A slight bump in subscription numbers for World of Warcraft after the launch of the Mists of Pandaria expansion has disappeared. Subscription numbers for the MMO now stand at 8.3 million, down from 9.6 million at the end of Q4 last last year, Activision announced in its latest earning report for Q1 2013.
Developments on the Warcraft movie front keep getting more interesting. First, we find out that Moon and Source Code director Duncan Jones would be taking over for Sam Raimi. Now we hear that the man behind the Academy Award winning visual effects team for Life of Pi will be directing the effects in the world of Azeroth.
Blizzard has been having fun with the pets it has created for World of Warcraft, creating everything from floating skulls to balloons to marmots. But for the first time, the dev team is creating a pet to pay tribute to a person and company outside the game.
The company announced plans for a new pet for release in an upcoming patch, out of respect for JJ Abrams' company, Bad Robot, which is releasing the Star Trek Into Darkness movie next month and the upcoming continuation of the Star Wars saga.
World of Warcraft has grown so large and ambitious that patches can focus on individual meta-games without even touching the main title. The next patch, for example, will focus entirely on the Pet Battles system, working to reduce randomness in matches.
For a giant publisher with such stock in online gaming, Blizzard has been notably reluctant to jump into the free-to-play market. All that changed this weekend with the announcement of Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, a F2P online collectible card game that marks the company's first foray into the market strategy. And while it isn't as striking an opening volley as Titan, Blizzard's patience has paid off. The F2P market is still going through its growing pains, but by waiting the company has output a game that seems to dodge many of the inherent drawbacks of the sales model.
Read more: Games shouldn't 'put up a wall' to get everything »
Today at Blizzard's PAX East panel, the company announced Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft. The collectible card strategy game is Blizzard's first stab at the free-to-play model, allowing players to compete as heroes from nine WoW classes, all set in the Warcraft universe.
With Blizzard finally getting back into the console space with Diablo 3, it is only logical that the company would consider shifting its other franchises outside the PC realm. But don't expect World of Warcraft on consoles any time soon.
World of Warcraft is still going strong, but a decade of constant tweaks, revisions, and expansions has made Blizzard especially attuned to how small changes impact the experience. Greg Street, lead systems designer for the game, says that Cataclysm altered combat in a way that hurt the game, which the team tried to fix in the subsequent Mists of Pandaria expansion.
The Thunder King has been unleashed in Pandaria with the newest content update for Blizzard's World of Warcraft. The 5.2 patch was released today and includes a new raid, new world bosses, and a new hub for daily quests that players usually loathe for building rep with a new faction.
Activision isn't exactly hurting for money. Between the annualized blockbuster success of Call of Duty and the millions of people still paying a monthly fee for World of Warcraft, the company seems to be sitting pretty. But it doesn't want to stake its future on those successes, and has set other plans in motion in case they fizzle.
Read more: Failure to hit CoD sales targets could 'significantly harm' company results »
Not much has been said about the new Warcraft movie since Sam Raimi said he was no longer directing the film. But now, Legendary Pictures has announced his replacement, grabbing the the director of sci-fi films Moon and Source Code.
Blizzard is preparing 2013's first major patch to World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria, and has issued a change-log for players to pick over. While the patch includes the usual bug fixes and balance changes, the most striking additions come in the form of a brand new raid dungeon and a daily quest hub.
Almost a month after opening up the Mogu'Shan Vaults, Blizzard has unlocked the next raid for World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria, called Heart of Fear. A schedule for future raid unlocks has also been released.
World of Warcraft cities across several servers were turned into tombs over the weekend as naughty level 1 hackers with insta-kill powers ran amok, slaying players and NPCs alike. One claims the hack has been used for almost a month against monsters, but Blizzard recently detected it so they decided to go out with a bang. The hole has been hastily fixed.
While many companies would love to sell 2.7 million copies of any game in the first week of release, that number of sales, revealed today by Blizzard, for the Mists of Pandaria expansion for World of Warcraft represents a steep drop from the 24-hour numbers of the last two expansions.
