With BlizzCon 2008 attendees clasping their StarCraft 2 beta access codes, developer Blizzard has revealed that the beta for the anticipated sci-fi RTS won't hit this year.

"It's not going to be this year," lead producer Chris Sigaty told OMG StarCraft, as found by StarCraftWire. "We're working really hard on Battle.net itself, of course it's a Battle.net beta. As we get through that, hopefully as soon as possible after the new year,but there's no specific date at this point."

It is unclear if Sigaty's claim of "as soon as possible after the new year" relates to the completion of Battle.net work, the launch of the StarCraft 2 beta, or both.

"There's still things we look at and go, oh, we gotta fix that," added senior art director Samwise Didier. "We try to get as much of those out of the way."

"If we're gonna hear everybody reporting that same thing...we don't want that," Sigaty nodded, stressing the importance of balance and receiving meaningful feedback.

World of Warcraft developer Blizzard is mostly keeping its mouth shut about its "next-gen MMO," but that hasn't stopped CEO Mike Morhaime from teasing fans.

"Let's just say it's going to be different and it's not going to be a sequel to World of Warcraft," Morhaime told Wired. "It will be different."

He explained that the studio is "not trying to replace World of Warcraft with this new MMO," but is instead trying to "create a different massively multiplayer experience, and hopefully World of Warcraft will still be going strong when that one is released."

Little more is known about the unannounced MMO--during another BlizzCon interview, Morhaime refused to confirm if it is set in a new universe--though the studio has hinted that that the project could end up on consoles in addition to PC.

"We definitely don't have a deadline where 'at this point we're not going to support World of Warcraft,'" Morhaime added. "We wanna support it as long as people want us to support it."

Over half of the World of Warcraft players that left the popular PC MMO for Mythic's recently launched Warhammer Online have since returned to Azeroth, Blizzard claims.

"We've seen a significant number of people, well over half, that cited Warhammer as their reason for leaving--they've already returned." Blizzard COO Paul Sams told GamesIndustry.biz. "It surprises me because Mythic is a very good company and it doesn't surprise me at the same time because it's really hard [to make an MMO]."

"I think Warhammer is best positioned to succeed out of the various products that have come out thus far since World of Warcraft has come out," he explained... Read more

Diablo III "will definitely be out after StarCraft II," said Blizzard design VP Rob Pardo.

Pardo, in an extensive interview with Wired, also shed light on the company's plans for DRM and digital distribution. "Battle.net really is our most effective DRM," he said, adding, "That's really kinda been the thing that's always saved us from a lot of the PC piracy that I think hurts a lot of other single-player-only games."

Blizzard plans to similarly rely on its multiplayer match-making service to protect its interests with StarCraft II and Diablo III after their release. "No, there's no particular plans for that," said Pardo in response to a question about the games "phoning home" to check their authenticity with Blizzard servers each time before launching. "If you want to use an analogy--we take an approach that's more similar to Steam than EA, let's say," he explained.

As for Steam itself, Pardo stopped short of shooting down the idea of launching Blizzard products on the service, stating that Blizzard for now plans to stick with its own digital distribution service. "I think we're probably currently in the mindset that we're going to digitally distribute just on Battle.net. I don't know if our strategy will change in the future. I think it's something that we're just trying to get really good at doing ourselves for now," he said.

As expected, we learned a lot of new things about Diablo III at BlizzCon. And as many of these bite-sized details got swept away in all the excitement, I figured it was time to update our massive Diablo III guide.

In addition to tons of new videos and screenshots, we've added plenty of information on the new Wizard class (including her entire current skill tree), details on the newly announced Skill Rune system, and a note on a major change to the attribute system, among many other updates.

Also included is new information on which way Blizzard is leaning on the issue of console ports, subscription fees, and other key development decisions.... Read more

World of Warcraft (PC) will eventually go the way of microtransactions to further monetize Blizzard's 10-million-player-plus subscription MMO.

Fan site WarCry attended a Q&A session during last weekend's BlizzCon '08 and came back with this:

When asked to expand upon a button found by sifting through the Lich King beta's data files named "Paid Character Customization," [World of Warcraft production director J. Allen] Brack initially hesitated to give any answer at all. Several questions later, he went back to the matter, saying that he could, in fact, confirm that World of Warcraft would eventually have some form of paid character customization, though they themselves hadn't yet worked out any details.

Inhabitants of the World of Warcraft can rest assured that their new hairdos are likely free, as the release of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion looms near while the paid character customization is evidently still in the conception stages. However, the more costly makeovers could arrive in a future patch or the next expansion after Wrath of the Lich King.

