Diablo posts

Blizzard Entertainment has already launched a web site that aims to celebrate the developer's 20th anniversary. Today that site posted up a nearly 50 minute video that looks back at the origins of the company all the way to the present via chats with many Blizzard executives and team members

The video goes over how the founders of Blizzard got together in 1991, how one of them got $15,000 from his grandmother to help fund the company and why the founders picked the company's original name Silicon and Synapse. It goes over the early games made by Blizzard (Rock N' Roll Racing, anyone?) and how times were pretty lean in terms of money for the first few years. It also discusses the company's various other names before finally settling on Blizzard.

The video goes over the many games that Blizzard made, from the Warcraft series to StarCraft, the Diablo series and of course World of Warcraft. Blizzard team members also look ahead and make some pretty general statements about the future of the company.

Blizzard Entertainment celebrates its 20th anniverary this week and for fans of PC exclusive game titles there are few developers who have had as much influence over the industry as the team in Irvine, California. Blizzard have had. This week Blizzard launched a special web site to celebrate its 20th birthday.

At the moment the only thing on the site is a special video message from Blizzard co-founders Mike Morhaime and Frank Pearce thanking Blizzard fans for their support over the past two decades. It looks like the 20th anniversary site will have more content in the future, including interviews, a Blizzard timeline, a look at the developer's fan community and more.

Activision Blizzard announced its latest financial numbers for its last fiscal quarter that ended on December 31 2010. Revenues came in at $1.43 billion for the quarter, slightly below the company's numbers of $1.56 billion for the same period a year ago. For the entire 2010 calendar year the publisher brought in $4.45 billion in revenue, slightly higher than the $4.28 billion in revenue that it brought back in 2009.

In the press release, which also announced the cancellation of True Crime Hong Kong and the shut down of the company's Guitar Hero business, Activision Blizzard announced that next week during Toy Fair it would announced a new franchise that it claims will "bring the world of toys, video games and the Internet together in an unprecedented way."

Last August Bill Roper, formerly of Blizzard North and then infamously part of the failed Flagship Studios, announced he was leaving his last regular game development gig at Cryptic Studios. In a new interview at Gamasutra, Roper goes into detail about what happened at Flagship where he and the rest of the team launched the online action-RPG Hellgate London and then watched as the game fell victim to launch bugs and poor reviews that caused Flagship to shut down completely less than a year after the game was released.

Roper states in the interview that in his opinion, "The biggest failure with Hellgate is we just tried to do too much." That included having a game with a single player component, a free online component and a subscription-based online component in one game. He also says, "I mean, I think when Hellgate: London came out... we knew it needed another four to six months." However the game's publishers, Namco Bandai and Electronic Arts, were unwilling to give Flagship that extra time, according to Roper.

And what is Roper doing now that he has left Cryptic Studios? He states, "I've been talking with a lot of different companies. I've been doing different game designs and talking with everything from publishers to investors." However he added that's its been hard to get investors to fund his ideas, saying, " .. they were all like, 'Wow, that's a really awesome idea. I would totally play that game. You'll never get funding right now.'"

There are very few games that we can honestly say excite us as much as Diablo 3. At the latest Blizzcon, the newest title in the venerable hack-'n-slash series was one of the belles of the ball, and a ton of info was released on a new hero: the Demon Hunter. Resembling the Rogue in a lot of ways, and the Sorcerer in others, the Demon Hunter is a throwback to the original Diablo series.

This trailer for the Demon Hunter shows off plenty of gameplay footage and almost no cinematics or scripted events. While there is a lack of UI that the player would normally be using, there's still plenty of information. The Demon hunter appears to primarily use fire and shadow as its elemental types, and can wield almost any ranged weapon, from bows to arrows. It can also dash around to reposition or avoid conflict, which makes it great for those that like to play keepaway with monsters. It does have a few close-range moves, such as the Fan Of Knives move from the Warcraft 3 Warden hero. There's also a few shots of quest acquisition and completion, breaking apart various physics objects, and new environments. The trailer is almost 19 minutes in length, but totally worth your time.

