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Blizzard CEO and president Mike Morhaime steps down
Mike Morhaime has been a part of Blizzard since it was founded in 1991 as Silicon & Synapse, Inc., and now he's stepping down from his role as president and CEO. Former executive producer and senior VP for World of Warcraft J. Allen Brack will take over as president, while Ray Gresko (Overwatch, Diablo III) will step in as chief development officer, while co-founder and former WoW lead designer Allen Adham will join the executive leadership team. In a statement, Morhaime said "After many years of working with some of the industry's most talented people to create games and worlds for you to play in, I've decided it's time for someone else to lead Blizzard Entertainment. I will now serve as an advisor to the company I so love and admire...I truly believe that this amazing community has the potential to be a shining light to the rest of the industry by setting a positive example of inclusivity, tolerance, and acceptance toward others. In the words of one of Blizzard's core values: remember to always play nice; play fair. "
Overwatch League is Blizzard's eSports incubator
Blizzard has its own official eSports league for Overwatch, aptly dubbed Overwatch League. It works a lot like traditional sports. Major cities in North and South America, Europe, China, Korea and the South Pacific will have a team. Those teams are comprised of the best players coming out of a sort of open competition called a "combine." From there, they'll be drafted and sign contracts with a guaranteed salary and benefits. The team spots will be secured, according to developer/publisher Blizzard, as a way to foster local fans and talent "for years to come." And at season's end, the best teams will play against each other live, in front of a global audience. Sound familiar?
Activision Blizzard loses 1.1 million WoW players since May, triples profits
Today's investor call with Activision Blizzard was a rollercoaster of news for MMO fans, with both good and bad news coming forth. Starting with the bad -- everyone asks to start with the bad news, don't they? -- World of Warcraft's subscriber numbers are much lower than they were this past May. The company reports that subscriptions have dropped from 11.4 million in May to 11.1 million in June to 10.3 million, representing a loss of 10% of the playerbase. These numbers represent the total worldwide, and Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime said that most of the losses were suffered in the eastern market. No matter where the losses come from, this continues the downward trend of the title during the past year. Blizzard declined to provide a subscriber forecast for the next quarter. The good news is that the company has whooped expectations by nearly tripling its profit for the quarter over this time last year. During this past quarter, Activision Blizzard raked in $627 million worth of sales, of which $148 million is pure profit. A majority of the revenue -- 62% -- comes from its digital sales. The company expects 2012 to be even better, with titles like Diablo III and another Call of Duty in the works. CEO Bobby Kotick is nothing if not confident in the company's future: "I believe our unyielding commitment to excellence and our creative talent around the globe will continue to position Activision Blizzard as the leader in interactive entertainment."
AGDC: How to rule the World (of Warcraft)
I'm attending the Austin Game Developers Conference this week, and today's big event is a keynote by Mike Morhaime, president and co-founder of Blizzard Entertainment. Titled How to Rule the World (of Warcraft): Ten Lessons, I doubt it covers guild management, PvP tactics, or farming for gold -- but I'm certainly interested in Morhaime's thoughts on the operation and administration of the Warcraft universe. Keep reading for a play-by-play of the keynote!9:25 AM CST: The ballroom is filling up, and everyone is waiting for the show to get started.9:36 AM CST: The ballroom is working its way towards full, all of us waiting on the man of the hour to show.
