Starcraft Junkie

Before we get into the gory gameplay, balance and multimedia details which were revealed during BlizzCon, two important and confirmed bits of information our readers should know about :

1) As confirmed by Mike Morhaime, President of Blizzard Entertainment, this year’s BlizzCon attendees receive StarCraft 2 beta keys.

No, StarCraft 2 Beta was not announced, and no planned schedule exists. However, it is reasonable to assume that Blizzard will make the beta available before 2009’s Blizzcon.

 2) During the StarCraft Gameplay Panel, it has been revealed that StarCraft 2 will be released as a game trilogy:

• Wings of Liberty (Terran)
• Heart of the Swarm (Zerg)
• Legacy of the Void (Protoss)

The trilogy is required only for the single player campaign, and the full-featured multiplayer (Battle.net) experience will be available to players who purchase even just one of the above. Splitting the game into 3 distinct products was an uneasy development decision, and according to Rob Pardo, made due to StarCraft 2’s giant single-player project scope, among other considerations.

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As Blizzcon looms near, Blizzard’s key employees and community managers have been dishing out quite a bit of interviews and have re-iterated through almost every key aspect of StarCraft 2. Karune, Frank Pearce and others have commented on key issues such as MBS, the new Gas Mechanics, Single player and Account unification issues. However, the build used as the basis for all this coverage is none other than the WWI two-month old version of StarCraft 2.

Out of two dozen Interviews, we have picked the bits of info that shed additional light on what is already known about Blizzard’s RTS flagship.

Gameindustry Interview highlights :

So like Warcraft III, the replay functionality wasn’t something we contemplated from day one, it was an afterthought and wasn’t implemented as well as it could have been – so that’s something that we can do from day one for StarCraft II, which should be pretty cool.

 

We want to take the storytelling component in the single-player campaign to the next level, so we’re talking about branching missions, decisions on the gamer’s part in terms of the technology that’s available to them – there’s a lot of buzz on the Internet around social communities, and we’ve got those social communities around our games and we want to leverage that to bring those players closer together on Battle.net.

Blizzard is definitely aiming high with its next-generation unified gaming platform. Blizzard’s new account system, the online store and the Global Achievement system. Coupled with Frank’s “social” vision , these ingredients form a recipe for a unique and unprecedented gaming platform, bringing together gamers from very different genres under one massive roof. It should be noted however, that the social gaming niche is already being explored by services such as Raptr.

Q: Do you see lots of crossover between the different players of your games?

 

Frank Pearce: We did some research, and I can’t remember which direction we did it in – whether it was StarCraft players that played WoW or vice versa – and there’s a fair amount of overlap.

In a brief reply to  VG247, Pearce also confirmed one of the most obvious estimations one could make – StarCraft 2 is not planned to be released in 2008.

“This year? Like, 2008? Too much work to do,” Pearce told VG247.

He added: “We don’t have a specific release date in mind yet. We still have too much work to do.”

StarCraftWire, Incgamer Network’s new StarCraft site, manages to score quite an informative Q&A with Karune during the PAX expo

StarCraftWire.net: Will the Medivac Dropships be able to heal each other?

 
Karune: No, the Medivac Dropships will not be able to, however, SCVs can still be brought to them in order to repair them

 

StarCraftWire.net: Will it be possible to play Starcraft II at LAN Parties?

 
Karune: While the idea is still there, the main focus right now is Battle.net and Multiplayer to determine whether or not LAN will be available.

Unlike StarCraft: BW’s medics, Medivacs won’t be able to keep themselves in full health throughout the battles, and will require maintenance to be kept operational. We will be seeing more SCVs coming with every Terran infantry drop in order to keep these vital support units alive.
Considering the wave of coverage about Blizzards grand account unification plans, we can expect Blizzard to pay significantly more attention to the way players interact with their centralized systems, and implement only the minimal, if any, features for closed multiplayer environments.

StarCraftWire.net: When can we expect to see more updates to the Starcraft II official website, and what can we expect to see?

