Tag: Blizzard

Blizzard Offers Charity To Hurricane Sandy Relief


Blizzard is my favorite company when it comes to charity. In 2009, Blizzard released the Pandaran Monk pet, raising $1.1 million for the Make-A-Wish Foundation. In 2010, the Moonkin hatchling raised over $800 grand for the Make-A-Wish Foundation. In 2011, the Cenarion Hatchling raised nearly $2 million in support of disaster relief following the tsunami in Japan. With the recent Hurricane Sandy that tore up the eastern coast of the United States, Blizzard has announced that a special Cinder Kitten pet will be released on the Blizzard Store.

The pet will cost $10 and 100% of proceeds will go toward the Red Cross relief effort.

(Source: World of Warcraft)

World of Warcraft Exploit Leads To City Massacre


In some MMOs, the idea of players being able to engage in PvP combat outside of designated areas can be horrifying. Someone gaining the ability to engage in combat where they shouldn’t could go on a rampage and make use of the full loot systems in games like RuneScape, and make the lives of many players miserable before they are eventually banned. In MMOs like World of Warcraft, the threat is slightly less present. Death is little more than a time setback, the penalty paid in a moderate fee to repair armor.

And speaking of World of Warcraft, everyone is dying. In the streets, in the houses, but mostly in the main cities. For several hours yesterday, on multiple servers, a kill exploit ran rampant through the major cities of Azeroth, with low level characters mowing down players and NPCs without a second thought. The exploit was hotfixed by Blizzard, and the perpetrators have presumably been banned. Eurogamer tracked down the source of the exploit, and found quite an interesting justification for the action:

“We had to. The first account ban for using the kill hack was issued around 30 minutes before we started nuking cities. We did so because we knew it was going to be fixed,”

Now might be a good time to explain that just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you are obligated to.

(Source: Eurogamer)

Blizzard: Will Not Up WoW's Free Trial


World of Warcraft may still be at the top of the game, but if the past few years are any indication, it is a title that may be lost in the foreseeable future. Since it hit its peak just a couple of years ago, World of Warcraft has seen a substantial loss of players, down to the current level of approximately nine million. Still, this figure doesn’t appear to have frightened the top brass at Blizzard Entertainment.

In an interview with Gamasutra, Blizzard stated that the developer has no plans to increase the current free to play limit. Producer John Lagrave commented that there are special parts of the game that he would rather reserve for paying customers.

“We looked at whether Level 20 would give you a good sense of what our game is, and we think it does. We’ve definitely slid some of the pay-for features into the first 20 Levels,”

Sorry, gamers who for one reason or another are still holding out.

Blizzard: Will Not Up WoW’s Free Trial


World of Warcraft may still be at the top of the game, but if the past few years are any indication, it is a title that may be lost in the foreseeable future. Since it hit its peak just a couple of years ago, World of Warcraft has seen a substantial loss of players, down to the current level of approximately nine million. Still, this figure doesn’t appear to have frightened the top brass at Blizzard Entertainment.

In an interview with Gamasutra, Blizzard stated that the developer has no plans to increase the current free to play limit. Producer John Lagrave commented that there are special parts of the game that he would rather reserve for paying customers.

“We looked at whether Level 20 would give you a good sense of what our game is, and we think it does. We’ve definitely slid some of the pay-for features into the first 20 Levels,”

Sorry, gamers who for one reason or another are still holding out.

International Sanctions Shut Down World of Warcraft in Iran


Iranian gamers may be waking up to find that access to a number of games will be going away in the coming weeks. According to the BBC, while the Iran government would like you to believe that the games are being banned as “western propaganda” used to “poison the minds of the youth population in Iran,” the real culprit appears to be international sanctions against the country. While many publishers already have no intention of releasing their games in Iran, this does mean that gamers in Iran will find their IP addresses blocked from accessing previously available services.

