Posts with tag starcraft-2

It's a new year and that means another opportunity to play oracle and figure out what Blizzard's plans are for 2010. BlizzPlanet has gone ahead and tossed out some of their ideas on what will happen for BlizzCon this year, laying out their predictions and even speculating on the event date. As you might know, there was a bit of confusion stemming from supposed leaked information that pointed to BlizzCon 2010 happening in Las Vegas in July. That didn't go down so well with Blizzard, and the Las Vegas convention center later retracted its statements.

BlizzPlanet points out, quite logically, that Blizzard probably wasn't too thrilled with that. Even if they had planned to do it in Las Vegas, that kind of public relations misstep is a deal breaker. Besides, Eldorian from BlizzPlanet applies simple, sound logic to his sleuthing work and explains that examining the Anaheim Convention Center's Calendar of Events reveals an odd, blank date on the weekend of August 20-21, yet almost all the weekends of the venue are already booked. With Blizzard being the secretive bunch that they are, he figures those blank dates actually correspond with this year's BlizzCon event. It's a pretty cool theory. Read the rest of their predictions as well as a few of our own guesses after the jump.

Acknowledging the power of social media and networking, Blizzard has created fan pages for their three big franchises on Facebook. Following the trend of other products and companies who have created Facebook pages in order to deliver updates, promotions, and other fan extras, Blizzard has set up pages for Diablo, Starcraft, and Warcraft. Interested fans need to have a Facebook account in order to "become a fan" of the pages, which Blizzard says they have big plans for.

Through these fan pages, Blizzard will be able to give a constant feed of news updates and media such as video, galleries, or links. Fan pages are also a common conduit for promos and contests as frequently used by Blizzard partners such as Razer and Figureprints. There are also forums for discussion and a "wall" that allows fans to write on for questions, comments, or anything related to the franchises.

Interestingly, and perhaps owing to its massive player base, the Warcraft fan page has already gained three times as many followers as the other two properties in the short time it has been active. This reflects a similar trend on Twitter, another social networking tool that Blizzard has utilized lately, where @Warcraft has over twice the number of followers of either @Diablo or @Starcraft.

I think this is an interesting post by Grancran over on the official forums. We've already talked about how Blizzard is revamping the newbie experience in upcoming releases (including the next patch and the expansion), but he wants to know: for whom? Sure, there are going to be lots and lots of people going through the starting experience again when the expansion rolls around, both because of the new class combinations and the new races, but all of those people have already played the game. Why update a tutorial system when the majority of gamers have already played WoW?

It's an interesting question. Neth answers pretty tamely, saying that we were all noobs at one point, and that they want to make the starting areas as welcome as possible. But the question remains: is Blizzard expecting an influx of new players at some point in the future?

Activision-Blizzard has released their third-quarter numbers for the financial year of 2009, and as you might expect for the company in charge of Call of Duty, Guitar Hero, and World of Warcraft, business is brisk. They were expecting to bring in around $700 million, and ended up pulling in around $50 million more than that. It's good, we guess, to be the king.

Blizzard, in particular, laid claim to three of the top five selling PC games in North America on the good side, and on the bad side, Activision acknowledges in the press release that they're happy to have WoW back online in China, but a little worried about the troubles it's seen over there lately.

Strangely enough, there is no information in the earnings about how much money World of Warcraft has pulled in for the company, or any updates about subscriber numbers. Usually, that gets at least a mention, so maybe, with subscribers certainly down in China, Activision-Blizzard wants to keep that under their hat for now.

PAX wrapped up over the weekend in Seattle, and from what we've heard of our friends' experiences over at Joystiq, it was a wild, wild time. Blizzard was there as expected, and it sounds like the setup was pretty awesome. They had all three playable demos up from BlizzCon, including the Starcraft II singleplayer game, the Diablo III monk class, and of course the Cataclysm Worgen and Goblin race starting areas. We hear that Blizzard had their GMs in attendance as well, and reader Aveiceae (whose pictures you can see in the gallery below) reports that she saw both Drysc and Bornakk there. She also says that Blizzard gave away some of their famous hand sanitizer throughout the show -- very important, especially at a gaming convention during swine flu season.

