Blizz-o-News!

A whole bunch of news has emerged from the nameless tendrils of the Acti-Blizz games leviathan, as the company makes its public financials call. The biggest of these regards World Of Warcraft, which has basically stopped growing. No! But yes! Because it's the same as it was back in 2008. Arguably this has something to do with all the trouble the game has had in China, where it has been suspended for the best part of a year. Also interesting is this story, which says that only 30% of new WoW players ever get past level 10.

Blizz-o-News continues below.

Also revealed in last night's call was the fact that both new WoW expansion Cataclysm and Starcraft 2 would hit this year, probably by the summer. In fact Starcraft 2 is gearing up for a beta, which will happen "later this month". If I recall correctly, the way to get involved in this beta is to opt-in for betas in the revamped Battlenet. And speaking of Battlenet, more information has been revealed on how the new service will work. It's been directed by Greg Canessa, who previously designed systems on the Xbox 360's Live service. Battlenet will be similar, with an "always on" service, matchmaking, and all that malarky. The full preview is available over on the Starcraft II site. A more recent bit of news has revealed that Starcraft II be downloadable from this service on launch, which is nice.

The call also revealed that the company made a lot of money, which I actually don't care so much about.