Blizzard will be hosting the Battle.net World Championships this year in Asia, launching Diablo 3, Mists Of Pandaria and the first StarCraft 2 expansion, maybe even going to Bed, Bath & Beyond if they have enough time, I don’t know.

But one thing that we do know is that because of their full schedule there will be no Blizzcon this year.

In light of our jam-packed schedule, we’ve decided to hold the next BlizzCon in 2013.

Hmm, so does that mean we’ll get no new info about the Titan MMO project either? Or perhaps we’ll see Blizzard at E3? I had predicted Blizzard would reveal what Titan is in 2012, but now with Blizzcon canceled, I don’t know. We’ll see.

Less than an hour ago Blizzard officially announced the new World of Warcraft expansion, Mists of Pandaria, and now we have the first preview trailer for you straight from Blizzcon.

Is it just me or does this trailer scream Kung-Fu Panda? Serious Blizzard, Pandas doing Kung-Fu? Lame!

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Blizzard just released the Diablo 3 Black Soulstone cinematic trailer from Blizzcon. It seems we have a new villain, Azmodan, the Lord of Sin, who is bent on destroying the world.

As Deckard Cain’s niece, Leah, struggles to make sense of her uncle’s mysterious and disturbing notations, she bears witness to a dark vision. Azmodan, Lord of Sin, towers over the fragile young woman, swearing his armies of the burning Hells shall pour forth into Sanctuary, ravishing the world and all hope of resistance.

The Diablo III Black Soulstone cinematic trailer is below.

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Blizzcon just started, but we’ve already been flooded with breaking news about Diablo III, Blizzard’s DotA and now the newest expansion to World of Warcraft called Mist of Pandaria. While the expansion title might have been leaked out months ago through a trademark, here’s what we’ve learned so far.

This next expansion is set in a place that’s been lost to time for 10,000 years. A land of balance, harmony, beauty and hope until WE arrive.

The real enemy, the true villain of the franchise is going to be war itself.

Below are the details so far released at Blizzcon:

• Level cap increase to 90
• Pet Battle system with Panda-like creatures
• Monk class added
• New Pandaren race
• New continent Pandaria
• PvE Scenarios
• New Talent System

No release date has been mentioned yet, however we’ll continue to update this thread with more information about Mist of Pandaria as it’s announced.

If you needed any more confirmation that the MOBA genre is hot, then look no further than Blizzard Dota. For some reason this title got completely by me last year and I thought this was a newly announced game, however it’s not.

Blizzard DOTA will take some of Blizzards more famous characters from its most popular franchises and let players battle it out MOBA style. The backstory is that two gods, one blue and one read have been fighting each other for all of time, so to settle things, they each summon characters from various universes and pit them against each other.

Check out the preview trailer for Blizzard DOTA below.

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Blizzcon has kicked off and the first big piece of news has been released. It seems Diablo 3 will be free for all World of Warcraft players who commit to a 12 month subscription through the WoW Annual Pass. Also included is an in-game mount called Tyreal’s Charger.

Also revealed is the box art and collectors edition, detailing all the goodies that will be included which you can view below. I’m not sure why a WoW pet is included, I guess they really want to get D3 players playing both games.

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Gamescom might be long over, but today Bioware released a highlights video of the conference showing off a bit of gameplay, but mostly players reactions to Star Wars: The Old Republic. There’s nothing earth shattering in the video, no reveals or anything like that, but if you didn’t have a chance to go to Gamescom in Germany, this video will give you some idea of the mayhem that gamers experienced at the convention and at the SWTOR booth.

Props to the guy in the Darth Maul costume and the chick.

Check out the SWTOR GamesCom highlight video after the jump.

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And the Guild War 2 flood of information keeps coming out of Gamescom.  Today GWcom.de released an a video demoing the crafting system found in GW2 and providing some more information about how it works.

To start off there will be 8 total professions players can choose from with 2 professions being active at any one time. The twist is that players will be able to switch from one profession to another without losing their progress (level) in that profession, which basically means players will be able to master all 8 professions if they want to.

Now I’m going to assume there will be some restriction or cost to switching your profession otherwise limiting players to 2 active professions makes no sense.

In Guild Wars 2, there are two basic crafting mechanism, Discovery and Crafting. Discovery is the recipe system where players experiment with various materials to see what types of recipes can be created. Then once you have some recipes, you’re able to start crafting items. Guild Wars 2 takes the XP approach with crafting, so the more items you craft the more XP you get and eventually level in your profession.

Recipes also have level ranges, however it was not fully explained how it works in the video.  From what I can gather, by using the Discovery Recipe system, players can discover higher level recipes then their current crafting level, but whether or not you’ll be able to use those recipes at the lower level has yet to be answered.

Check out the full GW2 crafting demo below. Only the first 2 mins 30 sec have any commentary, the other 20 mins is just crafting.

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The guys at Joystiq recently had a chance to speak with the developers who are working on DUST 514 and revealed the launch price at “around $20″. CCP had previously announced that there would be an initial download fee for the game and that players would receive that payment back in the form of in-game currency, but didn’t give out a solid price until now.

CCP went on to re-confirm some already known information that the Eve Online and DUST 514 marketplaces would be completely integrated stating, “Bought currency items and non-currency items can be freely exchanged between the players“.

CCP also expects that some players won’t even bother with the actual FPS aspect of the game and concentrate solely on their virtual business.

I wouldn’t be surprised if we get quite a few EVE players that join Dust but actually don’t play Dust at all, they’re just on the market speculating … and they never go into a match,

I still wish DUST 514 was on PC, but who knows, maybe PS3s will be under $200 by then.

Some information about RIFT Patch 1.5 was released yesterday at Gamescom including a 25 min video showing off the Hammerknell raid as well as some unreleased content.

• RIFT patch 1.5 will go live at the end of Sept – beginning of October
• There will be “single-dungeons” as part of the “Chronicles of Telara”. These dungeons are for more casual players who don’t have the time to complete full raids. You can easily clear this dungeons with 1-2 players (depending on the equip) and the difficulty will not scale with the amount of players in the dungeon. Hammerknell will be the first “solo-dungeon” so that casual gamers are able to see that type of dungeon as well.
• There will be the “Master-Mode”. Which are more challenging and meant for gamers between full raiding and casual. Right now, Darkening Deeps and Deepstrike Mines are the first dungeons in testing phase. There will probably be more depending on which dungeons the community wants to see.
• The new “Hammerknell”- Warfront “Library of the Runemasters” will be released
• The first parts of the new “Planar Achievment System” will go live. From level 50 on players will receive points for earned EP from daily quests etc. These points can be spent in 6 extra bonus skilltrees to adjust the characters a little more and give them some finetuning.

other facts:

• The new 10-man-dungeon “Rise of the phoenix” won’t be released with 1.5 because they are focusing on other things (see above) and it is still in testing
• The new 10-man-dungeon will be as hard as Hammerknell just with 10 man!
• The new Zone won’t go live with 1.5
• But there will be new Raid-Rifts with the new zone (1.6 or later)
• The aspect “social-life” was discussed. Developers are planig some fancy features like a “barber-shop” whre you can change the face of your character.
• The “Warrior and leather” issue was discussed. They want to have every class have their own class equipement. So warriors won’t prefer leather instead of plate anymore in the future.

Check out the 25 min Gamescom RIFT gameplay video by continuing below.

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