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GDC Roundup, day four
The tenth annual Game Developers Conference is in full swing in San Francisco, CA, and our sister sites Joystiq and Massively are on the scene! No matter what kind of games you're into, there's a ton of news on its way out of the convention, and we're compiling some of the stuff that might matter to you in daily roundups just for you. If you want the whole GDC news experience, check out all of Massively's and Joystiq's coverage, or previous roundups. I apologize for my appalling lack of Michael Sacco-ness. Saccosity? Massively's Interview with DC Universe Online "We're hitting major milestones right now. We're pushing as hard as we can right now to get a launch date out there. [...] We're trying to get it in your hands as quick as possible. The great thing about Sony is we really are taking our time. We have been given the opportunity to make this right." Fable 2 Episodes Massively Successful "That was hugely successful. There were something like over half a million. I think it was 600,000 downloads of the first episode, which was very, very cool." "Save your fork, there'll be pie" After confessing to having a big appetite for Borderlands, the Gears of War developer used the pie analogy to explain to Joystiq how games without any sort of DLC "hooks" are becoming increasingly rare. GDC 2010 Microtalks: Big ideas, tiny speeches Ten lecturers -- all from different sectors of the game industry -- each spoke for five minutes and each were allowed to use 20 different slides. Naughty Dog's Richard Lemarchand set the stage for the speakers, announcing the theme of the talks as "come play with us." Massively's Interview with Dungeons and Dragons Online Today, the numbers speak for themselves. Their revenue is up 500%, they've had over one million new players, and you'll be hard-pressed to find anyone who would refer to the game as "forgotten." Turbine has arguably set the standard for a hybrid free-to-play business model, and it's paid off very well. However, it wasn't always a sure thing and it certainly wasn't a snap decision. GDC 2010: The Future of Champions Online At the end of our brief discussion on the future of Champions, Bill had this to say, "Past that, I think it's just about remaining as responsible as possible to what the community is telling us they want." That sounds the right approach to us.
WoW Insider Show live this afternoon at 3:30pm Eastern
Our podcast (which, if you haven't heard, is award-nominated now -- please give us your vote every day until the end of November) returns to the series of tubes this afternoon on Ustream, and the great Michael "Belfaire" Sacco is coming along with it. Turpster, Sacco and I will chat about night elf mohawks, and what's up with the patch 3.3 PTR (including how to get the gear and some axe that people might like) and the next expansion. And as usual we'll chat live with the chat channel, answer your emails, and just generally have a good time talking about the World of Warcraft. The show kicks off at 3:30pm Eastern/ 8:30pm GMT on our Ustream page, or we've also embedded a feed in the second half of this post, so you can just go there. If you're planning to be out and about, you can also listen to the show on your iPhone or iPod touch (assuming you've got the Internet connection required to do so). And of course even if you can't make it to the live recording, we'll have the show on the feed next Monday as we usually do -- you'll miss the aftershow, but such, as they say, is life. Hopefully we'll see you today.
"Zero lore. Maximum fun." with Onxyia back in town
When the news first broke yesterday about Onyxia returning to her status as a raid boss, I, probably like many of you, went into lore-generation overdrive. She's dead in the comic (Varian Wrynn decided her head didn't so much belong with her body any more), so how was she going to be a raid boss? I stabbed at ideas: she's in the Caverns of Time! Arthas could resurrect her as a Frostwyrm of some kind!Fortunately, cooler lore-heads (Ziebart and Sacco) prevailed: they pointed out to me this comment by Maxim in the original post: "Zero lore. Maximum fun. HOORAY!" That perfectly sums up why Blizzard is doing this: there's no lore reason or explanation behind it, it's just a straight up fun thing for us to do to celebrate the five-year anniversary. Bornakk makes it official: Ony is still dead, and she's not coming back. This is a one-time thing on the 5th anniversary.While, unfortunately, that may destroy some dreams about seeing similar old-world content come back to life (at least until the 10th anniversary, when we'll probably see Molten Core updated for the level 100 15-man raiding scheme -- drool), it means that there's no thinking involved about why Onyxia's back. She's back, we get to raid the original raid and pick up some great loot while doing it. Zero lore. Maximum fun.
