What if I would find myself inside the Blizzard armory... should I choose a hammer? No, maybe an axe! Or... should I go straight to my office and think about the next-gen MMORPG that's going to crush the competition? Obviously, when talking about "the Blizzard armory," I think about the conference room where all important things happen... if such a room exists, of course! Anyway, today we have two giants involved in the story - Blizzard, our most beloved game maker, and Mythic, another of our "beloved game makers" gang...

As you probably read a few days ago, Blizzard had some World of Warcraft problems, but got through pretty well, and it is worth being remembered that some WoW players moved to Mythic's Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, then got back. After all, that's what all that story was about. Now, Mark Jacobs, Mythic's CEO, says "It's a marathon, not a sprint," so we should get ready for a long and interesting battle between the two big ones.

Regarding this issue, Jacobs said <-250x250 Square - right->"One thing about MMOs is that people play multiple games. That's one of the reasons I was very surprised by Paul's comments. He knows that people may play WoW and they'll play WAR and maybe even a third game at the same time."

Well, Blizzard's Paul Sams only said people have moved from WoW to Warhammer Online, and then got back to WoW, he didn't actually say people are leaving Mythic's MMO. Anyway, to say people are playing more than WoW and WAR at the same time, I think it's a bit exaggerated - I guess some of these players also have a real life, you know...

To close this story, I must get back to my idea - the guys at Blizzard need to check the Blizzard armory, that's a fact - Mark Jacobs says that "This is the beginning of a rather lengthy battle with the guys at Blizzard. We’re in this space to be successful and, when you have a competitor that is as successful and important to the games industry as WoW has been, you don't go into this space unless you're willing to spend money and spend time and really compete against them," so they would better get ready in time!

I know a lot of people who build a new gaming computer, and then jump right to Crysis, Age of Conan, or any other game that became notorious in the last year, maybe two, the most. That's fine, but I think most of those who get their first gaming computer these days are missing a lot of games, like Far Cry(the original, not the new one!), Warcraft 3(addons included) and, of course, Half Life and Half Life 2!

While Half Life, the original, may seem like a Ford T on the highway, these days, Half Life 2 is a game worth checking out, especially since Half Life 2: Episode 3 won't come out that fast. After all, despite its age - over 4 years now, Half Life 2 can still put most low-end video cards to the test when pushing settings to the max, and that's pretty good for such an "oldie."<-180x150 Small Rectangle - right->

The sad story is that when Valve announced the gaming community that Half Life 2 would get Episode 3 in time for last year's Christmas, everything was looking just great. Unfortunately, things proved to be quite different, since we'll soon reach another Christmas, and I see no sign of Half Life 2: Episode 3. I don't have eagle eyes, but I'm not blind either, so I have to ask: when will we get Half Life 2: Episode 3???

Talking to Kikizo, Doug Lombardi, Valve's the marketing director and official voice, made a terrible confession - "The next time you play as Gordon will be longer than the distance between Half-Life 2 to Episode 1, and Episode 1 to Episode 2."

Why such a big distance, to push Half Life 2: Episode 3 way into 2010? Well, it seems Valve is very busy to promote Left 4 Dead, its upcoming zombie shooter, but I only hope one thing - they won't leave all Half Life fans to die waiting for the third episode. After all, I am sure even some gaming chicks are waiting for a new encounter with Gordon Freeman, right? Anyway, since boys will be waiting for Alyx Vance to come join Gordon once again, we all have somebody to wait for, but 2010 sounds sooo far...

Despite the two expansion sets that came out so far - The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King, World of Warcraft is aging. Nevertheless, it remains the world's largest MMORPG when it comes to its user base, with almost 11 million subscribers. As it usually happens with such epic games, players start dropping it at a certain time, looking for something new. The interesting part is that most of those who migrated from WoW to Warhammer Online returned to Blizzard's masterpiece.

In an interview with GamesIndustry, Paul Sams said there's nothing out of ordinary with these people leaving WoW and then getting back to it, since everything follows the pattern of any major MMO - "We've certainly had some of that happen, which is the same thing we experienced with Age of Conan and each time an MMO has come out we've seen some amount of reduction of use."<-125x125 Button - right->

Now, here's the good part - "The good news is that we've seen a significant number of people, well over half, that cited Warhammer as their reason for leaving - they've already returned."

