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According to MMO-Champion’s post Blizzard has just registered a new name to be used in the online gaming sphere. This name is Mists of Pandaria and is supposedly the upcoming expansion of the world’s most succesful MMO World of Warcraft. The reason it is believed its for WoW and not for their project that’s codenamed Titan is because the Panda’s already play a part in the Warcraft world. This youtube vid is proof:

In the forums, speculation is already underway, general opinion is that this expansion will see the addition of two new playable races and will expand the level cap to 90. I’m curious to see how long Blizzard can keep its users entertained. And I’m very curious to see what project Titan is. Any ideas?

I’ve written about gold farming in the past as a problem that’s plaguing many MMO games like World of Warcraft and the Diablo games in the past. Automated (or very single-minded) players would  only be in the game for the sake of earning gold to sell it to other players willing to pay a premium. The problem has always been the illegal nature of it all and the shabby sort of people able to make this work on a steady basis (gold farming sweat shops).

Blizzard, in my opinion the most successful publisher in the world, has now decided to incorporate gold trading in their upcoming Diablo 3 game. Allowing people to offer items on an in game real-money auction house. Listing items here will require a small fee (to guard the quality of the items on offer) and a cash out will require a small fee to be paid to Blizzard.

I think this allows for a more ‘clean’ playing field and will get the shady groups and companies away from gamers.

An extensive article can be found on Gaming Radar about this subject.

And another tech company going for an IPO very soon; Zynga. Developer of Facebook games like Farmville and Empire and Allies, commanding millions of daily player on the world’s biggest social network. With the IPO, Zynga would value itself somewhere between $15 – $20 billion. By comparison, Electronic Arts is worth only $ 8 billion, and Activision Blizzard has a market cap of about $ 13 billion. So, once again, I feel an IPO coming up that is too highly prices. I understand; it’s climbing together with the huge Facebook valuation, but still, the current major publishers have better and more sustainable businesses than Zynga has right now.

Some arguments? Activision Blizzard has 12 million subscribers for World of Warcraft, and that’s for the past 5 years, Blizzard’s development studio has the #1 IP’s in the world and they actually have a trackrecord of being able to adapt to change; what’s Zynga going to do when Facebook fails? Which I know for certain it will.

VentureBeat wrote a more objective article about it here.

I already wrote about Activision Blizzard and their new upcoming MMO, but they have even more ideas to share. How about a future without consoles? They do acknowledge the fact that consoles are a big part of the business, but services like OnLive make a console-less future very possible! (more…)

Normally, Blizzard does not speak out about upcoming titles. The company, nicknamed ‘Fortress of Solitude’, did manage to slip some information to the public at the Deutsche Bank Securities Technology Conference; telling gamers to expect something with a broader appeal than World of Warcraft.

Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick said:

What we’ve announced at Blizzard is that we have Starcraft II coming, Diablo has been in production… and a new, unannounced MMORPG that has a little more broad appeal

So the new title will NOT be a competitor to World of Warcraft, they will try to find an additional audience. To make sure this happens, Jeff Kaplan, the World of Warcraft game director, has been moved towards this brand-new property.

The upcoming changes to Battle.net; Battle.net 2.0, will also be incorporated in the new MMO, so the upcoming and current Blizzard titles; Diablo 3, Starcraft 2, World of Warcraft and now the unnamed new title, will all be woven together on one platform. Adding cash play and more rewards and recognition systems will likely expand their audience even more, if they manage to integrate it all, it will make for one hell of a platform!