blizzard

Wassup StarCraft fans?!! That was my Brian Tong impression. Spot on, no? Anyway, I have good news and bad news. The bad news is that StarCraft II is shaping up to be a much more ambitious product than Blizzard Entertainment had originally conceived, and the company is going to be forced to delay parts of the game.

The good news is that instead of waiting until everything in the game is complete, Blizzard is splitting the game into a trilogy--each focusing on a different StarCraft race.

The first game in the series--Wings of Liberty--will focus on the Terrans. The second … Read more

When we at Crave UK are not mua-ha-ha-ing at each other, dreaming of world domination, we like to make new things.

But before we go off and get too excited about anything new, we like to ask people what they think of it first. So the very sharpest brains in the business--at CBS Interactive, our owner--have selected you, the humble Crave reader, as the ideal demographic to offer your respected opinions on this latest wheeze to come out of the corporate megalith.

It's a show all about World of Warcraft--you know, that game where you can pretend to … Read more

As a part of my morning routine, I do a little Web surfing before leaving the house. One of the pages I read is Wowhead.com, a World of Warcraft database. When I opened the page Monday morning, instead of the usual plain black background, I was treated to a Wrath of the Lich King graphic. In oversize font at the bottom of the page were the letters "In Stores 11.13.08."

After taking a second to confirm that today was not April 1, I quickly went to the official WoW page and, sure enough, there was … Read more

Hot on the heels of its new expansion's cinematic debut last week, Blizzard Entertainment on Monday announced that it will release a World of Warcraft patch "in coming weeks" that will include features from its second expansion Wrath of the Lich King. Blizzard said the patch is designed to "bridge current game content with that of the expansion."

Among the additions players should expect:

New talents and spells for existing classes The implementation of barber shops for players Two new arenas featuring more dynamic terrain than previous arenas Guild calendar The hunter pet skill revamp … Read more

Blizzard Entertainment on Thursday released the CG intro for its next game, World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King. This is the second expansion for WoW. The first, The Burning Crusade was released in January 2007 and sold 2.4 million copies in 24 hours to become the fastest-selling PC game in history.

The CG intro for The Burning Crusade appeared about a month before the game's release. Blizzard has commented already that it expects Wrath to be released sometime in the fourth quarter. The fact that it's debuted the intro for the game is evidence that … Read more

As a big World of Warcraft fan, I was extremely excited that Blizzard was once again having its annual Blizzcon convention in Anaheim, Calif., this October. Blizzcon is a two-day event and celebration of all of Blizzard's properties, which include Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo. It typically contains Q&A panels, social events for players and developers, and hands-on gameplay of the latest Blizzard games. Think of it as a mini-E3 just for Blizzard fanatics.

So I woke up early Monday morning to purchase tickets for the show, which were set to go on sale August 11 via the Blizzard Store. The log-in page loaded like molasses, and when it finally loaded, I found out I had to create an account before I could buy tickets. Which I then tried to do, but it kept giving me errors and kept pushing me back to the first page. I finally gave up in frustration and left to go to the office.

It turns out, I wasn't the only one to suffer from Blizzcon ticket snafu. Comments from Wowinsider as well as Blizzard's General Discussion forums indicate that Blizzard had been suffering from ticket store problems all morning. Even after they took the store down for maintenance in the afternoon and placed it back up, site errors and traffic problems continued to plague the ticket store. The murloc on the Error Page has even gained a nickname, dubbed "Failoc", perhaps in reference to the Twitter "Fail Whale." From comments and forum posts, it seems like only a handful of people managed to buy tickets Monday.… Read more

Since its launch in the fall of 2004, Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft has shattered expectations at every turn.

Prior to its release, no American massively multiplayer online game (MMO) had ever reached what was then seen as the magical million subscribers level--even major hits like EverQuest and Ultima Online. Yet almost before anyone could blink, WoW, as it's known, had surpassed 4 million paying users and now has more than 10 million worldwide, and at $15 a month for most users, it may well be bringing in more than $1 billion a year.

Then, prior to the January 2007 release of World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, no one had ever heard of the kind of nationwide midnight madness lines associated with iPhone and Xbox launches for a game expansion. Sure enough, however, people lined up at game stores everywhere for hours for the right to be among the very first to buy Burning Crusade, and the update went on to sell millions of copies.

And now, with the second major WoW expansion, The Wrath of the Lich King, in beta testing, Blizzard is getting ready to prove yet again that when it comes to American MMOs, it is the undisputed gold standard.

"It's just beautiful," said longtime WoW player and Lich King beta player Katrina Glerum. "The game really feels epic in a way that The Burning Crusade didn't....Burning Crusade felt like an extension of the (original) game. This really feels epic, and that you're part of something grand." … Read more

A federal judge has sided with the maker of World of Warcraft in its attempt to shut down a third-party application that allows players to advance more quickly in the game than they normally could.

Blizzard Entertainment won a partial victory on Monday when a court granted its request for summary judgment on copyright infringement grounds. Blizzard is suing Michael Donnelly of MDY Industries, which sells the WoWGlider (or MMO Glider) utility for $25 and has sold some 100,000 copies.

U.S. District Judge David Campbell ruled that because using the Glider 'bot is prohibited by Blizzard's World … Read more

We've long known that publishers of massively multiplayer online games like World of Warcraft don't like it when players mess with the purity of their games.

That's why they routinely issue stern warnings that anyone caught gold farming or buying accounts or using bots that automate various processes will be punished in some way, including being banned from the game.

But now, it seems, WoW publisher Blizzard Entertainment is taking its enmity toward this kind of behavior to the courts.

As reported by the BBC, Blizzard has sued the creator of a program, or "bot," … Read more