mike-morhaime
Latest
Sunday Morning Funnies: Your lack of faith is disturbing
It might be a long weekend, but that's no excuse not to read your funnies! We have some new faces, the return of a beloved comic, a comic/craft hybrid, and more. New additions The Emissary - Act 1. This is the beginning of a new project from Barry T. Smith, a departure from his usual style with InkTank and Angst Technology. Manic Graffiti is back! Let's start with the Pax Arcana Lich King Special. This isn't new, but it's a debut for this list. Sluggy Freelance's Years of Yarncraft Papercrafts! There are lots. Here's one. Check out mmolecule, or "GG" Comics by Ken Harrison. WoW players meet up with the Force. Comedy with a plot LFG: No, that's not Legara. Road to BlizzCon, Sin'dorei Scheming Part 2. Welcome to Booty Bay! Comedy Extra Life illustrates the difference between respawning and reincarnation. GU Comics points out that There's a Good Reason. It's back to school time and Monkey Punchers celebrates. BTS. NoObz. There's a flaw in the strategy.
Blizzard responds to the BlizzCon ticket problems
Tamara Chuang from Blizzard's hometown Orange County Register has been following the BlizzCon ticket story here at WoW Insider, and she finally heard back from her queries to Blizzard about what happened earlier this week. The Q&A is up on her blog right now -- Shon Damron of Blizzard's PR team responded to a few questions about what happened on Monday and Tuesday at Blizzard and what they'll do differently to sell tickets to their events in the future.Not surprisingly, Blizzard says they just weren't prepared for the demand -- last year, tickets sold much slower, and the close release date of the next expansion, in addition to the growth of WoW over the past year and, on the horizon, interest in Starcraft II and Diablo III, pushed fervor for tickets to a high. Blizzard thought by adding in more space and selling more tickets they'd account for demand, but they say a review of the entire process is now in order.Damron says a lottery (like the one they plan to use to sell the extra 3000 tickets) will be a definite possibility. We'll have to see exactly how that process works as Blizzard sells off the rest of the tickets for this year's BlizzCon, but it does definitely sound to us like they are taking serious considerations to make sure that buyers of BlizzCon tickets, many of Blizzard's biggest fans, don't go through what happened earlier this week again.
The OC Register on the BlizzCon debacle
WoW Insider's own Mike Schramm recently talked with Tamara Chuang from the Orange County Register about the trials and tribulations of the recent BlizzCon ticket sales for an article she wrote concerning the debacle. Mike is in some good company, with executive editor of GameSpy.com David Kosak also contributing to the analysis of Blizzard's failure. Yesterday, Mike wrote an in-depth account of the problems we all faced obtaining tickets to the event.The OC Register article makes a good point noting that some major events, such as the World Series, have had ticketing problems in the past. However, it is also pointed out that other sites such as NBCOlympics.com still stay up even under the pressure of lots of traffic.With Mike Morhaime's apology late last night, and his offering up 3,000 additional tickets via a lottery, it will be interesting to see what this does to appease the fans in the long run. It is good to see that this issue is getting some wider coverage outside of the game and fan sites. While bad press isn't exactly good, it usually leads to things being better the next time around.
Blizzard 'reevaluates' BlizzCon space, announces ticket lottery
Blizzard president Mike Morhaime has issued a public apology on behalf of the company for the recent BlizzCon fiasco -- the "Wrath of the Ticke-Ting" -- which left thousands of F5ers empty-handed after two days of strenuous clicking. "As a result of this week's events, the excitement that many of you felt about the show has turned into dissatisfaction and disappointment," Morhaime writes in a statement posted on various Blizzard-operated sites. "Due to these circumstances, we've reevaluated our convention hall space and come up with some solutions that will allow us to offer 3,000 more tickets for sale."We don't know where Blizzard plans to squeeze the additional load of freaks and geeks -- worst case scenario: dump some mobile buildings in the parking lot and load 'em with free diet soda and chips ... and dip -- but we do know that the only way to become one of the fabled "3,000" is to sharpen your Sword of Last Resort and spill some virgin blood upon the Alter of Actilizzard toss your name into a hat and hope it gets pulled. That's right, "To avoid the issues many of you faced this week, we'll be selling these 3,000 via a lottery," Morhaime explains (read: the servers still can't handle the force of 10 million clicks). Further details will be posted once Blizzard figures out how it's gonna work. Suggestions?
