More WoW, Major 2007 Announcement for Blizzard

Blizzard has announced their intention to follow up this year's Burning Crusade expansion with a new World of Warcraft add-on every year. While not terribly surprising, they have also announced that they're working on a major announcement for next year. Consensus seems to be that it will likely be another Starcraft game, given comments by Blizzard COO Paul Sams. "StarCraft is my absolutely favorite game of all time. As you probably already know, there is no doubt that we will continue the StarCraft and Diablo franchise, and trust me, I will be the happiest person in the world when we announce StarCraft 2."

Comments

Well..

[Necreia]

I'm very excited to see more of the Starcraft series, as long as it is not MMO.

Re:Well..

[Cornflake917]

Many of the developers who created Starcraft split from Blizzard and went off to make Guild Wars. This scares me. I want too see a new Starcraft sooo bad, but not if it's ruined by people who don't know what there doing.

Re:Well..

[KDR_11k]

I hope that includes the idiot who decided a 12 unit selection limit is a good idea.

Re:Well..

[Mako_energy]

This is true, this his been on my mind for a long time now. There was another starcraft game that was supposed to come out back in 2002, I think, Starcraft Ghost. I don't think that will ever get finished. Either way, after seeing Warcraft 3, I'm sure that Blizzard will just mess up the Starcraft franchise, and any other RTS they make. If I got my way, they would just hand the rights to Starcraft over to the people that actually made it, but I know that will never happen.

For free tech support, go to http://www.freetechsupport.us/

starcraft 2

[legoburner]

Pleeeeease let it be starcraft 2, and have it be more fun than warcraft 3. I need more starcraft chips and it seems they have stopped selling them at my local korean importers. There is the small matter of the game being as addictive as all hell too.

Geez, and this is news?

[theRhinoceros]

Wow. An announcement that there will be an announcement next year about a game that likely will not come out for a while after that, barring no (ahem) delays. Anything to get hits on a blog/AdSense clicks, right?

Re:Geez, and this is news?

[Ryan Amos]

Yeah, from Blizzard's track record, if they announce Starcraft 2 next year, we'll see it around 2010. And I'm not kidding about that, actually.

Re:Geez, and this is news?

[RingDev]

Nah, they'll release the statement just before the end of Q4 to drive up interest and ad revenue to make up for lack lust x-mas sales. Gotta look good for the investor ;)

-Rick

Re:Geez, and this is news?

[jackbird]

With a billion a year in WoW subscriptions, I think retail Xmas sales are icing on the cake to Blizzard.

Re:Geez, and this is news?

[happyemoticon]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

San Francisco, Calif., August 22, 2006: Happyemoticon today disclosed breaking news on behalf of Channel 2 that sometime, possibly within the year, there would be breaking news of titanic proportions reported by Channel 2.

"We cannot overstate the magnitude of this 'newsish' report," Happyemoticon stated, his jowls flapping manically with the stress, "Although none of our reporters have yet been tasked with the assignment of finding this 'news,' current research by the boys in R&D suggests that we're onto something. We're not ready to disclose what this 'something' is, but rest assured, when we ascertain what this news is, the release of the news that our breaking news is ascertained will certainly be big news. Really big. News."

A variety of claims and speculation have emerged as people try to piece together facts in an attempt to determine what the news referred to by this news report is referring to, from aliens to typhoons to the Rapture, many of them in turn framed as news stories. Jim Joebob, a news theorist working for News Corporation (parent company of Fox Channel 2), theorizes that the news' news may be so new it hasn't even happened yet. "A contact in their lab mentioned they had a perpetual random number generator which they use to 'sniff out' incoming stories, by sensing local anomalies in causality as evinced by the frequency of 1 or 0. I am sure of the integrity of this device, as it is apparently powered by a hamster, gerbil, or some other rodent, known to be extremely high sources of entropy."

"Apparently for the last two weeks," he continued, "they've been coming up with nothing but 1/2. If this hearsay news is news, then there should even be a news story about the news flibbilityblah."

Re:Geez, and this is news?

[steveo777]

Either that or they plan on having finished building the world's first, full-scale, fully functional Yamato Cruiser by 2010. That way we can play live action. Hopefully they're not also working on a Zergling Rush... That would suck. A very squishy sort of suck.

Re:Geez, and this is news?

[cptgrudge]

Yeah, from Blizzard's track record, if they announce Starcraft 2 next year, we'll see it around 2010.

If it's well done, polished, and fun to play, I will wait.

Re:Geez, and this is news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exceeeeeeeeeept that Blizzard doesn't see most of that money go directly in to their pockets.

Vivendi Universal, on the other hand, is quite happy.

Re:Geez, and this is news?

[RRRobotHouse]

Haha, first thing to make me laugh all week...

Re:Geez, and this is news?

[Traiklin]

Yeah, from Blizzard's track record, if they announce Starcraft 2 next year, we'll see it around 2010. And I'm not kidding about that, actually.

only a 3 year development cycle?

you sure you're not being over generous with that estemate?

Re:Geez, and this is news?

[jackbird]

That's true of the xmas sales, too, no?

Re:Geez, and this is news?

[Swift(void)]

only a 3 year development cycle? you sure you're not being over generous with that estemate?

It has been well known for almost a year that Blizzard have 2 or 3 other titles they are working on that have yet to be announced. So thats a 4 year cycle. How long were the titles in development before even that tidbit came out? Add on some more time.

Aside from that, 2010 seems a bit far down the line. I get the feeling that WoW has certainly taught Blizzard not to make any big announcements until what they want to annouce is fairly close to completion. I would not be surprised if whatever they announced next year made it for a 2008 release, if not Christmas 2007 (depending on when the announcement comes).

