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October 28 2010

BlizzCon 2010 has come and gone, but while it was here we were treated to many interesting tidbits of news.

At the opening ceremonies, it was announced that Blizzard Entertainment would be releasing official mods for StarCraft 2. Since the game’s release, there have been many custom user maps created including zombie survival maps, recreations of classic games like Guilty Gear and even RPG adventure maps. With this in mind, Blizzard is releasing four official mods.

Auir Chef, a play on words for the famous Iron Chef, has players both killing and cooking, gathering materials that are spread throughout the map for their recipes in the hopes of earning the title “Executor Chef”. It was by far the worst received at the convention, as the mod has nobody standing in line to try it a mere few hours into the convention. The gameplay, while interesting, was blocky and while the concept was humorous, it just wasn’t very fun.

StarJeweled brings the addicting qualities of BeJeweled to StarCraft 2, and I can honestly say that it does it quite well. The mechanics here make players match gems just like BeJeweled in order to gather energy and build troops. Matching gems will spawn grunt units at your base, which will then head off toward your opponent - but, similar to games like Puzzle Quest, matching gems will also give you resources that you can spend on bigger, more advanced units.The game play is wild and adds a new level of stress to an already intense RTS. The gem matching screen shows up as an inset panel on the right hand side of the screen just above your command console. Both days of the convention saw the line for this game quite full, and with good reason. This mod gives a whole new meaning to reaper rush.

Left 2 Die is zombie survival horror in StarCraft 2. Unlike the name, however, it is not a first person shooter like one would expect. It is a co-op version of the mission outbreak from SC2. For those unfamiliar with the mission, it is a survival mission based around a night and day cycle. At night your base is assaulted by infected Terrans, and you must defend against the onslaught and survive until daylight. During the day the infected hide inside of infected buildings. While in the day cycle, players have to eliminate the infected buildings to keep the zombies from coming back. Total victory comes when all buildings have been pacified. In this co-op version, “Special Infested” are added into the mix of milling zombies just as in Left4Dead. You can run into the Hunterling that pounces on you, and a Boomer-like infected that vomits corrosive acid on structures and explodes when killed. Killing these Special Infested and destroying the Infested structures will reward players with Biomass, which is used to research new structures and units like the Medic, Firebat, and Perdition Turret. It is really addicting, and making it co-op adds a whole new level of fun to an already critically acclaimed mission. I had a ton of fun with this mod and can’t wait to play it at length with my friends.

Officially called Blizzard All-Stars this next mod is already being called Blizzard DOTA by the fans. This is a re-birth of an old and incredibly popular mod for Warcraft 3. DOTA stands for Defense of the Ancients, and it is a tower defense game in which players must spawn towers and use hero abilities to protect a central structure from auto-spawning waves of mobs. At the main base there is an item store back at the base and a fountain of health that restores your hero to full strength. There are currently about twelve heroes in the game, with more on the way. They are divided between the Terran/Protoss side and the Infested/Zerg side. Fan favorites like Sylvanas Windrunner and Muradin Bronzebeard from Warcraft, as well as the Murloc Marine and Tauren Marine easter eggs, make appearances but really all the big names are here. There are no neutral mobs for you to beat on and earn experience, so the leveling is very even paced. You can tell that this is a work in progress though, as there were plenty of imbalances between heroes (looking at you here, Sylvanas!) that need to be worked out.  However by and large this was the hit of all the official mods. Both days of the convention saw this line going nearly as far back as the Diablo 3 line. This mod has the soul of DOTA and I predict when it’s done it will be a huge success.

Now, with this in mind one must wonder how they are going to get this content to us. It has been promised to us by the end of the year, and this will mark the first wave of mods that will be available through the upcoming Battle.net mod store. Think of it sort of like an iOS app store for Blizzard games. The announcement of this is pretty important for a couple reasons. First of all, it has the potential to centralize the addon and mod community for all Blizzard games. How often have you downloaded a mod from one website like Curse, only for support to be halted and shifted over to WoWInterface? What about that super cool SC2 map that you downloaded, but had to reinstall and now can’t find? This can also open up an opportunity for increased security. Most sites check the code for malicious strings set to steal your information, but they do sometimes miss things. It wasn’t too long ago that there was a bad string of code that squeaked by, causing all sorts of mayhem. Any mod or map hosted on the official Battle.net app store will be the responsibility of Blizzard to make sure it is safe. A pretty big endeavor, but I trust the boys in Irvine can do it.

The four mods showcased at BlizzCon will be made available through this new app store, and will be completely free, acting as the flagship mods for the project. This does however raise a few questions, that at this time were not answered. When dealing with the apple app store, not everything is free. Developers can charge a fee for their product as approved by Apple. One has to wonder if something similar will happen here. Will we see player generated paid content? Will Blizzard release mods that will cost money in order to obtain? If the Sparkle Pony is any indicator, I’d be willing to bet we’ll start seeing some paid content on the Battle.net app store before too long. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as personally I’d like to see the addon community get paid for their hard work. I know some wonderfully talented coders that used to make addons for World of Warcraft. They stopped simply because there was no money in it, and no one donated. They now make iPhone apps for the app store and no longer support their previous gaming mods, nor have any plans to make any more. For what it’s worth, I’d shell out $0.99 to download and install Grid any day of the week.

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