20 Ways Blizzard Entertainment Changed the World
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2. The face of PC gaming
The genres and games you find in the constellation of PC gaming from Bejeweled and Peggle to Minecraft and Train Simulator are unmatched by any other platform. Yet it's ultimately Blizzard's games World of Warcraft in particular that have become the de facto face of PC gaming around the world. Not just for their undeniable popularity, but for the imprint they've left on our societies, from Time Magazine and New Yorker profile stories to StarCraft II ads plastered on the side of a Korean Air Boeing 747.
... 13. Battle.net
Consoles have created online networks such as Xbox Live, and Valve created Steam, but no single developer has created a such a successful network solely for its own games. Battle.net has been around for years, but only recently has Blizzard begun to transform Bnet into something it sees as the future: a network of constant connectivity. Why must I lose contact with my friends just because I want to play SC2 instead of WoW or Diablo III? Who says you can't talk to your friends in cross-game chatrooms? Using a single network gives the players a new sense of community, where they'll never game alone again.
They've also created a high resolution "DNA" profile of the company that tracks many of its well-known developers and the development houses (and titles) they've left the company for. Of course, Guild Wars, Hellgate: London, and Torchlight are all represented, but there are some lesser known ones like Ultima X: Odyssey, Fallout 2, and Arcanum in there, too.
