Given that Diablo III's (allegedly) right around the corner and WoW's just a race of English-language-butchering kittens away from having the market cornered on cuddly things in MMOs, StarCraft's sort of gotten shoved into the background during this year's BlizzCon.

And that's really a shame, because it's doing some pretty damn awesome stuff.



During BlizzCon's Heart of the Swarm campaign and lore Q&A, Blizzard dropped a few details about the wriggly, pulsate-y expansion's single-player campaign. Most impressively, Zerg units will evolve relative to campaign progress, ultimately giving you choices between "genetic splits."

The example used during the panel involved the tried-and-true, foolishly faithful Zergling and his never-ending struggle against Terran bunkers. One of the two potential split options, however, involved evolving tiny, insect-like wings that allowed the little Zergling that could to climb over terrain and go around the bunkers. Utter obliteration of the Terran base followed shortly after. Another person in the audience said it best, I think, when he obnoxiously shouted "OP!" But I also agreed with the rest of the audience's assessment: "."

The other split choice, meanwhile, allowed you to triple your Zerglings in the blink of an eye. They were called Swarmlings - and with good reason. I watched with a mix of horror and more horror as the freshly hatched Zerglings devoured an entire marine army in the blink of an eye.

Furthering the campaign's evolution theme, you'll also be able to destroy planets as you see fit. Depending on the planet, your units will gain different permanent stat boosts. For instance, one planet might speed up your mineral harvesting. Another might do the same for gas. It's your call as to what you destroy and what you graciously spare to live an empty existence, paralyzed with fear of your inevitable return.

Also interesting was the panelists' response to a spoilerific audience question involving certain choices you could make during Wings of Liberty's campaign. In short, yes, those choices will carry over via your previous saves or Battle.net. Bear in mind, however, that this isn't Mass Effect. Blizzard explained:

"We are actually planning to bring your choices forward into the game. If you're playing Heart of the Swarm and you didn't finish Wings of Liberty or reach the point where you had to choose between the tunnels or the platform, it goes to the canon choice - in that case, flood the tunnels."

"That said, this is a Zerg campaign, and many of those were very Terran-focused choices. So I can't say that the choice will have a huge impact on that game. But you will hear references to the choices you made in the game.

To many WoW players, PvP is the heart and soul of the game. The sweet satisfaction of slaying your target is just so pure, and killing in a new setting makes it even better. With that in mind, Blizzard's announced four new battlegrounds in the Mists of Pandaria expansion, each with their own inspiration and objective. See what we'll be playing nonstop once the gates to these stomping grounds open up.

First on the list is Stranglethorn Vale's Diamond Mine, a pushcart map set in a Goblin-owned mining cave. You'll need to square off against the opposing faction as you both try to collect precious gems in a minecart straight out of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Concept art depicted a rickety track, leading to a pristine waterfall over an endless chasm. The best part? You can knock your enemies into said bottomless pit.

Next up is the Valley of Power, showcasing the new Murderball-style mode. Similar concepts have proven popular in FPS games: capture an object and hold on to it as long as you can, all while being a high-priority target for your enemies. The stage is set in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms, where an ancient artifact resides, waiting to be harnessed by whichever faction can grab it first. That power comes at a price, though: holding the ancient Orb of Power will constantly damage you, so you'll need healers as backup while you evade and protect your prize. It also matters where you hold the artifact; bunkering down in the middle of the map makes you more vulnerable but bestows more points, while hiding on the battleground's outskirts will only provide a trickle of points.

The last discussed addition is the Tol'vir Proving Grounds, a new arena set in Uldum. With the playerbase's affinity for fighting in Nagrand Arena, Blizzard's constructed a new arena in the spirit of the famous line-of-sight-centric circle. Tol'vir has a square layout, with four pillars carved into the effigies of Anubis-like gods. Another battleground was mentioned but not discussed in detail, though it's a doozy: the DOTA-esque Azshara Crater. We can't wait to see how these battlegrounds will play out, and what strategies and class picks will dominate. The Orb of Power shall be ours!

