Kevin Kelly
Articles by Kevin Kelly
Hands-on: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer
Still playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare? Clear your calendars on November 10. In fact, just throw them away, say goodbye to your friends and family, and stock up on ready-to-eat foods and adult diapers. If Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 manages to usurp the multiplayer throne from its predecessor – which it's expected to do – you're going to need 'em. It's an "evolution" of everything you loved about the first game, running at the same gorgeous 60 frames per second. The evening was sponsored by Microsoft (no surprise given the Modern Warfare 2 console reveal), and it was strictly multiplayer only. We played games of Domination, Assault, Team Deathmatch, and Capture the Flag on the three maps featured in this demo, for a total of four hours of fragging. Read on for what's new, some images from the event, some brand-new screenshots, and some multiplayer video at the end of the post. %Gallery-73088%
No plans for 250GB Xbox drive outside Modern Warfare 2 bundle, MS says
Shortly after the announcement of the Limited Edition Modern Warfare 2 Xbox 360 bundle, we had a chance to grill Microsoft's Albert Penello, director of platform marketing for Xbox, about the bundle. While Pinello confirmed the bundle's absence of any additional accessories – no high-definition cables, no WiFi adapter – he also commented on the 250GB hard drive. When asked if Microsoft had any plans to sell the significantly embiggened hard drive separately, Pinello said, "I wouldn't say plans. Maybe. I hear this story every two years. It was the 20s, and then the 60s, and then the 120s." Not that you could afford it anyway. So, Microsoft doesn't have "plans" per se, but Pinello pointed out that, historically, these things become available separately. Until then, if you want a massive 250GB of Xbox storage, your only avenue is purchasing the $399 Modern Warfare 2 bundle. %Gallery-73023%
JBO: Joystiq Box Office, September 7 - September 11
We can't be gaming all the time, despite our best efforts, and from time to time we'll actually take advantage of the movie-playing abilities on our gaming systems. JBO features our top picks for XBL, PSN, Netflix's Watch Instantly and Blu-ray each week. Recommendations of the Week: Double Impact (Netflix Watch Instantly: Mac/PC or Xbox Live, subscription required: starts at $8.99 per month) There's a flurry of chopsocky action newly available in the Blu-ray department just after the break, but we just had to show this Jean Claude Van Damme "classic" a little love. He plays twin brothers, separated at birth and reunited to kick some bad guy butt. One is raised in a life of entitlement, and the other lives on the underbelly of society, but when they're together ... it's pure early '90s movie cheese. The tagline along sums it up for you: "One packs a punch. One packs a piece. Together they deliver." But what exactly do they deliver? That question remains unanswered. Read for the full list on a system-by-system basis just after the break. As usual, we'll see you at the popcorn st-- well, actually, we won't see you at all. But you catch our drift. Plus, be sure to tell us what you'll be watching, or what you've seen recently that bowled you over.
PAX 2009: Cosplaying in Seattle
In the aftermath of PAX this year, we almost forgot to post one of our favorite event pastimes: a cosplay gallery. We've been too busy slapping on facemasks and hazmat suits to quell the nerd flu outbreaks. There weren't nearly as many people dressed up as last year, but we're hoping that Tycho and Gabe add a full-on costume contest to the mix next year for PAX East or West. Did you see that Big Daddy costume we posted about? Well, that guy wasn't at PAX ... but we wish he would have been. Still, there were some impressive efforts up in Seattle this year, and you can take a gander at them in the gallery below. And yes, we've included a photo of War's horse Ruin from Darksiders, because he was a mechanical bull who just happened to be wearing a giant, killer horse skin. Cheater. Anyhow, knock yourself out in the gallery below. After all, we braved a freakin' virus to get these pictures for you.%Gallery-72343%
PAX 2009 interview: The Beatles: Rock Band lead designer Chris Foster
The Beatles: Rock Band drops today, along with the band's remastered albums availability on iTunes (?) and a flood of Beatles: Rock Band news. Fans will be wailing on plastic instruments all day in an effort to travel back in time and live out their fantasies of becoming musical legends. We caught up with lead designer Chris Foster at PAX, who gave up some secrets about the game (including the scrapped "forever" mode). Read on for the full interview.%Gallery-68343%
PAX 2009: Battlefield 1943 producer talks lack of DLC
We spoke with Battlefield 1943 producer Gordon Van Dyke at PAX and asked him why there hasn't been any DLC at all for the game so popular it crashed servers and broke sales records. The main reason? DICE is busy. Apparently it's working so hard on the next two Battlefield games that it doesn't have time to show BF1943 any extra love at all, which is a bit perplexing given the popularity of the title. Gordon told us, "We don't have any immediate plans right now, but it's not ruled out. There's a lot of pressure on the team for Battlefield 3 and Battlefield: Bad Company 2 ... we don't want to stretch things too thin and and make something that's not up to quality. Battlefield 1943 is a huge game with a lot that we can pull from. We just want to make sure we keep our options open, and make sure that the decision we land on is what's best for everyone. We don't want to be that company that pushes out DLC just for DLC's sake." Fair enough, but we'd still like to see more maps and modes come to Battlefield 1943 like ... yesterday. Hey, hire some interns already!
