Portal:Blizzard Entertainment
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Introduction
Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. is an American video game developer and publisher based in Irvine, California, and is a subsidiary of the American company Activision Blizzard. The company was founded on February 8, 1991, under the name Silicon & Synapse, Inc. by three graduates of the University of California, Los Angeles: Michael Morhaime, Frank Pearce and Allen Adham. The company originally concentrated on the creation of game ports for other studios' games before beginning development of their own software in 1993 with games like Rock n' Roll Racing and The Lost Vikings. In 1994 the company became Chaos Studios, Inc., then Blizzard Entertainment after being acquired by distributor Davidson & Associates.
Shortly thereafter, Blizzard released Warcraft: Orcs & Humans. Blizzard created several other video games, including Warcraft sequels, the Diablo series, the StarCraft series, and in 2004 the massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft. Their most recent projects include the first expansion for Diablo III, Reaper of Souls, the online collectible card game Hearthstone, the seventh expansion for World of Warcraft, Battle for Azeroth, the multiplayer online battle arena Heroes of the Storm, the third and final expansion for StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, Legacy of the Void, and the multiplayer first-person hero shooter Overwatch.
Selected general articles
- Rock n' Roll Racing is a vehicular combat-based racing video game developed by Silicon & Synapse (now known as Blizzard Entertainment) and published by Interplay Productions for the Mega Drive/Genesis and the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in 1993. The game prominently features a number of popular heavy metal and rock songs in its soundtrack, hence the game's title. The game was ported to the Game Boy Advance in 2003.
Rock n' Roll Racing was initially developed as RPMII, a sequel to the company's SNES game RPM Racing. At the end of the project, Interplay marketing added licensed music and changed the name to Rock n' Roll Racing. It is also similar in gameplay to
Racing Destruction Set where it got its logic/AI engine and the NES game R.C. Pro-Am developed by Rare in 1988. Read more... - The StarCraft II World Championship Series (WCS) is a StarCraft II professional tournament series organized and sanctioned by Blizzard Entertainment. It combines the highest levels of professional StarCraft II competition. Its current iteration features two regions, World Championship Series Korea and World Championship Series Circuit with World Championship Series Global events featuring players from both regions. The grand finals are held annually at BlizzCon in Anaheim, California, except for the first year of competition, when the finals were held in Shanghai, China. WCS Circuit events are streamed on Twitch while WCS Korea events are available on Twitch, YouTube, and afreecaTV.
World Championship Series Korea professional competition is centered around events organized by afreecaTV under the Global StarCraft II League (GSL) name, including GSL Code S seasons and GSL Super Tournament events. World Championship Series Circuit professional competition centers around tournaments held under the World Championship Series Circuit name with qualifiers held for each under the World Championship Series Challenger name. Read more... - The Overwatch League (abbreviated as OWL) is a professional esports league for the video game Overwatch, developed and fully controlled by Blizzard Entertainment. The Overwatch League aims to follow the model of traditional North American professional sports, using a set of permanent, city-based teams and regular season play, rather than the use of promotion and relegation used commonly in other esports leagues. Each team franchise is backed by an owner and tied to a major city, and players that are signed onto the team are assured a minimum annual salary, benefits, and a portion of winnings and revenue-sharing based on how that team performs in the season.
The League was announced in November 2016, and the first twelve teams were established within the next year. The first season saw regular play from January to June 2018, and playoffs held that July, and an All-Star weekend that occurred in August 2018. A total prize pool of US$3.5 million was available to teams within the first season. Blizzard has since announced the addition of eight expansion teams for the second season. Read more... - Alyssa Wong is an American speculative fiction author of Chinese and Filipino descent. She has published short fiction and poetry, and studied fiction at North Carolina State University, graduating in 2017 with a Master of Fine Arts. In July of 2018, she was hired by Blizzard Entertainment as a writer on Overwatch. Read more...
- Blackthorne (released as Blackhawk in some European countries) is a cinematic platformer video game developed by Blizzard Entertainment. It was released for the SNES and DOS in 1994. The cover art for the SNES version was drawn by Jim Lee. The following year, Blackthorne was released for the Sega 32X with modified graphics, higher color palette and four new levels. In 2013, Blizzard made Blackthorne available as a free download. Read more...
- Hearthstone, originally Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, is a free-to-play online collectible card video game developed and published by Blizzard Entertainment. Having been released worldwide on March 11, 2014, Hearthstone builds upon the existing lore of the Warcraft series by using the same elements, characters, and relics. It was first released for Microsoft Windows and macOS, with support for iOS and Android devices being added later. The game features cross-platform play, allowing players on any supported device to compete with one another, restricted only by geographical region account limits.