The voices of Azeroth
Last week we looked at who made the soundtrack of Azeroth (and I heard-- and saw-- those very people at the Video Games Live BlizzCon concert), and this week, olanthe on WoW Ladies wants to know who's behind the other, very memorable part of WoW's audio: the voices.Unfortunately, just like the music, Blizzard doesn't actually credit the talent part by part, so while it's easy to find a list of who's voiced something in game (the IMDB entry is probably the most comprehensive, as it contains all the names from the booklets to both shipping WoW and Burning Crusade), finding out who's done what is a little harder. Tony Jay did the intros for all the races, and Cam Clarke has been pegged as the male Blood Elf (among others, including Nexus-Prince Shaffar and Medivh). Voice actress Erin Fitzgerald has done quite a few voices in Burning Crusade, including Dorothy and the Wicked Witch, as well as Sarannis and the Essence of Desire in the Black Temple. Kath Soucie, another well known voice actress, has also done voices in BC, as has Michael Dorn (yes, Worf).But most surprising on the list is probably the sheer number of Blizzard employees-- some, like Samwise Didier, Chris Metzen and Mike Morhaime, are well known, but others, like Tracy Bush, Derek Duke, and Glen Stafford, are usually working on the music of Azeroth. And even others-- Michele Arko, and I'm sure a few other names that I just don't recognize, work in completely different departments of Blizzard, from QA to Administration. So it seems like they invite a lot of their local employees to come in and record voices for their games, and not until recently, with the Burning Crusade, have they turned more often to more high profile actors.Unfortunately, that doesn't exactly answer the question of who the female Night Elf is. But especially for the shipping game, odds are that it's someone who works at Blizzard, not a professional voice actor.Update: You guys are the best. A reader of ours is friends with the Night Elf voice, so here she is: Debi Mae West. And yes, her goods really are of the highest quality. Apparently, she was also Meryl in Metal Gear Solid.
Blizz Prez Mike Morhaime, #4 on PC World's Most Important People on the Web
As you might imagine, we here at WoW Insider love World of Warcraft. It's the greatest thing to come along since at least Diablo. Blizzard is a great company, and when it comes to computer gaming, you could solidly make the argument that nobody does it better than they do.But when PC World announced their "Most Important People on the Web" list today, I was surprised to see, right there in between the inventor of Bittorrent and Jimbo Wales of Wikipedia, Mike Morhaime, President of Blizzard Entertainment as the 4th Most Important Person on the Internet (a big jump up from a previous list). PC World cites WoW's huge player base and Blizzard's profits of $1.5 billion a year (not to mention all the money floating around WoW's black market services), but does the president of a videogame company really deserve to be two slots down from Steve Jobs, in between the man who basically created an anonymous peer-to-peer sharing system and the man who's developing the definitive online collection of knowledge?Call me cynical, but I say no. WoW may have influence over a lot of people, but Blizzard is using that influence to nerf druids and tweak raid bosses, not affect the Internet population. Then again, the guy did appear in animated form on South Park, and Jimbo Wales has never done that. We should all know by now that these lists are just a cheap way of encouraging discussion (and attention), but Morhaime's inclusion on the list means that WoW's ascent into our culture isn't done yet.
Interview with Mike Morhaime
The San Jose Mercury news managed to snag an interview with Blizzard Entertainment's president, Mike Morhaime. This doesn't contain lots of news about the upcoming Burning Crusade expansion, like the recent interviews with Jeff Kaplan and Tom Chilton, but does provide a broader-picture view of what's happening back at Blizzard entertainment. How has money and success impacted the company? Well, it's a bit much to summarize, so go check it out yourself.
And the award for 46th most important business personality goes to... Mike Morhaime!
CNN Money has named Mike Morhaime, the CEO of Blizzard Entertainment, as the 46th most important person in a list of 50 personalities that represent Business 2.0. We'll leave out our annoyances with the list as a whole (c'mon, naming "consumer as creator" as #1? Cop out!) so instead we'll use Mike's naming as an opportunity to analyze the importance of Blizzard's crowning achievement, World of Warcraft, to the World of Business.The totality of CNN's tribute to Mike is dedicated to the wild popularity of WoW. The article claims that WoW is more than "just another video game", citing the uniqueness of the game's popularity (6.5 million users and climbing), profitability (WoW brought in $700 million last year) and peripherals (a thriving out-of-game market for virtual goods worth around $200 million) as factors that make Mike a uniquely influential business leader.Big business' attraction to World of Warcraft's is no doubt due to the game's domination of MMO marketshare -- when you own 50% of a subscription based market you're bound to draw the attention of the suits -- so we wouldn't be surprised if WoW isn't the company's last MMO, despite earlier denials by a Blizzard staffer. Still, we feel sorry for Mike. On one side he's got the money crazy suits asking for more, MORE MMOs, and on the other he's got millions of StarCraft, Diablo and WarCraft fans screaming for sequels to their beloved franchise. He deserves an award just for being able to maintain that smug smile!