Blizzard responded to recent comments of Battle.net being blocked in Iran with the following:

We can’t speak to reports surrounding the Iranian government restricting games from its citizens. What we do know is that United States trade restrictions and economic sanction laws prohibit Blizzard from doing business with residents of certain nations, including Iran. We’ve recently tightened up our procedures to ensure compliance with those laws, which means we must restrict access to our games by players in those nations.

Iranian youth may want to consider a proxy if they intend on continuing to poison their minds with western propaganda.

(Source: BBC)

World of Warcraft Mobile App Now Free For All


Good news, World of Warcrafters, your game just became a little bit freer. As a convenience service, Blizzard launched the World of Warcraft remote. This service allows players to connect to the auction house remotely, chat with their guild, review prices, and bid on items even if their character is not at an auction house. Up until now, this service cost about $3 a month on top of your regular Warcraft subscription. As announced today, Blizzard has made all of the features of WoW Remote available for free.

Starting today, all of the features that were previously part of the optional World of Warcraft Remote subscription service are now available for free to all World of Warcraft subscribers.

Players who had already been paying for WoW Remote have received a thank you note, as well as 7 free days of game time and a non-combat pet.

(Source: World of Warcraft)

Blizzard Releases Free Trial For Diablo III


Blizzard announced today that Diablo III is launching a starter edition, the restrictions of which will be familiar to those who participated in the pre-release beta. Announced earlier today, new players will be able to play up through Act 1, to the Skeleton King, absolutely free. There are several restrictions in place to keep the service from being abused by gold farmers: Level is capped at 13, starter accounts will be unable to access either auction house, and match making will only be available with other starter edition users.

Any progress made during the starter edition will be carried over if you do decide to purchase the full game. The starter edition serves to branch out the already available guest pass.

(Source: Battle.net)

Blizzard Servers Breached


Grab your authenticators and rev up the conspiracy machine. With all the server breaches that have happened over the past year or so, it seemed inevitable that Blizzard would eventually be the victim of such an attack. A security notice on Battle.net has been posting warning users that a security breach has resulted in delicate information being released.

According to the notice, encrypted passwords, security questions, email addresses, and mobile authenticator information was stolen in the breach. Mike Mohaime points out that the information leaked is not enough to recover an account, however users over the next few days will be forced to change their secret questions and mobile authenticator users will be required to update to a new version of the software.

All in all the breach was bad, but as several sites are pointing out, it could have been much worse.

(source: WoW Insider)

World of Warcraft Dropping More Weight: Another Million Subscribers Lost


World of Warcraft is a paradox in and of itself: While the subscription numbers continue to drop, Blizzard has been very quick to point out that the game just continues to become more profitable. The problem, according to Blizzard, is that players are becoming bored with grinding content in between expansion packs. To stem the flow of gamers, Blizzard has offered everything under the sun minus the kitchen sink to bring back their ex-customers. So far, Blizzard has offered full upgrades to Cataclysm, free level 80 characters, a copy of Diablo III for subscribing for a full year, and more. To take care of what they see as the source of the leak, Blizzard has committed to less downtime between expansions and more content.

The latest numbers from Activision show World of Warcraft standing at 9.1 million subscribers, a ten percent drop from last quarter. Warcraft’s new expansion, Mists of Pandaria, launches later this year and hopes to stop, if not reverse, the exodus of players.

Despite this bad news, World of Warcraft remains the top subscription MMO by a wide margin.

(Source: Gamasutra)

Now This is How You Charity: World of Warcraft Server Blade Charity


It is that time of the year again! Blizzard was once again out and about and ready to give. Blizzard auctioned off two thousand original World of Warcraft server blades, with the proceeds to go to St. Jude Children’s Hospital. Well the final tallies are in, and Blizzard has raised $330,000.

“Each winner in this auction will own a small monument to those collective experiences. The best part is that this auction benefits a great charity doing tremendous work in helping children from the U.S. and around the world.”

Blizzard holds regular charities in World of Warcraft with benefits toward the Red Cross, Children’s Hospital, Make-a-Wish Foundation, and more.

(Source: Games Industry)