Until Warhammer Online reaches the user base WoW has - if this ever happens - a lot of time must pass, I guess. For now, they are plagued with registration troubles and server troubles, and the number of registered users is getting closer to the 800,000 mark.

This is it, boys and girls, so if you left World of Warcraft for Warhammer Online, and would like to share your thoughts with us, don't be shy and step forward. We're waiting for your confessions!

You know what's probably one of my greatest regrets related to computer gaming? It's not the fact that - as most of my friends - I can't find enough time for gaming lately. It seems those theories saying that days are getting shorter as time goes by are true, but even if a day in 2010 would last 10 "1995 minutes," my problem remains - I missed playing the first game fantasy real-time strategy game from Blizzard Entertainment when it arrived on the market!

The game I am talking about is Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, and my regrets are related to the fact that I only got to see it after playing Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness like a madman. Obviously, the encounter was ruined, especially because there's a huge difference when it comes to graphics between the two games.

Now, let's leave my regrets aside and talk about Blizzard's Mike Morhaime opinion regarding new MMOs that try to conquer this huge online gaming market. <-250x250 Square - right->Basically, it's the fact that everyone underestimates the huge logistics effort that comes with such a game, and even Blizzard Entertainment did it - "I think everyone who hasn't done it will probably underestimate the logistics behind it - we certainly did," said Morhaime.

"You focus on the things you are used to but you don't necessarily realize how difficult it is to scale up quickly and with an MMO you have to factor in providing 24/7 customer service, multiple languages... and that's not just hiring all those people to do customer service because internally within the organization you still have to support your employees and that's a whole lot of management infrastructure that doesn't exist before the launch." Oh, yeah, I fully agree with that. In the end, we're talking about an industry here, and not a game you make for your friends, gets uploaded to some freebies site, and an additional 100-1000 people start to play it.

Regarding their own World of Warcraft, Blizzard Entertainment claims that, after  Wrath of the Lich King, gamers will have to wait more than a year until the next update. According to the same Mike Morhaime, "The next one I think it is still unlikely that we're going to get it down to a calendar year. We're going to continue to try and decrease that but really the content of the expansion is more important and I think you guys are going to find with Wrath of the Lich King that it's going to be worth the wait."

Well, if the big ones have to spend so much time for updating an existing product...what about the little ones? I think we should respect at least the effort of some new companies trying to enter this MMO world, because it seems the path to success is longer and harder to finish than most of us would imagine...

StarCraft was one of those games that simply won't allow you to go to sleep, and it still is, for a lot of people. I have friends that used to play a full day, the night after it, and stop playing during next afternoon. Fortunately, none of them died because of that, but I don't know how one feels after more than 24 hours of gaming, only with 30-50 minutes breaks... If you ask me, no matter how great can be one game, I always put sleep on first place, and those few situations when I find myself gaming at 4AM are not including StarCraft, anyway.

Oh, wait! I can even tell you when this happened last time - it was when I played Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, and if you missed that game so far, I strongly suggest that you grab it and give it a spin, it simply can't disappoint you - maybe only because it's going to end sooner than expected... but only because of that, since everything else is simply amazing!<-125x125 Button - right->

Now, we all know StarCraft 2 is coming out, nothing new with that, but did you have any idea that Blizzard is splitting StarCraft II into three? I bet you haven't, so let's see what has been revealed about the next title to kill the nights of entire generations, shall we?

At Blizzcon 2008, StarCraft 2 arrived with a new build , and the decision to create a trilogy raised a lot of eyebrows. After all, if they come up with a new part every decade...you do the math!

Now, Blizzard wants to get much deeper into the StarCraft universe, although this idea of splitting it into three parts doesn't sound too good, as I said. I know this will be more about the story, but what about OUR WAIT??? We had a decade to hope to live and see StarCraft 2 coming out, and now?? So, what do you think - do you think that having StarCraft 2 as a trilogy is a good idea, or not?