The following is the transcription of the StarCraft II Gameplay Panel, though it generally deals more with the Galaxy Editor:

In StarCraft II, we’re taking a lot of the same ideas from our previous games and pushing these gameplay ideas but really expanding on them and making them as deep as we possibly can. Between our story mode spaces, we can see a lot more of the story than we could in any of our previous games. StarCraft II has more story, deeper characters, more choices, and unique missions. Each mission has its own meta-game that forces you to stretch your abilities as a commander.

Mining Your Own Business:

This is a mission where Tosh calls up Raynor and he says, “I have a contract but it’s really hard to do and there’s Zerg. I need your help.” Each game is unique. The goal is to harvest 5,000 minerals. You are faced with decision of building SCVs, defending, and leaving to high-ground. You have to play chicken in the environment.

There are two distinct types of Redstone cliffs: man-made and natural. This is not something that the graphics artists made for us. The new water tools are no longer locked to the cliff level. This is what we did for the “Mining Your Own Business” mission. You can just open up a map and start spraying random stuff. New lighting editor sets apart the look. You can create custom light, it’s not determined by the artists. You can create any crazy custom worlds you want.

Read the rest of this entry »

The following is the transcription of the BlizzCon 2009 StarCraft II lore panel:

Welcome to the Lore Panel. This year we want to try something different. We have our scripts ready, and cast the game. So we figured we’d bring the cast of StarCraft 2 out to BlizzCon so you guys can see who they are and hear what they brought to the role. We’ll have a Q&A at the end.

The first character we want to bring out, the one honest man in the universe, the hard-hitting, hard-living, old-school Jim Raynor, Robert Clotworthy:

For our next character, we’d like to introduce, this is a wild one, the gentleman who played this character is no longer with us, but we have found another character who has the same gravitas, power, Zeratul, Fred Tatashur:

Guys for the third character, one of my personal favorites, a new character who has quickly taken over and just rocks, and the sound of his voice just lights us up. You’ll recognize this character from the intro of the game, Tychus Findlay, Mr. Neil Kaplan.
Read the rest of this entry »

The following is the StarCraft II Battle.net Discussion Panel with Rob Pardo:

Battle.net hasn’t been talked about lately because World of Warcraft is our most popular game. The goal is to improve the service so it will be a premier matchmaking service. Launched in 1996 for Diablo, it was updated in 2003. There have been more players on it in total than World of Warcraft. The prospect of StarCraft II and Diablo III will take this further. As always everything in this panel may or may not change.

Read the rest of this entry »

Update: See the official WoW Cataclysm site: worldofwarcraft.com/cataclysm

Welcome to the ORG network’s coverage of BlizzCon 2009! Blizzcon has expanded to 4 halls this year, and it is packed. The opening ceremony is over and the fansite staff are set up to meet the development team. Inside the BlizzCon goodie bag are: a Jim Raynor figure, hand sanitizer, a key to “epic loot” (somehow associated with SteelSeries), Blizzcon map, Blizzcon schedule, a Blizzard Authenticator, a press badge, and a card for Grunty

A leak of a new Diablo III class, the monk, was leaked from the Korean Diablo 3 website:

The monk is on the far right:

Official announcement:

Gameplay:

The next World of WarCraft expansion, Cataclysm, has been announced:

Remember to check out our Flickr photo stream. Also, be sure to follow the StarCraft.org and the StarCraft: Legacy twitter accounts for complete event coverage!

- Discuss at StarCraft: Legacy
- Discuss at StarCraft.org

Well, here it is. Welcome to the first morning of this year’s BlizzCon. BlizzLive will be providing live coverage of the Opening Ceremony via our Twitter Feed that you can find on the right-hand sidebar.

Our current plans are for Twitter to be our main method of communication during the day, while on the floor of the convention, and then we’ll also be providing round-up article coverage and news updates as more information is shared and available for you all. There will additionally be large amounts of photos uploaded throughout each day, so keep an eye on the photo feed on the right as well.

While we’d like to be able to get it up faster, our Video feed will be updated each night with the appropriate official Blizzard cinematics/gameplay videos, as well as our own personal video coverage from the floor and nightly wrap-up video.

More immediately, there will be a 1st Day Live Q&A with our representatives at the convention, hosted live on this page at 6 PM (Pacific). Make sure and have your questions saved up and we’ll answer them as well as we can. And don’t be afraid to invite your friends, we’ll answer their questions too.

We’re looking forward to today’s events, we hope you are too!

The ORG Network is pleased to announce a new project created by the collaborative efforts of three of its flagship member sites, StarCraft Legacy, Starcraft.org, and StarCraft 2 Forum. BlizzLive.com is a new site; its purpose  -  providing the best, most accurate, and up-to-date coverage of Blizzard’s events. Our ambitious new project will provide fast, professional coverage of all of Blizzard’s live events. The site’s first event will be this year’s BlizzCon.

Staff members from all three sites will be working together to produce and distribute the best quality content. BlizzCon coverage from our contributing member sites will be exclusively available on BlizzLive. We’ll be covering all of the major news, panels, and events. As a part of our coverage we’re planning the following:

• Coverage of All Breaking News
• Photos
• Video Coverage (talk show style from the floor)
• Live Blogging
• Panel Articles and Videos
• Exclusive Interviews
• Podcasts
• StarCraft II Gameplay Impressions
• Diablo III Gameplay Impressions

Starting Thursday, August 20th, BlizzLive will go live and the staff will be hosting a live chat to introduce ourselves, gather your last minute questions and speculate on what secrets BlizzCon ‘09 has to offer. And then on Friday, August 21st, BlizzLive will begin our coverage of BlizzCon 2009. Be sure to bookmark the new site and continually check for updates as we deliver the best of BlizzCon directly to you.

Don’t forget to use the reminder below and visit our site Thursday, August 20th at 6 P.M. (PST) for the live Pre-BlizzCon Q&A with our staff on the ground in Anaheim.