BlizzCon 2011 - Kung Fu Panda: The Game?!

So it seems like the much anticipated children's movie is coming to life in a video game much like Hello Kitty Online has spawned from the depths of Hell onto the internet and somehow became a fully playable world in the video game sense. Yesterday afternoon Blizzard had announced that they would be adding the much anticipated (?) Pandarian race to World of Warcraft in an upcoming expansion. And in my my fits of laughter and tears (yes I really was laughing that hard), I found out they really were serious!

In my previous write up about BlizzCon I had spoke of how I thought Blizzard would step forth into the world with some news of "great things", but really- walking, talking Pandas? Is that what you spend your multi-million dollar budget on? How hard was it to get an old model of a character and put a panda skin overlay on top of it? Oh yeah and put a voice .mp3 file in there too! Great job concept team - that must have taken you about 30 minutes to come up with and another hour to put the skin on top with how hard it is to figure out what colors BLACK and WHITE are in your code base.

I'm glad you guys have a bunch of nerf guns and XBox 360's on Campus because you all must have spent a great deal of time celebrating your new expansion and successful creation of a new player race by playing Forza 4 and doing some Multi-Player in Halo afterwards. I call this one a great success for you and the team - as well as the droves of your targeted market 9 -15. Well done, lets give you all a pat on the back once again, just like we did with Cataclysm!

And now with the annual subscription model World of Warcraft is surely looking to try and "fatten up" its figures in how many active subscriptions they have when they sucker people into they game and then when the players decide the game is crap - they still get to record those numbers for a whole year (i.e. the annual marketing report). This is undoubtedly a way to make the numbers of players look and seem like there are way more in game then there actually are. I mean - 12 million subscribers looks really darn nice when you see it on a sticker when you buy a game, it really lures you in and makes you think that there are tons of knowledgeable people playing the game right?

WRONG!

Most of these people are in fact dumb as nails or are the most obnoxious elitist trolls in any game around. And when you tell me that there are youngin's in my guild and in voice chat with me (around 10 or so) and you are in fact their PARENT and are being an obnoxious elitist tard, that some how does not instill the confidence I have in the marketing potential of said game - or even its community.

So I will let Blizzard have their Kung Fu Panda Expansion. I just hope next year that they don't come out with a Finding Nemo one.

BlizzCon 2011 - Blizzard, what will you do?

So it seems BlizzCon 2011 Starts later on today, and I am sure there will be many things discussed this year from the changes made in World of Warcraft with Cataclysm to all things pertaining to StarCraft II. But one things stands out in my mind as the most sought after topic of all - as Blizzard has not made mention of it for some time. What is this "Next Gen MMO" that they have planned in the works and are currently developing in their studios?

I have quite a feeling many of you do not know what I am speaking of, so I might as well direct you on over to the link to Blizzard Entertainment's career page to show you what exactly I am speaking of in the mean time.

http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/careers/directory.html#region=Americas

As you take a look at the many vacancies in the "Next Gen MMO" area right in the middle of the page - I'm sure you will wonder as I do, what could this game be? Sure it is not another expansion to World of Warcraft, but could it be something greater? Possibly the long awaited "Starcraft MMO" all of us have looked forward to in the past?

If this were true I know many of us would be quite pleased with something like that in most case, but there are quite a few people who have lost touch with the Blizzard IP in the past months and have taken on new games of choice, such as Trion World's little gem - Rift. Albeit World of Warcraft has lost some of it glitz and glam since the inception of Cataclysm with the game become almost "too user friendly" for most, but does that warrant the amount of players who seem to leave the game on a constant basis and then suddenly come back for almost no reason just to leave once more? I think not.

If Blizzard is going to start fresh with a new IP they will have to do something quite extraordinary and not stick to their guns like they have in the past or even start "dumbing down" many of the game systems to tailor to a much younger user base. Many of the players are frustrated by a sense of the game "too easy" and "fail sauce" because of how the game mechanics work, and many of the players who either quit during vanilla or during a previous expansion and have returned rarely stay for long to even try the new update to the game as they were expecting "more".

My final thought on this come the day BlizzCon kicks off in the morning is - I really would like to see more innovations from the crew at Blizzard, rather then just some CG Movies and stale gameplay videos that seem to just raise the hype of the fan base and not give much relevant  information as to what the upcoming patch or nerf is truly about. More info on what is being planned for the future of the company and future releases would also be great as well, as many of us are looking for some "out" from World of Warcraft, but are just too "gun shy" to go to another game at the moment as we feel WoW is the best thing on the market.

So please Blizz give us something to look forward too - cause you know damn well, there are many games this year looking to kick you down a peg and become King of the Mountain.