Posts with tag rumors

Yesterday, a handful of gaming news sites reported that a senior designer working on the new Titan MMO had gotten laid off by Blizzard Entertainment. In the hours that followed, the internet began conducting an "investigation" via Facebook that revealed tens, if not hundreds of Blizzard employees were just laid off.

There's only one problem with the information said investigation dredged up: It's not true. There are no massive layoffs at Blizzard. So says Blizzard itself, via Community Manager Bashiok:

mass layoffs at blizz

Hey guys, out of respect for their privacy, we don't discuss individual employees, but the speculation circulating about 'massive layoffs at Blizzard' is just a rumor.

source

Fellow Community Manager Zarhym confirmed the lack of layoffs on his own personal Twitter account, saying that there's "tons of speculation based on false evidence." He went on to explain that the vast majority of people rumored to have been laid off showed up to work today.

So rest assured: The sky is not falling. Blizzard employees still have their jobs. Project Titan has not been cancelled. Ghostcrawler is still in the building. And despite what you may have heard from Mr. Feeney's grocer, Cory and Topanga are not adopting a 14-year-old Chinese boy.

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Brace yourselves for what could be some of most exciting updates to the game recently with patch 4.3. Review the official patch notes, and then dig into what's ahead: new item storage options, cross-realm raiding, cosmetic armor skinning and your chance to battle the mighty Deathwing -- from astride his back!

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There hasn't been much new news on the Patch 3.3 PTR for us hunters the last couple of weeks. Then all of a sudden in the latest build something intriguing popped up over on MMO-Champion. Shown above, it looks to be a blue glowing ethereal bear. Looking eerily like a bear form spirit beast.

This got me thinking that there are 3 possibilities (okay, I'll admit there are a lot more than 3). First, Blizzard has been secretly planning on allowing shamans learn a new ability called spirit bear that will finally allow them to tank. Next, maybe night elf druids will be able to Shadowmeld in bear form. Finally, my personal favorite, could this be a new spirit beast?

The idea of a bear form spirit beast isn't out of the question. So far we've had a couple of cat forms and one wolf. Adding a bear form would fit right in with the standard pet forms.

I don't know, but I can't wait to find out. If it does turn out to be new tamable spirit beast, I'll call him DeadElvis. If not, maybe this is what a tamed druid will look like after they learn hunter form. Either way, stay tuned and as Patch 3.3 develops we'll let you know what we find out.

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Patch 3.3 is the last major patch of Wrath of the Lich King . With the new Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons and 10/25-man raid arriving soon, patch 3.3 will deal the final blow to the Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.

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A few tipsters have alerted us to the fact that the Warcraft movie now has a subtitle on the Internet Movie Database -- instead of "Warcraft," it's now called "Warcraft: Rise of the Lich King." Though keep in mind what we've said before: almost anyone can edit those IMDb entries, which means this is less than even a rumor. It could be that some IMDb editor saw the title of the book somewhere and confused it for the movie's new title, or it could just be that an overzealous fan threw in a title of their own. Especially this early in a movie's pre-production, nothing is guaranteed.

Two other things to note here: back at the BlizzCon panel a few years ago, Chris Metzen did tell us that the movie wouldn't focus on Arthas anyway, so calling the movie "Rise of the Lich King" seems like it would go directly against that plan. Then again, we do know that when Sam Raimi became attached to the project, he brought his own set of ideas, so maybe he's convinced Blizzard to tell the story of Arthas yet again. Secondly, the IDMb crew page has been updated: apparently the Aaron Sims Company has been contracted to do some early character work for the movie. Unfortunately, their work is all over the map -- he's worked on Evil Dead II (great), Men in Black (pretty good), and Doom (whoops -- one of the worst videogame-based movies around). It's early though -- we do know Blizzard won't let Uwe Boll touch the movie, so hopefully they've chosen worthy talent here already.

Here's another rumor that points at just who we might be seeing on stage BlizzCon -- over on Roadrunner Records' Blabbermouth.net news website, there's a rumor going around that guitarist Gus G., who's part of a band called Firewind, will be playing with Ozzy Osbourne at this year's BlizzCon. This isn't the first time we've heard Ozzy might be there -- Zakk Wylde, who is apparently on his way out of Ozzy's band, previously mentioned that he might be playing there, but Blabbermouth says Zakk is out and Gus is in.

Now, before you go all nuts over the excitement of seeing the Prince of Darkness at BlizzCon (and we don't mean Arthas), keep in mind that this is only the second in a series of rumors, both from sources who may not exactly be familiar with BlizzCon anyway (they're only writing about this because they're interested in who's playing guitar with Ozzy, not what's going on at Blizzard's convention). So we definitely don't know for sure what's going on at BlizzCon yet -- don't pack your "Bark at the Moon" t-shirt until you've heard the official announcement from Blizzard.

