{"id":1477,"date":"2011-10-21T12:06:47","date_gmt":"2011-10-21T19:06:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bytica.com\/?p=1477"},"modified":"2011-10-21T12:32:08","modified_gmt":"2011-10-21T19:32:08","slug":"blizzcon-2011-the-big-three","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bytica.com\/?p=1477","title":{"rendered":"Blizzcon 2011: The Big Three"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

BLIZZCON 2011 OPENED ITS DOORS TODAY here in Southern California, and all three of the developer’s main franchises were represented well at the opening ceremonies, which just ended: <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Diablo III<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/span><\/span>:<\/span> Blizzard CEO\/President Mike Morhaime unveiled the final box art for the game, due in 2012 (sorry, no official launch date yet), followed by a look at the <\/span><\/span>Diablo III <\/em><\/span><\/span>Collector’s Edition (it’s a cool-looking white box). <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Then came the big bombshell: a full, digital version of <\/span><\/span>Diablo III<\/em><\/span><\/span> will be FREE to all <\/span><\/span>World of Warcraft <\/em><\/span><\/span>annual subscribers the day D3 goes live (as well as beta access to the next WoW expansion, and a free mount). This was followed a by video showing the history of the <\/span><\/span>Diablo <\/em><\/span><\/span>franchise, after which Blizzard’s Chris Metzen took the stage to unveil a new <\/span><\/span>Diablo III <\/em><\/span><\/span>trailer. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

StarCraft II: <\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/span><\/span>There wasn’t any huge news on this out of the opening ceremonies, other than Metzen unveiling a new trailer for the <\/span><\/span>Heart of the Swarm. <\/em>OMG! Here come the Zerg! <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

WoW 5.0: <\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/span><\/span>The biggest news by far, the next <\/span><\/span>World of Warcraft <\/em><\/span><\/span>expansion \u00e2\u20ac\u201c <\/span><\/span>Mists of Pandaria <\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/span>\u00e2\u20ac\u201c was revealed. The expansion, which will raise the level cap to 90, will be set on a serene new continent \u00e2\u20ac\u0153lost in time\u00e2\u20ac\u009d called Pandaria, and will introduce the new Pandaren race and a new Monk class. Hey, did I mention pandas? <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Afterwards, Metzen finally confirmed a bit of WoW lore that had been floating around forever: That the Pandaren were originally supposed to be the new Alliance race in <\/span><\/span>Burning Crusade<\/em><\/span><\/span>, not the Draenei. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The Blizzcon fun is just beginning, as the WoW developers will be taking the stage soon to talk more about Mists of Pandaria<\/em>. More to come!\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BLIZZCON 2011 OPENED ITS DOORS TODAY here in Southern California, and all three of the developer’s main franchises were represented well at the opening ceremonies, which just ended: Diablo III: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,19,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blizzcon-2011","category-events","category-world-of-warcraft"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bytica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bytica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bytica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bytica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bytica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1477"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"http:\/\/www.bytica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1477\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1489,"href":"http:\/\/www.bytica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1477\/revisions\/1489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bytica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bytica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bytica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}