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Molten Games picks up NCsoft funding, former Blizzard and SOE execs
NCSoft and Molten Games want you to know about... Molten Games. What is Molten Games? It's a new San Diego-based company that says it's "focused on breaking free from the traditional developer/publisher relationship and putting gameplay first and foremost." That's nice, we hear some of you saying, but why should you care? According to Molten, you should care for two reasons. Number one, the firm has secured a multi-million dollar investment nest egg from NCSoft. Reason number two, or more accurately, reasons two, three, and four, are team members Paul Della Bitta, former global head of e-sports and community at Blizzard, Jungwon Hahn, former head of Blizzard's Korean office, and Blaine Smith, former senior producer at SOE and a veteran of Relic's Company of Heroes and Dawn of War franchises. So, there you go. Molten says it will release information pertaining to its first online game "at a later date." [Source: Molten press release]
Big Download talks to Blizzard about eSports and PvE/PvP
Our newest sister site Big Download is just a week old, and yet they're already playing with the big boys -- Steven Wong has posted an interview with Blizzard's Lead Designer Tom "Kalgan" Chilton, as well as Paul Della Bitta and Joong Kim of Blizzard's eSports division about what it's going to take to tune the Arena game just right. As he did before, Kalgan confirmed that the Arena Tournament Realm is acting as a laboratory for changes and updates to classes.Della Bitta confirms, also, that Blizzard is still interested in letting players watch the matches, either via television or some other way (we heard that way back when from WSVG's President -- when they were still around, anyway). And Joong Kim lays out a simple timeline for the Arena tourney: Blizzard expects the online portion to be finished mid-July, and the Global Finals will start later in the year, around October (which is when another big Blizzard event is taking place... coincidence?).Wong doesn't get Kalgan to list a favorite class (obviously -- think of the torment that would cause on the forums), but he does confirm yet again that Blizzard isn't giving up on keeping both the PvP and PvE games the same. They want players using the same abilities as much as possible in both types of gameplay, and apparently they're committed to juggling both of those flaming torches for as long as they can.
Big Download's big interview with World of Warcraft's Arenamasters
Today on Massively's sister site Big Download, there's a featured article all about the World of Warcraft Arena Tourney. The BD team sat down with Tom Chilton, Paul Della Bitta (Senior Manager, Global Community and eSports) and Joong Kim (eSports Manager) to talk about that huge $200,000 prize purse, the future of World of Warcraft as an eSport, and the reaction players have had to the Arena.We found especially interesting the news that eventually these online matches will transition to live events. They're still looking for a place to throw the Global Finals this year, probably sometime in October or November. Eventually, they'd like to look into televised matches; it may sound strange, but Guild Wars has definitely shown there's a market for that kind of event. Go check out the interview, and stay tuned for more details on the WoW Arena Tournament.
