Today, SteelSeries, a leading manufacturer of game peripherals and accessories, unveiled a new line of gaming surfaces featuring art from Blizzard Entertainment's highly anticipated StarCraft II. The QcK Limited Edition Terran Marine and Kerrigan vs. Zeratul editions are designed with a non-slip rubber base which prevents the pads from sliding, no matter what surface the mousepad is placed on, and is optimized for optical and laser technology providing an overall more reliable gaming experience.

"StarCraft and its expansion have together sold more than 11 million copies worldwide, and we believe StarCraft II will prove equally influential and popular, making this a great opportunity to provide gamers with surfaces that help to improve performance and game play," said Brian Stech, SteelSeries President of the Americas. "We are incredibly excited to have an opportunity to continue our partnership with the designers from Blizzard Entertainment and develop surfaces that we know StarCraft players will enjoy."

A new list of features surraunding the upcoming RTS franchise Star Craft 2 that might interest you were announced today. Starting with the big one, Blizzard has confirmed that Star Craft 2 will not support LAN multiplayer mode. The game will be entirely online based, multiplayer connections will go through Battle.net only, no LAN connections will be allowed.
Blizzard today also posted a new 7 minute video footage of some ingame action. Units from all the three races are captured in the video, you can watch it in high quality here.
Also unveiled during an interview with Shacknews was that players will be able to hire NPC mercenaries and use them in the single player mode campaign. StarCraft II lead designer Dustin Browder also detailed that again in single player campaign mode, there'll be additional objectives and optional quests which if completed will give players different bonuses. You can read the full interview with Dustin Browder right here.

This story is less hardware important, but still the word Blizzard is mentioned, so I'm sure you'll make it count. Blizzard Entertainment is glad to inform its admirers that tickets for the game developer's fourth BlizzCon gaming convention are now on sale. Tickets are priced at USD $125 each and can be purchased through the company's event website here. BlizzCon is a celebration of the global player communities surrounding Blizzard Entertainment's Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo game universes. The event will take place August 21st and 22nd at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California, and will feature an array of activities, including developer panels, contests, tournaments, hands-on gameplay with upcoming Blizzard Entertainment games, and more. The ticket-purchase process uses the online Blizzard Store and requires an active Battle.net account. For those of you that won't be able to make it to BlizzCon, Blizzard will offer the DIRECTV BlizzCon Pay Per View service for $39.95. A minimum of eight hours of live HD coverage from the show floor on each day of the convention, including exclusive interviews, demos, and more will be captured and streamed to DIRECTV subscribers. All they need is to watch and enjoy the show from their PCs. Find more information at BlizzCon.

RTS giant Blizzard let loose a few new teaser screens of its much anticipated title, Starcraft II, sourced by SK Gaming. The screens include stills of ongoing campaigns demonstrating the visuals and graphic design of the game. One of those hype building measures from a company that has so far stood and delivered to all its hype. Starcraft II is on course for launch later this year. Enjoy the screens. A larger archive of Starcraft II images sourced from Blizzard so far can be found here.

Blizzard Entertainment today announced that World of Warcraft, its award-winning subscription-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game, is now played by more than 11.5 million subscribers worldwide. This new high was reached following the November 13 release of the game's second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King. Within its first 24 hours of availability, Wrath of the Lich King sold more than 2.8 million copies, making it the fastest-selling PC game of all time. In addition to winning a number of editor's choice awards from major gaming publications, the expansion has now gone on to sell more than 4 million copies in its first month, setting a new record for monthly PC-game sales. Both sales records were previously held by World of Warcraft's first expansion, The Burning Crusade.

Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. today announced that World of Warcraft's second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, has sold more than 2.8 million copies in its first 24 hours of availability, making it the fastest-selling PC game of all time. This eclipses the previous record of nearly 2.4 million copies sold in 24 hours, set in January 2007 by Blizzard's first World of Warcraft expansion, The Burning Crusade. Wrath of the Lich King was simultaneously released in North America, Europe, Chile, Argentina, and Russia on November 13; Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand on November 14; and South Korea and the regions of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau on November 18.

