The first day of the BlizzCon, and while registration lines were short, lines for all else was not; there were lines to play Starcraft 2, there were lines to play WoW, there were lines to buy things from the BlizzCon store. Being a Blizzard event meant that there was a lot less to buy than other conventions; besides the BlizzCon store, you had your choice of T-shirts or concession stand food to spend your dollars on. Sponsored by several other partners, Intel, Dell, Creative Labs and Nvidia, Upper Deck, and Brady Games all had booths which were mobbed with people.
There are a small number of panels and presentations, as well as championship tournaments to watch. There are games to play, and game concept art scattered about the exhibition hall. The exhibition hall feels cavernous because there's so few vendors there.
I'd guess that there's somewhere close to 6,000 people here at Blizzcon, (no numbers were officially stated, though Jay Mohr seemed to believe that Hall A held about 4,000 people). While a vast majority of people are Orange County and L.A. locals, people also came from places as far away as England, Australia, and Korea to be at BlizzCon.
Two big announcements were made at BlizzCon about World of Warcraft:
- There's another expansion pack coming out called "Wrath of the Lich King" and the focus will be on the continent known as Northrend, the home of Arthas and his undead army. This expansion raises the level cap to 80 and should include a number of features that players have been requesting.
- The Death Knight hero class will be introduced in Wrath of the Lich King, and it's the first of the Hero classes. The Death Knight Hero class will be an unlockable feature on your game's account available after completing a level 80 quest, which will allow you to start your Death Knight character at level 55.
Starcraft 2 and the Terran units were introduced at a panel on Friday; as I watched the presentation, I felt that I was watching an military contractor's demonstration of their latest catalog of weapons.
The events of the evening were the sound-alike contest, a dance contest and a costume contest, which were all hosted by Jay Mohr, actor/comedian (who also plugged his new sports column at Fox Sports. The sound-alike contest was interesting, with a lot of very good Murlocs and sound bites from NPCs, including some from the soundtests: "Your sound card works perfectly".
The dance competition was dominated by the Blood Elf contingent, which included two female blood elves dancing to Britney Spear's Toxic, and one male Blood Elf doing the Napoleon Dynamite dance.
There were an amazing 98 entrants for the costume contest; there were no skits, which allowed the contest to progress quickly (otherwise the contest would have taken all night). The prize for the costume contest was ridiculous: a fully loaded, top of the line laptop, along with a two year subscription to WoW, which puts the prize package somewhere north of $3,000. The runners up received sounds cards and other goodies, making the BlizzCon costume contest one of the more lucrative ones to enter.
Leave a comment