NEWS
by Zee Salahuddin

Blizzard to Release Six Titles by 2014


Activision Blizzard COO Thomas Tippl said that the publisher is expected to ship six "proven property" releases witnin the next three years. He was on stage at the Citi 2011 Technology Conference yesterday.

Logical deduction leads us to the following points:

Proven Properties implies no Titan
"Proven property" implies that the titles will be from prior Blizzard IPs. These include the WarCraft, StarCraft and Diablo universes. This also implies that the shrouded-in-secrecy new MMO under development at Blizzard, codenamed Titan, is not going to be one of the releases. Diablo was announced more than 3 years ago, we still don't have a release date. Titan hasn't been announced, we should definitely not expect to see it before 2014.

The First Two Titles
We know Blizzard is currently working on Diablo 3 and StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm. Using our well-honed deduction skills, we have astutely ascertained that the first two titles will be Diablo 3 and StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm. Ahem.

The Third Title
Given the 18-20 month window (an educated guess) between Wings of Liberty and Heart of the Swarm, Legacy of the Void should ship by end of 2013, well within the three year window.

Blizzard to Release Six Titles by 2014


The Fourth and Fifth Titles

Let us perform some mathematical deduction:

  • World of Warcraft was released on November 23, 2004. The Burning Crusade was released on January 16, 2007. That is 784 days apart.

  • Wrath of the Lich King was released on November 13, 2008, 667 days after The Burning Crusade.

  • Finally Cataclysm was released on December 7, 2010, 754 days after Wrath of the Lich King.

  • If we average the three numbers, an expansion is released every 735 days. 735 days from the release of Cataclysm would imply December 11, 2012.

  • But clearly, the number of days seem to be decreasing, so a more educated guess for the next expansion (especially given the fact that the next patch will introduce the penultimate boss for Cataclysm, Deathwing), should be around Summer 2012.



In either case, 2012 is well within the release window again.

Finally, even if we took December 11, 2012 as the release date of the next World of Warcraft expansion, another 735 days would imply December 17, 2014 as the date for the fifth expansion of World of Warcraft.

The Sixth Title
The sixth title, logically, should be an expansion for Diablo 3, if Gamespot's information is to be at all trusted.

So there you have it, the following should be the six releases from Blizzard Entertainment over the next three years:


  • Diablo 3

  • StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm

  • World of Warcraft: Fourth Expansion

  • StarCraft 2: Legacy of the Void

  • Diablo 3: First Expansion

  • World of Warcraft - Fifth Expansion



Source: Gamespot.