The game is a turn-based card game between two opponents, using constructed decks of 30 cards along with a selected hero with a unique power. Players use their limited mana crystals to play abilities or summon minions to attack the opponent, with the goal of destroying the opponent's hero. Winning matches and completing quests earn in-game gold, rewards in the form of new cards, and other in-game prizes. Players can then buy packs of new cards through gold or microtransactions to customize and improve their decks. The game features several modes of play, including casual and ranked matches, drafted arena battles, and single-player adventures. New content for the game involves the addition of new card sets and gameplay, taking the form of either expansion packs or adventures that reward the player with collectible cards upon completion. Read more... - Greg Street is an American video game designer and Lead Game Designer for Riot Games.
Street was previously employed by Blizzard Entertainment as Lead Systems Designer on the award-winning MMORPG World of Warcraft, and is also known by his screen name "Ghostcrawler" on the World of Warcraft forums and his own Twitter account. Prior to being employed by Blizzard, Street worked as a marine biologist, eventually moving into the game design field. He also worked with Ensemble Studios on the Age of Empires series of real-time strategy games, during which period he was also known by the screen name "Deathshrimp". Read more... - Professional StarCraft II competition features professional gamers competing in Blizzard Entertainment's real-time strategy game StarCraft II. Professional play began following the game's initial release in 2010, as the game was the long-awaited sequel to StarCraft, considered one of the first esports and the foundation of South Korea's interest and success in competitive gaming. Current competition is centered around the Global StarCraft II League in Korea and the World Championship Series Circuit everywhere else, with all Blizzard-sanctioned events being under the StarCraft II World Championship Series banner. Read more...
Matthew Francis "Matt" Uelmen (/ˈoʊlmɪn/; born July 31, 1972) is an American video game music composer and sound designer. He is best known for his work in Blizzard Entertainment's Diablo series, which was recognized with the inaugural Excellence in Audio award by the IGDA in 2001. He also worked as a sound designer for the real-time strategy game StarCraft, and worked on World of Warcraft's expansion The Burning Crusade in 2007. From 2009 until the studio's closure in 2017, Matt Uelmen worked as a member of the Runic Games team, as a composer and sound designer for the Torchlight games. Read more...- The Korea StarCraft League (KSL) is a StarCraft: Remastered tournament series hosted by Blizzard Entertainment in South Korea. It was announced in June 2018 and began its first season the following month. It is broadcast regularly in Korean and English on Twitch. The main English language casters for the event are Dan "Artosis" Stemkoski and Nicolas "Tasteless" Plott. It currently runs alongside afreecaTV's AfreecaTV StarCraft League (ASL) as one of the two top level Korean leagues for StarCraft: Remastered. Read more...
OGN's Yongsan e-Sports Stadium is an example of an esports stadium, where professional StarCraft is played.
The real time strategy (RTS) computer game StarCraft had an active professional competition circuit, particularly in South Korea. The two major game channels in South Korea, Ongamenet and MBCGame, each ran a Starleague (Ongamenet Starleague, MBCgame Starleague), viewed by millions of fans.
Starting in about 2002, pro-gamers started to become organized into teams, sponsored by large South Korean companies like Samsung, SK Telecom and KT. StarCraft is also the most popular computer game competition during the annual World Cyber Games thanks to its Korean fanbase, and it is overall one of the world's largest computer and video game competitions in terms of prize money, global coverage and participants. Read more...- Diablo III is a dungeon crawler action role-playing video game developed and published by Blizzard Entertainment. It is the third installment in the Diablo franchise and was released on May 15, 2012 for Microsoft Windows and macOS. A console version was released for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on September 3, 2013. Versions for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One were released on August 19, 2014.
In the game, players choose one of seven character classes – Barbarian, Crusader, Demon Hunter, Monk, Necromancer, Witch Doctor or Wizard (with the Crusader being unavailable unless the player has purchased the expansion pack, Diablo III: Reaper of Souls and the Necromancer added later as separate online purchase) – and are tasked with defeating the Lord of Terror, Diablo. Read more...
