Project Lore

Blizzard sent out a press release today announcing that tickets for their BlizzCon Gaming Convention will be available for purchase on the official BlizzCon website on August 11, 2008. Those of you lucky enough to get in on the tickets will have to pony up $100 per person to attend the event on October 10 and 11. BlizzCon is going to be held in Anaheim, CA in the Anaheim Convention Center and should have tons of interesting content for fans of WoW, Diablo, and Starcraft. These include hands-on demos of upcoming games, discussion panels with developers, gaming tournaments, contests, commemorative merchandise, and a silent auction. Attendees of previous Blizzard events have also received beta keys, exclusive in-game items, and other great swag. Just remember, if you want to go, buy tickets fast! Last year they sold out very quickly, and this year tickets will probably go even faster. If you can’t make it or don’t get tickets, you can also check out the in depth coverage that will be happening on DIRECTV Pay Per View, if that's your thing.

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So Tigole, aka Jeff Kaplan, confirmed on the official Blizzard forums that leveling from 60-70 is going to be faster once WotLK hits, similar to the way that 20-60 is now faster than it used to be. This is a great example of how Blizzard is really listening to its community. The acceleration from 20-60 came long after BC was released, but it was embraced by most of the community. Blizzard improved the questing process by leaps and bounds in the Burning Crusade, but players still had to get through the long grind to 58 to see most of the new content. This time, Blizzard is allowing players to have an easier time through older content to get to the shiny new stuff. I can't wait to see what kind of new quests they're going to have in Wrath of the Lich King, and this is just one more improvement to help keep my attention. This may also make more people consider rolling Death Knights right away. Genius!

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Hooray! Blizzard officially announced that Wrath of the Lich King will have Achievements. These will work in a similar fashion to Achievements in other games and on other systems, such as the Xbox 360. So, you can perform a task and get credit towards an achievement. While all achievements will grant meaningless points towards a score for comparison between players, some will also give fun or cosmetic rewards, like many of the seasonal quest rewards. The achievements will be separated into categories of PvP, Dungeons and Raids, Professions, Quests, Events, World Exploration, Reputation, and General. A couple of the examples listed for achievements are Shave and a Haircut and Fo Grizzle My Shizzle. Hopefully the second one has something to do with skinning a bear and having it aggro all bears in the zone. These things are going to do wonders for Blizzard, and will probably keep level 80s interested even more, causing players to spend lots of time and money getting just one more achievement.

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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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