Tisoi also has a report over on WoW LJ, including a few pictures of the setup on the convention floor, as well as a few (sneaky) screenshots of the Worgen and Goblin areas. He also got to meet Jeff "Vork" Lewis and Sandeep "Zaboo" Parikh of The Guild. Felicia Day wasn't there (she spent the weekend at Dragon*Con, where there was other WoW-related shenanigans going on), but as Sandeep reported on his Twitter, she wasn't needed, thanks to cosplayers. Sounds like a great time was had by all. Next year, PAX is headed out east -- we'll have to keep an eye out and see if Blizzard is going there as well.

While wandering about the floor at BlizzCon, I stopped over at the TokyoPop Manga booth and spoke a bit with editor Troy Lewter, who we've talked to before.. Currently, the big series they write for the world of Azeroth is the Warcraft Legends series, which is on its 4th volume with a 5th due out next month.

Talking with Troy and other members of the Tokyopop team at the booth, what I was most struck with was the passion for the work and the universes of Blizzard's games that they display, and, perhaps more importantly, to the art and stories they tell.

Troy laid out three important concepts that they follow in creating the mangas: Telling a solid story, focusing on a few characters, and cross-pollinating with other forms of media.

In telling a solid story, the aim is to create the story such that you don't need to rely on the Warcraft world and characters, per se. In short, even if the story wasn't about Thrall or Varian or the Scarlet Crusade or anything else, you could still connect with the characters themselves.

As noted in my previous article on the subject, the new and improved Battle.net won't affect only StarCraft II -- among other things, the Real ID feature will allow you to see what other Blizzard games your real-life friends or acquaintances are playing, should they desire it. But that's apparently not the only perk for WoW players. Blizzard recently announced that migration of WoW accounts to Battle.net accounts will soon be mandatory, and posted a FAQ about it on the official website; one detail immediately caught my eye...

What will change in World of Warcraft after the forced migration?

The core gameplay experience will remain unchanged as a result of the migration. However, you'll be able to take part in all of the new Battle.net features, such as cross-realm, cross-faction, and cross-game chat.

That's right. Got a friend that plays Horde and you play Alliance? You'll be able to talk to them from inside WoW, even if they're on a different server. Heck, even if they're playing StarCraft II or Diablo 3, you'll still be able to chat with them. How cool is that?

To quell some concerns that'll surely get posted in the comments, the extent that others can utilize your Real ID is completely up to you. You decide who gets to see what information and to what extent -- if you want your best friend to be able to see what game you're playing or what server you're on, you can do that, but you can also prevent your annoying cousin from pestering you to play StarCraft II while you're raiding. No, Jeff, I actually can wait for you to "pwn" me. Gots to get me some purps.

The BlizzCon Battle.Net + Starcraft II panel revealed some interesting tidbits about how the new Battle.Net will communicate and interact with not only Starcraft II, but other current and future Blizzard games -- including WoW.

By adding someone to your BNet friends list, you can see when they're online in games that you play. This means that. for example, if your friend Alex Ziebart is playing SC2 and you're in WoW, you'll be able to see that he's online -- and even send him a message if you desire, a la Steam's community overlay.

But wait, there's more! If you and Alex are real-life friends, and approve each other as as much on BNet, you'll also be able to tell more detailed information at a glance on your WoW friends list, like what server Alex is currently playing on, or whether he's actually playing Diablo 3. A proposed feature is to let you log out of whatever game you're in and jump into whatever game Alex is playing and join him! The friends list will work very similarly in all of the BNet-ready games.

It sounds like a great improvement, and very XBox Live -- which I gather is the point.

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BlizzCon 2009 is here! WoW.com has continuing coverage, bringing you the latest in Cataclysm news, live blogs, galleries, and reports right from the convention floor. Check out WoW.com's Guide to BlizzCon for the latest!

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BlizzCon is just a day away now! WoW.com staffers are gonna be haunting the grounds in full force and are likely to leave some ectoplasmic residue (read: drool) on a number of demo tables and panel floors, depending on what's announced and shown at the event. And the announcements are, at least for most everyone but Blizzard, still a mystery. Popular opinion (and the ability to put two and two together) seems to indicate the unveiling of a new WoW expansion, but why stop there? After all, there are three other games that Blizzard is working on -- or so they say -- so it's quite possible that we'll see some big ol' infodrops about those titles too.

