Blizzard: Thank you everyone for coming. We are obviously here to show you Heart of the Swarm. In here we are going to show you the opening cinematic and then Dustin is going to walk you through a brief presentation we have that, now that we are nearing the end of development we have laid out all the features and all the content that's going to be in the game. So we are just going to give you an overview of everything. And then after this we are going to take you to the play-test area and you will be able to play through three missions from the middle of the campaign and that will also allow you to check out the sort of campaign meta-game. Kerrigan leveling up and getting new abilities, and mutating and evolving all your Zerg species. So I guess I'm just going to start this... Oh yea, this is a reminder, embargo is 12:01 midnight next Tuesday. So, please, anything that you get from this visit: your unit view information, the screenshots and videos we are giving you, like all that stuff, like hold it until then. On that note, pictures on this screen will be given out to you.
Dustin: Pause to go fix the lights.
Crota: Oh it's going to be a longer teaser than last time?
Dustin: Oh, this is the opening cinematic.
Crota: Ooh...
Dustin: I watched this twice a day for the last six months.
Audience: *chuckles*
Dustin: Well, that's because I have work to do, but sometimes it might be a little more. Like if I'm in a bad day maybe I'll give it to myself at the end of the game to kind of, "Hey it's ok, you know, it will be fine."
Audience guy 1: Is this [inaudible]
Dustin: A lot of people worked on this.
Dustin: If you don't get chills when you see that, you are dead inside.
Audience: *Laughs in agreement*
Dustin: Alright, I'm desperately, desperately ill. I’m near death’s door. I almost stayed at home today, but I realized many of you traveled hundreds or thousands of miles to talk about videogames and I thought that's pretty cool. So, I thought I would show up. So, let's talk about what we got for Heart of the Swarm. So obviously we have a new story and campaign, twenty new missions, all that jazz; and you will see some of that here today. New story mode mechanics, all that stuff. New multiplayer experience which hopefully many of you have seen or experienced some of in the beta already; and we are still working on some of that stuff and new online service stuff. In the expansion we are trying to hit every type of gamer that comes to our experience. You know, we know that StarCraft is not just one game. It is many, many games sort of smashed all together and there's a lot of gamers that come to us to enjoy the multiplayer, the campaign, the arcade, to enjoy socializing with their friends, whatever; and some of people are just coming here just for one of these things, some that are coming for both of these things or many of them just fasted together. We are trying to hit all the different kind of players who come to StarCraft.
So for Kerrigan, she obviously has her many, many issues, and we have a long back story for Kerrigan that's been developing now for many, many products and many, many years and she is trying to get vengeance on those who have betrayed her. You are going to be rebuilding Kerrigan's power, rebuilding the Zerg Swarm as you battle your way across the stars. And you are exploring the galaxy seeing lots of different worlds, lots of new and strange locations that we have never taken you to, in the StarCraft universe.
From inside that campaign, you got the ability to choose some different abilities as you progress through the game. I don't know what you guys have or haven't seen. I've been demoing this so many times since I'm just finding myself repeating myself... You got levels that you are gaining as you are moving through the campaign as you complete missions and bonus objectives you gain additional levels and then you’ll have choices as to which abilities you want to get as you go up and Kerrigan is the ultimate expression of Zerg mutation evolution, so, you change this at any time if you have chosen abilities you don't like, or you want to try something new for a different mission you can sort of swap which abilities you want to have for Kerrigan as you advance.
