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StarCraft II Delayed into 2010

Nathan Grayson — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 02:42:43 -0500

BioShock 2, Max Payne 3, Splinter Cell: Conviction, Singularity, and now StarCraft II? We’d say all that’s left for 2009 are tumbleweeds, but they’ll probably just delay those too. So, who’s responsible for what will surely go down as one of the darkest days in Korean history? That’d be Blizzard’s own Battle.net service.

"Over the past couple of weeks, it has become clear that it will take longer than expected to prepare the new Battle.net for the launch of the game," said Blizzard in a statement.

"The upgraded Battle.net is an integral part of the StarCraft II experience and will be an essential part of all of our games moving forward. This extra development time will be critical to help us realize our vision for the service."

The game’s now scheduled to launch during the “first half” of 2010, which is basically where mom ‘n’ pop have decided to stash the rest of Christmas as well.

If there is a silver lining to all of this, though, it’s that Diablo III’s still chugging along on schedule. Even better, Blizzard’s Mike Morhaime noted that “it would be correct to conclude that you could expect two releases of Blizzard next year,” which we’re taking to mean StarCraft II and Diablo III. Guys, 2010 is going to be a fantastic year. Expensive, sure, but fantastic nonetheless.

Valve Sues Activision, Activision Threatens to Return Fire

Nathan Grayson — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 21:44:05 -0500

Looks like E3 won’t be the only time we’ll be seeing more than half of the gaming industry under one roof in the near future.

After totally serving Activision with God as its witness, Valve’s sicking its lawyers on Activision again – this time, because Activision tried to weasel out of the agreement the two gaming giants made last time they duked it out in court. Confusing, right? Let us break it down for you.

Due to a 2002 dispute over royalties, Valve sued Activision. Valve more or less won, and Activision agreed to throw the Half-Life creator a bone to the tune of $2,391,932. So far so good, but without the watchful eye of the law staring the two companies in the face, things fell apart.

Soon after litigations came to an end, Activision decided that Valve had been overpaid by $424,136 in previous years. Thus, when Valve’s hard-earned check finally showed up, it read $1,967,796 instead of the full amount agreed upon in court. As a result, Valve’s firing up the ol’ litigation machine again, and Activision is threatening to counter-sue.

Personally, we’d rather just have respective company heads Gabe Newell and Bobby Kotick hop in the cage and throw hands, but then, lack of widespread fighting is just one of the many drawbacks of today’s legal system. Oh well.

StarCraft II Beta, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Receive Tentative Release Dates

Nathan Grayson — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 20:17:28 -0600

Generally, the term “conference call” stirs up images of stuffy businessmen swapping stories about things like revenues, stocks, and how to be completely out of touch with today’s youth (“Call your online database ‘kgb’! Then fill your commercial with facetious douchebags!”). However, there ain’t no conference call like an Activision Blizzard conference call, and today’s game of telephone didn’t disappoint.

First up, Acti-Blizz finally took war back to the future with the announcement that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 will launch during Q4 (real, not fiscal) of 2009. Is it us, or is the recession looking a little pale?

Continuing its elongated pop-the-question date with our PCs, Activision Blizzard also plans to launch StarCraft 2’s beta sometime in the “months ahead.” In addition, the much-anticipated beta will include an early version of Battle.net’s next iteration, which will probably just open a portal to heaven or something.

Did we mention that Activision won’t be laying-off anyone? Presumably at all? Draw your own conclusions.

Analyst: WoW Accounted for Half of Activision Blizzard’s Earnings

Nathan Grayson — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 03:53:00 -0600

Activision Blizzard, aka gaming’s Death Star lurking in a system of Alderaans, is about the only game company to avoid placing hundreds of jobs on the chopping block in order to fuel rapidly waning economic fires, and there’s a reason for that: World of Warcraft.

According to Stern Agee analyst Arvind Bhatia, WoW subscriptions likely made up about half of Acti-Blizz’s earnings during its previous fiscal year. This means that World of Warcraft was responsible for earnings per share of around 30 cents out of a total 60 cents. The bottom line for those who don’t follow @thestockmarket on Twitter: Activision Blizzard pulled in $400 million from a four year-old game about orcs, elves, and cow people. Say what you will about Blizzard’s games, but they have some serious staying power.

