Looking for blog topics this morning I spotted a couple of posts at CNET, both of which have to do with our friends at Blizzard Entertainment, which you may know from such games as World of Warcraft, the Starcraft series and the Diablo series. Like many folks, I love those games — though I admit I’ve never played WoW and several of the others. At least, not yet.

Brendan Sinclair wrote yesterday about how the game company has registered at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for several names, all of which use the word “cataclysm.” Sinclair, in turn, got the news from superannuation. It looks as though the company intends to use the word, somehow, in conjunction with computer and online games, as well as printed products — the wording suggests it could be comic books, posters or perhaps just the printed material that accompanies the hard copy of the game.

So, what does it really mean? Sinclair suggests that it could be either an add-on to an existing franchise or a completely new game. Blizzard had no comment for CNET.

But as I said, that’s not the only news coming from the Blizzard bunch. If you’re going to play Blizzard’s Starcraft II, you’re not going to be able to do it over a local area network (LAN), like other games. Instead, you’ll have to go through Blizzard’s Battle.net service. According to CNET’s Dave Rosenberg, the company released a statement in which it said that the move is being made to enhance game play by routing people to Battle.net, but it’s also supposed to protect against piracy.

Is that really the case? Perhaps. But fans are already up in arms over the change, and have started a petition to get Blizzard’s bigwigs to change their minds, said Tracey John at Wired. More than 20,000 people have already signed.

If Blizzard holds firm, I doubt seriously that the company will offer LAN functionality in any more of its games once it’s been removed from Starcraft II.

For more on some related topics, take a look at these links:
How World of Warcraft Works
How Home Networking Works
What are the best video games that were never made?