I think Evan said it best when he tweeted, "Wowkemon?" this morning when Blizzard announced that "pet battles" would be coming to World of Warcraft. But Blizzard's new system is even more similar to the classic pet-collecting game than most people thought at the announcement. Read on to see how pet-lovers will be spending all of their WoW time in the future.

Update: Blizzard's J. Allen Brack announced during an interview after the panel that the dev team wants to get the pet system playable on the WoW mobile app. He said "it would be a huge undertaking," but assured that the team has talked about it.

One of the main goals of the system is to give players a new type of activity to do in World of Warcraft and to make it accessible to as many players as possible. While some of the vanity/companion pets will be excluded from the system, they said that "almost all pets" will be usable in the new combat system.

Pet battles are very similar to pokemon duels: they'll be turn-based battles between teams of 3 pets per player (PVE and PVP). Pets gain XP from battle and can level up to level 35, unlocking up to 6 abilities along the way. Each pet can take 3 of those 6 abilities into battle each time. You'll also be able to name all of your companion pets now (My winter gnome servants shall be called Interns).

It's going to be a little more difficult to collect pets now. The ones you already have should almost all work in the new battle system, but there will also be Wild pets out in the world. You'll need to track them down and battle them with your existing pets to beat it down and capture it to train it as your own (sound familiar?). But finding these wild pets may be the trickiest part. The devs said that wild pets will have complex variables that control when they appear in the world. One example they gave was that one pet might only appear in Terrokar Forest, while it's raining in the nighttime. Wild pets will have random stats when you capture it, so you may want to keep recapturing the same wild pets until you get one with stats you want.

The good news is that all those captured pets won't go to waste while you wait for the best one. wild pets will be able to be traded and sold on the auction house for in-game currency. More importantly, Blizzard is "working very hard" to make sure that pets will be account-wide, so that you won't have to capture them on multiple characters.

And you won't be scouring Wowhead for secret tips on how to find these pets. Blizzard will be adding an official Pet Journal in the game that will show you all the pets in the game, along with their abilities, and where to find them all in the world. This will work similar to the dungeon journal.

You will also be able to earn items to boost pets, and you can track down pet masters around the world to challenge them. If you can best them, you'll earn a special ability that you can brign into battle to help your pets win.

This system sounds incredibly deep and complex--it sounds like, if you wanted to, you could pretty much spend all of your WoW time in this new pet battling system. Pet masters, ready yourself!

http://youtu.be/nlhWqmVeDno

Here's the Diablo 3 trailer from the Blizzcon opening ceremony. It's another extraordinary bit of CGI work from Blizzard. Plot-wise, it sets up the hunt for the black soulstone, the true significance of which is as yet unknown. The giant evil toad chap is called Azmodan, he's one of the Lesser Evils. He rules half of hell. The other half is ruled by the tricksy Belial, who's also likely to make an appearance, as he and Azmodan have been at war for control of the underworld for centuries. Either way, it's nice that Azmodan decided to appear in a prophetic dream and tell us all his evil plans. We'll get to violently thwart them when Diablo 3 is finally released next year.

Pandas, pandas, everywhere! The next expansion was described at BlizzCon this morning as "the calm before the storm", and saying that the enemy of the expansion is not an enemy but instead "war itself". Look inside for all the screenshots released at Blizzcon less than an hour ago!

With the reveal of the new Monk class in the next World of Warcraft expansion, Mists of Pandaria, Blizzard's taking a whole new approach to combat. As the bruiser Monk class, available to every race except Worgen and Goblins, you'll be flinging punches and thwacking enemies with impunity through the new content. They've even got an entirely new approach to killing mobs in WoW: absolutely no auto-attacking. Here's everything you need to know about the class that let you live out your Pandaren Brewmaster fantasies.

