Blizzcon was a blast. Good food, drink and some great gaming as I got to plow through some intense sessions of some of the most anticipated games (that won’t be coming out for years *sigh*). And while I would love to sit here and formulate a well thought out essay, I figured it would just be easier to list the good and the bad in two separate categories.
After a couple of rewrites, I went ahead and toned down the negativity of the “bad” section. Somethings got to me, but after a few hours of sleep, I took back some of the mean things I said. =D

The Good

StarCraft 2
So much can be said about our belated StarCraft 2. And much more will be said at a later date about my concerns and what not. But the one thing I was pleased to see is that, while this looks a lot like StarCraft 1.5 instead of StarCraft 2, it was fun. Fun Fun FUN. I got in line for this game easily eight times, and I enjoyed both the campaign and the run-of-the-mill skirmishes with the computer. Even getting my ass handed to me in 1 vs 1 by Jeremy was still enjoyable to some extent. Though getting pwned is never fun. Blizzard has done some pretty decent work in trying to breath some new life into the game with a new combination of classes and specializing the units for your very own individualized army. This will be very cool when all is said and done. And it was something I spent a little time tweaking with in what little time I had (in the 20 min play sessions they allowed us). For example, in the campaign mode, when you collect cash for winning missions as Jim Raynor and his crew, you can invest in a little more protection for your marines by giving them shields. Stuff like this can translate over nicely in the multiplayer world if cash is awarded for matches. Which in turn allows us nerds a chance to meticulously plan out our army equipment.

Diablo 3
If StarCraft 2 was fun, then this game was damn fun. Simple hack and slash at it’s finest. And what I mean by that is the dev team took all the great parts of Diablo 2’s gameplay and infused it into Diablo 3. Story, skills, items? These things we were not allowed to try out. The only thing we were really able to do is run around in the desert wrecking just about anything that stood in our path. And when something died, it didn’t just die, it went kaboom, splat, and vwoosh with blood and limbs flinging all over the screen while [the screen] shaked feverishly, letting you know you dealt a wicked finishing move. Another great part was wave after wave of enemies to cut through which left very little downtime. I wish I could explain more, but there was only so much to do and so very little places to go in the 20 minutes they allowed us. Remembering that all loot that dropped on the ground was for myself alone, and not for my team mates was hard to remember at first. But once I got into the habit of remembering, it was nice to feel as greedy as I wanted without irritating anyone on the team. My personal favorite was the Wizard who was able to drop a slow moving but potent nova blast which could really set back the mobs. And the frost nova, while lacking in graphics, had a nice thud to it as it froze anything in a small radius from myself. It was just hard to time because this is the first Diablo game that had a cool down timer. Very much like World of WarCraft, which is of course, a good thing or a bad thing depending on how you want to look at it. The biggest let down would have to be the Witchdoctor. While he was fun, the DPS just wasn’t there. I imagine they are fiddling with the numbers on that one. Although the “flaming skull bomb” was pretty fun to toss around. Blizz, please make this more effective! (I will discuss more on this lower down in the article)
—The Artifact
Did I mention my elite item finding skillz? Yeah, I spelled that with a Z to really drive home the point. So there was a competition for all those playing WoW and Diablo 3 to hunt for the “artifact” where ever the hell that was… and while playing a round with Ryan and Jeremy, yours truly detonated a Fallen, and a small Blizzard flag popped up right over his dead body. I quickly snatched it up to find a small “present” in my inventory. I raised my hand awkwardly and a Blizzard moderator came on over to confirm my artifact acquisition. Once they did I was greeted with a few small cheers and some jealous scornful looks. But hey, I won’t lie. It was all luck.

After my time was up I went over to the main Diablo 3 booth and collected my prize, two PNY video cards and a Diablo 3 Monk poster autographed by the entire Dev team of Diablo 3 (!!!!!). I think I like the poster more to be quite honest. As tempting it is to sell this sucker on eBay, I think I am going to be hanging on to this epic drop for a while.

