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Amidst speculation, Blizzard VP implies completely new game
Blizzard fans all over the internet have worked themselves up into a frenzy over a vague splash screen at the company's website -- a melting wall of ice adorned with rune or sigil-like markings. Everyone's speculating. Is it Diablo 3? Maybe it's just a promo for Wrath of the Lich King. After all, the ice motif seems to fit, right?Maybe not. During a Q&A session at GDC Paris 08, Blizzard VP Rob Pardo was asked to comment on "the new game." He replied saying, "So you want me to announce the game before the announcement?" That was a classic press conference or Q&A blunder; you're not supposed to accept the premise of an unwanted or hostile question!
Starcraft II WWI '08 panel part 3: Terran
The Terrans and their BFG's Pardo then moved on to the final Starcraft race, the Terrans. The theme here they wanted to push was guns, guns and more guns. No Queen or Mothership here, just lots of units with lots of firepower.The first unit Pardo talked about was the Jackal. It's a fast, mobile firebat that spits out fire lots of splash damage. With its speed and mobility it has the potential to take a big chunk out of your opponent's forces.The next unit was The Thor. It's a large ground assault unit with two abilities. In addition to its anti-air flak cannons, it can self-repair. And if it is destroyed, its wreckage stays on the battlefield and can rebuild itself. No Hero for you!Finally, Pardo talked about some larger issues about the game they were working with. They didn't want the game to too heavily emphasize micromanaging units. They want players to have time to deal with the macro issues of resources, expansion and strategy. So they designed most units to be simple movers and shooters, not like the more complex units of Warcraft 3. They also de-emphasized Hero classes for the same reason. Hero characters will mostly be met in the single player story mode and even then, as characters to talk to instead of taking control of them in battles.In terms of development, the team is focusing currently on spell casters and special abilities that come later in the game as well as upgrades for base units. The story campaign is about one-third done.The last point Pardo wanted to make before the panel was open to questions was about the evolution of Battle.net. With the release of SC2, Battle.net will be transformed to become what they hope is the premiere gaming platform for PC online play. NEXT: Q&A with Rob Pardo ===>
Starcraft II WWI '08 panel part 2: Protoss
The Protoss are a force to be reckoned withPardo moved on to talk a bit about how the Protoss are progressing in the development of the game. Their psionics are the key theme to their race and Blizzard pushed that further, but also pulled back on the emphasis on spellcasting.First he showed an example of their new force field ability used to control the battlefield. A video showed a swarm of zerglings rushing a Protoss base, but the Protoss force threw up a series of connected force fields that formed a funnel forcing the zergs into a choke point where they were easily destroyed.While high damage Protoss spells like Psi Storm are returning, Blizzard also wanted to introduce some early game casters. Nullifiers were mentioned. And Stalkers were given a teleport ability that had interesting strategic potential. In another video of game play, force fields were raised forcing an attacking army to go around it. The Stalkers then teleported themselves to the other side of the force fields, behind the attacking army, and took them out from behind. The return of the MothershipThe Protoss Mothership also makes an appearance. While not as powerful as the Zerg Queen, it has been given powerful support abilities. It is now a mobile battlefield teleporter, able to zap in troops to wherever it is at. It is also heavily armored and has an emergency ability called Time Bomb which renders it immune from damage for a short period of time. Since it isn't as versatile as the Zerg Queen, Protoss players will be able to have more than one Mothership in play at once. NEXT: The Terrans and the diminishing Hero ===>
Ron Pardo hints at a new game announcement at Paris GDC
As you may recall, Rob Pardo was the keynote speaker at this week's GDC in Paris, only days before the Worldwide Invitational in the same city. He delivered a speech laden with a lot of insight into his and Blizzard's inner workings and philosophy, but not much in the way of new information about WoTLK, as Natalie reported yesterday. However, Gamesindustry.biz is reporting that Pardo did let a rather major piece of information slip in the final Q&A session that wrapped up on the conference. It looks like there may be a new game announcement at the Invitational later this week after all. Someone asked Pardo to comment on the Diablo 3 rumors that have been whizzing around the net lately. "So you want me to announce the game before our announcement?" he said. "No offense, but I think there's like 300 people here, and I'll be ripped apart by 8000 people there [at the Invitational] if I pre-announce it - but it's going to be really exciting. I think everybody here will be really excited about the announcement." Luckily, among those 8000 people at the Worldwide Invitational will be three of our own, so you can expect WoW Insider will be on top of this announcement when it drops. In the meantime, be sure to check our in-depth analysis of the latest changes to Blizzard's splash screen, which is almost certainly a teaser for this announcement. [Thanks for the forward, Centipede!]