First and foremost: Monks, unlike the Death Knight, will not be a Hero class. Each newly-created Monk will start at level one, with new starting content in their own harmonious zone. With Humans, Orcs, Night Elves, Blood Elves, Gnomes, Tauren, Dwarves, Undead, Draenei, and Trolls all able to play as Monks, and Pandaren siding with both the Alliance and the Horde, you'll get quite a few options when starting out as a meditating mauler. Monks have been imbued with all-new animations, so you're guaranteed to see fresh moves as you slap your enemies around. Monks will primarily use their hands and feet to attack, but when they take up a weapon, they prefer Staves and Fist Weapons (a weapon category which will be greatly expanded for this expansion), and can also use one-hand axes, maces, swords, and off-hands.



Monks also use a brand new energy mechanic: Chi. Chi will enable your bread-and-butter abilities, Jab and Roll for attacking and mobility. In turn, Jabs will activate Light and Dark force, which are then used to cast abilities in a yin-and-yang balance playstyle. Boths sides have four orbs representing Light and Dark force, and it's still up in the air about how you'll have to balance between these two mentalities on the fly. By eliminating all auto-attacking as a Monk, Blizzard hopes to incorporate that fighting game feel from classics like Street Fighter, where pressing a button immediately results in a meaty hit.

Monks will have three talent trees: Brewmaster, who focuses on drunken brawling, the Mistweaver who combines healing with damage, and the Windwalker who uses melee DPS via the ancient art of "punch people in the face." Watching the Pandaren Monk battle a horde of enemies was a treat: socking enemies in the face with his huge fists, the Monk came complete with Bruce Lee-style exclamations as he bashed his opponent's skull in. When surrounded, he busted out an AoE spin-kick, demolishing nearby brutes in style. We'll let you know how the Monk plays after giving him a go this afternoon.

With a wink and a nod, Chris Metzen revealed a new trailer for the official Blizzard DOTA map for StarCraft II at this morning's BlizzCon Opening Ceremony. This map may not have the same hype level as StarCraft II's new multiplayer units, but Blizzard has wisely chosen to focus on another asset in their expertise: finding the humor in fights to the death. Alongside offering a new creep, lane, and jungling experience, Blizzard has hinted at "a way to play Blizzard DOTA for free, possibly by including it as part of the StarCraft II: Starter Edition." Check out the four hero roles and the nitty-gritty of the raucous hero-versus-hero romp.





The demo being shown at BlizzCon offers a choice from 12 heroes, with three heroes for each role: Tank, DPS, Support, or Siege. Tanks (Arthas, Muradin, and the Butcher) work as you might imagine, soaking up damage for your team and initiating group fights. DPS champions (Kerrigan, Zeratul, and Nova) are there to shoot and stab while the Tank distracts enemies; their glass cannon nature will make them shatter if targeted directly. Support heroes (Uther, Tassadar, and Thrall) have the power of crowd control in the palm of their hands, stunning and disabling enemies while they heal their allies. Lastly, Siege heroes (a siegetank, the Witchdoctor, and a new Zerg unit), a uniquely named role for MOBA-kind, will have one main directive: destroy as many towers and buildings as they can. Their long-range attacks make them perfect for laying suppressing fire and controlling space on the map.



Blizzard DOTA takes a tongue-in-cheek approach to the lore behind the new map. Two antagonistic gods, one red, one blue, have decided to pit endless waves of soldiers against each other. When they find themselves in need of leaders on the battlefield, they summon forth the greatest heroes of the known universe--all from Blizzard's best intellectual properties. When one of the available heroes in the game is a Murloc marine, you know you're in for a good time.



No release date has been given (in classic Blizzard fashion, it's be done when it's done), but it's hinted that a beta within the coming months. Check back for hands-on impressions of how the heroes play, and whether or not this could take the MOBA world by storm.

After the opening ceremony, Blizzard held a WoW-only panel to reveal additional details about the Mists of Pandaria WoW expansion coming out. This post was updated as the information was revealed, and holds most of the big news we learned about the expansion.