Or maybe Blizzard will through us for a loop and treat us to two days of Premonition raids and panels about J. Allen Brack's ponytail. It is a mystery!

So what are you holding out for? StarCraft II release date? Diablo 3 bombshell? Next-gen MMO reveal? Glossy eight-by-tens of Zarhym in shades and a leather jacket (so dreamy)?

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BlizzCon 2009 is coming up on August 21st and 22nd! We've got all the latest news and information. At BlizzCon you can play the latest games, meet your guildmates, and ask the developers your questions. Plus, there's some great looking costumes.

We recently learned of a quiet little announcement that Blizzard's three hot properties now each have Twitter accounts of their own. If you use Twitter, you can now follow @warcraft, @starcraft, and @diablo.

All three accounts are pretty bare at the moment aside from some catchphrases, but I'm going to bet the accounts will be used as another miniature news outlet, much like the front pages of their respective websites. It's probably also safe to say we'll be seeing a lot of product and tournament plugs, too. If you're a Twitter fiend, you might want to click that follow button for them (and our account, too). If you don't normally use Twitter, it's too early to say if these accounts are anything you should go out of your way to check out. If there's any major WoW news showing up there, it will find its way here too. Your life probably won't end if you don't follow them. Probably.

In an official press release, Blizzard announced today that StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, the first installment of the Starcraft II trilogy, previously indicated to be released in the last quarter of this year, is delayed to the first half of 2010.

The release cited the massive amount of work necessary to overhaul Blizzard's online matchmaking service, Battle.net, as the main culprit for the delay. Since the new BNet will be part of every new Blizzard game from here on in -- including World of Warcraft, as players with BNet accounts have seen -- it's vital that the service be working properly before the game's release.

StarCraft II was never officially dated -- only an on-the-sly indication -- and multiple financial sites have reported the now-official release date as the first half of 2010 following this announcement and Activision-Blizzard's quarterly financial report.

What does this mean for the WoW player? Well, it means that if you were expecting the focus of BlizzCon, or one of the focuses of BlizzCon, to be a StarCraft II release date, you'd be incorrect.

Gives you pause when you consider what else they could be announcing instead, eh?

Hey there WoW.com readers! You're probably wondering who the hell this guy is. And by this guy, I mean me. I'm a writer over at Joystiq, where we sometimes jealously watch all the fun stuff our sword and spell-wielding counterparts over here get to do. Luckily, and only by means of geographical location and the fact that they were showing off Starcraft 2, I got a chance to tour the Blzzard campus and take a lot of snaps if you know that I mean. Wink wink, nudge nudge.

These will be featured in a story over on Joystiq at some point today, but in the meantime here's a sneak preview just for WoW.com readers. You may already know about Blizzard's massive courtyard Orc statue that's in the process of being installed in the front of the main building, but you might not know about the tenets engraved on each of the eight compass points that tout Blizzard's mottos. There's a peek at all of 'em in the gallery below, and they're also listed just beyond the break.

Read on for more, check out the statue and points gallery below, and stay tuned today for the drool-worth tour photos.

We've had WoW and Diablo 3-themed BlizzCon/Worldwide Invitational in-game pets already, so you might say "hell, it's about time" when we tell you that Grunty, a murloc in Space Marine power armor, is on its way.

MMO-Champion's Boubouille, head of the Romulan Data Miners Guild, discovered the pet's model while performing routine excavation on the newly-updated 3.1.2 patch files.

If I were a betting man, I'd say that all signs point to this being part of the BlizzCon goody bag as opposed to TCG loot, meaning there's even less of a chance for you to get it. Hope you're prepared to beat the queue to get one. Heck, I'm even considering trying to go after seeing this -- I can't wait to see the idle animations he gets. According to the screenshots, it looks like he even blasts the air with his flamethrower. For once, the fish will do the frying.

*puts on sunglasses, plays "Won't Get Fooled Again"*

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.