Video Games

So the two newest heros that were released in Dota 6.36, the Alchemist and the Warlock, have been officially nerfed. Still, check DotA Allstars 6.36b (not ai) out here.  The official change log is as follows:

6.36b
=====

* Fixed a Static Field bug and tweaked effect
* Nerfed Chemical Rage
* Reduced Gravekeeper’s Cloak a little bit more
* Less damage/armor on Acid Spray and a little more cooldown
* Slight base damage buff to Drow
* Reduced the max gold Greed can stack up to
* Soul Assumption early levels given a cooldown similar to the rest
* Fixed Purge tooltip
* Added status icon for Fatal Bonds on heroes
* Nerfed Fatal Bonds from 6/12/18/24 to 5/10/15/20
* Reduced Agility/Level on Spectre
* Lowered the recent XP deny changed a little
* Radiance damage reduced from 40 to 35
* Lowered Shadow Word damage on enemy a bit
* Nerfed Infernal a bit
* Added Shadow Word status icon
* Minor base damage nerf on Alchemist

Check of Unreal Tournament 2007’s trailer.  UT 2007 is fueled up, and more explosive than ever.  Trailer features in-game footage.

Penny Arcade has announced that “they are teaming up with Hothead Games to create an indie, episodic video games based on their comic”.  Their first game is “Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness,” and it’s a comic adventure game for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.  There has been no confirmation of a release date. 

This game is to be purchased and acquired electronically, although there is no word of how the development team plans on doing this.  The director of business relations for Penny Arcade, Robert Khoo, says that they “are right now looking at different vendors,” and that ”Steam is always a possibility.”

This is certainly not the first “episodic” game to appear on the scene, but let’s hope its cartoon-based development makes it a breath of fresh air.

DotA has been revamped again, this time welcoming two additional heroes: the warlock and the alchemist. Plenty of tweaks, and such. Dota allstars 6.36 (not AI) is available for download here.

6.36
====

* Added two new heroes (both disabled in -lm)
* New loading screen (thanks Artgerm)

* Gravekeeper’s Cloak reduced from 7/14/21/28 to 6/12/18/24
* Nether Ward HP reduced from 100/200/300/400 to 75/150/225/300
* Searing Arrows cooldown from 0 to 4/3/2/0
* Dark Ritual cooldown from 45 to 60/55/50/45
* Nightmare casting range from 650 to 500/550/600/650
* Storm’s Dispel damage increased from 200 to 350
* Chakra cooldown from 25 to 19
* Viper’s Poison Attack cooldown from 0 to 4/3/0/0
* Denied units now give off minor Experience instead of none (planned for improved league play from a while back, unrelated to the recent forum postings for those wondering)
* Improved Mana Burn cast range on neutral Satyr (only meaningful when converted since it does not autocast anymore)

* Ogre Magi base damage improved
* Redistributed Crystalys/Buriza recipe costs from 1000/750 to 500/1250
* Improved base Intelligence on Phantom Lancer
* Increased Mask of Madness lifesteal from 10% to 17%
* Track cast range improved per level
* Increased Battlefury cleave aoe from 160 to 200, damage from +50 to +65 and a little more HP/Mana regen.
* Increased Leshrac’s agility
* Improved how Doppelwalk levels
* Monkey King Bar’s bonus damage increased from 90 to 100
* Luna attack range from 300 to 330
* Drunken Haze’s duration from 5 to 7 seconds and slightly reduced mana cost
* Increased duration of level 2 and 3 of Doom by 2 seconds
* Changed level 2 and 3 Phantasm to take the same 200% extra damage as level 1
* Buffed Ursa’s strength gain per level

* Fixed the old incorrect Chaos Damage ladder tooltip to reflect the DotA custom settings
* Rebased Lightning Bolt due to it sometimes causing allies to lose their issued orders on the target
* Fixed a recent bug with Chronosphere that froze his images
* Fiend’s Grip now properly stops the effect when you run out of mana
* Swapped the locations of Dusk and Twighlight Taverns to be consistent with the Sentinel side
* Temporarily disabled -lmap
* Fixed -vr to random inside the voted hero vs hero set, so for example, blue/pink don’t always get the first one listed anymore. Don’t confuse this with the 10 heroes being randomized, only the order which they are assigned once the lineup is voted on. This removes the voting bias that previously existed in informal games
* Fixed a Clinkz Searing/Windwalk exploit
* Fixed Perseverance undo ability and Reality from triggering Essence Aura

Blizzard COO, Paul Sams, made public the claim that “starting with The Burning Crusade, every year thereafter we plan on bringing out a new expansion set - so every 12 months”.  This is an ambitious task for a team of designers whose released works have been spanned by large gaps in time, but they say that they are up for the challenge.  Joystiq was told by Jeff Kaplan (WoW’s lead designer) that Blizzard’s plan for expansions is “a little bit more ambitious than one every two years. We have to weigh that against the quality of the product and how much content we want to put into it. We won’t put something out until the quality level is there. So, our goal though is to provide content quicker than we have been up until now. We’ve really beefed our team up — we have about 100 now and when we started we had around 50.” 

Blizzard has always been about high-quality productions, and fans seemed not to mind waiting the extra while for them.  Hopefully in the wake of their newly-developed plans to increase quantity, Blizzard won’t exchange their reputation of superb game-developing for one of pulp and viral sensationalism.