It looks like Diablo 3 isn't the only potential console game that acclaimed World of Warcraft creator and PC developer Blizzard is considering for the future.

While the company has remained extremely quiet regarding its "unannounced next-gen MMO," World of Warcraft director Jeffrey Kaplan has hinted that the new project, which won't be officially unveiled for "a while," may end up on consoles.

"I don't think World of Warcraft would really work that well on the console, but that's not to say that other MMOs couldn't," Kaplain told MTV Multiplayer. "We have a pretty savvy group of console developers."

"A lot of the guys we inherited from [StarCraft Ghost developer] Swingin' Ape really know what they're doing on next-gen consoles," he continued. "So we might have a few tricks up our sleeves in that regard."

With the single-player portions of StarCraft 2 now split into three distinct games, Blizzard lead producer Chris Sigaty and VP Rob Pardo have revealed that the individual titles will ideally be released at least a year apart from one another.

"With any luck, it would be like a year for each successive one, but that's going to be a target date, that's not a promise," Pardo noted in a Joystiq interview.

"In a lot of ways, you should think about the follow-ups as being kind of expansion sets to the original," Pardo explained. "It's just that the campaigns are not going to feel like expansions, they're going to feel like full, independent stories."

"I don't know how long it's going to take...it could be [a year or more between each one]," producer Sigaty revealed to MTV Multplayer. "We want to hit the shortest amount of time possible."

"Let's spin that in a positive light," he laughed, attributing the uncertainty... Read more

A panel of World of Warcraft developers took questions today during Blizzard's BlizCon convention, revealing a few upcoming details on the wildly popular MMO.

The biggest news so far is that ground mounts will now learn how to swim post-Lich King.

"In the first content patch that follows Wrath of the Lich King, all of your ground mounts will no longer dismount in water, and they swim now," said a Blizzard representative.

Creative VP Chris Metzen announced that popular Warcraft lore character Deathwing will be coming into the game in the future.

The panel also noted that while they may work the Panda-like Pandaren race into the fiction of the world, they ran into some trouble with China's perception of the race, noting that they had to be sensitive to such a large base of customers.

Also mentioned was a possible five-man "interaction" with Arthas, the title villain in the upcoming expansion Wrath of the Lich King.

Along with the news that StarCraft II will now be a trilogy of games, Blizzard also released new screenshots of the current build of the game. We also can pass along these high-detail unit and building renders.

Jay Mohr is still on stage making people dance here at BlizzCon. Normally I'd be there capturing every nerdy moment of it, but I ditched the elves for a hot date with Diablo III and StarCraft II.

I can bring you a good portion of the costume contest, however. BlizzCon attendees put in a lot of work on their costumes, and there are always a few surprises--either with the quality of their robes, or with the intensity of their pandering.

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Stuck in a day-long WoW raid on the first day of BlizzCon? We've got you covered.

There was a huge volume of news and media released today out of Blizzard's show. Here's a handy compilation of everything we covered, broken up by title:

Diablo III News:

• New Class Revealed: The Wizard
• The Wizard Talent Trees
• Wizard Class Trailer
• Wizard Footage
• Even More Gameplay Footage: Wizard and Barbarian
• First Diablo III Hands-on Impressions: Hell Yeah
• Skill Rune System Announced, Detailed
• Blizzard Talks Diablo III Console Port
• Jay Wilson on Battle.net Subscription, Modding Stance

StarCraft II News:

• StarCraft II Broken into Trilogy of Three Standalone Games... Read more

Diablo III director Jay Wilson said today that the company does not have a great desire to charge a subscription fee for the upcoming revision of its multiplayer client Battle.net. However, the developer did note that Blizzard will likely monetize unknown features of the game.

"We are going to monetize features so that we get to make them," said Wilson. "We kind of have to."

Wilson noted that whatever the content would be, it would have an appropriate value to users.

Fans of map hacking and other Diablo II modifications have little to look forward to with the sequel, as Wilson shot down any talk of mod support.

"We don't have a lot of plans to do that. It would make our lives so much harder" he said, adding that despite the fact that he and many other designers got their start in modding, the team takes a strong stance on the hacking of their games.

Wilson also used the panel to reemphasize the trading aspect of Diablo III, saying that no items outside of specific quest rewards will be bound to players.

Blizzard today announced that StarCraft II will be released as a trilogy of separate games, each concentrating on one of the universe's three factions.

