20 years of Blizzard

A while ago Blizzard posted this rather tame video of Mike Morheim and Frank Pearce, saying thanks to all their customers for enabling them to run Blizzard for all these years. If that had been the only thing they posted then I would think their 20 year celebratory bash was rather dull (and others would agree). But as it turns out, they got more in store for us.

Today they posted a 48 minute documentary, looking back at the early years of Blizzard. I’ve been watching it myself and I have to say it is very interesting for anyone who loves to geek out on stuff like this. Here’s the full message posted on Battle.net:

Did you know that Blizzard Entertainment was originally founded under a completely different name? What is the significance of Jawassic Park in the context of Blizzard Entertainment’s art culture? Whatever happened to Orcs in Space? These and many, many more questions are answered in the full-length video we’ve just released on the Blizzard 20th Anniversary site. Clocking in at almost an hour, this video features candid commentary from the people who have spent the last two decades creating the games that helped make Blizzard Entertainment the company it is today.

Head over to the anniversary site and check out the Blizzard Retrospective Video now!

Warcraft II

Back when they started the company, I was only six years old and couldn’t really enjoy their product.

In fact, the first Blizzard product that I played (and really loved) was Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness. It was really the first PC game that I played that I kept coming back to and really enjoyed over and over for many years. I remember thinking that the graphics were amazing and everything just seemed so… “detailed”. I realize now that what I was enjoying at that early age was Blizzards obsessive compulsion for bringing extreme polish to all of their games.

To this day I randomly get the sound bytes appearing in my head:

• “Yesh me looord”
• “Work, work!”
• “Zug Zug!“
• “shchwoobou”
• “Lok’thar!”
• “Your sound card works perfectly“

Not only did it look good and sound good, it was also a lot of fun and the map editor that came with it meant you could dream up your own multiplayer scenarios! I had many days and nights of fun playing with my friends, trying to achieve monetary and military superiority.

Diablo

After Warcraft II there was Diablo. A game that I played from start to finish, many times over, spending hours on end walking through the game (When Diablo II was released a few years later I remember my favorite feature being able to run). I had played several RPG games, fantasy games, dungeon games, etc. None of them really stuck a cord with me like Diablo did. It was so atmospheric – And this, for me, is the key word when I’m talking about games. This is a standard that has been set by Blizzard and is forever cemented in my head. I want games to be atmospheric, full of mood, feeling, visuals and sound that belong together!

I might have spent more hours of my life playing Diablo and Diablo II combined than World of Warcraft and I have some friends who still, to this day, play Diablo II every week. So after reading this you can understand that I am quite excited about Diablo III.

Starcraft

And of course, Starcraft hasn’t passed me by. Among my friends, after Warcraft II, Starcraft was The Game. We would talk about it in school (some of us for a bit too long), we would write down strategies, we would plan events where we could come together in LAN parties and play Starcraft. We would have our own sort of unofficial tournaments. Whoever was beating everyone else at Starcraft was the man at the time. There were few things that could elevate your persona among a nerdy crowd than winning a game of Starcraft against a reigning champion.

I remember 8 player “Free for all” games that would last for hours on specially designed maps that had nearly unlimited amounts of resources wherein one champion would slowly arise. Most of the time it was a specific classmate of mine who won, he later in life became a professional poker player and now lives in Las Vegas. I wonder if those two things are connected?

Heh, I meant to write something quick and short. Oh well.

Happy birthday Blizzard, here’s to many more years of awesome gaming!

Hunter season 10 Arena gear

Segways? hah.

MMO-Champion recently brought us the news of the Arena season 10 gear, coming with patch 4.2. This hunter set looks pretty sweet in my opinion but still doesn’t look nearly as awesome as the season 9 (codename: pirate ninja) set in my opinion. This would mainly be due to the fact that the previous set was so deliciously awesome rather than the new set being lame (because it isn’t).

If only they would get the PvP gear designers working on PvE gear…

PvP Season 10 gear

Hmm.. I think I’m sticking to my season 9 gear for all of Cataclysm!

Random video

Highlighted randomness (Source)

Which class would you nerf and what would you nerf about them?

Nerf calling is the path to the dark side. Nerf calling leads to L2P comments. L2P comments leads to Rage posting. Rage posting leads to suffering the ban hammer.

Interesting reading

• Yogg-Saron soloed by Death Knight on MMO-Champions forums
• Why are there so few tanks by Jinxed Thoughts
• What do MMO Fans Really Want? by We Fly Spitfires

Cheers,
Gav

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