Project Lore

After all of the panels, all of our surprise and not-so-surprise announcements, all the shopping and meeting other players, and of course all the demo playing that we could squeeze in, Blizzard still had one hell of a closing ceremony in for BlizzCon ticket holders. The closing ceremony began with Blizzard Chief Operating Officer Paul Sams recapping the overall feel of the convention and announcing that 1,000 BlizzCon-goers and watchers on Direct TV would receive guaranteed beta slots for Starcraft II. Take a look to see the closing ceremony remarks and a video Blizzard put together highlighting the events of the weekend: Next up on stage, we had the band Level 80 Elite Tauren Chieftans. Excuse me, now that the level cap is getting raised to 85, they’ll be The Artists Formerly Known as Level 80 Elite Tauren Chieftans. The band rocked out to songs including "Power of the Horde" (for the Horde!) and "I Am Murloc." Here’s a clip from their first song of the night, "Rogues Do It from Behind" (yes we do, thank you very much.) These guys know how to rock hard, and as you probably tell from the audio in this video, the bass was pumping so hard that I could feel it reverberating in my chest. Awesome. The most anticipated performer of the night had a drawn-out entrance. After L80ETC (TAFKAL80ETC) finished their set, the Direct TV broadcast came on the screens around stage, as the audience (including me and Juggy) grew antsy. Ropes that designated aisles and a mosh pit area were taken away, and the audience brave enough to be right up front crowded in toward the stage. Finally, the Prince of Darkness made his appearance with some shouts to the audience and introductory music accompanied with glowing red lights throughout the room. The audience grew so loud that I couldn’t even hear myself as a I screamed along. Ozzy played almost a full setlist of 10 tracks, including classics such as "War Pigs," "Iron Man" and "Crazy Train" (with special accompaniment by 9-year-old guitar prodigy Yuto Miyazawa). And at several points mid-show while singing, he doused the audience up front with buckets and hose streams of foam. The concert was an epic ending to an epic event. Wish you all could have been there rocking along with us! Here, Ozzy opens up the show with "Bark at the Moon." This one contains some NSFW language! That's it for now, but keep checking back at Project Lore for more videos from BlizzCon. Coming up in the next couple of days we'll have more footage of live gameplay of the new races as well as more sights and sounds from the event. Leave us a comment and let us know what you think!

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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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