Weblogs Inc : Tag starcraft

Jeff Kaplan on WoW development: "We debate like crazy"

Our buddy Phil Kollar of Game Informer (who was on the podcast recently) got a chance to talk to Jeff Kaplan about the World of Warcraft, and while Kaplan repeats a lot of what he's said before, the interview is worth a read for a look inside Blizzard's design process. What's probably most interesting is that it's very fluid and very dynamic -- just as much as we're arguing on this site and on the forums about how Blizzard should do things, they're also arguing and going back and forth behind the scenes.

He does talk specifically about cutscenes, saying that the Wrathgate scene was an experiment that paid off well, and we should expect some more of that kind of storytelling even as soon as in patch 3.3 (you may have seen it before if you're checking spoilers). And he does talk about raiding sizes and accessibility -- Blizzard has always wanted to do smaller raids, both for the feel of them and for the tuning, but it apparently took them a while to bring 40 down to 25 and then down to 10 correctly. Finally, he doesn't reveal anything about the new MMO, but he does say that singleplayer gaming will always have a place at Blizzard's core -- even when you're playing a multiplayer game, the singleplayer experience should still feel right. True enough, good interview.

Blizzard properties now on Facebook

Acknowledging the power of social media and networking, Blizzard has created fan pages for their three big franchises on Facebook. Following the trend of other products and companies who have created Facebook pages in order to deliver updates, promotions, and other fan extras, Blizzard has set up pages for Diablo, Starcraft, and Warcraft. Interested fans need to have a Facebook account in order to "become a fan" of the pages, which Blizzard says they have big plans for.

Through these fan pages, Blizzard will be able to give a constant feed of news updates and media such as video, galleries, or links. Fan pages are also a common conduit for promos and contests as frequently used by Blizzard partners such as Razer and Figureprints. There are also forums for discussion and a "wall" that allows fans to write on for questions, comments, or anything related to the franchises.

Interestingly, and perhaps owing to its massive player base, the Warcraft fan page has already gained three times as many followers as the other two properties in the short time it has been active. This reflects a similar trend on Twitter, another social networking tool that Blizzard has utilized lately, where @Warcraft has over twice the number of followers of either @Diablo or @Starcraft.

Blizzard says no Diablo 3 in 2010, 'who knows' when it'll be released

Remember that silly, insane rumor from back in 2008 about Diablo 3 being released by Blizzard before StarCraft 2? Turns out that Blizzard's Rob Pardo thinks that's a bunch of hogwash. Rather, that's at least what we can infer from his recent conversation with Techland on the subject. "We always announce all of our games too early," he says. "I think it's safe to say that, yeah, [Diablo 3] is not going to be out next year."

Considering StarCraft 2's delay to 2010, we think it's fair to assume that Diablo 3 will in fact not be arriving before a StarCraft sequel. Pardo adds that it's not a question of lacking resources, as "each game has individual development teams; it's just that the way that we develop games, we develop them very iteratively." Worse yet, there doesn't seem to be a finish line in sight for D3. "Now when we announce [a game] we just go, 'Here's the game we're working on, we're going to start talking about it and who knows when it ships.'" If any of you were still holding your breath for Diablo 3's release, now might be a good time to exhale.

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StarCraft II site updated with new screens, feature content

Okay gang, fun's over. We all had some good times with the few non-delayed Q4 2009 blockbusters that dropped during the past two weeks, but now it's time to start agonizing over every scrap of news for next year's highly anticipated titles. We'll kick things off: Hey, the StarCraft II site just received a major update, delivering a whole mess of feature articles and screenshots to the series' fast-clicking fanbase!

The articles include a short story about the ever-devious Zerg Changeling, a design overview of the campaign story, insight into creating one of the multiplayer maps, and character bios for three of the game's combatants. Are you adequately excited by these updates? Good. Now, prepare to not play the game for an undisclosed period of time. Yeah, it's all coming back to you now, isn't it?
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[Via Big Download]

Blizzard announces holiday card contest

Blizzard has made it a holiday tradition to release a holiday card every year (usually drawn by Samwise), but this year they're putting a little twist on it. They're running a contest asking the potential artists among you to submit your own original Blizzard-themed holiday card. Download their template, fill it up with Diablo, Starcraft, or Warcraft-related holiday art (no Lost Vikings or Rock N' Roll Racing art, apparently), submit it on the contest page before December 7th, and you can win a whole slew of prizes from Blizzard and Razer, including a mouse, keyboard, and headset, as well as a signed copy of Blizzard's 2009 holiday card from Samwise himself.

