Earlier this month, a supposed leaked Blizzard release schedule threw the internet into a fevered tizzy with promises of unannounced World of Warcraft expansions and new projects.  One of those projects was the mysterious Project Titan, which the company is now starting to shed a bit of light on…sort of.

“The media is not supposed to know anything about that. It’s our next-gen MMO project,” said Blizzard’s senior VP Frank Pearce said in a recent interview with Destructoid.

“We’ve only started talking about it in a limited fashion because we want to leverage the fact that we’re working on something like that for the purpose of recruiting – getting some of the best talent in the industry on that project,” Pearce added.

Project Titan is expected to release in 2013.

Look, if you’re already blowing $14.99 a month to destroy your social life by playing World of Warcraft, why not shell out a few more of your hard earned dollars to claim the collector’s edition of the MMO’s upcoming expansion, Cataclysm? The special edition, $79.99 version of the add-on, which will only be available via retail outlets, recently had it’s contents revealed by Blizzard.

The special edition includes the prerequisite DVD featuring developer commentary and a quick background of everything Warcraft, a 176-page art book, a CD featuring the expansion’s soundtrack, a mouse pad, a starter deck and a few bonus cards for the World of Warcraft TCG, and perhaps best of all, a “Lil’ Deathwing” in game pet.

As of now, there’s no official release date, but you can keep updated via the official website.

Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft is set to receive its third official expansion sometime later this year.

It’ll bring changes to familiar landscapes a new level cap and also new characters to waste time grind level to their peaks.

One of the new races is Worgen and today Blizzard showed off the nagging female.

The female Worgen

Blizzard Entertainment’s massively multiplayer online role playing game World of Warcraft aims to siphon more money from its over 11 million users with a new paid Auction House monitoring service.

World of Warcraft Remote Web version.

For $3 a month, those who regularly venture to the rolling hills and dark crevasses of Azeroth, can access World of Warcraft Remote. It’s a service allowing users to manage whatever in-game auctions they currently are engaged in through a Web browser or Blizzard’s Mobile Armory App for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

The app is currently in beta, where users can enjoy its fineries free of charge. Blizzard has set no exact time for its full, official and paid release.

During this beta period, only a large handful of realms are running the beta test, and as the above image reveals, mine isn’t one of them.

For lots more detailed informational tidbits, head to the World of Warcraft forum page.

Colleges and Universities around the country are wrapping up and high schools are finishing next month, so what’s a gamer to do in the long, hot, summer months?

Stay indoors and grind away in everyone’s favorite MMORPG of course!

Best Buy made that summer prospect more interesting today, as the national retailer is giving away copies of World of Warcraft expansion The Burning Crusade, with the purchase of the original World of Warcraft.

With the deal, you’ll pay $19.99 for both. Not too shabby, but it won’t get you entirely up to date. WoW‘s latest expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, is out in the wild and Cataclysm is due out this year. The grind starts now.

WoW + Burning Crusade = $20 @ Best Buy

Is the future of the impossibly popular MMO World of Warcraft literally in the palm of your hands?

Game Designer David Perry might argue so.

He snapped a picture of the World of Warcraft login screen on his iPad recently, testing the Gaikai cloud server (similar to Onlive) over a standard Wifi connection.

“We’re really interested to see what works well with streaming and will be trying just about every genre of game, on every device possible as we explore server-side computing,” he wrote on his blog.

Is this the future?

He made no mention of if the game ran, and if so, how well. But just the possibility of taking WoW with you is definitely exciting.

via 1UP

Blizzard today branched out from selling Pets in its World of Warcraft Store to the more useful Mounts with the “Celestial Steed.”

The "Celestial Steed"

Admittedly, it’s a pretty creature. It has celestial bodies for bones, armor adorning its body and it’ll run you a healthy $25. It offers no advantage over other mounts as its performance is tied to the skill you have in the game.

Want one? You’re going to have to wait.

North American queues have exceeded 80,000, meaning the Mount is already monumentally successful, as that’s a cool $2 million Blizzard will make today off the creature.

Still want one? Hop in line right here.

With the insane monetary success of Blizzard PC and Mac MMO gem “World of Warcraft”, you’d think it’d one day show up, in one form or another, on consoles, but that’s unlikely to happen, says Blizzard.

In an interview with G4, WoW Lead Producer J. Allen Brack spoke about the prospects of a console MMO and why it’d be no simple task.

