Unlike previous installments of the game, Diablo 3 features a different resource system for each of its five classes: Barbarian, Demon Hunter, Monk, Witch Doctor and Wizard. Only one of these classes has the “classic” mana as a resource now, and this post will give you an overview of the variety of resources Blizzard introduced in D3.

Barbarian – Fury

Barbarians attacks are powered by Fury resource. It’s gained by killing enemies and taking damage. Unless you’re using the “Unforgiving” passive skill available at level 55, your Fury will deplete over time when you’re not in combat. Some of Barbarian’s primary attacks such as “Bash” or “Cleave” generate fury, but using more potent skills will deplete it.

Demon Hunter – Hatred & Discipline

Demon Hunter uses a system combining two different resources, and is the only class that does so. The first one is called Hatred, and your basic attacks generate it and more powerful offensive attacks expend it. Hatred starts at a value of 150 and regenerates by 4 points/second, not including the use of any abilities or passive skills.

The second resource is Discipline, and it has a default value of 30. The regen rate is 1/second. Discipline is used by defensive spells: basically anything that helps you survive or get away from enemies will use Discipline.

Monk – Spirit

Monk’s resource is called Spirit. It works similarly to Barb’s Fury: several of your primary attacks generate Spirit, while most others deplete it. Unlike Fury however, Spirit does not degenerate over time but instead it actually regenerates in the same way as Mana or Hatred. Monks have a decent number of abilities, ability combos, skill runes, passive skills and even items that can improve the regeneration rate of Spirit.

Witch Doctor – Mana

Surprisingly only one class in Diablo III uses Mana as a resource, and that is the Witch Doctor. It works exactly like in previous Diablo games or any other RPG game for that matter: it regenerates over time, and casting spells costs a certain amount.

Wizard – Arcane Power

Arcane Power is quite similar to Mana: it has a fixed amount of 100 (able to increase this by 20 through passive skills called “Astral Presence” though). It also regenerates by 10/second, or 12 if you use the aforementioned “Astral Presence” passive. Most of Wizard’s spells cost around 15-25 Arcane Power, so you can use a few before you run out of AP. However, Wizard has a lot of spells that have no costs at all to cast, so you need to constantly rotate these in order to make use of Arcane Power’s natural regeneration rate. Some of these so-called “Primary” spells can also replenish Arcane Power each time they hit an enemy, for example “Magic Missile“, a spell available at level 1 has an “Attunement” skill rune that gives you 4 AP each time you cast it.

Images source & more info: Barbarian’s Fury, Demon Hunter’s Hatred & Discipline, Monk’s Spirit, Witch Doctor’s Mana, Wizard’s Arcane Power.

Many old Diablo 2 and new players have been a bit confused about this stuff, so I do hope this post helped explain you the difference between these five resource systems in Diablo 3.

Diablo 3 Class Resource Mechanics Overview is a post from: Trolr

TERA’s headstart begun today, and along with that thousands of players are experiencing the game for the first time. For those of you who didn’t participate in the beta, you might want to know a thing or two about leveling speed. In this post I’ll be going over some of my impressions and opinions on leveling in Tera, as well as try to compare it with some other MMORPGs on the market.

Current level cap in Tera is level 60. It’s hard to say how much time exactly you’ll need to level up, primarily because you couldn’t level up all the way to the cap during beta testing. You can rush through the first ten levels in around 3-4 hours. After about 3-4 days you should already be level 30, but of course it depends on how much time you’re investing: a good 6-8 hours a day will easily get you there. On average, you should be level 30 after 20 hours of gameplay. If you played the game in beta before and know all quests and stuff, you can probably cut down this time, but newer players will often spend time reading up quests, setting up interface, etc.

One important thing to note is that leveling up in Tera is not as hard as you’d expect, considering the game is coming from a Korean developer. It’s been “westernized” quite a bit and that includes the leveling speed as well: you won’t run out of quests (at least as often as you’d think) and grinding really isn’t necessary. Compared to World of Warcraft however, leveling in Tera Online is significantly slower.

As expected the leveling speed slows down progressively as you reach new levels. While it is fairly easy and quick to get to level 30ish, every other level will possibly take over 2 hours of play, perhaps even over 3 hours. Unless you’re following a guide that will tell you exact locations of all quests and objectives, I don’t really see how you can do it any quicker.

