Project Lore

After a roughly two-and-a-half month wait, BlizzCast 13 has finally been released. This episode (running time 52:09) is split up into two major parts, covering a little bit of everything:  

• Starcraft II Beta Special featuring: Rob Simpson (eSports), Dustin Browder (game director – StarCraft II), Chris Sigaty (production director -- StarCraft II)
• World of Warcraft and Diablo III Q & A featuring: Zarhym (World of Warcraft Community Manager), Bashiok (Diablo Community Manager)

Where Starcraft II is concerned, the team covers everything from how the beta helps them tune and balance the different races to Battle.net features and when we might first get our hands on the Galaxy Map Editor (hint: not until near the end of the testing phase).

Needless to say, the second half is of slightly more interest to regular Project Lore readers, as Zarhym and Bashiok cover a number of different questions culled from the community.

A lot of their discussion is focused on progression in Icecrown Citadel and their thoughts on how taxing it can be, though a few peanuts can be picked out of the trail mix (and everybody knows the peanuts are the best part):

• The raid-wide "buff" designed to make ICC easier to complete with likely begin appearing around April. The buff will continue to build over the following weeks, but can be completely turned off by guilds looking to complete the encounters at their original difficulty.
• Submitting 20,000 pictures to the Battlecry Mosaic will unlock the final section, resulting in everyone receiving something "super special."
• To coincide with the release of the Starcraft II Beta, the integration of Battle.net features into World of Warcraft should start happening relatively soon (Ama's Guess: As late as 3.3.5, or as soon as the yet-to-be-detailed 3.3.4). 

A full transcript (as well as the audio, itself) can be found at the Official BlizzCast site.