Project Lore

I've always been a loud talker, very loud in fact.  Unlike most normal human beings I do not possess the ability to whisper.  Instead my whisper is more on par with a normal homo sapien's indoor voice, in that when I whisper, everyone within earshot hears me.  I may have struggled through elementary and middle school with discipline issues, but my lack of quiet talk isn't all bad.  Midway through secondary school I realized that being loud enabled me to grasp the attention of the teacher when I needed it, not just when I was a little out of line (I still raised my hand most of the time though).  In my adult life I have no teachers, but there is another type of authority figure who's attention I need, the developers.  Only now the odds have been raised from being part of two dozen souls, to twelve million. A loud voice doesn't cut it on the Internet though.  Neither does CAPSLOCK, the equivalent of yelling, so STOP DOING IT.  If you want the attention of the developers, or really anyone on the Internet, your best bet is to be persistent, creative, funny, part of a mob or a jackass who happens to have an accurate point.  You can also combine those to become a persistent, creative, hilarious jackass leader of a mob (Stephen Colbert comes to mind).  Wondering why you should bother acting out to get heard?  It's simple, the developers are a limited commodity, who are only able to do a few things at once. My point is this, if you see a problem in World of Warcraft and you don't ask for it to be addressed, it's likely to get bumped by something that is perceived to be "more important" or "more wanted."  A perfect, and recent, example would be Wintergrasp.  People from all corners of WoW (due to the solid rewards) have been clamoring for the zone to be fixed.  The sheer mass of QQ lead to numerous attempts across a few patches, but none proved satisfactory for Blizzard or us players.  With the QQ continuing, Blizzard took a final drastic step and overhauled the quest, and therefore a large chunk of the rewards (honor, tokens, gold).  Not exactly what we were looking for, but at least Wintergrasp is more relatively playable now. Yes, I am giving you a greenlight to complain on the official WoW forums.  If you have an issue with the game, then by all means do an intelligent write up to present your case and post it.  Heck, post it to our forums first if you need help formulating your ideas.  On the flip side, don't belittle other people's concerns (thinking along the lines of the PvP versus PvE battles).  In fact, doing so has a good chance of ruining your own post's credibility. Speaking of opinions, what do you most want to see corrected in World of Warcraft?  Balance, raid, group, or solo content, PvP, Arena, loot and ilvl?  What has your panties in a bunch?

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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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