Ack, appreciate you not coming down with the ban hammer, got my youtube clips crossed. :0 Link corrected.

Risking an infractiong here, but Ghostcrawler reveals that he's a "hot chick".

The goal is to be able to hotswap specs in the middle of a raid, without hearthing and respeccing or anything. That seems amazing, and would be a delightful time savings. Not to mention how it would make you feel a lot more like a unified class as opposed to a "balance druid" or "enhancement shaman".

Dual Gear System to go with Dual Spec?
Default mods like item rack to be added.

Will affliction be good for raids?
Affliction will be fine for raids.

Infernal/Doomgaurd get more stuff?
Full durations, use indoor, more possible later.

Demonology has pet specific talents, hold me.
Might make tree more like hunters.

Druid have thread. Feral mana issues namely shifting?
Will be looked at.

Bosses immune to posions?
Will lighten up on this, and windfury isn't a weapon buff.

Mages are sad, but like bread.
Fire & Frost are good, arcane may need a little more.
Mana concerns to be looked at, evo got shorter cooldown.

51 point fire, what's up with that? Arcane 51pt also.
Living bomb would be tuned higher, and it's neat.
Arcane Barrage, goal is to mix up the arcane rotation.
Arcane is a bit more mobile
Avoided adding new buttons for 51 point talents, many classes has too many already.

Ferals in PvP, what do they bring special from rogues?
Haven't seen much of them in the area, we'll watch for it.

Mages CC causes healing, but hex doesn't, can we heal ourselves?
Mages escape not heal.

Enhance shaman, windfury cool down get changed?
Cool down may be removed if flame tongue is on the off hand.

Balance druid, are moonkin viable in arena?
You have typhone, damage added to lots of ability, we think their damage is good, will watch survivability.

Ret paladins burst hard in PvP. Will PvP changes hurt PvE viability?
Probably okay, lots of bugs caused ret damage to be off kilter.
Want controlled DPS to feel satisfying.

Four tanks now, abilities are shared, are tanks going to feel different?
Fighting between giving everyone required abilities while keeping them different enough to be distinct.

Switch specs mid raid?
That's the ideal goal.

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All of the above is poorly paraphrased.

To elaborate, he said this during the main presentation, and a fan asked about it in the Q&A section afterwards, and he said it again.

The statement of their intent wasn't ambiguous. I've got the PPV being recorded to my DVR, and I had to rewind and re-watch this to make sure I really wasn't misunderstanding it. They have clearly stated that they currently intend to support switching your spec in between encounters during a raid. Wacky.

Big announcement in the SC2 gameplay panel, the Starcraft 2 campaign will be split up into 3 volumes sold separately and will be a "Starcraft Trilogy". The first game features the Terran campaign and is titled "The Wings of Liberty", the second is the Zerg campaign "The Heart of the Swarm" and third is the Protoss "Legacy of the Void".

This is just for the single player campaign, the multiplayer will be fully functional from the start.

Good change, People playing a class and not a spec is the way forward.

Blizzard has said classes will be made to do equal DPS (+- 4-5%)
So, why take a class that can perform only one role in the raid, versus hybrids which will at a point in the future be able to perform multiple roles in the raid without having to go respec for the same thing?

Well think about it... How many raid situations have you seen that require all 25 people in the raid to suddenly switch their role from one fight to the next?

Different buffs, to fill the raid, because the pure class is better at interrupts / stuns, provides debuffs / buffs at a lower DPS cost, etc? This is a really old discussion, and I do have to ask: "If the ability to respec was that valuable, why would people stack rogues/warlocks for 10% DPS increases per person, even though it meant they had to rotate more people in?"

Yes, hardcore min/maxers are always going to try to have six of the fotm class in their group, and the ones who are server first boss-killers might even pull it off. Most guilds are just going to appreciate the fact that they don't need to try to recruit purely on a class basis.

Because the player is better, the spec provides utility you need, and because you like them and they mesh well in your raid.

Can we not turn pure vs hybrid into the next hardcore vs casual?

The WC3 woman announcer was clueless. At one point she turned to the other guy and apparnetly thought her mic was muted and/or she was covering it enough and said, "I can never remember all these unit names," to which he replied, "Yea, I know..." somewhat sympathetically. They didn't seem to add much insight IMO.

On the other hand, the WoW arena announcers are pretty good from what I've seen/heard. I wish they would quit it with the trailers and show more of this stuff.

Okay, I lol'd.

And as for the Starcraft single player announcement... that is really odd. Reading over the Kotaku post about it, it seems like they'll have the three storylines being played out concurrently? Like in SCI, the Terran campaign preceded the Zerg campaign preceded the Protoss campiagn chronologically... but now they'll have each of the three plots tying together, only you play from one perspective at a time? That'll certainly make for some interesting storyline narration, though I'm still rather skeptical of the game being split up into three..

Swapping specs mid-raid is an astonishing move. I guess the idea is to remove situations like Twins -> M'uru where you have five people either spend 50g or go sit.

Did they say anything about when it might be released?

Metzen in the QA answered a question about that and specifically said that the 3 campaigns are consecutive, they do not happen at the same time.

There will also be a mini-Protoss campaign packaged with the first of the three, the Terran campaign. They are breaking them up in order to not ship way delayed or sacrifice epicness of each campaign. Multiplayer will be separate and fully functional shipping with the first campaign.

Well, normally they have expansion packs, which usually contains smaller campaigns for all three races. If this "trilogy" was the equivalent of SC2 + 2 expansion packs, I think it might work out well.

It makes sense, but I hope they allow people who buy the initial version to get the subsequent ones at least at a substantially reduced price, if not for free.

The Kotaku post said that the campaigns would all have "the same ending", leading me to believe that they'd play out concurrently in the game's timeline. I guess if Metzen says otherwise, he's the boss. I think it'd be a plus if they got away from the "terrans win a bunch of battles, then zerg win a bunch of battles, then protoss win a bunch of battles including the final one" mode of storytelling. SCI had an amazing plot as far as I'm concerned, but was somewhat constrained by that.

Yep. But keep in mind you get one full campaign, one mini campaign, and multiplayer in the first box. Rob Pardo asked the audience whether they'd rather see the campaigns be much simplified and less epic and ship together earlier, break up the campaigns and not sacrifice, or meet somewhere in the middle with a much delayed release date. The audience favored the second option, which was he then announced was the case.

He also showed a wicked-cool animated storyboard of Kerrigan's backstory. Metzen was visibly excited about doing more with her character.

I don't disagree, I'm just interested in how much total gameplay you get for your dollar past the first box. I enjoy single player campaigns and I'm excited for epic well-designed story arcs, but I also don't wan to shell out $60 for a third of a game. If they price it like expansions, at $50-$30-$30, and each "expansion" is big enough to justify the name, that would be ok with me and I'd probably buy it. If each box is billed as a separate game and thrown out at $60 a piece, I might think a lot harder about it.

Half-Life: Episode One and Two would seem to be the model they're emulating with the SC2 setup.

I can't wait to buy The Blue Box.


The Dual-spec thing is very nice, though it does seem to make Frostfire Bolt a bit less useful. Having a spell that lessens the blow of a boss being immune to your main element isn't quite as needed when you respec for free, on the spot, between bosses.