Blizzard hint that they are remaking their classic games for modern audiences

Blizzard Entertainment have posted some job vacancies indicating that they are working on remakes of some of their most popular older titles. It appears that Diablo II, Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and the original StarCraft are all being updated to work better on modern machines.

There's already a popular mod that puts the StarCraft and Brood War missions into the StarCraft II engine. Blizzard may be looking at doing similar and official.

It's an interesting announcement because the problem isn't really compatibility: all of Blizzard's games can be made to work on modern PCs and Macs without too many problems, a tribute to their robust programming and how well they've kept their games updated over the better part of twenty years. The problem appears to be one more of overcoming technical limitations. The gameplay of the original StarCraft is sublime (and in fact in terms of mission design and concise storytelling, it remains superior to StarCraft II) but the fact you can only build five units at a time, you can't auto-order new resource gathers to gather new resources as they are produced and you are stuck to big, blocky pixels with no way of changing resolution is now rather irritating. It'd also be nice to see the cut scenes from the games revamped and updated.

How comprehensive the remakes are going to be remains unclear. They could be simply spruced up versions of the originals, with better interfaces and the ability to change resolutions, or they could be full-scale remakes in the engines of their sequels.

More news is expected at this year's BlizzCon, which runs over the coming weekend. Blizzard are also expected to release the first full trailer for the WarCraft movie; having a revamped version of WarCraft III for when the film comes out will likely be a nice piece of marketing (WarCraft I and II being such older and more primitive games that they would require much more thorough reworkings to be brought up to modern standards).

UPDATE: Blizzard have indicated that their plan is to simply update the games to work more reliably on Windows 7, 8 and particularly 10, as Microsoft is planning on withdrawing support for older versions of DirectX in the next few years. They'll also be addressing bugs and exploits from the multiplayer versions of those games.

GAME OF THRONES RPG's release clashes with year's biggest 2 games

Cyanide have released a docu-trailer for their Game of Thrones computer RPG. This trailer shows some gameplay with two of the game's developers talking about the title.

Game of Thrones: The RPG will be released on 15 May in the United States but, completely inexplicably, won't be out in Europe until 1 June (since clearly it takes two weeks for digital information to cross the Atlantic). The publishers, in their wisdom, have also decided the release the game on the same day as Max Payne 3 (one of the biggest games of the year on both console and PC) and Diablo III (probably the biggest game of the year on PC). In fact, they've somehow managed to cross with both dates for Max Payne 3 (which is out on 15 May on console and 1 June on PC).

I can only conclude at this stage that the publishers don't actually want anyone to play the game. There's some very strange decision-making going on there.

Blizzard's new MMO gets a name, plus plans for next few years revealed

Blizzard's Chinese office has leaked a production slate showing Blizzard's projects for the next four years. Heads have already rolled at the office over this, and Blizzard have confirmed that the schedule is genuine, although the dates are not set in stone.

Q4 2011
Diablo 3

Q4 2011
StarCraft 2: Legacy of the Swam

Q2 2012
World of WarCraft: Expansion 4

Q1 2013
StarCraft 2: Heart of the Void

Q2 2013
Diablo 3: Expansion 1

Q4 2013
World of WarCraft: Expansion 5

Q4 2013
Titan

Q4 2014
Diablo 3: Expansion 2


The most intriguing title on the list is Titan, Blizzard's new MMO game (though not necessarily an MMORPG). Titan has been in development for a few years already, and if it sticks to its late 2013 release (which it probably won't, this being Blizzard) it will be Blizzard's first original title in more than fifteen years. Blizzard said years ago that their next MMO would be a new franchise not linked to any existing title, so Titan isn't a code word for Worlds of StarCraft or Diablo Online either.

The slate also confirms that Diablo III will have two expansions and that World of WarCraft will have two additional expansions, taking it up to its tenth anniversary. However, it does seem to be extremely optimistic over getting Sam Raimi's planned World of WarCraft movie out in 2013 when the project still seems to be in development hell.