Mike Morhaime apologizes, offers 3000 more BlizzCon tickets
If you haven't heard by now, there were some problems with Blizzcon tickets. A lot of problems. However, it looks like even Blizzard now realizes that they could have done a lot better during those 2 days of Fail Murloc agony. Blizzard President Mike Morhaime has just posted a personal apology for all the trouble with tickets on the official BlizzCon site. In addition, he's announced that they've rearranged their convention hall space and will be able to offer 3,000 additional tickets. In order to avoid the problems of the last batch, they will be sold by a lottery system, and only sold to those with an active Blizzard account as of August 12th, 9 PM PDT, the time when the last batch of tickets was officially sold out. Further details on the lottery will be posted when they finalize their plans. Of course, There's probably far more than 3,000 customers who were put out by the problems, but this is probably as much of an olive branch as we can expect, given that they can't overpack the convention halls and it's likely too late to find or create a new, larger venue. Hopefully though, Blizzard is serious when they say that they will do what it takes to prevent this from happening in the future. We'll look forward to buying our tickets for BlizzCon 2009 without the presence of the Fail Murloc.
Blizzard planning Wrath launch in China "as soon as possible" after US
Mike Morhaime spoke up about World of Warcraft in Activision's earnings conference call last week (strange, since there was almost no sign of Blizzard at the Activision press conference during E3), and he spoke about Blizzard's plan for Wrath of the Lich King's release in China. In the past, there's been a signficant delay between releases in the US and Eastern companies (not that it's hurt the popularity there). And Blizzard says they want to close that delay, but it's up to the government over there to approve the content -- in the past, the government of China has asked for changes to be made to the game, and Blizzard says the release schedule is dependent on their approval.Morhaime also said that the game continues to grow -- they've seen big growth around marketing campaigns, the holiday season (when people buy the game for others), and the release of new content. And you don't have to be a WoW expert to see that they're going to hit a perfect storm of all three later this year. This could be the biggest winter the World of Warcraft has ever had.[via WorldofWar.net]
Edge talks Morhaime on Age of Conan
We made mention of Mike Morhaime's surprising words regarding Wrath's launch date during a recent conference call, but there's one thing we didn't really look at that Edge did. Mister Morhaime says Age of Conan's release a couple of months ago did manage to pull some subscribers away from WoW, but unsurprisingly, almost half of them came back pretty fast. Around 40% of them have come back so far.This does not surprise me, really. That's usually how most MMO releases go, even if Age of Conan was the most heralded release since WoW. I'll admit, I haven't played it myself but I had ten or so guildmates of mine go and try it out. All of them ended up not playing the game after a month, saying that something was 'missing.' How delightfully vague, eh? They all came back.A thriving, pre-existing community really helps a game's launch, and WoW had (and has) that in spades. You've gotta hand it to Age of Conan, though. For being a game that seems so niche in a market that has only moved out of nichedom in the last few years, they're putting up one hell of a fight. 40% of players have come back so far, sure, but 60% haven't. Yet.
Blizzard: Yes, some players left for AoC
Say whatever you will about Age of Conan, but it's been one of the only games to actually put a tangible dent in Blizzard's ten million ton monster truck of an MMO, World of Warcraft. The news came from Blizzard president Mike Morhaime who recently said on an Activision Blizzard earnings call, "Age of Conan released with some initial success a couple of months ago, and we did see some of our players leave to try the game. However, we've seen about 40 percent of those players return to World of Warcraft." We know that Age of Conan saw about 700,000 players jumping into the game during its first month on the market. What we don't know is how many of those players were World of Warcraft vets. It must have been fairly substantial though for Morhaime to have even mentioned it at all. With Warhammer Online purportedly coming out sometime this September we're wondering how many players will go and stay gone this time around, especially with Wrath of the Lich King hot on its heels. It's certainly going to be an interesting holiday season this year.
Wrath of the Lich King coming Q4 2008
After the beta announcement, we knew the hour of bewilderment was almost upon us. Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime announced in a conference call (via Shacknews) that the latest World of Warcraft expansion Wrath of the Lich King is coming this year between October or December. Morhaime actually said it was coming out this year, but "it's not coming out in the July to September quarter," which after hours of calculations left us certain of the Q4 2008 window. Brush up on your WotLK news care of WoW Insider. [Via WoW Insider]
Blizzard: Wrath will be out in Q4 2008
In an uncharacteristic display of candor, Blizzard CEO and co-founder Mike Morhaime confirmed during a conference call that the much-anticipated Wrath of the Lich King expansion will be released between October to December of this year. Shacknews quotes Morhaime saying, "we have said that it will be coming out this year," referring to earlier speculation stemming from a Vivendi press release. "I can tell you it's not coming in the July to September quarter," Morhaime states, and mentions that Beta testing "is going very well".The confirmation of any release date is uncommon practice for Blizzard, whose common response to such questions is "when it's ready." Apparently, Blizzard is confident that Wrath of the Lich King will be ready within the year. From the polish that can be seen in the current Beta, this doesn't seem far from the truth. In the same conference call, Morhaime also discussed competing MMOs, the status of ongoing development (that is to say, very little information), and how World of Warcraft has been refined as a game over the past four years.
