In the flurry of excitement about BlizzCon that's taken place, I couldn't blame you if you missed a post or two somewhere. But we're here to help! Hopefully, this convenient round-up of our BlizzCon coverage will let you feel like you made the trek out to the convention yourself!
If you were one of the lucky few who happened to attend both this BlizzCon and the one in 2005, you would have noticed, as I did, the subtle changes that separated the two. Some of the changes were physical and others were harder to catch. In 2005 when we arrived at the arena, the sense of excitement was not only palpable, it was visible. For the first time since it's release, WoW fans were able to stand IRL and expound upon their favorite aspects of the game. I know personally, as someone who was at the time fairly new to the game, it was an amazing sight to see so many people who loved the game as I did. When I stood in line to get my tickets this year, however, it felt as if I were surrounded by a different crowd of gamers, a quieter one.
Nearly a week after the big event and I think we've managed to run out of photos and information to post about it. (Okay... I admit, I still have a pile of photos, but haven't had the time to resize them all yet.) So what's left to say about BlizzCon 2007? Just our final impressions of the event (you can also read up on Mike's final impressions), so here I go: Most enjoyable: Playing the WoW TCG in a beginner's tournament! Even though I had to leave after two rounds of play to make the L70ETC concert, I had a blast, and have spent time since BlizzCon tinkering with different deck setups and talking friends into playing with me. And besides the game being just fun, the tournament was a very social event. We were all seated at long tables, and before rounds and between rounds we all got to chat about our favorite classes and what realms we played on. BlizzCon overall was a bit anti-social, with many events being held in dark rooms where the focus is purely on the Blizzard folks who are hosting the presentation -- there wasn't much opportunity or encouragement to meet or socialize with people you played with. For this same reason, I also really enjoyed our Meet and Greet on Thursday night, where we got to hang out and chat with some of our readers. Of the official Blizzard events (the panels were incredibly interesting, but I'm not sure about fun), I've got to say that my favorite was the L70ETC concert. It's not every day that you get to sit with a crowd of 8,000 of your fellow players cheering on a World of Warcraft-themed rock band singing nothing but in-jokes for the gamers in the audience.
This entry in the 2007 BlizzConmachinima contest won the Comedy category. It's the latest episode in the series by Oblivious Films, The Grind. You know, squirrels can be deadly when cornered, especially on Friendship Day.
I've never really had an opportunity to play Upper Deck's World of Warcraft-based TCG. Sure, I own some cards, I've skimmed the rulebook, and shuffled through them admiring the artwork. But my friends all play World of Warcraft -- not the TCG, which means I've never really had an opportunity to play the game. But with our BlizzCon goody bags we received a free Heroes of Azeroth starter pack and an invitation to bring our sealed pack of cards to their beginners' tournaments -- so Saturday afternoon, after getting a game demo from one of the members of the Upper Deck team, I signed up to see what gameplay was really like.
So if you're curious for a beginner's look at the game and how it plays -- keep reading!
While a name like WoW Radio doesn't inspire thoughts of video, but I'm here to tell you that they did an excellent job of getting us video of the major happenings of BlizzCon 2007. So if you didn't get a chance to attend, I highly recommend taking a look at their BlizzCon page, which features video of:
The opening ceremony
StarCraft II gameplay footage
The Wrath of the Lich King panel
The careers in gaming panel
The StarCraft II live demo
The UI panel
The WoW lore panel
The Legendary Pictures movie panel
The professions & items panel
The raids & dungeons panel
The StarCraft II lore panel
And audio coverage of:
The raids & dungeons panel
The WoW music panel
Of course, if watching hours of panels is too much, you might want to check our liveblog coverage from day 1 and day 2!
Those wacky kids over at Joystiq have managed to snag a couple of very interesting interviews with high-profile bloggers attending this years' BlizzCon, and both of them provide an interesting persperctive on the event. First up, the opinions of Cory Doctorow, blogger, journalist, and science-fiction author. When asked what he thought about BlizzCon, he replied:
Well, it was awfully commercial. I'd envisioned a lot more of the social stuff -- guild stuff, "friends" who'd never met f2f getting together. But that was pretty thin on the ground -- it was so damned dark, you could hardly spot your friends even if they were there.
It was okay. It was expensive, and sparse on content, really. Lots of showy stuff from Blizzard, and some from sponsors, and very little from the players, considering, and they're a very important part of the whole thing!
In both interviews, comments are made about the lighting in the convention center. I can vouch for the interior being extremely dark (I'm sure they had a couple of lights on, but at least half of my photos only show dark shadows of people), especially when coming in from bright, sunny southern California!
Not everyone who entered a film in the BlizzConmachinima contest could win, but there were certainly some great nominees this year. This piece was a 2007 nominee in the Drama category. When I first saw Dead Rain, I admit I was freaked at a couple of points during the film, but then again I am a big ol' whimp when it comes to zombie flicks. Check it out.
