So, you all know by now that Blizzcon 2012 has been cancelled in lieu of an eSports Tournament event "somewhere in Asia".

I'm really disappointed. Not because it was cancelled, but because I was saving up a post for September about Titan!

Right now, "professionals" have predicted that Blizzard's Next Gen MMO is going to be announced at Blizzon 2012, and that number was only going to increase substantially as the date approached (ie, analysts predicting that the Next Gen MMO would be revealed), but I really wanted to wait until the opportune time to say "NOPE", that it wasn't going to be announced. Damn.

I'm still sticking to late 2014-2015 by the way, even though everyone else is saying 2013 or 2014 at the latest right now. :)

You weren't going to miss much at Blizzcon 2012 anyways. If you have read my earlier posts, I made one last year predicting what to expect in 2012-2014. The only game they were going to announce in 2012 was Diablo 3 X1, but due to the major setbacks they have been experiencing with D3, it's understandable that it has been delayed (to 2013), and Blizzcon 2012 would have had no release announcements to speak of. It would have actually ended up just like the "Demon Hunter Blizzcon" (2010) which caused some great disappointment.

This means that there will very likely be two games revealed at Blizzcon 2013 (D3 X1 and WOW X5).

Plus, setting up Blizzcon is a very exhausting event for the team members. Sure, it's a very profitable event, but they have other stuff to worry about without having to deal with the pressure of Blizzcon. During the past Quarterly Shareholders Meeting, Thomas Tippl committed to a "minimum of 2 Blizzard titles in 2012". It really doesn't matter what CUSTOMERS are told or promised; what really matters is what the SHAREHOLDERS are promised.

I think some of the big problems they're having relate to Battle.net. Not stability or performance issues, but rather integration problems with PayPal and their new Battle.net Balance / Blizzard Store / RMAH systems. This might put their integration plans of the Activision Game Catalog into Battle.net on the back burner (e.g. using B.Net Balance to buy Activision games rather than just Blizzard titles, and selling other publisher's games to compete with Steam and even Origin which has just added 11 new publishers.)

On that note, Blizzard has recently started hiring for a ton of "Critical" positions on the Battle.net team. :)

Back To The Announcement, Though..

According to the Blizzcon 2012 cancellation announcement today, more details about the event will be revealed "in the months ahead." Meaning that they're releasing this information very early, when they could have just announced it a few months before Blizzcon. They're making this announcement early for a very good reason.

For a while now, I've been talking about keeping a very careful eye on this week and next.

If a release date announcement is made, it will be done right before the investors conference call (and on a Monday.) If it's not made before the investors call, then the game truly has been delayed until after March. If the release date announcement is not made on the Monday, then the chances of a Q1 release greatly diminish (meaning a Q2 delay off-hand comment made by Mike Morhaime is highly likely during the Q4 call.) Monday, February 6 is the most logical choice but I had said that we don't necessarily have to wait until Feb 6 and that there would be other signs of what might happen beforehand.

For example, if we don't see any new information released during this week and the week of Jan 30 - Feb 3, the probability of a release date announcement diminishes. But, if we see a lot of interesting or unexpected posts (especially about Battle.net), then there's a very good chance of an announcement.

This recent announced by Blizzard is very disappointing to everyone, but it's also surprisingly being done very early. Either this means that they have more bad information to share and they just want to rip that bandaid off now and just get it all over with (so expect more bad news during the call.) OR, they're just getting the bad news for the year out of the way first before revealing the really good news; like an imminent release date announcement, with the game coming out earlier than people were expecting. Blizzard has "promised" Q1 after all, so I'm putting my trust in Blizzard.

This just leaves us back to what I've already been saying; pay attention to the other details they release over the next 2 weeks (up to the days before the shareholders meeting.) And because they have all of this extra time now, we can even certainly expect to see 3 releases this year (instead of just 2). :)

As you know, I'm still waiting for that Battle.net Balance to be implemented, and I have suspected for some time that Blizzard may be having some PayPal or RMAH/Balance integration issues.