Any distractions will of course even further slow down leveling, such as gathering or crafting. A good way to speed up the process however, any many players will tell you the same, is to group up with others. Join a guild or play with your friends, it doesn’t matter, but gaining experience is much faster in groups than soloing. Monsters give 20% extra experience regardless of the number of party members, and the leveling speed increases also because it’s easier to kill mobs with more players since and you have less downtime. It’s particularly effective because you can easily do group quests or BAMs (elite mobs) without wasting time finding groups when required. It’s also best if you group up with classes that have great synergy together, although I won’t get into that here. Another important thing to remember is that not all classes level up at the same pace. From my experiences leveling with a Lancer is the slowest, while obviously DPS classes will be much faster.

Overall, while I personally do think leveling in Tera should be quicker, many players disagree with me and find it quite fine. Perhaps it’s because I’m just tired of leveling characters in countless MMORPGs already, and in the end get disappointed by the lack of endgame. We’ll see if Tera will be any different.

Leveling Speed in TERA Online is a post from: Trolr

The spectator mode is one of the most anticipated features players have been expecting from League of Legends developer Riot Games. We’ve first seen it in action well over a year ago, and it’s been used ever since to cast tournament games. But to the average player, it’s been unavailable. That’s all about to change soon however, as Riot finally announced that it’s coming with a video detailing the spectator mode features.

While this company is notorious for releasing new features on an extremely slow schedule, a preview video just revealed is giving me a glimmer of hope that we’ll be seeing the fully-fledged spectator mode very soon. Up until now spectator mode didn’t exactly have any advanced features: you could spectate a (custom) game, see total gold accumulated by all players and both teams, see item builds, skill cooldowns and ranks, and of course remove the fog of war entirely. Now however some new features have been announced in addition to the aforementioned ones:

• Spectating friends – you’ll be able to right-click your friend in the game lobby and spectate the game they are currently in
• Featured games – Riot will be displaying “featured games” that players can spectate. Details are a bit vague on this at the moment, but likely it will consist of promoting top-ELO player matches, team scrims and tournament games.
• Timeshift controls – in case you missed some action, you’ll easily be able to rewind, as well as speed or slow down the match up to 8x.
• Directed camera – this camera mode will automatically switch to the part of the map where action is happening, whether it’s kills or damage. Not sure how intuitive it is, but it appears to be extremely helpful.

Even though League of Legends has well over 30 million players, I do feel the lack of a publicly available spectator mode has been hindering it’s growth as an e-sport. This will not only make tournament games easier to cast, but will also enable any player to spectate or do commentary on a game of pro players. While it is not mentioned at all, I assume that the release of spectator mode entails the inevitable release of a replay system as well, which is one of the main things that the community lacks as well.

I am just a tad bit disappointed however that we’ll only be able to spectate our friends. Streaming League of Legends games is insanely popular with some players getting up to 40,000 concurrent viewers, it would certainly be helpful if we could spectate their games, rather than just watch their point of view all the time. I’m a big fan of all LoL streamers and love to watch someone who can play better than I ever will, but their commentary is sometimes not very helpful, or even annoying.

Either way the release of spectator mode is a great addition to League of Legends. No exact release date was given, but it will be released with the next patch (Varus). My only hope is that Riot picks up the pace in the future and starts adding new features more often than once a year: replays, achievements, game modes, new maps are just some that are often requested by the community.

League of Legends Finally Releasing Spectator Mode is a post from: Trolr

However, nobody expected the microtransactions to start even during beta. As a new gaming studio it’s not surprising GGG needs the funds to develop a great game, and they actually thought of an interesting concept, one that I’m surprised no other studio thought of yet: they are selling beta keys!

you can pre-purchase Points used to buy cosmetic microtransactions. Every purchase comes with a Closed Beta key so that you (or a friend) can start playing immediately. In addition to the Points, we offer a wide selection of exclusive rewards such as in-game pets, shipped copies of the game, its soundtrack, posters and even the chance to help design a Unique item that will be added to the game.

