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Gamescom 2017: Blizzard Conference (Day One)

By Nolan Leahy Blizzard Entertainment live streamed a video conference today at Gamescom that showed news regarding DLC and patches for their current IPs. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmgIpNh3Re8[/embed] The topic introduced in the above preview was news regarding StarCraft II. Blizzard announced that they are working on a new co-op Commander for the popular two player coop mode. The commander is known as Dehaka. According to Heart of the Swarm’s story, Dehaka is a pack leader of some primal Zerg found on the planet Zerus, the Zerg home world. His commander abilities in the co-op mode will include being able to summon primal Zerg heroes and the ability to use an ability to "devour" opposing units and pick up their specific traits. David Sum, the lead designer, mentioned as an example that the "Devour" ability would allow for a unit to instantly kill any unit and take a specific trait like being able to attack air units. Next is World of WarCraft, where Ion Hazzikostas (Game Director) and Morgan Day (Lead Encounter Designer) mentioned World of WarCraft Legion’s new upcoming dungeon in patch 7.3. The new five-man dungeon is known as The Seat of the Triumvirate. In addition, Gamescom will be hosting the European Regional Finals for WoW Arena World Championship, where European players will be competing to be able to go to the Grand Championship at Blizzcon. The final matches are going to take place on Saturday, August 26th. Finally, Production Director Chacko Sonny discussed the new map called Junkertown. The map is “a brand new escort map set in the outback of Australia,” according to Sonny. What followed then was a new video that gave insight to the aesthetics of what the map will look like. Though not entirely informative, it proved to be a comical clip starring Junkrat and Roadhog with a Cowboy Bebop-like introduction. More news from Blizzard will follow during Wednesday’s Blizzard Gamescom presentation on August 23rd at noon.


Source: Gamescom Image: buffed

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