Don't expect World of Warcraft on the PS3 or Xbox 360 ever
Blizzard Entertainment's Rob Pardo is a bona fide Rockstar in the gaming industry. In his recent keynote speech at the Game Developer's Conference at the Paris GDC he continued to indirectly extinguish rumors that suggested World of Warcraft is coming to a Console, rumors that stretch back years. While not specifically talking about World of Warcraft, when Pardo was asked what kept MMOs from Consoles he responded: "Lack of hard drive space, and difficulty in certifying patches. Basically just that.... another problem is that they want a piece of the subscriptions (laughs)." That's a simplistic answer coming from the Executive VP of Design at Blizzard Entertainment, but there it is laid out in plain sight, a truth even if shared in a humorous fashion. Giving Microsoft or Sony residuals, most likely a big chunk is one thing keeping World of Warcraft off Consoles. Is that a bad thing? No, but Blizzard could be missing something here, and just maybe Rob Pardo is plain wrong about what's keeping MMOs away from Consoles. It's simple really...
Rob Pardo talks about free WoW, Starcraft, Activision
Rob Pardo, SVP of game design at Blizzard, gave the keynote speech at the Game Developer's Conference held in Paris this week. Here are some WoW-related tidbits from his talk and the Q&A session held afterward.About WoW WoW was first conceived as free to play, being supported by advertising. However, the non-subscription business model couldn't support Blizzard's goals for the game. Pardo suggested that Blizzard approached the MMO genre "very naively, or else we might not have done it." He once hired a WoW player who sent him a 16-page diatribe about the game because, even though the guy was wrong, "he was passionate" about improving the game. About Starcraft 2 Blizzard has no problem putting intellectual properties on hold for a while, hence the wait for a Starcraft game. Pardo says that they wanted to make a real-time strategy game but were "tired of green-skinned orcs" so they moved away from Warcraft to Starcraft. Starcraft 2 is at a playable stage in its development and he's having a lot of fun with it. Read more about Rob Pardo's keynote speech.
World of Warcraft originally planned as free-to-play
Blizzard's own Rob Pardo recently dropped something of a bombshell about World of Warcraft at the Paris GDC event when he revealed in a keynote that the game was originally planned as a free-to-play experience. He also adds that, "We didn't want to charge a subscription, but as we researched market conditions, we realized that wouldn't support us." Pardo also discussed how Blizzard drove into the MMO genre in astonishingly tongue-in-cheek fashion: "Very naively, or else we might not have done it." The notion of a free-to-play World of Warcraft makes us wonder just how the game would have panned out had Blizzard stuck to their original plan. Might MMOs have become as big a business as they are nowadays? Who knows, but it's fun to think about the possibilities nonetheless.You can find the rest of Pardo's discussions within Gamasutra's website. He discussses everything under the sun in relation to Blizzard. Multiple franchises, the Activivision-Blizzard merger and making communties for games are just a few of the many topics covered.
