Blizzard has confirmed that the publisher is laying off approximately 600 employees worldwide, and of those layoffs, roughly 90% will be unassociated with game development. Blizzard also noted that none of the layoffs are related to the World of Warcraft dev team.
World of Warcraft lives off subscriptions, and so Blizzard are coming up with more ways to entice back fans who've let their membership lapse. The 'Scroll of Resurrection' is one such way. Those who get a friend to accept a Scroll invitation and buy 30 days game time get a free mount. The gamer returning can select one character to 'upgrade' to level 80 permanently.
Not much has been written about Project Titan in the past few months, save for the leak that the unrevealed MMO will be "more casual" in nature than World of Warcraft. However, lead designer Tom Chilton stated in an interview with the Southern California newspaper The OC Register that there has been a "slow trickle of expertise" going from the World of Warcraft dev team to the Project Titan team - and that the trickle may turn into a flood in the future.
Blizzard has acknowledged that falling World of Warcraft subscriber numbers are at least partially attributable to the emergence of Star Wars: The Old Republic, even admitting members of the Warcraft development team have been checking Bioware's MMO out.
Blizzard has announced that beta testing for the upcoming expansion World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria will begin shortly, and gamers can register for it via their Battle.net accounts. The publisher did not say when the beta test would actually begin or how many players would be accepted, but did note that gamers who are accepted in would be informed via email. It did state that WOW Annual Pass holders would receive priority selection.
The upcoming Mists of Pandaria expansion to World of Warcraft will be adding literal kung fu pandas to the preeminent MMO, and Blizzard is hoping the hardcore players will accept it. According to lead systems designer Greg Street in an interview with GameSpy, “I worry about the perception. I think after BlizzCon we faced this misperception that we were somehow forsaking our hardcore players. Which is not at all what we were doing."
Blizzard are adding a feature to let players recover items they've recently sold, destroyed or disenchanted. It's a "new self-service option" that uses the ticket submission system. They'll be "restored to a character immediately" except in the case of a disenchanted item which will need a "review by Customer Support" before getting restored. Limited use.
Activision reveal that as of March 31st, 2012 the number of subscribers to Blizzard's World of Warcraft were exactly the same as the figure posted 3 months prior: 10.2 million users. At the beginning of last fiscal year WOW subs were high at 12 million but fell throughout the year. Activision shares took a hit in November when 800k users disappeared from WOW.
Blizzard today announced that only 24 hours after release, more than 3.5 million copies of Diablo III had been sold, setting a new all-time record for fastest-selling PC game.
Co-founder Cal Henderson of Glitch developer Tiny Speck has gone and used World of Warcraft's own texture files to literally map out the entire game world like in Google Maps. It's been dubbed 'World of MapCraft' and features slippy maps. It includes everything like Outland, dungeons and battlegrounds too. It even supports 'classic' versions.
The Mega Bloks empire, rival to LEGO, has just added Blizzard's World of Warcraft universe to their product line-up. They've put together "highly-collectable and realistic characters". They cover all classes, races and the two factions. Mega Bloks also sell "iconic vehicles and play sets" to create some battle scenes. One such set is Deathwing's Stormwind Assault.
Blizzard Entertainment has announced the release date for the latest expansion to their mega-successful MMO, World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria. The expansion will be landing on retail and digital distribution on the 25th September 2012. The expansion will run $39.99 USD.
Wargaming.net has announced that it has changed the title of their upcoming naval MMO from World of Battleships to World of Warships.
Activision has announed in its quarterly investor call that Diablo III has become the fastest selling PC game of all-time with 10M units sold. The game had sold 6.3M in its first week, with 3.5M in the first day.
Hollywood periodical Variety has revealed that the troubled World of Warcraft film production, which director Sam Raimi had abandoned a long time ago, has hired a new screenwriter, Charles Leavitt.
Jan van der Crabben, former designer for Empire: Total War, has warned his fellows that studios should brace themselves for a 70% drop-off of initial registered users with their free-to-play titles. Speaking at a GDC Europe keynote, Crabben said whilst the majority play for a little bit and then leave to never return, those who make it a fourth day will generally keep coming back.
The heavily hyped Mists of Pandaria expansion for World of Warcraft is landing on the 25th September, and Blizzard has unveiled the game's opening cinematic.
Blizzard has announced in its Battle.net Blog that the 5.0.4 update which lands on the 25th August will unlock every single World of Warcraft race to all users regardless of which expansions they own - including the Pandaren race that will be introduced on the 25th September in the Mists of Pandera expansion.
Blizzard will not be raising the level cap for their free-to-play World of Warcraft Starter Edition. The studio believes the journey to level 20 already gives users "a good sense of what our game is". Subscriber numbers have fallen from 13 to around 9 million. This begged the question if Blizzard would expand their F2P offering. It has features "that are special" and won't be enjoyed freely.
Gamers in Iran will be disappointed to find they can no longer access World of Warcraft and Battle.net, thanks to US sanctions and trade restrictions. The games weren't released in Iran, but gamers in the country have accessed the game via virtual private networks.