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Sunday, August 23, 2009

Two days of gaming goodness

4:49 PM / Games / 2 Comments

Over August 21 and 22, Blizzard Entertainment held its fourth annual BlizzCon convention in Anaheim, California, packing all the gaming fun and associated geekery one could wish for into a two day event. The convention, the 200,000 tickets for which apparently sold out in under a minute, allowed fans to play work-in-progress versions of the studio's three announced upcoming games - Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty (yay), Diablo III (even more yay) and the just-unveiled World of Warcraft: Cataclysm expansion set (meh) - as well as ask the developers questions at Q&A panels, empty their wallets in exchange for an assortment of exclusive memorabilia, and embarrass themselves in the name of good fun. Oh, and apparently some up-and-comer called Ozzy Osbourne was singing some songs. I didn't attend myself, clearly, but I did pay my £24.95 to subscribe to the live feed provided by DirectTV, even if it did mean staggering into work on Saturday morning looking, for some unfathomable reason, like I'd only had three and a half hours' sleep.

It looks to have been a terrific event and, while watching a low resolution feed in a browser window can't exactly compete with actually being there in the flesh, a lot of the enthusiasm was certainly communicated to me and I got to hear most of the big announcements in real-time... although I did, for some reason, get it into my head that the event was on Saturday and Sunday, not Friday and Saturday, which meant that I missed the opening ceremony and, turning up late, found myself wondering "What's this Cataclysm thing everyone's talking about?" and "A Monk? Are they re-releasing Hellfire?"

In the past, the developer panels have always been my favourite aspects of BlizzCon, and this year proved to be no exception. Because, on numerous occasions, more than one panel was taking place at any given time, DirectTV had to be selective with their coverage, meaning that I missed out on the likes of the Diablo III lore and art panels and the cinematics department's panel, but I did get to witness all the most important stuff, such as the long-awaited preview of the new Battle.net platform and its rather disturbingly Big Brother-like ramifications, and the panel focusing on the design and gameplay of Diablo III's new playable character class, the Monk, which looks like ridiculously good fun.

I think the word "ownage" was invented for the Monk.

The Starcraft II lore panel brought some gladness and some sadness. It focused on the game's voice cast and brought out many of the key players, as well as its voice director, Andrea Romano, for an on-the-spot Q&A session chaired by Chris Metzen, the man responsible for dreaming up most of Blizzard's game worlds, storylines and character. While it was nice to see the original voices of key characters Jim Raynor and Arcturus Mengsk (Robert Clotworthy and James Harper, respectively) on stage and in person, the stunt casting of Battlestar Galactica star Tricia Helfer as Sarah Kerrigan, in place of original voice actor Glynnis Talken (who repeatedly expressed interest in returning to the role) did grate somewhat. I hate the notion of celebrity voice casting, particularly when said celebrity is brought in to replace an already perfectly good actor. And let's face it, Helfer, whose previous computer game experience consists of her role in the deliriously (and intentionally) bad live action FMV sequences in Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars, doesn't exactly have what I'd call the pedigree for a role like this. The cynic in me is inclined to think that she was cast for one reason and one reason only:

The ubiquitous Tricia Helfer pin-up shot, top, and the character she will be voicing, bottom.

Now, I can see the appeal, personally... until I remember that these, erm, assets won't actually be visible in the game. For Starcraft II, she's a voice, nothing more, and hers is far from distinctive.

Another issue for me is the new Xbox Live-styled Battle.net service, which I alluded to above. While many of the new features sound excellent, such as the tiered ladder system and increased ease of inter-game communication, not to mention the fact that, despite the numerous upgrades and improvements, it will remain free, I couldn't help finding Blizzard's desire to create such an overarching, all-encompassing, "always connected" system rather disturbing on some level. The fact that players must connect to Battle.net to activate the game even if they only intend to play single player mode is problematic enough; worse still is the cheerful admission by Rob Pardo, the company's Vice President of Game Design, that they will have the power to de-activate accounts completely, forcing players to buy new copies of the game in order to continue playing. Sure, the likelihood of them doing such a thing to anyone other than a hacker, pirate or rampant cheater is unlikely. However, the fact that they are able to wield such power is actually pretty scary. Whatever happened to the days when you could just hand over your money for a game and enjoy it with the knowledge that you "own" your personal copy? Yes, I know that technically you license the game rather than actually obtaining ownership of it. The point still stands, though, that my copies of the original Starcraft and countless other titles exist on my shelf and are mine to play for as long as I want without having to concern myself with forced online activations and the worry that the developers could, on a whim, decide that they don't like me playing their game and forbid me from doing so any more, despite having paid for it.

Starcraft II's main menu, with integrated Battle.net 2.0.

Am I being paranoid? Maybe so, but as you probably know by now I distrust DRM in all its forms and view with great suspicion any attempts at forced connectivity. While all these new features sound like a lot of fun, I suspect that a sizeable number of players don't really care about them and just want a way of being able to hook up with their friends and play a quick game, whether that be via a LAN connection or some sort of "open" online play similar to what currently exists for Diablo II. One thing's for sure, this post-World of Warcraft Blizzard is a very different animal.

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