Here's a bit of sad news for Diablo III fans. So sad, in fact, that if you happen to be one of those "I can never let anyone see me cry" guys, you should probably run off to a secluded area. Like, right now. Go!

Activision Blizzard CFO Thomas Tippl recently talked about how the Blizzard side of the business has been going, and more importantly, when exactly all of the studio's games are coming out. According to Kotaku, we shouldn't expect to see Diablo III until 2011 at the earliest.

2010 will be a busy year for Blizzard, what with StarCraft II, the new and improved Battle.net, World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, and whatever else may be in the works. This of course pushes those StarCraft expansions and Diablo into the "next few years."

As a Blizzard fan, long waits sort of come with the membership. But you know what? It sure would be nice to say, "hey world, I had the chance to play Diablo III before you ended in 2012." Make it happen, people.

Another story related to a Blizzard game where a time far off from the present is discussed? Uh huh. The two themes have become so intertwined with one another that it isn't even disappointing to hear anymore; it's simply the norm.

The StarCraft II beta, which we foolishly expected to go public this year, has been shoved into 2010. This news was confirmed by producer Chris Sigaty at a Russian videogame expo called IgroMir. I didn't know such a convention existed, but with a name like that, I'll be sure to never forget.

With more time on Blizzard's side, perhaps we will see the inclusion of the StarCraft II map editor in the beta after all? Fully expect me to take your silence as a "yes," guys.

[Via Eurogamer]

I'm sure we've all been in a situation where the power has gone or the Internet's shut down right when we've been in the middle of a hot gaming session. What do you do in those situations? Throw the controller? Scream and rage? If you're one eighteen-year-old Starcraft fan, you grab a kitchen knife and stab the first 15-year-old girl who walks past your house. Sensible option.

A Swedish Starcraft gamer flew into a fit of rage when his Internet cut off while he was playing the RTS title, so he ran into the kitchen, grabbed a knife, and then started attacking the young girl as she passed by his house. He stabbed her multiple times, but fortunately has survived the attack. 

The nutjob has been charged with attempted homicide and has been sent off for psychiatric treatment. The world breathes a sigh of relief that he was playing Starcraft and not Demon's Souls, as things could have been far worse.

You may have noticed that Blizzard takes a while to put out their games. Their two biggest releases coming up, Diablo III and StarCraft II, have been in development for what seems like ages. Often games that are in development for this long are stuck in the mire of game design, and may never see the light of day, so it's understandable that Gamasutra would raise the question of if "the development time has been extended to a surprising degree" when they talked with Blizzard lead content designer Kevin Martens. Martens thinks this is Blizzard's greatest advantage, however.

"Here's the secret to Blizzard games, and this is a secret that won't help any of our competitors: endless iteration," he explained. "We'll take something, we'll put it in the game. Maybe we'll like it when we put it in, maybe we won't. We'll leave it in there for a while, we'll let it percolate. We'll play it and play it and play it, and then we'll come back. We might throw it all out, or we'll throw half of that out and redo it."

Basically, being able to try things over and over and over again makes their games better. Seems pretty logical to me, even, dare I say it, obvious. Still, how many companies actually have all the time in the world to test out every option in every game. I guess that's why Martens isn't too scared to reveal this "secret."

Blizzard’s annual BlizzCon expo celebrating all things StarCraft, Warcraft and Diablo isn’t as profitable as one might think. Despite selling 20,000 tickets at $125 a pop, a ton of merchandising at the con and the DirecTV deal, Blizzard didn't see any profits from the show.

Executive Vice President, Frank Pearce, spoke at Austin GDC yesterday where he opened up on the cost of the convention:

"BlizzCon is operated at a substantial loss for the company. "It's a huge marketing opportunity, so that's the benefit we get out of that. But in terms of any kind of financial gain, it actually is a loss for us."

Frank wouldn’t go into details on how much is lost, but it’s got to be a pretty penny. GameSpot points out that Blizzard has to rent out the Anaheim Convention Center, provide around 2,000 PCs for demos and there’s all those cash prizes too. Plus, there’s the celebrity factor with Kerrigan's voice actress Tricia Helfer making an appearance along with Ozzy Osbourne’s concert.

