Posts with tag mike-morhaime

One small bit of rumor has been floating around the BlizzCon floor the last couple days: that World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will be released in 2010. We hear these kind of rumors all the time, and don't give them very much credence. Whatever date is up on Game Stop (November 1st, 2010) or Amazon or wherever are just placeholder dates until they start to change or we hear from trusted sources that the dates are correct.

But this time, things are a little bit different.

WoW.com has been able to confirm that during a DirecTV interview, Mike Morhaime, CEO of Blizzard, revealed that Cataclysm is targeted for a 2010 release date.

Now a targeted release date should be clearly understood for what it is. It is a date that Blizzard wants to ship their game, nothing more, nothing less. It means that they have a plan and schedule to get the game ready by then. But as everyone knows, long term schedules can and do change. Please limit the QQ if we don't see Cataclysm next year.

Interesting news nonetheless!

Activision-Blizzard held their second quarter conference call yesterday, and in addition to addressing the Starcraft II delay, both Mike Morhaime and Activision CEO Bobby Kotick shared some insight into what the revamped Battle.net will be like. The brand new system (which is currently up and working, albeit in a very skeleton form so far) will have "social networking features, cross-game communication, [and] unified account management," in addition to features that will let players "share experiences" with each other online (we'd presume that means things like screenshot galleries and leaderboards, but who knows?). Kotick also spoke up, and compared the service to that other popular online community, Xbox Live.

Blizzard is still saying the new Battle.net will come in conjunction with the new Starcraft, so we'll have to keep an eye out for them both in the first half of 2010. It'll be interesting to see what other features Blizzard adds in, and exactly what form features like "cross-game communication" take -- do they mean actual in-game messaging across games, or just status updates and messages on a social network? Kotick's comparison to Xbox Live raises some questions, too, as that's a much wider service than you'd think Battle.net would be. But then again, the guy's a CEO, and all CEOs have a tendency to overestimate exactly what their company is doing. Like most of Blizzard's upcoming releases, we'll have to wait and see on Battle.net.

Apparently there were a few Blizzard blokes at E3 last week, even though we didn't see them wandering the floor at all. Mike Morhaime and Paul Sams were both there to accept their awards for world records from Guinness after making it into the 2009 Gaming edition. World of Warcraft picked up a record for the most popular MMORPG in the world (with, as you probably know, 12 million players), and Starcraft gained recognition for being the best-selling PC strategy game, with 9.5 million copies sold worldwide. Neither of these awards are really that much of a surprise -- both games have already garnered tons of other awards, and both games are already squarely in the pantheon of the best and biggest PC games ever sold. But being recognized is always nice, we're sure.

They honored a number of other extremely popular games and services as well, including two big Activision Blizzard titles: Call of Duty 4 was recognized for being the most-played online video game, and Guitar Hero was recognized for being the best-selling rhythm game series (though Red Octane, the game's original publisher, was honored, and they've only recently been acquired by the Activision overlords).

Congrats to all the award winners, as if they even needed it. Something tells us the millions and millions of dollars in revenue from all of these games was probably a nicer reward than Guinness recognition. Just a guess.

Tickets are sold out for the day, and most of us are probably a little angry, but don't forget! There's another day of ticket sales on the 30th! If you haven't made your decision on whether you want to go or not yet, you're running out of time and it's probably a good time to look back on the BlizzCon that was. BlizzCon 2008 lacked any major World of Warcraft announcements, Blizzard's other franchises stole the spotlight last year, but that doesn't mean WoW wasn't there in spades. Let's take a moment to look back on that, shall we?

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The Opening Ceremonies BlizzCon 2008 kicked off with the opening ceremonies, hosted by Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime. Morhaime delivered many facts and figures about the World of Warcraft at the time (if WoW were a country, it would be the 75th largest in the world), and announced a new class for Diablo III: The Wizard.

The OC Register has a great breakdown of what Activision said on their earnings conference call today. Perhaps the biggest WoW-related stat to come out of the call is that the number of subscribers to the game has apparently leveled off: they're holding steady at 11.5 million. Which is nothing to cough at, but it's what we were told four months ago, and if, as Ghostcrawler claimed, the numbers are still going up, then they're going up very, very slowly. Morhaime says that numbers are growing everywhere, but that China will be a main focus of growth this year as Wrath of the Lich King releases there soon.

In non-WoW Blizzard news, the Starcraft 2 beta will start this summer and will be the "final" phase of development for that game. The new Battle.net interface will be tested then as well, so keep an eye out for that. And Blizzard expects big things there in China also -- NetEase, the company that will now be handling Wrath's launch, is already set up to run both Diablo III and Starcraft 2 out there, so it'll all be under one umbrella.

