This is day two in the website stunt my Blizzard Entertainment. Yesterday I spoke a little about my predictions on this stunt leading up to their May 19th World of StarCraft announcement and so far things are looking to play out exactly that way. They have their timeline set up to display the “?” exactly on May 19th which is the day of their World Wide Invitation in Seoul, South Korea.
Rumor has it that, regardless of the coming announcement, Blizzard is already working on StarCraft 2 which is being done in full 3D with a new race and total revamp to most units. Right now everyone is trying to decide if the rumor will come full circle and be the official new Blizzard game announced on this coming Saturday. I’m finding myself already anxious to see what they will announce because at one time Blizzard Entertainment made great games. In fact they made the best games.
This time line is actually really special to me. The games you see above were THE games that hooked me into PC gaming. Of course I played games before these and I was always a computer nerd but to be completely honest I never considered myself hooked until 1995 when I picked up Warcraft: Orcs and Humans and Warcraft: Tides of Darkness. These two games were the very first real-time strategy games that I had ever played. The concept of building an army by gathering resources and creating structures was more than magical to me. We only had one computer in the house back then and Graev and I would often fight over who would play through the next mission as we conquered the Orcish Hordes on our way to victory. This was the golden age of gaming folks. We mispronounced every name in game – Mage was “mag” and paladin was “pal-adin”. We laughed our butts off when the orc peons would ask you to “stop touching me” after you clicked on them a dozen or so times.
Then came Diablo. Our first real adventure RPG where you visited a town in birds-eye 3d. We were consumed with our quest to slay The Butcher and make our way through the catacombs. I am somewhat ashamed to say this but I admit that we even duped gold and potions in single player because we were so fixated with achieving our glorious destiny. It’s actually really cool that my favorite quote from Diablo is the one they are using on the index page right now. Every day I would run home from school so that Graev and I could maybe get a level up before dinner was ready. I owe a lot to Diablo. When the game first came out my family had just moved back to California from Massachusetts. I had no friends in a brand new school and I stuck out like a sore thumb. It wasn’t until I found the group of kids sitting together talking about their Sorceress’ Fireballs obliterating a dozen skeletons that I realized I had found true comrades – ones that have remained friends with me to even this day.
Know this, my friend – The evil that you move against is The Dark Lord of Terror.
-Deckard Cain
As Blizzard continues to update their time line I look forward to sharing what made their games so special to me.
Every single one of Blizzard’s games I’ve adored. From the Lost Vikings and Blackthorne to WoW. I just hope, if indeed they are making another MMO, that they’ve learned from their hideous WoW mistakes. With such success, I’m sure it’s hard to pick out what you actually did do wrong with WoW.
Honestly, I don’t want another MMO from them. I’d like a blend of Diablo and Starcraft. A Sci-Fi action RPG… like good ole Alien Syndrome. 🙂
I agree. I don’t want another MMO right now – Starcraft 2 RTS or Diablo 3 would be GREAT!
[…] 2 would be. We even made an event out of it by taking the Blizzard games and writing about them one by one in order that we played […]