The first game in the trilogy will consist of the Terran campaign, and is set to be titled "Terrans: Wings of Liberty."

The second Zerg-focused title will be "Zerg: Heart of the Swarm," with the third game being "Protoss: Legacy of the Void."

"[The second and third games] will be like expansion packs, but we really want them to feel like standalone products," said Blizzard's Rob Pardo.

Each campaign will be very different, with Pardo announcing the Zerg campaign will contain RPG elements. The Protoss campaign will likewise be differentiated by elements of diplomacy. In addition, the Terran campaign will feature a Protoss mini-campaign.

The campaigns are planned as concentrated, epic storylines, with enough content to justify a full release. As a result, the games will now feature more in-game cinematics and story content.

Blizzard added that the plans for the multiplayer component are unchanged by the splitting of the campaigns. However, some units will now be unique to the campaigns and will not be playable in multiplayer.

Pardo noted that the decision was necessary to maintain the quality of the product, the alternatives either being a long delay of the game, or a scaling back of the campaigns.

More details may become available during BlizzCon, which continues through this weekend.

Blizzard designers revealed new details of StarCraft II's single-player campaign during a panel at the company's BlizzCon convention today.

Players will take on the role of Jim Raynor during the Terran campaign. The campaign begins on Mar Sara, the point of first contact with the Zerg in the original StarCraft.

"Depending on which missions you choose and which order, you may open up five planets [at once]," said Blizzard's Rob Pardo of the game's non-linear, planet-based progression.

As the game begins, Raynor is fighting a losing battle against the Terran Domninion, lead by Arcturus Mengsk. A new character named Tichus Findlay will be... Read more

Though Diablo 3 is currently only confirmed for the PC, Blizzard president Mike Morhaime has once again suggested that the long-awaited action-RPG may end up on consoles as well.

"Every game we have the discussion about which platforms make the most sense," Morhaime stated in an interview at BlizzCon. "As Diablo 3 takes shape, I think we'll do an evaluation."

"I think there is a pretty good argument to be made that that type of game might work very well on consoles," he added. "There might be some technical limitations though that we might need to get past."

Diablo 3 director Jay Wilson also chimed in on the oft-speculated topic, noting that the game's control scheme would work rather well on consoles.

"If we did it, we would want to do a really high quality version--we... Read more

Continuing our ongoing coverage of BlizzCon, we have compiled a complete list of the Wizard class talent trees found in the playable demo of Diablo 3.

As with World of Warcraft, each talent category has multiple tiers, requiring a certain amount of skill points to be spent in the previous tier before the next one is unlocked. For example, 5 skill points must be used in the first tier to access the second.

Along with the below skills, Diablo 3 features a new Skill Rune system, allowing more modification of the talents. For example, adding a Multistrike Rune to the Witch Doctor's Skull of Flame skill splits the lone fireball into multiple splashing attacks.

Be aware that the list below is a work-in-progress, and that some of the details will change before Blizzard's long-awaited PC RPG eventually arrives.

Storm Talents

Level 1
• Charged Bolt
  • Rank 0/1
  • Launch a volley of 3 electric bolts that deal 1-8 lightning damage each. Critical hits from lightning damage stun targets for 2 seconds.
  • Mana Cost: 8
• Thunderstruck
  • Rank 0/15
  • Increases the critical hit chance of all... Read more

Two new videos showing StarCraft II have arrived from BlizzCon, currently in progress. Included is lots of new gameplay footage showing Zerg and Terran forces scouting one another before attacking. The second video features a larger battle between Protoss and Terran armies.

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See below for the second video... Read more

Diablo III lead designer Jay Wilson revealed the Skill Rune system of skill modification during his talk at BlizzCon.

Skill Runes are skill-modifying items that are randomly dropped by monsters and used across all classes. They can be attached to each skill like an item, often completely changing the gameplay of each skill.

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The lead designer showed off the Teleport skill with a Striking rune, turning the spell into an offensive skill that can destroy enemies. The Skull of Flame skill was... Read more

My jaw literally dropped in a moment of pure gaming geekiness as I spotted the retro gaming section of BlizzCon.

Playable stations of past Blizzard titles such as The Lost Vikings, Blackthorne, Rock N' Roll Racing, and the original Diablo and Warcraft titles are set up in a prime location.

Blizzard has always imbued its event with a sense of the company's history. Last year a display of memorabilia adorned the upper floor of the floor, but this year, having playable versions of the games that founded the company is an unexpected treat for attendees.