Minecraft film set to hit silver screen

The game's auction houses allow players to buy or sell items for real-world money "There's no doubt that what went wrong was always going to go wrong, and at its glacial speed Blizzard have acknowledged this." Despite the firm's U-turn another industry watcher said it would not spell the end for real-money auction houses. The news comes soon after Blizzard revealed that subscriber numbers for WoW had dropped to about 7.7 million. But it will face stern new competition from a major player - Disney. Diablo 3 marked a change of strategy. Something to keep existing players interested and happy. Olivia Grace, a contributing editor at online gaming site Wow Insider, said the game was "definitely not" what she and other keen gamers were expecting, "This is something of a surprise, yes, and it's not that remarkable that there have been feelings of disappointment," she told the BBC. n"We are working around the clock to buy and add more servers," its blog said. nDuplicate cards can be converted online into "arcane dust" that can be stockpiled and then used to craft the rare cards players need to do better in duels. "We firmly believe that by shutting down the real-money and the gold auction houses, it really paves the way to make sure that killing monsters in-game is the most rewarding, the most satisfying, the most compelling way of getting your hands on those items," said Josh Mosqueira, Diablo 3's game director. Maybe the focus that a smaller audience allows will be good for WoW in the long run." "This is maintenance, in a sense," he wrote. "This is no surprise," Mr Bailey added. "China is a very advanced and fiercely competitive market for online gaming, that, as well as offering greater direct competition to World of Warcraft, is also experiencing its own shifts in terms of business models and devices." Disney onslaught Beyond World of Warcraft, Activision anticipated further difficulties in 2013. nThe push reaped initial rewards - user numbers swelled to more than one million in China - but the figures made public on Wednesday suggested the spike was short-lived.  nTo manage this decline, Blizzard has introduced a system that lets people play across servers to ensure the game's economy, Player-versus-Player areas and arena battle systems have enough people participating to keep them functioning. nDisney Infinity will feature a well-recognised cast of characters The media corporation plans a similar title with add-on accessories, Disney Infinity, to be released in the summer. nThat title, which featured a new "continent" on the game inhabited by martial-arts-skilled pandas, was targeted at the Asian market. Temperamental' Last week Rockstar North admitted it was facing "unanticipated" pressure because sales of GTA 5 had been stronger than expected. UK users, for instance, now faced a �1 fee for each item sold in the real-money auctions and 15% charge of the final sale price for in-game commodities including "gold", which itself could be used to make purchases. Blizzard said buyers of Warlords would be able to boost one character to level 90 so they could instantly go adventuring in the world of the expansion. Cards bought in stores are replicated in the online game in which people duel with other players calling on weapons, spells and followers to help defeat an opponent. In October 2012, 10 million gamers were signed up - a figure boosted by the release of Mists of Pandaria, an expansion pack that sold 2.7 million copies in its first week. PlayStation has been dealing with frustrated customers experiencing problems with Grand Theft Auto Online But it added that matters could be "more temperamental than such things usually are" because using so many computers introduced their own issues. Blizzard said Hearthstone was going through internal testing but would be released before the end of 2013. No release date for Warlords has yet been given. Writing on the Rock Paper Shotgun game news site, Nathan Grayson described Warlords of Draenor as a "decent expansion" but said the decision to re-visit Warcraft's past was "puzzling". n"This is not a condemnation of the model itself but rather its implementation," said Ed Barton, director of digital media at the consultancy Strategy Analytics. Blizzard itself had banned players of another game - World of Warcraft - from buying and selling gear outside the title. Skylanders, the company's series that allows players to use real-life toy figures to interact with the game using near-field communications technology, has been very well received by critics and gamers alike. Packs of five cards would cost about $1 (60p) each, he said. The last time they were this low was in 2007 and they are significantly down on the 2010 high of 12 million. nDespite this, she said, Hearthstone looked well put together. nCards in the game are based around characters, spells and artefacts from Blizzard's Warcraft world to make them immediately familiar to players, said Rob Pardo, Blizzard chief executive during a presentation about Hearthstone at the Pax East gaming convention. The