 
Karune: Not really sure when there will be an update to the site, although there may be misc. updates now and then for units, but otherwise waiting for closer to the Beta to really update the website.

 

StarCraftWire.net: Has there been a decision on what units will make it into the final game?

 
Karune: No real decision has been made really, we’re still trying to decide what units will make the cut, as you’ve seen that we dropped a couple units, one of our goals may be to try to keep the unit number closer to to that of the original Starcraft as we don’t want to have a unit be in the game and have it be useless to the battle.

 

 

StarCraftWire.net: What is Blizzard currently focusing on in Starcraft II?

 

 
Karune: Single player. Single player is still our primary focus right now, as it’s our main concern, afterwards, our focus will be on the multiplayer aspect which shouldn’t be too difficult, with the Editor being our final focus for Starcraft II.

Blizzard Developers’  StarCraft 2 single player efforts have long been mentioned, but it was the technical aspect that has really shown how much development and thought is invested in this somewhat overlooked aspect of StarCraft 2. SC2’s single player campaign was worth developing a separate and innovative 3D engine for, and the hype just keeps coming.

And interesting glimpse into the long term StarCraft Universe strategy is provided in this TotalVideoGames interview

VG: You talk about expanding the lore this time around in a similar manner as Warcraft II to Warcraft III; the next step after Warcraft III was World of Warcraft, so I have to ask – is this laying down the foundations for the often rumoured ‘Universe of StarCraft’?

 

 

Pearce: Anything we do to evolve the storyline in a franchise lays the foundation for whatever we want to do in the future. One of our goals with these franchises is to create rich, deep worlds that we can use to leverage for all sorts of things, whether it’s novels, comic books, games of different genres, or even movies. We’re also in the process of trying to have a Warcraft movie made.

 

Colayco: In recent months we’ve had a StarCraft board game introduced, and manga comics. So having a greatly fleshed out lore and background to a story lends itself to all these different projects.

These are not fantasy plans, either. The WarCraft movie is due to be released some time during 2009, and is produced by none other than the makers of 300 and The Dark Knight – Legendary Studios. Serious business, so to speak. Leveraging a rich and immersive Universe to build a multi-million fan base that follows it across multiple genres and platforms is perhaps the best and most challenging long-term strategy a VP of Product Development can embrace. 

We have read through many StarCraft interviews, articles and videos in order to extract the maximum updates from the recent news wave, which to remind you, is still based on the WWI build.

Brace for Blizzcon.

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Blizzard’s co-founder, Frank Pearce, has come out with a statement sure to excite StarCraft fans in an interview given to VideoGaming247.

When asked about the possibility of a 4th race in StarCraft 2, Frank deals the usual response:

We talked about the possibility of a fourth race early on, but we felt like we had a finite amount of great ideas and wanted to make sure we focused all the cool, best ideas on the existing three races rather than diluting those ideas across four races.

However, for the first time, Frank gives hope when it comes to the inevitable StarCraft 2 expansion:

We don’t have the resources or time to add a fourth race to the launch of StarCraft II, but I’m sure in the event that we decide to do an expansion set it’s a feature that’ll come up for discussion.

This is the first time a Blizzard representative has not completely denied the possibility of adding a new playable race to StarCraft 2. Blizzard have been very adamant in their choice of sticking with the three original StarCraft races, which they decided to further explore and differentiate between. It will be interesting to see how they tackle the challenge of introducing a completely new race to the delicate balance currently evolving amongst the three existing races in StarCraft 2.

Next up, we have a few bits of information about StarCraft 2’s most recent gameplay tactics, straight from the mouth of Blizzard – Karune, Blizzard’s community manager. First up, Karune discusses a sneaky tactic employed by the Terran.

Thought I’d share with you guys that in internal gameplay, we’ve had some poor souls find out the hard way that apparently if you are playing Terran and you immediately lift off your command center to a close by high yield mineral field, you will easily make up the difference of the time lost from collecting minerals during that period, and essentially be able to out produce any other race very quickly. Thus far, it seems like it is easy to defend this new fast expansion strategy. Nonetheless, I’m sure it will be balanced in the coming weeks, but thought it was funny so I thought I’d share.