PAX 2009: Red Dead Redemption lets you kill ... everything
Red Dead Redemption's promised Wild West sandbox came to life in a build shown off to attendees at PAX over the weekend. One of the first things we noticed is that you can end a life whenever you want. What kind of lives? See a bunny bouncing by? Kablam. Attacked by a wild bear? Kapow. Angry at your horse and want to put him down? Kablang. You can kill literally every living thing in the game and, in some cases, skin them and sell their hides to the furrier in town to make some dough. We doubt he deals in horse skins, however. There's more beyond the break, just mind you don't get shot.%Gallery-72189%
JBO: Joystiq Box Office, August 31 - September 7
We can't be gaming all the time, despite our best efforts, and from time to time we'll actually take advantage of the movie-playing abilities on our gaming systems. JBO features our top picks for XBL, PSN, Netflix's Watch Instantly and Blu-ray each week. Joystiq Box Office has been away for a couple of weeks due to BlizzCon and other supernatural events, but we're back with a vengeance for the PAX edition. Double up, pop some corn, and enjoy the three-day weekend. Recommendations of the Week: Mad Men: Season 3 – My Old Kentucky Home (PSN: $2.99 HD or $1.99 SD to own) If you haven't been watching AMC's Mad Men, then you've been missing out on the cultural phenomenon that's making everyone wish they were living back in the early 1960s. Men wore suits and fedoras and had three-martini lunches, and women wore dresses and enough underwear to construct an entire parachute. Don Draper has replaced James Bond as the cool man every guy wants to be ... and he's a freaking ad executive. Highly recommended. World's Greatest Dad (840 HD, 560 SD to rent)This movie ran the festival circuit and had a lot of good buzz, which is rare for a Robin Williams movie these days. I missed this when I was at Sundance, but enough of my movie-going critic friends loved it that I feel comfortable recommending it. It's a black comedy starring Williams, is directed by Bobcat Goldthwait, and had a small theatrical opening on August 21. Now you can already watch it on Xbox Live. Not too shabby. Maybe we're not too far away from theater and at-home release dates being the same day all the time. Read for the full list on a system-by-system basis just after the break. As usual, we'll see you at the popcorn st ... well, actually we won't see you at all. But you catch our drift. Plus, be sure to tell us what you'll be watching, or what you've seen recently that bowled you over.
