Well, that pretty much rules out any possibility that Diablo 3 will be an MMO. Okay, so maybe there wasn't need for doubt. Since Diablo 3's announcement is out, we probably have just one more rumor to confirm: the Team 3 project. Blizzard never hinted on the upcoming RPG's relations to the mysterious 50-man team still laboring away inside the company walls. Maybe Team 3 is responsible for developing Diablo 3 for the past four years, or maybe - just maybe - they're actually part of this secretive next-gen MMO project. Learn more of your favorite Blizzard game at the full story.

The first MMORPG Weekend Warrior is here and it provides busy gamers with a weekly round up of the hottest topics in the world of MMORPGs. This week sees a number of major updates such as details on Sony Online Entertainment's DC Universe MMORPG, a pair of patches for Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, Rob Pardo's revelation that World of Warcraft was originally designed to be free-to-play, and two awesome giveaway promos for those who are thinking of starting a free-to-play MMORPG. More on this in the full article!

The hit MMORPG World of Warcraft which has garnered more than ten million subscribers was originally designed around a free-to-play business model complete with advertisements. At least that's what Rob Pardo, the vice president of game design for Blizzard, revealed in a recent talk at the Paris Game Developer Conference. Care to find out more, then head on over to the full article.

Designing a video game intended for millions of users undoubtedly sounds difficult, but after overcoming hurdles, Blizzard found massive success in World of Warcraft. At the Game Developers Conference 2008, Blizzard's senior vice president of game design Rob Pardo wasn't shy of sharing the ingredients that made WoW a phenomenon. Wanna know the secret behind the MMORPG with over 10 million subscribers? Look no further than the full article!

Blizzard's coming to the 2008 Game Developers Conference and has a bunch of events lined up for the five-day gathering. The studio that brought us the Warcraft and StarCraft franchises will talk about the future of MMOs, show a new cinematic teaser for StarCraft II, and more besides. Check out the full article to find out what else they're bringing to the GDC.

Here's an update on the DICE Summit 08: Blizzard CEO and co-founder Mike Morhaime and VPs Rob Pardo and Frank Pearce talk about how they were able to develop their company.

They also shared how they were able to achieve much success due to their operations without corporate interference. More information in the full article.

It seems Blizzard is sticking to its commitment to bring its uber-popular World of Warcraft MMORPG to as many people as possible. The following was posted by Blizzard poster Nethaera on the official WoW Forums as a response to a question about the OS requirements for the Wrath of the Lich King expansion:

The specifics for what will be required for running the expansion have yet to be worked out but it seems unlikely that we will be moving over to have everyone only able to play if they have Vista. We try to keep the game as accessible to as many people as possible and take that into account when developing our content.

Rob Pardo, Blizzard's senior VP of game design, also revealed recently that rumors about a graphical engine upgrade for Wrath of the Lich King are not true. According to Pardo, there won't be any system requirement change for those who wish to install Wrath of the Lich King.

There you go, people. If you're running WoW on a not-so-high-end computer, don't worry. You'll still get your chance at becoming Death Knights.

GameDaily BIZ recently sat down for a chat with Rob Pardo, Blizzard's senior vice president of game design. A large part of the interview had Pardo talking about Blizzard's two big games: World of Warcraft and the upcoming StarCraft 2. Read on for a few snippets from the interview.

WoW on consoles? "I think you'll see a console MMO that's popular one of these days. It's quite likely, not going to be WoW. WoW was really never designed for the console experience and for us to try and put it on a console would be a Herculean effort..."

Graphical engine upgrade for Lich King? "We're not planning on any graphical engine overhaul so there's not going to be a system requirement change... if you look at some of the new zones, in a lot of ways they look better than previous zones. A lot of that is actually our artists learning how to tune and tweak things more then they had before."

StarCraft 2's single player campaign. "We develop the multiplayer first because if you really do want to have the balance and that depth and that strategic complexity... Without the single player, you just have these goofy different units and races and no one really understands any of them. There's no context to it. There's no understanding or storyline."

Of course, as with most Blizzard interviews, the subject of Diablo and StarCraft: Ghost came up. According to Pardo, Blizzard will revisit the Diablo universe "but that day is not today". As for StarCraft: Ghost, it's still on indefinite hold but the only thing needed for it to become a reality is a development team with a passion to do the game.

You can check out the full interview by clicking on the Read link below.

Blizzard Entertainment has a great lineup of games tailing its name, and if its cash register didn't dial in World of Warcraft as its primary income for the moment, it'll soon get an extra cha-ching: Warcraft IV. Blizzard's Rob Pardo told Game Daily in an interview that if one of Big Blue's development team demands to do a sequel to Warcraft III: The Reign of Chaos next, then it will be so.

 

"The way that we develop things, each time a development team becomes available - because they're done with creating the games that they've been doing - they have a lot of say over what their next game is," explained Pardo, later giving expounding on how developers 'burn out' from focusing on a single content over considerable time.

"What it would take is for one of our teams to decide that they want to make Warcraft RTS and of course, there'll be some talk about doing that and I'm sure after StarCraft 2 ships, it will be one the ideas on the table for that team to do," said Pardo, lighting a candle path toward another RTS titan.

Of course, he did suggest that a successor to Warcraft III would be coming from the developers who exhausted themselves on the StarCraft universe. So until StarCraft II releases anytime soon, the next Warcraft title will not even begin its planning stages.

Hope for Warcraft RTS fans gets even more bleak, after Rob Pardo concluded, "If we want to go back and do it, maybe we will, maybe we won't." It's still a little more hopeful than World of Warcraft on consoles - a possibility that Pardo was less than willing to accomplish.

We've all heard the rumors of a supposed "World of StarCraft" game being developed by Blizzard. Those rumors aren't anything entirely new. What with the surging sales of their World of Warcraft MMO, it was bound to happen that only - what? *calculates* - a few billion of the raging Blizzard fans would clamor for an MMORPG of StarCraft.

To put a big foot down on the matter, Blizzard Chief Creative Officer Chris Metzen announced during BlizzCon 2007 that they are indeed NOT doing any development for a "World of Starcraft" MMO. At least, not as of now, they aren't. He said that the concept about an MMORPG has been discussed among board members, true. But as for development, sorry, that's false.

Well, some of can't help but be wishful thinking. Especially after:

1. the confirmation of the much-rumored WoW expansion
2. Rob Pardo saying Starcraft Ghost may not be dead
3. Blizzard looking for people to work on a "Next-Gen MMO"
4. Frank Pearce hinting at a mysterious "Team 3" working on something "really awesome"
   

We're sure there's a lot of other factors to throw in to make this "World of StarCraft" that much more a possibility. For what it's worth though, we're just glad that the Blizz Board has discussed about such a prospect. Now I wonder how many Zerglings we'd have to sacrifice in order to make those concepts and prospects into an actual reality.