Re:Geez, and this is news?

[Ryan Amos]

They've probably been working on it for at least a year.

This Just In....

[cjb909]

Blizzard announces they will be making a major Announcement!

Re:This Just In....

[eurleif]

Sinc when is parroting the headline funny?

Re:This Just In....

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't, but commenting about moderations is always off topic.

Ladies and gentlemen..

[Rob T Firefly]

I have an important announcement to make...

..and that is next year, I shall make an important announcement.

*bow*
Thank you, thank you ladies and gentlemen, you're far too kind. I'd like to thank you all for being here today, I'd like to thank Rob Malda and everyone else who made this possible, and I'd like to thank my mom.
*bow*
Thank you all for your time, please enjoy the cocktails.

Re:Ladies and gentlemen..

[fshalor]

I'm hearing that python skit... where the *girl* keeps clearing her throat... "ahem, and my discovery is , ahem, [coughcough] that is to say, that I discoverd it and it is, ahem [cough] here it is, my work, ahem, aHEM, ahem, [coughcough]..."

Re:Ladies and gentlemen..

[Anonymous Coward]

And here I was expecting "Cannonball!"

Starcraft 2 ? Diablo 3?

[Chaffar]

You guys are all wrong... They're obviously gonna release Blackthorne 2 :)

Re:Starcraft 2 ? Diablo 3?

[another_fanboy]

Monsters are no match for a man with a shotgun. I wonder if this is where Bruce Campbell got his insperation...

Re:Starcraft 2 ? Diablo 3?

[chrismcdirty]

Don't tease me. I miss good platforming/adventure games like this, Flashback, and Prince of Persia.

By the way, everyone knows it's a toss up between Lost Vikings 3 and Rock & Roll Racing Online.

Re:Starcraft 2 ? Diablo 3?

[Reapman]

Don't even JOKE about LV3... Lost Vikings was frickin awesome... granted I never played much of the sequal, but that game was gold. Definitly under appreciated.

Re:Starcraft 2 ? Diablo 3?

[Cruise_WD]

Rock & Roll Racing Online? I do believe my trousers just exploded.

That is still in my top ten games ever. Just so damn addictive. Any kind of R&RR game would just, well, errr, Rock, I guess :P

We've Heard This Before

[Blakey Rat]

They also promised that they'd release a patch every month for the at least the first year when the game came out, and we've seen how they've hit that goal. They also announced that WOW was a game intended to make casual players happy, before adding in that "grade-on-a-curve" honor system that casual players can't possibly excel at. Not that I have anything against Blizzard, but considering what's happened in the past, I would wait to get excited until it actually does happen. In fact... that applies to pretty much all of these press releases.

Re:We've Heard This Before

[rob1980]

The grade-on-a-curve honor system cheesed everybody off because the only way you can make high warlord/grand marshal is to essentially quit your job and pvp for 14 hours a day. It wasn't just the casual players, fortunately. I guess they thought it would work, and after awhile saw that it didn't - a new honor system is going in with the expansion.

Re:We've Heard This Before

[Anonymous Coward]

And if you've read the expansion details:

1. PvP honor is going to no longer be based on a "ladder" and is going to be more like XP. Meaning that a casual player will still potentially reach the top PvP rank, it may just take longer than a hard-core PvPer.

2. The new raid instances will be designed for no more than 25 people. This will make end-game more accessible to casual players, more than likely.

Re:We've Heard This Before

[Blakey Rat]

Yeah, and I'm very thankful that they're fixing it, being stuck at rank 7 despite playing every weekend. But it does kind of make you wonder what the heck they were thinking when they put it in in the first place. Oh well.

Re:We've Heard This Before

[Blakey Rat]

Yes, but my point is that they've been selling WOW as "the MMO for the casual player" since it opened, while at the same time modifying the game to be *less* friendly to the casual player. (Adding in the honor system, adding in 40-man insane-hard raids, etc.) It's great that they're finally getting around to fixing that, but it doesn't change the fact that a lot of WOW's press releases in the past have been almost-lies.

BTW, I don't consider "25-man" good enough. IMO, they should add a new 5-man and 10-man for every 15 levels or so. All the new instances are level 60 instances, and that's not fair to people who are just starting-- they deserve new content too.

Also IMO, they should add in an auto-level system so that the game can, say, run Deadmines as a higher level dungeon by bumping up the levels of all the monsters. When you enter with your group, the instance would create monsters designed to give you at least a little challenge. (This scheme works in Oblivion; why not put it in an MMO?) That would make it so when you're level 60, you can run any instance in the game and have a good time.

Re:We've Heard This Before

[another_fanboy]

Also IMO, they should add in an auto-level system so that the game can, say, run Deadmines as a higher level dungeon by bumping up the levels of all the monsters.

This would also prevent higher-level players from farming in lower-level dungeons.

Re:We've Heard This Before

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

The problem with WOW is simple - Blizzard listened to their fanbase. Too much. Casual players don't spend hours a day complaining on the forums. Many hardcore players do. Thus, any feedback that Blizzard recieves is invariably from the hardcore players.

Of course, hardcore players only represent about 2% of the overall WOW population (look at Census data; only about 10% level 60, and that's slanted because hardcore players are on more often and are thus more likely to be counted).

Blizzard should have been adding more content for lower levels (to increase the replay value of the game) and for casual level-60 players (e.g. more 5-man instances with decent loot). Instead, they add an honor system that is essentially a ranking system, more pointless reputation crap, and instances that are so challenging that only the most hardcore and organized guilds have a chance.

