New details and Outland screens from “World of Warcraft within Minecraft” project (exclusive interview)

A 27-year-old U.S. graduate student known as “Ramses” is creating a stir in the community of Minecraft, the sandbox-building game by Swedish development studio Mojang. Within Minecraft’s blocky world, he has spent about 100 hours so far on a re-creation of Azeroth, the enormous setting of Blizzard’s massively multiplayer game, World of Warcraft (WoW).

Minecraft generates customizable 3D worlds that are made of cubes. Because every single part of the landscape can be altered, it … Continue Reading

Activision Blizzard earnings: World of Warcraft resists the assault from EA’s Star Wars

Activision Blizzard has beaten earnings expectations for its third fiscal quarter, which ended Dec. 31, and its major cash cow is still holding up. World of Warcraft didn’t suffer after Electronic Arts launched its massively multiplayer online game Star Wars: The Old Republic. World of Warcraft ended the year with 10.2 million paying subscribers, down only slightly from 10.3 million in the previous quarter.

Bobby Kotick, chief executive of Activision Blizzard, said in an analyst … Continue Reading

Star Wars: The Old Republic isn’t hurting World of Warcraft as much as you may think

To what extent has Electronic Arts’ Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR) been keeping users away from Activision Blizzard’s cash cow World of Warcraft (WoW)? Surprisingly little, according to traffic reports from leading independent community websites for both online games.

The high-risk, high-reward market of subscription-based massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) has become more competitive since Electronic Arts bet the farm on SWTOR, which took six years to develop and allegedly cost about $200 … Continue Reading

Gamer found dead in internet cafe…nine hours later

23-year-old Chen Jung-yu was found dead at an internet cafe in New Taipei, Taiwan on Tuesday night.

Jung-yu was rigid in his chair with hands on the keyboard and mouse, according to local police. He had been playing the popular online multiplayer game World of Warcraft when he died (though another outlet is suggesting the game may have been League of Legends). Reports state that he had been dead up to nine hours going unnoticed … Continue Reading

DC Universe Online exec talks about the game’s future and competition from Star Wars (interview)

Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) is celebrating DC Universe Online’s one-year anniversary today. All current players (with characters created on or before today) will receive a mission allowing them to earn a unique One Year Anniversary Cape.

The massively multiplayer online game (MMO) is notable for a number of reasons, including a dynamic, real-time combat system unlike most other MMOs, which generally feature quasi-turn-based battles (a la World of Warcraft). This gives it more of an … Continue Reading

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72pins creative director discusses taking Call of Duty and Halo back to the 8-bit days

72pins is made up of a small team of retro art makers who take modern games — such as Halo or God of War — and reimagine them as classic Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) carts.

Cleverly coined as “NEStalgia” and named as one of Time Magazine’s top holiday gift picks for geeks, the end result speaks for itself. The unique pixel art is applied to an actual working NES cart, meaning that copy of BioShock … Continue Reading

Star Wars: The Old Republic drops 30 spots on the UK sales charts

Electronic Arts and BioWare’s long-awaited, big budget Star Wars: The Old Republic has seen an unprecedented drop down the UK sales charts. According to Chart-Track, the licensed massively multiplayer online game plummeted from 10th position all the way to 38th during the week ending on December 31.

The steep decline is not a good sign for the momentous MMO, largely accepted to be one of the most expensive games ever made. Released on December 20, … Continue Reading

Blizzard makes $26M on World of Warcraft security authenticators [update]

Update: As pointed out below in the reader comments, these estimates are likely off by a sizable amount as they do not take into account the free Battle.net Mobile Authenticator. Users of the free app are entitled to the Core Hound Pup in-game pet (which was used to come up with the $26 million figure) just as users of the paid authenticator are, so it’s virtually impossible to calculate how much revenue has actually been … Continue Reading

5.5 million hours spent in Star Wars: The Old Republic over Christmas weekend

Electronic Arts is touting the latest numbers for Star Wars: The Old Republic, and it seemed that lightsaber hums competed hard with the sound of jingle bells.

Over the last weekend, 5.5 million hours of potential quality family time were sacrificed for the Galactic Republic and the Sith Empire instead, according to the publisher. It’s a sign that EA’s major bet on The Old Republic, which has been in development for years in the hopes … Continue Reading

The DeanBeat: Game industry predictions for 2012

We all know how worthless predictions can be, but they’re kind of irresistible. They’re easy to make, particularly if nobody pays attention to whether they came true or not. I could come up with a lot of crazy forecasts, like Zynga buys Ubisoft. But I’ll try to stay real this year. If you have some ideas of your own, please leave them in the comments and take our poll at the end.