“I think there’s a lot of reasons,” said Brack. “There’s not one thing. One is, it takes a long time to develop an MMO. The lifecycle of consoles being what they are, you have to really time when your console’s going to come out, what its projected lifecycle is going to be with when your game is going to be, which is challenging.”

But what about World of Warcraft specifically?

“In the case of WoW, we talk about it all the time,” he said. “How would we bring WoW to the console?”

He also expressed the various technical barriers keeping WoW from consoles, namely the massive hard drive space such a game, with its patches and all, would require.

“There’s those technical challenges,” he explained, “there’s patching challenges, there’s the quality controls that we have vs. the quality controls that say, a Microsoft or Sony or Nintendo has. All those things sort of raise the bar in terms of the challenges and then specifically in the case of WoW, WoW was designed to be a keyboard game and its control scheme and its camera controls and the number of abilities that you have and the spells and how things work are very keyboard-centric. The idea of translating that to a gamepad is a very, very challenging proposition.”

“I think it’s unlikely that WoW comes to the consoles,” he said. “It is something that we talk about on a pretty regular basis, but someone is going to figure out how to make an MMO on a console and they’re going to be wildly successful. I have no doubt about that.”

The video game world is changing. This much we know. But mega-hit World of Warcraft is far from being seen as an afterthought, right?

Perhaps not so.

Activision, in a recent company filing expressed its stance on the rapidly evolving industry and that its juggernaut MMO might not make it through.

In the “risk factor” section of the report, Activision wrote:
‘We compete with other forms of interactive entertainment, such as casual games like iPhone applications and other mobile phone games, and games developed for use by consumers on social networking sites.

‘Additionally, direct sales of software over the Internet by competitors could adversely affect our distribution business.’

Don’t expect World of Warcraft to blow away just yet, Activision is merely accepting changing trends and predicting accordingly.

Source: CVG

Created by the Online Schools, is this staggering “The Unbelievable World of Warcraft” statistics chart that should, if it hasn’t already, drop your jaw to the floor.

Basically, it summarizes and puts into graph and chart form, all the staggering WoW statistics including celebrity players, usage figures and revenue totals. Compelling stuff.

For instance, did you know players complete 16.6 million quests per day, Elijah Wood and Jessica Simpson play the game and that upkeep costs for Blizzard exceed $135,000 per day?

Soon arriving in the Blizzard Online Store, a marketplace for all things Warcraft and then some, will be World of Warcraft pets, in cute and cuddly plush form.

Expected to arrive “in the weeks ahead” are the soft and lovable creatures, first available in Wind Rider Cub and Gryphon Hatchling models and later extending to a full line of pets.

Best of all, when you buy the plush creature, you’ll also earn a code to download a digital version of the critter in-game as an account-bound, non-combat creature to show off to all your buddies.

Keep an eye on the Online Blizzard Store for more information. We’ll update when the plushies go on sale, because, well, I’ll be buying one.

The best things in life are free, right?

That sentiment may be true, but if you’re a World of Warcraft fan, maybe not so much.

Available for pre-order today are Sound Blaster’s World of Warcraft-themed headsets.

Debuting at last year’s BlizzCon, these headphones, which come in both Horde and Alliances flavors, will set you back a hefty fine; $160 a pair.

Pre-order yourself a pair today at Creative or Amazon. I got out of the MMO scene last year and can’t see myself even entertaining the possibility of purchasing these, but hey, that’s just me. You MMO fans, you buying?

Alliance

Horde

Source: Kotaku

Numbers released today by the NPD group, a statistic-tracking organization, revealed The Sims 3 to be the best-selling PC title of 2009, beating out the likes of World of Warcraft and Modern Warfare 2.

The below list is a top-ten gathering of 2009′s best-selling PC titles. Note the statistics count boxed retail copies sold and not digital ones.

1. The Sims 3
2. World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Expansion Pack
3. The Sims 2 Double Deluxe
4. World of Warcraft: Battle Chest
5. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
6. World of Warcraft Blizzard Entertainment
7. The Sims 3: World Adventures Expansion Pack
8. Spore
9. Dragon Age: Origins
10. Empire: Total War

Overall, NPD stated that PC game sales were down 23-percent from the same aggregate sales of 2008.

The list is dominated by Electronic Arts and Activision-published titles, making up 9 of the 10, with SEGA’s Empire: Total War the lone exception, at number 10.

If you’ve committed a crime and are on the run from the law, the last thing you probably want to do is Tweet about it, or update your Facebook status to “totally just robbed that bank dude!”

