Project Lore

Blizzard still expects to put out the Cataclysm expansion pack this year, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick announced Wednesday in the 2009 fourth quarter conference call on financial earnings.

During the call, Kotick discussed the “better than expected” financial results that Activision Blizzard has shown through 2009, and also spoke on what the company expects for 2010:

“For World of Warcraft, we expect to launch the next expansion pack, Cataclysm, and continue to grow our player base around the world. And finally, a much anticipated release of Starcraft II, which will also be available for download on the new Battle.net site. And that illustrates how we’re building significant digital capabilities, and that we we expect these to create new and unique opportunities for gameplay.”

This is a bit of a relief for me to hear after going months since the reveal of Cataclysm at BlizzCon. We had been told at that point that Blizzard anticipated a 2010 release for Cataclysm, but since then we’ve heard very little. Now we have at least another morsel of hope that we’ll see the expansion in the relatively near future (well, the next 11 months.)

Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime expanded on the topic, adding that the development team is continuing work on the expansion, and is aiming for “a release in the back half of 2010.” As we already know, one of the big changes expected is the overhaul of the Old World, and Morhaime states that developers are trying to bring those areas up to match the team’s “constantly rising design standards.”

Of course, things can always change, and a lengthy disclaimer at the front of the webcast conference call notes that “forward looking statements” should not be taken as fact. But hopefully this will hold out as true. And to any of you who have seen release dates listed on gaming sites or Amazon or some such, I would warn you that until we hear it straight from Blizzard, those dates likely aren’t anything beyond a guess.

Some other morsels from the webcast:

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And We Think It's Bad In Dalaran Most of ProjectLore's bloggers have been following the whole "WoW in China" escapades pretty closely.  I'm not exactly sure what draws us to the topic, but various voices have touched upon almost every aspect of the struggle to keep our favorite MMORPG up and running in the world's most populated nation.  We've got you covered from the originating factor of the partnership switch, the following lawsuits and outages, all the way to everyone's favorite pastime, gold farming.  And now for the latest installment, WoW's return to China. Seeing as you clicked on the loaded title I will just hit you with the details straight away.  For starters, according to MMOSite.com World of Warcraft saw a one week relaunch in late July (v3.1.3) with millions of players participating, or attempting to.  To get Wrath of the Lich King, and WoW in general, back online the title has been censored in various ways.  Nearly all of the changes have to do with the prevalence of dead bodies (read Undead/Scourge) that are everywhere in WotLK.

• Undead mobs have had their models redrawn to patch up the bare bones (this was done for vanilla WoW and TBC as well).
• Piles of bones, and other items, in the world have been modified to sandbags, sacks of grain and the like.
• Bleed effects now cause black goo to spew from the target.  Many players are joking that it's oil.  It also appears that blood of non-humanoid targets may have been turned green, as seen on this wolf.
• Various spell and talent icons have been modified to remove bones.  Most of these have been replaced with "generic boxes."

Where The Bones At? To me the modifications remove a lot of the sinister, nefarious, and downright disturbing aspects of the Scourge, and even the freed members of the Forsaken.  I do wonder how the Government in question can justify adding a patch of skin to an Undead knee, but allow an Abomination to exist in the title.  Better yet, Thaddius.  The electric monstrosity is "built from the flesh of women and children" for C'Thun's sake. It's unfortunate that the Chinese players can't experience the content as it is meant to be played.  At least they get to play a slightly modified vision, instead of nothing at all. For those of you interested in the finances the 50+ days down may have on Activision Blizzard's stock, it appears that there is little to worry about.  According to the excellent Gamasutra, the company only makes 6% of its worldwide WoW revenue from China.  This is largely due to lopsided contract Blizzard had with The9.  The old contract granted the developer a low revenue stream of only 20%, according to some insiders.  By restructuring to a much friendlier agreement with NetEase Blizzard should begin to pocket far more cash from China.  Enabling the company to make up for the 50+ days of losses rather quickly.  Of course, it remains to be seen how many hourly users Blizzard may have lost due to the down time. The saga continues.