I quit WOW for a lot of reasons, but more than anything else it was because I took one look at 40-man instances and decided that they felt all too much like a second job.

Also IMO, they should add in an auto-level system so that the game can, say, run Deadmines as a higher level dungeon by bumping up the levels of all the monsters. When you enter with your group, the instance would create monsters designed to give you at least a little challenge. (This scheme works in Oblivion; why not put it in an MMO?) That would make it so when you're level 60, you can run any instance in the game and have a good time.

Yes, of course the loot would also have to be modified to make the run useful. Also, it's sometimes fun to "powerrun" lower-level instances (sometimes with random PUGs) and just screw around.

Really, I had more fun in WOW when I was just screwing around with PUGs and doing random quests (and exploring the world) then when I would run instances with the guild. And raiding is even worse - it's far too organized, far too scripted, and far too repetitive to be much fun for long.

Maybe Blizzard believes that running the same instances over and over is fun. For 2% of their population, they may be right. But I think that it would be wiser for Blizz to focus on the 98%. Hardcore or casual, we all pay the same monthly fee.

Re:We've Heard This Before

[Avallach]

Ironically, they're doing just this, albeit volunatary for all the Burning Crusade instances. You'll be able to run them on 5 different diffculty levels which will skew the mob levels and loot levels appropriately. Would love to see the idea retrofitted. :)

Re:We've Heard This Before

[bannerman]

"All the new instances are level 60 instances, and that's not fair to people who are just starting-- they deserve new content too."

That doesn't make any sense at all. If they were just starting, the old content would be new to them. The old content is actually pretty freaking amazing, too.

Re:We've Heard This Before

[Anonymous Coward]

You might want to rethink that initial assessment. Yeah, I have 3 60s, but I have 20 or so sub 30 alts scattered across various servers, many of which show up on (say) warcraftrealms.com. Most of which were experimental characters, etc. There's no way to link those back to one account to say "OK, this person with a 13% "hardcore" character ration is only one person".

Most of the folks I play with have 2 to 4 60s (it takes, what, 10-12 days /played for additional 60s -- that's not THAT long, especially if you do it all rested, when other people aren't on, etc. One minor alt over the course of 6-12 months when your friends are not around can be 60 with what feels like no real effort). Most of those folks have a comparable number of alts, again spread over a couple servers. We re-rolled once on a pvp server, gave that up in the 20s or so, made alts on a server our original server transferred to (to stay in touch with the guild we left instead of moved with), and we recently transferred to a different time zone (east coast server to west coast server) -- leaving behind quite a few alts and building a new stable of mules etc. on the new server.

So just within our accounts, we hover close to that 10% 60 thing.

(And before you start talking "oh, you're so hardcore" -- I've been playing since launch. You'd have to be a once-a-month casual, or constantly rerolling, just to avoid hitting 60 in two years of playing... And MC is PUGgable on most realms (at least, if you're Alliance), and that's hardly a "job". It's not as divided as you think...)

Re:We've Heard This Before

[Anonymous Coward]

12 patches in 21 months is just under two months per significant patch (yes, I know, some came faster, some came slower, but that's the average). Given Blizzard's usual schedule track record, that's surprisingly close to "one patch a month".

Re:We've Heard This Before

[SatanicPuppy]

I think they were thinking, "This should be fine, assuming people don't start pvping 14 hours a day, hahahaha."

A lot of the problems Bliz has had have stemmed from the fact that they keep underestimating the amount of interest people will have in the new features.

Re:We've Heard This Before

[Anonymous Coward]

>> When you enter with your group, the instance would create monsters designed to give you at least a little challenge. (This scheme works in Oblivion; why not put it in an MMO?)

Many people hate this in Oblivion - that's why there are mods to turn it off. If a something is too hard, you can advance all the levels you want but when you come back to it - guess what? - it's still too hard. You can hurt a guy with your 4 damage firebolt so you play and play and play til you're skilled enough to use the 40 damage firebolt - guess what? - still can't hurt him!

Re:We've Heard This Before

[Chelloveck]

The problem with WOW is simple - Blizzard listened to their fanbase. Too much. Casual players don't spend hours a day complaining on the forums. Many hardcore players do. Thus, any feedback that Blizzard recieves is invariably from the hardcore players.

It's not just WoW. Blizzard has had the problem of going after the hardcore gamers at the expense of the casual players since at least StarCraft. WarCraft II had a decent skirmish mode. So did StarCraft. Then, with the Brood War expansion, suddenly the skirmish AI got hugely over-powered. WarCraft III had exactly the same problem. So, while the hardcore gamers may be satisfied, the rest of us have just gotten tired of the computer handing us our asses on a regular basis.

Re:We've Heard This Before

[rilian4]

...So, while the hardcore gamers may be satisfied, the rest of us have just gotten tired of the computer handing us our asses on a regular basis.

Hear Hear! I play war3:tft once a week in skirmish mode with some old college friends for fun while we chat using skype and we resorted to playing games with us outnumbering the computer opponents by 1...2v1, 3v2, etc...we sometimes can manage 2v2 but that's with 1 comp on normal and one on easy. In 3v2 we can do one insane and one normal but we still outnumber the comp team by 1. We found that to do even teams with comp was to invite us getting killed. We also have to use some very specific tactics to hold off computer opponents.

Re:We've Heard This Before

[drsquare]

while at the same time modifying the game to be *less* friendly to the casual player. (Adding in the honor system, adding in 40-man insane-hard raids, etc.)

You know that adding features for non-casual players doesn't take anything away from casual players? I don't see how forty geeks in a raid on the other side of a map takes away enjoyment for a casual player killing rabbits for a few minutes during a lunch break.