Still, that would be an incredible show. I like Video Games Live and all, but they've never performed "Crazy Train" for us.

Thanks, Rob!

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BlizzCon 2009 is coming up on August 21st and 22nd! We've got all the latest news and information. At BlizzCon, you can play the latest games, meet your guildmates, and ask the developers your questions. Plus, there are some great looking costumes.

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So it might just be some fanciful speculation, the product of rampant imaginings after digging through some game files. It could mean something, it could mean nothing. But yesterday's bombshell discovery of Halloween masks, traditionally reserved for playable races, threw a whole bunch of us into a tizzy. Goblins as playable races? That wouldn't be too surprising considering they've had models in the game that could wear player armor, anyway. But Worgen? I mean, wow.

It's not that far-fetched, either. The Undermine, the home of the Goblins, is situated near the Maelstrom. Remember how Blizzard trademarked Cataclysm, which in Azerothian terms actually refers to the events around the Maelstrom? That means we just might see The Undermine in the next expansion. So Goblins aren't such a wild idea.

But what about the Worgen?

This is still rumor central here, but according to Zakk Wylde's Twitter account, we might be seeing a level of rock heads and tails above what Level 70 80 Elite Tauren Chieftain can offer at this year's BlizzCon. We might be getting Ozzy Freaking Osbourne.

Wylde's Tweet made it sound like he was surprised to hear the news (well, other news, but considering this was said in the same e-breath...), as if he heard it through the grapevine himself. Combine that with the fact that Ozzy at BlizzCon is such an absurdly amazing notion and you get one skeptical blogger. Still, I'd love to see it. Think of the possibilities! Ozzy and the crew doing L80ETC's I Am Murloc? ...Wait, actually, that would be hella lame. Let's pretend I never said that. I'm pretty okay with Ozzy doing his usual thing.

Considering this news came from Zakk Wylde's Twitter account, I feel it necessary to link this picture he posted a few days ago, posing with his new guitar.

[Thanks for the tip, Centipede!]

Blizzard has never been keen to put WoW on consoles -- while there have always been rumors, they've never bothered showing much interest. And in a new interview with IndustryGamers, Blizzard's Rob Pardo tells us why: the controller issue remains a problem (it's certainly possible to map WoW onto a controller, but not yet in any way Blizzard would approve of), and modern consoles have come up with even more problems of their own. A hard drive, says Pardo, would be pretty much required, since WoW is up to around 10gb so far, but even the Xbox 360 (which now commonly allows game installs on the HD) still doesn't guarantee players will have that much space available. And Pardo says that while they have been in talks with Microsoft about what the two companies can do together, he says he's wary of the patching process over there -- it's not exactly as quick as they'd like.

So it remains unlikely that we'll ever see WoW in its current form on any console systems -- while there's probably lots of money to be made, the game was designed from the ground up to be a PC game, and there are still too many issues flying around (and it's likely too late in the game's lifetime) for Blizzard to try and make the jump. But that next-gen MMO...

I can honestly say that I would love to have WoW available on the go, for things ranging from checking my mail to browsing the auction house to leveling a death knight on long car trips. The iPhone seems like a great platform for something like that -- a pared-down but fully-functional WoW client.

And now we might be a little closer to that becoming a reality. Our sister site, Massively, just picked up a hot tip from Youtube, where someone has posted a video of a rumored Vollee port of World of Warcraft for the iPhone.

And it looks pretty darn cool, fake or not.

We've got the video and impressions after the jump.

As planned, Medievaldragon hosted a live chat with author Christie Golden last night, and even if you didn't tune in, you can see the transcript right over on WorldofWar right now. It's a very interesting read, especially if you're into the lore of the book and these characters -- Golden talks about how she built up Arthas' life and relationships, and turned him from the Human prince he started out as into the (her word) "monster" he is today. And she mentions a few fun tidbits about her influence on the game -- she created the Taretha character in the Old Hillsbrad instance, and there's an NPC in the Plaguelands that bears a striking resemblance. There's also something in the Balnir Farm that she suggested they put in. You'll have to go and see for yourself what that might be.

And even if you're not interested in the book and the lore, we get another little pull on the line in reference to Gilneas -- when Golden is asked what's going on at the Greymane wall, she says that she "really can't comment as to that." One more little breadcrumb in the trail leading us to either the next big content patch or the next expansion.

