Project Lore

We learned a few things from last week's Activison-Blizzard conference call. Namely that Cataclysm would be hitting retail shelves in the second half of the year and that the Starcraft 2 beta is more or less imminent on the company's schedule. But one thing you might not have read much about on fan or PC-gaming sites (like this one) is what Blizzard' president Mike Morhaime had to say about console gaming.

Shock and awe, I know! Blizzard has always been a stalwart defender of the computer as the exclusive platform for most of their games, but let's not forget the company cut its teeth on consoles. Many of their pre-Warcraft titles were developed for, or at least ported to, them (Blackthorne, The Lost Vikings, and Rock and Roll Racing are typically the most notable). And even if they were done externally, versions of Diablo and Starcraft have found their way onto our television sets, as well.

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In early December 2007 Blizzard Entertainment was part of a merger between Activision and Vivendi Games.  The deal was essentially brokered to offload debt France's Vivendi SA had acquired, and give Activision something it severely lacked, a successful MMORPG.  It worked, creating a total (estimated) transaction of almost $19 billion.  In perhaps the most expensive example of monday quarterbacking, Robert Kotick, Activision's President and CEO, admitted to Game Informer that he believed Davidson & Associates was "insane" to pay $7 million, that's with an 'm,' for Blizzard back in 1995.

“That year Activision probably had 60 million in revenues. They said they paid seven million dollars for Blizzard. I’m like 'Are you out of your minds? They’re like a contract developer! They have Warcraft but what else do they have? You paid SEVEN million! That’s insane!

"I was talking to [Blizzard founder] Mike Morhaime the other day and I said, 'You know, I could have bought you for seven million and instead it was seven billion.' [Laughs]
He said, 'Yeah, could you imagine if I had just held out for the seven billion instead of the seven million?'”

You've got to hand it to Davidson & Associates for spotting this diamond in the rough.  With only a couple of quality titles before Warcraft: Orcs & Humans (they were released under a different company name, no less) Blizzard was largely unheard of, let alone highly respected.  Buy Blizzard it did, and D&A reaped the benefits for years to come.

Could you imagine if Blizzard wasn't given the proper time to execute on Warcraft II, Diablo, StarCraft or Battle.net.  Or how meh StarCraft: Ghost would have been when it was forced to ship.  I highly doubt BlizzCon would have ever of happened.  Who knows if WoW would have even been created.  And without WoW it's doubtful ProjectLore would exist!

My brain hurts.  Time to stop contemplating the mass implications to our space time continuum.  Let's just hope things remains solid going forward.

Like the pic?  Then buy the shirt.

Activision's DJ Hero Demo With DJ Shadow Thanks to the wild success of BlizzCon our favorite MMO developer has little cause to attend E3 these days.  Who could blame them?  They have thousands, upon thousands of people attempting to get tickets to the company's gathering in August.  With a guaranteed captive audience, why bother paying the ECA for a booth?  There are also numerous other benefits, including setting the rules, relatively unlimited physical space, and, this is the big one, complete and total coverage from the video game journalists and mainstream press of Blizzard's material.  Blizzard isn't here in Los Angeles, but we can't simply ignore the return of the biggest video game convention in the world.  So here I am and here.  We.  Go. I'll be realistic, although I am covering the show as a freelance writer for a site, there's simply no way I can compete with the budgets behind the likes of 1UP.com.  Just go there for your day-to-day, press-to-press, announcement-to-announcement coverage.  Instead of trying to speedbag alongside million dollar budgets, I'll play to my strengths by dissecting upcoming titles and analyzing incoming information. Rundown of my favorite announcements:

• Nintendo announces Super Mario Galaxy 2, New Super Mario Bros. Wii, New Wii Zelda, Metroid: Other M and Golden Sun DS.  To be honest, SMG2's announcement scares me more than excites me.  I am a huge fan of the original title, the diverse gravity gameplay is stunning, but feel that a direct sequel could be diluted fun, the likes of Mario Sunshine to Mario 64.  Sure Miyamoto and friends can do a lot more with gravity, but will it feel fresh like most of the other Mario platformers ?  New Super Mario Bros. for the DS was a stunning return to the series' original 8-bit gameplay.  With added drop-in co-op for four players and Mario vs. Donkey Kong-style puzzle solving, how could an oldschooler like myself not be excited?  Metroid and Zelda announcements are all well and good, but the Golden Sun DS announcement, that will bring the best RPG series I've played in a decade to a trilogy, had me covering my notepad in exclamation points.
• Microsoft's Project Natal Hardware Microsoft's Project Natal and the extension of Xbox Live to a games on demand service.  As it stands now, Project Natal is the biggest announcement of the show.  I don't play the whole "who won E3" game, but its too innovative to ignore.  Let's just hope it plays as good as the presentation makes it sound (remember how awesome the Wii Remote sounded so many E3's ago?).  Full digital distribution coming the Xbox 360 eh?  Well that will certainly piss off the retail chains.  Left 4 Dead 2 seems kinda quick.
• Sony stuck alongside Microsoft in following Nintendo's example with a motion controller.  In addition to that we have the PSP Go! and a little diddy called Final Fantasy XIV.  The motion controller didn't come off as, well, trumped up as Microsoft's.  What I mean is that Sony's promises seem more realistic than Microsoft's, but again we should take the wait-and-see approach on both technologies.  PSP Go! is an entire platform that will piss off the retail chain since all of its content will be digital (no UMD drive).  As a collector of video games this decision upsets me, so I doubt I, or any retail chains who won't see substantial income from selling it, will be supporting the first sliding handheld.  Square-Enix returning to the MMORPG genre with FFXIV was a bit of a shock to me.  The company promises a multi-lingual worldwide release across the "exclusive" PS3, and, oh yea, that PC thing.  I wonder if they will stick to the hardcore guns ofFFXI , or casual it up in an attempt to suck away WoW players.  DC Universe Online, a title we've discussed before, still seems interesting even though it remains in pre-alpha.  The same state it was in at the New York Comic Con.
• Activision, the other Blizzard meat, did impress the hell out of me with DJ Hero.  The whole rhythm genre felt incredibly stale to me after Rock Band, but the scratching game blew me away with a multiplayer mode that would blend songs together (vocals for one overlayed on the music for the other) for a very interesting, and club-tastic, mash-up.  Still, I think the general gameplay will get stale quickly, but that doesn't mean it won't sell like Wiis.

Muramasa: The Demon Blade Hands-on:

• Muramasa: The Demon Blade plays like a revamped, stylized Double Dragon.  Too bad it doesn't have co-op.
• Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, also known as Marvel vs. Capcom 3 with old school anime characters, looks beautiful and plays awesome on the Hori's Wii arcade stick.
• Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles rehashes Resident Evil 2 in an on-rails shooter title for the Wii.  The gameplay seems very slow for a shooter, with a good amount of downtime, I literally put the gun down, that is meant to build old school Resident Evil suspense.  I enjoyed Umbrella Chronicles, but Darkside didn't impress.
• Sin and Punishment 2 brings back Space Harrier gameplay and is developed by no less than the excellent Treasure.

That was all I got to cover on Day 1 of E3 2009, which just so happens to be my first E3.  There are numerous other MMORPGs on the show floor (A.P.B.,CrimeCraft ) that I will try to get my hands on.  Especially after hearing about some awesome mechanics in All Points Bulletin from the guys at TheGameReviews.com (another place I digitally pen for). What's excited you the most? *Note* I did not get to the EA, Sega or THQ booths.

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We know Blizzard is developing a third expansion for World of Warcraft. We know they're developing Diablo III, Starcraft II, and a nameless next-gen MMO. As it turns out, they're also developing a fifth project that will use a completely new engine built from scratch. Silicon Alley Insider reported on a post on DIII.net as they discovered a few job listings filed under "Unannounced Project," which is a different category from the "Next-Gen MMO" that has been used for Blizzards upcoming unnamed MMO. A couple of days later, there was confirmation that the job listings were for a game that had previously not been mentioned:

The job openings mentioned in this newspost is indeed a brand-new game that has not been mentioned before. 1. This brand-new game is not a World of Warcraft expansion, and it is not related to the Next-Gen MMO. 2. In the present, the brand-new game is using the World of Warcraft engine merely for testing purposes. 3. The Client Software Engineer job opening is to hire the person that will have the responsibility to develop an engine from scratch for this game.  This new engine will be built depending on the skill and interest of the person hired for this position. Whether this game is based on the three major franchises (Warcraft, Starcraft or Diablo) or a new IP, that remains unknown.

Blizzard has expressed plenty of interest in starting a new franchise, so it wouldn't be too surprising to learn that this new project was completely unrelated to their other works. On the flip side, it would be interesting to see a new Warcraft-related game. What could it possibly be? What are your thoughts? Excited at the prospect of new Blizzard games every year? Nervous that Blizzard may be spreading itself too thin? Silicon Alley Insider sees it as a great new revenue stream for Activision. I just can't wait to see what else Blizzard has up its sleeve.

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Well, it's officially official. Activision Blizzard is now the world's largest publisher of video games. While Blizzard's FAQ states that the merger will have no effect on anything of much importance at Blizzard, the company has already started selling (and has already sold out of) plastic accessories designed to enhance the World of Warcraft experience. Remind you of any other games published by one of these companies? The problem is that this piece of plastic is just for security purposes, and all you do is punch in numbers from one screen onto another. What is this game, a giant spreadsheet? Far from a new game enhancment. Blizzard should grab a couple of developers from Activision to make a guitar that requires a kick ass solo before you can log in to WoW. Everyone knows that Vivendi could learn a thing or two from Blizzard, but Blizzard still has a ways to go with accessory based gaming experiences.

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