Re:We've Heard This Before

[toddestan]

Casual players don't spend hours a day complaining on the forums. Many hardcore players do.

I disagree. The real hardcore players are too busy playing to spend hours a day on the forums.

Re:We've Heard This Before

[Blakey Rat]

Casual players pay the same monthly bill as hardcore players. If part of that bill is going towards developing new features and areas, we deserve to see them too.

(If you go by the sum total, casual players pay significantly more than hardcore players because there are significantly more casual players. Casual players are also less of a strain on their servers and bandwidth costs.)

Grasping at straws?

[Bieeanda]

The quoted comment contains absolutely no implications that Starcraft 2 is in the works. Sorry guys, but he's just saying that he loves the shit out of Starcraft, and will be wetting himself with glee when they can announce the sequel. Besides which, the consensus is always that they're going to announce Starcraft 2, because a major announcement could never be the launch of an entirely new franchise, a sequel to another of their games, or the revival of their classic titles. Really!

Re:Grasping at straws?

[NeutronCowboy]

Check out the job postings for Blizzard. They are (or at least, were) looking for an RTS level designer. Since WCIII level design has basically ceased.... I let you make your own conclusions.

-1, DMCA-wielding jackbooted thugs.

[base3]

Remember bnetd, boycott Blizzard/Vivendi.

Re:-1, DMCA-wielding jackbooted thugs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Blizzard had every right to go after bnetd. Think about this...What is the main selling point/feature about Blizzard Games? Replayability...What makes these games very replayable and enjoyable? Battle.net...How does blizzard control piracy of their game? By preventing pirates from using the most wanted feature...What did bnetd do? It gave pirates (and yes legitimate people) other server alternatives to Battle.net...

Was bnetd's intention to cause or advance piracy? No. Were they a huge reason for it? In the case of Battle.net enabled games, I would have to say yes.

Re:-1, DMCA-wielding jackbooted thugs.

[CrazyJim1]

I think the Slashdot community was/is wrong with bnetd. Bnetd allowed circumvention of Blizzard's copy protection and thats about all it did. I played on it when I couldn't get into betas of various Blizzard games, but I eventually bought the legit game in the store. If Bnetd was not shutdown, it could have spawned to support millions of players. That is to say, millions of people playing without first paying for a copy of the game.

Re:-1, DMCA-wielding jackbooted thugs.

[base3]

No they didn't. Just because the server emulation happened to have the side effect of enabling people to play for free doesn't mean that Blizzard had any moral right to shutdown a project that wasn't infringing its precious intellectual property. By your logic, the VCR and any other device "enabling" copyright infringement should be subject to being sued out of existence.

Re:-1, DMCA-wielding jackbooted thugs.

[base3]

Just because you happened to use it to avoid paying for the game doesn't mean that the people who were getting together on their own servers using the software they paid for were all committing copyright infringement. Blizzard used an unconstitutional law to persecute an open source project, and they will never see another dime from me. Unfortunately, there are plenty of sheep unwilling to vote against their war on freedom with their wallets.

Re:-1, DMCA-wielding jackbooted thugs.

[egburr]

I ran a bnetd server at home, so my friends and I could play. Battlenet was useless. When using battlenet, we would spend an hour or more trying to login, and then not be able to see each other even though we were all in the same private chat room and all on the same server. When we could see each other, often starting a game would fail. When we actually managed to play a game, we would usually lose our battlenet connecting during the game, so after the game ended we had to start the whole painful process over again. When I ran my bnetd server, we could all get on quickly and never had trouble seeing each other or starting games. We went from playing one or two games in an evening to four or five games, sometimes even more depending on if the next day was a workday or not. When Blizzard shut bnetd down, we quit playing Starcraft on a regular basis, and switched to Age of Empires. Now we occasionally will play a game or two of Startcraft, and find the battlenet servers to be decent. I figure that is probably because people have moved on to other games so battlenet isn't as overloaded as it used to be.

Re:-1, DMCA-wielding jackbooted thugs.

[Anonymous Coward]

If I remember correctly, the bnetd guys asked Blizzard about checking legitimacy, and were told no way. They then asked about including the CD-Key checks, and were again told no way. I think the arguments were:

1. Wouldn't check across all the bnetd servers people could possibly be running.
2. Since people had the source, they could just comment out the check code, and go on with life.

#2 is the flimsiest one, I think. The people that would take the time to download, edit, and recompile the source are the ones that are running keygens and cd-cracks anyway.

Here's a comment from the bnetd group: http://www.techliberation.com/archives/040327.php

Re:-1, DMCA-wielding jackbooted thugs.

[brkello]

I think I have to side with Blizzard on this one. It was purely and open source project so that people could play a game that they pirated. Could you come up with some other reasons for bnetd? Sure. But its primary reason for existence was to get around using valid keys. This is differt to me than a bit torrent...that is just a way of transferring files. It has both legal and illegal uses...but file sharing is something that is generic and not owned by anyone. The only reason bnetd exisited was because of Blizzard. Considering battle.net is the service they use to keep people buying legitimate copies, I can understand why they would go after bnetd. Put yourself in their shoes. If you wrote some software and someone came along and released a way to unlock your program without paying you, I think you would be fairly irritated as well.

Re:-1, DMCA-wielding jackbooted thugs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, ya. Please, for the love of GOD and all that is holy, can this game go away and we get our mud back up to where it was? I can just see some of the pimply coworkers of mine reading "new stuff every year" and getting w00d. Uh, this game is just a fad....it's obviously not the end all be all. Blizzard is such a immoral company they WILL find a way to get your money from you, and besides it's gonna get old, I mean you can't even steal other people's crap....how boring.