Pardo says Warcraft IV is "one of the ideas on the table" after SC2
Our good friends at Gamedaily recently got a chance to sit down and talk with Rob Pardo, VP of Blizzard, and he dropped hints about yet another new game that they might be working on. No, not Starcraft II, or the rumored Diablo 3, or even the long-awaited (and unfortunately, probably never coming) Lost Vikings sequel. Nope -- he hinted that after the release of Starcraft II, whenever that happens, Blizzard's RTS team might be hard at work on... Warcraft IV.Don't hold your breath, of course (this is Blizzard we're talking about) -- this would be after the current real-time strategy game is done, and Pardo says it would be "one of the the ideas on the table," so it's not exactly in the planning stages yet. But it's interesting to hear that Blizzard may still return to the Warcraft universe under the RTS banner -- we've seen such a different aspect of the world in the MMO, it would be very strange to go back to controlling these units from the top down.Pardo also says that a console version of WoW is pretty much out of the question at this point -- if there is going to be a super-successful console MMO, it's not going to be World of Warcraft, as this game was designed for PC and has gone through so many iterations since that Blizzard isn't at all interested in trying a port. We are still waiting for that playable version of the Molten Core console game, though...[via WorldofWar]Update: Whoops, the interview is a bit old (Pardo said this last year). Still, news to me that Blizzard might bring RTS back into the Warcraft universe, but considering that Starcraft II doesn't even have a rumored release date yet, we're going to be waiting a long, long time.
Beckett names Rob Pardo most influential person in MMOs
Beckett's July-August issues of Massive Online Gamer magazine (which went on sale yesterday) names what they think are the 20 most influential names in the MMORPG business today, and as you might expect, a World of Warcraft figure topped the list, namely Rob Pardo, Senior VP of Game Design for Blizzard Entertainment. Interestingly enough, Rob Pardo is the only current Blizzard figure that appears on the list. It seems to me, at the least, that Tom Chilton (If only for the Esports thing) or Jeff Kaplan should have been considered for the list as well, and I'm sure most of my fellow old school gamers are noticing the glaring absence of Lum The Mad, the grandfather of all MMO critics. Still, most of us can agree, I'm sure, that Pardo deserves the top spot. It's hard to argue with the success of Blizzard's games, especially WoW, and it doesn't look like it's going to flag anytime soon with WoTLK on the way. You can check out the complete list here, and see how much you agree with it. [Via Massively]
Rob Pardo to speak at Paris GDC in June
At the Paris Game Developers Conference this year, we will have the pleasure of hearing from Blizzard's Senior Vice President of game design, Rob Pardo. He will be presenting a keynote Q&A entitled "In the Eye of the Blizzard", where he will discuss his inspirations, challenges and his future at Blizzard Entertainment with interviewer Jamil Moledina, the executive director of GDC Events.Rob is certainly no stranger to game conference keynotes, as he has recently shown at the San Francisco GDC, but it will be interesting to hear his newest keynote interview where he will address the important topic that most game developers have on their minds: how to win at the game of creating a money-making MMO.The Paris GDC will offer over 50 sessions this year, and will be held on June 23-24th at the Coeur Defense Convention Centre in Paris, France.
Rob Pardo to keynote at the Paris Game Developers Conference
Blizzard's Rob Pardo, Senior Vice President of Game Design, has been recruited to keynote the Paris GDC this summer, which will take place on June 23rd and 24th at the at the Coeur Défense Convention Centre in Paris. He'll participate in a Q&A session in which he will discuss his inspirations and challenges, as well as Blizzard's future plans. The official press release should appear soon on the Paris GDC site. The Paris GDC will be taking place a few days before Blizzard's World Wide Invitational in the same city. We're expecting a lot of choice WoTLK news to drop there, but certainly, Pardo may say something juicy ahead of time at the Paris GDC, and we'll be sure to find out if he does.