Today sees the release of Blizzard's last World of Warcraft installment, the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. This is the second expansion to date, making the MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) game by far the largest in the world. World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King features a massive new continent called Northrend, the brand-new death knight Hero class, unique dungeons, an open-world PvP zone with siege vehicles and destructible buildings, and hundreds of brand-new quests. The expansion is available in both a standard and Collector's Edition. The Collector's edition includes the original game DVD, a 208-page book featuring never-before-seen images from the game, an exclusive in-game pet, a behind-the-scenes DVD containing over an hour of developer interviews, a soundtrack CD with 21 songs, and an exclusive mouse pad with a map of the newly opened continent of Northrend. The game should already be available everywhere, have fun playing it.

Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. announced today that the subscribership for World of Warcraft, its award-winning massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), now exceeds 11 million players worldwide. This milestone was reached as the beta test for Wrath of the Lich King, World of Warcraft's second expansion, nears completion. Wrath of the Lich King will launch in several regions around the world starting on November 13.

Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. today offered the public the first-ever opportunity to play an early version of its highly anticipated action-role-playing game, Diablo III. Players at the BlizzCon 2008 gaming convention in Anaheim, California, adventured alongside fellow attendees, fighting the hordes of the Burning Hells in one of the game's early dungeons. "Until now, no one outside the company has been able to play Diablo III -- we're excited to offer the first such opportunity to the gamers here at BlizzCon," said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. "We're working hard to make sure Diablo III lives up to the high standards of the first two games in the series, and we look forward to hearing what players think." During the show, Blizzard Entertainment also unveiled the game's third playable class: the wizard.

And now some good news for over 10 million World of WarCraft online players. Blizzard Entertainment announced today that World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, the second expansion for its award-winning subscription-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), will arrive in stores on November 13th in North America, Europe, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, and Russia, and November 14th in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand. The expansion will be available in Korea and the regions of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau on November 18th. The new expansion pack takes all World of Warcraft players to the cold, forbidding continent of Northrend, where the fearsome Lich King Arthas Menethil, last seen in Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne, works from his secluded citadel to bring all of Azeroth under his twisted dominion. Players will battle the Lich King's undead army from the shores of Howling Fjord and Borean Tundra to the seat of his unholy power in Icecrown Glacier. In addition, players will be able to advance characters to level 80 and gain powerful new abilities while exploring several new zones and dungeons. The expansion also introduces a number of exciting new features, including an achievement system, expanded player-vs.-player combat options such as siege weapons and destructible buildings, and the game's first Hero class - the necromantic death knight. Available for Mac and Windows players, the expansion pack will come in two packages - a standard edition that costs $39.99, and a Collector's Edition priced at $69.99. The Collector's Edition includes an art book, an exclusive in-game pet, a behind-the-scenes DVD, a soundtrack CD, a mousepad featuring a map of Northrend and two starter decks for the World of Warcraft trading card game March of the Legion. Retailers in North America are currently taking pre-orders for the game, reserve your copy now online here.

Blizzard has confirmed that the Necromancer, a character class featured in the second versions of Diablo, will be entirely missing in the third installment of the game. Speaking to Kotaku at the Leipzig Games Convention, Jay Wilson Diablo 3's lead designer said:

The Necromancer was simply a victim of his own success, ... He was just too well crafted as a character.

The absence of the Necromancer will be replaced by a new class called Witch Doctor, the Barbarian will also go through some changes and character improvements. That's all for today Diablo fans, more is coming when Blizzard decides its time.

AMD today announced that it has entered into an agreement with Blizzard Entertainment that will allow AMD to bundle Blizzard's best games across all ATI Radeon graphics products, to deliver a superior gaming experience. As the exclusive graphics sponsor for BlizzCon 2008 in Anaheim, Oct. 10-11, AMD will treat gamers to the unparalleled graphics capabilities of the ATI Radeon HD 4800 series in all PCs for game play at BlizzCon.

World of Warcraft (WoW), the largest MMORPG, is fun. People have gone lengths and breadths to achieve higher in the game. Those endless hours of playing it comes at a cost, the WoW subscription. But once you reach a high level (say 70), and own lot of gold, and basically have all achievements under your belt, your inclination to play the game retards. The fact that you have to pay to keep your subscription alive only makes it worse. For you, it means that you're bored, WoW isn't fun anymore, and so you could join another MMORPG. For Blizzard (now Activision-Blizzard), it means losing revenue. Not that they're short of it, but no company would want to lose it.