Morhaime at BlizzCon 2007
Michael "Mike" Morhaime (born November 3, 1967) is a co-founder and the former president of Blizzard Entertainment (founded in 1991 as Silicon & Synapse), a video game developer located in Irvine, California, owned by Activision Blizzard. Morhaime served as President of Blizzard Entertainment, Inc., a subsidiary of Activision Blizzard, Inc. He served on the Vivendi Games executive committee since January 1999, when Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. became a subsidiary of Vivendi Games. He graduated from Granada Hills High School in 1985. He is also an alumnus of Triangle Fraternity and received his bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering in 1990 from UCLA. He is a member of ETC, a metal band formed of and by Blizzard Employees, where he plays bass guitar. Read more...- The Death and Return of Superman is a side-scrolling beat 'em up video game released by Sunsoft for the Super NES and Genesis in 1994. It is based on "The Death of Superman" comic book storyline by DC Comics and features many characters from the comics, including Superman himself, Superboy, Steel, Cyborg Superman, the Eradicator, and Doomsday. All of the five Supermen are playable characters at some point. Read more...
- Diablo II is an action role-playing hack and slash video game developed by Blizzard North and published by Blizzard Entertainment in 2000 for Microsoft Windows, Classic Mac OS, and macOS. The game, with its dark fantasy and horror themes, was conceptualized and designed by David Brevik and Erich Schaefer, who with Max Schaefer acted as project leads on the game. The producers were Matthew Householder and Bill Roper.
Building on the success of its predecessor Diablo (1996), Diablo II was one of the most popular games of 2000. Major factors that contributed to Diablo II's success include its continuation of popular fantasy themes from the previous game and its access to Blizzard's free online play service Battle.net. An expansion to Diablo II, Diablo II: Lord of Destruction, was released in 2001. A sequel, Diablo III, was announced in 2008, and was released on May 15, 2012. Read more... - Diablo is an action role-playing hack and slash video game developed by Blizzard North and released by Blizzard Entertainment on December 31, 1996.
Set in the fictional Kingdom of Khanduras (located in the mortal realm), Diablo has the player take control of a lone hero battling to rid the world of Diablo, the Lord of Terror. Beneath the town of Tristram, the player journeys through sixteen randomly generated dungeon levels, ultimately entering Hell itself in order to face Diablo. Read more... - The expansion to the computer game Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, known as The Frozen Throne, had an active professional competition scene, particularly in China, Germany, and South Korea. The game was featured at eSports festivals including the World Cyber Games, the Electronic Sports World Cup, the World e-Sports Games, the World Series of Video Games and the International E-Sports Festival. Outside of the professional circuit, the game had many active competitive circuits, with users at Battle.net ranging between the 70,000 and 100,000 at any given moment. In China, in which Warcraft III was extremely popular due to it being easily available through piracy, fans and users often used an alternative client due to the country's poor internet connections to the outside world. Around 3,000,000 copies of the game were sold in the country. 500,000 Chinese competed in the Chinese qualifiers for the 2006 World Cyber Games. The amount of prize money through the years has been significant with top players winning hundreds of thousands of dollars. As usual in competitive gaming, income for Warcraft 3 professional players flowed from various sources like team salaries from pro-gaming teams and sponsorships usually computer technology related. A famous example was Danish gaming organization known as Meet Your Makers which boasted of paying their players US$300,000 on an annual basis. Similar to older games with huge competitive scenes like Starcraft:Brood War and Counter-Strike 1.6, the popularity of Warcraft 3 steadily declined and towards the end of the previous decade almost all tournaments and players were Chinese. After 2010, with Starcraft 2, League of Legends, and Dota 2 being released and becoming popular, Warcraft 3 gave up its position as one of the prime eSports titles. Read more...
- BlizzCon is an annual gaming convention held by Blizzard Entertainment to promote its major franchises Warcraft, StarCraft, Diablo, Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm and Overwatch. Since October 2005, it has been held at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California. The convention features game-related announcements, previews of upcoming Blizzard Entertainment games and content, Q&A sessions and panels, costume contests and playable versions of various Blizzard games. The closing night has featured concerts by The Offspring, Tenacious D, Foo Fighters, Ozzy Osbourne, Blink-182, Metallica, Linkin Park, "Weird Al" Yankovic, and Muse.
A similar event was the Blizzard Worldwide Invitational, held outside the U.S. from 2004-2008. Read more... - The Overwatch World Cup (OWC) is an Overwatch eSports tournament organized by Blizzard Entertainment, the video game's developer. The tournament is competed by international teams.