Re:-1, DMCA-wielding jackbooted thugs.

[radarjd]

When Blizzard shut bnetd down

Shut it down? http://www.pvpgn.org/

Re:-1, DMCA-wielding jackbooted thugs.

[IpalindromeI]

You should try using Hamachi. It creates virtual network cards that connect to each other and make your computers think you're on a private LAN. Starcraft LAN games don't go through Battlenet, so it should be just as quick as with bnetd. I use it all the time with some friends to play Worms without having to use their servers. It's a great program and very easy to use. Works on both Linux and Windows, although it isn't open source.

Re:-1, DMCA-wielding jackbooted thugs.

[egburr]

Dang! When bnetd went down, I figured something like that would appear, but I was never able to find it then and haven't even looked for a few years now. Thanks for the info!

Re:-1, DMCA-wielding jackbooted thugs.

[egburr]

I'm impressed! I did attempt something like that at the time. Unfortunately, I could only figure out how to do it between linux boxes, and most of my friends had only windows, so my solution didn't work for the group. I'll have to keep this in minde for other games, though!

Re:-1, DMCA-wielding jackbooted thugs.

[LoveGoblin]

But its primary reason for existence was to get around using valid keys.

Didn't the bnetd people request from Blizzard the info they'd need to implement the CD check? And Blizzard refused/ignored them?

Re:-1, DMCA-wielding jackbooted thugs.

[generic-man]

#2 should be:

Since people had the source, they could just comment out the check code, release a forked version of bnetd, and go on with life.

After all, who would download bnetd when you can get bnetd-nocheck for the same low price of $0?

Re:-1, DMCA-wielding jackbooted thugs.

[Cornflake917]

No, I will forget bnetd, and continue to buy games that are fun.

You think boycotting is going to make a difference when WoW has 6 million subscribers?

But please, continue your own self-sastisfying boycott. Last time I was on bnet, it had too many crybabies and whiners.

Re:-1, DMCA-wielding jackbooted thugs.

[Cornflake917]

Just because people were getting together on thier own servers using the software they paid for doesn't mean that Blizzard wasn't losing profits indirectly from bnetd. And don't you even dare give me the b.s. that bnetd would have made Blizzard more money, it wouldn't have. Any other company would have done the same as Blizzard.

If you have a problem with a law and you think it's unconstitutional. Boycotting a video game isn't going to change that law. Especially when a majority of people that have played blizzard games obviously don't know about or don't care about bnetd.

Re:-1, DMCA-wielding jackbooted thugs.

[brkello]

Right...so you think Blizzard should hand over the way they generate and validate keys. You don't see how a company would be reluctant to do that?

And to whoever modded me down over this, I really hope you lose your ability to mod. While you may not agree with what I am saying, that is NOT a reason to mod a person down.

Re:-1, DMCA-wielding jackbooted thugs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong, wrong, wrong!

Bnetd never supported Warcraft 3. It was Warforge. Warforge was never shut down, and yet there is nobody still playing the beta because it is comparatively buggy and sucks. Anyway bnetd still exists and I don't see this pirating network of millions of people. Actually there is no such thing with it still available.

Second, I don't know where you got this dream of playing blizzard betas with bnetd. It did not support even ONE beta. Again you are thinking of Warforge, the real pirates, which you admit you are one too.

Lastly, I do not get why you even think why bnetd was written for pirating. I used bnetd for starcraft because battle.net did not work correctly and all I wanted to do was play over the internet with local friends. We all used legitimate copies! The original author of bnetd, stated many times over the course of the five years he worked on it that that was always his intention to have an alternative to the crappy battle.net servers.

Just because you were pirating a game, doesn't mean everyone else was. Get it straight, moron.

Re:-1, DMCA-wielding jackbooted thugs.

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't mod you down, but your post *is* wrong.

Bnetd was *not* written for pirating. It was started Apr 1998 to create an alternative server that the author could connect to. He could not connect to battle.net so he had no way of playing online! I had similar issues so I used it to play my legitimate copy of starcraft.

Lastly, bnetd never facilitated pirating. People were copying blizzard games and playing them multiplayer online far before anyone even knew about bnetd. Ever heard of Kali? And somehow that one was considered legitimate. Ever heard of a network tunnel? Same concept.

Re:-1, DMCA-wielding jackbooted thugs.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Last time I was on bnet, it had too many crybabies and whiners."

This shows that you don't really understand the situation.

bnet != bnetd

bnetd was written to get away from bnet. Do you think all the legitimate owners would go back to bnet after bnetd was shut down? No, that is why there is still a boycott.

Re:-1, DMCA-wielding jackbooted thugs.

[LoveGoblin]

Well, I don't know how their key generation/validation works at all (completely useless if it's public?), so I'll leave that alone. But yes, I know what you're saying.

I was taking issue with what you said about bnetd's "primary reason for existence [being] to get around using valid keys" (you know...the part I quoted? :P) All I'm saying is that specifically attempting to implement the key validation is a pretty good indicator that they wanted to be/stay legit.

Re:-1, DMCA-wielding jackbooted thugs.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to rent out your space: BLIZZARD RULES!

How much will that cost me?

Re:-1, DMCA-wielding jackbooted thugs.

[Cornflake917]

"bnet != bnetd"

Umm I know this. I've played bnetd (so I didn't have to pay for the game) and I read the wikipedia article. Maybe I don't FULLY understand the situation. But I know enough to figure that a few people boycotting Blizzard isn't going to accomplish a DAMN thing.

"Do you think all the legitimate owners would go back to bnet after bnetd was shut down?"