For the Swarm you are collecting creatures, much as you would in Wings of Liberty. You are collecting units as you move through missions, but you can also evolve these creatures further as you play through the game. So you will see that as you encounter creatures, you'll see them in your Evolution Chamber on the Leviathan, you will see creatures you sort of picked up and you will be able to select mutations for these creatures. Again, these are changeable. So, you come here and choose which mutation you want for your Baneling, in this case. As you advance and if you don't like a mutation you chose, you can go back and change it and use it again later. But there's also the ability to evolve sub-species, or evolve new creatures for the Swarm. So, after completing some key evolution missions, missions where you go out and you gather DNA, or you break into a Dominion lab, you do something to acquire new genetic material for the Swarm, you will be able to come back to your Evolution Chamber and work with Abathur to choose how you want to permanently change your Swarm and that will change the art a little bit for units sometimes and the units look really cool and they change a lot. Sometimes it's just like a color shift, but we do everything we can to make these things look different from one another and still be a recognizable unit, I don't want a Mutalisk not to look like a Mutalisk, but we want to make it as much as possible, so your swarm looks different to you on the battlefield. And these evolution changes are permanent. Once you have chosen one of these you are stuck with that change. Unless, you know, load a save game. Other than that, they are a permanent change. So, for the campaign, twenty new missions, six environments, we got a bunch of new characters. We are not going to show you all of those yet, and I'm afraid that some Campaign questions you have today I will say sometimes, "Sorry, you are just going to have to just wait and see." We sort of still want some surprises for our fans out there, but we will try to give you guys as much as we can give you here today. And of course a lot of new cinematics and a lot of new dialogue, stuff like that.
For multiplayer, you guys have seen a lot of this already, I would hope; but lots and lots of new units... Are most of you guys aware of the Beta, lots of you guys playing? Should I speak? ... Ok, alright, I will either assume you can see this already or... Lots of new stuff for us to try to give us the tools to really balance the game. Like, one of the challenges we had in Wings of Liberty right now is that in Zerg vs Protoss there's not a lot we can do against Brood Lord, currently right now as Protoss. We could try to buff the Voidray but it's difficult for us. So units like the Tempest can give us this options that we previously didn't have to try to produce a better, balanced experience. So much has changed since Wings of Liberty launched. Predominantly one of the biggest changes ,obviously, is the e-sport scene has gone from "who knows if they will play it" to "this huge, insane experience" which is totally awesome. I can go to MLG and, you know, even watch minor tournaments with twenty thousand people watching this craziness. The map sizes have changed substantially as well as our initial vision of map size, was much smaller than it has evolved into. In many cases maps have been evolving directly from community maps that we have updated the textures or, you know, whatever and put them up in the ladder. And map sizes have changed the gameplay substantially, as well. So, Swarm gives us an opportunity to take all that learning and all of that knowledge and all of those changes and roll them into a single experience that will hopefully be a lot more balanced than what we are at today with Wings of Liberty. Hopefully, a more fun game to play.
For the online interface we have really done a ton of work in this area. We got an AI communication feature where you can actually play with the AI and tell the AI what to do as one of your team mates and it's a pretty effective way to order the AI around, almost more fun than trying to get your buddy on battle.net to do what you want to do, but you can tell it what to do. We got our clans feature and we got our groups feature. We got a new leveling system which will allow players to get rewards and just earn levels by just playing the game as opposed to having to win games all the time. So, even for a lose you will get something. You get more for a win, for sure, but you get something for a lose. We got a “players near me” feature that will allow you to find players really, really quickly if you are an IGR or at your office you want to play with your buddies, if you are at a dorm room, any kind of space where you are like "I just want to play with that guy!" Right? “I don't have his battle.net friend all worked out, I just want to play with him. Can we just hook up?” It's very easy to hook up with people in this environment. We allow you to watch replays with others. We got a "resume" for a specific time in a replay. So you can say, "I just want to, you know, jump into this replay and I want to take over from that point. So, let's resume from here. I don't know what "resume on time" is then. Anyway, there's a "resume on time replay" feature as well. They've changed the name of some of these so many times. So, I'm not sure what they all are.
Blizz employee: Oh I know what it is. It's when you go to a replay and load it with a friend. You can "punch in" the time and it will...
Dustin: Oh, I see. Very cool.