In what can be seen as a bid to woo such players and maintain their patronage, new achievement levels have been added to the upcoming Wrath of the Lich King Expansion pack. Similar to the achievements you have with console gaming, players will now be awarded titles, gear, bragging rights for several tasks, serious thru trivial. They can be as serious as defeating scores and scores of enemies or as trivial as getting a hair-cut done. Custom animations and sounds would accompany each achievement earned and in-game pets, special clothing and titles will also be awarded. According to Blizzard, these rewards will be "purely cosmetic" and won't affect actual gameplay.

The 'newly-wed' Activision-Blizzard is reportedly planning a music store and content delivery service to directly compete with Apple's iTunes service. For now nothing is even close to concrete, Activision-Blizzard is considering launching its own download store on its Guitar Hero game platform for now. Says CEO Robert Kotick: "When you think about the potential for what we will be able to do together, there have not been many viable alternatives to iTunes." in an interview to Reuters. He adds: "If you're downloading a song to play on your 'Guitar Hero,' there's no reason why you can't download the performance also. So there's all kinds of things you can think about."

Vivindi currently owns the World's largest music publication company, Universal Music. This could serve as a content source for this delivery platform.

Publisher Activision today announced that its merger with Blizzard Entertainment parent company Vivendi Games has been approved by the board of shareholders, and the transaction is expected to officially close today, July the 9th. The new company, dubbed Activision-Blizzard, is valued at roughly US $18.9 billion.

Activision and Vivendi Games will combine their businesses through the merger of a newly formed, wholly-owned subsidiary of Activision with and into Vivendi Games. As a result of the merger, Vivendi Games, the parent company of Blizzard Entertainment and Sierra, will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Activision. Vivendi will receive approximately 295.3 million newly issued shares of Activision common stock. Concurrently with the merger, Vivendi will purchase approximately 62.9 million newly issued shares of Activision common stock at a price of $27.50 per share for a total of approximately $1.7 billion in cash, resulting in a total Vivendi ownership stake in Activision Blizzard of approximately 52% on a fully diluted basis and approximately 54% of shares outstanding. As of the closing of the transaction, Activision will be renamed Activision Blizzard and will continue to operate as a public company traded on NASDAQ under the ticker ATVI.

Headquartered in Santa Monica, California, Activision Blizzard, Inc. is a worldwide pure-play online and console game publisher with leading market positions across all categories of the rapidly growing interactive entertainment software industry.

Following countless complaints of World of Warcraft (WoW) user account hijacks and misuse, Blizzard has come up with a device, a security code generator that each user possesses, the device generates a six-digit security code that the user has to enter when logging on to the WoW account. The generation pattern is unique for each user's generator and this effectively eradicates account misuse, or at least attempts to. Blizzard CEO and cofounder Mike Morhaime says "It's important to us that World of Warcraft offers a safe and enjoyable game environment", he further adds that an aspect of that is helping players avoid account compromise, so they are pleased to make this additional layer of security available to them.

Once activated with Blizzard, the authenticator offers a six-digit code that must be used within 60 seconds on a gamer's WoW account. The user has to enter this number alongside username and password. Similar methods are adopted by PayPal, banks, and other financial institutions to help protect data, PayPal charges US $5 for the PayPal Security Key.

Blizzard plans to charge US $6.50 for the device but no announcements are made as to when it will be available.

With a market position resurrection in progress, AMD/ATI look to compete using a tried and tested tool for technological supremacy over its rival(s), developer-level optimizations for their games. Blizzard has been looking at implementing DirectX 10.1 with its future games. If that happens, it becomes a favorable scenario for AMD's products since Blizzard aren't habituated to making games that run best on only the most expensive hardware, but that with DirectX 10.1, they will look to implement certain DX10.1-exclusive effects, which means that even mid-range users of ATI products could enjoy the best visuals that the game has to offer, something NVIDIA and its users could miss out on.

Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. today revealed Diablo III, the newest entry in its critically acclaimed action role-playing-game franchise. The announcement was made during the 2008 Blizzard Entertainment Worldwide Invitational at the Porte de Versailles Convention Centre in Paris, France. A cinematic trailer and an extended gameplay demonstration with commentary from the development team introduced the game to the thousands of players in attendance.