Coming Soon: Battle.net Balance
We’ll be rolling out the new Battle.net Balance feature in the weeks ahead.

It's been over 7 weeks now, and the Battle.net Balance feature has still not been rolled out.

I also noticed something else related to this delay. About a week before Mike's "Soon Was Too Soon" post, Blizzard also revealed that they were going to allow PayPal to be used to purchase Blizzard products and services on Battle.net. However this time, it would be available for several regions, and not just limited to WOW Subscriptions for NA users only.

PayPal will also soon be added in several regions as a payment option on Battle.net, providing another convenient and secure payment method for digital purchases of Blizzard products and services.

We’ll share region-related specifics, as well as further details on everything mentioned above, in the near future. Stay tuned!

This information was supposed to be revealed in the "near future". And, I assume that based on what they're saying, that both the RMAH Region Information and PayPal integration details would be revealed at the same time. Some of the RMAH Region details have already been revealed, but what happened to the PayPal system? It's been 5 months now.

Finding Delays Where They're Not Telling You

It's been made quite clear that the past (and current) delays have not been a result of game development process. They've had the luxury of extra time to add new features and content, there's been no crunch time, no rush, and due to Jay Wilson's recent "major update", we've learned that they're not even adding new content, but rather just making minor changes and deleting content.

Since we're left in the dark, there are other signs of delays to look out for that might give us an idea of what's going on. For example, if we discovered that they were having major hiring problems, not enough customer support, or enough developers on a game, we would know that it would be a reasonable explanation for delaying the game.

The South Korea Approval issues definitely had an impact to their timeline. And these other delays in announcements are also confirming my suspicions that PayPal and B.Net Balance systems have also caused a major delay in their release schedule.

Even their special definition for future time was changed. Mike said that "Soon Was Too Soon", admitting that even their expectations for "Soon" had to be pushed back significantly because "Soon" didn't end up being what they thought their "Soon" release would be. I hope that made sense.

As well, both "Near Future" and "Coming Weeks" have always meant about 2-3 weeks for Blizzard. But in the case of PayPal and the B.Net Balance roll outs, they became several months instead.

So, the Battle.net Balance system was delayed (we can't charge up our accounts with PayPal or any other credit system yet), the RMAH Cashing Out feature with PayPal was delayed, and the PayPal system for purchasing Blizzard Store items was delayed.

Are there internal problems with PayPal? Is this a technical or systems integration issue? Are there legal problems? Is PayPal getting cold feet after hearing about the SK Government Gambling issues? After all, online gambling (in itself) isn't illegal in most US states, but the transactions to/from online gambling sites are illegal. PayPal would be taking far more risks (UIGEA) than Blizzard in this case.

Or, perhaps Blizzard is implementing new security systems internally (and with PayPal) to ensure that prohibited countries are not able to participate in the RMAH? (A difficult task considering that SK players can register a US B.Net account, and it's a region-free game.)

I've talked about these subjects before though. When PayPal is finally implemented, I suspect that there will be new security or regional payment restrictions in place to limit players to specific countries (both through their B.Net Account and PayPal.) I don't think there's anything stopping users from buying the Region-Free Diablo 3 from overseas retailers, though, and playing it in their own country. That's if they even know it's region free. It's something that still hasn't been officially announced.. and for good reason.

Selling Skills

While on the subject of these PayPal announcements and the RMAH, there's one subject that I'm surprised more people haven't talked about. I've known about it for a really long time now, but I never really had a reason to talk about it; Blizzard wants the RMAH used for selling skills and not just items.

It's actually a really smart business move. Rather than limiting yourself to selling items (which improve the damage of skills), why not just sell the skills and their effects too?

When PayPal first announced their partnership with Blizzard, they pointed out Blizzard's intention to sell runestones (which represent skills) on the RMAH:

They’ll also be able to use PayPal to cash out any real-money proceeds they receive from the sale of items — such as weapons, armor, runestones, and other loot obtained in the game world — via the currency-based auction house. (There will also be a separate gold-based version of the auction house that uses in-game gold for item transactions.)

