Every year, Blizzard hosts Blizzcon, an event where competitions are held for all major games developed by the gaming giant. But that’s not the only thing gamers all around the globe look forward to. Blizzard also announces upcoming changes to all their popular games. Here’s what shot out from Blizzcon 2016!
Diablo III
The first Diablo game is one of the most iconic games in the world. The mysterious theme, the great soundtrack and the insane boss fights made the game turn into a great franchise. If anyone missed out on the experience, then here’s a second chance. Diablo III is due to get a patch soon which will add the first installment of Diablo in the Diablo III engine, allowing you to experience the masterpiece yet again! So get ready for the 16 level dungeons and the eight directional player movements. The graphics and soundtrack will be brought back from the original Diablo, allowing you to have the exact same experience.
Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft
Hearthstone is set to get its new expansion in early December with 132 new cards – The Mean Streets Of Gadgetzan! The set announcement so far has included lots of powerful cards for Priest, an underperforming class and plenty of other well designed cards have been announced as well.
Heroes of the Storm
Heroes of the Storm is set to get Varian Wrynn and Ragnaros the Firelord in an upcoming patch. These are two iconic characters from the Warcraft universe and they will be making an impact in the coming months. The game is also getting a new brawl ‘Blackheart’s Revenge’ soon.
Overwatch
With months and months of waiting, we finally got to see Sombra in action! A character that has been hyped to death finally made an appearance and the initial impressions are all positive. Sombra has the ability to disrupt enemy abilities, health packs, invisibility and teleportation through a translocation device. Her EMP ultimate discharges electromagnetic energy in a wide radius, destroying enemy barriers and shields and hacking all opponents caught in the blast.
Starcraft II
Google DeepMind and Starcraft II announced collaboration for research on AI. “We’ve worked closely with the StarCraft II team to develop an API that supports something similar to previous bots written with a “scripted” interface, allowing programmatic control of individual units and access to the full game state,” says DeepMind’s blog post. AI researchers seek to implement reinforcement learning techniques to make the AI learn from mistakes by repeatedly playing out scenarios and learn what it should not be doing in specific situations. Doesn’t it seem like they’re just training Skynet?
World of Warcraft
WoW is getting a new patch allowing players to access the raid ‘Tomb of Sargeras’ and also the ability to fly around the Broken Isles. Before the raid patch, we can expect patch 7.15 which brings back Brawler’s Guild, featuring new bosses and a new currency. The patch is also adding “micro-holidays” and several class updates that add talent diversity, fine tune secondary stats, and add class-specific utilities.
As every year, Blizzcon sure has delivered! I for one can’t wait for the changes to go live!