So then, after all these years, do you still play WoW? You know what? Actually, that’s a dumb question. How about this: why are you still playing WoW, and do you see yourself continuing your genocidal rampage through Azeroth over the next year – even knowing that Blizzard probably won’t release another expansion until 2010?

Guild Pulverizes All Wrath of The Lich King Raid Content in Three Days

Nathan Grayson — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 22:50:28 -0600

Talk about a hollow victory. You and your epic-clad, raid-running buddies wait more than a year for World of Warcraft's jam-packed new expansion, only to be within /spitting distance of its final raid bosses' lifeless bodies after a mere three days of playtime. Vacation's over, team. Back to real life.

Really, it makes us wonder why Blizzard decided to go with the bowling-ball-in-front-of-a-row-of-dominoes method when structuring its latest time-twister -- a question echoed by the guild that did the deed, TwentyFifthNovember:

"We are proud to declare that all WOTLK PVE raid content has now been cleared. This is both a moment of triumph and a cause for concern. The question in all our minds right now is if we could do this, how soon until the rest of the top guilds in the world clear all the raid content that WOTLK has to offer?"

"Did Blizzard miscalculate in the tuning of these encounters? Or is this Blizzard folding under the weight of a large casual player base that demands to be on equal footing with end-game raiders?"

Of course, this guild probably perforated WoW's new batch of glorified piñatas during the WoTLK beta, so odds are, they already knew the encounters inside-and-out before they even got their mitts on a retail copy of the game. Regardless though, that only means other guilds have the tools to pull off a similar thrashing, so we foresee a fairly large 24/7 raid converging on Blizzard's inbox in the near future.

However, before such "fans" sing "wah, wah, wah" all the way to Blizzard, we'd just like to remind them that other games do exist -- as do other, non-virtual worlds. So, you know, do something wholesome. Oh, and those strange people wandering around your house? That's your family. Enjoy.

Blizzard: "Well Over Half" of Players Who Deserted WoW For Warhammer Are Already Back

Nathan Grayson — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 19:38:19 -0500

Well, that was quick. Speaking with GamesIndustry.biz, Blizzard COO Paul Sams claimed that Warhammer Online was no 18-hour raid boss. The battle's over, and the spoils of waaaagh clutter Blizzard's side of the field.

"The good news is that we've seen a significant number of people, well over half, that cited Warhammer as their reason for leaving - they've already returned," Sams said over the deafening roars of BlizzCon.

But, regardless of whether the game's a direct competitor or merely Led Zep to Blizzard's Beatles, Sams handed out Warhammer Online's participation ribbon with an air of humility -- hedging his bets on the MMO's future success.

"I think Warhammer is best positioned to succeed out of the various products that have come out thus far since World of Warcraft has come out. It seems to be a good game, certainly a great company, Mythic and Mark [Jacobs] over there and his team, they're very, very talented," he explained.

"But I think without EA they would have struggled as well, because EA fortunately for them has a lot of money and so they were able to put forward a lot of marketing dollars and were able to support the huge infrastructure that they require for these kinds of games. It's a tough road and as I said, if we had not had the benefits of the trust of our customers because of the years of delivering for them, I think that we could have been in trouble a few times. There have been big challenges and mistakes that we've made and we've been fortunate enough to get by them."

So MPC readers, who's pocketing your subscription money at the end of each month? WoW or WAR?

Both? Don't go down that road, folks. It's a slippery slope.

Infinity Ward-Helmed Call of Duty 6 on Track for 2009 Release

Nathan Grayson — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 19:48:09 -0500

There are more Call of Duty: Modern Warfare players than there are readers for most major websites, so obviously -- through use of top-level mathematics -- this announcement has 23 out of every 11 of you in a glee-induced coma. No, wait.

Anyway, at today's Activision Blizzard Analyst Day event, Activision Publishing CEO Mike Griffith officially handed off the COD baton to its original owner. The move is in line with Activision's "leapfrog" strategy for the franchise, which sees Treyarch and Infinity Ward alternate COD releases each year.

Beyond that, however, few details were announced. In all likelihood, the game will probably hurdle itself forward in time from COD: World at War's WWII setting, back to the present, but that's merely speculation.

But what do you want out of COD 6? Another trip into modern-day Unspecifiedistan? An MMO? Something entirely new?

Gaming Roundup 8/22/08: Freedom

Nathan Grayson — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 22:40:32 -0500

Join Nathan Grayson in His "Free From WoW for a Whole Year" Bash!

