It was found out today that Blizzard filed for 3 trademarks with the USPTO. All under the name Cataclysm. What does this all mean is not known yet. Many has speculate it as the new WoW expansion, name for the new Battle.net 2.0, or even the new secret MMO.

It was filed under the fields of computer game software, entertainment services (i.e. Battle.net), and comic books/strategy guides/trading cards. One of the filings can be found here.

The speculation that it may be the next WoW expansion is backed up from this wowwiki.com article.

Great Sundering

The Great Sundering, also known as simply the Sundering or the Cataclysm, was a world event which reshaped Azeroth approximately 10,000 years ago at the end of the War of the Ancients. This event was triggered due to the Well of Eternity being destroyed.

Prior to the Sundering, there was only one continent on Azeroth, referred to as Kalimdor. In the catastrophic explosion, eighty percent of the land mass was destroyed, leaving behind the major continents and scattered islands that are known today: Northrend, Kezan, the Eastern Kingdoms, and the remnant still referred to as Kalimdor.

The site of the Well of Eternity became a swirling vortex of power known as the Maelstrom.
Fanart of the Sundering
edit Inspiration

The concept of a sundering, or a world being reshaped, is a common theme found in fantasy. Tolkien described a reshaping of Arda, and lands lost to the seas in his writings, and the Dragonlance Dungeons and Dragons gameworld underwent the Cataclysm, where seas receded to the point that a coastal port town became landlocked. In David Eddings’ Belgariad, the dark God Kal Torak attempted to use a magic orb that had been used to shape the world in anger and split the world in two and mutilated himself, an event similar to the Sundering.

More news may come up around BlizzCon 2009.

A week ago, there was a major press event at the Blizzard HQ in Irvine, CA. Now the NDA has lifted, many updates about the game is pouring in from major SC2 fansites, such as Starcraftwire.net and Team Liquid.

Some of the main highlights in this preview event were:

• Zergs are the weakest race at the moment, with no air support until T2 and many other changes from the original Zerg in SC.
• Terrans are the strongest of the three at the moment.
• The official tech trees for each race has been released here.
• The game is READY. The main problem holding the beta back is Bnet 2.0’s inability to support +20k users.
• The game will NOT support LAN.

It was predictable that the new Battle.net infrastructure will be the main obstacle holding the beta back. The game appeared more than complete for a beta judging from the last two Battle Reports. I foresee when beta is released, the game will have major latency and connection problems causing the game to be near unplayable for the first period of beta.

The reason behind this is: Blizzard will not be able to conduct a stress test on Bnet 2.0 until AFTER beta starts. Even if all employees and friends of Blizzard in alpha got onto Bnet 2.0 at the same time, it still won’t be the +40k goal they are looking. This is no different from the last 4-5 betas dating back to War3:RoC. The last Blizzard beta, WoTLK, suffered the same way, despite having the WoW servers being well-established for over 3 years.

Aion appears to be the new upcoming MMO that will give WoW some worthy competition (unlike AoC, Warhammer, etc.). It was released last year in Korea and earlier this year in China. It is a huge success in the Asian market and is rising as the most popular MMO (overtaking WoW, which half of its subscribers are in the Asian market). It is something to give a try and even recommended by some of the top WoW PvPers.

Upcoming Closed Beta Events

Closed Beta Event #6 - August 14-August 17
Focus: TBD

(continue reading…)

This showed up today for U.S. Battle.net accounts.

Also, the site is in the process of having some graphical changes, including the main banner logo.

A press event was held this morning at Blizzard’s HQ, consisting mostly members of major gaming sites/SC2 fan sites. Apparently there was a NDA on some information at that event that cannot be published until next week.

Could this be a beta announcement? We’ll see next week.