This is the other major bit news out of Blizzcon.

Diablo III is offered free!*

*If you subscribe to World of Warcraft for 12 months.

If you had an active or inactive subscription on the 18th October 2011. New accounts can’t get it. More details on the deal are here.

Beta access to Mists of Pandaria is also part of the deal.

Oh you get a free World of Warcraft in-game mount too : Tyrael’s Charger

I view this as a smart move from Blizzard. It looks generous and it holds up flagging World of Warcraft subscriber numbers.

But it’s not so generous as it might appear.

Blizzard can clawback any ‘losses’ via the long 12-month subscription and the extra pressure get the World of Warcraft Mist of Pandaria expansion, since you’re paying for the subscription anyway. There will also be opportunity for making money from purchases of Diablo III expansions and other merchandise (digital or otherwise). This will also increase Blizzard’s profits made via the real money auction house in Diablo III.

Still it’s a deal which will appeal to many especially those already committed to World of Warcraft.

Blizzcon is on and there’s basically two bits of important news.

The first is the new expansion with a new Chinese styled continent. Now this might be a smart move but from here it all falls apart into a dreadful series of cringes.

The continent is called Pandaria. Oh-kaaaay. To fit the new race, the…. Panderan… and a new class the.. uhm Monk. Groan. Yes this is Kung Fu Panda cloned to hell. One waits to see if there is a commercial agreement or a pile of litigation coming.

There’s a 5 level increase to level 90 and new content including a vanity pet battle system and challenge modes. They want to renew Horde vs Alliance but I rather suspect they will shake it up instead. The expansion is titled Mists of Pandaria and 5 year olds will probably love it.

You’ll be forgiven if you think this video is a joke or hoax at first, I certainly did.

Blizzard Entertainment has released many successful games in the past. Diablo, Diablo II, Starcraft, the Warcraft series and naturally World of Warcraft.

In the past.

Their most recent release from last year, Starcraft 2 scored well in Metacritic getting 93 out of 100 in the metascore and 8.2 out of 10 for the user score. Yet it mainly scores well for gameplay balance and pretty graphics. The actual play is much the same as from the original Starcraft released way back in 1998. In other words, it’s boring to those who have seen it before.

Blizzard are very good at getting the most out of their games financially. The most obvious are those virtual pets sold in World of Warcraft, but there’s an enormous line of figurines, card games, books, keyboards and so on. Starcraft 2 requires you to effectively buy three separate full priced games.

Making money is, of course, part of the games industry and I have no problem with that apart, perhaps, from the excess greed companies like Blizzard display. But the problem with such a brilliant money milking machine is it only works if people want what Blizzard offers.

I suspect it’s all starting to go sour.

Let’s face it, World of Warcraft has been very successful but it’s now quite ancient. It is slipping in the competition against better but less established Massive Multiplayer Online games (MMOs).  Once it led the way in mmorpg.com’s gamerankings. Today it only scored 7.72 out of 10, lower than many leading MMOs. Lower than Everquest!   There has also been a small but sustained dip in subscribers, down from the high of 12 million to 11.4 million.  As Blizzard tries to update the game because people want something new, they alienate longer term players who find the older system appealing. It’s a difficult balance. One they seem to hope to plug with more frequent updates.  Note in that article I took the answer to be ‘yes’ to the idea of the updates being lighter in content.

My experience with World of Warcraft included being ‘hacked’ which was certainly no fun.  It took many days to fix with a deluge of confusing, conflicting emails along with imperious, unrealistic demands and accusations.  Couple this with the actual game experience in, say, the Player versus Environment (PvE) dungeons and raids.  It is now so dumbed down and so clockwork that all the fun has been squeezed out until you are left with what?  Work?  Unpaid work?  No! Work that you pay for.  If the dungeon is not clockwork, due to a newbie or some in-game issue, you realise that sometimes people who accompany you on these exciting adventures are lowlifes with the manners and honour of a dead rodent.  Attitudes encouraged by the system Blizzard has designed.  Is it any wonder people are leaving?

Diablo III is coming. Much like Starcraft II was coming. One day. Eventually. Maybe even this year. Still Starcraft II did arrive, likely Diablo III will too but will it be the same lack of inspiration we usually see from Blizzard these days?

It will be interesting to see if Blizzard can turn the Behemoth into future profit, or if it will begin to sink.  What do you think?

So does 3D printing have any potential in games? Of course, just as it will probably impact so many industries. One can already print one one’s own character as a figurine.

One of the most basic applications I have seen is over at FigurePrints where they print out your very own World of Warcraft characters or Xbox LIVE avatars. You plonk down the dough (currently $US130 for a statue) and then you import your favourite character’s data which is as easy as selection. You then pose that 3D model and it’s ready to go to print. These figurines are printed on Z Corp Spectrum Z510 colour printers in Vancouver. Naturally this company has been swamped with requests. I have no doubt competition will come if it hasn’t already, including to other games and entertainment media.

All that is needed is the game company to provide the 3D data. Most games are already 3D based so there’s not much in the way. Many TV and movie studios can also go down this route, albeit there is less customisation in such media.

Imagine. One day you too will have your very own fully functional, exploding, rocket chicken. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

It snuck in. As far as I can determine via a portable hard drive of the boy’s. You know the species. Teenager.

A trojan. No not the prophylactic. The nasty little computer program which does nasty little things.

Including keylogging.