During my time at BlizzCon I was able to take a couple of moments to experience some of the upcoming content we are going to see in the future. Initially I was very excited to get my chance to see Wrath of the Lich King, but as I was wandering around Howling Fjord I noticed a helpful looking NPC in one of the villages, and when I spoke to him he offered to transport me to Zul'Aman. I am never one to pass up the opportunity to check out new content, and so I allowed him to port me to the front steps of the instance.
I'm going to give you my experiences with the instance after the jump, since it's very much spoiler territory there, and if you are the kind of person that likes to be surprised I don't want to take that away from you. Those looking for more info on the instance, read on.
Oh sure. Blizzard may have announced Wrath of the Lich King, showed off demos of StarCraft II, and given us loads of exclusive time with the developers at BlizzCon... but all of that pales in comparison to the real reason we all had to attend BlizzCon: to see the Blizzard-band Level 70 Elite Tauren Chieftain perform! And for those of you who didn't make it out to California for BlizzCon this year, I offer this video as some small recompense. Enjoy!
While wandering the BlizzCon floor on Saturday I ran into the Myndflame team. Clint Hackleman was kind enough to spend a couple of minutes to speak with me about "Escape from Orgrimmar," the much-anticipated sequel to Illegal Danish. I was very eager to speak with him considering that those of us who attended the first BlizzCon were promised Illegal Danish 2 would be released the first day of BlizzCon 2007. Here's what he had to say.
When asked about the delay in releasing the film, Clint said that they considered the film not ready yet, and much like Blizzard don't want to release an inferior product. Myndflame was showing an updated trailer of the machinima on the show floor, and when I asked if I could get a copy to show the readers, Clint let me know they were only showing it at BlizzCon. So I asked the ugly question: Why was the film not ready yet? What happened? The answer is the World Series of Video Games happened. Myndflame was invited to set up a booth at the WSVG, and with that a potential partnership looking towards good things to come. Good news for both sides, but bad news for the fans waiting for another Illegal Danish piece. But take heart, Clint says that the film will only be two weeks behind, and then we will finally be able to see the next chapter in the story.
I also was interested in how they make films. Clint mentioned that Myndflame has been a professionally sponsored machinima studio for a year now, so he and his brother D.W. focus only on turning out movies for us to enjoy. A piece normally takes about 9 months to make, 6 months of writing and composing and 3 months of actual production. This seems like a long time, but their goal is to create a piece that is about 24 minutes in length, so there is a lot that goes into such a long movie.
All in all, I was very pleased with the info I received talking to Clint. I know if I got an invitation to visit the WSVG I would probably be a bit behind on my projects as well. Good luck guys in finishing up the film, and we'll keep an eye out for it when it hits the presses.
Last night's costume contest was immensely impressive. There were a total of 98 entries and all of them obviously took a lot of time -- and some of them clearly took a lot of creativity. I still think my personal favorite was the fellow who dressed up in a costume like the in-game Murloc costume -- he even ran across the stage just like the Murloc suit animation! However, with all of the great entries, he didn't take the top spot. Props for creativity have to go to the fellow who came to the contest dressed in a blue-and-white checkered box (if you don't realize, the checkered box is what the game shows when it doesn't have a model for something). We've got quite a few contest photos in our gallery, but sadly many of the contestants moved very quickly from one side of the stage to the other, resulting in a lot of blurry images. But there's a decent shot of the four winners, including a Human Rogue, a Moonkin (he even did a Moonkin dance for us!), a Tarran Ghost from StarCraft, and a Warlock in their amazing tier 6 armor set (she had the helmet as well, though it's not in this shot).
However, enjoy the ones we've got, and we'll be adding more costumes to it as we see them on the show floor today!
Update: Joystiqer Kevin Kelly is out on the show floor as well, and it looks like he got a much better view of the stage than we did -- so be sure to check out Joystiq's excellent gallery.
You may recall that there were a few contests going on at BlizzCon, one of them being a machinima contest (and the machinima that comes out of major contests like this is always incredible!). Well, in last night's contests session, we found out who won and saw the premieres of the three winning videos, and now they're available online for all to enjoy!
While the WoW Insiders out here in Anaheim haven't been following the ongoing Arena tournament too closely, I can tell you the action is getting pretty exciting. Power Trip, professional gamers with Team Pandemic, was swept out of the tournament in the first round with a 3-0 loss to Warders of the Melee. And this coming off a sweep of the World Series of Video games! (If you're wondering why such an obviously strong team got taken out so quickly, you don't have to wonder long -- two of Power Trip's Priests had been disqualified from the competition, however, leaving them light on healing.) We've got two more rounds of competition today, and we'll get back to you with the final results of competition out here when we have it! However, if you're looking for a more detailed roundup of the action, GotFrag has some detailed impressions of the first round of play as well as a rundown of Power Trip's loss.
Subscribe
