Can you believe Blizzard, the company that’s brought us World of Warcraft and a litany of other games from Starcraft to Diablo and everything in between is now 20 years old?

The company’s been turning out quality titles for longer than a number of its customers have been alive, and over at the Battle.net WoW Blog we get to take a peek into the history of Blizzard, its franchises, and its workings over the years, from a small gaming company to a massive gaming powerhouse with not just one, but three unstoppable titles under its belt.

Head over to the Blizzard 20th Anniversary Site to see the retrospective video!

update: We just found the retrospective video on YouTube; check it out below!

Blizzard took the wraps off of a new account security guide yesterday, designed to give players both new and veteran a simple place to go to see all of Blizzard’s reccomendations on how to keep your account safe from the people who would – and they very much would – exploit it and snag your characters right out from under you.

The basics are clear: you know, use a strong password, make sure you don’t give out your account information, don’t use shady gold selling services, things like that. Then of course, the guide goes into exactly how badly you really do need an authenticator bound to your account, even if it’s the new free phone-in version. There’s absolutely no excuse not to have an authenticator at this point.

The guide goes the extra mile too, with a few handy tips on keeping your computer safe in general by making sure your operating system is up to date and all patched up, that you have some solid anti-malware utility installed and that it’s up to date.

Blizzard’s tips are good, and well worth reading even if you already know what you’re doing when it comes to account security. At the same time though, it takes more than reading them to make sure you’re safe – make sure you apply them. Use a solid password and get an authenticator for your account. Make sure you keep your computer safe from threats as well as your game, and make sure you never give out your account information, no matter who emails you asking for it.

I had meant to share this when it was a little newer, but Blizzard recently posted a Guild Advancement Guide to the new Community Site that explains the basics of guild leveling, achievements, reputation, and some general tips to help your guild do well in all of its endeavors, whether it involves raiding, instances, or just being social and trying to keep a motley crew of friends together and on speaking terms.

Of course the post really focuses on things like the Guild UI, perks and achievements, and the technical side of being in a guild or running a guild, but the tips are great for people who are confused about all of the changes to the guild system in Cataclysm and are looking for some more information about it.

There’s apparently been a great deal of discussion over the balance issues in Tol Barad – that they’re rough enough that there’s little incentive for anyone to try and take and to even bother to hold Tol Barad for their faction, and that overall the worst case is that no one’s actually PVP-ing in the zone and in best case factions are essentially win-trading on their servers to give everyone a chance to get the gear they want out of it.

Well, the furor has been rising on the official forums, and eventually Blizzard said that they would comment in a blog post on the issues and their plans for Tol Barad, and they made good on their promise yesterday:

Now that Cataclysm is out in the wild, more players are getting geared up and checking out Tol Barad, the new outdoor PvP zone. Today, we wanted to address some of the concerns players have expressed about the zone, including how challenging it can be to win as the attacking team, and provide some insight into our design approach. We also wanted to share some of the lessons we learned from Wintergrasp, discuss the difference between the two zones, and touch upon the recent hotfixes made to Honor Point gains and how we plan to improve Tol Barad going forward. We’re confident this zone will provide meaningful and fun PvP for some time to come, but we also recognize additional tuning is required to ensure Tol Barad is everything we intend it to be.

Cory Stockton, lead content designer for World of Warcraft, penned the blog post, and explained that while the situation isn’t where the developers really want it to be, it is closer than the community thinks it is. They do want the attacking team to have a really tough time taking Tol Barad, but they don’t want it to be neigh-on impossible as it seems to be now. Still, they think that a lot of people simply aren’t putting the right kind of effort into it, I think:

With that being said, we want winning Tol Barad to be a challenge for the attacking faction… but we don’t want it to be impossible. Taking Tol Barad should be tough — but right now it’s a little bit too tough, and it’s something we’re actively working to balance. Earlier, we attempted to temporarily address the issue by offering a far better reward to the winning attackers: Honor Points awarded for successfully attacking were increased tenfold, but that was such a great incentive that it ultimately undermined the spirit of competition. Since then, the reward for winning as an attacker has been brought back down to a more reasonable amount.

While we’ve already made minor adjustments to improve the gameplay and address select exploits, our job in Tol Barad is far from over. We ultimately want to make sure that any changes we make are all steps in the right direction, and we intend to make several updates in the next minor patch to address design and balance issues affecting attackers that we can’t address with hotfixes. For example, we plan to alter the battle slightly so that a team with two bases captured can more quickly and easily capture the third, as opposed to a team with one or zero bases. This way, if the defenders turtle up, it’ll be a little easier for the attackers to take their last base before the defense can take one of the attackers’ other bases.

He implies that the work is far from over and they do have some more ideas up their sleeve to make the zone more fun and more balanced for everyone to play. Now we’ll see if Blizzard delivers, or whether the community is just having a difficult time playing something that’s intentionally designed to be challenging.

According to Blizzard, Cataclysm had quite the launch, selling 4.7 million copies in December alone, making it one of the best selling video games of all time. Here’s the word from the press release:

Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. today announced that World of Warcraft®: Cataclysm™, the third expansion for the critically acclaimed massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), has sold through more than 4.7 million copies as of its first month of release, setting a new record for monthly PC-game sales.*

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm was simultaneously released in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Europe, Russia, Southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand on December 7, and became available in Korea and the regions of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau on December 9. With day-one sales topping 3.3 million copies,* World of Warcraft: Cataclysm became the fastest-selling PC game of all time, shattering the previous record, which was held by the second World of Warcraft expansion, Wrath of the Lich King®.