In short, there's no really bad news from Blizzard, but no really great news either -- the best news to come out of the call is that even in the slow economy lately, Blizzard is holding steady. Not a bad thing at all, but we probably won't see any spikes in player interest in Blizzard or WoW until they announce what's next on the content plate, whether that be at BlizzCon or before.

The Orange County Business Journal has awarded none other than Blizzard's own Mike Morhaime with the runner up for their Businessperson of the Year award (the main award went to some CEO of an investment company, much more boring than running a fantasy world full of orcs and elves). The Journal cite's Blizzard's huge successes in a rough financial year as reason for Morhaime's honor.

The paper isn't quite completely familiar with what Blizzard does (did you know Diablo III was "released" in June of last year? Don't know why I haven't seen it on store shelves yet!), but there are a few interesting tidbits in there for us, including the fact that WoW was so popular on its original release day that Blizzard had to bring employee copies out to their Fry's to sell them to hungry fans. And Morhaime talks a bit about Blizzard being part of Activision, and reveals the biggest change we've heard of yet since the takeover: "The big difference here is we are one step closer to the public markets. It requires that we spend more time than we used to in educating analysts and investors about Blizzard, where we used to be able to not deal with that side of the business."

So hopefully Blizzard's higherups aren't spending too much time trying to sell stock rather than making great games. He does reiterate, however, that Activision has continued to be hands off (especially as long as Blizzard is making so much money for them), so a lot of the things that fans have guessed are Activision influences are probably decisions that Blizzard themselves have already made. Still, success is success -- pretty good for a guy who started out writing test software for Western Digital. Congrats to Morhaime on the award.

*Don't call it that.

MTV's Multiplayer blog has an interview with Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime (who is apparently sitting pretty with the elven ladies after last week's big expansion launch). He says that he sees no end to the expansions -- Blizzard has told us before that as long as they have ideas (and players), they'll keep making content for this game. He also says that they're happy with the subscription model in the United States -- although we'd imagine that both of those things might get rethought if Blizzard's subscription numbers were going the other way. For now, though, while things are headed up, Morhaime sounds pretty happy with the way things are.

Finally, they ask about an iPhone app, and Morhaime says Blizzard is working on connecting mobile devices up to the game, but he also specifically says they're not looking at a stand-alone app. So maybe a mobile version of the Armory? I'd love to see an iPhone app, as we've said before, with mail or auction house functionality, but maybe Blizzard doesn't see the majority of their audience on the iPhone anyway. Then again, their Mac guys always need something to do...

You walk into the Anaheim Convention Center, the lights are low and the mist is criss crossing the floor with patterns shining all around the venue. To your left and right are some your best friends from your guild who have joined you at BlizzCon 2008. Looking forward you spot an unassuming yet influential man in jeans and a black and blue Blizzard shirt. You're gazing upon none other than Mike Morhaime, the president and co-founder of Blizzard. With a grin on your face you tell your guildies you'll be right back. You walk up to Mike and wink at him. Leaning to his ear you being to whisper...

If you could whisper anything in the ear of Mike Morihame, what would it be?

And be creative. I hear that they read the site...

Whew. What a dizzying first day that was, wasn't it? Ok, well, I wouldn't know myself since I'm halfway across the world, but judging from the conference hangovers my colleagues have got, it's safe to say it was one whirlwind of an opening. If you weren't here yesterday to watch -- er, read -- the play-by-play, here's a quick recap of BlizzCon '08 Day One:

• Our tenacious guys at BlizzCon liveblogged the opening ceremonies, although nothing really spectacular happened here other than the announcement of the Wizard, a hot new class for Diablo III. It was mostly trailers, recaps, and a reminder for everyone that something historic will happen in November. And it's not the elections.
• Mike gave us all a preview of the people milling about in costume earlier in the day, but that was just a preview for the totally phenomenal costume contest this year. While past years have been pretty cool, this year's crop blew all the past ones out of the water. You'll have to check out the gallery for yourself to see what I mean. Can you imagine a turtle mount? Yes. A turtle mount.
• Krystalle snapped quite a bunch of shots from the convention floor just to give everyone an idea of how BlizzCon feels. Looking through the general floor gallery, it almost felt like I was there. Minus the trademark convention smell, I presume, and the sad inability to purchase any of the cool swag.
• The first World of Warcraft panel of the day dealt with the game's UI. It's pretty cool and was a proper teaser for the even cooler things that would pop up later in the day. Our man Alex did the liveblogging duties for this one. Itemrack will have to wait, unfortunately. More stuff from yesterday after the jump!