The 2017 tournament involved an initial group stage in which 32 nations qualify; they are determined by the average skill rating of a nation's top 100 players qualify. Following this, the top two teams from each group advance to a single-elimination playoff bracket. The final eight teams continue the rest of the playoff bracket at Blizzard's BlizzCon event. Read more... - RPM Racing (short for Radical Psycho Machine Racing) is a Super Nintendo Entertainment System racing game developed by Silicon & Synapse (now known as Blizzard Entertainment) and published by Interplay Productions.
RPM was a successful remake of the Commodore 64 video game Racing Destruction Set, developed by Electronic Arts in 1985. It claims to be the first American-developed game for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Read more...
Bill Roper (born March 27, 1965 in Concord, California) is Chief Creative Officer at Improbable. Previously, he was Vice President/GM at Disney Interactive Studios since June 2011, and headed video game studios and creative and development departments for two decades, including divisions at Blizzard Entertainment, Flagship Studios, and Cryptic Studios. He is also an accomplished musician, and a founding member of the folk band The Poxy Boggards. Read more...- Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos is a high fantasy real-time strategy video game developed and published by Blizzard Entertainment released in July 2002. It is the second sequel to Warcraft: Orcs & Humans and the third game set in the Warcraft fictional universe. An expansion pack, The Frozen Throne, was released in July 2003.
In the game, players collect resources, train individual units and heroes and build bases in order to achieve various goals (in single-player mode) or to defeat the enemy player. Four playable factions can be chosen from: Humans and Orcs, both of which appeared in the previous games, and two new factions, the Night Elves and the Undead. Warcraft III's single-player campaign is laid out similarly to that of StarCraft and is being told through the races in a progressive manner. Players can play matches against the computer or against others using local area networking or Blizzard's Battle.net gaming platform. Read more... - StarCraft is a military science fiction real-time strategy video game developed and published by Blizzard Entertainment and released for Microsoft Windows on March 31, 1998. The game later spawned a franchise, and is the first game of the StarCraft series. A Classic Mac OS version was released in 1999, and a Nintendo 64 adaptation co-developed with Mass Media was released on June 13, 2000. Work on the game started shortly after Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness' release in 1995. StarCraft debuted at the 1996 E3, where it was unfavorably compared to Warcraft II. As a result, the project was entirely overhauled and then showcased to public in early 1997, receiving a far more positive response.
Set in a fictitious timeline during the Earth's 25th century, the game revolves around three species fighting for dominance in a distant part of the Milky Way galaxy known as the Koprulu Sector: the Terrans, humans exiled from Earth skilled at adapting to any situation; the Zerg, a race of insectoid aliens in pursuit of genetic perfection, obsessed with assimilating other races; and the Protoss, a humanoid species with advanced technology and psionic abilities, attempting to preserve their civilization and strict philosophical way of living from the Zerg. Read more...
Christopher Vincent Metzen (born November 22, 1973) is an American game designer, artist, voice actor, and author known for his work creating the fictional universes and scripts for Blizzard Entertainment's three major award-winning media franchises: Warcraft, Diablo and StarCraft. On occasion, Metzen has published his art under the alias "Thundergod." Metzen was hired by Blizzard Entertainment as an animator and an artist; his first work for the company was with the video game Justice League Task Force.
Metzen was the Senior Vice President of Story and Franchise Development at Blizzard Entertainment and assisted the company's projects by providing voice talent for a number of characters, as well as contributing to artistic character design. Outside Blizzard Entertainment, Metzen authored a graphic novel series based on a futuristic second American civil war. Metzen retired in September 2016 to spend more time with his family. Read more...- Diablo Immortal is an upcoming action role-playing hack and slash video game in the Diablo series designed for online multiplayer play on mobile devices. Developed by Blizzard and NetEase, the game was announced in late 2018 and is planned for release on Android and iOS with no set release date. Read more...
- StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty is a military science fiction real-time strategy video game developed and published by Blizzard Entertainment. It was released worldwide in July 2010 for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. A sequel to the 1998 video game StarCraft and its expansion set Brood War, the game is split into three installments: the base game with the subtitle Wings of Liberty, an expansion pack Heart of the Swarm, and a stand-alone expansion pack Legacy of the Void.
