Wrath Of The Lich King: He’s Angry Alright

Written by Jim Rossignol on August 21, 2008.

Blimey.

WoW: When Eleven Million Players Aren’t Enough

Written by John Walker on August 6, 2008.

Blizzard have launched a new drive for their rapidly ailing World Of Warcraft player base, in a last-ditch desperate attempt to drum up interest in the game, before it has to switch off its servers. Called Recruit A Friend, they’re hoping that by giving incentives to the smattering of players they currently have, they’ll be able to encourage new blood and rejuvenate the MMO.

Ha de ha. Honestly, there can’t be bank vaults big enough for storing all of Blizzards dosh, but they can’t stop. Recruit A Friend has players email their non-WoW-playing chums (is that possible?) to give them a trial activiation key. The motive? A zebra.

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Diablo III Designer Critiques The Critiques

Written by Kieron Gillen on August 5, 2008.

You’ll be aware on the ongoing growls of Diablo fans that claim the corpse-exploding action of the Diablo III screens are too WoW-esque and kidified. MTV’s Multiplayer blog has done something neat, and got DIII’s Designer, Jay Wilson, to comment on the community’s altered screens . For example: “More rain? It’s funny because if watch later on in the [debut gameplay] video, we have more rain. It is much stronger than that. I’m sure they got rid of the rainbow. Yeah, rainbow — gone. I think our artist just put [the rainbow] in there because they knew that’d be controversial. And I’m sure they were like, “Well we’ll see how far we can push it.” Beneath the fun, it’s an interesting look in the reasoning behind decisions. I’d love to see more of this kind of directors-commentary stuff. Until then, go read.

Blizzpoints

Written by Alec Meer on August 4, 2008.

High-scores are adaptive creatures. They diminished in importance for a while, back when arcades were dwindling but home consoles/computers were isolated, offline devices, but with the rise and rise of broadband reinstating gaming’s social heritage, folks’ odd obsession with proving themselves more skilled than friends and strangers has come back with a vengeance.

So it’s no surprise that Blizzard, who are either the Apple or Microsoft of gaming depending on how you look at it, would get in on gamerscore mania.
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Blizzard vs Glider: The Result

Written by Alec Meer on July 16, 2008.

You may remember that, some months ago, there was a legal barney between the WoW creators and the bloke behind Glider, a bot application he sold for a few quid to people who couldn’t be arsed to grind/gold farmers/no-handed folk/delete as applicable. We did a silly little vote on the thing, but clearly the real decision was in the hands of some judge who doesn’t play MMOs. Short answer: Blizzard wins round one.

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Actard Official At Last

Written by Alec Meer on July 9, 2008.

…and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see. And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.

It is the end times! The mammoth Activision-Blizzard merger is finally go-go-go, some eight months after the announcement that two publishing titans would make the beast with 18.9 billion (estimated) bucks. It’s all official as of tomorrow, apparently.
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Azeroth: “The Size of Newcastle”

Written by Jim Rossignol on July 2, 2008.

The excellent James Wallis has been doing some clever maths on his blog, and has used the raw power of infinite science to tell us some geographic and astrological facts about the World Of Warcraft.

Taken together, the two main continents have a combined area of approximately 113 square kilometres. In terrestrial terms that’s about the same size as the city of Newcastle, or the London Borough of Hillingdon. And if we assume that the world-maps produced by Blizzard Entertainment show approximately the entire surface area of Azeroth then we can wrap it around an imaginary sphere and calculate the diameter of the hypothetical ‘planetoid’ of Azeroth at 12 kilometres.

Of course, as Wallis explains, Azeroth is actually flat. More incredible revelations about the extreme density of things in Azeroth can be found here.

Ain’t No Pleasin’ Some Folks

Written by Alec Meer on July 1, 2008.

You’d have thought “sequel to beloved game announced after eight year silence” would be good news for Diablo fans. And to most, it was. Not everyone felt the same way though - an undercurrent of disappointed muttering had it that the game looked too bright and cartoonish compared to its darker predecessors. Most of us will doubtless wait to see what the game’s actually like before passing judgement based on its appearance alone, but slighted naysayers have banded together for one of those e-petition thingies, determined to talk Blizzard into changing the game’s art style after just four years of development. Can’t fail, surely.
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The Blizzard Show: Fear & Longing in Paris

Written by Alec Meer on June 30, 2008.