While this concept is definitely new (at least to me), I find it quite refreshing in fact. More than often players are looking to obtain beta keys for upcoming games and sometimes it can be difficult. This way, everyone’s happy: if you can’t get into the game by other means, you can just pay $10 and get yourself a key. It also gives you an additional 100 points that can later on be used for microtransactions.

As mentioned the cheapest early access pack costs $10, but there are additional ones, going up to a mind-blowing $1,000: if you have extra money lying around this pack will give the most rewards, but I simply don’t see anyone investing this much into this game. That’s taking it a bit too far if you ask me, but who knows, perhaps someone will feel generous.

Either way, if you simply can’t wait another 6 weeks until Diablo III or if you’re just looking for an alternative, you might want to give Path of Exile a try. I managed to snag myself a beta key (free, mind you), and I really liked the game. Hopefully, you will too.

New Business Model: Selling Beta Keys is a post from: Trolr

There’s not a single Blizzard game that isn’t highly anticipated, and Diablo III is definitely no exception. After years of waiting Blizzard finally revealed the release date, and it’s set for May 15.

Unfortunately no new details have been revealed, particularly those regarding the beta. While many players participated in the beta a few months back, there are no news regarding upcoming beta events. Pre-orders have started however, so I’m assuming pre-purchasing the game will get you into the upcoming beta events, as well as some sort of early access. Alternatively, you can try your luck with some unofficial beta key giveaways.

Standard Edition of the game costs $59,99, while the Collector’s Edition is valued at $99,99. I’m sure we’ll know more details soon, so stay tuned. Just finally having a release date is good news if you ask me!

Diablo III Release Date Revealed: May 15 is a post from: Trolr

I’ve been keeping up with some developments in Star Trek Online over the past couple of years, but I never got back to playing it. While I am keeping myself fairly busy with League of Legends still, a couple of my friends are about to try out STO and I might just join them.

I’ve never considered STO to be a bad game, but I could never justify paying a monthly subscription since I played it very, very casually. Now, that barrier is gone so there’s really no reason not to fire it up occasionally. I’m guessing with some (hopefully) proper marketing Star Trek will gain a ton of new players by going freemium, something we’ve seen happen with several other games as well (DC Universe springs to mind as the prime example, Age of Conan as another).

Unless you’re still keeping yourself busy with SWTOR, be sure to head over to the official website and register for and download Star Trek Online. If you never tried it before, it’s a great way to kill some time, and you don’t have to pay for a thing. Who knows, you might even like the game.

Star Trek Online Launch Trailer:

Star Trek Online Now Free to Play is a post from: Trolr

You’ve probably already seen the Modern Warfare 3 launch trailer, and if you read my post you’ll notice I’m not very impressed by the trailer, nor the game itself lately. MW3 will get released in a week or so, and this is probably going to be one Call of Duty title that I won’t try.

I’ve never actually tried playing Battlefield before, but it does look promising. I’m not of course judging the game just with this launch trailer, but with a ton of other gameplay videos I’ve seen. It looks as if it might provide some much-needed change, and multiplayer seems to be worth a try as well.

Anyways, here’s the BF3 launch trailer:

Definitely looks better than Call of Duty right now.

Battlefield 3 Launch Trailer is a post from: Trolr

It’s questionable whether the Call of Duty franchise even has anything new to offer at this point: a few different weapon attachments and a couple of other features is hardly considered groundbreaking. The last few titles have a borderline science fiction story and extremely short single-player campaign. For me definitely not worth $60, but as always I’m sure it’ll again break sales records.

In either case, you can watch this uninspiring launch trailer below:

Your thoughts?

CoD Modern Warfare 3 Launch Trailer is a post from: Trolr

If you attempted to visit mmo-champion or similar World of Warcraft news-sites in the past few hours no doubt you’ll notice most of them are offline. The reason is this year’s Blizzcon: there’s a lot of new information posted about some of our favorite games, and below you’ll find a recap of what was announced so far.

Diablo III

It appears that there still are some things about Diablo III that Blizzard kept from us. Wait actually, no there’s pretty much nothing we don’t know already. In fear of The Old Republic Blizzard already revealed more than plenty of details. As we recently learned D3 won’t come out this year, just as I predicted, and instead we’ll be able to play it in March 2012. The demand for beta keys is still insane though, so if you still haven’t tried the game don’t worry, many didn’t.