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Activision Blizzard CEO Robert "Bobby" Kotick on Thursday said he is "optimistic" about the future of the game industry as "a very low cost form of entertainment, if you look at the dollar-cost-per-hour." CNBC interviewed Kotick, who was in Sun Valley, Idaho, for the relatively secretive annual Allen & Company media mogul conference. Here's what he had to say about Activision Blizzard stocks performing above expectations in a down economy:

While Kotick does not speak specifically about WoW, there were some pretty interesting aspects to the interview that I wanted to elaborate on a bit because they can be applied to our favorite MMORPG. The journalist interviewing Kotick first points out that Activision Blizzard (and Electronic Arts) stocks were performing well Thursday. That's just a snapshot in time showing the trading levels at that point in the day, but if you look at the levels over the past six months or so, you'll see that the values have been rising steadily. Not surprisingly, the stock market apparently was on the minds of many Thursday who attended a panel on the economy at the conference. Although not an expert on the economy, Kotick pointed out that the availability of new hardware and the diversity of gaming experiences combine as a way to satisfy a lot of different entertainment needs all in one punch. As Kotick puts it, "While I'm relatively pessimistic about the economy, I'm very optimistic about the ability for video games to satisfy entertainment needs of consumers." And since we've been talking a bit about the future of WoW lately, I also found it interesting that Kotick said he's been looking at his expectations for Activision Blizzard over the next 5 to 10 years. He said that increasing production values, more effective in-game social interactions and the physical aspects of gaming "are really great catalysts for expansion of our audience; and we're still in the early days of markets like Western Europe, (and) in China." So perhaps WoW (or the next MMO) will be more of a world-wide audience? It seems that Kotick is hinting at that thought, which seems like smart business to me (more subscribers = more $$). Also along the idea of more money, Kotick said that lower the price of hardware, "the more consumers will be willing to purchase (it)." Makes perfect sense to me. Of course, a PC is a pretty hefty pricetag for someone just to play a game. But one would assume most people would have their computer for other uses, as well. What does everyone else make of this interview? Can you think of any other ways in which Kotick's ideas may be applied to WoW or the future of other Activision Blizzard MMOs, or do you think his points were too general to draw any real conclusions?

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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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A few massive announcements came out of Activision-Blizzard yesterday.  The first few came during their business-laden earnings call with investors.  Turns out that one of the industry's premiere publishers did not have a great end to 2008, posting a loss of over $72 million.  Since Blizzard contributed over $1 billion (with a b) in revenue to the company, imagine how much money they would have lost if they hadn't merged with Vivendi Games.  Granted, Vivendi probably brought their own baggage to the merger, but I would hazard to guess that their cash cow would have covered their losses.

We have plenty more from the earnings call, though. Blizzard's CEO Paul Sams announced that the company would release a "frontline" title every year. When I heard that, I immediately got pissed off at the merger.  I figured it was the end of an era.  The shareholders had finally "won," forcing the company to release titles against their mantra.  While Kotick may spout that Activision would not mess with Blizzard's culture, such a decision must have been brought on by external forces. Then I calmed down, sobered up and thought about Blizzard's future rationally. Blizzard is currently working on StarCraft II - which is being separated into three different SKUs - Diablo III, a third unannounced WoW expansion (we assume), and a new unnamed MMORPG.  That is four distinct projects, spanning six separate releases.  Conceivably, they could stretch those titles out for the next few years, driving StarCraft fans nuts in the process. In reality, Blizzard actually has plenty of projects, in different stages of development, to cover their game-a-year strategy without damaging their reputation. For those StarCraft junkies out there, Sams confirmed that the company would make non-WoW revenue this year.  This puts the good money on StarCraft II's Wings of Liberty chapter seeing a 2009 release. The biggest bomb of them all did not come from the earnings call, but from Tigole.  The EQ2 guild master turned game designer has stepped down from his position on WoW's development team to move to the unannounced MMORPG.  To me, the move puts the game at the earlier stages of development. Why would they want such an experienced MMOG designer to come in at the end of the project?  Polish?  Unlikely. I believe he moved to the new team because Blizzard is finishing up the early design document stages and about to get into the nitty-gritty details.  Thanks for all the hard work Tigole! There is one thing I would love to see from Blizzard, a revival of their old console properties.  New titles for the Nintendo DS from The Lost Vikings, Blackthorne and Rock 'N Roll Racing franchises would be awesome.  It could even give Blizzard a chance to branch out into new IP without too much of a risk, while enabling them to put more titles into the market - something ActiBlizz's  shareholders would love on the balance sheets. What do you guys think?  Is Activision influencing Blizzard like I originally feared, or are Blizzard's ducks just lining up in a yearly fashion?  Would you like to see Blizzard return to their console past?  How will WoW fair without Tigole?

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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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