August 22, 2008 (Dallas, Texas) -- Nathan Grayson, a Maximum PC freelancer and unanimously-voted "snappy dresser," has, on this day, officially avoided Blizzard's World of Warcraft MMORPG for an entire year.

"It's been great finally living life on my own terms," said Nathan, flashing a gloriously bright smile. "To mark the occasion, I'll be canceling my WoW subscription tomorrow. What? Oh sure, I could do it today, but, uh, tomorrow for sure. No problem."

To be sure, the journey from his luxurious armchair into the comforting grip of real life wasn't an easy one.

"Oh, it's been a wild ride," he quipped. "On cold, lonely nights, my mind used to slip back into Azeroth, and I'd dream of raids, epics -- legendaries, even! But it's been, er, I've -- I mean, whew. Anyone have a PC handy? I, uh, just need to check on some things. Sure, I'll follow the cue cards again afterwards."

Nathan Grayson's soul is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. (www.blizzard.com, NASDAQ: ATVID). Nathan is a great guy -- single, too. Really, he's one in approximately 10 million. Among other things, he's well known for posing the following question: Have you ever found your claws locked into your keyboard, signifying your irrevocable addiction to a game? Sound off in the comments section. Passers-by don't really know what to make of it.

He also runs Maximum PC's Gaming Roundup, available every week day. Peep today's edition for all of the latest World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King news and info. Oh, there's some other stuff too -- something about how suing file-sharers is a bad idea -- but that's not really important. The phony PR-speak ends after the break.

Moore warns against suing file-sharers

"I'm not a huge fan of trying to punish your consumer," EA Sports CEO Peter Moore said. "Albeit these people have clearly stolen intellectual property, I think there are better ways of resolving this within our power as developers and publishers."

His reasoning? Simple: Why ignore the mistakes of other industries?

"If we learned anything from the music business, they just don't win any friends by suing their consumers," he observed. "Speaking personally, I think our industry does not want to fall foul of what happened with music."

However, Moore lacks the one thing we most need: a solution to the problem. So, do you have any grand ideas on how to plug the never-ending flow of free content that comes with owning a PC? Do you even want to?

Battlefield Heroes is effectively "already out", says DICE

Stress tests. MMOs and other voluminous multiplayer games live and die by them. They're more or less akin to dropping a morbidly fluffy guy onto the end of a diving board to see whether or not it'll snap, crackle, and pop.

However, DICE's experimental free-to-play FPS Battlefield Heroes, keeping with its wild streak, is forgoing such things altogether. Instead of a buggy "big splash release," DICE plans to bring more players into the Heroes fold over time.

"We're not going to turn on a switch one day and suddenly our audience gets 100 times bigger," DICE executive producer Ben Cousins explained. "It's really our plan, within the closed beta, to get a very high number of peak concurrent users and we expect in the later phases of the closed beta to be about as big as Bad Company is today in terms of online numbers."

In that sense, he noted, "the game is already out."

Brack: Wrath of the Lich King may not hit 2008

Remember WoW: The Burning Crusade's last-second delay? A promised holiday release date thwarted by Blizzard's ceaseless pursuit of perfection? Ring any bells? Well, shortly after this holiday season, we could be in for a sequel. (To the delay, I mean. Not the game. I'd hope you already knew about that.)

“If we can get it to the point where you’ll have a great experience, then it’ll come out this year," WoW production director Jay Allen Brack told VG247. "If not, it will not.”

Beta players, how's the game looking? Spick, spam and ready for launch, or a hive of bugs and glitches?

Valve Bringing Team Fortress 2 Updates to Xbox 360, Being Forced to Charge Gamers

Good news: TF2's many updates are finally trekking over to the Xbox 360. Bad news: C'mon, it's the console version of TF2. Oh, and you're going to lose some money on this -- probably $10.

Diablo III trashes old Diablo classes, only fishes out Barbarian

Blizzard's reasoning: Classes like the Necromancer are nearly perfect, and therefore shouldn't be used. Meanwhile, the Barbarian's report card is splotched with red, "Room for improvement" scrawled across the top. It's just like the high dropout rate for straight-A students. Yep, the one that doesn't exist.

Square To Revise "'Lets Make FFXI Bosses Unkillable In Under 24 Hours With A Minimum Of Two Vomiting Players" Policy

It's all in the title. No, really.