Today Blizzard launched a new service for World of Warcraft players that them to pay for a faction change. For $30.00 gamers can make their Horde character jump ship and join the Alliance or vice versa.
According to the FAQ, “Each Faction Change costs $30.00 USD (not including applicable taxes). This covers a single Faction Change for a single character.”
In order to change factions, gamers need to go to their Account Management page and click the “Change Faction” button. From here, you’ll be given a choice of which race you want your character to be from those available to their class and faction. If you are looking to just change your race, you’ll have to wait a bit longer. Blizzard notes in the FAQ, “We will be releasing a Race Change service in the near future for this purpose.”
Today publisher Gazillion announced that David Brevik, the creator of Diablo, will take on the role of lead developer on the upcoming Marvel Universe MMO.
Brevik, now director of Gazillion’s Gargantuan studio, once held the role of President of Blizzard North and served as project lead, design lead, and lead programmer on Diablo I & II.
Brevik stated, “Gazillion’s mission to bring MMOs to the mainstream while maintaining the depth in gameplay that enthusiast gamers demand is something that deeply resonates with me. Marvel is a perfect fit for this mission.”
Hopefully the Marvel Universe MMO will fair a little better than Brevik’s last project, Hellgate: London.
Yesterday Blizzard revealed that it is preparing “a new service” which will allow World of Warcraft players to change their faction. This means you could turn your Orc hunter into a Human hunter, and vice versa.
According to a post on the official World of Warcraft forums by a Blizzard employee, “We wanted to give everyone a very early heads-up that, in response to player requests, we’re developing a new service for World of Warcraft that will allow players to change their faction from Alliance to Horde or Horde to Alliance. There’s still much work to do and many details to iron out, but the basic idea is that players will be able to use the service to transform an existing character into a roughly equivalent character of the opposing faction on the same realm. Players who ended up creating and leveling up characters on the opposite factions from their friends have been asking for this type of functionality for some time, and we’re pleased to be getting closer to being able to deliver it. Read more »
Today Blizzard revealed some details about their upcoming unannounced MMO.
According to Blizzard community manager Zarhym (his name on the World of Warcraft forums), “We’ve already stated it’ll be a brand new franchise, which means the lore, art, and game play are being developed entirely from scratch.” He went on to state that the new MMO is just a, “shell of a game thus far.”
Blizzard has stated in the past that it is developing the title with the World of Warcraft engine for testing purposes.
It seems like Blizzard is feeling pretty confident about the new title. Zarhym said, “It’s an overwhelming process, but a process through which we excel. Our track record supports this.”
Today Blizzard revealed this year’s exclusive BlizzCon World of Warcraft item.
Those who attend BlizzCon, or watch it on pay per view, will receive Grunty the Murloc Marine.
According to Blizzard, “This tiny terror is fully armored and comes equipped with a gauss rifle, which he’ll occasionally fire into the air to make sure no invisible spacecraft are swooping in to attack.”
In order to get Grunty, Blizzard fans need to go here on May 16. Tickets to BlizzCon are $125 a piece. If that’s too pricey, the pay per view is only $40.
According to a post on the World of Warcraft site, Blizzard is now accepting StarCraft II beta sign-ups.
The post states, “The StarCraft II beta-test period is coming in the months ahead! If you’d like a chance to participate, now’s the time to let us know.”
In order to sign up, you have to visit your Battle.net profile page. Once there, click the link labeled “Beta Profile Settings.” Follow the steps and you will be signed up.
Today Blizzard announced that BlizzCon 2009 tickets will go on sale May 16.
As usual, the event will take place at the Anaheim Convention Center on August 21-22. In order to get in, you are going to have to drop $125 per ticket.
If you aren’t lucky enough to get a ticket on May 16, don’t get too upset. Blizzard has stated that there will be another block of tickets release on May 30.
If you are like me, and have absolutely no way to get out to Anaheim for BlizzCon, you might want to consider watching the event on TV. DirectTV customers will be able to watch the whole event from their couches for only $40. If you don’t have DirectTV, there are also Pay Per View Internet streams, which will also cost you $40. If you pay to watch, either via DirectTV or an online steam, Blizzard will send you this year’s BlizzCon-exclusive WoW item.