World of WarCraft: Cataclysm
I think my ears bled from the roar of the crowd when they announced Cataclysm. I have to admit that I wasn’t very shocked. Rumors about this were milling about on the interwebz for week or so about this. I was just shocked to see that it was actually confirmed that the Worgen were going to join the Alliance. I don’t know why, but there is something weird about that. What made perfect sense was the Goblins joining the horde. These little guys had been helping out the Horde almost exclusively, yet they were still neutral just didn’t make sense. Obviously a little horde backing would the Goblins needed to compete in the technology war with the Gnomes on the Alliance side.

But the game play is all we care about right? Rest assured, and to my surprise, Cataclysm is actually fun in the lower levels. I mean, it’s as fun as WoW can be. What I am talking about were the racials. The Goblin’s remote bank and the Worgens enhanced speed. Not to mention you can play the Worgen as a Druid. So when you are in human form, you can run around casting all the things only the Night Elves could do. Pretty funny. The real meat of this expansion will come in other forms that can’t really be shown in 20 minutes. Let’s just hope that this has what it takes to keep the title fresh for a little while longer.

Ozzy Osborne
At 60 years old, this guy can still rock. The funny thing about this was that half way through the concert, as Ozzy was tossing buckets of water on the crowd, I turned to Jeremy and asked him if this was even a video game conference. Ozzy rocked hands down. It was a great ending to Blizzcon. Blizzard had handed out blue glow sticks to one side, and red glow sticks to the other, making the crowd up in front a very “Alliance vs. Horde” affair. The crowd up front was comprised of 3 kinds of people: normal sized to small sized nerds who were there for Blizzcon. Totally overweight nerds who were there for Blizzcon. And “FPS” guys who were way to buff, way to angry, and way to freaked out to start a mosh pit. I call them “FPS” guys because they totally matched the description of a first person shooter player, large muscles, tribal tattoos, way to startled by loud noises and bright lights. Constantly shouting, “Boom, headshot!” These were the first ones to start the mosh pits. Although a mosh pit at a nerd conference is something of a conundrum to me. Because it was basically these guys smashing into the little nerds who weren’t looking for confrontation… and then getting completely smashed into the overweight nerds. The FPS guys eventually all found each other and then created a giant mosh pit in the center of the crowd, watching an unstoppable force like an FPS guy crash into an unmovable object like a overweight nerd was pretty funny to watch.

I have been caught up in a few mosh pits in my day, but usually they consisted of like minded individuals. IE – Punk kids at a Punk show, Metal kids at a Metal show. But watching this convergence of different groups in a crowd as large as one only Blizzcon could create was an interesting experience.

The Shop
The shop, while really cool, was pretty damn expensive. People were flocking to the murloc plush dolls for $40 dollars… or the unbelievably cheap and fair price of 3 for $105. Omgzorz, no thanks. Those plushies cost next to nothing to produce (this I do not know for a fact, I am just assuming) and Blizzard was making a killing off of these. No set of murlocs is worth triple digits in my book. But what I did go ahead and pick up was a blank space marine. He now sits next to my Jim Raynor vinyl toy at my office desk on the opposite side of my monitor and it looks pretty good. There is just something about vinyl toys that just wins me over, and this blank white one matches my current batch of mighty muggs. All in all pretty cool. Good job Blizz.

