E3 is going to be here before we know it, and already companies are ruling themselves in or out of press conferences. Bethesda’s have been good for the last few years and they’ve just sent out their invites for this year’s.

The invite itself looks like an advert for a 50s style theme park, which is awesome and very Bethesda in my mind. ‘Bethesdaland’ has a nice little map with all the ‘locations’ that can be ‘visited’ at E3, including area dedicated to games like Doom, Quake, The Elder Scrolls, Prey and Dishonoured – but interestingly two areas are marked as “under construction” which could be telling us that we’ve a pair of reveals to look forward to at this press conference on June 11th.

Unfortunately it’s hard to tell just which game series could be getting a new entry by their lack (Fallout Boy’s at the centre of the park so that sort of rules out speculation it’s Fallout-themed because of the lack of a Fallout section on the map) or indeed if either could be something entirely new we don’t know about yet. Bethesda are very good at keeping us guessing after all. The popular theory around though are that they could be The Evil Within 2 and Wolfenstein: The New Colossus. Maybe.

There’s evidence for both, as Machine Games who developed Wolfenstein: The New Order are currently at work on something that Bethesda’s marketing executive Peter Hines once described as “fucking bananas”, and the subtitle ‘New Colossus’ has appeared next to previous Wolfenstein games at last year’s Bethesda press conference. As for The Evil Within 2, a job listing for a tester for Psycho Break 2 – the Japanese name for The Evil Within – appeared on NeoGAF back in March. It’s not much, but it’s certainly something to go on.

We won’t know though until the press conference, so keep your eyes on the news on the day. It could be amazing.

So, it’s been another week of WoW playing. Both Bodeclaw and Teddired have levelled up slightly and gotten a little stronger. so, what’s new with them this week?

Running Wild

I’ll be honest. I chose Worgen not only because of my dislike for the typical human, orc, elf… etc. classes you usually get, and me wanting something different… I chose her because frankly werewolves are awesome. And with Druid being the class I need never ever be anything human again, and this week I decided to test out one of the Worgen abilities I’d already learned – Running Wild.

For those who aren’t aware, Running Wild basically allows a Worgen to move as fast as they would be mounted without a Mount. Unfortunately the hat and mace combo kind of makes Bodeclaw look a bit like a Victorian bard who was turned into a dog, but I loved running around like this. In fact this week I probably spent more time travelling like this than I did in Travel Mode. Unless I was swimming, because frankly Worgens can’t swim as fast as my Travel Form does.

I spent my time running up and down the coast satisfying a bunch of Druidic quests for Malfurion this week. There was also a point where I sat on top of a cave infested with Naga to wait another player who was a Mage so we could tag the boss and not have one of us wait for the respawn. And that’s when I started to play with the slash-commands. I literally sat atop that cavern in my Worgen form to wait… and they still ran right past me. Typical.

Every now and then I also had to return to Lor’Danel to sell junk from my packs and do various other things. I also had one trip back to Darnassus to bank some items too – thank god for the flying transport systems. As long as I find my flight locations for each new area (and believe me, I check my map to be sure I do!) I just have to pay a bit to fly back. Although as a Druid it is also fun to run of course.

And after all that running, even big puppies need their rest. G’night…

Dungeon Running

Meanwhile, Teddired had a much different adventure. I spawned back where I’d left off and went to complete quests, only to be whispered by someone nearby inviting me to join their party for a bit of dungeon running. I decided, why not?

I will admit at first I got a little lost. I did warn the inviter that I was newish to the game, but they were very patient with me. So were the others to be honest. So Teddired and her boar entered into a series of dungeons and it was honestly very good practice for making use of more of my Hunter abilities. I tend to spam Cobra Shot and I did here too, but at the same time I kept an eye on my boar and made good use of Mend Pet as well as other types of shot and summoning the temp Dire Beast as an attacker. I don’t know how well I honestly did, but the group seemed fine with me. So if you’re reading this Blackpowder Inc, thanks for the fun. Let’s do it again some time. Hopefully no other end boss has learned the power of the locked door.

And thanks for the laugh with the blast zone not being cleared in time…

That had to hurt.

Earlier today Bethesda streamed another ESO Live that talked about the balancing coming to the game, but mainly covered the other two specialisations for the upcoming Warden class being added to the game. Last time they covered the class that gave the Warden a beast companion, now they covered the healing (Green Balance) and ice (Winter’s Embrace) builds for the class.

They also talked about balancing that are coming up. Right now the changes they’ve already made they say are in aid of making all builds valid for something in-game, with everything having its use. Resource management is something they wanted to have as part of the gameplay (Stamina and Magicka pools) and they feel that recently that it hasn’t been, so other changes were to bring that back into line as well. The next patch coming will be this Monday, and will do a number of things. One is to tweak Spear Shards for all classes will still making them somewhat more useful for Templars as well as trading the disorient effect for some extra damage, and it was once against stated they they are trying to making sure everything they offer is viable to someone. As they said they want it so that “any class can do any role” while still letting the classes have their own little things they’re good at.

As for the Warden builds, they first showed off the Green Balance one that builds the Warden as a healing class. Among the abilities are one that wraps the ally in a healing vine (Living Vines) that can heal over time when the target takes damage, and then can be further specialised to either apply minor lifesteal to attacking enemies or give one final healing burst when it expires. Another (Nature’s Grasp) pulls the caster to an ally while giving them healing over time, and can again be further changed to either give all that healing at once or also heal up the caster. Finally, the Ultimate of Secluded Grove was said to be a ‘cheap’ area of effect heal which can either renew Ultimate if used to heal low-health allies or applies a healing over time effect to those caught in it.

Meanwhile, the icy Winter’s Embrace is more about dealing damage as well the buffs and debuffs. The first ability shown off (Frost Cloak) grants both physical and spell resistance to the caster and allies for a short amount of time, and can be improved to have a lower cost and greater radius or grant the caster even better level of protection. Arctic Wind was shown as the Winter Embrace’s healing ability, granting some insta-heal as well as a little over time; but can also be made to heal either and ally nearby or also cause damage to nearby opponents if the caster’s health is already full – depending on which branch you choose to go down with it. Then the Ultimate of Sleet Storm applies defensive buffs to the caster and nearby allies; and can be made to either stun enemies too or will increase the caster’s max Magicka when slotted.

This is just a taste of what was covered, so if you wish to hear fully what’s coming to TESO with the Warden catch up with the VoD here. Warden will be coming to the game from early June, so read up and get familiar with it before it appears on a server near you!

Nintendo news double & Hot Wheels Forza DLC – your news update!