Joci Terran în Starcraft II? Mânuieşti energia Protoss? Află că ambele rase fac parte dintr-o categorie covârşitoare, dedicată eliminării gândacilor (de bucătărie) de pe faţa Pământului şi eventual din partea de multiplayer a jocului. Pentru că, conform statisticilor Blizzard pentru America de Nord (dar care se potrivesc foarte bine şi restului teritoriilor), zergii sunt cea mai puţin jucată rasă pentru că sunt cei mai dezavantajaţi.
Oricine a luat o bătaie la rush de la o hoardă de zerglingi şi roaches va spune că nu e adevărat, dar per total, oamenii şi extratereştrii sunt mai avantajaţi din diverse puncte de vedere, aşa că Blizzard are în vedere îmbunătăţiri în special pentru zergi în următorul patch pentru Wings of Liberty. Astfel, planurile lor includ cam următoarele modificări, mai departe în original pentru a evita orice probleme cauzate de termeni imposibil de tradus în limba română:
• We’re increasing roach range. This will allow roaches to be more effective in large groups, giving the zerg more options in the mid to end game.
• Fungal Growth will now prevent Blink, which will give zerg a way to stop endlessly Blinking stalkers which can be very challenging to deal with in large numbers.
• The Barracks are going to require a Supply Depot, which will impact a lot of early terran reaper pushes.
• The reaper speed upgrade will require the Factory, which is meant to weaken a lot of the early terran reaper attacks that dominate so many matches, especially in team games.
• We’re making a number of increases to the health of zerg buildings, which will make the very vulnerable zerg technology structures more resistant to raids. We don’t expect these hit point changes to have a super significant impact on the game, but the current numbers felt way too low.
În altă ordine de idei, Blizzard nu are în vedere doar Starcraft şi lansarea Cataclysm, ci se ocupă intens şi de Diablo III. Cei de la Eurogamer au reuşit să-l prindă la colţ pe Jay Wilson, lead designer-ul jocului, şi l-au luat la întrebări despre introducerea craftingului, rolul artizanilor, limitările personalizării obiectelor, loot aleatoriu, eventuale noutăţi absolute în genul action/RPG, lecţiile învăţate după lansarea Starcraft II şi multe altele.
Jay Wilson: I think one of the key things is you have to understand and accept true randomness. A lot of times [people think that] whenever an item drops sooner than it seems like it should, or you get like eight swords in a run, the loot system’s totally broken. No it’s not, it’s random. That’s what it’s supposed to be. It’s supposed to be unpredictable.
Jay Wilson: Well, one of the things that we talked a lot about when we started the project was… Look at the tone of Diablo II’s summaries of their story. There’s a lot of talk about destroying evil for all time, take out Diablo and then evil’s dead forever. I felt like that was a terribly arrogant idea that only humans would have; only humans would think that you could destroy evil forever.
That was the first hook that we talked about. What we really wanted was the idea of a story where we do have some time away, it’s about 20 years later, and things have actually gotten better because evil’s been “destroyed”. But the truth is that it’s actually all just been a ruse, it’s all part of the plan. It’s really just making sure everyone’s nice and complacent for the real war that’s coming.
Pentru toate detaliile, interviul complet.