world-of-starcraft posts

World of StarCraft, the proposed StarCraft II mod that got the copyright lawyers' attention at developer Blizzard because of its title, now has a new name. The mod will now be known as StarCraft Universe. The mod now has a dedicated web site and message board to give its fans more info.

You may remember that this mod was supposed to turn the game into an MMO but it looks like, according to TechSpot, StarCraft Universe won't be quite as ambitious. Only 12 gamers will be able to play on one of the mod's maps and there won't be things like leveling up or other MMO features.

[Via Joystiq]

After a few days of silence, Blizzard has now sent out a press notice to the media responding to the "World of StarCraft" MMO mod. If you remember Blizzard got YouTube to remove the trailer for the mod to its sci-fi RTS game StarCraft II which generated a ton of protests from the mod maker Ryan Winzen and a number of his supporters. We are posting Blizzard's response in full:

Earlier this week, a player-made StarCraft II mod called World of StarCraft and described as a "StarCraft MMO" was featured on a number of prominent gaming news sites, catching the attention of gamers as well as our own. With the name so closely resembling that of World of Warcraft, we wanted to discuss the title of the mod with the developer, and as part of our routine procedure, we contacted YouTube to request the video be removed while that discussion took place. We were also curious about the project and wanted to discuss with the developer what the mod entailed.

It was never our intention to stop development on the mod or discourage the community from expressing their creativity through the StarCraft II editor. As always, we actively encourage development of custom maps and mods for StarCraft II, as we've done with our strategy games in the past. That's why we release an editor with our RTS games, and why we feature top player-created content in the custom game search. It's also why we held a contest to spotlight the best community-crafted StarCraft II mods at last year's BlizzCon, and why we'll continue to improve Battle.net to better showcase player-created content.

Like many players in the community, we're looking forward to seeing the continued development of this mod, and as part of our ongoing discussion, we've extended an offer to the developer to visit the Blizzard campus and meet with the StarCraft II development team. As always, we appreciate all of the efforts of the talented and enthusiastic mod-making community, and we look forward to seeing and playing what they create using the StarCraft II editor in the future.

As previously reported, Ryan has since been contacted by League of Legends developer Riot Games about a possible job at its studio.

The person in charge of a mod that would have turned StarCraft II into an MMO game may just become a pro game developer after all. After Blizzard put a copyright notice on his World of StarCraft trailer (most likely due to the name and not the content of the mod) Ryan Winzen has now got an offer to an interview for Riot Games, the makers of the free-to-play action-RTS game League of Legends.

All of this came about because Ryan really, really wanted to get into the game development business and felt that making an MMO out of Blizzard's sci-fi RTS game was the way to do it. As Pixelated Geek reports, he's happy that this opportunity has come this way, saying, " ... I've waited my whole life for something like this."

[Via Blue's News]

Yesterday we reported on a mod team's plans to make World of StarCraft, a StarCraft II mod that would turn the sci-fi RTS game into a full MMO title. In retrospect it was perhaps not the best idea to call the project World of StarCraft. Lawyers from Blizzard have apparently stepped in to stop the mod from at least using its current name. The pre-alpha video of the mod posted on YouTube have been pulled.

That doesn't mean the mod itself is shut down but one of its team members, Ryan Winzen, is acting like it is in a post on the mod's message boards. His post, in all honestly, reads like the reaction of a 12 year old who got his toy taken away from him.

[Via Rock Paper Shotgun]

Before StarCraft II was officially announced in 2007, many people believed that Blizzard was about to reveal a "World of StarCraft" MMO game. While that didn't happen, a group of mod makers for Blizzard's sci-fi RTS sequel say they will make it happen via StarCraft II's own mod tools.

We have to be honest; we seriously doubt that these mod makers will be able to come up with something that is a true MMO with things like persistent servers, quests and huge maps to explore. However we say, "More power to them" if they can actually pull this off. We just hope the music score is better than the Techno crap that is in the video for the mod after the jump:

[Via PC Gamer]

German site OnlineWelten spoke with Blizzard Senior VP Rob Pardo at the Blizzard Worldwide Invitational last week. There was a lot of imprecise pondering about what it is that makes Blizzard so successful, but there was one specific tidbit that stood out in the interview.

OnlineWelten referenced some job adverts posted on Blizzard's company website -- adverts for jobs in a team working on a "Next-Gen MMO." Then came the question: is Diablo 3 the Next-Gen MMO? "No, it's obviously not, since it's not an MMO," said Pardo. "We have another development team ... there's still an uknown project."

So, just in case you were wondering, the Next-Gen MMO is still on. But we don't know a damned thing about it. We even once assumed that it was the project codenamed Hydra, but we recently discovered that Hydra was Diablo 3. So ... Galaxy of StarCraft? Sit tight.

[Via Shacknews]