iGame Radio

Blizzard Entertainment has announced three new features for three of its games. Starcraft II, World of Warcraft, and Diablo III will all benefit from these new features that will soon be implemented within their game structure.

World of Warcraft will soon see Crabby, the Clippy of the WoW gaming world. A literal crab for help, Crabby will foresee all of your gaming needs, becoming companion and friend. Soon, you will bow to his wisdom in all things WoW, never deviating from the path that he creates, since he, you know, obviously knows so much. Even his rearranging of your action bar will be a delight. We’re sure at some point that an add-on will be created where-in you can pummel Crabby to bits as well. Or the developers who created him. We’re not sure which one, though.

Meanwhile, Diablo III will see a new feature for your smartphone called the Horadric Cube. Read more

Blizzard has opened the doors for pre-ordering WoW: Cataclysm. However, unlike for previous versions of WoW, you can purchase the game as a digital download, available to play when servers go live.

Traditionally, to play most AAA titles, players had to stand in long lines to get their game. Often these sales started at midnight, and caused fanatical fans to camp out the day before. With the existence of digital downloads, this has begun to change. When Blizzard launched StarCraft II, fans could purchase both the digital and physical version of the game. However, those who purchased the digital version could not access the servers until 10 am the that morning, while those who purchased the physical disk could start playing at midnight as soon as they installed.

No more. Blizzard has announced that, regardless of what format you have purchased the game, you can start playing it as soon as the servers go live. Which will lead to the inevitable question of why anyone would stand in lines anymore. And whereas this would cause a great number of people relief at not having to stand in long lines, it also is one step closer to an isolated community that never actually physically spends time with each other.

And I think that’s a shame.

Back in July, Blizzard introduced a new method of logging into Battle.net, called RealID. Aspects of RealID caused a storm of protest as it required your legal name to be able to post on the forums, causing many players to fear backlash from a variety of segments of society. Blizzard backed down and everything was okay with the world.

Now Blizzard has added additional customization to RealID, allowing players to “opt in or out of the Real ID “Friends of Friends” and “Add Facebook Friends” features or to turn off Real ID altogether.” From the comments, this seems to be a step in the right direction, though many still ask for an invisibility feature so that they can game without being seen.

Personal question: why are they on an MMOG to play by themselves?

Earlier this week, Blizzard introduced their new RealID feature. This optional feature allows players of World of Warcraft, Starcraft II (and presumably Diablo III when it comes out) to link their real names to their character names, then list each other on their friends lists. It is meant to provide more depth and engagement for players of Blizzard games, and allow real life friends who game together to see each other in-game.

Okay, so nice idea.

Then Blizzard decided that in order to post on their forums from now on, you would have to use your RealID, i.e. your real first and last name, to do so. And the entire Blizzard universe blew up.

Many, many people have already posted about why this is an absurdly bad idea on many fronts. Peter Cohen and I also talked about it at length on the latest iGame Radio podcast as well. It’s a bad idea for female gamers, for minorities, for parents, for people who want to keep their jobs. It’s a bad idea for gamers who simply want their game life and their real life separate.

Well, over 15,000 European and 50,000 American posts later, and Blizzard has finally realized it’s error. They have rescinded their decision (in record time).

“We’ve been constantly monitoring the feedback you’ve given us,” stated a Blizzard spokesperson in the forums, “as well as internally discussing your concerns about the use of real names on our forums. As a result of those discussions, we’ve decided at this time that real names will not be required for posting on official Blizzard forums.”

One can speculate over many different reasons for the decision to change this. But the bottom line is that any company, when they try something new, will not really know what the response of their customers is going to be until they actually hear back from their customers. This is precisely the way a game company should operate. Blizzard tried something new. They got an immediate and overwhelming negative reaction to it. They chose to accept their customer’s response as a good indication that the decision was a bad one and withdrew it.

Case closed.

 

Episode 72 is posted. Cory Tamas and I rap about Mac game news of the past couple of weeks. Check out some of the topics below!

iPhone OS 3.0...iPhone game effects?

How will your guild handle your death??

Briad is coming for the Mac

Games in 2020...What will the Mac see?

 

I’ve posted Episode 69, in which Corey and I chat about DRM, the used games industry, and piracy rates. Oh, and benchmarks for the Macbook and Macbook Pro. Corey does a review for World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, and I do a review of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (Not World at War, as I called it once during the show…that’s what happens when you have the two versions available in the marketplace at once).

Oh, and I’m very sorry about the mess-up with Episode 68…that being that I accidentally swapped the URL for Episode 67 into the RSS feed item for Episode 68. That’s all been fixed now.

BTW, I’m playing around with a podcasting plugin. My eventual intention is to post all of my podcasts using WordPress hosted through MacRadio, but for now I’m running some tests. So I’m actually posting my podcast link to Episode 69 below, complete with player, to see how it looks.

Freeverse has released their unique casino game, Burning Monkey Casino, for the iPhone and iPod Touch. You can play stylish versions of Video Poker, Blackjack, or Slots with an their updated interface that takes advantage of the swipe and tilt that you can only find on the iPhone and iPod Touch. Alas, there are no monkey’s to burn. You can pick it up at the App Store for a mere $0.99.

Also, The Wrath of the Lich King has been unleashed upon the WoW masses. According to this Gamespot article, the sales were so strong that the GameStop credit card network was reportedly overloaded, and they had to go to manual swipe machines.

Got a burning question you’ve been wanting to ask someone from Blizzard, but can’t attend BlizzCon? Well, you’ll get a chance to get your questions answered. Slashdot is hosting an “Ask Blizzard Employees About Things That Matter” event, in which all you have to do is post your question, and the Slashdot folks who are attending BlizzCon will ask them. They have a sit-down scheduled with Chris Sigaty, lead producer on StarCraft II; Jeffrey Kaplan (aka Tigole), game director for World of Warcraft; Leonard Boyarsky, lead world designer on Diablo III; and Paul Sams, Blizzard COO. Your questions regarding Diablo III art will go the way of the dead horse, so don’t bother. Otherwise, post away!