PAX 2009: Hands-on with Torchlight
We never thought a completely new game would rise from the ashes of Mythos in just over a year, but that's exactly what Torchlight represents. We played through Torchlight for half an hour at the show, and it's a delightful action RPG that looks like a cartoon version of Diablo ... which doesn't mean it's for toddlers. There's still killing of the smashing, bashing and magical varieties throughout this thing, you know!%Gallery-72098%
PAX 2009: Brutal Legend lets you decide about the F-word
Tim Schafer showed us the opening cinematic for Brutal Legend at PAX, where they revealed the band that Jack Black's Eddie Riggs roadies for: Kabbage Boy. It's a band full of hipster d-bags (one guy wears a Phantom of the Opera half-mask) and they think they're metal. The only problem is that they sound like every emo-alternaband out there, much to Eddie's chagrin. Hopefully we'll get to reveal who's in the band soon, until then just let your speculation run wild.All of that inside, the cinematic included a very novel way to select if you want to hear the super-cussin' & swearin' version of Brutal Legend, or go the sanitized and parental-safe route. Eddie notices one of the musicians crawling around on top of his behemoth-sized, Stonehenge-on-acid set (which Eddie has already been chastised for not tailoring to their "tween" audience), and is not happy. He spouts, "I don't know how many times I've told you not to crawl around up there! I don't know what the F....." And then the game freezes. A menu screen pops up and you have to choose if you want to hear naughty words or not, and when you resume he finishes the word appropriately. Much better than choosing from a menu screen, eh? There another option-setting moment like this a bit later in the scene which was cut short, but we imagine it'll have something to do with violence and blood spurts. Thanks for making even the settings fun, Double Fine.
PAX 2009: Uncharted 2's Nathan Drake catches a train
Naughty Dog has been more than happy to explain to us how complicated it is to have a moving character on a moving surface, like on the floor of a collapsing building or the top of a moving train. But we have no idea how to quantify these things. We play games ... we're not math and physics experts. But if you have a barrel that needs blowing up, or a crate that needs smashing open, we're your guys.Uncharted 2's creative director Amy Hennig explained that most game levels tend to use a moving background that makes the object your character is standing on appear to be moving, and then augment that with physics. Not so with Nathan Drake. He gets to clamber over fully-modeled train cars and diveroll through actual collapsing buildings. No smoke and mirror tricks for this fortune hunter.To prove the point, the developer showed us a live demo of the game where Drake hauls himself onto the back of a speeding train while simultaneously fending off baddies on the train, and a heavily-armed helicopter that decides Drake needs to be swatted off. You'll have to fight your way forward towards an RPG if you want to survive. Hint: there's a loud, whining noise before the chopper fires its rockets, and also watch out for low-hanging lights.All of this takes place on a fully modeled and realized moving train, and it looks gorgeous, but we'll just have to take Naughty Dog's word for it as far as the mega-model railroad set that was design for this. Or, you can see what you think! Check out the new footage just after the break.
PAX 2009: Duel the Dragon DLC coming to Duels of the Planeswalkers
We've just returned from the Wizards of the Coast Magic: The Gathering party (where we were in the company of *NAME DROP ALERT* Wil Wheaton / Wesley Crusher / übergeek), and we've returned from the fray with tapped mana and ... information. WotC announced new DLC and a title update coming (finally) to the XBLA version of Duels of the Planeswalkers.Duel the Dragon, the first expansion to the popular Magic: The Gathering for the Xbox 360 set, features three new decks, six more ladder levels, new challenges including "multi-turns" that require more than one turn to win, and a final boss that is strongly hinted at in the title. They didn't announce a date for the DLC except for "soon." Even sooner than that, however, will be a full title update, which includes numerous bug fixes (no more freezes!), a forfeit option, and more.WotC execs foolishly chose yours truly to be the first to demo the new expansion, and through extreme amounts of audience help, which consisted of shouts of NOOOOO! and YEEEEEAHHHHH!, my black & blue deck triumphed over Sarkhan Vol. We'll have assets for the DLC soon, which thankfully won't include our blurry partycam shot above. Sadly the new DLC does not include deck customization, but keep hope alive.
