Tag Archives: frank pearce

Blizzard co-founder Frank Pearce has told VG247 that he’s keen to get new players involved with the StarCraft universe with StarCraft II, but that accessibility won’t be at the cost of satisfying the existing hardcore.

“We certainly want to be able to expose the franchise to new players,” said the company boss.

“But yeah, we have to balance that against serving the existing, passionate StarCraft community. One of our goals is always to make games that are really accessible – easy to learn, difficult to master, right?

“So, a pretty easy learning curve, but a lot of components to the game as far as strategies go that can really help someone that wants to be an expert player and distinguish themselves from the average player.”

StarCraft is by far the most popular competitive RTS on the market, but Blizzard comms boss Bob Colayco assured us the sequel would be able to bridge “teh noobs” and the 733t mentalists.

“What you saying: ‘Do you want to attract new players, or do you want this to be fan service?’ – I don’t know if that’s an either-or proposition. You can do things to certainly satisfy both, as Frank was mentioning. ‘Easy to learn, hard to master’ has always been a Blizzard philosophy.”

No date for StarCraft II as yet.

Speaking to VG247 at Games Convention, Blizzard co-founder Frank Pearce said that the updated version of Battle.Net confirmed to the launching alongside StarCraft II will be added to over time.

“I’m really excited about the Battle.Net stuff and the ambitious goals we have there, although it’s tough to say how much of it’s going to be available when we launch StarCraft II,” he said.

“We want to have a minimum feature-set available, but we’ll continue to add functionality to that even after we launch StarCraft II.”

Little is known of what’s the be included in the next version of the online gaming service, and a release date remains elusive.

Speaking to Kikizo at Game Convention, Blizzard co-founder Frank Pearce said that the newly formed Activision Blizzard wasn’t exactly named to his liking.

“We actually requested that it be called Blizzard Activision”, he laughed, adding: “You can’t win every battle.”

More, less jokey stuff about the merger through the link.

Speaking to VG247 at Games Convention, Blizzard co-founder Frank Pearce said that Diablo III’s requirements from the major Battle.Net upgrade currently being worked on at the firm will be specific to the game itself.

“Diablo III will have its own unique needs in terms of what Battle.Net provides,” he said.

Pearce also revealed that the team working on the new Battle.Net is a separate division within Blizzard.

“The Battle.Net team is actually a separate group of engineers working on that functionality,” he added. “So, they’re working with the StarCraft II team and they’ll be working pretty integrally with the Diablo III team as well.”

No date’s been set for the release of the Battle.Net 2 upgrade as yet, but we do know it’s going to ship alongside StarCraft II. So that’s probably next year.

Blizzard co-founder Frank Pearce told VG247 as Games Convention that a fourth WarCraft game could be a next project for the firm, provided one of the company’s current teams was interested in making it.

“If there’s a team that’s passionate about doing another WarCraft RTS, then that’s definitely something we would consider,” he said.

Don’t get dressed up in your favourite orc costume just yet, though: Blizzard’s major development units are a tad busy at the moment.

“It’s nothing that we’re working on right now,” Pearce assured.

“We have development teams working on Wrath of the Lich King, StarCraft II, Diablo III, and when those teams are all off the projects they’re working on, they’ll be intimately involved in the the discussions about what’s next.”

Just imagine WarCraft IV, eh? Just imagine that.

If there’s one thing humans, as a species, can do, it’s complain. Case in point: Blizzard senior VP and co-founder Frank Pearce on his team’s record-shattering, money-inhaling spectacularmathon of an MMO.

“I don’t know if I’d describe it as ‘interesting’ as much as exhausting,” he told GamesIndustry.biz. “We’ve got almost 3,000 employees worldwide now, and the majority of that growth is due to the success of World of Warcraft.”

“So it’s great, it’s a great problem to have,” he added, “but it is a lot of work. We’ve learned a lot, made a lot of mistakes along the way. It’s been good experience for us, I wouldn’t say that we’ve regretted it… but ‘interesting’ isn’t how we’d describe it necessarily.”

Poor guy; it’s rough stuff. Our cookie basket is already in the mail.

By Nathan Grayson

Speaking at an Activate Asia Pacific event in Auckland, New Zealand, an Activision rep has apparently said that StarCraft II “should” be out next year, reports StarCraftWire.

“Next year’s offerings from Activision Blizzard should include highly anticipated PC strategy title StarCraft II, the sequel to one of the world’s most enduringly popular games,” said the company in a presentation.

The comment comes after Blizzard co-founder Frank Pearce told VG247 at Games Convention last month that there’s “too much work to do” on the game to commit to a 2008 release date.

More through the link. There’s a new video after the break as well, if you’re interested.

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Blizzard co-founder Frank Pearce reckons you might be getting a fourth StarCraft II race “in the event” of an expansion to the RTS sequel.

“We don’t have the resources or time to add a fourth race to the launch of StarCraft II, but I’m sure in the event that we decide to do an expansion set it’s a feature that’ll come up for discussion,” the company boss told VG247.

StarCraft II will feature the three races from the first game – the Terrans, the Zerg and the Protoss – but a fourth had been considered early on in development.

“We talked about the possibility of a fourth race early on, but we felt like we had a finite amount of great ideas and wanted to make sure we focused all the cool, best ideas on the existing three races rather than diluting those ideas across four races,” Pearce added.

StarCraft II currently has no release date, but is looking likely for 2009.

Blizzard co-founder Frank Pearce has refused to commit hugely anticipated RTS StarCraft II to a 2008 release, saying simply that the company still has “too much work to do” on the game.

“This year? Like, 2008? Too much work to do,” Pearce told VG247.

He added: “We don’t have a specific release date in mind yet. We still have too much work to do.”

And that was very much that. Frank’s one of the Blizzard super bosses (lvl 71) so you probably shouldn’t be expecting much in the way of new Zerg action this side of Christmas.

Speaking to Videogamer at Games Convention this week, Blizzard co-founder Frank Pearce has said that the thought of putting out a StarCraft MMO is a little daunting.

“We’ve made it very difficult for ourselves and it’s an overwhelming thought,” he said.

“I’ve been there at Blizzard since we started on WoW and it’s been a very long and arduous journey. And to think about taking that journey again with the StarCraft franchise is a little scary. It makes an RTS like Starcraft 2 seem very achievable.”

That’s not happening, then. More through the link.