BlizzCon, Blizzard Entertainment
For the first time ever, BlizzCon will be streamed live via the Internet as a two-day Pay Per View event. You can watch over 18 hours of coverage from BlizzCon, including: key announcements about the future of Blizzard Entertainment games, exclusive developer interviews, tournament coverage showcasing some of the top professional players in the world, the highly anticipated closing ceremony featuring Ozzy Osbourne live in concert, and much more. With the purchase of this Pay Per View event, you’ll also receive the BlizzCon 2009 exclusive in-game pet for World of Warcraft: Grunty the Murloc Marine. Order Now!
Blizzard Entertainment is an American video game developer and publisher headquartered in Irvine, California. It is a division of Activision Blizzard. Blizzard is the creator of several successful PC games, including the Warcraft, StarCraft and Diablo series, and the MMORPG World of Warcraft.
Blizzard Entertainment offers events to meet players and to announce games, the BlizzCon in California, United States, and the Blizzard Worldwide Invitational in other countries.
Blizzard History
Blizzard Entertainment was founded by Michael Morhaime, Ayman Allen Adham and Frank Pearce as Silicon & Synapse in February 1991, a year after all three had received their bachelor’s degrees from UCLA. In the early days the company focused on creating game ports for other studios. Ports include titles such as J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, Vol. I and Battle Chess II: Chinese Chess. In 1993, the company developed games like Rock N’ Roll Racing and The Lost Vikings (published by Interplay Productions). In 1994, the company briefly changed its name to Chaos Studios, before finally settling on Blizzard Entertainment after it was discovered that another company with the Chaos name already existed. That same year, they were acquired by distributor Davidson & Associates for under $10 million. Shortly thereafter, Blizzard shipped their breakthrough hit Warcraft: Orcs and Humans.
Blizzard has changed hands several times since then: Davidson was acquired along with Sierra On-Line by a company called CUC International in 1996; CUC then merged with a hotel, real-estate, and car-rental franchiser called HFS Corporation to form Cendant in 1997. In 1998 it became apparent that CUC had engaged in accounting fraud for years before the merger; Cendant’s stock lost 80% of its value over the next six months in the ensuing widely discussed accounting scandal. The company sold its consumer software operations, Sierra On-line which included Blizzard, to French publisher Havas in 1998, the same year Havas was purchased by Vivendi. Blizzard was part of the Vivendi Games group of Vivendi. In July 2008 Vivendi Games merged with Activision, using Blizzard’s name in the resulting company, Activision Blizzard.
In 1996, Blizzard acquired Condor Games, which had been working on the game Diablo for Blizzard at the time. Condor was renamed Blizzard North, and has since developed hit games Diablo, Diablo II, and its expansion pack Diablo II: Lord of Destruction. Blizzard North was located in San Mateo, California.
Blizzard launched their online gaming service Battle.net in January 1997 with the release of their action-RPG Diablo. In 2002, Blizzard was able to reacquire rights for three of its earlier Silicon & Synapse titles from Interplay Entertainment and re-release them under Game Boy Advance. In 2004, Blizzard opened European offices in the Paris suburb of Vélizy, Yvelines, France, responsible for the European in-game support of World of Warcraft. On November 23, 2004, Blizzard released World of Warcraft, its MMORPG offering. On May 16, 2005, Blizzard announced the acquisition of Swingin’ Ape Studios, a console game developer which had been developing StarCraft: Ghost. The company was then merged into Blizzard’s other teams after StarCraft: Ghost was ‘postponed indefinitely’. On August 1, 2005, Blizzard announced the consolidation of Blizzard North into the headquarters at 131 Theory in UC Irvine’s University Research Park in Irvine, California.
In 2008, Blizzard was honored at the 59th Annual Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards for the creation of World of Warcraft. Mike Morhaime accepted the award.
Blizzard Notable unreleased titles
Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans, which was cancelled on May 22, 1998, Shattered Nations, and StarCraft: Ghost, which was “indefinitely postponed” on March 24, 2006 after being in development hell for much of its lifespan, and whose current status is in question. The company also has a history of declining to set release dates, choosing to instead take as much time as needed, generally saying a given product is “done when it’s done.”
Pax Imperia II was originally announced as a title to be published by Blizzard. Blizzard eventually dropped Pax Imperia II, though, when it decided it might be in conflict with their other space strategy project, the now-legendary StarCraft. THQ eventually contracted with Heliotrope and released the game in 1997 as Pax Imperia: Eminent Domain.
Blizzard News
Blizzard Entertainment has announced that they will be producing a Warcraft live-action movie. The movie will be released by Legendary Pictures.
BlizzCon Tickets on Sale May 30 at 10 a.m. PDT
If you were unable to purchase BlizzCon tickets during the first round of ticket sales, we just wanted to remind you that our second batch of BlizzCon 2009 tickets will be going on sale Saturday, May 30. Ticket sales are again scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. Pacific Time, so be sure to visit the ticket sales page then for a chance to get yours.
BlizzCon 2009 will take place August 21 and 22 at the Anaheim Convention Center, and tickets cost $125 each. For those unable to attend the show, in-depth coverage of BlizzCon will also be offered by DIRECTV as a Pay Per View event, available both via satellite and Internet stream. For more information about the convention and the DIRECTV BlizzCon packages, check out the official BlizzCon site.
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