I’ve recently got back from Blizzard’s 2008 Worldwide Invitational in Paris, and, well, it was an odd affair. A travel-addled brain-fart on the show in general follows.

There’s an inherent sense of disassociation in being a journalist at a fan event. On the one hand, it’s all-too-easy to be disparaging about the hordes of long-haired men in black t-shirts, uttering spoken OMGs and LOLs without irony. On the other, I had a constant sense of being an interloper. These people were here from love, or something like it. For them this event was about celebration of Blizzard games, pure and simple. For me, it was about information. Well, and maybe a little swag.

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The WoW Changes, Death Knight

Written by Jim Rossignol on June 29, 2008.

Sadly I’m not man enough to really figure out what all the proposed WoW changes mean, so I’ll just have to point you in the direction of the analysis at WoW Insider. There’s a in-depth look at the Death Knight here. It seems to me that it’s looking like some kind of cop-out Jack-of-all-roles class, but maybe I’m misunderstanding this:

In terms of what role the Death Knights will play in battle, the developers said they didn’t want to punish the player based on what spec they choose. Even though it’s problematic for designers, they are sensitive to WoW’s tank shortage problem. They want to avoid forcing DKs to choose between tank spec or DPS spec.

Anyway, there’s also a breakdown of all the class changes here.

The Diablo III Announcement, Game Footage

Written by Jim Rossignol on June 28, 2008.

Diablo III has been announced at the Blizzard World Wide Invitational in Paris. What we know so far, as well as some early screenshots and the gameplay trailer, can be seen below the cut.

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Diablo III Cinematic Trailer

Written by Jim Rossignol on June 28, 2008.

Blizzard Opening Ceremony: Live Blogging

Written by Alec Meer on June 28, 2008.

Okay, let’s give this a shot. Refresh for regular updates, folks.

10.49 - a lot of loud Lords of the Ringsy music and giant concept art. Now two very excited presenters are telling us to “make some noise.” We do so.

10.50 - The lady presenter’s mic breaks. She’s forced to share with the bloke presenter. People laugh. Not sure why.

10.51 - Blizzard’s EU president arrives, thanks us, keeps getting applauded. Note to crowd: stop applauding. Let the man speak.

10.54 - The invitational’s just been declared OPEN. Confusing, as I’ve been here three hours already.

10.55 - Blizz big names, including Mike Morheim, are introduced. Crowd experiences simultaneous orgasm. Even for the Vice-President of Global Finance.

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Blizzard Invitational: The Begginining

Written by Alec Meer on June 28, 2008.

I’m out in Paris battling with a shonky wi-fi connection and looking at Blizzard games. While I’m primarily here for another site, I’m gonna throw up some updates here throughout the day.

Only been here a little while, but it’s clearly it’s going to be horrifyingly busy. There’s a few thousand people already inside the venue by 9am, while what seems like an infinite queue of further visitors snake-circles around the convention centre’s exterior. Those of us who’ve made it inside mutter in mild fear - /how/ is everyone going to fit inside?
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Blizzard: Filthy Teases

Written by Alec Meer on June 24, 2008.

There’s a large part of me that never wants to write or read anything along the lines of “Diablo 3 announcement coming?” ever again. However, we are approaching something of a critical mass, so one more time… The Blizzard Worldwide Invitational hits Paris at the weekend (I’ll be there, trying not to stare at girls dressed as elves), and tradition dictates there’ll be an unveiling of a new game there. Well, we already know about Starcraft 2 and WoW: Anger of the Zombie Monarch, so everyone’s inevitably shouting Diablo III. There are, though, a ton of alternatives - Warcraft IV, Starcraft: Ghost, World of Starcraft or, heaven forfend, A New IP.

So what’s it gonna be? Blizzard have been openly teasing fans for the last couple of days. The basts.
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