company said that the auction houses would be removed on 18 March 2014, giving users a chance to adjust. He hoped his actions would deter his son from playing the games, he is reported to have said. n"Being killed by someone happens all the time," she said. Warlords lets characters play at level 100, introduces player settlements called garrisons and updates the look of some of the game's different races. nBlizzard took a cut of any transactions involving real-world money, offering it an extra source of income. nThe announcement comes as WoW player numbers hit a five-year low and Blizzard starts to group players on a smaller number of servers. The heroes are united in teams and fight rivals for dominance on one of a series of different maps. The expansion is set on the world of Draenor and gives players a series of new zones, dungeons and instances to play on. nA movie based in the science-fictional Halo universe, for example, has been under development for nine years but filming has yet to start despite several different scripts being written. One leaked document published by the New York Times claims such video games could be used for recruitment or to conduct virtual weapons training. Called the Warlords of Draenor it adds a new world to the game, lets players build settlements and instantly boost a character to high level. Minecraft creator Markus Persson revealed this week that the game's maker was talking to Warner Brothers about the project. n'Without our knowledge' The NSA is said to have extracted World of Warcraft account data and attempted to link it to Islamic extremism and arms deals, according to the Guardian. However, the documents obtained by former NSA contractor Mr Snowden and cited by the media did not specify if any terrorist plots had been foiled by the effort. nFilm adaptations of best-selling games have a rocky history in Hollywood and many projects never get beyond the planning stage. Bearing in mind Diablo 3 proved to be the fastest ever selling PC game in the weeks after its launch, it offered a potentially lucrative way for the company to continue making money after players had bought the subscription-free title. Players are currently able to buy and sell weapons, armour and other virtual items to each other using either real-world cash or in-game gold. This is an arena-based hero brawling game that lets people take control of key characters from almost every game Blizzard makes including Starcraft and Diablo. Work on the film is at a very early stage as Warner only recently acquired the rights to use Minecraft's iconic blocks, characters and monsters. Blizzcon also saw the announcement of a new game called Heroes of the Storm. The news comes less than two weeks after Minecraft creator Mojang took action to shut down a Kickstarter project seeking to raise funds for a film based on the game. "It's not the time you spend doing something, it's the impact it has on your life." Father and son are said to have reconciled but World of Warcraft expert Olivia Grace said she did not think Mr Feng's actions would necessarily act as a deterrent. nA spokesman for World of Warcraft's parent company Blizzard Entertainment told the Guardian they were not aware any surveillance had been conducted. nBut it has now acknowledged that the facility "short-circuited" the title. The man, named by the Kotaku East blog as Mr Feng, was concerned about the amount of time his 23-year-old unemployed son was spending online. nBushnell's website was also compromised, with links to blog posts about the multiplayer games World of Warcraft and Diablo 3. Most excessive game playing is usually a symptom of an underlying problem." "I've never heard of that kind of intervention before, but I don't think these top-down approaches work. nThe company is owned by publishing giant Hachette, and Bushnell's new book is provisionally titled Killing Monica. Matthew Ballast, of the publishing company, confirmed to Reuters that the leaked document is the author's work. nMovie news site Deadline reported the one of the producers of the recent Lego Movie is handling the project. The media reports allege US and UK spies spent years investigating online games including Second Life for potential terrorist activity. His son eventually asked one of the gamers why they kept targeting him. "It's not going to do much for family relations," Prof Mark Griffiths, a gambling and addictions expert at Nottingham Trent University told the BBC. Virtual universe games draw millions of players from around the globe. News of the operation was broken by the New York Times, the Guardian and ProPublica on Monday using leaked confidential government information obtained by whistleblower Edward Snowden. It follows complaints from gamers that the auction houses made the game less satisfying to play as they undermined the challenge of the battle to defeat Diablo, the "lord of terror". Mr Persson said he revealed the news to thwart someone else who was trying to leak information about the deal. nWarner was planning to turn a "live action" version of the game into a film, said Deadline.