It may have cost them a ton, but I’m sure the 11 million World of Warcraft players help Blizzard sleep at night.

FUN FACT TIME! Frank also gave an insight on some interesting numbers in relation to WoW:

"Put together, the massively multiplayer online role-playing game and its two expansions have 7,650 quests, 70,000 spells, 40,000 NPCs, 1.5 million assets, and 5.5 million lines of code, and requires 4,000 employees, 13,250 server blades, and 75,000 CPU cores."

Holy sh*t! 

StarCraft 2's map editor looks to be pretty robust, and Blizzard was happy to show off some of the power under the hood at Blizzcon. Imagine maps in the style of action role-playing games, shoot-'em-ups, and even first-person shooters. Blizzard was able to crank out examples of each from the new editor.

At a game play panel at Blizzcon, a third-person Action RPG and a Galaga-style shmup were shown off.  As VG247 says, with this kind of map-making flexibility and power, it makes sense that new maps might cost money. Of course, there will still be free ones too. Joystiq points to an FPS made using the editor, featuring a character model from the cancelled StarCraft Ghost. They say that this was created in just a few days.

I can't wait to see what gamers do when armed with this power.

[via 1UP]

Wow. Tricia Helfer is getting in all of the high profile games! First she’s voicing Dare in Halo 3: ODST. Now, she’s voicing Kerrigan in StarCraft 2. 

Joystiq reports that Tricia’s role in StarCraft 2 was revealed during a panel at BlizzCon this weekend. Vice President of creative development, Chris Metzen, told the audience during the StarCraft 2 lore panel that the sexy actress would be replacing Glynnis Talken as the Queen of Blades.

While I don’t mind that Tricia is the new voice of Kerrigan, I will miss Glynnis’ voice. The way she portrayed Kerrigan in the original StarCraft was just perfect.

Not long ago, Blizzard Entertainment’s Rob Pardo said, flatly, that uber-RTS StarCraft II would not support LAN. His words ignited a firestorm of keystrokes from an oddly vocal -- and Internet-equipped -- group of purists who clacked disapproval of the move in whatever corner of the Internet they were alerted to the grave, grave news. Those folks can relax and put the pitchforks down: Blizzard plans to incorporate some kind of LAN support for the title.

How? Call it ... essentially-LAN. Speaking with Shacknews, Battle.Net developer Greg Canessa echoed leader producer Chris Sigaty's confirmation that Blizzard is working on some kind of feature that can replicate the speed and reliability of LAN while users are still connected to Battle.Net (therefore authenticating their disc). If the concept comes to fruition, an Internet connection will still be required to play -- but there’s no need for a new petition.

Canessa explains, “We are working on solutions with regard to things we can do to maintain connectivity to Battle.net in some way, but also provide a great quality connection between players.”

When asked if this solution would be like a “pseudo-LAN,” Canessa agreed, saying “Something like that,” before continuing. “Maintaining a connection with Battle.net, I don't know if it's once or periodically, but then also having a peer-to-peer connection between players to facilitate a very low-ping, high-bandwidth connection ... those are the things that we're working on.”

It’ll be interesting to see how this works, for sure. If it doesn’t pan out, we’ll be sure to tell you about the new petition.

Back at the end of July, I got to go back to Blizzard headquarters to take a look at StarCraft II once again. This time, instead of crushing other publications under the might of my hydralisk swarms, I got some hands-on time with the single-player mode of the game. I also got the chance to speak with Andy Chambers, the lead writer for the game, as well as Chris Sigaty, the lead producer, who gave us some interesting insights into how the single-player mode of the game was created and the challenges they faced while working on the game.

Hit the jump for the details.

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When Blizzard announced that Starcraft II would be ditching LAN support, people got upset. Local play has been a staple of Starcraft for centuries, and it was quite shocking to see that the sequel would not allow for that most ancient and noble of nerd traditions, the LAN party. Naturally, an online petition started up.

Futile as I may find online petitions, I still admire the willingness of gamers to make their voices heard, especially as they're usually a ludicrously apathetic bunch. The petition has broken the 100,000 signature mark, making for quite a loud voice indeed. Seems that, despite having the Internet, there's no substitute in many peoples' minds for good ol' fashioned human interaction. 