BlizzCon 2010 was the place that Blizzard decided to reveal two big features for its long awaited action-RPG sequel Diablo III. The Diablo III panel on Friday gave out more info on both the Demon Hunter player class as well as the reveal of the game's PvP arena battles.

Blizzard's own recap of the panel reveals that the Demon Hunter was first designed to be a more woodland-like character called the Ranger but that the designs of the other characters in the game made the Ranger class to be not "as cool as the other classes." So the decision was made to make a ranged-based character that was darker and more mysterious. The Demon Hunter, in addition to using ranged weapons like the crossbow, can also use other gadgets, is highly acrobatic and can use shadow magic to dispatch demons.

As far as the PvP arena combat features are concerned, this is being put in just for the fun of it by Blizzard and not as a super-serious eSports feature. The game will be balanced for 3v3 combat and will let players use their characters that were made for the single player/co-op campaigns. There will still be matchmaking features that will attempt to find players of similar skills in the game. There's even more Diablo III info at the recap page.

Gallery: Diablo III PvP Arena Screenshots

With the second and final day of BlizzCon 2010 now in full swing at the Anaheim Convention Center, Blizzard sees the event as a huge marketing opportunity, even though the event actually loses money. Gamasutra reports that even with the ticket prices, fees for watching the event via internet streaming and DirectTV and money from booth vendors Blizzard will lose over $1 million for holding the event.

However that loss is OK with the company, according to Blizzard's COO Paul Sams who believes that the over 20,000 Blizzard fans who attend the event will go home and tell other Blizzard fans what they experienced. Sam says, "Some companies would argue we'd rather spend that money on TV advertising since that will have a greater reach than with the 20,000 attendees that come. I would argue that - for us - making sure those 20,000 people have the most incredible experience possible will do as much for us, if not more, as spending that amount on TV advertising."

While it was expected that Blizzard would reveal the fifth and final character class for Diablo III during BlizzCon 2010 (its the Demon Hunter in case you didn't see our previous post), the opening ceremony had one more surprise for people who have been awaiting the release of the action-RPG sequel for the past 2 1/2 years.

That announcement was that Diablo III will have player-vs-player arena battles. Yes, you will be able to take the character classes of the Witch Doctor, the Monk, the Wizard, the Barbarian and the new Demon Hunter and battle each other in fact-paced arena-style battles. BlizzCon 2010 attendees will be able to try out this new mode during the two days of the convention.

Update: Blizzard has posted up a page on the Diablo III web site that has more info on the PvP arena battles along with some screenshots.

It was expected that the fifth and final player class for Blizzard's upcoming action-RPG sequel Diablo III would be revealed at today's BlizzCon 2010 opening ceremony and we were not dissapointed. Revealed via a cinematic, the Demon Hunter is the final class for the long awaited game and based on the movie it appears to be a ranged weapon based character that can do a whole lot of damage.

The Demon Hunter joins the Witch Doctor, the Monk, the Wizard and the Barbarian as the types of characters players will control in the game. Blizzard still has not revealed any info on when Diablo III will be released.

Update: Blizzard has posted up a page on the Demon Hunter on its Diablo III web site along with a number of in-game screenshots. Blizzard is apparently only showing the female version at this time.

If you couldn't get a ticket to attend BlizzCon 2010 this coming weekend and don't want to shell out $40 to pay for the streaming video coverage of Blizzard's big fan event in Anaheim, California you will still be able to check out portions of BlizzCon for free.

Blizzard announced today that a "limited" amount of Friday morning's BlizzCon opening ceremony will be available for free internet streaming. Also parts of the pro gaming tournaments at BlizzCon will also be streamed for free. It's expected that we will get a big info dump on the status of Diablo III during this year's BlizzCon, which is likely to be Blizzard's next big game release after December's release of World of Warcraft Cataclysm.