I spent last weekend in Anaheim meeting guildmates IRL (it was similar in some ways to the funny web series The Guild (www.watchtheguild.com)). That was a surreal experience, but in general I had a lot of fun! There was a lot to see and do this year at Blizzcon, including playable versions of Starcraft 2 (separate single and multiplayer demos), WoW: Wrath of the Lich King, and most importantly Diablo 3! I played this early on Friday and had a blast! There were 3 classes playable and the group I played with had one of each. I tried out the barbarian class, and it seemed pretty powerful. I got to pick up and equip a lot of interesting, neat-looking loot and tried a bunch of different styles of weapons. The characters and world environment were gorgeous. At the Diablo Art panel they said they wanted it to look like you were playing a painting, and that is just how it looked in some places. The demo took place outside the wreckage of Tristram, and took you back into the church and catacombs that the original Diablo game made famous, and you even fought one of the earlier bosses from that original game! The level design is randomized, so every time you play it the layout will be different, and you encounter some variety of random quests along the way to your story goal. I suspect what I was playing was the start of the actual game, and I don't know how much will change between now and when it ships, but the game was damn fun and very playable as it is right now. They could zip it up and send it out as a demo and people would devour it over and over again. Very fun!
The lines for everything were pretty massive. Blizzard had serious problems with the ticket sales system this year and to help make it up to people they released additional tickets which made the total number of visitors well over 10,000. I think I must have seen every single one of these people in one line or another. I manged to get into the line for the Blizzard store early on the second day, but there was another store that had some cool shirts and stuff and that line was hours long both days. Frustrating! I also ran into an incredibly long line to play Starcraft 2, so I skipped it. I got a beta key for Starcraft 2 just for attending Blizzcon, so I wasn't too worried. I did watch people play it quite a bit and it looks great. The units are very detailed and I am liking what they announced at the convention that the game will have a heavier focus on story when it ships as 3 separate pieces. More Blizzard cutscenes = good!
I also got to see a bit of the Warcraft 3 tourney play and I was amazed by how FAST these people are. I could barely keep track of the units they had selected because they switched several times a second as they flipped around the map keeping an eye on everything. It was pretty crazy to watch and it was really cool that Blizzard brought people in from overseas to compete. They even had the first competitive Starcraft 2 tournament!
The closing night concert was amazing. It started with Patton Oswalt and he did 15-20 minutes to warm up the crowd. He was hilarious and clearly in his element amongst the geeks. After Patton came the Blizzard-themed metal band Level 80 Elite Tauren Chieftan, who performed 6 or 7 songs centered around all of the Blizzard universes, including a new one about the Death Knight class being introduced in Wrath of the Lich King. It was all very silly and fun and the crowd got into it. After a short intermission, they had a full orchestra and choir perform music from all of the classic Blizzard games as part of the Video Games Live! concert series. They had several special musical guest performers and singers to help out on some of the songs and it was really special. Hearing a full choir singing some of the epic music from these games and an orchestra along with all different kinds of instruments from folk to metal to pipes playing live was really awesome and worth the price of admission alone for me. I had a blast and I will definitely go to the next Blizzcon if I can!
~derek
More stuff:
Blizzcon Costimes contest
Level 80 Elite Tauren Chieftan concert
