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BlizzCon 2010 kicks off at 11 a.m. pacific, noon Kotaku time, 2 p.m. eastern. Make sure to check in for our liveblog of the day's big news. We hear it's going to be a show that makes Diablo players very happy. My breath is officially held. More »

#blizzcon While fans begin lining up outside the Anaheim Convention Center for the official launch of BlizzCon 2010, let's check out what sort of Blizzard merchandise they'll be lining up for once they're inside! More »

During GDC Online, Blizzard's Battle.net project director Greg Canessa presented a "postmortem" for the latest version of the service, which enables online play and discussion for Blizzard's titles, most recently StarCraft 2. Speaking to Joystiq before the talk, Canessa was happy to discuss the recent past of the service with us, and talk a bit about the future.

Battle.net is in use by all 12 million World of Warcraft players, three-plus million StarCraft 2 players, and other users, but it recently came to the attention of an even larger audience when controversy arose over Blizzard's decision to implement Real ID, requiring users to identify themselves by their real names on Battle.net. Forum users did not respond kindly to the sudden and mandatory attachment of their real names to their comments, flames and LOLcats, and that part of the plan was cut, with Real ID still being implemented in non-forum features.

"The vision behind Real ID," Canessa said, "was to maintain parallel levels of identity: we have that sort of anonymous character level of identity, and then that Real ID tier that spans games, and there are incremental features that you get for being part of the Real ID community. The vision for that spanned games, got into cross-game chat and so forth. In reality, the in-game social suite was very popular, the cross-game chat that we did, the stuff within StarCraft 2.

#scam World of Warcraft scams and scam artists are very real. You got to watch out, you got to be careful. Here are five ways you, the player, can protect yourself. More »

Blizzcon's beginning to develop a reputation for being a breeding ground for unmitigated face rocking. Last year, the show closed out with a performance by known World of Warcraft fanatic Ozzy Osbourne -- this year, the ending ceremonies will receive musical accompaniment from Tenacious D, whom we imagine are familiar with some of Blizzard's titles. We mean, just look at them.

The duo will perform new jams and old favorites during the closing moments of the show on October 23. Of course, the event's been sold out since about fifteen seconds after tickets went on sale, so this news really only pertains to people who were agile enough to grab an entry pass. Or the diehard, presumably independently wealthy people willing to shell out $39.95 to stream the event on DirectTV.

#blizzard Blizzard couldn't possibly top the live Ozzy Osbourne concert that closed out BlizzCon 2009, but a concert by Jack Black and Kyle Glass of Tenacious D comes pretty damn close. More »

#statues Add StarCraft II's Kerrigan and World of Warcraft's Moonkin to the assembly of statues based on Blizzard's big games, coming from DC Comics. At New York Comic-Con, I shot video of those debuting statues and the rest of the line. More »

There comes a time in all great directors' careers when they must choose between not another sequel, a video game adaptation and, in recent years, the almost-always-panned (but-oh-so-high-grossing) "reboot." Sam Raimi has apparently gone with Plan D: Disney's Wizard of Oz 3D prequel, reports Deadline.com. In making his choice, Raimi seemingly puts off directing the World of Warcraft movie, to which he's been officially attached since last summer (he abandoned "Spider-Man 4" long ago).

While Legendary Pictures, which owns the WoW movie rights, has yet to reveal its next move, we have to imagine the studio is now in hot pursuit of David Fincher. After all, the director has been heavily applauded for his adaptation of the "Facebook story" and would seem a likely candidate to depict the dramatic significance of a billion-dollar fantasy sustained by socialized grinding.

Wait -- you mean it's supposed to be a live-action Warcraft universe movie? Like with orcs and elves and things? Yeah, we'd totally pick Oz, too.

Blizzard continues to print money.

#blizzard In October of 2008, Blizzard proudly counted 11 million World of Warcraft subscribers worldwide. In December 2008 the number jumped to 11.5. Now Blizzard updates the count to 12 million, 22 months later. What took so long? More »

Blizzard today announced that WoW has topped 12 million subscribers, following the Wrath of the Lich King expansion launch in mainland China just over a month ago and in anticipation of the third expansion, Cataclysm, coming this holiday worldwide.

For a time, it seemed as though World of Warcraft's subscriber base was well on its way to 20 million -- somewhere in the ballpark of Australia's total population. Then, in December 2008, the game reached 11.5 million subscribers, and six months later, the number hadn't changed. It appeared the world's most popular subscription-based MMO had reached its cap.

When Cataclysm is released on December 7, World of Warcraft will have passed its sixth year in operation. And with 12 million-plus paying players? Wow.