Blizzard's initial ideas for World of Warcraft were concieved in 1994
In an interview with Eurogamer, Blizzard's Mike Morhaime recently went into some depth about the origins of World of Warcraft. According to the company's CEO, the roots of the world-girding MMO giant stem from discussions held as early as 1994. Just after the release of Warcraft II, actually. Said the executive, "We thought, wow, this would be such a great game to create a virtual world around, where you're a character inside the game and you can explore this fantastic universe. Technology finally advanced to the point where it was feasible to make the game. So, genre first, then franchise."Morhaime also steps up on the PC gaming soapbox, joining Gabe Newell in shouting down detractors that say PC gaming is 'dying'. He slams those who would rely solely on retail sales to judge the health of the marketplace, and views that sort of thinking as 'completely dead wrong.' Read into the article for all this, and a sense of what can make the CEO of a billion dollar-a-year company nervous.
The Guild visits Blizzard HQ
The cast and crew of The Guild got invited by Blizzard to come take a tour of the new facilities the other week, and they have a writeup on their website right now (written by Jeff Lewis, who plays Vork on the show) of their trip. Sounds like a lot of fun -- they got to tour the place, obviously, checking out the Hall of Fame, the gym and cafeteria (including the official "Blizzard Trays" area -- that sign makes me laugh), and the main offices. They also got to sit down and each lunch with Mike Morhaime, and then got to play both Starcraft 2 and some Rock Band with the staff. No Wrath?Blizzard sent them home with lots of swag, too. I was under the impression, especially given the comments on our last Guild post, that we weren't really sure that the game these guys were playing was World of Warcraft -- they've never said the name, as far as I know, and we've never seen any character shots. But Blizzard disagrees, apparently -- they've very sure The Guild is playing WoW, and they gave them a super nice tour for being a part of the game and the community.
April Fools at Tobold's blog: WoW to cost $20 a month
We have to admit, Tobold's April Fools' joke is easily one of the better ones coming out today. Upon first glance his reasoning for the $5 dollar subscription bump seems somewhat plausible, citing rising power costs and the weakening dollar. However the real treat is beyond the joke, in the comments where 'Mike Morhaime' -- co-founder and current president of Blizzard -- makes a comment about the joke being a good idea and to wait for official announcement on the World of Warcraft website. If that weren't enough, the director of Activision Blizzard Jean-René Fourtou mysteriously pops up in the comments afterwards and publicly fires Morhaime! Oh no, what will happen next? Ah, well then things take a truly inspired twist as the CEO of Electronic Arts John Riccitiello triumphantly appears to announce that Warhammer Online is actually coming out May 1st and then promptly thanks Actiblizzvision for allowing EA to scoop up their lost customers.We thoroughly enjoyed the joke, as it's fairly surreal to see even fake versions of these people posting comments on a blog.
Blizzard wins the Oscars of online games
As Oscar time gets closer, some of us gamers may start wishing for awards of our own. Mass Effect was at least as good as There Will Be Blood, right? Luckily, on February 7th, we gamers got our own red carpet show, as The Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences hosted the 11th annual Interactive Achievement Awards in conjunction with the DICE Summit at the Red Rock Resort in Las Vegas, Nevada. Blizzard, of course, managed to snag a few rewards of their own. Not only did the Burning Crusade pick up Massively Multi-player Game of the Year, but Blizzard President Mike Morhaime was inducted into the Academy's Hall of Fame.Gamespot had video coverage of the event, which you can check out here, or if you'd rather just cut to the meaty stuff, the Academy's website has a PDF with a list of the winners here. You can also check out some wider commentary on all the awards from our friends at Joystiq here. We'll expect trophies for Wrath of the Lich King and Starcraft II next year!
More Blizzard news from the D.I.C.E. summit
Wired's games blog brings us more news from D.I.C.E., with word of a "never before seen" presentation about Blizzard's canceled games over the years. Some of the games were later released by other companies, but others... Well, if you can remember anything about them, you may be a true Blizzard fan, and we'd have to kneel in homage to you.But really, some of the games sounded pretty awesome by the title alone. Around Blizzard these days, Nomad refers to a new human unit from the upcoming Starcraft II, but it seems at the presentation in question, it was on the list of canceled games accompanied by a picture of two giant Zeppelins. And we, of course, are all about the Zeppelins, so the game would have obviously been cool, if it had Zeppelins. Starcraft:Ghost, amazingly enough, didn't make the list of games, which brings up the question of whether there's still plans to resurrect it - or if Blizzard, like Wired's blogger suggests, just wants to forget about it altogether. Finally, no list of canceled Blizzard games would be complete without a reference to Warcraft Adventures. I was always disappointed that this one got canceled, being a big fan of the old adventure games, and it looks like I even have allies at Blizzard on this point. But the WoW team seems to like to fit the game's story in wherever they can, so it wasn't all in vain, right?
