In case you missed our big feature on eSports in America, StarCraft II is kind of a big deal. This weekend at the MLG Spring Championship in Anaheim, Blizzard revealed new details about Heart of the Swarm, the Zerg-centric …
Blizzard
Delay Diablo III‘s Real Money Auction House ‘Until It’s Ready’ Blizzard
Diablo III‘s real money auction house, which in case you’re just joining us refers to a place you can use actual cash to buy and sell in-game equipment, has been delayed again, and this time Blizzard isn’t saying when it’ll be …
Lord of Record Sales: Blizzard Says Diablo III Is Fastest Selling PC Game in History
Surprise, Diablo III sold to the moon and back since its release last week on Tuesday, May 15, says developer/publisher Blizzard in so many words. In fact the company says more than 3.5 million people picked up a copy of its …
Diablo III and Always-Online Gaming: Bad for Us and Here to Stay?
I’d rather talk about playing Diablo III, but since I’m working on a poky-band smartphone connection that makes playing much of anything online a lurching debacle, let’s talk about Diablo III‘s always-on requirement, or digital …
Diablo III Battles Battle.net Blues as Players Slam the Game in Reviews
“Has anyone heard whether Diablo III‘s out yet?” I had to double-check myself, spying that on a message board earlier this week. Blizzard’s chthonic action roleplaying game actually arrived on Tuesday, May 15, as expected, but …
BlizzCon: Worth the $40 Virtual Ticket?
This Friday, crowds will swarm the Anaheim Convention Center for BlizzCon, the 6th annual celebration of all things Blizzard. Super-fans who don’t make the journey have a much more couch-friendly option—attend via the internet with a virtual ticket. But is the $40 price tag worth it?
Well, the 500,000 people who watched it online …
Inside the World’s First Video Game Amusement Park
WTB one ticket to World Joyland.
If you’ve got a hankering to join the world’s biggest nerdfest (no, we’re not talking about Comic-Con), you might have to hop a plane all the way to Changzhou, China to get the ultimate Warcraft and Starcraft fix.
Billed as the world’s first video game-themed amusement park, “World Joyland” is …
Blizzard’s ‘World of Warcraft’ Now Free-to-Play Until Level 20
Clearly, Blizzard has been taking marketing lessons from bad drug dealer cliches from the 1980s. The company behind World of Warcraft has changed the structure of its free trial offer to ensure that becoming addicted to the online role-playing game becomes so much easier.
Blizzard explained the changes in an official statement like …
Call of Duty XP 2011: Activision Announces Its First-Ever FPS Fan Fest
From book clubs to cat lovers to germaphobes, you’ve got online communities for just about everything. And, occasionally, they’ll do meet-ups, so that everyone can put faces and real names to the people who share their passions. Someone will say, "Hey, I like sticking tweezers into surge protectors, too!" And someone else will ask,
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Exploited: China Forcing Prisoners to Play Online Games for Cash?
“I come from the orcs, we eat with spoons and forks, we love to eat our pork!” That’s the sound of a male orc in online roleplaying behemoth World of Warcraft. In China, it may also be the sound of an orc male working on the chain gang, by which I mean an actual Chinese prisoner playing an orc male in Blizzard’s mega-MMO to rack up very …
Blizzard Accelerating New ‘World of Warcraft’ Expansions To Reenergize Base
The world of World of Warcraft isn’t as big as it used to be – but at least Blizzard Entertainment has a plan to deal with recent shrinkage.
Blizzard’s noticed two alarming trends in its subscription model for WoW: that subscriber numbers dip between expansion pack releases, and that those dips are happening closer and closer to the …
The Day the Music Died: Activision Kills “Guitar Hero” Franchise
Double down on what works; jettison anything with risk attached. That’s the message that came out of Activision’s fourth-quarter earnings call yesterday. What got jettisoned? The upcoming True Crime: Hong Kong, the future of the Guitar Hero franchise and 500 employees, or about seven percent of its work force. Reports are also saying …