But another social avenue, one millions are a part of, is no safe haven for fugitives either.

Howard County, Indiana Sheriff Department Deputy Matt Roberson was able to track down fugitive Alfred Hightower, wanted on drug charges by seeking the help of WoW-developer Blizzard Entertainment, to catch the poor sap.

According to Massively, Roberson learned of Hightower’s habits of playing World of Warcraft and sent a subpoena to Blizzard, which  released Roberson’s IP address, allowing the Sheriff’s Department to pinpoint the perpetrator’s location in Canada.

Officers made the arrest and Hightower is currently being extradited to the U.S. where he’ll be the laughing stock of criminals everywhere.

Source: Massively.

With the rampant snow falling on the east coast today, schools everywhere are closed and World of Warcraft servers are brimming full of Horde and Alliance toons taking the battle to Patch 3.3.

But what to buy that WoW enthusiast this Holiday season? A time-card? Sure, that’d be nice, but something a slice more personal would likely be greater appreciated.

Enter PrintWarcraft, a Web site enjoying rapid success as of late. The company provides high-resolution custom posters for enthusiasts of all shapes, sizes, and assortments.

Ranging from a modest 12″ x 18″ to a full-on movie poster size , these custom WoW items can be built and specified however you’d like.

Here’s an example, and be sure to head over to PrintWarcraft to start the fun.

Could be you!

UPDATE: Blizzard posted in the realm status forum the following message:

“We have resolved the issues that came up during maintenance. We are in the process of making all realms playable and we expect this to be complete within the next hour.”

I’m away from my WoW computer at the moment, but if you’ve successfully logged in, please post in the comments, and let us know!

This patch, dubbed the “Fall of the Lich King” will be the final major patch before WoW’s next expansion “Cataclysm” hits next year.

Notable additions to the MMO experience, with the 750MB patch are three brand new five-man dungeons as well as an IceCrown Citadel raid, a new and improved Looking For Group system, and a vastly improved World Map and Quest-tracking game mechanic.

This new Quest-tracking system looks a lot like the highly popular QuestHelper add-on millions have downloaded and enjoyed, which speaks to Blizzard’s manner of taking popular third-party UI add-ons and building them into the actual UI.

Blizzard, you done good with this patch. I’m downloading it as we speak and can’t wait to bask in the new features.

Check out the very, very detailed Patch Notes list here and, fire up WoW and start your download now, as it is a big one.

Patch 3.3 Notes via Kotaku

It’s impossible to beat the open-world, never-ending MMO World of Warcraft, but one Taiwanese enthusiast today got closer than anyone ever has.

小灰, who pledges his allegiance to the TW-Wrathbringer guild, has the most impressive WoW stats this world has ever seen.

The player has collected every single achievement in the game and is the first man, woman, or beast to obtain 986/986 achievements completed on the armory.

If your jaw isn’t on the floor yet, maybe these next statistics will help.

Listed on his WoW Armory page are the following mindblowing figures.

He’s killed 390,895 creatures, died 8,543 times for a kill to death ratio of 45.75, somehow amazingly accrued 7,255,538,878 points of damage and has completed 5,906 quests for an average of 14.6 quests per day.

Jeebus!

On the lighter side of things, GamePro points out that the player has only handed out 11 hugs and “LOL’d” just once.

I wonder what kind of life this man, woman, or child has. You know, to be able to commit the ungodly amount of hours this feat must have taken.

Source: Kotaku

A mere five years ago, or 1,825 days, Blizzard released The World of Warcraft, now the most widely known MMORPG in the world.

Could the team behind the project have foreseen such gargantuan success? Who knows, but a select few who did believe in the project are now richer than you, and one is part-owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers.

The game has sold above and beyond 8.6 million in the US in its life and 11.5 million of you continue to pay $15 a month to log into Azeroth.

How long will the game remain at the forefront of the gaming world? Well, probably much longer, as the game’s next expansion, Cataclysm, isn’t even out yet, or has even been dated.

Not entirely related, but WoW continues to expand its cultural phenomenon by embracing Mr. T and letting him sell the game. Take a look.

Source: Joystiq

Ah, the spoils of Thanksgiving. Food, drink, and friends. These are all things we love about Thanksgiving, but what about in the World of Warcaft, in Azeroth? Why should our WoW characters miss out on the annual feast? Beginning this year, they won’t!

Blizzard announced today the “Pilgrim’s Bounty” event happening in the land of Azeroth.

