Blizzard has officially announced that Wrath of the Lich King will launch in mainland China on August 31, 2010. Hooray!

Here's the official announcement: Source

China's last expansion pack was September 6, 2007 (Burning Crusade). And WOTLK launched in NA/EU on November 13, 2008.

If you want more information about WoW China, check out the series starting with this one.

Blizzard is hoping that this new development in China and the launch of Cataclysm will help revitalize decreasing user counts. Blizzard has officially stated that their numbers have remained about the same since Feb. 2008, however player counts have actually decreased. They're predicting a significant amount of new subscriptions in China, which I will be monitoring with great anticipation. =]

One of the worries, of course, is that because this delay has gone on for so long (users are just sick-and-tired and are playing other MMORPGs) and many characters have moved to other servers (Taiwan mostly, and EU/US in some cases) to play WOTLK, that this launch won't nearly have as many new players as they had hoped. It _should_ be about 2 million new subscriptions within the first week.. anything less than that would be cause for concern. =]

As predicted last month, Battle.net is introducing new paid services for Starcraft 2.

Namely, Paid Name Services. =]

Your first name change is free and subsequent name changes will be accompanied by a fee.

Here's the direct link to Blizzard's news announcement: Source

This is really just the beginning and there will certainly be more paid services and other forms of micro-transactions incoming for Blizzard's other new games too.

What's interesting though is that Blizzard stated that SC2 would never have any micro-transactions. And, a long time ago they also said the same thing ("Blizzard Says No Micro-Transactions for WoW") about World of Warcraft. (Source 1 & Source 2)

When I talked about Blizzard's directives to monetize Battle.net (how Blizzard doesn't always tell the "truth" and I predicted that SC2 would have paid services like name changing) it met with a little bit of hostility. =]

I allow anonymous comments on the blog so that people can easily make posts without having to create new accounts. However, there have been many comments (Blizzard fanboys and Blizzard themselves) that I've had to delete because of swearing, but mostly because they provide no insight, supporting documentation, or signs of intelligence (e.g. "ur wrong!!"). It could also be that "Blizzard indoctrination" that I've been writing about. Apparently, it was a "retarded theory" that Starcraft 2 would have paid services though (that's actually what the Blizzard employee posted.) =]

In one of my previous posts, I had mentioned that Rockstar Toronto would most likely be the team doing the Red Dead Redemption PC Port.

Well, there's been some minor activity there.. finally. They've closed off their IT Manager position offer, and have opened up a new position: User Interface Designer.

Here are the current positions that they're hiring for:

1. Character Artist
2. Game Programmer
3. Gameplay Scripter
4. Graphics Programmer
5. User Interface Designer

The artist/game designer positions haven't changed in years mind you.

On the Rockstar Toronto homepage, the IT Manager text was quietly swapped out with UI Designer. And the new position was posted on Monster a couple days ago, and on Craigslist just yesterday.

There has been some concern from the employees at Rockstar Toronto because of Take-Two/Rockstar's many lay-offs and uncertain future. Whether the UI Designer position is because of attrition or because of a new project - it's still a good sign.

The reason that this is a good sign is because RDR requires a new user interface for Windows (the current UI isn't designed for keyboard/mouse interaction). All of the voice, music, and graphics content and assets have been created already. In order for a PC Port to be created, the development team will need a couple designers, a few scripters, a project lead, and a lot of programmers. Maybe a level designer and a few artists too if they intend to add extra content to the RDR PC version. Rockstar Toronto already has the required team members, except that they were missing a UI Developer. =]

Also, Jerome Lacote was the User Interface Artist at Rockstar Games (San Diego) who did all of the UI design and artwork for Red Dead Redemption. He left the company just last month (July 2010), and they're looking to hire someone with the same qualifications in Toronto. Here's a link to his resume if you're interested.

We should know more by the first week of December 2010 (when Take-Two makes their official announcements), unless there's an early leak from the next Quarterly shareholders meeting.

* UPDATE (08/27/2010)

They've just updated their website again (www.rockstartoronto.com), and have removed the "Gameplay Scripter" position. This is probably the most activity the webpage has seen in several years.. =]