By the D3 Dev Team wanting to make runes so that they could be sold on the RMAH, I think that this was the reason why they had so many problems deciding on an approach, and why they had so many iterations of the rune system.

I imagine that the business department told them what they wanted done, and how they wanted to ensure that the runestone (skill) system had a monetary aspect. Because of this pressure and restriction in place, it changed their design principals and they had to work around the limitation rather than having the freedom to innovate. It's no surprise they had a lot of problems creating the rune system.. it had to be something that Blizzard could profit from.

The problem, though, is that the RMAH was designed for only high-end items. So, they would have had to give runes low drop rates in order to make them rare enough to sell on the RMAH. This would have seriously limited the development and growth of players causing frustration knowing that they would have to shell out cash for skill upgrades (buying rare runestones from the RMAH.)

I wonder if there's more of this planned or in another format? More testing of new concepts in D3 to see if they're successful enough for future games possibly? :)

Skills vs Items

If I was responsible for a game design, I would want to leverage the RMAH as much as possible and I would (try to) create a non-obvious method of selling skills/abilities without actually selling them directly as "skills". :)

For example, as players level they are rewarded with new skills when they hit certain milestones. However, for the skills to actually be useful, I would want the players to purchase upgrades to the skills that add new strategy, different behaviors, and new visual effects. On its own, "Kick" is pretty mediocre.. but when you purchase "Fire Kick", it's suddenly a great AOE attack. Makes sense right?

Collecting items is a lot of fun, but there's much more enjoyment to be gained when you are rewarded with new abilities. It's something you can see, it's unique, it's something you use actively (not a passive effect), and it can completely change your strategy or gameplay. Because skills change your gameplay, it's also a method of appeasing the players need for content consumption. Basically, gameplay needs to be "mixed up" to keep players interested. (Which is why I'm really worried about Diablo 3's "dead zone". There are no new skills to be achieved, and the grind won't be as much fun anymore without clear rewards and achievements with each new level.)

Gaining new skills is actually a more enjoyable reward system than items, leveling, pets, or achievements. Selling items or pets are easy, but trying to "sell skills" is a very difficult task since players associate it with necessity for growth. If they work hard, they should be rewarded.. there shouldn't be another limitation (monetary at that) on necessary growth. "I have to PAY for that skill? WTF!"

Players should be sort-of used to this, though. When they hit a certain level, they visit vendors, and they pay for the skill. But that's all part of the game, and it's much different when they see a skill being sold for cash by another player who has it.

Even though it's a really great idea to sell skills (from a business perspective), it's really hard to pull off. If they were to lower RMAH fees, low-medium rarity items and skills could be worked in, but that cuts down on their profit. And even then, it's skills for cash.

I think the only way to do it, that would appear fair to customers, is to make skills a reward system from hard work. You can have three options available: work hard to get it yourself, work hard in something else (gold farming) and buy it, or simply pay cash for it. So, skills could be obtained multiple times by the same person and sold to other players, but they need to work hard to get it each time and it results in cash payment. It's something that CAN NOT be left to random chance, it must be a clear goal at the end of certain timely tasks. Items can be random, but skills can't.

Rather than selling skills, perhaps developers should view it instead as an important piece of content consumption. You might not make money from it, but you can reduce future expenses (eg, development time, creativity, hiring staff.)

The Blizzard Korea 2012 New Year's Videos are now up.