PAX 2009: More characters for Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2
Activision isn't officially at PAX this year, the publisher just dropped in to hijack our eyeballs for the evening so we could spend some with with Blur, Tony Hawk Ride, and Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2. In the midst of the gaming and socializing, Acti revealed a few new playable characters in MUA2: Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and exclusive to the Wii ... Goofy!Okay, we jest. The ink still isn't dry on that contract yet, but we hope that future versions of this game will gave us some sort of Disney hint, even if it's just a Scrooge McDuck level where you have to swim through gold coins. All kidding aside, MUA2 has added Iceman to the PS3/360 version, while the Wii inexplicably gains the cooler characters of Cyclops, Psylocke, and Blade. Where's the justice?! While we go vigilante and deal with this news, feel free to check out the gallery below and the new Iceman video just after the break.%Gallery-49195%
PAX 2009: Lode Runner dropping to 800 points on September 14
The new version of Lode Runner for XBLA was launched earlier this year in April at a price point of 800 points ($10). Microsoft quickly flip-flopped and said the game was incorrectly priced, subsequently correcting the price to 1200 points ($15), which caused a massive amount of complaining ... but no price reduction reverse. (Or what they call a "flop-flip"). It only took Microsoft four months, but the company is now flopping back to the 800 points price for one week. Starting September 14 through September 20, you can download the game for the price it originally debuted at, and what developer Tozai considers the "sweet spot." It has 272 levels, a map editor, and a robust community component waiting on people to run around in search of gold at a reduced price.%Gallery-12908%
J. Allen Brack - Page 3
The new archaeology skill sounds interesting. What went into creating that? Where did that come from? Well the actual origin of it is what ended up becoming the Path of the Titans. We experimented with a couple of different ideas. We talked about doing another talent pane that would be kind of a fourth talent tree and discarded that and eventually ended up going the Path of the Titans route. So there was a desire to kind of do that and have a way for those things to be tied together. And also, we like the idea of adding new professions. We liked the idea of adding a new secondary profession in particular. I am trying to figure out what the right one is. It is simplification of the talent trees and going through and making a pass at that and a combination is sort of what it was. You know how each race sort of has its one sort of class that gets associated with or is the one that people love. Do you think Goblins and Worgen are sort of already predisposed towards any certain class? The goblin rogue is something that jumps immediately into a lot of peoples' minds. I think a lot of that comes out once you have launched based on what the racials end up being. And we have some ideas for what the racials are, and so who is to say what it will actually end up being? But I think the goblin rogue is something that jumps immediately into a lot of peoples' minds. We have got the gnome rogue, which is very popular. So I think the goblin rogue is something that comes up very naturally. I don't know whether that is what it will be. It is really kind of hard to guess, because the players make that decision. We don't really make that decision. In terms of the Worgen, that is a good question. I don't really know what my guess is on that. I may be wrong about this, but with each expansion the level cap has been raised 10 levels. This one is only five, right? Why did you guys decide to go that route? Well the level cap is really determined by the amount of content that we want to create, and it is not determined by any kind of amount of time. The motivator behind that was mostly because of how long we wanted to work on the expansion and to figure out what the right amount of time is between expansion, because players have a need or desire to consume just vast amounts of content. We also don't want the players to feel like we are going to do the same thing every time. We are going to do the right thing that makes sense for the game and the right thing for them, even if they don't necessarily quite understand it. So this will be somewhat less content than Lich King because you're only raising it five levels? This is the largest expansion we have ever made. I actually think quite the opposite. I think this is the ... this is the largest expansion we have ever made. So there is a little less level up content for the people who are already at max level and only play one character. But we are going to have more dungeons. We are going to have more in game rating content. There is a huge amount of level up content, it is just not max level up. What was the time to 80 for Lich King? Like when it went live, how fast was the fastest person to get to 80? Do you guys know internally? I am going to not remember correctly, but I am going to say in the 32-36 hour range. [Note: it was actually 27 hours] And what do you think the time to 85 