Blizzard announced today on its EU site that a couple of new amazing games will be coming to mobile platforms – normally I wouldn’t talk about much aside from World of Warcraft, but these were too good to pass up! Among the titles, Blackthorne 2: Thorne Harder, and Queen’s Quest!

Blackthorne 2 follows the exploits of Kyle Blackthorne as he returns to Earth to save us all from oblivion:

Sixteen years have passed on Earth since Kyle Blackthorne returned to his homeworld, the futuristic planet of Tuul. There he rescued its inhabitants, the Tuulips, overthrew the evil Sarlac, and reclaimed his father’s kingdom. But now, a new threat stirs beyond a torn horizon, and only one man can stop the darkness closing in… on Earth.
Unwilling to let another world he had called home be crushed in the wicked grip of the orc blight, Blackthorne abandons his (black) throne and uses the power of the Lightstone to travel back to Earth. But what awaits him at the other end of the world portal is like nothing he could have expected, and the stakes are higher than ever before….
The bestselling action adventure shooter returns… and this time, it’s personal.

Features:

• Uncannily lifelike AI
• 100% photorealistic graphics
• Epic hard rock soundtrack
• Magical, revolutionary gameplay that builds on Kyle’s signature no-look shotgun blast. Now he never looks where he’s shooting!
• Twitter and Facebook integration to automatically post updates for every single enemy you kill. Your friends will thank you.

Hell yeah! I know all of my Twitter followers are looking forward to hearing about how hard I killed that super-shark up there, and every single other killable object in the game! This is going to be so awesome! Also – it looks like this and Queen’s Quest will be available not just for the iPhone but for Android phones and other mobile devices as well!

Now check out Queen’s Quest – a follow-up title following the exploits of the new Queen of the Zerg herself, Kerrigan the Queen of Blades! You play Kerrigan as she tries to find her way through the aftermath of the Brood War, making friends and enemies, battling off betrayers and climbing her way to her rightful place on the throne of the Zerg!

Here’s what you have to look forward in terms of features:

• weeping saxophone soundtrack
• Literary consultation from “A Couple of Dudes from Mar Sara”
• Comes on 17 floppy disks
• A revolutionary new Digital Rights Management (DRM) scheme in 5 easy steps:
  • Open the Spin-A-Spacer DRM application on any smart phone*
  • Line up the spacer faces to reveal the page/word matrix value
  • Consult your player guide / lore manual, and turn to the appropriate page
  • Use the special 3d lenticular glasses to decode the margin text and find the keyword passphrase
  • Enter the special passphrase into the on-screen prompt
  • Speak “OK” clearly and audibly into the device’s audio input
  • ENJOY! (Occassionally, you may be asked to call a toll-free 800 number to verify your identity)

*note: iPhone users will need to open the application on a secondary handset

I’m not normally a big RPG person, but this looks like lots of fun, and a great continuation of the story from where Starcraft: Brood War left off. I’m looking forward to it!

Blizzard knows its fans and customers well, and has unviled a new social tool to help us all get to know each other a little better. Now, as well as being able to match up people to play against one another in multiplayer games like Starcraft and Warcraft III, Battle.net Matchmaking can match you up with someone to raid with…in real life.

Remember folks, the couple that raids together stays together, and Blizzard has plans to help us all find happiness. Just select who you’re looking for from the drop down menus like so:

And then click to find a match for you! The site will churn a bit (this is the best part) like this:

And…well….I’ve never waited through the search. Clearly I’m just impatient, since the video on the page proves that there have been many happy results! Give it a try and let us know if Battle.net matchmaking has helped you find love in the comments!

Blizzard announced today that they would be adding a groundbreaking new feature to the World of Warcraft called the Equipment Potency EquivalencE Number, or E.P.E.E.N.! No need to fumble with silly add-ons anymore that help you determine who the best players or the people you should be spending your time in game with anymore! Now E.P.E.E.N. can do it all for you!

Not only will the game show you at all times what E.P.E.E.N. other players around you have, but the game will use phasing to make sure you don’t have to see or deal with players who don’t have E.P.E.E.N. in the same tier as you! You won’t be able to group with them, raid with them, or even see or speak to them, and that’s how it should be. Here’s what Blizzard had to say:

hat is best in life? Gear, plain and simple. As part of the upcoming stat-system revamp, we plan to introduce a new tool that will let World of Warcraft players know exactly where they stand in comparison to other players: the Equipment Potency EquivalencE Number.

With this new system, you’ll no longer have to wonder about your perceived or actual worth as a player. Your Equipment Potency EquivalencE Number, automatically derived from the quality of the gear you currently possess, will be placed on your character sheet and in the Armory, and also displayed over your character’s head in-game as an easy-to-read bar-like object that steadily grows as you acquire loot. Thanks to this new system, no one will be able to ignore the fruits of your long, hard journey toward gear perfection.

There are even rewards for growing your E.P.E.E.N. as well!

Those with sufficiently large numbers can earn in-game rewards such as a permanent bonus to “need” rolls, the ability to cut to the front of the queue in the Dungeon Finder, a larger ignore list, a much shorter dungeon deserter debuff, or — if your number is exceedingly impressive — a new non-combat pet, Binky the Mechano-Rooster.

As your number grows, the game world will tailor itself to you in other subtle ways: as the pool of players you interact with becomes more and more exclusive, you’ll no longer need to stand still in prominent locations quite so often to allow others to inspect your gear; you’ll have fewer time-wasting calendar invitations to sift through; and your friends list will become increasingly more manageable, reducing needless scrolling time. Any negative repercussions of these changes will be offset by the satisfaction you’ll receive knowing your equipment is significantly more impressive than average.

Thanks Blizzard! I’ll never need to deal with those people below me ever again!