Blizzard has 4 main goals for this expansion

Give players new things to do, not just new raid bosses. New types of activities.
Get players to leave cities and spend their time out in the world. To do so, they'll be adding a lot of outdoor raid bosses, like old times
More options to progress your character. You can get valor points through daily quests, pvp, raids, etc. But raids will still be faster.
No more cookie cutter builds in talent trees. (We've heard that before, but hopefully they'll have good plans for it


 

Mists of Pandaria details

It will be a single continent, like Outland and Northrend (not like Cataclysm's content)
That new continent will have an auction house
Alliance and Horde will crashland there during a naval battle, and then both try to take over the land for resources (just like every piece of land they find)
Pandaren will be neutral form 1-10, and then you make a choice
The island is on the back of a giant turtle


 


Other people on the island:

Jinyu: race of wise fish-men. Can stick staff in the water to hear what's going on around them
Hozu: wise monkey-men who stand on two feet.
Verming: "the new kobold" -- it's a cuter rabbit-type varmints that are tunneling underneath the farm land and stealing vegetables.
Mantid: sentient insect race that've lived on the island, but cut off by a giant wall from the pandas, and have begun to go a bit crazy.
Mogu: the big villains, they used to control the island before the pandas kicked them out. They're back and they're pissed. Looks like orc/ogre hybrid
Sha are demon-dragon looking spirit creatures that manifest anytime bad thigns happen on the island, lore-wise. Will be major


 

Jade Forest zone:

Alliance and Horde entry zone
Horde teams with Jinyu, alliance with the Hozu
Because we're fighting with each other and with the wildlife, our violence will start to make the Sha appear, which pisses the peaceful Pandaran off.
This is the theme of the first dungeon: outdoor beautiful mountains/valleys has been taken over by the Sha. You have to go in there and cleanse them out to undo the corruption you've caused
The closest look is probably Stranglethorn Vale or ZG.


 


Valley of the Four Winds:

Zone in two partsnorth side is panda farms, south side is jungle
Players can choose to go one way or the other. Can come back later, but don't have to.
They want the dungeons to "fit in the zone" -- physically see it, give it a presence in the zone. This dungeon is Stormstout Brewery
This zone will have your first interaction with the mantid insect race
The wall of the island borders this zone, and they're beaking through a bit


 


Playable Pandaran race info:

You start out neutral, and at level 10 you get to pick Horde or Alliance
They can be everyhing but Warlock, Death Knight, Druid, and Paladin. They are the only race so far announced that can be Monks
Racial ability: increased stat benefits from food
Racial ability: Cooking skill increased
Racial ability: Rested experience lasts twice as long
Racial ability: BOUNCY - you take 50% less fall damage
Racial ability: You put a target to sleep for 3 seconds


 



Mists of Pandaria will have 9 new dungeons
6 of those dungeons will be in Pandaria itself
Many of them will take players indoor and outdoors to keep it interesting
There will be 2 more classic dungeons redesigned as heroic dungeons: Scholomance and Scarlet Monastery
Mogu and the Mantid will be featured in the 3 raids that will be available at launch
The Raid Finder will be available for all raids, meaning that there will be 3 diffculty levels (Raid Finder, normal, and Heroic)

http://youtu.be/nyeZ8khSEC0

Here's the debut trailer for the new World of Warcraft expansion, Mists of Pandaria which was shown about half an hour ago during the opening ceremony of Blizzcon 2011. The 90 minute Mists of Panderia panel is kicking off RIGHT NOW, so I'll be bringing you more info from there momentarily. Meanwhile, look! Pandas! In World of Warcraft!

The embargo has (partially) lifted, and its time to open the floodgates on a ton of Star Wars: The Old Republic news. Josh and Dan share their hands-on experiences with interns Greg and Lucas, who grill them for info on lightsabers, aliens, enemies, story, and what makes this a great Star Wars game. Then we field listener questions on Battlefield and sound design, plus all the games we're playing this week.
PC Gamer US Podcast #291: A TORrent of Star Wars news

Have a question, comment, complaint or observation? Leave a voicemail: 1-877-404-1337 ext 724 or email the mp3 to pcgamerpodcast@gmail.com.
Subscribe to the podcast RSS feed.
Follow us on Twitter:
@pcgamer
@jaugustine (Josh)
@DanStapleton (Dan)
@greghenninger (Greg)
@Ljrepresent (Lucas)