will be? Oh, wow. We haven't really made all of that content, so it is really hard to say. So I really think that it will depend on ... the guy who did that in 30 hours or whatever, he is certainly not a normal player of the game. He might not even be human at all. The last thing I wanted to ask was: for the fifth anniversary you guys are going to be doing some revamping and changing and stuff. What sort of are the plans? We know about Onyxia. What else is happening? Onyxia is the big thing we have talked about so far. So it will be the five year anniversary of WoW and the 15 year anniversary of Warcraft. We are real excited to have that. Onyxia is some peoples' very first raid that they ever did; so we are going through the achievements and doing all that. So we are pretty excited to get people to come back to that and see how that goes. For players who have done that before, they will get a chance to see it totally different. And for players who have never done it, they will get their chance as well. And maybe we'll get a new Leeroy Jenkins video as well to go along with it. #ninbutton { border-style: solid; border-color: #000; border-width: 2px; background-color: #BBB; color: #000; text-decoration: none; width: 100px; text-align: center; padding: 2px 2px 2px 2px; margin: 2px 2px 2px 2px; } .buttontext { color: #000; text-decoration: none; font: bold 14pt Helvetica; } #ninbutton:hover { text-decoration: none; color: #BBB; background-color: #000; } << BACK COMMENT
J. Allen Brack - Page 2
One of the most popular panels at BlizzCon is when they announce everything that is getting revised in the game. Does that come from internal feedback? Does it come from the forums? Is it a combination? Do you guys do your own play testing with groups? Yes, yes, and yes. We have got some ultra-hardcore players in the company. We have got some very casual players in the company. We have got a community management department that helps us manage our community, helps us get suggestions and ideas from the forums, so they help us hear from fans. And then we have people who are just on the team who are just real excited or people who work closely with the team. So yeah. They are always feeding us ideas. The challenge is not the ideas. The challenge is what are the right ideas and how do we put them together in kind of a compelling package? Even if you don't purchase Cataclysm, you'll see the effects it has on the entire world. Where did that come from? Yes. The idea is not that there is the old world that is untouched and then there is the new expansion only world. We want it to be one coherent experience. We want it to be one experience for players and make it very easy for players to play with each other and their friends. The in-game pet that you guys have included ... Grunty the Murloc. Grunty. That is a little meta for your guys. Is is acknowledging there is a world outside of Azeroth. Are you guys fine with doing that kind of stuff or do you kind of feel, "Well we have to walk a line. We can't be too meta because it is a little too much." Like you can't put a Mike Morhaime character in there. Hey, that is a good idea! [laughter] That is a really good question, actually, and it is a fine line. And it is something we talk about. In this case, we just want to do something that was really cool, and so that is how Grunty kind of came to be. It was like, "Wow. That is really cool." We have got the mini Diablo and the pet Zergling, and the Panda cub from the original collectors edition, which were also in kind of that same vein. And so we feel like for certain kind of special things we can do that and it is not really a big deal. Now someone was telling me that in-game Grunty will fight the Zergling. Yes, that's true. It is cosmetic obviously ... But it is fun. It is very much a fan kind of feature. How far out do you guys start thinking about your next expansion? Is it every time an expansion is finished, that team will then be like, "OK. Now on to the next one?" Are there simultaneous teams working on them? How does that work? We kind of have to know at least a little bit about what the next expansion is going to be by the time we wrap one up. We have one team and it is over 140 people, and it is a World of Warcraft team. We have talked about splitting up into kind of expansion one team or into a live team, a patch team, and then an expansion team. But it is really important to us that we have one vision, one kind of consistent set of everything that we are doing, so it is just one team. As we start to wrap up Wrath of the Lich King, we started to have meetings with some high level folks about what it is we wanted to do for the next expansion and kind of come up with that core feature set to start kind of brainstorming and getting ideas, because not everyone finishes an expansion at the same time. So you know, the art team is finished well before the game actually ships, because it has got to be brought to a World Master, and that has got to be replicated. Then there is a huge amount of leave time in that. So we kind of have to know at least a little bit about what the next expansion is going to be by the time we wrap one up. So you guys must have some sort of a dry erase board or a binder filled with possible