Ten innovation lessons from Blizzard
The OC Register (Blizzard's HQ -- I'm pretty sure that's where it's at, as they're not exactly open with their location info -- is located right down near them in Southern California) has a blog post up featuring 11 "innovation lessons" other companies can learn from the folks behind World of Warcraft. While the lessons aren't exactly innovative themselves (I think there are lots of companies that do this stuff, and none of them have a ten million player game), the post does provide a good look inside Blizzard's process and the thinking behind what they do.Blizzard is pretty stubbornly committed to quality -- not only do they notoriously release things "when they're done," but if something doesn't work they apparently are happy to trash it completely (see Starcraft: Ghost). It is amusing, too, that Rob Pardo says he and Frank Pearce are trying to make "great entertainment projects, not perfect ones." WoW has its bugs, sure, but when you look at Blizzard's catalog: Diablo, Starcraft, Warcraft, you have to wonder what a "perfect" game looks like in Pardo's mind. Those are about as perfect as they come.And they "eat their own dog food," too: J. Allen Brack apparently spends four hours a night (up to 15 hours a week) playing the game on his own time at home. Seems like it would be tough for other companies to pull these strategies into their own plan (Blizzard really releases one-of-a-kind products), but as consumers, it's neat to get another look into the way they work.[Via Slashdot]
GDC08 Highlights: The future of Virtual Worlds and the end of GDC08
The Future of MMOs The Future of MMOs panel liveblogTeam Massively was there to live blog one of the most anticipated panels of GDC08. On it were a few names you might have heard of, like Cryptic Studios' Jack Emmert, Nexon's Min Kim, BioWare's Ray Muzyka, and Rob Pardo (who has apparently worked on some sort of popular fantasy game). We blogged a blow-by-blow account of the jabs, cuts, and parries from these Massive genre heavyweights. %Gallery-16640%
The best of WoW Insider: February 19-26, 2008
Quite a week in the World of Warcraft, which Joystiq sister site WoW Insider covers like a Warcraft Adventures-style bedsheet each and every single day. We continued to get lots of great information about patch 2.4 (including big news from the new raid instance,The Sunwell), and Heroics made a nice return to the news, with all the new badge loot. Oh, and we even had a liveblog go down straight from GDC. Here's our best stuff.News GDC08: Live form Rob Pardo's talk about Blizzard's approach to MMOsThe Senior VP of game design lays out what the big plan is for Blizzard's biggest game. PTR Notes: Patch note watch 2/20New buffs and nerfs continue to drop from the Public Test Realm as Blizzard gets the next patch ready to go live. 2.4 PvP sets gold and rep requirementsWhat you'll need to do to get what you want. Meet Lord AhuneBlizzard is also updating the Midsummer Fire Festival, and so here's the new Headless Horseman -- epics for everyone! Thrall gets a new Big Brother: US government wants to search for terrorists on WoWCould Bin Laden be hiding in Elwynn Forest? Features What does the Warlock Lifetap nerf mean?Lifetap got taken down a notch, but why is everyone up in arms about it? Breakfast Topic: Heroic PuGs from hellEveryone's been in a group like this, but being in a Heroic makes it even worse. Know Your Lore: The story of the Burning CrusadeThe expansion's lore is going to get wrapped up in the next patch, so here's what you need to know before we all go see the ending. Dress yourself up completely in Badge LootGot Heroic Badges? Now you can gear yourself all out. Hybrid Theory: What's a hybrid v2.0Our column on hybrid classes returns with a new writer and a new outlook on what it means to step across lines in the RPG class trinity.
Last Week on Massively: WoW-related stories
This week's round up of WoW-related posts on our sister site Massively covers many different angles of the MMO universe dominated by World of Warcraft. The Game Developers Conference 08 coverage took up much of last week with many people comparing their efforts to WoW's success. You can click on the links below or subscribe to a special WoW-only Massively feed.The Daily Grind: When will you be done with WoW?Akela Talamasca wants know what is it that will end the WoW-affair?GDC08: Massively is Live at the Future of MMOs panel Rob Pardo, VP of Game Design at Blizzard was on a panel at GDC last week debating the Future of MMOs. Massively's Michael Zenke was there to liveblog it. Ask Massively: Show me the MMOney!What will it take to overcome WoW? Massively lays out the battle plan.
Blood Sport: Is WoW turning into a PvP game?