The Bad

Schwag bag
Alright now we start delving into the negative. When Jeremy and I pulled in on Thursday, we ran at top speed to the convention center to pick up our schwag bags. It was exciting, it was like Christmas. But the unveiling of our said “schwag” back at the hotel was something of a let down. Yeah we got the Raynor vinyl toy, and the Blizzard authenticator, that is all cool and everything… but other than that it was essentially advertisement after advertisement after advertisement. Where the HELL was my f*cking beta key!? God dammit… the mystery key talked about from previous Blizzcons that were so sought after. And pretty much the reason why some of the people payed the whooping $125. But more on that later. Case in point, this shwag bag just had a million and one advertisements. It was really irritating. After about 10 minutes of rummaging through our bags, Jeremy looked up at me and gave me a serious “WTF” look. I had to agree. There was nothing here! An advertisement for intel products, an advertisement for the World of WarCraft magazine (4 issues a year for 70 bucks!? Hah… right….) ads for murloc toys, ads for keyboards and mice, ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads… come on Blizzard! This was ridiculous. I have no explanation other than to blame it on the economy. I already dropped enough cash for the convention, then I spent enough getting here. Now you want me to fork over more cash for things that should of already been in your schwag bag to begin with? Epic let down.

The “size up”
I usually can take a fair amount of this stare down abuse. It’s fun to send it right back. And needless to say I just got numb to it after a while. But the “size up” from other nerds started to get irritating. You know what I am talking about? The “welcome to my world, now I am going to pwn you” look that nerdy kids give right before you jump into a game with them. It wasn’t needed because we were all nerds here just looking for a good time. Or so I thought. I was probably asked “what server do you play on” about a million times while waiting in line to play games. Like they want to know if I am any goood at WarCraft, or if they owned me in a battleground. And one guy in the elevator even got pissed off that Jeremy and I played horde characters (that kid was a f*cking looser). But, on the WoW server question, it just got really irritating… because what are the astronomical odds that you actually played on the same server as the other person around the same time. There are HUNDREDS of servers in World of WarCraft. HUNDREDS. Then to add to these near impossible odds, the person might play Alliance, while you played Horde. So if there are, say (ballpark guestimation for fun) about 200 servers, with both Alliance and Horde on the server, then you are looking at a 1 in 400 chance of actually playing on the same side – same server. I have a better chance of walking into the super market and asking a random person if they knew the Hendersons than I would asking if they played Horde on the Drakka server.

So then let’s say that this person DID play on the Drakka server, on the Horde side. Then what are the odds that out of the THOUSANDS of players on your side, that you will actually know who that person is, then bump into them at Blizzcon? What are the odds that you even played in the same year(s)???Yikes… so to those guys posing the question I say… sure, I just happened to be on the opposing side of the same server you were playing on, and I am that guy you owned 5 million times over in your uploaded youtube video. If it helps you sleep better at night, yes you are more of a hardcore player. I promise you have played way more than myself. And yes you are better than me in every conceivable way in the World of WarCraft. I promise you that my choice of class and server reflects poorly on me in comparison to your choices.

WarCraftCon 2009
Well yeah, I guess this is a weak thing to bitch about. But there was about 60% of the people there for World of WarCraft, and 40% of the people there for everything else. When they announced the Monk class for Diablo 3, it didn’t generate nearly as much of a response as World of WarCraft: Cataclysm did. I mean, my ears bled when they announced that Alliance get the Worgen (soon to be World of WorgenCraft with all of their amazing racial abilities). It just seemed that all the panels I went to for Diablo were stark compared to the WarCraft sit ins.

Also, while Ryan, Jeremy and myself were waiting in line to play some more Diablo 3, we were next too this couple– and the boyfriend was trying to explain the mechanics of Diablo to his girlfriend who had never played it before. Obviously this girl was a WoW fanatic, and the boyfriend seemed to be adept in all things Blizzard. The single underlying mechanic in Diablo is click click click click. But this girl just couldn’t relate anything that he was saying. The 3 of us stepped in to help her understand the complexity of a game like Diablo, because we were really getting sick of hearing this conversation loop around in circles. The worst part about it was her over the top effort to relate it to World of WarCraft.

