Blizzard’s legendary MMORPG World of Warcraft will have a 20th anniversary, according to lead developer Ion Hazzikostas. Speaking with CNET, Hazzikostas said he had no doubt that there will be a 20th anniversary for WoW. He also mentioned Blizzard is hard at work planning for future expansions.

“I definitely can’t tell you what our 20th anniversary is going to be. I can tell you there is definitely going to be one. I have no doubt saying that,” he said. “We’re definitely planning into the future, talking about what the next expansion is going to be, and what the one after that is going to be, just in terms of big picture storylines, how can we start setting things up now, where do we want the game to go.”

The game has changed significantly over time. Hazzikostas said the World of Warcraft today isn’t the same game that launched in 2004. He mentioned different graphics, different combat mechanics, and the game’s overall engine is far different.

“It’s clearly not the same game it was 10 years ago, right? The engine is different, all the graphical assets are different, a lot of core combat mechanics have changed,” he said. “It’s hard to pinpoint one turning point when it changed, but we definitely have taken an incremental approach to the pressing problems the game has that we feel we need to solve and what we can add to it that will make it better and deliver the most value to our players.”

World of Warcraft began Nov. 23, 2004. It has gone on to become a cultural phenomenon through board games, books, action figures and plenty more.  According to the latest subscriber count, there are 7.4 million paying subscribers for the game at the moment. That count is expected to grow to over 8 million with the release of expansion Warlords of Draenor.

Warlords of Draenor will release for PC and Mac Nov. 13. Temporary world events are currently going on in-game to lead up to the release of the new expansion.

Blizzard announced the cancellation of Project Titan, an MMORPG project that was in development since 2007, back in September. Titan was supposed to be Blizzard’s next big MMORPG to stand beside – or even surpass – World of Warcraft, but the project suffered creative problems.

“We didn’t find the fun,”

Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime said.

“We didn’t find the passion. We talked about how we put it through a reevaluation period, and actually, what we reevaluated is whether that’s the game we really wanted to be making. The answer is no.”

BlizzCon 2014, a convention for all things Blizzard, will be held in Anaheim, Calif. on Nov. 7-8 at the Anaheim Convention Center. The event is expected to reveal additional details concerning Heroes of the Storm, the upcoming Warcraft movie and additional details for Warlords of Draenor.

So what do you think of WoW being around for another ten years?

A new browser game is being released soon that will bridge the game between the two games of Dragon Age 2 and the new Dragon Age Inquisition. It’s called The Last Court.

Made by Fallen London/Sunless Sea developers Failbetter Games, The Last Court takes place in an unseen region of Orlais telling a new story in which some familiar faces from other DA games will pop up. It’ll be added to Dragon Age Keep in just over a week’s time and some videos have already been put out showing off play footage. Here’s the blurb from Failbetter themselves:

“In Dragon Age: The Last Court, you are the ruler of Serault: an eccentric fiefdom at the farthest ends of Orlais. As the Huntress or the Scholar you’ll guide your realm through the most crucial period in its history. Will its ancient Shame be forgiven? Or will Serault fall into obscurity?

 

“This is a game of lordship. You’ll manage the affairs of your court. You’ll choose a counsellor, a bodyguard, an accomplice and a lover. You’ll balance the concerns of your subjects. Will Serault be renowned for its dignity or its freedom? What is the greatest threat: outlaws, revolutionaries, or the the nameless ancient things that slither in its deep woods? There are stories to explore and secrets to unravel. What lies in the Sealed Chantry? Who is the Horned Knight? Who is behind Serault’s recent troubles? You’ll meet a host of new characters, like the Purveyor of Teas and the Acerbic Dowager. And maybe you’ll run into a few familiar faces from other Dragon Age titles…”

 

Whether or not you’re tired of Call of Duty as a franchise, you can’t deny that it has a bunch of people excited for its latest game to release. Some of this is probably down to the involvement of Kevin Spacey no doubt.

Well, if you’re a UK resident wait no more. The game went live on Steam at midnight here, and will be going live at 12am in every timezone after that so for once Britain is getting a game before the Americans and that doesn’t happen too often.

As mentioned above this Call of Duty comes with Kevin Spacey in a voice role and also power-armour to augment what will probably be the same FPS game that COD games generally are. If you enjoy FPS games though, you’re going to love it and I hope that it ticks all your boxes.

Now I’m going to go play the last bits of the Evolve Alpha before it closes. 😛

The World Championship Tournaments for a whole bunch of Blizzard’s games are taking place over this weekend, with tournaments for World of Warcraft and Starcraft 2 having already been played and Hearthstone still to come.

The winners of these events will determine who will move on towards the finals at Blizzcon later. Each tournament begins at 10am Pacific Time (5pm GMT) and ends 12 hours later at 10pm Pacific (5am GMT). The World of Warcraft tournament took place on Friday and the Starcraft one is currently still in progress here if you’re interested.

The Hearthstone tournament will take place at the same times Sunday and Monday, and is being streamed from the ‘playhearthstone’ Twitch channel.

Telltale Games’ upcoming Game of Thrones game is set to have five playable protagonist characters, with choices made effecting the game’s central family.

The news comes from Telltale’s senior vice president of publishing, Steve Allison. The details emerged during an interview he was giving about a different game series entirely, the release for The Walking Dead Season Two.

While describing how Telltales’ use of storytelling has evolved he said, “Tales from the Borderlands adds multi-protagonist storytelling for us layered into the tailored narrative design established with The Walking Dead and it works amazingly well with two playable characters… In Game of Thrones we’re taking that multi-protagonist design even further with five playable characters from the same family whose choices affect everyone in the family, and that adds a whole new layer to things that we’re really excited about.”

We don’t yet know which family is being considered for the central roles but the game will be arriving soon, Telltale having confirmed that they’re aiming for a release of Game of Thrones before the end of the year.