What the hell are you talking about? Of course legitimate owners went back and played on bnet. I did.

Re:-1, DMCA-wielding jackbooted thugs.

[Anonymous Coward]

cheese + whine = your post

Re:-1, DMCA-wielding jackbooted thugs.

[rilian4]

Bnetd allowed circumvention of Blizzard's copy protection and thats about all it did

Not true. It was a full host to networked games of most of Blizzard's titles. the bnetd project probably put the cart before the cart by asking blizz to give them the ability to check for auth codes *after* writing their software but they did ask. Blizz said no. Blizz only took them to court after they got a hold of the war3 beta and modded bnetd to host it. Blizz looked the other way more or less up to that point.

...but I eventually bought the legit game in the store.

I bought them all too. With one exception, I owned all of them before I ever heard of bnetd. I bought the final one(broodwar) after hearing of bnetd. I loved bnetd because it let my group of friends play the games we love without having to deal w/ bnet's huge lag..We all owned legitimate copies of the games and would not allow anyone to play with us who did not own a legit copy(we didn't have a public server so we could control who had an account). I know that is not necessarily the norm for bnetd users but that's our story.

I wish blizz and bnetd could have come to an agreement that would have allowed bnetd to be legal.

Re:-1, DMCA-wielding jackbooted thugs.

[base3]

If you have a problem with a law and you think it's unconstitutional. Boycotting a video game isn't going to change that law.

Obviously, that's true, but that doesn't mean I am ever going to give one thin dime to those who use those laws.

Re:-1, DMCA-wielding jackbooted thugs.

[Anonymous Coward]

War on freedom? Could you tone down your rhetoric, a little?

Re:-1, DMCA-wielding jackbooted thugs.

[toddestan]

Could you come up with some other reasons for bnetd?

Sure. Blizzard was (probably still is) terrible at policing their own servers. Back when I played Diablo II, cheating in the form of duped/hacked items, as well as cheating by using programs like Maphack were rampant. Blizzard made a token effort to stop it every once and a while, but for the most part they simply didn't care. On the other hand, there were bnetd servers whose admins took a hardline stance against using hacks. Also many of the bnetd admins also would kick griefers that Blizzard would do absolutely nothing about on the battlenet servers.

Another reason for bnetd is that it also allowed users to play online with previous patches of the game. Blizzard made some huge changes to Diablo II over the years, and many liked the previous versions better than the current versions.

Re:-1, DMCA-wielding jackbooted thugs.

[Rockinsockindune]

Blizzard was (probably still is) terrible at policing their own servers. Back when I played Diablo II, cheating in the form of duped/hacked items, as well as cheating by using programs like Maphack were rampant. Blizzard made a token effort to stop it every once and a while, but for the most part they simply didn't care.

I would say that the 'policing' by Blizzard has gotten much better, especially in WoW. I'm not going to get into technical issues regarding the hacks available for Diablo II (mainly because I would only show my ignorance), but wouldn't it stand to reason that fixing the exploits would require major changes that were unrealistic for Blizzard to do with a patch? They have put more and more reliance on having the server handle the information that can be used for exploits such as these in WoW.

On the other hand, there were bnetd servers whose admins took a hardline stance against using hacks. Also many of the bnetd admins also would kick griefers that Blizzard would do absolutely nothing about on the battlenet servers.

How were they able to tell who was using maphack? Did they rely on other users to report them? What happens when you are PVPing, and you beat someone, due to skill, and they don't like that. They report you as a cheater, or maybe they get their whole guild to to try to increase credibility, and then you get banned? You may be able to argue that they were dealing with a smaller, tighter, and already proven reliable population. But that's unrealistic to compare to the at-large population.

Wow churn

[BrookHarty]

I've been playing since beta, and checking the stats on my server, the number of total online players have been going down hill for the last year.

Many of the large guilds are gone, they dont play as much, and people just pop on to talk to friends.

I cant wait until the expansion when they disconnect honor/rank from pvp'ing and allow smaller groups for instances. Non-instance pvp, The casual player suffers from wow's (l33t guild) attitude.

I think many people are just paying but not playing, soon people will finally just cancel the accounts.

Re:Wow churn

[keyne9]

They're hurting really bad. Which is why their subscriber numbers are still rising (they hit 7 million yet?).

Re:Wow churn

[stubear]

My biggest problem is that my level 46 paladin had way too many elite and dungeon quests and very few normal quests that I can go out and do on my own. I'd like to see Blizzard dual rank these quests so I can attempt them on my own or with a group if I choose (adjusting the difficult accordingly).

Re:Wow churn

[Mentally_Overclocked]

Most elite, non-dungeon, quests can be done with two people in my experience. But I am a priest and normally ran with a warrior ... might've had something to do with it. If we couldn't do it, we normally would find people around that wanted to work on the quest too.

Although I do agree, being able to solo quests is nice ... I also think that the game is made to be social. Find someone you like playing and leveling with and go about it that way. It makes it much more enjoyable.

Slow news day

[LargeWu]

It's a meta-announcement.

I wonder if we can get slashdot to come up with a topic icon for "slow news day"

Lack of faith.

[carbontetra]

I suspect that this announcement will be something regarding starcraft or a diablo MMO. But, truth be told, I'm not really happy with Blizzard right now. World of Warcraft was my drug of choice for a good long while, but it got very frustrating towards the end. Aside from the infighting in my guild, the drop rates for gear as well as the vast imbalance between a few classes in PvP and PvE, I've lost faith in Blizzard. I don't think they can make good dames like Diablo, Diablo II and Starcraft again, I think that they're entirely too happy to suckle at the MMO money teat. I don't blame them, however. They're in this business to make money, but as of this moment, approximately 5 months away from 2007, I am just not excited about their announcement of an upcoming announcement.

