Arashikou

@(Unverified) Wow, that looks like it's going to be awesome!

@sonofman

Sorry, no dice. You'll have to keep it in your pants a little longer. They did have a gag "female pandaren" shot at Blizzcon which was just a male pandaren with different-colored bows in his hair, but it was just to lampshade the fact that they don't have a female model to show off yet. (Which always seems to be the case for at least one race per expansion.)

@Undulation

Weird. Worst I heard was a few complaints about the controls. Everyone I know sings this game's praises up and down, and I'm looking forward to playing it finally. What reviews were you reading that said it was bad?

I think the steampunk feel of dwarves is mostly felt by players of the RTS games and vanilla WoW. The dwarves have been focusing on other aspects of their race since WoW started. In the Warcraft RTS games, dwarves didn't come along until the second game, and at that point, gnomes did all the tech, producing high-technology marvels like submarines and flying machines. The dwarves just blew stuff up, as a counter to the goblins on the Horde side. (Who also had no technological aspect at this time.) But when the gnomes sat out the third war, the dwarves filled their thematic niche, producing a large number of steam technology contraptions, including the siege engines the Alliance uses even now in PvP and the snub-nosed propeller planes you still see used as seaplanes. When WoW came along, dwarves kept this aspect. There were lots of quests about siege engines and artillery in dwarven areas, and some dwarven questing hubs used the "bunker" design with parked siege engines in the middle.

But as time went on, Blizz realized they needed to more clearly distinguish the races, and since goblins and gnomes had begun to have a stronger presence in the world, they differentiated the "techy" races by pushed the goblins and gnomes' technological angle while playing down the dwarves'. This also allowed them to play up other aspects of the dwarves, such as their archaeology and ties to their roots. Consider: The steam tanks in Ulduar resemble exactly the sort of thing dwarves built in Warcraft 3, yet there they are credited to the creator of the gnomes.

Cataclysm replaced or eliminated many of the quests that highlighted the technological aspects of the dwarves, continuing the push away from technology. When siege engines do appear outside PvP, they seem to exist only to be rescued by the player, and they have equal-opportunity crews of multiple races. And since the Wildhammer dwarves have started to have a greater role, many places that we might have seen dwarven flying machines or gyrocopters are instead stocked with Wildhammer gryphons. And even if dwarven tech did have a more prominent place in the world, it would be easy to mistake it as coming from gnomes, especially since gnomes and dwarves are so often found together and gnomes get all the techy flavor now. One could consider the group quietly mourning Trollplow (a steam tank vanilla players no doubt remember questing for) off to the side in Kharanos to be Blizz's little memorial to the role dwarves once had. However, do take note: The Skybreaker is described as a feat of "gnomish and dwarven" engineering, so clearly this aspect is not completely forgotten. Just not obvious if you don't pay careful attention to the text.

@Crayola Q Pants ESQ

You're right, Mojang doesn't make the trailers themselves. The trailers are made by Hat Films, (just check the credits at the end of the video) a bunch of talented machinima creators on YouTube.

I don't know if it's ever been said if they get paid for their work. They love Minecraft so much, it wouldn't surprise me if they'd agreed to do it free in exchange for getting to play with the new patches before they're done. :)

@FinalFantasyXIIIsucks

I follow your logic, but didn't Yamaoka say he'd gladly do the music for SH:D if Konami would just ask him to? Yeah, it was in this interview:

http://www.joystiq.com/2010/04/02/interview-akira-yamaoka-explains-grasshopper-jump/

And again in this interview:

http://www.joystiq.com/2010/09/15/shadows-of-the-damned-composer-sounds-off/

Konami's refusal to ask is part of the feud Gomez refers to. I'm not sure we can say Yamaoka fled SH so much as he fled Konami in general.

@rahmenxnoodles69

That's kind of the mindset you need to be in to get the most out of this game, IMHO. :)

"If you see something strange, touch it!"

Does anyone else think that the acronym for this game looks like a smiley face with a funny hat?

SH:D

@Dick Socrates

Wow, thanks for the link. I'm actually really impressed with the stuff on his site. You're right, I could totally see this guy working for SH. For the first time, I'm thinking SH:D might not be doomed. I'm more worried now that this guy will feel so overshadowed by his predecessor that SH:D's music becomes a shallow imitation of Yamaoka's style instead of him being able to do what he's good at.

For several releases now, Yamaoka has been the only good thing about the SH games. That's why I came to see him as indispensable to the series' success. But as much as I'm really going to miss Yamaoka's hand in this game, I'm willing to accept that this Licht guy could be a good thing for SH, still delivering the sort of ambient touches and chills the series needs. Now we'll just have to see if the game's any good. :)

@HaVoK308

Why? I don't mean that snarkily or sarcastically; I am genuinely curious:

What is your reason for not paying more than $4 for an iPhone game?