A couple of weeks back Blizzard announced that they weren’t holding a BlizzCon this year. The Blizz guys said that this was because they had a jam-packed schedule – with all the game releases and all.
Note: The releases that would rake in the bank (or a couple of banks).
This just in: Blizzard is sacking 600 of their staff .
Over the last several years, we’ve grown our organization tremendously and made large investments in our infrastructure in order to better serve our global community. However, as Blizzard and the industry have evolved we’ve also had to make some difficult decisions in order to address the changing needs of our company. - Mike Morhaime
Mike Morhaime added that most the employees would come from departments that are not related to game development.
Now, that doesn’t make much sense to me. A month ago, they a had-jam packed schedule – I assume with all their employees busy and all – and couldn’t make the community happy with BlizzCon. Now they have too many people NOT WORKING on game development so they’ve decided to not make those people happy too. Here’s an idea: How about letting those people figure out a way to get BlizzCon running this year?
With everyone expecting Blizzard to bring in major dough this year with Diablo 3 and the expansions for StarCraft 2 and Wow, it’s sort of hard not to feel bad for the 600. C’mon Blizz, less about the money, more about the people.
Much in speculation over the course of it’s development was whether DOTA 2 would support LAN. DOTA, of course, was enjoyed very much more offline than it was online (in the internet sense).
No less than Valve director Erik Johnson has confirmed that DOTA 2 will be playable on LAN. This is great news for gamers, specially in Asia where LAN houses are still a big hit. LAN support also typically allows for easier and more controlled local tournaments.
A number of game developers have received flak from the gaming community for not allowing LAN gaming and forcing gamers to connect via web portals in order to play multiplayer.
As part of (I guess) the last generation that’s going to enjoy board games – I mean those of us who was a kid of the 90s – the news that StarCraft and World of WarCraft is going to the board games came to me with great interest.
The games will be a StarCraft version of the classic wargame Risk and a World of WarCraft version of Monopoly.
Risk: StarCraft – just like the video game, you get to pick a race and your hero in a quest to conquer the world. The game will come with 290 gaming pieces and three play modes.
Monopoly: World of WarCraft – the board game will feature the artistry of the MMORPG. Don’t expect to see Boardwalk Avenue or Park Place as the game is no longer patterned on the real world. Expect to buy property on Twilight Highlands or Grizzly Hills instead.
A blog post on the official Hawken blog has confirmed that the game will launch as free-to-play on 12 December, 2012. Now, while that’s a long time from now, it might still possible to take part in the action a bit earlier via the Closed Beta test.
Sign-up for closed beta at http://playhawken.com/?ref=v7lejylt. Yes, there is a referral code. No, I won’t earn anything from that. When you sign-up for the Beta test, you will be given a referral code. Refer three people and you get your callsign reserved for you.
Useful for gamers who go by “John” or “Steve”, not so for gamers who go by “DonkeyMaster7714412″.
If you do sign-up, I hope at least three of you try and use the link above.
Today, Blizzard handed out 100,000 Diablo 3 Beta Invites to gamers who’ve been waiting for more than a decade after beating Diablo II 17 times in hardcore mode.
Now, of course, It’s great news to hear that a tenth of a million additional invites have been sent out. That’s more than the number of people in the town I was born in. There are a few things that are of issue with this, though.
First, when is beta going to end? When do we get to play? When do we get to start sending Blizzard more money? Come on! I’m not just working to put food on the table, clothes on my back and gas in my truck.
Second, why don’t I have my beta invite yet? I have StarCraft, StarCraft II and WoW. Oh, I didn’t notice – the invites are for North America only.
Last year, Blizzard said that Blizzcon essentially bleeds money and they don’t technically earn anything from it. Well, while I see how that happens, Blizzcon is something that the gaming community deserves since Blizzard does earn billions upon billions from us. It’s a simple, glorified advertising cost where the returns are much, much greater.
Give me a moment, there’s a point here.
Now to this year. Blizzard is set to have a financially great year with the impending release of Heart of the Swarm, Mists of Pandaria and most possibly (yes, possibly), Diablo 3. Despite this, Blizzard has decided not to hold a Blizzcon this year. According to the Blizzard people, “In light of [their] jam-packed schedule, [they've] decided to hold the next BlizzCon in 2013.”
Yes, with the expected billions they’ll get in revenue this year, they won’t have time to go through with Blizzcon.
What? Time? Money? Huh?
Well, I figure, since they’ll be earning billions this year, they could simply HIRE more people to help with running Blizzcon.
Right?
Even hiring three thousand temp staff for the weekend Blizzcon would’ve been going on wont break the bank. Okay, they’ll need event organizers for more than two days, but still, the cost has got to be negligible.
This image hit as both awesome and creepy. Well it looks good, life-like to a point. How about a stormtrooper on your next birthday?
If you plan on having a few hundred people for your party and you have around $9000 extra, you could.
The husband-and-wife team of Tiler and Amanda Oakleaf created a life-like 6-foot-4, 300-pound storm-trooper cake for a sci-fi convention in Boston. 600 sci-fi fans happily chowed-down on the cake.