The yellow, high yield minerals currently provide 50% more resources than the normal, blue variants. Since the Terran Command Center, like all Terran buildings, has a natural ability to lift off, maps with a closeby yellow mineral patch make this almost a crime not to abuse.

Karune has received a few suggestions to “fix” this issue on the forums and responded to them:

Making lift off a researched ability and hard coating the minerals both seem like interesting ideas – I’ll be sure to forward that along to the devs. Like I said before though, this has only worked on ‘certain’ maps. If anything, those maps could be modified slightly and it would probably fix it.

Knowing Blizzard, this strategy will likely still be viable on certain maps, but in a balanced way that allows the other races to respond to it without being at an obvious disadvantage.

Karune’s next post discusses the Mutalisks’ ability to bunch up tightly and function like a single unit, attacking targets for very high damage, as well as utilizing their attack cool-down time to move. This tactic requires some micromanaging skill to accomplish, and has become a favorite discussion point in Q&As. This is what the situation is like, currently:

There has not been extensive testing of this yet, but in terms of Mutalisks, players will be able to stack, but it will be much harder to keep them clumped up. As more info surfaces about this, I will keep you informed.

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Also, Mutalisks at first in StarCraft II while slowed down a bit before they attacked, but the code has been fixed to allow it to attack on the move like the original StarCraft.

It seems like Mutalisks will still be able to attack and move if used by skilled, agile players, but creating a Korean Mutalisk super-unit will be significantly more difficult.

Moving on the the Protoss side, Karune talks about the Immortal’s effectiveness against the difference races.

In my opinion, Immortals are better against Terran but definitely still useful in PvZ matchups, especially against armored units that are harder to kill, such as Ultralisks and Roaches. Furthermore, Immortals are almost always the unit to be sent in first while laying siege to an enemy base, eating up all the initial base defense pounding.

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The most effective counters to the Immortals are units that have fast attacks up to 10 damage per attack.

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Actually, recently I played a game realizing that Psi Storms are actually quite effective against them as well, as they fit that counter perfectly, doing a set X damage every second while the unit was under in the area of effect.

With their Hardened Shields, the Immortals cannot absorb more than 10 points of damage per hit, making them somewhat less effective against the Zerg and their impressive arsenal of small, fast attacking units which don’t deal a lot of damage. It’s interesting to note that the Protoss High Templar’s Psi Storm is actually a good counter to Immortals, since the damage it deals, despite being quite high, comes in small portions.

Another post from Karune deals with the scrapped Protoss structure – the Dark Pylon.

The Dark Pylon is not in the multiplayer version of the game. Originally, when it was being tested, it would cloak buildings in a radius around the building, making it more difficult for enemies to scout out ‘tech’ buildings in a Protoss base, to determine how they were teching. Additionally, it also hid base defenses until they began firing.

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The Dark Pylon was taken out because it was not found as useful as what was intended. There are discussions of finding a possible replacement building that would also serve as a base defense, but nothing has been confirmed yet.

Dark Pylon’s role was “borrowed” from the Command & Conquer universe – its intended functionality greatly resembles the various base stealth devices found there.

Lastly, Blizzard has opened an online store, where they sell Blizzard universe related “memorabilia” in the form of wallpapers and mobile ringtones. All your favorite characters, scenes, and battlecries are available for purchase and download. Unfortunately, at this time, only wallpapers are available for the StarCraft universe. If you’re looking for a free StarCraft wallpaper, check out the one we featured on the SC2 Blog.

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ATI – AMD’s “Advances in Real‐Time Rendering in 3D Graphics and Games Course“, during the highly technical SIGGRAPH 2008 conference, included a whole chapter dedicated solely to the implementation of the shader framework and the rendering techniques used in StarCraft 2.
As the name implies, the paper, which won’t be an easy read even for seasoned programmers, is a part of a course with the following prerequisites:

Prerequisites
This course assumes working knowledge of a modern real‐time graphics API like OpenGL or Direct3D, as well as a solid basis in commonly used graphics algorithms. The participants are also assumed to be familiar with the concepts of programmable shading and shading languages.