Blizzard discusses its methods for success at DICE '08
The D.I.C.E. Summit is a yearly gathering of the gaming industry's top talent, there to discuss everything from business practices to development methods to the latest in crazy game mechanics ideas. This year, not only did Gore Verbinski go a little nutty, but the Big Guns at Blizzard -- Mike Morhaime, president and cofounder; Rob Pardo, vice president of game design; and Frank Pearce, executive vice president of product development -- got on-stage to give a talk entitled "Blizzard: From Developer to Worldwide Publisher".The talk covered a great deal of ground in discussing how Blizzard has gotten to be the king of the hill in the gaming world. Key elements included retaining complete creative control, noninterference from parent companies, and building up layers of knowledge over the years that helped them take calculated risks with each successive title. "If we tried to do WoW from scratch, it would be a monumental effort. We already had the community for WoW. Even though they weren't MMO players, they were willing to try it out," said Pardo.Go check out the entire article at Gamespot here.
Video game giants awarded at CES 2008
Several video games and their respective creators were honored at the fifty-ninth Annual Technology and Engineering Emmy Awards at CES 2008 in Las Vegas. The awards spotlighted some of the most groundbreaking titles in development of massively multiplayer online graphical role playing games as well as user generated content or game mods. The winners of the first category for development of MMORPGs were Sony Online Entertainment for Everquest (Laura Naviaux), Blizzard for World of Warcraft (Mike Morhaime) and AOL/Time Warner for Neverwinter Nights (Don Daglow).And the winners of the second category for user generated content/game modification were EA for Pinball Construction (Bill Budge), Id Software for Quake (John Carmack) and Linden Lab for Second Life (Philip Rosedale).Pictured from left to right: Daglow, Budge, Carmack, Naviaux, Rosedale, MorhaimeWe really only have just one thing to mention. If you're the representative of a multi-billion-dollar international corporation like Activision Blizzard, shouldn't you consider something other than raiding your dad's closet for a 1970's brown polyester suit? Although, only really rich people can afford to look broke, because they buy good stuff and wear it forever. So when Mike got it, it was probably very chic... in the 70's.
Morhaime headed to the AIAS Hall of Fame
Blizzard's Mike Morhaime is headed for the Hall of Fame-- the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame, that is. The AIAS is going to honor him for contributing to "a significant advancement within the industry, while demonstrating proven success and leadership," and he's certainly done that, presiding not only over this, the most popular MMO of all time, but over years of amazing Blizzard success.Morhaime will get the award as part of the D.I.C.E. Summit in February, and he'll join such videogame luminaries as Peter Molyneux (of Populous and Fable fame), Quake's John Carmack, and Shigeru Miyamoto, an old graphic designer that made some game about a plumber.Congrats to Morhaime on the award-- definitely well-deserved. Now all we need to do is petition the Grammys for his contributions to the musical world.
Mike Morhaime on the Activision Blizzard merger
Incgamers.com got to sit down with Blizzard President and CEO Mike Morhaime to chat about the big news this weekend that Blizzard is merging with Activision. He basically echoes Blizzard's FAQ on the issue, and says that nothing at all will change-- "if I do my job properly," he says, "then players won't notice any difference."The deal came about with Vivendi's full consent and interest-- Activision is apparently aiming to be the number one game publisher, and bringing Blizzard both under their wing and up into their name will help them do that. Morhaime calls it a "merger of equals," and says that while there's a chance Blizzard might look into Activision's experience if they choose to make a game up their alley (i.e., a console game, but don't get excited, Morhaime's speaking hypothetically), generally, the two companies will just keep doing what they're doing.Morhaime also laughs when Incgamers asks how this will affect development of Diablo III, but laugh is all he does-- nice try! Otherwise, Morhaime holds that the merger will have no affect on Blizzard's games or development-- other than the name change, he says, it's business as usual.
The Activision Blizzard conference call
Following yesterday's big Activision Blizzard news, executives from Activision and Vivendi Games held an 8:30am conference call explaining the merger, the product of over a year of discussion between the two companies. There are a few major takeaway points from the conference call, most of which involve Blizzard. Those worried that the merger could affect Blizzard's sterling reputation for quality -- and those still unconvinced despite Blizzard's FAQ on the topic yesterday -- will be pleased to know the company will operate as its own entity. The deference paid to Blizzard's properties throughout the call -- not to mention the new comapany's name itself -- serves as a testament to the value of Blizzard in the arrangement. Will Blizzard make World of Warcraft for consoles? "There are no plans to release anything on the console side. Blizzard's focus is on the PC side. If we were to release anything on the console side, that would be managed by the Blizzard side of the business. At some point in the future, if it made sense to talk to the Activision side of the business about that, we would certainly do so. At this point, there are no plans to release any of the Blizzard franchises on the consoles," says Blizzard boss Mike Morhaime.