The game revolves around three species: the Terrans, human exiles from Earth; the Zerg, a super-species of assimilated life forms; and the Protoss, a technologically advanced species with vast mental powers. Wings of Liberty focuses on the Terrans, while the expansions Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void focus on the Zerg and Protoss, respectively. The game is set four years after the events of 1998's StarCraft: Brood War, and follows the exploits of Jim Raynor as he leads an insurgent group against the autocratic Terran Dominion. The game includes both new and returning characters and locations from the original game. Read more... - The Lost Vikings is a side-scrolling puzzle/platform video game series which was developed by Silicon & Synapse (later Blizzard Entertainment). The first game, The Lost Vikings, was released in 1992 by publisher Interplay Entertainment for DOS, Amiga, Mega Drive/Genesis and Super Nintendo Entertainment System among others. The sequel, The Lost Vikings 2 (known in the United States as Norse By Norsewest: Return of the Lost Vikings and in Europe as Lost Vikings 2: Norse by Norsewest), was developed by Beam Software and released in 1997 by Interplay for the Sega Saturn, PlayStation and PC. It featured a new super deformed style for the characters as well as voiced dialogue samples. A version for the Super NES, developed by Blizzard, was released later the same year.
The games' music was composed by Glenn Stafford and Charles Deenen. Read more... - Jeffrey Kaplan is an American video game designer who is vice president of Blizzard Entertainment. He designed elements of World of Warcraft and is the lead designer on Overwatch. Read more...
- StarCraft: Remastered is a remastered edition of the 1998 real-time strategy video game StarCraft and its expansion Brood War, which was released on August 14, 2017. It retains the gameplay of the original game, but features ultra-high-definition graphics, re-recorded audio, and Blizzard's modern online feature suite. The remaster was developed over a year and included playtesting from professional StarCraft players. Read more...
- Josh Mosqueira-Asheim is an American game designer of both tabletop games and video games. He was game director for Diablo III at Blizzard Entertainment. Read more...
- Blizzard Battle.net is an Internet-based online gaming, social networking, digital distribution, and digital rights management platform developed by Blizzard Entertainment. Battle.net was launched on December 31, 1996, with the release of Blizzard's action-role-playing video game Diablo.
Battle.net was the first online gaming service incorporated directly into the games that make use of it, in contrast to the external interfaces used by the other online services at the time. This feature, along with ease of account creations and the absence of member fees, caused Battle.net to become popular among gamers and became a major selling point for Diablo and subsequent Blizzard games. Since the successful launch of Battle.net, many companies have created online game services mimicking Blizzard's service package and the user interface. Read more... - Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness is a fantasy-themed real-time strategy (RTS) game published by Blizzard Entertainment and released for DOS in 1995 and for Mac OS in 1996. It was met with positive reviews and won most of the major PC gaming awards in 1996.
In 1996, Blizzard released an expansion pack Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal for DOS and Mac OS, and a compilation Warcraft II: The Dark Saga for the PlayStation and Sega Saturn. The Battle.net Edition, released in 1999, provided Blizzard's online gaming service, Battle.net, and replaced the MS-DOS version with a Windows one. Read more...
Activision Blizzard, Inc. is an American video game holding company based in Santa Monica, California. The company was founded in July 2008 through the merger of Activision and Vivendi Games, the company is traded on the NASDAQ stock exchange under the ticker symbol NASDAQ: ATVI, and since 2015 has been one of the stocks that make up the S&P 500. Activision Blizzard currently includes five business units: Activision, Blizzard Entertainment, Major League Gaming, Activision Blizzard Studios, and King.
The company owns and operates additional studios under an independent studios model, including Treyarch, Infinity Ward, High Moon Studios and Toys for Bob, and its titles have broken a number of release records. Call of Duty: Black Ops III grossed $550 million in worldwide sales during its opening weekend in 2015, making it the biggest entertainment launch of the year. The company's franchises also include Activision's Call of Duty, Destiny, and Skylanders; Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft, StarCraft, Diablo, Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm, and Overwatch; and King's Candy Crush Saga, Pet Rescue Saga, and Farm Heroes Saga. , it is the largest game company in the Americas and Europe in terms of revenue and market capitalization. Read more...- Blizzard North was the Bay Area division of Blizzard Entertainment, known for its Diablo series. The studio was originally based in Redwood City, California, before moving a short distance away to San Mateo, with Blizzard proper being based in Irvine, southern California. Read more...
- Heroes of the Storm is a multiplayer online battle arena video game developed and published by Blizzard Entertainment for Microsoft Windows and macOS, which released on June 2, 2015. The game features heroes from Blizzard's franchises including Warcraft, Diablo, StarCraft, The Lost Vikings, and Overwatch. The game uses both free-to-play and freemium models and is supported by micropayments, which can be used to purchase heroes, visual alterations for the heroes in the game, and mounts. Blizzard does not call the game a "multiplayer online battle arena" or an "action real-time strategy" because they feel it is something different with a broader playstyle; they refer to it as an online "hero brawler". Read more...