But, here's what the subtitles "really" say:

GREETINGS KOREAN GAMERS, MY NAME'S JAY WILSON AND I'M THE GAME DIRECTOR FOR DIABLO 3. I WAS TOLD TO SIT IN THAT DARK ROOM BECAUSE IT WAS CONSIDERED "ARTISTIC", I AM SORRY IF YOU NEEDED TO INCREASE YOUR GAMMA. I JUST SAID "2012" SO I WILL PUT THAT IN THE SUBTITLES NOW TO THROW OFF SUSPICION. I HAVE A VERY SECRET MESSAGE FOR YOU. THE GLOBAL RELEASE REALLY WAS BECAUSE OF YOUR RATINGS BOARD. WE HAVE FINALLY RESOLVED THE PROBLEM BUT GAMERS HERE ARE ASKING TOO MANY QUESTIONS. SO, I WILL TAKE SOME OLD BETA PATCH NOTES AND TURN IT INTO A REALLY LONG POST TO MAKE IT SEEM LIKE IT WAS A LOT OF WORK AND IT TOOK 6 MONTHS TO DO. IT WILL BE A GREAT DISTRACTION. BASHIOK ALSO HAS AMBIGUOUS TROLL TWEETS PLANNED IN THE COMING WEEKS TO FURTHER ANGER AND CONFUSE OUR CUSTOMERS TO STALL FOR TIME. PLEASE DO NOT SHARE THIS INFORMATION WITH ANYONE OUTSIDE KOREA. BTW DAEITY IS SUPER COOL AND ATTRACTIVE.

If you're interested in this sort of stuff (the videos, not the jokes), they also have a WOW Mists of Pandaria greeting here and a SC2 one here. The general Blizzard Korea video account can be found here if want to see the other older stuff.

(FYI, if you had actually thought that the subtitle translation above was real, then I am embarrassed for you. Looking in your direction, PrisonCharlie.)

UPDATE (01/21/12): The Bashiok Code

Remember yesterday I said that Bashiok was going to "FURTHER ANGER AND CONFUSE OUR CUSTOMERS"? Well, check out his latest post today.

I expect this response to further confuse and enrage, unfortunately.

He must have been reading this blog yesterday. :)

And since I was on the subject of secret hidden messages, I think he dropped his own secret message within this same post! Bashiok wrote:

Being perfectly honest about the cauldron and cube, they were removed for very 'designery' reasons which makes it difficult to explain to people playing the game.

Designery is emphasized and it's also not a real word. Upon further investigation, it was revealed that 'designery' is an anagram for 'greedy sin'. Gasp!

Seriously though.. Bashiok's posts were just embarassing. Here's the full entry:

White items will not be worth the inventory space. No one will pick them up. If people start picking them up we'll reduce the meaningless amounts of gold they already sell for even further. We can address these things if they happen.

Being perfectly honest about the cauldron and cube, they were removed for very 'designery' reasons which makes it difficult to explain to people playing the game. Players want more freedom, more choice, almost limitlessly, but a game is defined by its limitations. It's our job to define those limitations, and enforce them to create the type and feel of the game we're attempting to produce. There are a lot of good reasons, such as breaking up combat, giving very solid and safe stopping points for groups (especially strangers), as well as ensuring players are staying acquainted with the town, its inhabitants, features, and what it offers. A player may say, well that should be my choice, I should just be able to kill demons without a break for as long as I want. It's our job to make those limitations for the betterment of the enjoyment of the game, even if it's an intangible and almost psychological improvement that on the surface appears to be a nonsensical remove of freedom. I expect this response to further confuse and enrage, unfortunately.

He says that no one will pick up white items. Okay.. so, why put them in the game in the first place then, and why do they have vendor sell prices?

Then he basically says, "Well, if someone does actually pick them up for fun, we'll fuck the shit out of them so that they're not fun anymore and so that I can laugh at you."

He goes on to be "perfectly honest" about the removal of the cauldron and cube; "Yeah.. uh, they were removed for reasons that you don't need to know about.. you know, 'designery' stuff." What a cop out. I had thought they made games for their players? Instead, it was "Players want choice and freedom, but it's our job is to remove that choice and freedom."

Well, OF COURSE your response is going to further confuse and enrage. If I kept contradicting myself and I told my customers that they're too stupid to understand our "internal reasons", that I was going to screw them over one day, and I continued to insult their intelligence, of course they're going to be a little cross.