Blizzard have released the Cinematic trailer for the World of Warcraft Expansion, Mists of Pandaria. Like all trailers of this kind it tells you nothing about the game. Still, go watch a Panda(ren) beat up a man and a.. bigger, greener man.
Sadly DreamWorks Animation have made me unable to watch it without laughing.
Legend tells of a legendary warrior whose kung fu skills were the stuff of legend…
BlizzCon 2009 Artwork
This morning, Blizzard announced that they were cancelling this year’s annual festival where they usually hold rock concerts and showcase their latest in game-development.
Blizzard Entertainment, known for the World of Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo franchises, will be too busy working on developing games. A short press release from Blizz said: “We’re also heavily focused on getting Diablo III, Mists of Pandaria, and Heart of the Swarm into players’ hands as soon as possible.”
However, there will still be big tournaments for World of Warcraft Arena and Starcraft II later this year in the 2012 Battle.net World Championship Event. It will likely be one of the biggest eSports events of the year with pro-gamers around the world playing for the title.
The Championship is said to be taking place in Asia, but dates and times are yet to be confirmed. BlizzCon will be returning in 2013 for what will hopefully be the biggest one to date, considering their plans to skip this year, although this is of course good news if it means we get the next set of Blizzard games quicker.
Blizzard are known to be working on a mysterious MMO, named ‘Titan’, but the lack of news on that topic continues. But we are still expecting a few games from Blizz this year, including the next World of Warcraft expansion: Mists of Pandaria, the first Starcraft II expansion: Heart of the Swarm, and the third-entry into the Diablo Franchise: Diablo III, which is still in closed beta.
Akardo
BlizzCon 2011 started today with CEO and Founder, Michael Morhaime, making some big announcements, followed by a crowd favourite, Chris Metzen.
Biggest announcements for each of Blizzard’s big franchises include the new World of Warcraft expansion, Mists of Pandaria, which was leaked several months ago but has now been made official.
With the new expansion, there will be new PvE zones and general content, along with the new race (of Pandas) which can be played by both Alliance AND Horde, the new class, Monk, and the level cap goes up to 90. There will also be a new talent system, and more PvE content that will convince you to play more out in the world, rather than sitting around cities.
Diablo III is now “on the home stretch,” said Metzen, with still no official release date, due to Blizzard’s usual process of it being released “when it’s done.” Diablo 3 Collector’s Edition includes in-game items for D3, SC2, and WoW, as well as an art book, and a very awesome 4GB Soulstone USB device.
As of now, you can purchase a World of Warcraft Annual pass – a year’s subscription that you pay for monthly, but you get some excellent goodies, including a digital version of Diablo 3 for free, access to the new WoW expansion beta, and an in-game mount: Tyrael’s Charger.
With Starcraft 2, there has been various units released for Terran, Protoss, and Zerg, but the focus this year is on the expansion, Heart of the Swarm, which continues the epic storyline with Kerrigan in the campaign, as well as new multiplayer modes that are yet to be seen.
You can still purchase a BlizzCon 2011 Virtual Ticket to see the upcoming panels, competitions, and tournaments, and still get the Murkablo WoW in-game pet and see Foo Fighters live tomorrow night. Blizzard have also released three EPIC trailers for each game that can be found online now, including the especially epic Diablo 3 trailer, The Black Soulstone.
Akardo
Blizzard Entertainment have announced Foo Fighters as the musical guests at BlizzCon 2011.
The press release was released yesterday, announcing the headliners for the closing concert of this year’s BlizzCon on the 21-22 Oct.
Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl said: “We’re pretty sure that in the future, music historians will look back at BlizzCon 2011 as the unquestionable pinnacle of Foo Fighters’ long and illustrious career,” which you can’t argue with, they had Ozzy himself only two years ago.
BlizzCon first started in 2005 with only about 8000 people attending, this year’s Con is looking more like 30,000+ people, and the guests for the closing concert included Level 60 Elite Tauren Chieftain, a comedian, and The Offspring. Since then, it has just got bigger and bigger, with Ozzy Osbourne, and the D (Tenacious D) rocking the halls of Anaheim – just as Foo Fighters will do next month.
As of BlizzCon 2009, it was available live via internet stream and covered both days as well as exclusive interviews and discussion, this was available for a much more reasonable price of around £25, and the system is much improved as you now have choice over four halls on what to watch and when, plus it counts as a front row seat to see the closing ceremony.
This year, expect to see some Starcraft 2 updates tournaments from literally the best players around, plenty of World of Warcraft coverage, and probably most significant this year, Blizzard’s third franchise which has just gone into closed beta, the much anticipated: Diablo 3.
BlizzCon will run over two days on the 21 and 22 of October, and there are still an unallocated number of virtual tickets available from the website, which will give you great views for developer panels, competitions, tournaments, and the closing ceremony, not to mention the World of Warcraft in-game pet, Murkablo!
At the end of November some leaked documents appeared online via MMOGameSite which seemingly detailed Blizzard’s release schedule up to 2015.
In this document there are the details of WOW, Starcraft and Diablo 3 expansions but interestingly there was also a release date for an unknown title called ‘Titan’ for Q4, 2013. There were rumours circulating that this could be Blizzard’s next gen MMO which was first hinted at a couple of years ago.
Interestingly at Blizzcon this year Blizzard announced that other than WOW Blizzard were not currently developing another MMO and had no plans to.
Seemingly this has all changed because when Blizzard’s senior VP, Frank Pearce, was interviewed by Destructoid he was asked about Titan:
The media is not supposed to know anything about that. It’s our next-gen MMO project.
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