BlizzCon 2010

BlizzCon... the shiniest place on earth

There’s no gaming show or convention like BlizzCon, and while the likes of E3, Gamescom and PAX all have their place, BlizzCon is a completely different beast all together. There’s a passion at Blizzard’s annual get together that seems lost at other conventions and, while it may be there in part, it’s the one that is held in Anaheim California that steals the show in terms of raw enthusiasm, exhilaration and all out fan ecstasy. On paper BlizzCon 2010 did not look like it would hold any major surprises and, in truth, it didn’t. There were no major announcements, no massive reveals and just enough new information to keep people’s minds ticking over with anticipation but, after all, this is BlizzCon… a chance for Blizzard to meet and greet the “most passionate community of gamers” according to CEO Mike Morhaime and, to be fair, he may just have a point.

The opening ceremony kicked off with startling punctuality and a packed auditorium listened on as some of Blizzard’s “epic milestones” were revealed to the crowd of more than 30,000 in attendance and over 100,000 worldwide. Being represented at the convention itself were over twenty eight different countries along with every state of America, while around the world people tuned in from more than 100 different countries.

First up were the birthday announcements, starting with Blizzard itself which, in February, will turn twenty years old; there’s no word on the birthday party yet but I’m not sure if there’s a location big enough to hold it… can you still rent out Liechtenstein? It’s not just Blizzard celebrating but Diablo II turned ten years old this year which, in turn, made myself and presumably many other gamers worldwide feel just that little bit older, has it really been a decade already?

With World of Warcraft reaching the twelve million users this year it was proclaimed that if they all attended Disney World, it would fill the park for five months – now that’s a queue.

On a more serious note, Blizzard made mention of the charity pet sale they had earlier in the year. Players of World of Warcraft were able to purchase an in game Pandaren Monk with all of the 1.1milion dollars raised going to the Make a Wish Foundation. Furthermore the upcoming sale of the Moonkin pet (WoW) will also see the proceeds going to charity as will the money raised from an auction where players will be able to bid on actual server hardware used to power the very Warcraft realms within which their characters reside.

It was a statistician’s dream, opening with yet another stat proudly revealed. This time it was that, since his arrival within the game, the Lich King has been killed approximately 489,000 times, that’s a lot of loot! Mike Morhaime continued, it was the first time since 1998 that Blizzard had released two games in one year, a “double rainbow year” he chuckled before smirking his way through “what does it mean?”.

On July 27 a miraculous event occurred. For one week Justin Bieber was defeated on YouTube as the cinematic for Starcraft II became the most watched video for an entire week. It (Starcraft II) went on to be the biggest selling PC game of 2010 so far and the fastest selling strategy game of all time chalking up sales of over 3million in its first month alone.

Before leaving the stage, Morhaime went on to remind everyone that December 7th will see the day that World of Warcraft is changed forever; the day that Cataclysm is due to ship – not that you’d have to explain that to the legion of fans cheering like mad in the crowd. Hailing the beta testing “a success”, the final piece of information was that for the first time you’d be able to pre order the expansion via the Blizzard store, allowing you to download all the content beforehand meaning as soon as the servers hit midnight you’d be ready to rock and roll, so to speak.

Leaving the stage, Morhaime gave way for Chris Metzen, Blizzard’s Vice President of Creative Development who is always a hit with the fans. To be fair, you could probably call the whole event MetzenCon and it would still bring in the crowds. Metzen is one of those that has the gift of being able to reach the player on a personal level, as a player and fan himself.  Metzen set to work by conducting a social experiment all around one word, geek.  “This is our word” he went on to boast and, accompanied by a crowd reciting “geek is”, a picture would appear on the mammoth video screen that loomed over the crowd.  Various pictures were displayed, ranging from Transformers toys, a D20 dice, Thundercats, Star Wars, Captain America, Frank Miller, 300, Everquest, Aliens, Doom, Superman and many more. Finishing up his bit of audience participation, he continued by proclaiming that he believed there really was “a hero inside everyone” and that BlizzCon was one big “collective geekyness”.

Metzen retained the stage for what was to be the biggest reveal of the show, the 5th and final Diablo III class. Cutting to a video showing a scantily clad female dual wielding crossbow, and promptly shooting the shit out of anything that looked remotely demonic…enter the Demon Hunter.  The Demon Hunter is your conventional ranged character, armed with their trusty crossbows and traps. On the whole it looks rather fun to play and certainly the character looks badass enough. While only the female variant was shown, the sleek medieval look just seems to hit that sweet spot.

Following that was an announcement that not many really seemed to call: PvP arenas for Diablo III. These team based combat arenas will allow for players to engage in a more structured PvP environment and one can only presume it could well see Diablo III entering the professional gaming leagues. The opening ceremony wrapped up with another look at the recently released Cataclysm cinematic but this time with a little bit of a light show and that was that, BlizzCon had started and away everyone went.

As the convention carried on in to its first day, one interesting piece of information regarding the Warcraft film emerged. That being that the story had all been fleshed out between Blizzard and Sam Raimi and now the film was just awaiting that proverbial green light. The story is “bitchin” announced Blizzard’s Chris Metzen before adding “We are going to do it right.” Whether Blizzard can be one of the few to make the jump from video game to cinema a success remains to be seen, but the signs do look good we’ll just have to wait and see now.

The first day rounded up with the highly anticipated contests, hosted by love him or hate him comedian Jay Mohr who, despite a nervy start, seemed to get into the swing of things towards the end and more so when he was joined on stage by Kat Hunter. As the display played out, fans of Blizzard’s titles showed their creativity via the costume, dance, movie and song contests but it was the costume and dance that really took the spotlight. You can never cease to be amazed at not only the creativity but dedication some fans have as the entrants of the costume contest took the stage one by one.

