Blizzard Entertainment
On November 23, 2004, Blizzard released "World of Warcraft", a massively multiplayer online role-playing game. "World of Warcraft" is the fourth released game set in the fantasy "Warcraft" universe, which was first introduced by "" 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.
StarCraft
Blizzard Entertainment began planning "StarCraft" in 1995, with a development team led by Metzen and Phinney. The game debuted at E3 1996, and used a modified "" game engine. "StarCraft" also marked the creation of Blizzard Entertainment's film department; the game introduced high quality cinematics integral to the storyline of the series. Most of the original development team for "StarCraft" returned to work on the game's expansion pack, ""; the game's development began shortly after "StarCraft" was released. In 2001, "" began development under Nihilistic Software. Unlike the previous real-time strategy games in the series, "Ghost" was to be a stealth-action game. After three years of development, work on the game was postponed in 2004. Development of "" began in 2003; the game was announced in May 2007 and was released in July 2010. The "StarCraft II" franchise continued with the "" expansion, which was released in March 2013. The third "StarCraft II" installment, "", released in November 2015.