Re:Lack of faith.

[Anonymous Coward]

I know for a fact it is going to be the Diablo MMO.

World of....

[theMerovingian]

Starcraft!

Re:World of....

[jonwil]

Actually, they would be better off callng it Galaxy Of Starcraft and having some kind of spaceflight (probobly not player controled, just "jumps" from one planet to the next). Anytime they run out of content, they just open up a new jump and new planet.

Re:World of....

[Blakey Rat]

Ooo, I want to play as a Zergling rogue!

Re:World of....

[Ubergrendle]

Nerf Protoss Shamen! They're _so_ unbalanced...my friend's brother's ex-girlfriend's aunt's cousin once lost a game in battlegrounds to a Protoss Shaman, and they clearly should have won!

Ob. Futurama Quote

[Anonymous Coward]

Hermes: Sweet gorilla of Manila! A letter from the Central Bureaucracy!

[Hermes takes a piece of paper out of the red tube.] Attention, Hermes Conrad: You are about to receive a letter from the Central Bureaucracy.

[Another red tube appears and Hermes takes a piece of paper out of.] My God! It's from the Central Bureaucracy!

An expansion a year? Pfft!

[everphilski]

Everquest has what, 12? In seven years. And Everquest 2 has 2 "real" expansions and several small ($7 iirc, I'm at work) expansion packs as well and has been out just as long as WoW.

Re:An expansion a year? Pfft!

[Kazzahdrane]

Indeed, hooray for Blizzard and their habit of adding content to the patches instead of charging subscription fees AND for paid expansions every 7 months or so.

Re:An expansion a year? Pfft!

[Clever7Devil]

Alright now, I think we have to give Blizzard a little bit of credit here. I acknowledge their status as money-grubbing consumer pimps; however, they do tend to put out product that pleases their customer base. One expansion a year actually seems a little much to me. I'm sure if we add on the classic Blizzard delays it'll be closer to a year and a half. What I'm saying is, I'm pretty happy about that. Does anyone else remember how much was added with Lord of Destruction? If they manage to improve upon WoW that much with every expansion, I won't mind the wait.

Say what you will about Blizzard. I know their business practices are questionable; I know that many people just don't enjoy the games they make; but we wouldn't be having this conversation if there weren't so many of us who did.

Re:An expansion a year? Pfft!

[everphilski]

Yeah, remember how loooooong we had to wait for LoD? Or 1.10? Blizzard is slow as molasses when it comes to generating content and revamps... 1.10 was in excess of a year late.

That takes the cake.

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank God I play Everquest.

I think Diablo 3 is more likely...

[kinglink]

Starcraft 2 is going to be more welcomed, but I believe the announcement is Diablo 3. Diablo is a established name, and there's been little hint of Starcraft 2 even being worked on (why did they basically kill ghost, or at least delay it?)

Actually a big announcement would be Starcraft Ghost coming out next year for the 360 also... but that would just piss off the fans because what we really want is Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2.

Will this be a future dup?

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

I'm shocked that I haven't seen a Slashdot dup today, but this is probably the next best thing. Can I still claim "dup" in a few months from now when the announced announcement is made?

Obligatory Penny Arcade

[Zinnian]

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/06/16

Don't get too excited

[the_crowing]

If the major announcment is the unveiling of a new game in the works, I wouldn't expect it to come out for at least another 4-5 years. Remember how many times Daiblo 2 got delayed? What about Starcraft:Ghost? I remember reading about that game 2 years ago when it was, supposedly, nearing completion and the last I heard anything regarding it was over a year ago.

That said, Starcraft 2 would be incredible!

Re:Don't get too excited

[SirTalon42]

Starcraft: Ghost was shelved. Don't expect to ever see it (which is probably going to be a good thing from the info that had been released about it)

Starcraft 2?

[CodemasterMM]

You need more vespene gas!
Er, I mean StarCraft franchise.

Is it just me or have they really kicked the dead horse that is WarCraft a bit too much? WoW was cool for maybe a few months, but now I hate it. Friends of mine lock themselves away for weeks (not days - weeks) and then boast they helped their guildmates kill some random boss. Good job, buddy, you just killed a mythical being, 2 weeks, and your GPA!

Nonetheless, I do hope like crazy it's something with StarCraft. (Hopefully StarCraft 2, not some MMO as I'm a cheap bastard and don't want to pay too much)

If they don't release on the Wii, I won't play it

[WillAffleckUW]

And that's my final decision.

Sorry, Blizzard, I loved Starcraft I and II, Diablo I and II, but ...

Re:If they don't release on the Wii, I won't play

[freshman_a]

Sorry, Blizzard, I loved Starcraft I and II, Diablo I and II, but ..

So... you loved their PC games, including one that never existed (perhaps you mean StarCraft: Brood Wars, not Starcraft II?), but you will only buy the game they have yet to announce if they release it on a system that has yet to be released and you have yet to actually play?

Please tell me there is some sort of sarcasm or humor that I'm missing...

Re:If they don't release on the Wii, I won't play

[WillAffleckUW]

I'm serious. I'm sick and tired of buying unnecessary computers and graphics cards just to play a frickin game.

Either it works on the Wii or I won't play it. Period.

You couldn't be more wrong

[merreborn]

http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart1.html

The population of one server droping says NOTHING of the population of other/new servers.

Sure, the oldest servers are going to lose players, but as long as the new ones *gain* players faster, it's a net gain.

WoW is *still* growing faster than any MMO, ever. You're gonna have to come up with something more than anecdotal evidence to discount the volumes of evidence of that.