Read more: Overall subscribers back to more than 10 million »
Shacknews Managing Editor John Keefer returns to World of Warcraft to explore the new world of Pandaria. Read his travelogue to discover more about his ongoing journey.
It was a long row to hoe, but my hunter finally reached his limit in the new World of Warcraft expansion, Mists of Pandaria. Now that I finished all the basic quests, I inevitably asked: "what do I do now?"
As with previous expansions and content patches, there are daily quests to earn standing with the various new factions and earn better gear for raids and heroic dungeons. But aside from the usual errands the factions have you run, Blizzard has included a new minigame that would make Zynga proud: Farming.
Now that you've had a few weeks to prance gaily around the definitely-not-Asian land of Pandaria, it's time to put on your raiding trousers and get down to serious business. Blizzard yesterday opened up the Mogu'shan Vaults, World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria's first raid for you to throw your corpses at in the hope of striking shiny loot.
Shacknews Managing Editor John Keefer returns to World of Warcraft to explore the new world of Pandaria. Read his travelogue to discover more about his ongoing journey.
My hunter had to clear off some cobwebs before taking a trip to the Isle of Pandaria for the new World of Warcraft expansion. He hadn't been adventuring since just after the Cataclysm. He was maxed out at 85, but his gear was somewhat lacking, having not raided much with the guild after a self-imposed hiatus. But the allure of a new adventure brought me back, and while I was confident in his ability, my skills were rusty and so much had changed since I had last visited Stormwind. After a bit of research and practice, though, I was right as rain, and ready to see what the new continent had to offer.
My first glimpse of the new land offered a sense of déjà vu. The Horde was there, spreading their chaos as always, but the new surroundings had the feel of Stranglethorn Vale in the Eastern Kingdoms or Nagrand in Outland. I was battling monkey-like Hozen (I fully expected a quest telling me to kill the "Leader Hozen") and making friends with fish-like Jinyu. Except for the Oriental musical ambiance, it was almost a feeling of "been there, done that."
The Horde and Alliance are at war again, and it finally spilled over to the panda lands very early this morning with the launch of Mists of Pandaria, the newest expansion for World of Warcraft. Many players have been playing non-stop since the servers clicked over to the new content at midnight PT.
Good Afternoon, Shack. I got my World of Warcraft Collector's Edition for Mists of Pandaria today and if you are familiar with Blizzard, then you know the usual inclusions in a CE. You get a cool coffee table art book, a mouse pad, a soundtrack, a behind the scenes video and the game on DVD. And when you finally enter your special decoder-ring serial number, you will log into the game and find each of your characters has a special in-game mount and in-game pet, perfect to test out with the new pet battle system.
Blizzard is laying the groundwork for its next World of Warcraft expansion, Mists of Pandaria. Before you jump into a world of pandas, the game client will receive the 5.0.4 patch. The biggest changes come to classes and the new talent system, and there's plenty to check out.
If you fancy playing a pandaman in World of Warcraft but don't much fancy actually buying the Mists of Pandaria expansion, good news! Blizzard will be opening every race up to all players, whether they own the expansion which introduced them or not. Yes you, person who somehow has kept playing WoW all these years without buying a single expansion, will soon be able to have goblins, werewolves, space-goats and all that jazz.
You really have to hand it to Blizzard. They sure have a way of making something appealing through their cinematics. Whether you like the idea of Kung Fu pandas in World of Warcraft or not, this new opening cinematic for Mists of Pandaria is pretty compelling.
If you have been chomping at the bit to create a new Pandaren monk in World of Warcraft, you'll get you chance when the Mists of Pandaria expansion launches on September 25. If just having the game isn't enough, Blizzard also detailed the tschotskes available in the special editions.
Read more: Digital Deluxe and Collector's editions available for pre-order now »
Every so often, Blizzard enlists its still faithful World of Warcraft players to bring new blood into the game for a free item. It's that time again, and the prize this time is yet another new mount, the Obsidian Nightwing.
There is a difference in this mount, though.This time, you become the winged panther and players will get to ride on your back. With the debut of the new mount, Blizzard is retiring the X-53 Touring Rocket as a Recruit-a-Friend reward.
"They made too many changes. They should have expected that might bother a few (million) people."
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