The StarCraft 2 engine definitely has a split personality, and for a good reason – there is a fully interactive, playable “Story Mode”, which requires a completely different form of real-time rendering. Rendering four high-resolution characters and a detailed static environment is quite unlike rendering two hundred units with hundreds of constantly changing lighting sources, but both of the above scenarios must be supported by the same engine.

Starcraft II is supported by an engine that in many ways has a split personality; during normal game play we typically render scenes from a relatively far away distance, with high batch counts, and a focus on action rather than details. At the same time, we really wanted to push our storytelling forward with Starcraft II, and this is where the game’s
“Story Mode” comes in. In this mode, the player generally sits back to take in the game’s rich story, lore and visuals, interacting with other characters through dialogues and watching actions unfold….

…story mode generally boasts lower batch counts, close‐up shots, and a somewhat more contemplative feel – all things more typical of a first person shooter.

All technical details aside, Chapter 5 includes one over-quoted statement which presumably reveales the GPU system requirements for StarCraft 2.

Yet we also wanted to utilize the full potential of any available hardware to ensure the game’s looks were competitive. This meant supporting a widerange of hardware, from ATI Radeon 9800/NVIDIA GeForce FX’s to the ATI Radeon HD 4800s and NVIDIA GeForce G200s, targeting maximum utilization on each different GPU platform.

The above statement effectively puts the minimum requirement bar at an ATI Radeon 9800 or at Nvidia’s GeForce 5 family – cards which have been introduced more than 5 years ago. Blizzard’s developers are staying loyal to their tradition of aiming for the mainstream and putting an emphasis on gameplay instead of intense system punishment.

Reports from the Game Convention in Leipzig are streaming in, but considering that the presented build is actually identical to the World Wide Invitational one, nothing major is expected to be either announced or discovered during the event.
IGN’s brief interview with Frank Pearce, Blizzard’s senior vice president of product development, hasn’t revealed much, but it did confirm that there is no super-secret  StarCraft 2 closed beta testing group, and that the beta is months away at best.

Currently, the testing for StarCraft II doesn’t include that many people. “It’s like a limited internal alpha phase,” says Pearce. “The development team that’s working on it is playing it and we’ve released some alpha builds to some other development teams internally and then the quality assurance department is also playing it.”

…We asked when the field of testers might expand to beyond Blizzard’s walls. “That’s months away,” said Pearce. “We still have to expand our internal alpha to include the rest of the organization, iterate on that feedback, and then we have to evaluate what kind of beta we need, whether we need one at all. There’s a pretty high level of certainty that we’re going to need a beta and then we have to decide if we want to do a host beta or a closed beta or both. So, months.”

Another interview was given to VideoGamer, with Frank’s line remaining consistent – things are going well, but the game is far from being being ready to be released.

VideoGamer.com: Which leads me nicely on to the next question which is when will they get the chance to play the game? Do you have even a rough ballpark for when the game’s gong to be released?

FP: Not really. We still have a lot of work to do. Anyone that’s had the opportunity to play it at any of the shows we’ve shown it at might think wow, this feels pretty good, this feels pretty complete, so why don’t they just release it? But we still have a lot of work to do on the Battle.net side and we still have a lot of work to do on the single-player campaign side. And until that stuff is done, the total package isn’t there.

The second part of the interview, however, is interesting, and sheds quite a lot of light on the development and decision making processes inside Blizzard. When the interview touches WoW and the possibility of a StarCraft MMO, Frank puts things in perspective by reminding that World of WarCraft has been in development since 1999, and says that bringing the StarCraft Universe to the same level won’t be easy.

VideoGamer.com You’ve made it difficult for yourself!

