Blizzard Entertainment

Overview

Conventions

A "Murky" pet that was given away to attendees of the first Blizzcon in 2005.

• The first BlizzCon was held in Anaheim, California at the Anaheim convention center in 2005 and has since been held on a semi-regular basis. It has been held since in 2007 and 2008. In July 2008, Blizzard announced they would be partnering with DirectTV to televise BlizzCon 2008.  
• The third Worldwide Invitational was held in May 2007 in Seoul, Korea and featured the unveiling of the highly anticipated StarCraft II. The fourth WWI was held in Paris, France in June 2008 with the announcement of Diablo III and information concerning the second expansion to their massive multiplayer online RPG World of Warcraft, The Wrath of the Lich King. Previous WWI events were held in Seoul, Korea and featured professional, or "eSports" tournaments but no new product announcements.
• On top of the many prizes and tournaments going on, Blizzard has also made a habit out of giving away special codes that can be redeemed in World of Warcraft for different  aesthetic purposes. Things such as in-game pets that follow a player around, or a suit that dresses them up are just a few things that Blizzard has given away exclusively at their events.
• Blizzard has announced and is holding the next Blizzcon in August of 2009. The convention will, as the previous Blizzcon of 2008, be available to non-attendee's through DirectTV  for a nominal fee. It will also be available for purchase to be viewed via a streaming feed online.

"Grunty" the Murloc will be the WoW in-game non combat pet given to attendees of the 2009 Blizzcon or viewers via the DirectTV feed.

Battle.net

Trivia

• Diablo 2, which was the sequel to Blizzard's hit game Diablo, was considered to be the most highly anticipated game ever at the time of its release in 2000.
• In their real time strategy releases, clicking a critter repeatedly about twenty times will cause it to explode.
• The cheat code "operation cwal" that can be used in Starcraft is a nod to a group of Blizzard fan's that greatly anticipated the release of the game; "cwal" stands for "can't wait any longer".
• A group of gamers reverse engineered the network protocol used by Battle.net and released a free version of the service called bnetd that did not require players to use the official Blizzard servers to host games. Blizzard threatened legal action and filed a lawsuit against the developers which eventually caused the service to shut down.
• The three viking characters (Erik the Swift, Baleog the Fierce, and Olaf the Stout) from Blizzard's game "The Lost Vikings" can be found in their MMORPG World of Warcraft in the Uldaman dungeon camping in a side tunnel off of the main zone.
• Notable title cancellations from Blizzard include Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans which was cancelled in 1998, Shattered Nations, and StarCraft: Ghost which was "indefinetely postponed" in 2006.
• Blizzard was honored in 2008 at the 59th Annual Technology & Enginerring Emmy Awards for the creation of World of Warcraft. The award was accepted by Michael Morhaime.
• It has been announced by Blizzard that they will be producing a live-action Warcraft movie to be released by Legendary Pictures.
• Blizzard was originally to be the company to publish Pax Imperia II but the project was dropped when it was decided that it would be in conflict with their other space-based RTS StarCraft. THQ eventually struck a deal with Heliotrope to have the game published under the title Pax Imperia: Eminent Domain.