Quelques révélations pendant l'E3 07

Nous en avons déjà tous entendu parler, mais voilà encore quelques nouvelles à propos de Zul Aman, le VoIP et les banques de guilde.
Quelques informations de plus lors de l'E3 de Santa Monica, le tout relayé par GameSpot Pc Games et MMO Champion.

Source : ici

Citation :

E3 07: World of Warcraft Content Upate Impressions - The Dungeon of Zul'Aman
We take a sneak peek at some upcoming content for one of the most popular online games in the world.
By Andrew Park, GameSpot
Posted Jul 11, 2007 11:42 am PT
SANTA MONICA--All the sunshine and sandy beaches in the world couldn't keep us from visiting with Blizzard Entertainment at the E3 2007 media summit in Southern California. The developer was on hand to show off new content updates for its insanely popular massively multiplayer online game, World of Warcraft, including some new gameplay features and a brand-new dungeon area.

The big news is the new Zul'Aman area, an outdoor dungeon in the mid-level Ghostlands area near the blood elves' homeland. The dungeon is inhabited by the forest trolls who first made their debut in Blizzard's real-time strategy game Warcraft II. ("Trolls love the outdoors," explains vice president of game design Rob Pardo.) The vast outdoor zone consists of ruined stone temples that reflect the trolls' shamanic beliefs growing through thick forests of trees. According to the story that Blizzard has penned for the area, Zul'Aman is the home of the troll warriors led by Zul'jin (a character from Warcraft II) and has become a stronghold from which the trolls have begun attacking the blood elves, thanks to a newfound power that a troll witch doctor has discovered. Apparently, this powerful troll spiritualist has somehow managed to steal away the essences of four troll animal gods and confer them to four mighty troll warriors. These avatars act as the early "boss" encounters for the dungeon.

Zul'Aman is a smaller raid dungeon that's better suited for 10-character parties than the full-on 25-character raids that some of the game's larger dungeons demand. Because the dungeon will not require any keys or attunements to enter, the dungeon seems intended to be more accessible to players on tight schedules. Much of the layout will call for methodical clearing of troll enemies who may call for help by beating on nearby war drums, which summon additional troll warriors to fight. Each of the four avatars, which have respectively been infused with the spirits of a bear god, a dragonhawk god, a lynx god, and finally, a god of evil, may also summon help, as well as assume different forms over the course of battle. Once players have defeated each avatar, they'll eventually take on the witch doctor that started the whole mess and finally do battle with Zul'Jin himself. The final troll boss will not only be a powerful foe; he'll also be able to draw upon the ghostly spirits of each of the four liberated animal gods and change his own shape to assume their powers.

In addition to offering challenging encounters against these mighty foes, Zul'Aman is apparently intended to encourage players to tackle it repeatedly to master its content. There will be several characters hanging around just outside the dungeon to give out quests that take place within the dungeon, including hunting for treasure and liberating four different hostages who have been taken captive by the armies of each of the four avatars. The rescue missions will apparently be timed and will yield better rewards if completed early.

Blizzard also plans to release additional, smaller patch updates before then that will add two new features: integrated voice chat and guild banks. Voice chat will be added to the game free of charge, will mute the game slightly whenever someone talks (so that you won't need to talk over any onscreen battles), and will use onscreen icons to indicate who's saying what, so that you'll be able to quickly determine which team member in your party is asking for help. The guild banks, on the other hand, will let guild officers create vaults to store the guild's entire possessions, as well as set permissions to limit access to certain items if they care to do so.

World of Warcraft is still running strong with millions of subscribers worldwide. Unfortunately, there's no set release date planned for the Zul'Aman update, beyond "when it's ready," though we're told that the voice chat and guild bank updates should be coming sooner to the game.

-GameSpot

Des informations supplémentaires :

Citation :

July 12, 2007 - Along with fully integrated voice chat and guild vaults, the World of Warcraft team over at Blizzard will be adding a new outdoor 10-man dungeon called Zul'Aman in an upcoming patch. It's located in the south-east corner of the Ghostlands, an area ruled by Zul'jin and his Forest Trolls. These guys, under a witch doctor, have started fusing animal spirits into some of their warriors. In fact, they've done it to four, who will serve as the majority of the dungeon's six boss encounters.

Blizzard designed Zul'Aman to be more of a quick dungeon, something that can be beaten in one night. This contrasts with something like Kharazan, which requires a massive time investment. The quest thread to Zul'Aman starts in Shattrath, and thereafter it's a simple matter of heading over the Hatchet Hills in the Ghostlands and starting the quest. Loot in Zul'Aman will apparently be a step above what drops in Kharazan. Though there'll be less overall items to collect, the ones that do fall from bosses will be more powerful.



Once inside the dungeon you'll see it looks similar to Troll ruins from other parts of the game, though a few of the boss arenas looked interesting. The first boss, a bear-Troll hybrid named Nalorakk, is visible right from the entranceway. As soon as you approach him he'll start sending out waves of troops to keep you busy. Once you eventually engage him, you'll have to fend off a troop of bear-riding Trolls and deal with the bear form he shapeshifts into. According to Blizzard, Nalorakk will on rare occasions drop a bear mount for your own use.