V'Ming - who thinks that gnome warlocks are travesties of nature and need to be KOSed - shares thoughts and ideas on becoming deadlier at the Arenas. He also dabbles in the dark arts in Blood Pact.Looking at some of the upcoming class changes in patch 2.4, I can't help but feel that many of them are driven by PvP - particularly Arena - issues. Blizzard is undoubtedly trying to level the playing field for the classes before the 3v3 Arena Tournament, tentatively set to begin in April. That's a very short time to iron out problems and further imbalances that the patch will bring.A design philosophy that Blizzard has insisted on from the beginning is that each class should play similarly in both PvP and PvP. Tom Chilton (Lead Designer, or Kalgan) said at last year's Blizzcon that the game "shouldn't have significantly different rules for spells in PvP vs PvE.""Slower" water in Arenas is the latest change that depart from this philosophy, in addition to PvP-only diminishing returns, and PvP-oriented stats like Resilience and Spell Penetration. However, since many class changes apply to both PvP and PvE, PvE players seem to be "dragged" along by changes meant to tune their classes' PvP performance. Shamans and druids seem to be most affected this patch with changes to Nature's Swiftness, Elemental Mastery, Call of Thunder for shamans, and Lifebloom for druids.
GDC08: The future of MMOs
Earlier today fans of Massively Multiplayer Online Games were given a rare treat: a look into the future of the genre. Five veteran members of the gaming industry debated the finer points of MMO game creation as it exists today, and how the games of tomorrow will be bolted together. Participants included Cryptic Studios' Jack Emmert, NCsoft's Matt Miller, BioWare's Ray Muzyka, Nexon's Min Kim, and Blizzard's Rob Pardo. Each designer brought their own unique points of view to the conversation, and their visible conflicts made for a not only entertaining but informational dialogue.The biggest point of contention during the discussion was the subject of Microtransactions; while Nexon's business model is based entirely on that concept, Cryptic's Emmert was a staunch opponent of the practice in general and as a "magic bullet" in specific. Mr. Emmert also dug several times at Blizzard and Rob Pardo, cracking jokes like "Isn't it true that Blizzard is going to buy the entire continent of Africa?" and essentially stating that the Massive gaming industry is deeply sick as a result of WoW's success. The entire liveblog of the discussion is available over at Massively, and is well worth a look. Gallery: GDC08: The Future of MMOs
GDC08: Pardo and others on the future of MMOs
This afternoon gaming luminaries Rob Pardo (Blizzard), Min Kim (Nexon), Ray Muzyka (Bioware), Jack Emmert (Cryptic), and Matt Miller (NCsoft) got together at GDC to exchange their thoughts on the future of the industry. Sister site Massively was there live, no doubt typing furiously in order to catch every crumb of information. Want to know what's going to happen to your favorite game (or games!) in 10 or 20 years? Check out Massively's live coverage. Gallery: GDC08: The Future of MMOs
GDC08: Massively is Live at the Future of MMOs panel
var digg_url = 'http://www.digg.com/gaming_news/GDC08_Massively_is_Live_at_the_Future_of_MMOs_panel'; Today at GDC Massively is liveblogging a sort of 'MMO Keynote', a panel entitled simply "The Future of MMOs". A simple title, perhaps, but probably the most anticipated event for Massive game designers and fans alike. On it are a few names you might have heard of, like Cryptic Studios' Jack Emmert, Nexon's Min Kim, BioWare's Ray Muzyka, and Rob Pardo (who has apparently worked on some sort of popular fantasy game). Moderated by MMORPG.com's Jon Woods, it's sure to offer some insights into the games of tomorrow.Below the cut is our blow-by-blow account of the jabs, cuts, and parries from these Massive genre heavyweights. The last time I saw a get-together like this was at the Austin Game Conference, and the result was a spectacular confrontation. If ... you know ... you like MMOs. Otherwise it's a bunch of guys talking generalities about "those addictive games". If the idea of the mind behind World of Warcraft talking about the games that he loves, along with observations from one of the founders of BioWare, combined with the insights of a tabletop gaming champion and a pioneer of Korean gaming doesn't interest you ... why are you here?Read on!%Gallery-16640%
GDC08: Blizzard's approach to MMOs
Rob Pardo, Senior Vice President of Game Design, spoke earlier today on Blizzard's approach to multiplayer game design. Pardo shared what the iconic company has learned over the years of releasing titles like WoW, Starcraft, and Warcraft regarding game balance, PvP and UI design, player psychology and more. Head over to WoW Insider to check out the full transcript from the talk and the Q&A session plus a gallery of all the slides (and Pardo's handsome mug). Gallery: GDC08: Blizzard's approach to MMOs