Re:You couldn't be more wrong

[snuf23]

Well I quite playing and the game just hasn't been the same without me. So it's obviously going downhill. Poor Blizzard!

Total Annihilation is better

[Anonymous Coward]

Total Annihilation is delivering a (what appears to be) worthy sequel to the original.

That's just one of the many benefits of Total Annihilation.

I hope so

[Pluvius]

Starcraft is the only good game that Blizzard has made since they stopped developing for consoles, and it's well past time that a sequel was made for it. Of course, it will probably be an MMOG, which will likely cancel out the good parts of the franchise...

Rob

WoW lol

[SP33doh]

guild wars: new campaign/expansion/standalone every 6 months. with no monthly fee.
WoW: monthly fee and yearly "addons", LOL.

though starcraft isn't dead?
damn straight.

Re:WoW lol

[drsquare]

Guild Wars isn't really a MMORPG. And PK isn't interesting if it only happens in organised instances. It's only exciting if you can get killed in any place in the entire game, even when you don't want it and aren't expecting it.

400 hours isn't a lot for a MMORPG btw.

Re:WoW lol

[SP33doh]

no, 400's not a lot, but i'm currently 3 minutes walking distance from multiple people who're almost to 2000.

guild wars isn't about PK, owning noobs, interupting online funerals by massacring people, and getting to level a million. it's about strategizing and competing.

arenanet prefers to call guild wars a "cooperative/competative online RPG" which fits the bill quite well. and yes, it does vary a lot from standard MMORPGs, (and a large sum of people believe that it's much more interesting and entertaining that the traditional MMORPG.) but if you're looking for a more "traditional" MMORPG you'd definately go for wow. (however there are a lot of extra things you can do in GW in a more traditional RPG format (example: fissure of woe armor *droooooollll*) but WoW does unarguably have more content in THAT area.)


however, i wasn't comparing the overall quality of the games, I was just pointing out that wow has monthly fees and yearly updates, guild wars has no fees and bi-annual campaign/expansions.

Blizzard

[Blaaguuu]

1. Make Extremely Adictive Game. 2. Charge Monthly Fee. 3. Profit. 4. Make Millions of Already Addicted Players Buy Additional Content. 5. Buy Solid Gold Yacht.

Re:GW lol

[strobe74]

Guild wars: I played all the content for each expansion and had top end gear within 6 weeks of release (and I'm not a hardcore grinder). The only option for this game was to create a new character and go again. (though i liked the pvp but it got old after a while) - translation (BORING) WoW: Been playing for almost a year and haven't had to build a new character so i could rinse and repeat yet.. LOL OMG.. GW expansions every 6 months? Remember that hoop you jumped through? WELCOME BACK! Feel free to wet yourself with excitement now. That last expansion was pointless. It didn't add anything to GW. Liked the game until that expansion, and won't be buying the next.

Blizzard? Blizzard who?

[DeeDob]

Really, Blizzard is a company that creates great games that are praised by everyone.

Diablo,
Diablo 2,
Diablo 2: expansion,
StarCraft,
StarCraft: expansion,
WarCraft,
WarCraft 2,
WarCraft 2 expansion,
WarCraft 2 weird online something edition,
WarCraft 3,
WarCraft 3 expansion,
World of Warcraft,
World of Warcraft expansion (pick a number)

Let's make something original and turn our franchises into something different:
WarCraft Adventures... canned.
StarCraft Ghost... put on hold indefinitely.

Really, they make good games, but in over 13 or so years, they actually brought only 7 games out, 3 of them were sequels. In all that, only 3 intellectual properties / universe (at least to the best of my knowledge).

So if next year they are going to announce their new project, then i don't expect to see it (with their usual delays) until 2009 or 2010. I'm really serious with this one.

Re:Blizzard? Blizzard who?

[Anonymous Coward]

Really, they make good games, but in over 13 or so years, they actually brought only 7 games out, 3 of them were sequels.

And every single one was a bona fide smash hit. Says something about quality vs quantity, doesn't it?

Best GSC Char:Max Level Probe Worst...

[Dareth]

I want to be a maxed out level Probe, nobody cuts the crystal or hauls the gas like I do!

Worst GSC ( Galaxy of Star Craft ) would be an infested Terran. Might be good for quick guest accounts, and you get to go out with a bang!

One problem I found with too many expansions

[snuf23]

I got into EQ2 earlier this year and one thing I found was that very few people had any interest in running the content from expansion #1 (Desert of Flames). I could hardly ever get groups to do the key quests for dungeons or to run the dungeons themselves. Most people were just grinding levels 50-60 in order to get to the expansion #2 (Kingdom of the Sky) content.
I guess everyone either didn't like Desert of Flames or had run it before and were leveling alts. Personally I enjoyed the Arabian Nights theme in DoF better than the floating islands of KoS.

Re:GW lol

[SP33doh]

you're judging an apple based on the qualifications for a good orange.
guild wars isn't about mind numbing hours of leveling rpg characters.
guild wars is about its vast and unparralelled PvP modes, strategies, etc.
and it sounds like you've never even been in a guild that got team arena builds going, GvGd actively / set up GvG builds, (did did hall of heroes), etc. etc.

and factions added nothing? [insert eye roll here]

I've played guild wars for almost 400 hours, and am still loving it,
oh, and I'm going to compete in a 4v4 tournment (for a moderate amount of money) at penny-arcade expo tomorrow.

I hear it wil be called "StarCraft Forever"

[Brad1138]

NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

Re:If they don't release on the Wii, I won't play

[Anonymous Coward]

You're retarded.