1. Social and … Continue Reading

Review: Should you buy Star Wars: The Old Republic?

Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft could soon be feeling a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of subscribers suddenly cried out and started heading for a galaxy far, far away. Star Wars: The Old Republic is an impressive and easy to play new competitor from Electronic Arts that makes great use of the Star Wars license. It is the most promising new massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) since World of Warcraft claimed … Continue Reading

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World of Warcraft patched as Blizzard Entertainment tries to reverse declining subscriptions

Blizzard Entertainment  released a huge patch on Tuesday for its hit game World of Warcraft, as part of an effort to turn around a significant drop in subscribers. As we reported earlier this month, player numbers dropped from 11.1 million to 10.3 million in the third quarter of 2011, and parent company Activision Blizzard must surely now be looking over its shoulder at the upcoming big budget rival Star Wars: The Old Republic.

A fourth … Continue Reading

League of Legends surpasses 30 million registered players

Riot Games announced today that their hit online game League of Legends has surpassed the 30 million registered-player mark along with 11.4 million monthly active users. They have reason to crow, as even the ubiquitous World of Warcraft only reports 10.3 million subscribers.

Perhaps more significantly, over a million games of League of Legends are played each day, many consisting of two to five players, reports the company. In addition, at peak times, the game … Continue Reading

Blizzard COO Paul Sams talks mobile games and giving away Diablo III for free

VentureBeat ran into Blizzard Entertainment’s Paul Sams at this weekend’s BlizzCon fan event in Anaheim, Calif., and we sat down with him to discuss the company’s newly announced World of Warcraft Annual Pass, declining subscribers, and the company’s plans for future mobile projects.

Sams has been with the company since the mid-90′s, and as chief operating officer, he’s overseen development of every Blizzard title in some way or another since Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness. … Continue Reading

Why World of Warcraft added Pokemon-like battling to Mists of Pandaria

Developers of the ridiculously popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft announced that the next game expansion will include a new battle system that essentially turns a player’s companion pets into Pokémon.

The announcement, made yesterday at the annual Blizzcon event, was one of many that Blizzard Entertainment made about World of Warcraft’s fourth expansion, Mists of Pandaria. Companion pets are somewhat of an accessory. They follow a player’s character around when summoned … Continue Reading

Blizzard Entertainment reveals the next World of Warcraft expansion, Mists of Pandaria

Blizzard Entertainment has announced the fourth World of Warcraft expansion, titled Mists of Pandaria.

Speaking today at the sold-out BlizzCon fan event in Anaheim, Calif., Blizzard’s vice president of creative development Chris Metzen revealed the upcoming expansion set to deafening applause. Each new expansion is financially a big deal for Blizzard, which generates a billion dollars a year in World of Warcraft revenues.

Whenever the company starts to lose subscribers, it pumps up the user … Continue Reading

Justin.tv signs exclusive broadcast deal with giant e-sports league ESL

Justin.tv announced today that it has secured an exclusive distribution deal with the electronic sports league, ESL, to broadcast electronic sports tournaments on Twitch.tv.

Any tournament run by ESL, including the upcoming Intel Extreme Masters tournaments, will be broadcast exclusively on Twitch.tv. That could bring a lot of potential visitors, since ESL is one of the oldest e-sports leagues in the world and has been running tournaments since the days of games like Counter Strike … Continue Reading

Superhero online game City of Heroes launches as free-to-play today

City of Heroes, an online role-playing game run by NCSoft, will now use a freemium model that makes money off the sale of premium goods in lieu of requiring all players to pay a subscription fee.

All City of Heroes players can now play until they reach level 50 without paying a cent. The game will give players the option to purchase new content and items — such as boosters that will help them become … Continue Reading

Under pressure, Blizzard Entertainment may unveil Titan in October

Blizzard Entertainment is under pressure to deliver something big before the end of the year, now that it has delayed Diablo 3 until 2012. It has plenty of options, but signs point to the company finally dropping details about its hotly-anticipated next online game, code-named “Titan.”

Blizzard is the developer behind World of Warcraft and it’s currently the dominant force in online. Its largest gaming event, Blizzcon, is coming up in Anaheim, Calif., in October, … Continue Reading

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Star Wars: The Old Republic release date is December 20 this year

Game publisher Electronic Arts today announced that Star Wars: The Old Republic, one of the company’s most anticipated online games, will come out in December this year.

The Old Republic is Electronic Arts’ Hail Mary pass in online games and aims to rip users away from rival online games, such as Blizzard Entertainment’s seven-year-old game colossus World of WarCraft. If Electronic Arts succeeds, it will have persistent revenues coming in from subscription fees charged to … Continue Reading