History Of Blizzard

Blizzard Entertainment was founded by Michael Morhaime, Allen Adham, and Frank Pearce as Silicon & Synapse in February 1991, a year after all three had received their bachelor's degrees fromUCLA. In the early days the company focused on creating game ports for other studios. Ports include titles such as J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Vol. I and Battle Chess II: ChineseChess. Games like Rock n' Roll Racing and The Lost Vikings were developed by the company in 1993.
In early 1994 they were acquired by distributor Davidson & Associates for $6.75 million. Thecompany was changed its name to Chaos Studios, before finally settling on Blizzard Entertainment after it was discovered that another company with the Chaos name already existed. Shortly thereafter,Blizzard shipped their breakthrough hit Warcraft: Orcs & Humans.
Blizzard launched their online gaming service Battle.net in January 1997 with the release of their action-RPG Diablo. In2002, Blizzard was able to reacquire rights for three of its earlier Silicon & Synapse titles from Interplay Entertainment and re-release them under Game Boy Advance. In 2004, Blizzard openedEuropean offices in the Paris suburb of Vélizy, Yvelines, France, responsible for the European in-game support of World of Warcraft. On November 23 of 2004, Blizzard released World of Warcraft, itsMMORPG offering. The acquisition of Swingin' Ape Studios was announced by blizzard, on May 16, 2005, a video game developer which had been developing StarCraft: Ghost. The company was then mergedinto Blizzard's other teams after StarCraft: Ghost was 'postponed indefinitely'.
World of Warcraft was the fourth released game set in the fantasy Warcraft universe, which was first introducedby Warcraft: Orcs & Humans in 1994. Blizzard announced World of Warcraft on September 2, 2001. The game was released on November 23, 2004, on the 10th anniversary of the Warcraft franchise.