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we’ve devoted a whole issue to the of it. Why pay an MMO subscription if created from bots are largely due to poor Blizzard team? Our writers this week you are merely competing with AI? game design. have filled out the reasons for Blizzard’s success. Russ Pitts gives a detailed -Tom If bots create an unfair (illegal) For over a decade, Blizzard has produced account of how Blizzard the company advantage… so does availability of time. top quality games and found a spot in came to be what they are today, and in In Response to Korean court jails the heart of a vast majority of gamers. so doing, reveals a bit about their Secret distributors of MMO bot program, I’m all for fairness in games and Whether they’re creating a trek deep Sauce. Shannon Drake speaks with from The Escapist Lounge: Why pay a competition, but typical MMORPGS are into the ground to fight of the demons of several ex-Blizzard employees about subscription if you are merely competing not designed to be fair so I only treat Diablo, or a struggle for resources their tenures at the studio. And Michael with children who don’t have them as interesting social environments among three galactic species in Zenke returns this week to discuss the responsibilities beyond themselves and and try to refrain from competing StarCraft, Blizzard is known for the shine importance of World of WarCraft. can spend 12 hours or more each and because… I simply cannot compete in a and depth with which they infuse each every day to the game? game that requires insane amounts of product. This is what Blizzard brings to Cheers, time to progress. the table. I still don’t see the problem with bots, but then again, I think any “problems” -Cody K. I sat here for a long while, thinking of all the offerings Blizzard has bestowed upon the grateful gaming public, pondering what to write in summation/introduction to our profile issue on Blizzard. I could talk about Blizzard’s “When it is finished!” attitude toward game In Response to “Korean court jails development. I could talk about how distributors of MMO bot program,” StarCraft impacted Korean culture. I from The Escapist Lounge: The could even talk about my own wonderful situation is worse still in games where adventures in Azeroth with my human the exchange of in-game money for real priest and Tauren druid in World of is encouraged. Above that there’s always WarCraft. the enjoyment of others, too. Robots grinding away every hour of every day A short Editor’s Note doesn’t suffice to on the same task that the human traders explain it all. But then, isn’t that why are doing really takes the enjoyment out In Response to “Cubicle Vision” from The Escapist Lounge: Okay, so don’t play games on the company’s equipment. Not a problem. Go get yourself a Game Boy, DS, PSP, hell, even an old Atari Lynx, and have your relaxing game of Tetris or whatever during your federally mandated lunch break. Since the game unit is portable, why not take that hour away from your desk? The cubicle world - with all its email, voice mail, and memos - will still be there when you return. -Wizard of Wor In Response to “All Work and No Play” from The Escapist Lounge: I listened to this fantastic presentation by Merlin Mann, about how technology and the internet is making our lives even more tedious that in the past. He said that children’s books 20, 30 years ago, often showed firemen, mechanics, police officers, chefs as people’s jobs... in the future, all the jobs will just be a person at a desk, looking at a computer. -cibbuano In 1991, the internet didn’t exist. Particularly in terms of what users were willing to pay. At one point, the hourly rate That is to say, it did exist (and had for for access to Sierra’s network had climbed some time), but to the majority of as high as $6 per hour. This was in addition Americans it might as well have been a to the subscription fees users were already huffalump until the creation of the World paying for dial-up access to the internet Wide Web in (approximately) 1992, itself and (in some extreme cases) long when the internet would begin to distance telephone charges levied by the become both widely understood, and telephone company. By contrast, many easy-to-use (therefore “of interest” to telephone sex chat services charged less most people). than half that amount. Yet in 1991, the internet (such as it was) The Sierra Network, not surprisingly, was neither widely understood nor easy- failed and was shut down in 1996 by AOL, to-use, which is why the prospect of who had acquired it from AT&T. Ironically, playing games on the internet may have this was not too long after the internet seemed like a good and bad idea had become both widely understood and simultaneously. On one hand, nobody easy-to-use, and right around the same was doing it yet - it was a virgin market; time that several other online gaming on the other, nobody was doing it yet - services had begun to flourish. Among the risks were terrible. them, an exciting new service offered by a company called Blizzard. In 1991, videogame industry leader Sierra launched the Sierra Network (later The Sleeper Has Awakened called the ImagiNation Network). It was In 1992, a revolutionary videogame was geared more-or-less toward children, released that captured the imaginations with cartoon-ish art and themes, but it of gamers the world over, almost allowed users to play a variety of games immediately selling half a million copies. and chat with friends in online chat One of the first “real-time strategy” rooms - all for an hourly fee, of course. games ever made, it tasked the player It was, in every way, ahead of its time. with building a virtual army by collecting resources and then constructing That game was not Warcraft. As with any game based on a license, How the West Was Won buildings that would produce their Dune II relied on the players’ familiarity Officially founded in 1991 as Silicon & machines of war - all in “real time.” Westwood Studios’ Dune II, predating with the premise of the original works. Synapse, Blizzard Entertainment had While the player was at it, their “enemy” Warcraft by at least two years, was The Dune series had sold millions of been making their bones producing was doing the same, building up to an based on the science fiction books by copies of books world-wide, and had console titles and second-rate DOS eventual showdown between the Frank Herbert, and cast the player as been made into a feature-length film in games like Battle Chess II (1990) and competing armies, after which one side one of three races bent on controlling 1984, but to many people, the story was The Death and Return of Superman would claim total victory. Whoever had the spice-infested planet of Arrakis. It simply too dense to get their heads (1994). As with any business, their goal the most machines or the best strategy has been described as among the best around. Case in point: The resource in the first few years was to simply would win the day. It was like chess PC games ever made, and many still Dune II players were tasked with mining, survive. Condor Software co-founder combined with backgammon wrapped up consider it the best example of its genre the spice “Melange,” took Herbert an Dave Brevik explains early corporate life in an erector set, and gamers loved it. ever made. Yet, it was not without its entire novel to attempt to explain. Called by saying “console games were paying share of problems. “the spice of spices” in his appendices, the bills.” the fictional Melange has been attributed with prolonging life, allowing users to He would know - Condor was doing the foresee the future, astrally project same. Founded by Brevik in 1993 with objects through time and space, turn Max and Erich Schaefer, Condor had been people’s eyes blue and make giant making ends meet by developing low- worms try to kill you. “Catchy” is not the budget console titles. Then, they got a call first word which comes to mind here. from publisher Sunsoft to develop a comic book franchise title for the Sega Genesis. Still, the game was among the first of its kind, and as such is fondly remembered Dave Brevik tells the story: “We were and universally considered the developing a fighting game (likeStreet grandfather of the RTS genre. The Fighter) using [DC’s] Justice League criticism of its universe did not prevent characters ... [Part-way] through Westwood from controlling RTS development, we got approval to show production for almost a decade, but the game off at CES. This was before combined with the soon-to-be glaring E3 existed.” lack of multiplayer capability, did leave a hole large enough for rival Blizzard to What the designers at Condor didn’t drive an entire franchise through. know, however, was that another company, over 300 miles away, was developing the exact same game for a competing console. The two development teams met for the first time at the Consumer Electronics Show. “Much to our surprise,” says Brevik, “[Blizzard] was making the same game for the Super Nintendo system. We had never talked or shared any assets or Warcraft, like Dune II, was an RTS enough for someone unfamiliar with the ideas, and it was supposed to be the game, in which the player mined Tolkien books to appreciate.

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