So artists, get to, um, "art"-ing! We can't wait to see your rendition of Deathwing as Santa Claus, Kerrigan as the Mrs., and a whole tribe of Fallen Ones standing in for the little elves.

All You Need To Know: Starcraft II

Games that are coming out soon have a lot of unknowns that the average person might not know. Who is this character inspired by? Is all the talk of volumetric fog or cel-shaded graphics really worthwhile? Do the game mechanics really seem solid, or are they lackluster? In All You Need To Know we provide information to help you fully appreciate what these upcoming games have to offer.

Feed your head after the jump.

Check out our collection of Starcraft II related downloads here on Big Download!
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Pandaren in the World of Warcraft

In among all of the "omg fake pets for real money" drama from this week's announcement, we may have missed something big: the Pandaren are now live in the World of Warcraft. The Pandaren are my favorite Azerothian race, even though they're essentially a joke -- Samwise Didier just loves pandas, and he made art for an April Fool's joke that Chris Metzen loved so much they decided to include the bears as real characters in Warcraft III. Since then, they've become fan favorites (not least of all, especially for me, because alcohol and ale are a big part of their culture), but we've only seen hints of them in World of Warcraft. There was a rumor going around a while back that they would never appear in the game because China didn't allow depictions of violence against the bears, but that was just a rumor. Still, the Pandaren have existed in WoW only as a Blizzard in-joke. We assume they're out there somewhere, but until now, no one has ever seen one.

Of course we say "until now" because there are now little Pandaren monk noncombat pets running around, bowing, and doing magical kung-fu. Does this mean that the future Emerald Dream expansion will have us all playing as Brewmasters? While yes that would be awesome, not so fast again: Diablo and the Zergling from Starcraft are both in the game as noncombat pets, and they don't mean anything at all (although they were both included in the game before the announcements of Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 -- maybe Blizzard is working on a Pandaren-based puzzle game? Conspiracy theorists, assemble!). And just because we all have Grunty doesn't mean murlocs are suddenly going to take to spaceships with battle rifles in the official lore. But it's cool to see Pandaren actually in the game, even in pet form, and who knows, maybe we will one day find the legendary realm of Pandaria in our own version of Azeroth.

Latest official StarCraft II Q&A trickles out the info

While all of us wait patiently for Blizzard to light the candle on the StarCraft II beta test (remember when they said it was going to happen last summer? Good times) we check out any info we can get on the upcoming sci-fi RTS game. Recently the game's official forums posted up the latest fan Q&A about the game (the 54th, in fact).

The questions, as usual, get extremely specific (these are die hard StarCraft fans who are asking these questions to Blizzard after all) and deal with issues like Zergling vs. Zealot ratios, being able to dodge an EMP attack in the game and allowing maps and mods for StarCraft II to have their own launcher. Meanwhile we wait for the beta test . . . and wait . . . and wait some more.
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Amazon.com has one day sale on Blizzard "Battle Chest" game collections

Amazon.com has the occasional one day sale that might be of interest to our audience. Today their one day sale deals with the "Battle Chest" game collections from Blizzard Entertainment. For today only three of these collections are on sale for 50 percent off.

If you haven't bought these games already you can get the Diablo Battle Chest (Diablo II and its expansion plus strategy guide) for $19.98, the Warcraft III Battle Chest (the original game, the expansion plus strategy guides) for $19.98 and the StarCraft Battle Chest (the original game, the expansion plus strategy guides) for just $9.98. That's 50 percent off their normal price.

Activision-Blizzard and their financial future

Barron's has a long article up about Blizzard's corporate overlords at Activision-Blizzard, and as is usual with most pieces of Activision news, people will probably see in it what they want to see. Those who think Bobby Kotick is just a money-grubbing exploiter will find more fuel for their firey fanboy rage: apparently he's a follower of Las Vegas casino entrepreneur Steve Wynn, and is modeling some of Activision-Blizzard's business plan off of that guy, Shareholders, however, will probably be thrilled. In terms of a purely financial sense, Activision-Blizzard is apparently one of the shinest futures around, with Kotick bragging that videogames will eclipse film and TV in terms of moneymaking in just a few years.