Running from Nov. 22 through Nov. 28, gamers can partake in Pilgrim’s Bounty feasts at major towns by sitting at a Bountiful Table and enjoying the delectable delights found there.

These Bountiful Tables are loaded with food and surrounded by interactive chairs used to consume and share food with friends.

Every chair at the table has an unlimited amount of food and are specifically labeled.

The Sweet Potato Chair, The Turkey Chair, The Stuffing Chair, The Cranberry Chair, and The Pie Chair.

Additionally, if you consume five helpings of a certain food you’ll gain bonuses specific to that food and best of all, if you eat five servings of every food, you’ll earn the Spirit of Sharing, which lasts one hour and increases reputation gained by 10%. Woo hoo!

There’s also cooking quests, special items, and achievements to unlock by joining in the Turkey-Day merriment. Have a look, and be sure to check out the official Pilgrim’s Feast page for more information.

Mr. T returns to the World of Warcraft with this engaging and comical television spot proclaiming, in the classic Mr. T tone, explosive details surrounding the “Mohawk Grenade.”

What’s a Mohawk Grenade you ask? Well for one, it’s available today on North American servers from a purveyor in your local startup location, and what is does is it turns anyone in its immediate blast area into a Night Elf Mohawk. Nice.

Check out the ad embedded below, and look for the same feature all over TV soon.

World of Warcraft, the massively multiplayer online game from Blizzard is a behemoth of a game. But just how huge is it?

During a keynote address at GDC Austin, Blizzard team members unveiled a host of numerical statistics concerning the game and the lengths the studio must go to to keep the game up and running on a day to day basis. Buckle up, because here we go!

• 7,650 quests
• 70,000 spells
• 40,000 NPCs
• 1.5 million game assets
• 5.5 million lines of code
• 180,000 bugs swatted by the QA department
• 4,449,680,399 rewards unlocked
• 20,000 computer systems
• 13,250 server blades
• 75,000 CPU cores
• 1.3 petabytes of storage
• 4,600 staffers
• 27 hours of music
• 360,000 text strings
• 2 million words
• 12,000,000 Battle.net accounts

Anything on the list really jump out at you, besides everything?

An Inside Look at The Universe of Warcraft @ Gamasutra via Kotaku

Logitech bills the G13 as a “game changing experience,” and it’s both true and false.

If you are a dedicated PC gamer — an elite WoW player, Call of Duty, Fallout 3, etc. — then the G13 can completely change the way you play. This is especially true online, where the customizable buttons on the G13 can give you a decided edge.

There’s just one thing that you have to get past: A game changing experience means you have to change the way you game. If you’re in your 20s and have been using control to shoot, alt to strafe, and space to open doors for the past 15 years, then the G13 is going to feel like a foreign object for a while. Younger players have the advantage here. Their minds aren’t as hard-coded as ours.

Getting past the difficulties of old age, the G13 has 25 programmable keys that you can set and switch with five savable profiles. You can also customize the backlight to four different colors. There’s also a 160×43-pixel LCD panel that can show messages between players and live game stats. The LCD panel is a bit of a gimmick, and the viewing angle isn’t great since your fingers are right above it.

One of the most useful functions of the unit is the ability to program macros to script commands as you see fit.

The unit is also nicely sized and won’t slide around your desk.

The control profiles are stored in the unit, so you can take the G13 with you with no software reconfigurations to worry about.

Still, a lot of us are used to what we do with the existing keyboard and mouse, but I do like the G13 even more as a laptop gaming solution. The mini joystick on the right of the unit is really handy in that regard.

While I never really got used to using the unit, with PC gaming on the downturn, it might be a blessing in disguise that something totally different has come along. The G13 works with PC or MAC and comes with a free World of Warcraft trial, which is one of the games it’s meant to be used with.

Blast factor: If you’re still an avid PC gamer, the G13 is a great solution with built-in profiles for the top games. The backlit keys and LCD really add to the appeal, too.

Blizzard, creator and purveyor of all things World of Warcraft confirmed rumors this weekend of a third WoW content expansion naming “Cataclysm” the ambitious endeavor.

Complete with two new races, Worgin for the Alliance and Goblin for the Horde, an increased level cap of 85, and new class combinations; Tauren Paladins, Human Hunters, Night Elf Mages, Cataclysm is a lofty digital endeavor. But with the kind of cash Blizz has on hand and their proven track record of excellence, we are expecting great things from the Lich King follow up.

The expansion will also add seven new zones to the game world including The Lost Isles, Twilight Highlands and an underwater locale not named by Blizzard.