"We've wanted to expand on the epic story and gameplay elements of the Diablo universe for some time now," stated Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. "We know that players have also been long awaiting a return to the series, so we're very excited to be sharing this announcement with Blizzard gamers here in Paris and around the world today."

Word got round that Blizzard's next installment of the award winning Star Craft strategy game is due to hit retail shelves on December 3, 2008. The report is everything but official, so don't get too excited.

Many froth-mouthed fans of Blizzard's intergalactic real-time strategy masterpiece Starcraft have anxiously been awaiting word on when the next installment of the series would land in their anticipatory laps. Blizz has been characteristically tight-lipped about the title's launch window, though we were recently informed that an online SKU search for Starcraft II on Best Buy, Circuit City, and Gamestop's web sites reveal the same supposed release date of December 3, 2008. With no confirmation from Blizzard, it's far from official

Blizzard today unveiled a new zerg unit, that will take place in the next StarCraft strategy game. Meet the baneling:

The baneling is a creature so bloated with fluid-filled sacs that it can barely walk; instead, it moves itself by tucking into a tight ball and rolling. However, this ungainly appearance belies the fact that the baneling is an extremely dangerous organism, one of several new zerg specialists recently seen on the battlefield. When a baneling gets close enough to an enemy, the creature triggers a reaction within its volatile chemical payload that causes it to explode with devastating force and shower the immediate surroundings with searing acid.

Blizzard has also added seven new in-game screenshots.

In an interview about next expansion of WoW called Wrath of the Lich King, World of Warcraft producer J. Allen Brack said that the game will "probably" undergo a complete graphical upgrade in the future. "Will we need a graphical update from the ground up at some point? Yep, probably," he said. "That's actually something we talk about every expansion," he added. "I'm positive we'll talk about it next expansion."
"A lot of people continued to play with the original client, because it was faster, or they preferred it, or were just used to it or whatever," he said. "And so for me as a game developer, the idea that we would spend so much time and energy on something and have people go, 'meh, that's not really for me,' that's not very exciting."

Blizzard Entertainment today announced plans for its third BlizzCon gaming convention, to be held at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California on October 10 and 11. BlizzCon is a celebration of the global player communities surrounding Blizzard Entertainment's Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo franchises. In response to the demand to accommodate more attendees, this year's event has expanded from two convention halls to three.

Blizzard is suing Michael Donnelly, the creator of the MMO Glider program, which performs key tasks in the game automatically, such as fighting and other game actions. Both sides have submitted legal summaries to the US District Court in Arizona. Blizzard says Glide is a software bot which infringes the company's copyright and potentially damages the game. In its legal submission to the court last week, the firm said: "Blizzard's designs expectations are frustrated, and resources are allocated unevenly, when bots are introduced into the WoW universe, because bots spend far more time in-game than an ordinary player would and consume resources the entire time." Blizzard argued that Michael Donnelly's tool also infringed the End User License Agreement that all parties have to adhere to when playing the game. As result Blizzard wants Michael Donnelly to stop selling Glider and return all profits that he made from its sales. More than 100,000 copies of the tool have been sold for the time being. Mr Donnelly says his tool does not infringe Blizzard's copyright because no "copy" of the Warcraft game client software is ever made. The two parties are now awaiting a summary judgement in the case.

Blizzard Entertainment has now released the long awaited 2.4.0 patch to their MMO World of Warcraft. The patch adds a new area to explore (the Sunwell Isle) with new quests, raids and dungeons along with support for a new global arena tournament and new UI improvements. You can download the patch via the game's auto-updater or manually via sites like FileShack. The full patch notes can be found here.

World of Warcraft is not known as the most friendly game with the real world. With over 10 million subscribers worldwide, World of Warcraft is the bane of gamers everywhere who want to do something out in the real world. Case in point: a former female Blizzard employee gave her husband a copy of World of Warcraft in Christmas 2004. World of Warcraft basically wrecked the man.

He would get home from work at 6:00, start playing at 6:30, and he'd play until three a.m. Weekends were worse - it was from morning straight through until the middle of the night. It took away all of our time that we spent together. I ceased to exist in his life.

Six years of marriage went down the drain, things like personal hygiene, bills, and even romance took second-stage to his World of Warcraft addiction. The poor woman eventually filed for divorce, citing World of Warcraft as the reason. Since the divorce, the woman cut back on the time she spent playing WoW. The man, however, still plays "religiously".