FP: Yeah, we’ve made it very difficult for ourselves and it’s an overwhelming thought! I’ve been there at Blizzard since we started on WoW and it’s been a very long and arduous journey. And to think about taking that journey again with the StarCraft franchise is a little scary! It makes an RTS like Starcraft 2 seem very achievable [laughs].

VideoGamer.com: Fans say a StarCraft MMO would be great, but they don’t see your side of things do they?

FP: The World of Warcraft team is 135 people. The StarCraft 2 team is 40 people.

During the interview, Frank also confirms that unlike StarCraft (which was ported to Nintendo 64), StarCraft 2 is not planned to be ported to any sort of console, mainly due to the game’s fast pace.

FP: It’s not something we’re specifically planning for right now. The development team is working on the game and the interface with the PC and the PC interface peripherals in mind.

BC: One barrier to entry there is just the speed of the game. If you look at how the RTS genre has evolved a lot of it has slowed things down, make things a little bit more, not a plodding place, but a little bit more of giving players more of a chance to evaluate. StarCraft is really action packed.

All in all, It looks like once again, StarCraft 2 fans are going to have to wait for BlizzCon for real news and information about the game.

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Blizzard hand picks the events which are used to showcase its pre-beta stage games, and it is not often that StarCraft fans are presented with the chance to play the current StarCraft 2 build. One such event, however, is about to take place on the 20th of August, 2008, in Leipzig.

An announcement on WoW Forums by an official Blizzard poster, confirms that 

We’re excited to be able to showcase some of Blizzard’s games at this year’s Games Convention in Leipzig from 21 to 24 August. We’ll be providing playable demos of StarCraft II(http://eu.starcraft2.com/) and….

This is not the first time that the Leipzig Games Convention is used by Blizzard to showcase StarCraft 2. Even though last year’s event was anything but exciting, the comfortable location provides a great excuse for European gamers to attend one of the fastest growing and important events in the industry.

The most important thing you should know about this event is… the pricing. This is the cheapest way to play StarCraft 2 – tickets go for as low as 4,50 Euros, and you can pre-order here.

Day ticket** 12,00 €
Day ticket, reduced rate* 8,50 €
Evening ticket (from 3.30 p.m.) 6,00 €
Day ticket, child rate  4,50 €
Day ticket parents (adults in the company of children) 8,50 €
Four-day ticket** 29,50 €

Children up to the age of five years have free admittance with the company of an adult.

* Concessions apply to schoolchildren, students, pensioners and the unemployed
** Cards in the advance booking available

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Episode 4 of the BlizzCast series has been posted on the official Blizzard site. BlizzCast is a series of recorded interviews and Q&A sessions, dealing with the latest developments and happenings in the Blizzard game universes.

This episode of BlizzCast features one item of interest for StarCraft 2 fans – the Community Q&A session, providing very thorough answers to interesting questions. The Q&A is also accompanied by two new, action heavy screenshots.

Answers are provided by Mike Heiberg, senior game designer, and David Kim, associate game balance designer.

First, they are asked about the reason for the decreased mineral collection rate by workers. This was previously reported to be 5, but is currently at 6 units per trip, down from 8 in StarCraft 1.

The rate of collection for StarCraft 2 was planned to be similar to that of StarCraft 1, with the reduction in per-trip numbers originating from the increased unit pathing efficiency. To counterbalance that somewhat, SCVs will now have to spend less time on the mineral patch to acquire a full load.

However, both David and Mike comment that mineral collection feels faster now. The maximum rate of collection is achieved when 3 SCVs are used for each mineral patch, and it’s easier to see when this limit is reached in StarCraft 2 compared to 1.

The next topic is about the improved unit pathing. As an example, David and Mike describe how Zerglings easily surround Zealots from all sides, packing closely next to each other so more Zeglings can get a piece of the action. This creates a situation where smart players will push their Zealots against the wall or put them on choke points to minimize the amount of Zeglings they have to deal with simultaneously.