expansions that maybe were halfway developed and then like, "OK. We are not going to do this one." We talked about that, but we ended up not ever going back and reusing anything like that. So it pretty much is a fresh discussion every time. It is like, "OK. Now it is time to start talking about the next expansion. What do we think the right ideas are?" And we will talk about two, three, four, five different ideas before we settle on, "Yeah, this one seems like the one the team is really excited about. This is the one we think is the right expansion or the right thing for World of Warcraft right now." So there are a lot of things that go into it. #ninbutton { border-style: solid; border-color: #000; border-width: 2px; background-color: #BBB; color: #000; text-decoration: none; width: 100px; text-align: center; padding: 2px 2px 2px 2px; margin: 2px 2px 2px 2px; } .buttontext { color: #000; text-decoration: none; font: bold 14pt Helvetica; } #ninbutton:hover { text-decoration: none; color: #BBB; background-color: #000; } << BACK COMMENT NEXT >>
Blizzard interview: J. Allen Brack on World of Warcraft
J. Allen Brack is the lead producer on World of Warcraft, and he's not just a guy working at a job -- he's a hardcore fanboy as well. If you need proof, check out his open letter to the Star Wars Galaxies community, back when he was a producer on that game. In it he mentions that he's getting married in a Star Wars-themed wedding. That's hardcore. He joined Blizzard in 2005 to work on WoW and its expansions. We sat down with him at BlizzCon to talk about the new World of Warcraft expansion, Cataclysm, and to find out how much life the title has in it. Read on after the break for the full interview, and to find out some of what's going on in WoW's biggest expansion to date. %Gallery-70703%
PAX 2009: Twisted Pixel reveals new game: Comic Jumper
It must be fun working at Twisted Pixel, where you have games featuring a hungry, purple blob, a man who travels via combustion and now, an over-muscled hero with a giant smiley face for a head. Twisted Pixel just announced Comic Jumper, its newest downloadable title. The platforms are still unannounced and the game is likely "more than a year away," according to Twisted Pixel Games co-founder Mike Wilford.You play as Captain Smiley, along with his cohort Star -- who is, umm, stuck to the Captain's chest. They're bonded together, but they hate each other! Sounds like the perfect way to expose gamers to sticky situations and witty dialogue, no? The game will have you sending Captain Smiley into different levels within assorted comic books, with the art style (and possibly gameplay) changing with each jump into a new book. "This is something that Josh [Bear, another co-founder, the third being Frank Wilson] has had in his mind since high school," Wilford said. We're wondering what it was doing in there for so long ... and what will happen once it escapes.
Interview: Blizzard's Greg Canessa on Battle.Net
In recent years, Greg Canessa has bounced from Xbox Live to PopCap Games and now onto Blizzard, where he's heading up the Battle.Net team. Version 2.0 of the service is an ambitious undertaking, and we spoke with Greg during BlizzCon about its pending launch and many of the new features. Head past the break for the full interview! %Gallery-70705%
Interview: Greg Canessa - Page 2
Rob went into some detail about the decals. They sound like an achievements system: you complete in-game goals and are awarded decals. And those appear on units? Which units?That's right. We actually have two different award systems. So you have your achievement system, and then the rewards for earning those achievements are either avatars, decals, or both. And so the avatars, again, that is pretty straightforward. Those are like your gamer pics that you get; your 2D avatars that you can put on your character. And as soon as they are tied to achievements, some will be easy to get. Some will be super hard to get. So there will be like the elite one that you get, it will be like, "Oh my God. He looks like a Lurker. Wow. The Lurker gamer pic is really rare, so he must be really awesome." So there is that. And then the decals will be broken out into Terran, Protoss, and Zerg. So they are essentially art that you can apply to the 3D model and it applies to your whole army. So you have got the gear, the Protoss one, or say the Terran will have, say, a gear, and the gear will appear on all the pieces. It will be kind of like a stamp on all the 3D models for all the pieces in the game.And then will people be able to, either inside Battle.Net or in the game, know which achievements avatars and decals are tied to? Like, if I'm looking at you and you have this awesome avatar, and I'm like, "I've got to have that," will I be able to mouse over and see how that asset is unlocked? If you go into the avatars and decals area of your profile, it is like a sticker book. In game it will be a little more indirect because if you are obviously playing a game of Starcraft, you are not going to have a lot of time when you are playing Starcraft. Out in Battle.Net, you will be able to go into your achievements. So you will be like, "Wow, that gear one, that is super cool." You will be able to go out to your character