Blizzard Announces New Warcraft MMORPG

An anonymous reader wrote in to say that "Blizzard Entertainment makers of the enormously popular Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo series, have announced their next game: World of Warcraft, a massively-multiplayer online role-playing game set in the famous Warcraft universe. Gamespot has an extensive preview available complete with screens and loads of info on the game." It looks very pretty. I still want the Star Wars MMORPG to rock my world tho.

Comments

I'm waiting for Sporcraft

[Anonymous Coward]

So I can kill all the stupid Sporks. Stupid, confused trans-utensil twits. Get the operation and pick a team already.

Yet another junky EverQuest rip off.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know why everyone thinks so highly of Blizzard. Yes, they have produced some impressive sales figures... But games like "StarCraft" were mostly eye candy. Contrasted with something like "Total Annihilation", where there actually were strategic choices to be made beyond "attack with my land unit or my air unit".

Then there was that whole bullshit of "safe disk": Blizzard "copy protected" their Diablo 2 disk with data encoded in the subchannel. This was some new definition of "copy protected" of which I was not previously aware. It broke the CDROM standard, which caused my hardware to corrupt data reads about 50% of the time. (Tested extensively under linux.) The only way to actually install and play this game involved first making two copies of the "copy protected" disk. One with and one without the subchannel data. (As I stated, some new definition of the term "copy protection" of which I was not previously aware.)(*)

Anyhow, I did play and enjoy D2 for a while. I was somewhat put off by their ludicrous AI code. Like a monster walking through, or standing in, my firewalls rather than just taking one step aside. (Come on folks -- This isn't that difficult of a computational problem.) Or their class balancing: Like the necro being able to take out any large group of monsters, regardless of level, by playing them off against one another...

After the 1.08 patch, I gave up on Blizzard. I spent a lot of time collecting a bunch of bullshit items. Which was fun at the time, I suppose. Only to have everything yanked out from under me in a massive nerf that was, pretty obviously, intended to "encourage" me to shell out another $40 their latest upgrade to get back some of what they'd taken away.

I found a cheaper solution. I gave away everything I had collected, and deleted the game.

I'll never trust Blizzard again!

Afterward, while wandering through a "Best Buy", I spotted EverQuest for $10. I always wondered what it was like... First month was free... What the hell I thought. I'll probably delete it in the morning...

I have been truly amazed at the differences between these two games: EverQuest and Diablo2. It's night and day. Not because of the massively-multiplayer nature of EverQuest. I played D2 on battlenet, and the differences between 8 people and 2000 people are not that significant.

But the depth of the gameplay. The sheer size and scope of the world. The volume of spells, equipment, and options. The tradeskills. The quests. The class and race balancing. Everything from the lighting and architecture to the faction balancing. It completely blew me away.

So now blizzard, with their track record of producing "minimal" gameplay with great eye candy has taken notice of the profits available from MMORPGs, and is targeting that realm.

Unless it's free, they are going to be providing too little, too late.

My $0.02.

(*) Writing as Anonymous Coward to avoid persecution under the DMCA.

Re:could be fun...

[Anonymous Coward]

If the AI is as smart as the units' pathfinding in Warcraft 2, I'll be playing 24/7. Don't want my character to wander into a pool of lava, or into a huge battle, or off a cliff, or some other bad place while I'm sleeping.

Re:When do I have the time?

[jbarnett]

There aren't many "hop on and have fun for a bit" games like that any more. Nowadays, games need commitment.

Oh, I see now. I thought my level 87 Barb had something special with your level 78 Amazon. What are you saying, are you saying you would like to play other games? I thought we had something special...power leveling for 20 hours a day...

I bet it is that Quake3 game, it is such a slut... just there when you are lonely and want to blow some stuff up, in and out huh? No long term commitment... your such a typical gamer.

So you just want to be freinds? If you ever see me power lvling around Hell/Hell Act 4, give me a party invite ok? ok?

I have to go, there is a rumor that some guy is trading SOJs for Prefect Skulls on USEast and have to check it out... hope to see you around.

Love,
Barb_Kill_Joo
Level 87 WW Lance Barb
USEast