Of course, with Blizzard being the right arm of evil publisher Activision, this collective outcry could fall on deaf ears. Blizzard is keen on pushing Battle.net with all its might, and if that means sacrificing the happiness of a mere 100,000 people, then so be it.

With the "it's done when it's done" design philosophy for Starcraft II meaning a tragic yet understandable 2010 release, it seems like many of us are wondering why Battle.net was cited as a reason for the delay. Courtesy of Gamasutra, we have got some answers.

Activision's leading man Bobby Kotick says that the intention is to make Battle.net "the foundation for connecting tens of millions in the Blizzard community in a social gaming network across all Blizzard's future games." He also compared the service to Xbox LIVE saying Starcraft II and World of Warcraft would be the first to utilize it.

Blizzard president Mike Morhaime was also able to chime in on the matter, saying "we recognize that we only get one chance to make a first impression." The ambitious new Battle.net will "add social networking features, cross-game communications, unified log-in and account management and more" on top of the current feature set.

This all sounds really exciting to me. Although it's sad we won't get Starcraft II this year, the delay can only be a good thing for the state of both Battle.net and the game itself. Now please, guys, don't delay any more games -- especially not Borderlands.

We got an interesting press release today announcing a series of licensed "gaming surfaces" featuring Starcraft II. Now, when I hear the phrase, "gaming surface," I instinctively think, "table," seeing as that would be a surface on which you would play a game. I do not think, "mouse pad."

And that's what these are. They're mouse pads. Now, I understand the desire to make your product stand out from the pack and, from the description in the press release, I'm sure they're very nice mouse pads. But it's a f--king mouse pad, people. A mouse pad with attractive art and a coating intended to provide an optimal amount of glide, sure, but a mouse pad nonetheless.

These mouse pads produced by Steel Series will come in two different styles, featuring the above image of Kerrigan fighting Zeratul and another with a focus on the Terrans. They will retail for $14.99 and will be available from GameStop and Amazon.

Hit the jump for a press release and check out a larger version of the "Kerrigan vs. Zeratul" image in the gallery.

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Oh, Internet, you and your silly petitions that nobody will ever bother actually reading. Hot off the back of Blizzard revealing that StarCraft II would not support LAN, a bunch of hardcore StarCraft fans have banded together to petition the studio and demand that the feature be reinstalled.

The petition is at least respectful, imploring Blizzard to bring LAN back, and pointing out that Internet connections aren't always available and that it was LAN that cemented StarCraft's popularity in the first place. The petition currently has 25101 signatures, so it's not quite a Left 4 Dead 2 boycott yet, but it's early days.

That said, do these petititons really ever work? Only when they're a marketing stunt, and I have a feeling that Blizzard isn't yoinking out LAN simply for publicity. We'll see if the democratic process wins out this time, but it's highly doubtful that Blizzard will reconsider because of an Internet petition. 

 

Yesterday, it was revealed that long-awaited RTS Starcraft II would not have LAN support, sending a number of PC gamers into a frenzy, despite the fact that they had the Internet so it shouldn't really be a problem. Blizzard has naturally responded to the nerd rage, defending its position and making sure to mention piracy as a contributing factor.

"We don't currently plan to support LAN play with StarCraft II, as we are building Battle.net to be the ideal destination for multiplayer gaming with StarCraft II and future Blizzard Entertainment games," confirms a Blizzard rep. "While this was a difficult decision for us, we felt that moving away from LAN play and directing players to our upgraded Battle.net service was the best option to ensure a quality multiplayer experience with StarCraft II and safeguard against piracy.

"Several Battle.net features like advanced communication options, achievements, stat-tracking, and more, require players to be connected to the service, so we're encouraging everyone to use Battle.net as much as possible to get the most out of StarCraft II. We're looking forward to sharing more details about Battle.net and online functionality for StarCraft II in the near future."

So, an equal mix of piracy and Blizzard pushing its own gaming platform are to blame. Still, hardcore traditionalists who don't like change will likely be unsatisfied by this and shall continue to get all stroppy. You know what they should do? They should boycott it. I hear that's the cool thing to do!