blizzard posts

It took a bit longer than first announced but today Razer revealed that its Spectre PC gaming mouse and the Marauder gaming PC keyboard, both branded as official StarCraft II products, are finally shipping to folks who put in pre-orders. Both products are still available to buy on Razer's web site. Pre-orders for the Banshee gaming PC headset are also being shipped out today. However it looks like the headset is now on back order and new orders for the Banshee won't ship before December 17.

As we have reported before all three products a special lighting system that monitors a player's Actions Per Minute (APM) stats, which is so important in playing StarCraft II in online tournaments.

StarCraft II players are on watch once again. Developer Blizzard has announced today that a number of player accounts for the hit sci-fi RTS game have been either suspended or banned from playing due to what Blizzard states is "cheating and/or using hack programs while playing."

Nearly two months ago Blizzard suspended or banned over 5,000 StarCraft II accounts for similar reasons. Today's announcement did not mention specific numbers; Big Download has emailed Blizzard to see if they plan to reveal any concrete number of players. A little while ago Blizzard responded to complaints by some players that they were banned even though they were using training programs for the game's single player modes. Blizzard's response was that such programs could also be used to hack into multiplayer games as well as artificially boost a player's access to achievements.

Just before the release of the game's third expansion pack, developer Blizzard has released two more of the hugely profitable in-game pets for the hit MMO World of Warcraft. The Lil' Ragnaros and the Moonkin Hatchling pets cost $10 each and will likely be a solid source of revenue for Blizzard.

The Moonkin Hatchling could also generate a lot of money for a worthy charity. From now until December 31, World of Warcraft players who purchase the pet will have 50 percent of the pet's price donated to the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Last February Blizzard did something similar with the revenues of the Pandaren Monk in-game pet and as a result generated over $1.1 million to the worthy children's charity.

World of WarCraft Cataclysm's launch is scheduled to happen on December 7. As developer Blizzard did with the launch of StarCraft II earlier this year it will hold a number of official launch events around the world to celebrate the third expansion pack of its hit MMO game.

The official US launch event will be held at Fry's Electronics in Fountain Valley, California starting at 6 pm on December 6. Members of Blizzards will be attending and look for a dance contest and a concert from the Blizzard-based band The Artist Formerly Known As Level 80 Elite Tauren Chieftain. Other launch events will occur in Toronto, Taiwan and various European cities (London, Paris, Madrid, Stockholm, Rotterdam, and Moscow). Naturally the events will also have the boxed copy of the expansion pack (both regular and Collector's Edition) on sale when the clock strikes midnight at the various locations.

StarCraft II was designed to use Blizzard's Battle.net service to be authenticated and played but that hasn't stopped the sci-fi RTS sequel from being found on BitTorrent download sites. The web site TorrentFreak.com claims that one digital copy of the game has been downloaded 2.3 million times in just the last three months. By comparison Blizzard sold over 3 million legit copies of the game during its first month of sale.

While the file itself may be downloaded it's currently unknown how many of these files are actually playable due to the game's requirement that it be signed on to Battle.net to play online. Blizzard recently banned several thousands StarCraft II players for multiplayer cheats and hacks; it's also possible that other gamers could also be banned for playing illegal copies.

Diablo III has always been targeted for release for the PC and Mac by developer Blizzard but the action-RPG series certainly has a gameplay design that would be a perfect fit for a console and its controller. Now new job openings on the Blizzard web site suggests that the company is thinking about doing just that.

Under the Diablo III job listings they list a senior producer, lead designer and lead programmer with the "console" label. The game's official web site has posted up a note stating, "We're exploring a Diablo-related concept for consoles." However it added, "Please note that this is not an announcement of a console title. We are first and foremost developing Diablo III for Windows and Mac PCs and don't intend to allow any possibility of a console interpretation to delay or affect the release of the game."

Blizzard is looking to have its biggest sales year in history with the release of StarCraft II back in July and the third expansion for World of Warcraft due out on December 7. So it's not a shocker to hear word that the developer's main offices in Irvine, California will be expanding by a large amount very soon.

The Orange County Business Journal reports that Blizzard, which already occupies an office complex of 235,000 square feet in Irvine, has signed a lease to occupy two more buildings next to its current offices. The space, which will add another 100,000 square feet to Blizzard's offices, is supposed to be ready to move in by the end of 2010.

It's not currently known what departments of Blizzard will be headed to the new facility but the company, which has about 1,100 team members and is hiring for another 150 employees, is already working on four known projects. Of course it continues to expand and support World of Warcraft and it's developing the first of two planned continuations of StarCraft II. It's also making the long-in-development Diablo III and is also deep into making its unannounced next MMO project. There are rumors of even more games that are in the works as well.

[Via Starcraft.org]

StarCraft II may have sold three million copies in the first month of its release earlier this year but in the country of South Korea, where the original StarCraft is a massive e-sports phenomenon, sales of the sci-fi RTS sequel have been slower than expected. According to an Edge magazine article reprinted on the Next-Gen.biz web site, "only two to three per cent of Korean gamers" have purchased StarCraft II a month since the game officially launched in that country, despite a $30 million promotional campaign.

What happened? The article speculates that developer Blizzard has tried to exercise more control over how StarCraft II is used in pro gaming tournaments and in the broadcast of those tournaments in South Korea compared to the original game. That control, plus the 12 year gap in between the two games, may have kept some original StarCraft players from switching to StarCraft II. However the article adds that a number of Korean pro-players have now begun to switch from StarCraft to StarCraft II in tournaments so perhaps the transition will simply take longer than first expected.

Want to make sure your Battle.net account is secure when you play World of Warcraft? This week, developer Blizzard announced that they have added an extra way to make sure your account is safe from being hacked. They have set up a toll-free phone number that can be used to authenticate your Battle.net account.

Basically you will now be able to sign into Battle.net while playing World of Warcraft by calling the number, entering your unique PIN and a one-time security code that will show up when you attempt to sign into Battle.net. So far this service is just for US users for World of Warcraft players although support for StarCraft II could be added later

While StarCraft II fans await the release of all those cool custom maps that Blizzard showed off at last month's BlizzCon event. the sci-fi RTS game just got a new, if small, patch update. The 1.1.3 patch is now available to download via the game's auto-updater.

The patch fixes three specific things. One deals with the Terran Thor unit which will now "prioritize attacking ground combat units over Medivacs" with the new patch. Also, some new game catagories have been added to StarCraft II that "filter Tower Defense and Tug of War custom maps" Finally the patch "fixed a desync that could occur when trying to watch replays that had a dependency on bank files."