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David Kim:  Yeah and the wrap around itself is a little easier to pull off I guess because the A.I. takes care of some of that for you but you do still need the micro if you want to get the maximum out of your melee units.

Another important change is to deceleration. In StarCraft 1, this was less precise, and units could sometimes slow down in a way that put them before or after the location they were ordered to go to. In StarCraft 2, this mechanism is much more precise, and units know when to start decelerating to reach the specific location.

Mike Heiberg:  Right, a lot of times you’d be floating your guardians in to take out some spore colony or something and they’d float a little too close and you’d be like “Whoa!” and you’d have to back a couple of them out. They’re a little more intelligent now about not floating directly into danger when they don’t have to.

Next, the developers discuss resource consumption and its effect on the strategies available to each race. They state that there are more options to choose from in StarCraft 2, which also makes scouting more important.

The last question deals with Infestation, Corruption, and Mind Control. Both Infestation and Corruption are time limited, and the inquiry was about a more permanent ownership changing spell, like the StarCraft 1 Dark Archon Mind Control ability.

Mike sums it up nicely:

Well when we were doing the classic Starcraft mind control we were finding that it actually resulted in some pretty big swings in balance where basically you mind control a large unit, say a Battlecruiser, and now the difference in power from the two different armies is like two Battlecruisers because he lost one and you gained one. So seeing as in Starcraft II we have a few more of those high impact units, we have Colossi, we have Motherships, and Queens, that’s a very scary type of spell to be still bringing into the game, I mean we have more opportunities for those large swings in balance.

A powerful spell like Mind Control would have to be restricted to specific units and leave some of them out, and Blizzard does not like implementing such artificial constraints.

Further, the devs discuss Infestation and its limited effect on StarCraft 1, which resulted from the difficulty in pulling it off.

Mike Heiberg:  Right, in classic Starcraft infesting someone’s command center was really more of an insult.

The StarCraft 2 infestation will be even higher on the tech tree, requiring both the tier 3 Infestor Pit and Infestation research, but will be easier to manage. Since Infestation is going to be easier and the Infested Marines free, the effect will only be temporary.

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As for Corruptors, the developers mention that introducing this mechanism instead of using simple mind control creates new gameplay decisions:

Mike Heiberg: Right we want to allow those types of little micro decisions where in the middle of the battle: “Should I focus on his guys, his Corrupters? Should I focus on my own corrupted units because I’m not getting them back?  Or should I back off and make those basically invalid because there’s nobody nearby for them to be messing with?”.

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Brian Morrisroe, the lead Diablo 3 Art Director apparently quit last week, according to a statement released by Blizzard to game blog Kotaku. The announcement comes on the heels of criticism from Diablo fans about the style of the new game’s art, but according to Blizzard Morrisroe’s disembarkment is unrelated. Blizzard also stated that the game art would not be changed and that they “are pleased with the look and feel” of the game, and it won’t change after Mr. Morrisroe’s departure. Personally, I thought the gameplay trailer for D3 was pretty amazing.

Still, the timing of the event leaves one to wonder if the Diablo community has offended. Blizzard is now seeking new talent at the Art Director position. Shouldn’t be too hard, seeing as how working for Blizzard is a dream job for many.

Via Kotaku.com

—
Related Articles at Starcraft II Galaxy:

• Blizzard’s Secret New Game?
• Karune Answers Questions About Zerg Screenshots
• Starcraft 2 Interview, New Units

The official BlizzCon 2008 site is up. The site currently contains information about the panels that will take place during the convention, and will be used to release updates and information pertaining to the upcoming mega-event. Most importantly, however, this is where wishful fans can purchase tickets.
What is BlizzCon, you ask?

In addition to serving as a gathering place for the different Blizzard Entertainment gaming communities, BlizzCon will offer an array of activities, including discussion panels, hands-on playtime with upcoming games, tournaments, contests, and more.