Anyway, Blizzard revealed this previously unseen Diablo III trailer: Black Soulstone, in which we find out about a new villain, Azmodan, the Lord of Sin, who like any self-respecting villain wants no less than to destroy the world.

Another high-quality cinematic, much like we expected.

But is seems Blizzard is really, really afraid of SWTOR, because now they offered a free copy of Diablo III for everyone who subscribes to World of Warcraft for 12 months! That’s definitely unprecedented and clearly goes to show that they will do anything to keep WoW subscriptions from falling. Nevertheless, it’s great news for everyone who still enjoys this game, and plans to do so for the next year.

Blizzard DOTA

Apparently this isn’t a new announcement, but I have no clue how I missed it. I had no idea Blizzard was making their own DOTA, especially since I thought Valve trademarked the name and started working on their own DotA 2. We’ve seen plenty of stuff concerning the MOBA genre recently: Heroes of Newerth went free-to-play, League of Legends continues to grow (and I continue to enjoy it), and there’s even been some new titles released: Rise of Immortals and Realm of the Titans, neither of which had much success unfortunately.

Back to the topic. We have a cinematic trailer showcasing some of the stuff and heroes we’ll get to see in Blizzard DOTA, and you can watch it below:

While story really isn’t important in MOBA games, I still think Blizzard DOTA’s story is really lame and Blizz could certainly do better. As you can see from the cinematic, we’ll be summoning heroes from other Blizzard titles, so hopefully it’ll turn out well. Judging by the trailer I’m not really sure whether Blizzard is really trying to make a serious game here or what, but in either case I’ll be sure to keep an eye on it in the future.

World of Warcraft – Mists of Pandaria

The name of the 4th expansion for World of Warcraft has been known for some time now, but finally it’s been officially confirmed:

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.

Players will finally be able to play Pandaren, a long-awaited race, and we’ll have access to a new class as well, the Monk. Below is a recap of the announced features and changes:

• 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
• Focus on Alliance vs. Horde war, rather than a villain
• Pandaren will be playable by both factions
• Challenge mode dungeons

Initial impressions from players are mostly disappointing. More details will surely follow and hopefully the general impressions will improve. If nothing else, we’ll always have Star Wars: The Old Republic

Blizzcon 2011: Blizzard DOTA, Free Diablo III, Mists of Pandaria is a post from: Trolr

Over the past couple of days we’ve had an unusual number of news regarding Diablo 3. The game will have an auction house where players will be able to sell items for real money, some new info on Runestones has surfaced, some new screenshots and leveling info as well. Blizzard also announced that playing Diablo III will require an active internet connection, meaning you will always have to be connected to Battle.net in order to play.

Of course when considering the auction house that’s a necessary move, but many players have expressed their disappointment about it. In any case, that’s not what this post is about. One other thing that we heard even before but seems to make even more sense now is that Blizzard is pushing for the release of D3 this year, and I can think of no other reason than Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Bioware recently got us access to preorders for SWTOR and announced beta weekends in September. They are no doubt working extremely hard to get this game out this year as their targeted window is this year’s holiday season, most likely meaning December. One thing SWTOR has going for it and it was already mentioned on some blogs is that the game might take a huge chunk of World of Warcraft‘s player base since Blizzard has nothing to give to players to keep them engaged at this time: no expansion or game coming out soon.

But things have just turned as Diablo III, a game that has been years in development and wasn’t expected to come out this year is apparently being pushed out as soon as possible in order to compete with SWTOR, as ridiculous as it may sound. Blizzard is notorious for not releasing games which aren’t “ready”, but Star Wars is no doubt pressuring them to finish it in the coming months. Rob Pardo, executive producer for D3 explained:

“We always do the standard answer, ‘when it’s ready.’ When we actually announce a release date, that’s because we know we can hit it. Typically nowadays we announce release dates around three or four months before the game comes out. We’ve already said that we’re working hard to get to this year, but it’s going to be tough.”

Even if Blizzard doesn’t think Diablo is ready for this year, we will no doubt have a torrent of information about it and access to beta this year. After all, something has to keep us from trying out this new Bioware’s MMORPG, right?

Is Diablo 3 Blizzard’s Answer to SWTOR? is a post from: Trolr