From our perspective, as longtime fans and players of Blizzard's games, the most interesting thing I see here is that Barron's makes no distinction at all between Activision and Blizzard any more -- the Activision-Blizzard company, according to the article, is equally responsible for both the Starcraft and Transformers franchises. Obviously, as gamers, we see a huge distinction between those two: one is a classic, storied, much-loved videogame series, and the other is a cash-in on a license that's panned everywhere but the box office. But for the financial guys, they're just both properties of Activision-Blizzard. That's not to say that our Blizzard is entirely lost (anyone who was at BlizzCon last week knows that's not true), but it is a sign that the merger is no longer news. From an outsider perspective, Guitar Hero and World of Warcraft are just two cash cows from the same company.

BlizzCon 2009: WoW.com interviews Christie Golden

During Day One of BlizzCon this past weekend, I was given the opportunity to sit down and talk with author/novelist Christie Golden, the woman behind the best selling Warcraft novel Arthas and the upcoming Cataclysm novel(s) which we learned about in this very interview. I asked her questions about her personal background in Warcraft, her writing process, and what it's like to work with Blizzard's worlds.

WoW.com: If you don't mind, we'll kick things off with a question I pretty much ask everyone... Horde or Alliance?

Christie Golden: Yes.

WoW.com: Good answer!

Golden: Seriously, I play both, and I love them both. I have characters on both sides, I don't prefer one over the other.

WoW.com: That definitely comes through in what you've written in the universe, starting with Horde material and then moving onto Arthas. When you say you've played both, how far? Are any of them level 80?

Golden: I've been so busy with all of the writing I've been doing lately that I haven't been able to hit 80, I haven't seen as much of Northrend as I've wanted to. Around 70 is where I'm stuck for now.

Grunty vs. Zergling battle video

When Eldacar wrote in to the tip line that Grunty and the Zergling pets fought when brought near each other, I immediately forced The Spousal Unit to help me test it. We made the above video, with The Spawn cheering us on. Grunty is the Murloc Marine pet that came with attending or streaming BlizzCon 2009. The Zergling was part of the original collector's edition of World of Warcraft.

BlizzCon 2009: StarCraft Ghost lives on (in spirit)

During the StarCraft 2 gameplay panel at BlizzCon, Dustin Browder spent much of the time talking abut the upcoming map editor that ships with SC2. If he's to be believed, it's the most powerful piece of software on the planet. Which might be a slight exaggeration. Those developers all have bias running in their veins.

However, we were fairly impressed when they showed us that the editor allows first-person game creation. What?! Yes, that even includes details as far down as UI manipulation and an inventory system. That's a lot more than you'd expect from a simple "map editor." One employee-created game was an FPS featuring a very familiar, bouncing-ponytailed Ghost that was created in just a few days.

Blizzard officially put StarCraft: Ghost on indefinite hold back in 2006, and they've been telling us here that it's still the case. Although some enterprising modder/mapper out there might just want create their own version.

BlizzCon 2009: BSG's Tricia Helfer to voice StarCraft 2's Kerrigan

During a StarCraft 2 lore panel taking place at BlizzCon this weekend, Blizzard vice president of creative development Chris Metzen revealed the voice replacement for Sarah Kerrigan. Battlestar Galactica star Tricia Helfer will replace Glynnis Talken as voice over actress in the upcoming sequel(s).

It seems as though the BSG star is getting her fair share of video game voice over work these days, as she'll also be voicing a character named Dare in Halo 3: ODST. We're thinking if she gets to talking with gaming's every man Nolan North and they work out a monopoly, we'll have a serious issue on our hands.

