Blizzard posts

Regular kids celebrate their birthday with a party that has an over-rich cake, lots of screaming toddlers and maybe a creepy clown. But how do you celebrate the fifth birthday of the biggest subscription-based MMO game in the world? Because that's exactly what's happening today to Blizzard's World of Warcraft.

Yep, after years of development and months of free beta testing it was five years ago today on November 23, 2004 that Blizzard finally launched the game for paying customers. Even though MMOs had been around for a number of years before World of Warcraft, the launch of Blizzard's game was the beginning of a new era as literally millions of players decided to fork over a monthly fee to play, fight and socialize in the fantasy world of Azeroth. In fact it's safe to say the genre's history could be split into two parts: BWOW (Before World of Warcraft) and AWOW (After World of Warcraft).

Naturally our sister site WoW.com is celebrating the fifth anniversary as well and even has some cool giveaways they will be giving their readers over the next few days. Make sure you head over their way to partake in some birthday goodness. And stay away from the creepy party clown.

Blizzard is currently targeting the release of StarCraft II for the first half of 2010 and their next World of Warcraft expansion pack, Cataclysm, is due out sometime in 2010 as well. But what about Diablo III? Blizzard first announced the action-RPG sequel nearly 18 months ago but has yet to give any hint on a ship date for that highly anticipated game.

The newly launched Techland web site (run by Time magazine) has posted up some quotes from Blizzard exec Rob Pardo on that subject. He admits that Diablo III " . . . is not going to be out next year." So why announce a game that is going to take so long to develop? He also admits. "We always announce all of our games too early. We realize that and go, 'You know what? Next time we're not going to do that.' And then we always fail at that." However he says Blizzard would rather be late in releasing a game like Diablo III than releasing a game on time that just doesn't work. In fact going forward Pardo says their attitude when revealing a new title is, "Here's the game we're working on, we're going to start talking about it and who knows when it ships."

It's been a few months since there's been a lot of new content uploaded to Blizzard's StarCraft II web site. That changed today as the site added an additional 17 new screenshots for the upcoming sci-fi RTS blockbuster (we have reproduced them and put them in our ever growing StarCraft II gallery). The shots are a mix of gameplay visuals with some in-game engine cinematics like the shot you see above.

In addition to the new visuals, there are also some articles on the process of making 1v1 multiplayer maps for the game as well as how Blizzard's development team will be creating the single player story/campaign. There's even a new StarCraft II-based short story to check out that focuses on the new Zerg Changling unit. And no, there's still no word on the beta test . . . sorry.

Blizzard fans who had hoped to be rolling sevens and pulling on some one armed bandits in Las Vegas next year during BlizzCon can now hold off. Our sister site Wow.com is now reporting that their previous story of BlizzCon 2010 being held in Vegas in late July isn't happening after all.

The Las Vegas Convention Center's web site did indeed show that Blizzard's annual fan event was booked for their venue for July 30 and 31. However the venue's reps have now admitted that due to human error, they had listed the convention on the site when in fact no such confirmation had been made.

Interestingly the convention center rep did say they had one conversation with Blizzard about having BlizzCon come to their venue which may indicate that Blizzard might still move BlizzCon away from Anaheim, California to a new location for the 2010 event. Of course we will post up any BlizzCon news when it happens.

Last August at BlizzCon, Blizzard VP Paul Sams hinted that they might be changing the venue for future versions of their (sort of) annual fan convention. Since its start the event has been held at the Anaheim Convention Center (close to Blizzard's own headquarters) but the 2009 edition made it clear that the venue was close to its limits in terms of holding its over 26,000 attendees.

Now our sister site WoW.com has learned that the Las Vegas Convention Center has a new listing on their calendar . . . for BlizzCon 2010. According to them the show will be held at their venue in Vegas on July 30 and 31. So far Blizzard has yet to admit that they have made such a change, telling WoW.com that they are asking people to refrain from making any travel plans. However if it turns out to be true (and that's likely) it looks like Blizzard will be able to allow even more people to attend than in the past. The Las Vegas Convention Center is the home to tons of conventions every year including the largest trade show in the US, the Consumer Electronics Show, which has well over 100,000 attendees.

Update: WoW.com has updated their story with word that Blizzard is now flat out denying that BlizzCon 2010 will be held in Las Vegas even as the Las Vegas Convention Center's web site continues to show otherwise.

It's not been a good fall season for StarCraft II fans. We've learned that Blizzard's upcoming RTS sequel won't be released this year but has been pushed back to the first half of 2010. We've also learned that not even the beta test will happen this year either.So when something new is revealed about the game we all sit up and take notice.

In this case the game's official Twitter web page has a link to a new screenshot from the game that shows off for the first time the Brutalisk, a new Zerg unit that gamers will have to deal with in the single player campaign. As you can see it towers over the puny Terrans. Details about the unit have yet to be revealed.

Games that are coming out soon have a lot of unknowns that the average person might not know. Who is this character inspired by? Is all the talk of volumetric fog or cel-shaded graphics really worthwhile? Do the game mechanics really seem solid, or are they lackluster? In All You Need To Know we provide information to help you fully appreciate what these upcoming games have to offer.

Feed your head after the jump.

Check out our collection of Starcraft II related downloads here on Big Download!

Sometimes you just need to sit down, slide a floppy into your A: drive, and enjoy gaming retro style. We know this all too well! That's why we have a list of the best and brightest from days long gone. These are some of our favorite games of all time, and we're sure that you'll love them as much as we do, if not more. Welcome to Boot Disk, and enjoy the retro ride!

It was mentioned in the All You Need To Know for Diablo III that Diablo was founded upon some simple rogue-like principles. Randomized dungeons, shrines, unidentified equipment, and many other different elements were mixed into a single action-packed experience. However, you shouldn't simply take our word for it. Diablo is still available for purchase over a decade since its release, and is still one of the best games out there. It's also fascinating to see the evolution of the genre it created, as Diablo is very different from other games of its kind such as Dungeon Siege or even its own sequel. While you may have played all the games it inspired, it's always good to get a taste of a classic.

Several months ago, back when Blizzard was still targeting a release of StarCraft II by the end of 2009, Pocket Books announced plans to release a prequel novel, StarCraft: Heaven's Devils, by author William C. Dietz, in December. Now that Blizzard is targeting a first half 2010 release date for the long awaited sci-fi RTS game, Pocket Books has delayed the release of the novel as well.

According to Amazon.com, the new release date for the novel is April 6, 2010 which certainly is in that broad time period that Blizzard has stated publicly for the game's release. It's possible that Pocket Books may know something about Blizzard's tentative specific release date for the game and adjusted the novel's release date accordingly . . . or they could just be guessing.

If you were hoping that maybe, just maybe, Blizzard might give its long suffering StarCraft II fan base an Christmas present by launching the multiplayer beta for the long awaited sci-fi RTS game before the end of the year . . . well, it looks like it's not going to happen.

Fan site StarCraft Legacy, getting info from a Russian games convention that Blizzard attended this weekend, is reporting that the game's lead producer Chris Sigaty admitted during a presentation that the multiplayer beta, previously planned to launch last summer, won't start until sometime in 2010. As we reported last week, Blizzard has now said they are targeting a release date for the full game for the first half of 2010. If the multiplayer beta doesn't start until 2010, that likely means the full game won't be released until sometime in the April-June 2010 time frame.

[Via Eurogamer]