Furthermore, underwater mounts, and the ability to fly wherever you desire in Azeroth are included in the update.

Cataclysm is due out sometime in 2010 undoubtedly bringing Mtn Dew sipping gamers back to the folds of their chairs in the process.

For now, enjoy these first screens of “Cataclysm” and revel in their sexiness. Also scroll your eyes to the bottom to read Blizzard’s official description of the update.

* Two New Playable Races: Adventure as one of two new races”"the cursed worgen with the Alliance or the resourceful goblins with the Horde.
* Level Cap Increased to 85: Earn new abilities, tap into new talents, and progress through the path system, a new way for players to improve characters.
* Classic Zones Remade: Familiar zones across the original continents of Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms have been altered forever and updated with new content, from the devastated Badlands to the broken Barrens, which has been sundered in two.
* New High-Level Zones: Explore newly opened parts of the world, including Uldum, Grim Batol, and the great Sunken City of Vashj’ir beneath the sea.
* More Raid Content than Ever Before: Enjoy more high-level raid content than previous expansions, with optional more challenging versions of all encounters.
* New Race and Class Combinations: Explore Azeroth as a gnome priest, blood elf warrior, or one of the other never-before-available race and class combinations.
* Guild Advancement: Progress as a guild to earn guild levels and guild achievements.
* New PvP Zone & Rated Battlegrounds: Take on PvP objectives and daily quests on Tol Barad Island, a new Wintergrasp-like zone, and wage war in all-new rated Battlegrounds.
* Archaeology: Master a new secondary profession to unearth valuable artifacts and earn unique rewards.
* Flying Mounts in Azeroth: Explore Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms like never before.

PepsiCo, purveyor of sugary Mountain Dew, announced today that the World of Warcraft branded soft drinks will hit shelves this month and run all summer long. So probably until August.

Available in citrus-flavored Horde Red and wild fruit-flavored Alliance Blue these new drinks also come with in-game goodies for veterans and 14-day free trials for noobies.

After you’ve quenched your thirst with your daily allotment of sugar hit up the Mountain Dew/WoW promo site to snag the “Battle-Bot” pet for those already subscribed and the aforementioned 14-day free trial for those longing for the 500+ hour journey that is WoW.

The entire soda promotion begs the question: Can a Horde player drink his/her specifically themed soft drink and converse/interact with/acknowledge/not want to kill anyone drinking the other flavor? Social experiment commence!

Look for these WoW-inspired drinks beginning this month wherever Dew is sold.

Worried about the Swine Flu?‚  Seems the whole country is caught up in the media blitz of coverage, and while we don’t plan to exacerbate any fears of yours, when the medical world looks to video games for answers, well that’s worthy of your attention.

Canada.com reports that researchers have looked to the massively multiplayer World of Warcraft for answers regarding the ways in which pandemics spread.

Why World of Warcraft? In 2005 the “Corrupted Blood” outbreak took place on the servers of WoW resulting in the “deaths” of 4 of the 6 million active players.‚  The in-game pandemic is described as such:

“Blizzard Entertainment decided that some players’ characters had become too powerful, so they created a virus – called “Corrupted Blood” …The virus quickly infected any nearby character, regardless of its relative strength.

Yet many players ignored the quarantine, spreading the virus. Eventually, more than four million of the game’s six million players worldwide were infected, and millions “died.”

Clearly, the killing off of two-thirds of the massive WoW population caught Rutgers University Professor Nina Fefferman’s eye as she hopes to use the Corrupted Blood pandemic as a model of how to approach the very real Swine Flu issue:

“Suddenly, there did exist [in WoW] an experimental framework to watch how people would behave during an epidemic. That’s exactly what we worry about in real-world epidemics – the little behaviours that we don’t tell people to do or not to do, because we have never seen this happen before.

I’m not afraid just yet, although my nose is a little sniffly….

via GamePolitics

What is a 15 hour session of World of Warcraft without a sugar filled, cavity inducing, and caffeine loaded soft drink?‚  My days of WoW have come and gone, but I can easily recall the many late nights fueled by my lust for Alliance blood and that sweet, sweet nectar of life, Mountain Dew.

Blizzard announced today that this summer, you’ll be able to see World of Warcraft characters in a new place — the beverage aisle.

The Mountain Dew Game Fuel will launch in two World of Warcraft inspired flavors, Alliance Blue (wild fruit) and Horde Red (citrus cherry).