“So what do I need to do to move on the screen, do I use W-A-S-D keys?” … no, you click. “How do I attack things,” … you click. “What if I see a chest I want to open,” … omg are you for real chick? You click! “How do I use my special powers on my character?” … you click. “What if I….” …. no you click. You F*CKING click. How stupid are you? Why do you not get this? Have you ever played anything other than World of WarCraft? I bet you think that WoW was the first MMO to ever come out. Did you know there was such thing as a raid BEFORE WoW? Yeeesh. Most of the previous comments mentioned above didn’t verbally leave my mouth, but after a few minutes it became apparent that this girl wasn’t getting it. So the 3 of us tuned it out.

But in a more alarming way, it was sad to see just how little people know about Blizzards other amazing games. I don’t mean to hate on WoW, because it’s an amazing game. But the tunnel vision of the die hard fans is something I need to learn to let go of before I slowly drive myself insane.

The Witchdoctor
I’ll try and be brief on this one as I know this is something that can be easily fixed by Blizzard. The dps for the Witchdoctor was crap plain and simple. Playing the Barbarian or Wizard, I was able to slaughter handfuls. Playing the Monk I was able to slaughter armies (I imagine they will tone this guy down a bit later). But with the Witchdoctor, I just sat there desperately trying to firebomb, stab and poison a single target while my 2 zombie mongrels helped me out. By the end of a 20 minute play session with Ryan, Jeremy and myself on the Barbarian, Wizard and Monk combo, we were able to clear the dungeon and most of the outer lands. But with Jeremy and I on the Witchdoctor in another play session, we didn’t even reach the dungeon in time! I am confident this won’t last forever. It was just a surprise to see Blizzard screw up the math on the class so bad for this test build when the Witchdoctor was one of the original classes designed for Diablo 3.

The Stupid Q and A Questions
Oh man, any effort I put into being professional flew out the window when I sat in for some of the Q and A sessions. I will spare anyone the details, and for those who have uploaded transcripts to the internet, they have been a lot nicer than I would have been when they constructed sentences that the people meant to say. But come on, you traveled a great distance, payed $125 and stood in a question line to make yourself look like a bumbling idiot? A quick rule to anyone in the future. I know you might be nervous, but practice what you are going to say. Perhaps even do so in front of a mirror to see how you look as well as how you sound. And make sure that you do a brief canvas of research, just make sure the question hasn’t already been answered by the development team prior to the Q and A.

When I sat in for the Diablo 3 Q and A. It was painful. And I wasn’t alone because people in the audience with me were face palming themselves when a guy who just say “uhh” and stutter for minutes, wasting everyone’s time. Also, ask yourself if what you are saying is a question. Because one guy went up to the pannel and said that he didn’t like the blood without forming it into a question at all. Leaving the Dev team scratching their heads.

Secret MMO
There was buzz,, and even comments made live by Blizzards CEO about their mysterious new MMO that is going to be based off of a new intellectual property. Other than a few hints here and there, they really had nothing new to introduce other than the Monk and Cataclysm. Sort of a bummer. I was secretly hoping they were going to announce it before or after Ozzy, or even better, have Ozzy himself announce it. That is, if you could understand him…

Beta Keys
This seemed to be the biggest gripe with everyone I talked to. In previous Blizzcons, the people who payed the $125 got a private beta key code that they could input at a later date. This year we got nothing. Even one woman shouted out the matter of fact at the opening ceremonies. The crowd then followed in a low hummed “boo.” Chris Metzen had to then shrug it off and talk about something else.

At the closing ceremonies, they got some PR guy to come out on stage and announce that 1,000 of us were going to be randomly selected into the StarCraft 2 beta. People cheered, obviously our chances were like 1 in 25. Then he went on to announce that the people who bought the pay-per-view event would be entered in this drawing as well. Great, that is easily another 50,000 people. Making the odds a lot less likely, and causing the entire crowd of 25,000 of us to boo for about 20 seconds straight.

In conclusion

Blizzcon was a blast. There were a few obvious draw backs, and certainly not that much new for Blizzard to report, but it was a lot of fun to play the new games and see Ozzy.