profile in Battle.Net, if you go into the avatars and decals area of your profile, it is like a sticker book. You see all the ones in color lit up that you have earned, and then all the ones in gray that you haven't earned. And you will be able to right click on that and say "view correlated achievement", and you will be able to view the achievement. It will link you out to the achievement that you need to unlock that gear. So you will be able to essentially find it through your profile.Like you would for Achievements on Xbox Live or Trophies on PSN?Exactly. But this is rewards based on that, but yeah, same sort of thing. How does Blizzard use data from old Battle.Net games? Does that data actually go as far as to affect the way games are developed? Like, for instance, "Defense of the Ancients," ido developers analyze that in data form and try to figure out why it's so popular, and then try to replicate that experience?Certainly there are pieces of data that are useful. Obviously Battle.Net is a pretty old service, so there was some data that we definitely can accumulate. And some of that data has been valuable to us in terms of our decision making process around the design for the new Battle.Net. We are pretty observant. We have looked at industry trends. We have looked at how people play our games. We have looked at, you know, DotA is a great example. And we have definitely built many aspects of the new Battle.Net design around scenarios like Dota. We want to be able to facilitate the community creating the next DotA for Starcraft 2. I mean that is definitely a design goal of ours. Switching back to what Rob had talked about. What did he mean when he mentioned an offline guest mode?All that really means is in the case, say, where you are on a laptop on an airplane, you are going to be able to play the campaign mode. So once your game, you have taken it home and you have registered it in sort of a registered installation, you are going to be able to play offline if you are, say, on a laptop. So that is what that means. Somebody in the press room here at BlizzCon was like, "Did they just say that LAN was coming back because of this offline thing?!"Offline single-player campaign.That makes more sense.As far as the new stat tracking goes, is that going to be a huge function of the new Battle.Net? Will you have your own pages of data that you will be able to access?Absolutely. And that is one of the benefits of the always connected experience, right, because you are always connected and you have got your character. We have very rich stats that we are tracking across all your game play modes. Your league and ladder play as well as your individual play, your pickup play, your co-op skirmish play, your campaign, your challenges; all that, there are stats around all of it. You have got pages of stats and so forth.During the Battle.Net presentation you guys showed some of your research into experiences like MySpace, Xbox Live, WoW, and so on. Then you had a separate spotlight on Facebook and Twitter, which are two of the most popular social media platforms today. Had you guys investigated any sort of parternship with these services within Battle.Net? The goal is for Battle.Net to be there in some form for the beta. Yeah, we have definitely looked at it, and some of those great thoughts are the same thoughts that we have. We are still figuring out what we want to do there. But we have got a lot of great ideas around ways to sort of extend our experience into social networks and bring more social network features into our service. So there are really kind of two aspects to it. Look for more from us going forward.You mentioned that eventually the new Battle.Net will support older games. Is that a pretty arduous undertaking to, say, prep Diablo 2 or the original Starcraft to run on the new Battle.Net?It could be potentially, and there is a big list of stuff we need to do. Obviously our number one goal is to get Starcraft 2 to a level of ... the Battle.Net experience to a world class level of service and support for Starcraft 2. That is the number one goal. Beyond that, of course we have got Diablo 3. We have got other games and we want to make sure that we are serving Diablo 3 and the World of Warcraft audience really well. And then that is another project that we are looking at. The answer to that question really depends on the level of integration we would be talking about. The full feature set that you saw today for Starcraft 2, that would be really ambitious for all of the games, obviously. Some subset of that may be a little less ambitious. Maybe you could do something with the social stuff. You know, it is on the list. We just don't know exactly where it is on the list.Mike said earlier today that he still believes the Starcraft 2 beta will be out this year. Will Battle.Net be working with that if it does?The goal is for Battle.Net to be there in some form for the beta. The beta is a multiplayer beta and Battle.Net is the service for Starcraft 2. By definition, Battle.Net would need to be there.So it's a double-edged beta: Starcraft and Battle.Net.Yeah, definitely. Absolutely. That is the goal. Well, we're ready to get our hands on it already. 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