World of Warcraft veteran leaves Blizzard to join RIOT Games as League of Legends developer.
Former World of Warcraft lead systems designer Greg Street has updated his LinkedIn profile to reflect that he is now a lead game designer at Riot Games.
The Linked profile doesn’t indicate the project he is working on at Riot Games. In a post on his Twitter account, Street alluded to the change but implied it would be some time before he provided more clarification on it.
“Thank you for all the recent tweets, but I think the appropriate thing for me to do is lie low for awhile,” Street said. “I won’t vanish forever. Cheers.”
Street, also known as Ghostcrawler on the World of Warcraft forums, had been with Blizzard for nearly six years when he left last month. Prior to that, he worked at Microsoft’s Ensemble Studios as the lead game designer on Age of Empires III.
The lead composer on World of Warcraft announced his video game tribute band Critical Hit today, along with the band’s debut album, which includes covers of the main themes from Tetris, Pokémon, Halo 2 and Metal Gear Solid 2.
Jason Hayes is an in-house composer for Blizzard Entertainment. He has contributed to the soundtracks of video games like Dota 2, StarCraft, Warcraft 3, Diablo 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. For Critical Hit, he brings together professional violinists, guitarists, pianists, flautists and percussionists to perform original arrangements from some of the world’s most well-known video games.
The band’s debut album, Critical Hit: Volume One, is now available for pre-order for $14.99. Hayes will sign copies of the album that are pre-ordered between now and Oct. 31.
Critical Hit will perform its first live show on Nov. 9 at BlizzCon at the Anaheim Convention Center. The performance will take place during the convention’s Sound Panel.
Rumors have it that Atlas Entertainment and Legendary Pictures have offered Colin Farrell (Total Recall) and Paula Patton (Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol) roles in the upcoming movie based on Blizzard’s World of Warcraft game. The film doesn’t have a studio as of yet, although it looks as if Universal Pictures will take the job. Duncan Jones (Source Code, Moon) will be the director.
According to Deadline, Farrell and Patton are not a done deal, as it looks to be 50/50 with Farrell at this point and negotiations are still ongoing with Patton. Jones is also said to be interviewing other actors for major parts at this time. Filming is expected to begin in January of next year.
Who would you like to see star in the Warcraft movie? Are Farrell and Patton good choices?
A four-minute cinematic sets the scene for new Patch 5.4 raid
Blizzard has released a new cinematic trailer for World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria’s Siege of Orgrimmar raid coming in Patch 5.4.
“Siege of Orgrimmar is a 3-wing, 14-boss raid for max-level players, which will call you to take down Warchief Garrosh Hellscream at the head of a host of Azeroth’s finest,” explains Blizzard.
The update also adds new Proving Grounds and Connected Realms features, new zones and a list of other tweaks.
Here’s are the highlights of the update:
New Raid: The Siege of Orgrimmar
– The Siege of Orgrimmar is a 3-wing, 14-boss raid for max-level players, which will call you to take down Warchief Garrosh Hellscream at the head of a host of Azeroth’s finest.
New Raid Mode: Flexible
– Raid with a group of friends and guild mates regardless of server, and with any group size from 10 to 25, and the difficulty will automatically adjust to provide an appropriately challenging experience.
New Feature: Proving Grounds
– Undertake solo trials to practice or learn a new class role (Tank, Healer, or Damage). Each trial is available in multiple difficulties — Bronze through Gold and the challenging ‘Endless’ mode.
New Zone: The Timeless Isle
– Giant outdoor zone promoting open-world adventuring with tons of hidden treasures, giant creatures to defeat, five world bosses, a pet battle tournament, and much more!
Legendary Quest: Judgment of the Black Prince
– The epic conclusion to the Legendary quest line will see players rewarded with unique cloaks imbued with powerful new abilities.
New Feature: Connected Realms
– Lower population realms will be permanently and seamlessly “linked.” Players on the same Connected Realm will be able to trade, send and receive mail, join the same guilds, access a single Auction House, run the same Raids and Dungeons, and join other adventurers to complete quests.
PvP: Redesigned Arena System
– Arenas are no longer tied to specific Battlegroups, and players no longer need to create or join an Arena team to compete. Similar to the Rated Battleground system, players in a party of the appropriate size can queue.
The patch, which is available for testing on the Public Test Realms now, is detailed in full in a huge list of patch notes on the official site.
Activision Blizzard’s MMORPG giant continues decline, loses another 600,000 in last quarter.
The World of Warcraft is continuing its contraction. In announcing the plan to buy its independence back from Vivendi in the form of $5.83 billion worth of shares, Activision Blizzard also revealed that as of the end of its second quarter (three months ended June 30), World of Warcraft was down to roughly 7.7 million subscribers.
That total is still enough to make the game easily the biggest subscription-based MMORPG in the world, but it represents a loss of 600,000 players over the quarter. After the launch of World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria last September provided a short-lived boost to the user base, Blizzard has seen the game lose more than 2.3 million subscribers. When it peaked in 2010, World of Warcraft commanded a subscriber base of more than 12 million players.
As World of Warcraft numbers ebb, the need for Activision Blizzard to produce a successor to its 2004 MMORPG megahit becomes more pressing. In May, reports emerged that the intended follow-up, code-named Titan, had hit development difficulties. As a result, Blizzard was hitting the reset button on the game’s development, pushing a launch out to 2016 at the earliest. The company confirmed it had reallocated resources away from Titan, but noted that it had never announced any sort of release window for the game.
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