The convention for World Of Warcraft and all things pertaining to video game developers Blizzard, just happened this last weekend. Unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to go but our  very own Mazer sent me this link from Macworld.com with a rundown of some really cool events. Honestly I am not a fan of WOW (sorry but I am not)  I have been a fan of some of Blizzard’s other great and iconic games, especially the Diablo franchise and of course the epic scifi space warfare game Starcraft. At Blizzocn this year they apparently unveiled the forthcoming sequels to these games to the audience for the first time.

Although footage and trailers for Starcraft II have been out for sometime now, the company primarily talked about the online ad multiplayer aspects of the game. Starcraft II was originally rumored to be out by the end of this year but was pushed back for a 2010 release due to the fact that Blizzard’s improved Battle-Net server network is not quite ready. One big disappointment by fans is that the game will not be available to be played on a private local area network. Blizzard claims this is due to limit piracy. Starcraft was one of the most successful video game titles in history selling millions of copies . You can even still buy the 12 year old games in stores to this day! So I am not sure I agree with this reasoning. If someone really wants to pirate a game…this wont stop them. One of the best aspects of Starcraft was its amazing and unprecedented multiplayer capabilities. I myself would spend hours just making my own maps ad campaigns in the campaign editor. I can only imagine what kind of advancements they will add for part 2.

The single player will feature about 26 missions that branch out in different directions which Blizzard estimates game-play to lapse to about 20-30 hours. That sounds great to me.

Diablo III was announced to be at least as long as Diablo 2 was and that it will feature a similar “randomized” dungeon and boss encounters. Diablo III has also been announced to have a playable character type known as a Monk. The Monk will supposedly be a “tanking” character who is designed to with stand enormous amounts of damage so that the rest of the party may move about freely inflicting damage.

I have high hopes for these games but after all of the footage I have seen I am still very unclear if they will live up to my expectations…..but since it is Blizzard, and they rarely do a bad game, I am sure they will deliver.

Here are some videos of the game play for both games. Let us know what you think.

Starcraft II Game-Play Trailer:

Diablo III Game-Play Trailer: