warcraft 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.

We know that Blizzard's games are huge in Asia but a newly discovered web site seems to show plans for a amusement pack that will have sections devoted to two of Blizzard's game franchises. The World Joyland web site has an elaborate design that seems to show concepts for Warcraft and Starcraft sections.

A French web site called Gameblog claims that this amusement park will launch in March in the Wujin district of China. Quite frankly we are not sure if that's true or not as there are no actual pictures of this park on the site. Big Download contacted Blizzard to see if any of this is more than a pipe dream but its PR rep would not comment yet on this development.

Founded back in 1991 as Silicon & Synapse, the development team that later changed its name to Blizzard Entertainment has become one of the biggest and most influential PC game developers of all time. The company helped to popularize the RTS genre with its WarCraft and StarCraft series, made playing RPGs cool again with the Diablo series and exploded the MMO genre with World of Warcraft.

Now there's word that Blizzard is going to come out with a 20th anniversary book in 2011 to celebrate its long legacy. The book was revealed this past weekend by its author Jeff Green, formerly the editor-in-chief of the late and very much lamented PC gaming magazine Computer Gaming World (which switched its name to Games For Windows Magazine for its last few issues). Green took on gigs at Electronic Arts following the magazine's cancellation in 2008 but has now left EA and is now working on the Blizzard book along with writing gigs at "all of your favorite game websites and magazines."

It's been a busy week for StarCraft II fans as some previews of the game's single player campaign hit the interwebs. But there's been some other related news for Blizzard's sci-fi RTS sequel. One is that the newly released map editor includes a feature that lets folks import and convert maps from the original StarCraft and WarCraft III and make them work for StarCraft II. StarCraftwire.net has a brief tutorial on how it works.

Also the game's official web site has been posting up excerpts from the recently released hardcover novel StarCraft: Heaven's Devils by author William C Dietz that serves as a prequel to the plot for StarCraft II. Finally Wildstorm Comics has released the hardcover collection of the seven issue StarCraft comic book series. While Wildstorm canceled the monthly series unexpectedly, the StarCraft II Collector's Edition will include an exclusive 0 issue of the StarCraft comic.

We have already reported that this week is the fifth anniversary for the launch of Blizzard's World of Warcraft MMO game.Now Blizzard is using this occasion to also celebrate the 15th anniversary of the game that really started it all for Blizzard; their original RTS game Warcraft.

To celebrate both anniversaries, Blizzard has launched a special web site that looks back at the game franchise that helped to launch the RTS genre as well as bring the MMO genre to new popularity heights. At the moment the site has a video documentary with a number of Blizzard team members talking about their favorite memories about Warcraft games. Blizzard plans to post up new interviews on the site with both Blizzard team members and community members talking about the franchise as well as a special version of the Blizzcast podcast.

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!

Back in the pioneering days of PC gaming, there were two giants in the real-time strategy business. The first, which we have already discussed before, is Westwood Studios, creators of the incredibly influential and arguably first modern real-time strategy game. The other was a lesser known studio that burst onto the scene with incredible vigor that has gone almost completely unmatched, barring possibly Relic. I am referring to Blizzard, of course, and the game that put them on the RTS map was not Starcraft, but Warcraft 2. Now that the MMO is the largest persistent world in the history of gaming and the series has stalled out with the third game, it's time to take a look back at the second game and how it would come to define Blizzard in ways nobody expected.

The Video Games Live music concerts tours have been going on for a few years now all over the world but what if you happen to live in a part of the world where there are not any plans to hold such an event? Today Video Games Live announced that they are selling an exclusively branded MP3 player that will hold 10 exclusive live performances of a number of game music from those concerts.

The $50 MP3 player is currently on sale at the Video Games Live web site. The 2 GB player comes with headphones, a USB adapter, support for an internal speaker and a microphone for recording voices. The 10 music tracks have not been released before now and include live recordings of music from games like Halo, Warcraft, Mass Effect, Civilization IV and more.

Blizzard has been hinting about this for some time and tonight the developer/publisher has just launched the new version of its Battle.net web site. The 2.0 version of the site still serves as the multiplayer gaming hub for a number of Blizzard games, including the original Starcraft, their Warcraft RTS game series, the Diablo titles and of course their World of Warcraft MMO.

While the "classic" Battle.net accounts are still around for Blizzard's older games the new 2.0 version will give people who play World of Warcraft and the upcoming Starcraft II and Diablo III a way to sign on via just one Battle.net account. Creating a free Battle.net account also gives anyone an option to beta test upcoming games, including Starcraft II. In fact, Starcraftwire.net states that beta invites for the RTS sequel have already begun to be given out to random Battle.net account holders (it should be noted that these are invites only; the beta test itself has not yet begun).

The quest to attain the title of "most popular mod" is a difficult and arguably meaningless one. Ask the devotees in any mod's camp, and they're sure to tell you that their mod of choice is the only correct answer. What mod, then, is the most popular mod in the world? Counter-Strike is a possibility. First released in 1999, Counter-Strike has ten years of experience behind it, and an exponentially larger fan base. Team Fortress boasts just as many dedicated gamers, if not more.

These and other mods are undoubtedly popular, but according to an analysis on Gamasutra written in June 2008, Defense of the Ancients, a strategy-RPG hybrid fittingly developed for Blizzard Entertainment's strategy-RPG WarCraft III, is the most popular "free, non-supported game mod in the world."