Definitely give the chat a look if you've got any interest at all in the Arthas book (which comes out in just over a week on April 21st) or the history of the game's current big bad.

A lot of you readers glommed right on to the first thing that I too noticed in the notes about the patch 3.1 pets and mounts yesterday. Ok, well, the first thing I noticed was the Gurloc and Wolvar orphans -- new Children's Week fun! -- but the second thing was the fact that we've got an "aquatic" mount going into the game for the first time ever. Not only are normal mounts going underwater, but we'll soon have access to an Aquatic Riding Ray that will presumably only work under water.

That's a big deal, and it pins just a little more credence onto the longtime rumors that the next expansion of the game will take us into the big watery swirly known as the Maelstrom. Lots of water activity was actually updated in this expansion already -- there are many more items designed to help us breathe underwater, and breathing itself was buffed quite a bit.

Of course, the Emerald Dream is also rumored to be included in the next big expansion, but of course we've also heard rumors that we'll actually see both at the same time. Whatever the truth turns out to be, you can probably put money on the fact that this is only the first Aquatic mount we'll see in the game, and that we'll be headed into the water even more soon.

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Patch 3.1 brings us Ulduar, dual specs, significant changes to all the classes, and more! We've got you covered from top to bottom with our Guide to Patch 3.1.

Sure, this is hardly the most important change to come down in patch 3.0.2, but anything Furbolg is worth a mention in my book.

Personally, a Furbolg casting is more than enough excitement for me, but you, our readers, are discerning people, and we know you'd like a little bit of insight tailored to your own expectations, so we're going "choose your own adventure" on this one. You can read either one of the next two sections of this post whether you're the sarcastic and cynical reader type or the excited, "can't get enough rumors and speculation" type:

Meh: "So Blizzard improved an animation only used by lowbies (Alliance lowbies at that) with an obscure quest item? Is this why we can't have more battlegrounds?"

OMG Rumorz: "Emerald Dream expansion confirmed, with playable Furblog races! I can't wait!"

There you go: either you get a chance to whine that Blizzard isn't working on more important things, or you can extrapolate a ton of rumors from something that probably took a developer a few minutes to do. Enjoy.

Thanks, Acyronius!

Our good friends at Massively have put together a feature on "the many MMOs of Blizzard," and we can hear you now: You're asking what they could mean by "many MMOs," since Blizzard only has the one. But Blizzard is working on, as you probably know, a next-gen MMO, and their writeup is all about the many possible MMOs they might have rumored to be in the works.

As much as everyone would like a Lost Vikings MMO, or even a World of Warcraft 2, or a long-rumored Universe of Starcraft, I'm going with the last answer: none of the above. Blizzard could adapt any of their worlds to the massively format (well, except for Rock N' Roll Racing, but Massively has included it anyway), but considering that Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 are already in the works as non-MMOs, my guess is that Blizzard is going to break new ground with a brand-new IP whenever they return to the MMO format with another game.

Of course, this being Blizzard, they're not likely to give any hints until they want to give them to us, and if for some reason the next-gen MMO never does come about, we'll probably never even know what it was. But speculation is half the fun. What would a Blackthorne MMO even be like -- maybe a free-to-play sidescroller?

I know that I wasn't the only one that did a double take today when I opened up WoW and saw the "Breaking News" maintenance announcement that included a tidbit about the realm Dreadmaul undergoing hardware upgrades for Wrath of the Lich King.

I find this interesting for several reasons. First, the expansion hasn't even had a release date announced yet and they're already making hardware changes. Now this is obviously a good practice – getting ready for things before hand – but then again, if it's not going to be released in October / November of this year all these hardware changes could be done later and for much cheaper. No matter if you agree with my pricing analysis or not, it is definitely a bit odd to hear about hardware upgrades when the release date hasn't even been made public yet.

Reader Oleg was kind enough to send along this Diablo III screenshot, which he found over on Blizzard's main site about the new game they announced this weekend. As you can see up in the corner, the game's internal code name apparently was Hydra, so that answers the question we posted way back in September of last year about someone overhearing the name "Hydra" being bounced around the Austin GDC.

And we also know now, of course, that Diablo III isn't an MMO, which means that Blizzard still has at least one secret project running: that next-gen MMO that we've been told about via job listings. Unfortunately, we probably won't hear much about it for a while -- unless Blizzard wants to ramp up their production, three titles at once is a lot for them to work on, and even at BlizzCon later this year, we don't really expect to see a new game announcement (although they might use the occasion, if Wrath really is released by then, to announce the next planned expansion).

Still, that's one mystery solved. Maybe we'll overhear another codename this year in Anaheim, and the rumor wheel can start spinning up yet again.