Today PopCap released a free version of its casual pachinko-esque puzzler Peggle as a free add-on to World of Warcraft. Now whenever you have to wait, you can kill time by shooting pegs.
This version of Peggle features WoW themed levels, a “talent tree” to spec you Peggle skills, and a new “/peggleloot” command, which allows players to divvy up loot based on a Peggle shot. Whoever get the highest score with one shot gets the loot.
Today Blizzard released the second edition of their Starcraft II battle reports series. For those of you who don’t know, the Battle Report is a video of two developers playing each other in SCII shoutcasted by SCII’s lead designer and a professional Starcraft player.
This episode features 20 minutes of Zerg on Terran action. To check out a higher quality version of the video above, click here.
After months of teasing and waiting for new gear, World of Warcraft poopsockers players are able to head into Ulduar to conquer new content.
Here’s a small trailer showing what awaits:
In addition to Ulduar, the patch brings a huge number of changes to the game, from fundamental ones such as allowing ground mounts to swim (yes!) to balance tweaks for each class. Given the amount of time this has been in testing, I can only hope that class balance has improved since the last time I played the game.
As I’m sure all of you know, it’s April Fools Day and there is a long standing tradition in the games industry when it comes to April 1st. Every year companies send out fake press releases: some are pretty funny, others not so much.
Every April Fools Day Blizzard Entertainment knocks it out of the park. They go far beyond the normal joke press release. This year they have sent out several videos and screen shots showcasing some “new” features in their games. For example, Blizzard announced today that they will be adding a “Pimp My Mount” feature to World of Warcraft. Blizzard’s website advertises, “Tired of your mount looking like every other raptor, wolf, horse, kodo, or nightsaber out there? Then Z to the A to the zzber (whew, that’s a mouthful!) will be glad to welcome you to his shop where you can epic-ize your mount with some phat total pimpage!”
Also added into the World of Warcraft is a new PVP Dance Battle System. According to Blizzard, “As with the Arena system, close communication and teamwork is crucial–you’ll have to be in sync, both with the music as well as with the other members of your crew, to become the ’server’ and not the ’servee.’” Blizzard even released a special promotion video which can be found here.
Blizzard isn’t one to ignore its other franchises. They announced today that there is a new player-class in Diablo III, The Archivist. Wielding magic spells like Lorenado, Quest Bolt and Shush. To see the Archivist in action, click here.
Lastly, Starcraft 2 got a little April Fools attention when Blizzard announced the newst weapon in the Terran arsenal, the Terra-tron. When you are hopelessly out numbered and the situation is looking grim, you can make a last ditch effort by assembling all your base structures into a giant walking robot. To check out videos of this kooky colossus, click here.
Blizzard has launched its new Battle.net, integrating online accounts for games like StarCraft, Diablo II, and World of Warcraft.
From now on, instead of having an account for each game, players can merge all accounts under one Battle.net login. Additionally, the Blizzard Store is integrated into Battle.net, allowing downloads of previously purchased games (think Steam-like functionality, only from a web browser). Users of the new Battle.net will automatically be entered into beta drawings for Blizzard games.
While merging accounts is optional right now (and only available for users in the Americas), creating a Battle.net account will be mandatory in the future.
Today Blizzard launched a new service for World of Warcraft players that them to pay for a faction change. For $30.00 gamers can make their Horde character jump ship and join the Alliance or vice versa.
Today publisher Gazillion announced that David Brevik, the creator of Diablo, will take on the role of lead developer on the upcoming Marvel Universe MMO.
Today Blizzard revealed this year’s exclusive BlizzCon World of Warcraft item.
Today Blizzard announced that BlizzCon 2009 tickets will go on sale May 16.
As I’m sure all of you know, it’s April Fools Day and there is a long standing tradition in the games industry when it comes to April 1st. Every year companies send out fake press releases: some are pretty funny, others not so much.