We got your own observer UI, you can build. I got an example here, today; but who knows where this one is really going. This allows our mod makers and more importantly our casters to completely redesign the UI. So, if I watch a sporting event on different networks, they will have essentially their own UI for how they want me to view their experience and this will allow casters to customize everything you want to customize. What you don't want, the production in the upper left or you want it in the bottom right, you want to get rid of the bottom bar, you want the game time in the top middle. That's all stuff they can customize and presumably share that with one another and pass on the best ideas. And at one point we said, "Hey, you know what we are going to do? We are going to update our observer UI” and we started to do that work but said, "You know what would be a better idea? Instead of us doing that, let's give the tools to the community, because there are so many Casters out there that are such specialists at this experience, right now. Maybe also want to have their own take depending on how they were casting. You can imagine someone like Day[9] when he is doing a Day[9] daily wanting to have a very different UI than someone who is running something at MLG, who is showing something live. So, I'm personally very excited when it comes to this and one of our engineers has been working very hard on it for many, many months and he was solely committed to this. So, I hope this is going to be something very exciting for our community.
We got a new training mode, which will hopefully help players move from the campaign experience to the multiplayer experience. We got three different missions that run in sequence which gives them more and more tech and ramps the speed with each mission. So, the first mission is at the same game speed you are playing in the campaign and the last mission is the same speed when you go on the ladder. And it has a bunch of helpful hints that will give you an idea. We watch a lot of new players play and they are really shocked by, "How many workers?" like, "four barracks is legit?!" right? There’s a lot of differences between campaign and multiplayer. So, this will hopefully help some players at least make that transition from campaign into multiplayer. We got a bunch more of levels for our AI and a new AI challenge mode that doesn't require you to go into a lobby and guess what your difficulty should be, try it and see, have to pick a new map now which map should I play on. It will just find you a map that is on ladder today. It will automatically ramp you to your best difficulty and then keep you at your best difficulty. So, hopefully this will be a better AI experience.
We got unranked play. Which, obviously, allows you to play without the pressure of ladder sort of looming over your head. We got global play and Multilanguage support. And there's a bunch more of other stuff, sort of minor features, that sprinkle into this, but the online UI team has been working solid for months and months and months ever since we released the 1.5 patch which updated Arcade experience, to try to give you an experience that is a vastly improved Battle.net experience and I don't know exactly where they are all out, but a huge percent of this are going straight into the 2.0 patch which will go to Wings of Liberty users as well. So, almost all of this is also Wings of Liberty for everybody else. Our values on battle.net when Wings of Liberty was set was, "Let's just keep updating this thing and everyone gets the updates and keeps on going whether you buy it or not, it’s cool, it just keep coming" and we are holding that value going forth into Heart of the Swarm.
Ok, here's an example of kind of what it looks like so you can get a sense of how large this changes are in terms of the flow. I'm personally a huge fan of this left side navigation, here we are going into our new matchmaking screen and you can see the training there in the upper left and you can start on any of this three missions. It trains any of the three races, I guess you can train as random if you wanted to, it's ok. New "VS AI" mode which will match make you against different skill levels and then increase difficulty as you go. Unranked play and ranked play. So I think the whole thing is not only, hopefully, with a ton of new features; but I feel like the art team has done a great job at cleaning up the whole experience as well, such as reducing all the confusion and clutter and it's just a more pleasant experience.
Ok, this is just an screenshot from our training mode. Right? You can see that we are doing things that are a little different here. Here's a box with a lot of different objectives. So, we are giving you a lot of different objectives and they can change throughout the game, rapidly, as you are completing them or make things happen. There's also things like that message in the middle of the screen that says "spawn larva" that are popping up text right in front of your face. This is something you don't want to see in the multiplayer experience, or even in other areas like the campaign where you are trying to enjoy the story or the experience, but in a training mode we can get away with a lot of the stuff that can really teach players better ways to play. I don't know if this will take you to Grand Master or anything but it might at least take you to bronze, right? So, this is what we are hoping for, for those players who are really struggling with that transition.
Just a screenshot of what our clan system might look like. This is what our group system might look like. You can see news in there and you can news things in there to your group and obviously have your own custom chat channel with other users.