The event is going to take place on Blizzard’s home turf, at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California on October 10 and 11. Until then, anxious enthusiasts may take a sneak peak at the swag bag that each visitor will receive upon entering the premises of the convention:

If you’ve ever been on the verge of finishing off a paladin, only to be foiled at the last second, you’ll appreciate the 16″ inflatable divine shield ball, complete with a paladin inside in the midst of hearthing away. Half of the goody bags handed out will contain the bubble-hearth ball, while the other half will have…

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Frostmourne. The very name of Arthas’s runeblade strikes terror into hearts across Azeroth. Now it comes to you in a more convenient package, and you don’t even have to travel to Icecrown Glacier to get it. As you go about your daily activities, whether they be raising legions of the undead or just brooding on your throne, carrying this 48” inflatable Frostmourne will grant you an extra touch of sinister majesty.

Aside from the goody bag, fans will also have access to the on-site store, which will feature all sorts of Blizzard game-related products – Diablo health and mana stress balls, pandaren brewmaster bottle openers, Zerg Creep, and much more.

Of course, no Blizzard event will be complete without a Murloc, and this one is going to be special:

“ This one has developed a taste for speed, and sits astride an exclusive polar bear mount, waving a BlizzCon flag. It’s the perfect way to cruise Northrend in style.“

As previously announced, the tickets to BlizzCon 2008 are now available for purchase – starting today. Get them while they’re hot!

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Blizzard will be introducing a massive cross-game Achievement System, which will be featured in all three announced Blizzard project. If things go well, the system is also likely to be applied retroactively to existing Blizzard titles.

World of WarCraft’s lead designer, Jeff Kaplan, has told MTV Multiplayer that the Wrath of the Lich King’s Achievement System is just the first step…

…he revealed that eventually players will have a Blizzard Account that shows Achievements from other Blizzard games they’ve played, including the upcoming titles “Diablo III” and “StarCraft II.”

 

“Eventually, our plans are for the Achievement system to become an account-based system,” he explained.

The Achievement System will undoubtedly introduce a long term, life-time spanning reward system for loyal Blizzard fans. It might even include retroactive achievements which won’t be available to newcomers, as promised by Blizzard on the Wrath of the Lich King achievements web page:

Feats of Strength will be awarded retroactively (that is, they’ll be immediately granted to your character if you qualify) since many of them will be impossible to earn in Wrath of the Lich King.

Blizzard intends to unify all the player’s achievements under a single Blizzard account which will contain a permanent record of achievements. Having to make an educated guess, based on the interview and the somewhat similar systems implemented on other platforms, Blizzard will probably keep record of your highest WarCraft 3 ranks, Diablo 2 levels and official StarCraft tournaments, as well as other multiplayer and single player in-game achievements.

You’ll have this Blizzard identity, and you’ll be able to see things like ‘Oh, this guy was great at Diablo III, but he never played Starcraft and he was mediocre in WoW.’

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BlizzCon 2008 is fast approaching, and tickets to the event will soon be available for purchase. Hot on the heels of Blizzard’s recent mega-event, the World Wide Invitational, BlizzCon is going to be another stage where Blizzard will exhibit the latest developments to its games. Hopefully, StarCraft 2 will get more exposure this time around, like it did on last year’s BlizzCon.

What else can be expected from the event?

In addition to serving as a gathering place for the different Blizzard Entertainment gaming communities, BlizzCon will offer an array of activities, including discussion panels, hands-on playtime with upcoming games, tournaments, contests, and more.

The event is going to take place on Blizzard’s home turf, at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California on October 10 and 11. For those who can’t make it or can’t afford the admission price, the event will be televised using DIRECTV pay per view in high definition.

“Meeting and interacting with our players at BlizzCon is always a great experience for us,” stated Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. “We’re also pleased to be working with DIRECTV this year to bring the show, for the first time, to those players who are unable to attend.”

Tickets for the convention will cost $100 each, and will be available for purchase on the official BlizzCon website. Pricing for existing DIRECTV customers and programming details will be available in the coming weeks from Blizzard Entertainment and DIRECTV.

For more details about the BlizzCon convention and a taste of last year’s event, check out the official BlizzCon 2007 page.

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