I can picture the scene at Store 24, I reach down for the Horde flavor and I am met by a member of the filthy Alliance and in that moment PvP has created an entirely new meaning.

This marketing scheme also begs some very interesting questions; does my in-game loyalty bind me to a particular flavor?‚  Will I be hated based on the drink I hold?‚  Will World of Warcraft guilds and raids bleed into the real world?

Blizzard promises more details soon.

BlizzCon 2009 is officially happening.‚  The fourth annual convention for all things Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo will be held at the Anaheim Convention Center, August 21^st and 22^nd.

This year’s BlizzCon will be bigger and better than ever before.‚  Due to a high forecast of attendees, floor space will expand from three convention halls to four.‚  That’s an entire extra hall for you and your raiding pals to soak in Blizzard’s latest offerings.

Blizzard has been known to keep secrets, but when they’re ready to divulge, BlizzCon is usually where it happens.‚  Who knows, maybe we’ll finally get a glimpse at the World of Warcraft movie fanboys have been screaming for, or perhaps, their next non-World of Warcraft MMO.‚  One thing is for sure, whatever coveted secret Blizzard decides to unveil will blow our minds.

Mike Morhaime, CEO and founder of Blizzard Entertainment says,

“We’ve been amazed by the incredible response to each of our previous BlizzCon events,” and that‚  “We’re pleased to be bringing the convention back to Anaheim this year, and we look forward to this new opportunity to meet Blizzard gamers from around the world.”

And why shouldn’t he be. ‚ With hands on time with pre-release titles, discussion panels with Blizzard developers, competitive and casual tournaments for attendees, great prizes, commemorative merchandise based on the Blizzard universe, and a silent auction, this year’s BlizzCon looks to be aiming for new heights.

Keep an eye on the BlizzCon 2009 official site for further details regarding ticket availability and pricing.

About Blizzard Entertainment, Inc.

Best known for blockbuster hits including World of Warcraft^(R) and the Warcraft^(R), StarCraft^(R), and Diablo^(R) series, Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. (www.blizzard.com), a division of Activision Blizzard (NASDAQ:ATVI), is a premier developer and publisher of entertainment software renowned for creating some of the industry’s most critically acclaimed games. Blizzard Entertainment’s track record includes eleven #1-selling games and multiple Game of the Year awards. The company’s online-gaming service, Battle.net^(R), is one of the largest in the world, with millions of active users.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-looking Statements: Information in this press release that involves Blizzard Entertainment’s expectations, plans, intentions or strategies regarding the future are forward-looking statements that are not facts and involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Blizzard Entertainment generally uses words such as “outlook,” “will,” “could,” “would,” “might,” “remains,” “to be,” “plans,” “believes,” “may,” “expects,” “intends,” “anticipates,” “estimate,” future,” “plan,” “positioned,” “potential,” “project,” “remain,” “scheduled,” “set to,” “subject to,” “upcoming” and similar expressions to help identify forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause Blizzard Entertainment’s actual future results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements set forth in this release include, but are not limited to, sales levels of Blizzard Entertainment’s titles, shifts in consumer spending trends, the impact of the current macroeconomic environment, the seasonal and cyclical nature of the interactive game market, Blizzard Entertainment’s ability to predict consumer preferences among competing hardware platforms (including next-generation hardware), declines in software pricing, product returns and price protection, product delays, retail acceptance of Blizzard Entertainment’s products, adoption rate and availability of new hardware and related software, industry competition, rapid changes in technology and industry standards, protection of proprietary rights, litigation against Blizzard Entertainment, maintenance of relationships with key personnel, customers, vendors and third-party developers, domestic and international economic, financial and political conditions and policies, foreign exchange rates, integration of recent acquisitions and the identification of suitable future acquisition opportunities, Activision Blizzard’s success in integrating the operations of Activision Publishing and Vivendi Games in a timely manner, or at all, and the combined company’s ability to realize the anticipated benefits and synergies of the transaction to the extent, or in the timeframe, anticipated, and the other factors identified in Activision Blizzard’s most recent annual report on Form 10-K and any subsequent quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. The forward-looking statements in this release are based upon information available to Blizzard Entertainment and Activision Blizzard as of the date of this release, and neither Blizzard Entertainment nor Activision Blizzard assumes any obligation to update any such forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements believed to be true when made may ultimately prove to be incorrect. These statements are not guarantees of the future performance of Blizzard Entertainment or Activision Blizzard and are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors, some of which are beyond its control and may cause actual results to differ materially from current expectations.