like map pool.

Based on these observations, we’ve made the decision to keep MULE resource generation the same regardless of mineral type, while allowing high yield mineral patches to remain on our ladder maps. This change helps keep the risk vs. reward the same for all three races when acquiring expansions that feature high yield minerals.

Snipe damage changed from 45 to 25 +25 Psionic
We felt the Snipe ability was countering zerg broodlords and ultralisks slightly too well. Especially at the pro level, we were seeing a lot of games where terran players were playing very defensive games while massing ghosts to counter most of the options zerg players had at their disposal.

While we like to see creative and innovative use of units, we felt that in this case Snipe was becoming too effective against zerg’s most expensive units. When adjusting the ability, we tried to settle on a number that would allow using Snipe to remain a viable tactic, though not as powerful as it is now. With this change, brood lords will fall in ten casts of Snipe rather than six (taking into account health regeneration), while an ultralisk will die in 19 casts, up from 11. This also significantly increases the number of ghosts and stockpiled energy needed to pull this tactic off, which we feel confident about because, previously, terran players rarely needed to consider the energy on their ghosts units.

Phoenix now has a range upgrade at the Fleet Beacon
In the past, we’ve discussed whether protoss needed a more immediate change to give them additional ways of dealing with mutalisks in PvZ, or whether it was more appropriate to make changes to that matchup in Heart of the Swarm. After investigating, testing, and reviewing both community and pro feedback, we’ve decided to include a change in this patch.

The phoenix will now have 6 attack range after purchasing an upgrade, which should allow them to more easily deal with a large number of mutalisks. In the previous patch, when protoss players attempted to move their armies out across the map, their bases became extremely vulnerable. Existing options to cope with massed mutalisks were costly and not always effective. This range upgrade should help even the odds by giving protoss players the option to reactively build phoenixes in smaller numbers, and with some micro, allow them to more efficiently defend against mutalisk swarms. Upgraded phoenixes should also offer protoss players the potential for better map control in the PvZ match up.

Still, we also wanted to make sure that producing mutalisks in PvZ remains a viable strategy, and believe that it is. While it might not be a good idea to brute force a protoss opponent with a ton of mutalisks, pairing them with units such as infestors and/or corruptors will help counter the advantage the new range upgrade provides.

APM / CPM changes
There was a lot of concern and debate regarding whether APM should be an accurate number or it should be a fun, play style distinguishing factor like it has been traditionally. After hearing a lot of feedback from both sides, we decided to bring back classic APM, and change our current APM (that doesn’t count spam clicks) to be called Commands Per Minute, or CPM.

This way, pro players who want to show off how fast their hands move can do so, while at the same time players who really just want to know how accurate and efficient their actions are can look at CPM.

Dota 2 beta... beta?

Feb 04 2012 04:27 AM | By Kaiser Leon in Dota 2 News | 0 comments

Dota 2 betaception

The Dota 2 team has no update for today though, but they did post something intriguing. Those that have watched Inception knows the tagline A dream within a dream. Apparently, the developers have done something similar, A beta within a beta.

To help with the stability of the game, the team has decided to create a test version of the already beta game where they can put in some features for further testing before putting it on the main client.




Links
Dota 2 blog - Source