#rumor A day after Amazon.com suggests a January release for World of Warcraft's Cataclysm expansion, MMO Champion uses a combination of patch info and official forum posts to nail down December 7 as the date. What does Blizzard say? More »

#screengrab Fans can get up close and personal with Prince of Persia: Sands of Time's Chesty Jake in the Egyptian-themed Uldum zone in World of Warcraft's Cataclysm expansion. Thanks, Michael! More »

Activision's Bobby Kotick and EA's Jeff Brown engaged in a little Battlefield of Duty: Corporate Warfare 2 match this week, lobbing sound bites back and forth at each other. Kotick was first, boasting in the latest issue of Edge (via Next-Gen.biz) that his company allows its studios to maintain their independent cultures; citing Treyarch, the embattled Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer Games as examples. Kotick suggested that EA doesn't offer this luxury, and that's why Activision has successfully hired developers from its competitor's ranks. "We have no shortage of opportunity to recruit out of EA," he said. "That's their biggest challenge: Its stock options have no value. It's lost its way."

Of course, EA's corp comm VP Brown was quick to respond: "[Kotick's] company is based on three game franchises -- one is a fantastic persistent world he had nothing to do with; one is in steep decline; and the third is in the process of being destroyed by Kotick's own hubris." Though Brown didn't clarify which franchises he was referring to, we'll throw out three names for you -- and you can play the matching game! Here goes: Guitar Hero, Call of Duty and World of Warcraft.

The two probably had more to say to each other, but at that point the other players muted them both, and a few seconds later the actual match started up.

The online gaming industry analysts at Screen Digest recently shared some good news and bad news with Western MMO developers. The good? According to their report, the MMO market in Europe and the U.S. increased to $1.6 billion last year, up from $1.4 billion in 2008. However, the average revenue gained per MMO player declined 10 percent over the same time period, with recurring subscriptions pulling in around $13 million in 2009. (That's the bad news.)

This decline, of course, is a result of new business models in the MMO space, such as microtransactions and free-to-play online titles. These new models appear to be shaking things up a bit -- but we suppose as long as that first number keeps going up, the second one can do whatever it likes.

#barackobama Best known for Call of Duty and World of Warcraft, Activision Blizzard has joined a corporate initiative to help improve literacy in science, technology, engineering and math (the STEAM fileds). More »

#blizzard Oddly coinciding with ArenaNet's article about allowing players to communicate with guild members using mobile devices, Blizzard reveals that offline mobile guild chat will be coming to World of Warcraft as well. Fancy that! More »

#worldofwarcraft In China, World of Warcraft and censorship aren't strangers. Things like blood and skeletons were edited for The People's Republic, and the release of expansion Wrath of the Lich King was held up due to content Chinese authorities found objectionable. More »

#mmo Red 5 Studios, the developer founded by former World of Warcraft team lead Mark Kern, finally unveiled its long-in-the-making online shooter, Firefall today. The free-to-play futuristic action game also has a futuristic release date. More »

#clips There are World of Warcraft Blizzard fans, and there are StarCraft Blizzard fans. What do you get when the two meet? You get a World of Warcraft StarCraft II mod. More »

#clips Kotaku favorite game blending artist David Stonecipher is at it again, giving us a look at how the characters of Mario's universe would look in World of Warcraft. More »

#wow Sideshow Collectibles want to make sure it's Brewfest all year-long at your place, with this replica of World of Warcraft's Tankard O' Terror. More »

#videogameclothing The gaming t-shirt people at Jinx have released their fall World of Warcraft clothing line, and fans of the game's most popular aquatic enemies really have something to gurgle over. More »

#worldofwarcraft I never did put much stock in the idea that video games were "just games." More »

#starwars The creator of the Star Wars franchise, George Lucas, is suing the creators of the Jedi Mind thought technology tech. More »

The nominees for the first-ever Game Developers Choice Online Awards, which will be presented during the similarly named GDC Online on October 5 - 8, were announced earlier today. The list of candidates reads like a who's who of heavy hitters in the online gaming space, such as World of Warcraft (nominated for the Best Ongoing Live Game award), Star Trek Online (nominated for Best Online Visual) and League of Legends (nominated for ... like, everything.)

Winners will be announced and accolades will be distributed at the conference on the evening of October 7. To see who's in the running for what, check out the full list of nominees posted after the jump.

#taiwan Whether it be StarCraft or Warcraft, game developer Blizzard has a look. It has style. Pizazz, if you will. More »

#wow Because if you do, it'll cost you $88 million. More »

#robertkotick We already knew The folks behind World of Warcraft and Starcraft are hard at work on a totally new massively multiplayer online game. We didn't know that Activision Blizzard was pouring gobs of money into it. More »

#blizzard The folks behind World of Warcraft and Starcraft are hard at work on a new massively multiplayer online game. Know what that means? More »