There was a surprise as one contestant was promptly joined on stage by her boyfriend who quickly became her fiancé. Taking her to one side, the crowd soon ensured that he did the right thing and got down on one knee, she said yes (thankfully) and it’ll no doubt be a great story to tell their guild when they get back online. The dance contest also had its own excitement, there was men in kilts dancing as female Dwarves, men stripping off to a leotard ruining the Night Elf female dance for everyone and probably resulting in many not being able to look at Alizée the same way again.

Not to be outshone by the costume contest the dance contest also had its own little bit of excitement, but not with the same outcome. As one participant took the stage to perform his rendition of the Undead Male dance which basically consists of thrashing around as if in a mosh pit, he took a fall and the end result being a broken leg. Not many can lay claim to breaking their leg on stage at BlizzCon in front of the watching world another BlizzCon story that will no doubt be told amongst gamers for some time yet.

The contests drew to a close and Day one was over. Fans made their way out of the doors and internet streams slowly wound down, the day had ended and it was now time for attendees to reminisce about what they’d seen and look forward to day two of the event.

The second day kicked off and it was business as usual, over on the main stage was a developer panel detailing the work that went into crafting the cinematics from Cataclysm. Watchers sat as discussions began with a talk on how Deathwing (the big bad dragon in Cataclysm) came to get his new look. From how his chin armour grew larger and larger until it’s as we know it today, down to the sheer size of him and the technicalities of getting all to look good in game. Following on from Deathwing was an interesting talk on how Blizzard created the actual cinematic for Cataclysm, and the tidal waves were the subject of particular attention. It was an interesting look into the team behind the cinematics that fans seem to have so much adoration for. From the sheer size of the team involved to the fact that it took over one year to create the Cataclysm cinematic as we see it today.

As the day progressed the number of developer panels continued, from Starcraft II Art down to an open Q&A for Diablo III, there was literally something for everyone on offer. One area that was getting a lot of attention was the gaming tournaments; World of Warcraft, Starcraft II and Warcraft III were all being represented with players and teams from all around the world battling out for glory and a rather large cheque, not to mention their very own super bowl style Blizzard ring. Simply watch a number of the competitive matches and it’s clear that these just aren’t regular gamers, the level of team work, cooperation and attention to detail could be comparable to that of a professional sporting athlete.

Sadly, all good things come to an end and kicking off the closing ceremony was Blizzard’s Paul Sams who, through a series of cringe worthy jokes, started the proceedings before going on to reveal Blizzards new upcoming game, World of Jerseyshore Craft.  There were a few other tongue in cheek reveals, Gleeablo being the funniest of the pick but by now as the crowd started getting a bit restless in their anxious wait for ‘The D’ and so it was time for Sams to say his thanks for coming and depart the stage.

After a brief wait Tenacious D emerged (accompanied by Dave Grohl, it should be added) to a huge roar from the crowd and began to blow the crowd away as they rocked the night out playing fan favourites as well as a couple of new songs from their upcoming album.

BlizzCon 2010 drew to a close and its tales will be noted down in the annals of time. If there’s one thing people will have learnt it’s that Blizzard sure do know how to put on a spectacle for its fans. Each year BlizzCon has gone from strength to strength and even this year, with a lack of any major new game announcement, it still proved to be a one of a kind show. As the clean-up process in the Anaheim convention centre began, the only question remaining was… how do you top it next time round?

Bite Sized BlizzCon

There was far too much going on at BlizzCon to compact it all into one article, so here’s a run-down of a few of the more headline grabbing announcements.

  • Warcraft movie has its story nailed down and is awaiting the green light to start filming.
  • Demon Hunter is the 5th Diablo III class.
  • PvP arenas for Diablo III.
  • Diablo III over half way through development.
  • Diablo III will have a closed beta and possibly leading to an open beta.
  • Blizzard would put a game on a console if it played well.
  • Diablo III is over half way done.
  • New Blizzard MMO not being announced till at least 2010.
  • Starcraft II Heart of the Swarm not out till after 2011.
  • Four official Starcraft II mods are set to launch, Auir Chef, Left 2 Die, StarJeweled and Blizzard DotA.

Diablo III stats from the show floor (over two days)

  • 14,000 PVP games played.
  • 75,000 players killed.
  • 3,200 PvE Games played.
  • Nearly 3,000,000 monsters killed.
  • Almost 930,000 items dropped.



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4 Comments

  1. Edward Edward says:

    Brilliant write up, Ben! I’m not much for Blizzard games, but I’m incredibly jealous you got to see Tenacious D.

  2. Mark R MarkuzR says:

    I SO wish I was into Warcraft and Starcraft… this just looks fantastic. It’s clear that Blizzard really give a shit about their fans and want to make sure they all have a great time. Sure, they’re raking the money in from it at the same time… but they would likely make just as much from having the Q&A attendees rather than going to such efforts to make it something outstanding. I’m sorely tempted to pick up Warcraft just to see what it’s like, and to understand what the fuss is about with all these 12 million people who all play the game.

    Hats off to Blizzard, they really know how to put on a great show. I’m impressed. Well done for single handedly covering the whole weekend too, great job!!

  3. Lorna Lorna says:

    I think stuff like this is fascinating as it is a part of the gaming world that I have never yet ventured into. It is almost a world apart and this convention really shows it…it looks and sounds incredible. The dedication and passion of the fans really shines through and I think that even for someone not familiar with WoW etc, the atmosphere must be electric, let alone the head turning cosplay outfits :) Shame about the chap with the broken leg though…he has to live with that being giggled over on YouTube forever now.

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