Mike Morhaime held a press conference earlier this afternoon, which WoW Insider was able to attend. I arrived a little late since it started before I finished up the UI panel liveblog, but I managed to catch a majority of the Q&A. Unlike the various panels, most of these questions were aimed at the philosophy and business model at Blizzard. How they've operated in the past, and how they'll operate in the future.

BlizzCon itself came up a lot throughout the conference, the big question being will this BlizzCon be a letdown? There haven't been any major announcements. Announcements, sure, but nothing on the scale of Starcraft II or Diablo III. Mike Morhaime actually seemed most excited about this particular BlizzCon, because it isn't just showcasing one game. All three of their primary franchises have something new on the way, and fans of all of those games are in attendance. Beyond that, he believes the community is extremely important, and gatherings like BlizzCon are important as well. Blizzard themselves were blown away by just how many people were trying to attend the convention this time around. The number of hopefuls completely dwarfed both last year's BlizzCon and the more recent Worldwide Invitational. Will BlizzCon continue to be an annual event? Maybe. They'll focus on this weekend first, and then they'll start talking about next year once it's through.

What I found most interesting, though? Morhaime was asked what the most unusual, off the wall concepts they had for a game that simply did not work out. He mentioned a game titled Nomad that Blizzard was developing after Starcraft was first released. A game they had never mentioned or announced until now. It was a post-apocalyptic style setting, but each day they sat down to work on it, it was with a little trepidation. Eventually they asked themselves, "If we were going to work on just one project today, would it be Nomad or would it be something else?" They went with something else. That something else was World of Warcraft.

Everyone going to BlizzCon this year will get to roam around the convention hall with some of the very people who bring you World of Warcraft and other Blizzard games. While many World of Warcraft fans might be familiar with the online pseudonyms such as "Drysc" and "Tigole," very few probably know what they actually look like.

We've searched the internet high and low for pictures of these folks and have compiled them into a nice and handy gallery complete with some biographical information. The pictures are small and mobile enough that they can be saved to an iPhone or other mobile device that can be brought into the convention hall.

If you happen to be going to BlizzCon be sure to stop and say hello to these Blizzard people. And if you aren't going, check out WoW Insider during the convention for the latest and greatest reporting right from the floor.

The Wall Street Journal sat down to interview Activision CEO Bobby Kotick, and our little World of Warcraft game got a nice bit of face time (one wonders why no one's asking Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime about, say, Guitar Hero, but who are we to question the corporate structure?). Kotick says that Activision closely examined what everyone else was doing with MMOs and online gaming, and saw that the only real winner in the market was Blizzard. Rather than investing in their own franchise, then, they decided to just buy Blizzard from Vivendi (and as you know, that's what happened). Kotick says what's so difficult about running these online games is just the scale -- you've got to handle credit card fraud, keep thousands of servers up and running (and patched), and still provide a good experience for millions of players at a time.

Kotick also talks about the way that WoW is sold in Asia (there, instead of paying a monthly fee, many people in Internet cafes pay per hour in cash), and says that Blizzard's experience with setting up a viable pay model may come in handy with other Activision properties overseas, Guitar Hero being his first choice.

We're still not exactly clear on how all of this relationship works -- while both Blizzard and Activision have said in the past that it's hands off, you have to think that even though things are buddy-buddy now while the money's flowing, but what happens when the two sides start to disagree?

It might be a long weekend, but that's no excuse not to read your funnies! We have some new faces, the return of a beloved comic, a comic/craft hybrid, and more.

New additions

1. The Emissary - Act 1. This is the beginning of a new project from Barry T. Smith, a departure from his usual style with InkTank and Angst Technology.
2. Manic Graffiti is back! Let's start with the Pax Arcana Lich King Special.
   
3. This isn't new, but it's a debut for this list. Sluggy Freelance's Years of Yarncraft Papercrafts! There are lots. Here's one.
4. Check out mmolecule, or "GG" Comics by Ken Harrison. WoW players meet up with the Force.

Comedy with a plot

1. LFG: No, that's not Legara.
2. Road to BlizzCon, Sin'dorei Scheming Part 2.
   
3. Welcome to Booty Bay!

Comedy

1. Extra Life illustrates the difference between respawning and reincarnation.
2. GU Comics points out that There's a Good Reason.
3. It's back to school time and Monkey Punchers celebrates. BTS.
4. NoObz. There's a flaw in the strategy.