That’s a pretty big number. No doubt that the simultaneous global release had something to do with it, but honestly I don’t think anything else should have been expected. The game – like any Blizzard game or expansion pack – was highly anticipated, and we had been looking forward to it for ages.

The release goes on to point out:

“We created thousands of new quests, introduced new lands to explore, and extensively revamped the game world for World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, making it our biggest and most ambitious expansion yet,” said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. “We’ve been floored by the community’s response so far, and we’d like to thank them for their continued passion and support for World of Warcraft, and for helping Cataclysm reach this incredible milestone.”

Prior to the launch of Cataclysm, World of Warcraft’s subscriber population had grown to more than 12 million players globally, further strengthening the game’s position as the world’s most popular subscription-based MMORPG.

That does raise an interesting question though – only about a third of the overall population of the game is playing Cataclysm, in that case – so what’s everyone else doing? Waiting to buy the game, or what?

Then again, you could look at the flip side there and note that a third of the game’s population opted to pick up the latest expansion and features in the first month they were available, so there’s that too.

What about you? Have you purchased Cataclysm yet? Are you planning to? Let us know in the comments!

Now that Cataclysm has been out for a good while, the Blizzard devs have had a solid opportunity to see how their designs have managed to play out in live play. As usual, as expected, and as appropriate, the devs are seeing some unintended effects of the things they’ve done, and hearing the cries of players who have it difficult – especially healers, who have had a pretty rough time of it lately.

Some of it’s by design, and some of it is unintentional, but Ghostcrawler did say that there will be some changes in the near future to round things out a little more. He let us in on the scoop in a blog post at the new official site, where he explained that the devs are largely happy with the current state of PVE and damage numbers, acknowledge that healing is really hard but point out that it should be, acknowledge there’s a bigger emphasis on crowd control, and notes that a number of stats will likely get some changes in the near future.

In PVP, they noted that offensive dispels will get softened a bit and squishier classes will likely get some love, and noted that they’re pleased with the overall direction away from “see a healer, kill it first” to other more diverse strategies. Head over and read the blog post to see the whole list, but keep in mind it’s far from exhaustive.

Word just came down today that the portals that the elementals have been rampaging through for the past couple of weeks will stay open until further notice, just in case you “need anything from in there.” Interesting. Here’s the word from Bashiok on the new official forums:

Due to your valiant efforts in protecting the key invasion cities, the four boss portals are now ‘permanently’ open. If you need anything from inside the portals, or maybe you dropped your keys in there, now is the time to go through and get them.

Initial reports from shaman in the area that were available at time of publishing suggest that this is hinting at something far more sinister. One such shaman, a one ‘Krunkmaster’ from Proudmoore was quoted as saying “This is hinting at something far more sinister.”

Chilling!

You’ll want to stay tuned to the World of Warcraft community site for the latest developments on this and other events.

Oh dear. Well, the bright side is that the fun will remain for anyone looking to get in on the action who wasn’t able to – bad news is…well..what is that “something sinister” referred to there? It could be nothing, or could we be looking at a world-wide epic invasion awesomeness death and destruction launch event? We’ll just have to wait and see!

Well folks, that’s that – it’s all over. The Cataclysm beta is finished, all said and done. Sayeth the Zarhym on the official forums:

We’re just about two weeks out from the official global launch of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm! And with that, the time has come to conclude the beta test. We will be shutting down our beta realms momentarily. We want to sincerely thank all of you for your dedication to testing, providing feedback, reporting bugs, and everything else you’ve done to help us make this expansion the best World of Warcraft title to date.

Stay tuned to our new community site (http://us.battle.net/wow/en/) for the latest news and updates as we get closer to release. We’ll see you in Cataclysm!

Yeah, the down-side to this is that they aren’t doing anything fun like a wide open beta or any huge world-ending event in Cataclysm, but…well…it is the Cataclysm after all. That should be world-ending enough, shouldn’t it?

If you didn’t get into the beta, no worries – you only have a week or so left before the fun comes to you!

Just in case you were wondering, all that rested experience your level-capped 80s have because they spend most of their time either in dungeons or in instances and raids? Wiped when Cataclysm officially launches. This sounds bigger than it is – Blizzard is just making sure that everyone has a level playing field to get from level 80 to 85, and the world first 85 won’t be because some random person leveled to 80 right after Wrath launched and has enough rested experience to carry them through the next five levels.

There’s no explicit word as to whether or not the rule applies to lower level characters as well, but it likely doesn’t, since those other lowbies can still use the rested experience to get to level 80, where they’ll probably find themselves suddenly out of it. We’ll see how Blizzard implements it though.

Next week, it’ll be six years since World of Warcraft hit store shelves, launching an empire that’s expanded across three expansion packs and over 12 million subscribers and growing. The game is still the defining title in the MMO genre, and it’s easy to forget that when the game launched there were questions over whether a subscription game could ever be popular, even if it was from a game developer with other successful titles under its belt like Blizzard.

The debate over subscription versus free-to-play seems to be a long ago echo in the past now, and there’s no doubt that even today MMOs copy the most successful elements of World of Warcraft to power their own titles and draw in subscribers or free-to-play players looking for an alternative experience. Even so, our beloved WoW wasn’t entirely original in its own right – it relied on tried and true methods of gameplay and mechanics, visuals, and techniques borrowed from the MMOs that went before it in order to become popular.

To celebrate, everyone who logs in gets a feat of strength achievement to celebrate the birthday – but if you didn’t play last year, where we all got the Baby Blizzard Bear for logging on for the 5th anniversary, you’re out of luck – there’ll be no anniversary pet this year! According to a blue post on the forums, Blizzard wants to reserve the pets for the special, significantly numbered anniversaries and occasions.