- Sam Oscar Lantinga is a computer programmer. He used to be the lead software engineer at Blizzard Entertainment, where he was known to the community as Slouken. He is best known as the creator of the Simple DirectMedia Layer, a very popular open source multimedia programming library, and also developed the compatibility database for Executor, a proprietary Mac OS emulator.
He was the lead programmer and a co-founder of the now-defunct Loki Software, which ported several game titles to Linux. A Linux client of World of Warcraft was developed, and negotiations with Linux Game Publishing were under way until Blizzard cancelled the project. It is unknown if Lantinga was involved with this port. Read more... - World of Warcraft (WoW) is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) released in 2004 by Blizzard Entertainment. It is the fourth released game set in the Warcraft fantasy universe. World of Warcraft takes place within the Warcraft world of Azeroth, approximately four years after the events at the conclusion of Blizzard's previous Warcraft release, Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne. The game was announced in 2001, and was released for the 10th anniversary of the Warcraft franchise on November 23, 2004. Since launch, World of Warcraft has had seven major expansion packs released for it: The Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, Cataclysm, Mists of Pandaria, Warlords of Draenor, Legion, and Battle for Azeroth.
With a total of over a hundred million registered accounts by 2016, World of Warcraft is the world's most popular MMORPG by player count. By 2017, the game had grossed over $9.23 billion in revenue, making it one of the highest-grossing video game franchises of all time. At BlizzCon 2017, a "classic" version of the game was announced, which is planned to provide a way to experience the base game before any of its expansions launched. Blizzard announced at BlizzCon 2018 that WoW Classic will be released in the summer of 2019, and will be included with the standard subscription. Read more...
Brevik at GDC 2016
David Brevik (born February 14, 1968) is an American video game designer, producer and programmer who served as the co-founder and president of Blizzard North. He is best known for the critically acclaimed Diablo franchise. Currently he serves as game designer and founder of his independent studio, Graybeard Games. Read more...- Aaron Boulding is an American video game journalist. His work spans online, print and TV outlets, and he has been covering the gaming industry since 1998. Boulding currently works as the managing editor for Blizzard Entertainment.
Boulding worked as the Video Game Analyst on ESPN for many years. He makes regular appearances on the ESPNEWS Hot List and ESPN2's First Take. Additionally, he writes The Easy Points blog on ESPN.com. Read more... - Overwatch is a team-based multiplayer first-person shooter video game developed and published by Blizzard Entertainment, which released on May 24, 2016 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Windows. Described as a "hero shooter", Overwatch assigns players into two teams of six, with each player selecting from a roster of nearly 30 characters, known as "heroes", each with a unique style of play whose roles are divided into three general categories that fit their role. Players on a team work together to secure and defend control points on a map or escort a payload across the map in a limited amount of time. Players gain cosmetic rewards that do not affect gameplay, such as character skins and victory poses, as they play the game. The game was initially launched with casual play, with a competitive ranked mode, various 'arcade' game modes, and a player-customizable server browser subsequently included following its release. Additionally, Blizzard has added new characters, maps, and game modes post-release, all free of charge, with the only additional cost to players being optional loot boxes to earn cosmetic items.
Overwatch is Blizzard's fourth major franchise and came about following the 2014 cancellation of the ambitious massively multiplayer online role-playing game Titan. A portion of the Titan team came up with the concept of Overwatch, based on the success of team-based first-person shooters like Team Fortress 2 and the growing popularity of multiplayer online battle arenas, creating a hero-based shooter that emphasized teamwork. Some elements of Overwatch borrow assets and concepts from the canceled Titan project. After establishing the narrative of an optimistic near-future Earth setting after a global crisis, the developers aimed to create a diverse cast of heroes that spanned genders and ethnicities as part of this setting. Significant time is spent adjusting the balance of the characters, making sure that new players would still be able to have fun while skilled players would present each other with a challenge. Read more... - Warcraft: Orcs & Humans is a real-time strategy game (RTS), developed by Blizzard Entertainment and published by Blizzard and Interplay Productions. The MS-DOS version was released on 23 November 1994 and the Macintosh version in early 1996.
Although Warcraft: Orcs & Humans was not the first RTS title to offer multiplayer games, Blizzard's game persuaded a wider audience that
multiplayer facilities were essential for future RTS titles. The game introduced innovations in mission design and gameplay elements, which were adopted by other RTS developers. Read more...
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