Further in, we were shown a group of Troll mobs playing keep-away with a dragonhawk. They were tossing a skull back and forth, and once aggroed they toss the skull at you. This knocks you back, but also adds the skull to your inventory, which you can thereafter toss at your buddies, adding it to their inventory, and so on. Various scout Trolls are scattered around the dungeon that will flee as you approach. If you don't halt them with a stun or snare, they'll start beating on drums and bring larger waves of mobs to crash your party.

Another boss encounter squares you off against a dragonhawk-Troll avatar, who has a fire breath attack as well as multiple fire bombs. The bombs stick in the ground after he spews them out, and they explode after a short amount of time, which should keep your party on its toes. He's also surrounded by grouping of eggs, which a hatcher Troll will run around and break open to spawn dragonhawk mobs. You can kill the hatcher if you like, but if you do the boss will eventually break all the eggs simultaneously when he's low on health, resulting in a mob inundation. Either way, it seems, you're forced to deal with the adds, it's just your call whether you want to fight them piecemeal or all at once.

We weren't shown the Lynx or Eagle avatars, but did get a glimpse of the final encounter against Zul'jin. This battle seems like it'd be pretty tough, as he calls on the spirits of the fallen avatars from earlier in the dungeon to alter his powers, making the fight more dynamic.

No information was available as to whether Blizzard would be announcing a new expansion for World of Warcraft, though common sense would say it's only a matter of time. We'll have to wait for BlizzCon later this summer. The Zul'Aman dungeon has no set release date, but Blizzard said players can expect the guild banks and integrated voice support to come first.

Les informations les plus importantes sont :

- Les Loots de Zul'Aman seront de qualité supérieure à ceux de Karazhan (qu'en est-il de la difficulté ?).
- Il y aura moins de loots qu'à Karazhan (normal car il y a l'air de n'y avoir que 5 bosses).
- Cette instance sera plus rapide à finir que Karazhan, parfaitement réalisable en une soirée.
- Le premier boss, le Dieu Ours, pourra looter une monture ours (avec un droprate très bas, comme d'habitude).
- Il y aura des trolls scouts qui fuiront le combat pour avertir des collègues avec des tambours de guerre, à moins de les tuer avant qu'ils les atteignent.
- Le boss Dieu Dragon-Faucon (pas trouvé mieux) aura des attaques basées sur le feu et beaucoup de minions pour l'aider.
- Rien de neuf à propose de la rencontre finale contre Zul'Jin, il utilisera les pouvoirs des différents aspects des dieux animaux rencontrés précédemment (qui a dit Hakkar ?).

Il y a eu aussi confirmation à propos de l'arrivé du VoIP et des banques de guilde avant celle de Zul'Aman. Considérant que l'instance est presque terminée, ces deux nouveautés sont attendues pour très très vite.

Les points clefs du donjon sont les suivants :


Zul'Aman sera une zone de raid pour 10 personnes.
Le reset timer sera inférieur à 7 jours, c'est à dire moins que tous les autres donjons de raid.
Zul'Aman sera plus dur que Karazhan et proposera du meilleur loot.
Le donjon proposera 6 boss et le but est de pouvoir les tuer en une soirée. Il faudra 2 à 3h pour nettoyer le donjon.
Aucun prérequis ne sera demandé (pas de clef ou de quête ou de sacrifice de vie privée)
Zul'Aman proposera une quête apparemment très dure qu'il faudra compléter en un temps limité. D'après Tigole, ce sera très hardcore mais très profitable. Elle sera complètement optionnelle.
Le premier boss sera bête et méchant : pas besoin de coordination poussée entre les membres du raid, mais il tapera très fort. On appelle ça un gear check et du tank & spank.
Niveau difficulté générale de la zone, les premiers boss seront du niveau de difficulté du Princeou de Nightbane.
Un nouveau modèle de troll, les trolls des forêts, sera rajouté. Difficile de savoir si Tigole parle d'un vrai modèle ou d'un nouveau skin.

Pour ceux qui se posent des questions sur les autres aspects des mises à jour, voici un extrait des fofo officiels :
http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=301970373&sid=2

Voici quelques petites précisions sur la banque de guilde et l’outil de communication vocal, deux éléments qui sont encore en phase de développement

Banque de guilde
La banque de guilde sera un lieu centralisé dans lequel une guilde pourra entreposer des objets, et qui sera différent des emplacements de banque personnels. Le maître de guilde pourra instaurer différents niveaux d’accès correspondant aux divers grades de la guilde, permettant un accès à des parties spécifiques de la banque à un nombre restreint de membres.

Outil de communication vocal
L’outil de communication vocal permettra aux joueurs de communiquer oralement en jeu, sans avoir besoin d’un programme extérieur, puisqu’il fera partie intégrante du jeu. Il sera possible de distinguer quels sont vos interlocuteurs via des indicateurs dans l’interface, et le volume des sons/musiques du jeu diminuera lorsque quelqu’un prendra la parole.

Bien évidemment ces deux éléments comprendront d’autres fonctionnalités et détails, mais ils sont toujours en développement, et nous ne manquerons pas de vous communiquer de plus amples informations au fur et à mesure de l’avancée de ces deux projets, qui seront implantés en jeu avant la prochaine extension.

Oui, je sais, ça met l'eau à la bouche et ça ne donne aucun détails...