This is an example of our end-game experience. We got a new popup here that shows you victory. So, it celebrates victory a little bit more it's not quite so lame as we had in Wings of Liberty, where score screens will just pop out. And this is our experience with this system. I think you guys have already seen this in the beta at this point I don't think it's news to you at this point, but...
Blizz or audience guy: Well at least with that you don't get suckered by the guy saying he left the game.
Audience: *laughs*
Dustin Browder: Right, there will be no shenanigans on that respect. If you don't see the screen, he is not out yet. Exactly.
We are going to give a bunch of rewards for this area. I don't know if these are the final ones, but you get an idea of how they function. We are trying to make decals a little more of a thing. One of the mistakes I believe we did in Wings of Liberty was that we took a lot of these decals and buried them at the back end of the game for those of you who won a thousand games as Protoss, maybe you had a nice decal. Everyone else had a decal that they wouldn't use. So, we are putting the decals around the Command Center, Hatchery and Nexus, just to help on a prominent display. We are trying to set some sense of a hierarchy to these decals and I think they are actually making a pretty good job at trying to create ten levels of decals here and you will also be unlocking a bunch of new portraits as you advance through these levels. And the final thing we are offering are skins. These ones are not final. These are just mock-up skins in the game, but these are some of the units that will have these skins and this is a real challenge for us right now, because we don't want to get these so crazy that you can't recognize what these units are. This is still an e-sport. Even if it is not an e-sport, you are playing competitively on ladder and trying to be serious about it. I don't want you to be confused by, “Does that Zergling have wings or is it just the upgraded Zergling with a skin. So, we are really going to be tuning these in the next couple of weeks and try to make sure that we got these really tight. Just something else to make you want to get to that last level of experience in the multiplayer experience. I'll be clear too. You guys can't really experience this on ladder right now, but the leveling system right now is really designed to reward you for winning but it's also rewarding you for playing. So, we are not going to ask a lot of questions. We are not going to be mean with this leveling system in the sense that, if you play versus AI, you get experience, if you play custom maps you get experience, if you play 2v2 1v1 4v4 you get experience. Right? So, it's not about like it was with the achievement system we had in Wings of Liberty that we all sort of thought, I don't know about you guys, but we internally thought it was a little too mean. You could go home tonight, have a bad night, maybe a little sick, a little tired, whatever, a little drunk and you managed to lose five games. "Why am I even playing tonight?!" Right? I just want to... "My ladder ranking is just tanked and I won't really get an achievement.” So, we are trying to give you something whether you win or lose. You know, some benefit for it.
This is an example of one of our custom Observer UIs and you can see that our engineer really changed everything. There's upgrades in the left and the right. The bottom bar is completely gone. The unit tab is now right here in the bottom. He's got the players and the time in the top middle with the food currently on display. It's a completely different UI, and this is something one of our engineers who is very passionate about e-sports, Jason Buel, put together for us. But you can imagine with this kind of power what our casters will be able to do. I have no idea, but I can't wait to find out. I think this is a really cool feature for us going forward.
This is an example of our physics system in action. You are going to see the Warhound in here. This is an old video, don't get mad. And it won't be this extreme in the live game. We won't be these much physics all the time because it gets really confusing and noisy, but you get an idea of what the system is capable of and the types of stuff you will see from time to time.
*Physics preview*
Dustin Browder: These are all temp sounds still too. Oh, that's my favorite one. *chuckles*
Dustin Browder: Alright, so obviously there is a bunch of risks to this. It can get too noisy, it can get too crazy, you can turn this off if you don't want to see it. So, if you are observing a game and you are like, "Ahh, the physics is ruining my game experience," you can shut it off. But our goal is to try to ride the line where it is really cool, but it's not too obnoxious and so that people will leave it on. So, we are trying to set up and tune it when we go forward and see if we can sort of redline that system and get us to a happy place on it. And that's it.
