blizzard

For a PC-only game built on well-trod swords-and-sorcery territory, Diablo III is generating a surprising amount of buzz from not only serious PC gamers, but also more mainstream and casual gamers. That's good for PC gaming, as this may be the biggest thing to happen to that field since Minecraft.

But will Diablo III be able to capture hearts and minds the way its two predecessors did, starting back in 1996? PC gamers Dan Ackerman and Rich Brown debate the relevance of this action RPG. … Read more

Diablo III isn't just Blizzard's most preordered effort ever; it's also Amazon's most preordered PC game of all time.

A representative of the online retailer told GameSpot this morning that the action role-playing game today became the site's most preordered PC game ever, beating out previous Blizzard efforts like Starcraft II and World of Warcraft: Cataclysm.

Read more of "Diablo III Amazon's most preordered PC game ever" at GameSpot.… Read more

Turn off your cell phone and cancel any commitments. The Diablo III open beta weekend begins today.

The beta lasts until 10 a.m. PT Monday, April 23, and will serve as a stress test before the highly anticipated May 15 launch of the influential action role-playing game. Anyone can play the Diablo III open beta weekend by signing up for a free account on Battle.net and downloading the Diablo III beta PC/Mac client. … Read more

World of Warcraft creator Blizzard has said it's "looking into" crafting an iPhone version of its time-destroying MMORPG.

Senior World of Warcraft producer John Lagrave told Eurogamer the world is "evolving toward" gadgets like the iPhone. "It would be foolish for any game developer to not be looking at that," he said.

Confirmation that Blizzard has its eye on a mobile future will be welcome news for WoW addicts who currently have to stop playing to do things like take the bus or go to the bathroom.

Read more of "Blizzard 'looking into' World of Warcraft on iPhone" at Crave UK. … Read more

Chris Blizzard, a high-profile figure in the Firefox world, has left his job as Mozilla's director of Web platform to join a startup.

"I'm trying something new and starting in the next week or so I'm going to be joining a very small startup that's based in Palo Alto," Blizzard said in his announcement last week on his blog. "I happened to stumble across an amazing team that's doing great (and difficult!) work that deals with the intersection of systems, compilers, and web-scale problems."

Blizzard has been in charge of the &… Read more

The wait for Diablo III is nearly over. Blizzard Entertainment today attached a May 15 release date to the long-awaited action role-playing game. Gamers can prepurchase the title today on Battle.net.

Beginning on May 15, gamers can purchase Diablo III at brick-and-mortar retailers throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, South Korea, Southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau. Additionally, players in those regions--as well as in Mexico, Argentina, Chile, and Brazil--will be able to purchase a digital copy of Diablo III via Battle.net.

Read more "Diablo III raging May 15" at GameSpot.

There's sour news out of Irvine, Calif., today, as Activision Blizzard subsidiary Blizzard Entertainment announced that it will reduce its global workforce by 600 employees.

The company noted that 10 percent of its staff cuts--or about 60 people--were actively involved in game development.

Blizzard was quick to point out that the World of Warcraft development team will not be impacted by the staff reductions.

The company's massively popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game has struggled in the past year, slipping from 10.3 million to 10.2 million subscribers through the end of December.

Read more of "Blizzard laying off 600" at GameSpot. … Read more

A game like World of Warcraft requires several thousand servers to operate the hundreds of online realms within its ecosystem. Earlier this year, Blizzard Entertainment auctioned off several of those server blades "used during World of Warcraft's early days."

A Reddit post brought up the subject again recently, and contains a few pictures of a server blade used for the European server Sunstrider from February 27, 2005 to August 24, 2010. There's little doubt that countless gamers spent thousands, if not millions, of hours playing during that time frame. A special clear enclosure reveals the innards of the server, which contains 6 gigabytes of RAM (DDR-400MHz). It did not come with the original hard drives. … Read more

After at least three years and an estimated $155 million, Electronic Arts and BioWare open their new massive multiplayer game, Star Wars: The Old Republic to general audiences on December 20.

The developers' hope is that the game will bring meaningful competition to the World of Warcraft-dominated online gaming market. Gamers and the "Star Wars" faithful, on the other hand, just hope the game is fun. We've been playing the game in an early release phase, open to customers who preordered the game and others.

Rich: Games in the MMO (massive multiplayer online) genre are notoriously hard … Read more