스타크래프트2 테란 싱글플레이 동영상 공개

2010년 발매를 앞둔 스타크래프트2의 테란 싱글 플레이 동영상이 공개되어 화제입니다. 블리자드코리아에서 지난 12일 게임미디어들을 대상으로 시연한 이 동영상에는 다양한 전투장면은 물론 싱글플레이의 미션수행과 자원 채취를 하는 SCV의 모습과 차량탈취 미션 등이 담겨져 있습니다. 한편 멀티플레이에 등장하지 않는 유닛들은 싱글플레이에서 그 모습을 확인 또는 사용할 수 있다고 합니다. 이 중에는 새로 추가된 유닛은 기존에 존재 하였지만 사라진 유닛또한 포함이 되어 있는데 과연 저그와 프로토스에는 어떤 유닛들이 싱글플레이 전용으로 등장할지 궁금해지는군요. 다음 페이지에서 동영상을 통해 참고해 보세요.

[참고자료]

Interview: Dustin Browder talks StarCraft 2 development and delays

Dustin Browder is the man in the hot seat as Blizzard's lead designer for StarCraft 2. Ultimately, he's the one you can heap the blame (or the praise) upon when the final product finally ships. At the time of this interview, we didn't officially know SC2 would be delayed, but given the sheer amount of things they'd shown us during our visit, it became clear that there was no way StarCraft 2 would make 2009.

Still, Browder talks about the reasons for the delay, and ultimately gamers are going to be happy that they chose to make the game better, rather than rush it out for the holiday shopping frenzy. Read on for the full interview with him where we talk delays, easter eggs, the new matchmaking system, the single player experience, and hidden items in the game, including a fully playable Lost Viking arcade game with a data editor that will let you make your own scrolling shooters.%Gallery-69481%

Interview: Andy Chambers on writing StarCraft 2

Andy Chambers has a lot of industry work under his belt, having worked at Games Workshop for more than 14 years before joining Blizzard in 2006. He's currently the creative director on Starcraft 2, which makes him the perfect guy to quiz about the single-player aspect of the game. It's an enormously ambitious project, which still hasn't been entirely figured out yet -- and that's the main reason for the delay Blizzard announced recently.
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New Starcraft 2 videos: cinematic trailer and some single player gameplay

Consider yourself spoiler-warned: there's a very familiar face at the end of the cutscene above. But, if you played through Starcraft and the Brood War expansion, you had to know this particular person was still around. But the statute of limitations on that expired eons ago, so don't blame us.

Feast your eyes on all of the Protoss kicking Zerg butt in the Starcraft 2 cutscene above (or download the massive 490MB high-def version here), and then head beyond the jump to see more than four minutes from the single-player version of the game. Sadly, it doesn't feature the fully-rendered Jim Raynor that you'll control throughout (read about that in our hands-on), but it does pimp out the unit upgrading and the new video screens. And plus ... it's Starcraft 2. Do we really need to say more?

Hands-on: Starcraft 2 - the single-player experience (finally!)

Don't you just love embargoes? So do we. Expect a ton of StarCraft 2 information today.

Forget everything you know about StarCraft 2. Well, forget everything you know about the single-player campaign in StarCraft 2. Which at this point is pretty much ... nothing. We've told you all about the multiplayer and its upcoming changes, but the single-player experience has been one gigantic black hole. Until now. We recently spent a day at Blizzard's campus learning all about StarCraft 2's Wings of Liberty Terran campaign, the first in a series with the Zerg and Protoss expansions coming at a later date.

One thing is for sure: this isn't anything like the old StarCraft single-player campaign. Read on to find out what you'll be doing with Jim Raynor throughout the 30 or so missions in StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty.%Gallery-69481%

Blizzard franchises get their own Twitter accounts

We recently learned of a quiet little announcement that Blizzard's three hot properties now each have Twitter accounts of their own. If you use Twitter, you can now follow @warcraft, @starcraft, and @diablo.

All three accounts are pretty bare at the moment aside from some catchphrases, but I'm going to bet the accounts will be used as another miniature news outlet, much like the front pages of their respective websites. It's probably also safe to say we'll be seeing a lot of product and tournament plugs, too. If you're a Twitter fiend, you might want to click that follow button for them (and our account, too). If you don't normally use Twitter, it's too early to say if these accounts are anything you should go out of your way to check out. If there's any major WoW news showing up there, it will find its way here too. Your life probably won't end if you don't follow them. Probably.